MONEY! This is a topic that evokes a wide variety of thoughts and emotions. This site will contain a lot of information and discussion about money as time goes by. There is a lot to know and understand about it. A survey shows that most people are not very informed about money. There are many books available about it ranging from history to the future, and despite the immediacy of and the profound influence of money in the lives of the people, the vast majority of the people have invested little time in its study. We know what it looks like, in its many forms, and we know what we can do with it, but this is not enough. Something that has become the overwhelming driving force of the world warrants more. The people would help themselves greatly by taking the time to study the literature available about money. The information found there is indispensable, but there are some things about money that seem to be missing from the literature, vital things.
A fundamental fact about money that demands understanding seems obvious, but is mostly overlooked is the fact that money is what we use to access the products of society, and regardless of the form, money is a means to limit your access to the products of society. If there were no limits to your access, there would be no reason to have money at all. If you think this sounds like everything would be free in such a case, you are simply making a mistake, an understandable one, but still a profound mistake.
“Free,” like “freedom,“is something that has little or no meaning when analyzed deeply. There is no such thing as “free,” nor, as has already been written about on this site, “freedom.” These are just words that represent no physical object and as mental abstracts have only relative meaning within certain contexts. Nothing is all that is free. No object of human production is truly free since it must be “paid for” with time and energy/effort. The air you breathe in comes at the cost of time and effort inhaling. When the universe is considered, devoid of life, everything in it is a product of time and energy, and, therefore, not free. This train of thought has no end. The products of society that we currently buy with some form of money are certainly never free. They all require time and effort to produce. So, even if there were no limit to your access to the products, nothing would be free. The amount of time and energy required to produce the products and to gain unlimited access would be the cost, but money would have no place. You invest time and effort; in return you get access to all the products of society. You will not be given anything. You will have to purchase what you get by contributing to society. What makes this so desirable is the fact that your pay for your effort is everything you want as long as you live. That is pretty good pay, don’t you think?
Yes, your money will disappear. You will have to give up money entirely. There will be no money and there will be no need for money. There will be no savings, no stock market or stock, no banks, no financial institutions, no artificial value, and there will be virtually no need for lawyers. All these things exist only because we use money to conduct the operations of our society. Of course, such a system serves some, and very well.
In terms of everything that is produced in the USA, including services, the financial industry (a name it does not deserve) comprises nearly half. Things that are being done in the management and manipulation of money have become a huge portion of the total work people do. It also pays very well. In fact, it appears that the financial jobs are among the top paying in the country.
Banking is something that we all see. But do you realize that every penny that goes into the banking system is a needless expense for society. It is like paying someone to follow you around holding your money and taking care of your payments, but much worse. It is simply an unnecessary expense, and it is an expense that has taken the top tier in the pay scale. Can you see that if everyone worked in the financial sector there would be nothing to eat? Can you see that the more we spend dealing with the onerous burden of money the poorer we become? It is imperative that society use its time and effort wisely. Our work must help us as much as it possibly can, and the cost of money is too high and totally unnecessary.
Nothing we need and want requires money. We have just become so inured to it that we don’t understand what is happening. If you want to build a house or a factory, you can’t build it out of money. You build it out of tangible building materials. Money doesn’t fertilize crops. It doesn’t fix your leaky pipes. When you need building materials, go get them. In a society that pays you unlimited access to the products of society as compensation for your work, that is all you have to do; just go get the stuff you need. It seems insane to first have to convince someone that you are worthy of the money required to get the stuff you need. How did this happen? Open minded study easily answers that question, if you can get to that condition. It is not easy, perhaps even unlikely. Try it after reading this article. You may find it more likely.
There is a lot to fathom about money and how it has transformed the very essence of life in society. Consider crime. Money is the motive nearly every time. Show a hungry animal food and them put it out of reach. You will see the animal behave in ways similar to the way people behave after they become aware of what is available in the world that they are unable to obtain. Food is a prime example even amongst humans. Just look at the starvation statistics. The food is out there, but many cannot gain access to it; they don’t have the money. Who can be confused now about the frequency of crime? It is a natural occurrence in a society that limits access to it products.
