We know the common explanations on origin of money; it was used to replace the barter system so that it's convenient (to swap say cows with pigs, it's easier to use this 'middle-man' entity called money). How gold was used and then paper currency and today it's all electronic -- just some number stored in some harddisk somewhere.
Let's go a little deeper on what this thing is. In time, it has morphed into something that we see today where it primarily serves a basic human nature. It's of control. It's of power. When one human wants to control another human -- the latter's time or action, money is used.
So today money is nothing but a representation of power.
Why this need for power? it arises deeper from human nature or ego. Call it duality -- where one human has a desire to make another human do things the way he (former) wishes.
Essentially it's a tool of aggression. A wrong tool to achieve the right goal (of expansion)
We can see it fails in a very rare situation -- called love. E.g. an emperor can enslave a beautiful girl -- but he can't force her to love him. Also we know when a rich guy falls madly in love with a girl (say poor girl), he knows the weakness of his riches.. no amount of his money can win the hear of the girl.
So money arises from the desire of a human to manipulate another. Note money is worthless to control an animal or even a very small child; they don't understand money. You can't make a 3 year old do things by enticing with money.
The reason a human want controls at a deeper level is for him to expand and feel more. The knows that something is limited in him and he wants to expand. The joy never arises when this duality exists -- joy can arise only with sharing and expansion (call it love or non-selfish) nature. So pursuing this path is like trying to quench a fire with pouring gasoline; sad that almost everyone seems to be trying to do this.
Bottom line -- money in reality is as solid as a castle built in air. It is unreal (ask a person in his death-bed on the value of money). So it's better to enjoy life and the moment rather than giving attention to accumulation of money. [Of course, to overcome the need for money, one needs to overcome fear, for that one needs to overcome duality; it's easier to overcome the need for expansion -- this is thru' non-selfish/sharing/love]
What for money is good?
ReplyDeleteIt's a nice medium to interchange labor/time. Also it's a good motivation to make people work -- in the ideal world, each human works only on his passion -- whatever his creative energy takes him. May be he paints.. or a scientist invents a better way to grow crops -- but most humans (near 100%) are motivated by greed or fear. This is unfortunate; but that's the state of things. Given that the only useful motivator is greed/fear (and not say sharing/love/unselfishness), the fastest way to convert technology (laws-of-physics) to useful human products is to use money.
Thus as long as money is used to motivate people to do work, it's fine. When the purpose moves to accumulation and used as a tool of power/aggression, we see all the negative effects it brings up.