It has already been suggested that there is not enough for unlimited access for everyone. This is an old response and it has no substance. It comes from the psychology created by the system that has dominated life on Earth as long as history is available. This system cannot abide abundance. This system requires for its very existence shortage, scarcity, and deprivation. We have been subjected to this so long we have unconsciously accepted it as a natural condition of life. Nothing could be further from the truth. The waste that goes on in the world today is essential to this inhumane inane system.
Here is the next fundamental fact about money that beats you down every day all the time and still goes unnoticed. Somehow, at some point in time, it became accepted by the people that their time and effort does not deserve as much as that of another. You get paid more or less than someone else. The people have accepted the judgments that value their contributions to society at different levels. These value judgments and their enforcement have become such that the most essential work of society are the least valued. The people who work to build and maintain everything are granted the least access to the products of the society they build, while those who contribute things that we could easily do without are granted the most access; movie stars, high end athletes, and those who deal in money and laws, though the list is longer still. Only a very few, percentage wise, have unlimited access and, guess what, those few have virtually unlimited access to you as well.
If you and I get stranded on a deserted tropical island and I quickly gather all the coconuts and put them where you cannot get them, I can get you to do things for me that you might not otherwise be willing to do in exchange for coconuts. I would have access to you. The hungrier you become the greater my power over you becomes. My behavior in that case would certainly be subject to criticism, but such things are going on every day all over the world while the people idly accept it. You see it all around you, but you may be unaware of it.
Society is overflowing with products and services. Production is a staggering abundance. Even food has become a commodity that is bought and sold, rather than something personally grown, hunted, or gathered. It is a product of society and to get access to it money must be obtained. Again, the person with the money has power over you. If you want something besides food, the same situation exists. In the world today, your desires for things other than food are being created by some of the greatest human effort ever done, which is another topic, but you will see what I mean by considering advertising, marketing, and invention, the last of which creates desires that previously did not exist, like laptop computers. Then there is medical care.
Medical care has become big business. You can get your heart replaced. Well, you can get it replaced if you have the money; otherwise you are likely to just perish. Medical services are not provided to those who have no money. Sure there are charities and some medical service provided to those who have no money, but people are suffering and dying all over the world, even in the USA, because they don’t have enough money to get available medical help. Now, how does this compare to the coconut story above? You might do many things for someone to relieve your hunger, but when you are in the grips of excruciating pain, or your body is badly broken, you are likely to be even more motivated. What a wonderful way to make money! Just refuse to grant access to a product of society known as “medical care” unless money is provided. In a system that bases price on the strength of demand, how could you ask for a better means to set prices high? “Does it hurt bad? We can fix it for the right price.” It sounds very much like the story of coconuts. All this is going on today, and worse, while the least amount of notice and effort reveals that medical care as we have it today is only because so many have contributed to society so long.
The cost of education is not just books and tuition. What university exists solely as an island in society? They all use the roads and every other system that society provides. Without the vast amounts of time and effort supplied by the people, there would be no hospital or medical equipment, and no university. People would not be able to devote their time to the study necessary to become medical professionals. No doctor acquired the requisite knowledge to be a doctor without vast help from society. What would a person eat while spending the necessary time in study if there were no people making food available? The more one goes to school, the more one owes society. Ah, but that is backwards. The more one goes to school the more one deserves more money. This current attitude is devoid of reason, and absolutely oozing the worst form of discrimination.
Somehow you have accepted that you are not worth as much as someone else. That is the cold hard fact of the matter. You have accepted this lie, this delusion. If this is not your attitude, why then do you accept the limited access you have to the products of society? Even the highest paid doctors are getting less than some. Even they have accepted that they are worth less than someone else, if not consciously then by behavior. We have, nearly every one of us, accepted the delusion that some are worth more than others. The proof is in your pay, your profit, your returns. While you work away, even contentedly, you accept that you are not going to get full access to the products of society when there is no physical organic reason for it. It is discrimination.
You are being judged. Your value is being determined. The quality of your life is being set upon you through the instrument of money. You contribute to society and your contribution is compensated with some amount of money, which is, again, simply your access to the products of society. You are granted some level of access, but limited access, as represented by your money. Your value is being set for you.
You live on a planet that has had humans working incredibly hard on it for centuries. Humans have been very busy. The amount of work that has been done is beyond comprehension. We see remnants from thousands of years ago in the form of pyramids and such of the work that has been going on continuously for all these thousands of years. Everyone alive has inherited the products of the work done by the ancestors. In the USA there are few roads left to build. Lakes have been created. The list goes on and on. Surely you can understand this. A lot has already been done. We have inherited a lot of stuff, and the new born even more. Yet the work must go on. We must be ever productive, more and more all the time. It gets harder and harder to do enough work to satisfy our survival needs. Many perish because they cannot keep up the pace, or they cannot get back into the pace after the system has let them fall out of sync. Where does it all go? When is it enough?
In the USA, and the world at large for the most part, the people are required to work all their lives to provide for themselves. You must have a job and work at it to get money to buy the things you want and need, because you are not going to get access to the products of society unless you have money. There is retirement, sure there is. For most of you it is after you are so old and worn out that you don’t even have long left to live, and your retirement is an austerity demonstration. The exceptions to this are too few to make the situation acceptable. The exceptions, of course, are the wealthy, and in truth they only have it a little better than the rest of the people. In fact, there are ample reasons to claim that they do not have it any better, but worse. They only have access to the products of society and to the people. They don’t have greater access to peace, happiness, fulfillment, or any of the products that humans can create in a better world. The wealthy also have the burden of responsibility for the prevention of the fulfillment of Life on Earth.
When I get all the coconuts and prevent you from gaining access to them on the desert island, I am holding you down, back, and out. Money is no different. If I get all the money and prevent you from accessing it, I hold you down in much the same way. One source stated that corporations in the USA are sitting on nearly two trillion dollars, the exact number being unnecessary, and the the exact form being equally unnecessary. This number is above and beyond what they call “illiquid assets,” like buildings, real estate, machinery, and such. It also does not include the inherited work already done by humans. Those corporations use the roads, the utilities, and everything else. They hold enough money to eliminate hunger here, to provide medical care to those without access, and so much more. But they have no intention of any such actions. They hold their money while they claim they need more confidence that any use they apply the money to will result in even more money coming back to them, a return. They are held in high esteem. They are successful. They are seen as paradigms of the hope we all have. There is no hint, other than from this writer that they are hording the coconuts.
There is only so much money. If money is a “store of value,” as they put it, it must represent tangible products or services. People who have wealth are keeping you from getting better access to the products of society and they are using you to do their bidding, which is all the essential work and the work of increasing and protecting their wealth. They know that people desire better access to the products of society, so they must be ever vigilant against the people. You may have noticed the law enforcement and military expense in today’s world. If you think they are there to protect you, consider the nuclear bomb. The wealthy have plenty of protection against the nuclear threat. Do you? Do you think the military of another country would invade to get more people? In this densely populated world more people means more mouths to feed. Invaders are after land and wealth, usually. Furthermore, would you require a military if everyone had unlimited access to the products of society? A society that successful would be the inspiration of rapid duplication around the globe. The kicker is; such a society is not only possible, but great effort is being applied to prevent its inevitable manifestation by completely natural organic means.
There was a man named Thomas Robert Malthus who wrote some books in the late seventeen hundreds that spun a bit of sophistry about over-population and scarcity that have been invaluable tools in the suppression of the human spirit ever since. Today the world is in apoplexy over the growing population and the depleting resources. Malthus was a reverend in the Christian faith and a philosopher economist. He studied societies both present and past, and then postulated their extensions. He went against many well know persons who postulated quite the opposite of his views believing that humans could and would perfect society even unto utopia. The fact that Malthus worked solely within the parameters of society that operates in the usual manner was a great flaw in his thinking. His views assumed that there would always be money regulating access to the products of society. He saw how prosperity caused more births until there was less prosperity that slowed the birth rate. It was a fine bit of sophistry, ingenious. It was totally devoid of any true vision and comprehensive comprehension of society. It appears to be just a way to protect the wealth of the wealthy and to continue the perpetration of a terrible social system, the one that has a king at the top and peasants below.
People began to dislike the idea of Kings and Queens and the social system was modified so that those royals could have their positions without causing the people to revolt again. It was a clever move, and it has everything to do with your money. They merely stepped out of the spot light and temporarily increased the people’s access to the products of society while they devised ways to control the people. For the people was their only threat.
A person was no threat to the wealthy. Killing a person was easy. Killing or imprisoning a lot of people, though more difficult, was easy enough. The real threat has always been The People. Large numbers of people united in a cause stormed the palaces and executed the royals many times in history. This fact was not lost on the wealthy or the royals and they have been at great endeavors to use their wealth to get people to devise ways to prevent such things. Yes, they got the people they wanted to control to devise the means to do so.
Today the people are so outgunned it is ridiculous. The wealthy can bring to bear the unimaginable force of the world’s military might in defense of their wealth. Or maybe you think the military is not at the disposal of the wealthy, like they want you to think. Are those in power wealthy? I rest my case. If you are unable to see that the wealthy can bring to bear the might of the armed, just try to do anything against their wishes. You can end up in prison even if you have lots of money if you go against the greater wealth, or you can end up dead. It has happened many times, whether you are aware of it or not.
It stands as fact that money can get people to do things that a sentient being would find unimaginably horrible. We all know this. There is only one reason this condition exists; access to the products of society is limited. Discrimination is being done that shows the people that there are some who get more and this keeps a false hope alive in the hearts of the people, the hope to rise up to a similar level. The wealthy realized early that hope was essential to the maintenance of a strong and peaceful population of servants, though now they feel crowded by too many servants; yet another topic for later.
People who can get everything they want and need are difficult to manage into doing horrible things. Theft is a rare occurrence in a society that provides unlimited access to the products of society in return for a short term of service. The very character of the people in such a society is something altogether different than that of people in society as it is today, worldwide. When basic needs are met and access to the means of attaining personal fulfillment are readily available, beautiful people occur. In such a society the products of society become beautiful things, works of art, utility, and durability. People become productive in pursuit of their own personal dreams, health, well-being, and community/family desires. A society that is that successful generates generations of ever greater quality and beauty. Vistas become visible that have been shrouded in darkness, invisible to the minds that struggle for survival. The vastness of outer space becomes a beckoning frontier, and that frontier is likely limitless, as are its resources.
On Earth today, resources are being used to operate society. The world over societies, together comprising the super family of our species, operate in such a state of inefficiency that people like Reverend Malthus seem lucid. But the availability of resources and space are only a concern within the systems that operate society as it is today, and there is no reason to continue to operate society as it is today. There is, in fact, overwhelming evidence that the super family of man is headed to its own destruction if the current systems are allowed to continue. Now, do you think you might like to break your mind free of its limits and at least try to envision a better way? Perhaps you could just consider the one you are reading about right now with a mind free of brainwashing that life has done to you since you came into this life.
Note:
This article is testing the waters, so to speak. I have quite a bit of fear around presenting it to the world. Change frightens some. Some would like to see thing continue as they are. So, if I suddenly commit suicide, I really didn’t. Some things are worth dying for, as some things are worth living for. I fear those who oppose egalitarian altruism. I fear those who argue against utopia. The psychology of those people is hard to fathom. The “it can’t be done” crowd, don’t remember Edison and many others. That something doesn’t seem possible to you is not proof of your opinion. Opinions are limited to the scope of the consciousness of the opinion holder. They see reasons why something can’t be done instead of the obstacles that must be surmounted to reach the goal, or they have darker more sinister psychology. I fear there are those who have very sinister desires and who do such things. That is a subject for another time. I do fear that though. I do not fear to fear. Fear is a good thing. It helps me survive.
Anyway, I debated this article for some time. I wrote it quite a while back. The fact that you are reading it tells you what I finally decided. I want world peace, but I want even more. I want everyone to be fulfilled, provided their fulfillment doesn’t require sinister stuff. I want to live in a world of people who love everyone and everything, of happy people who are enjoying the adventure. I want to live in a world of people united in Truth. I am sick of the multitude of arguments on every subject of any importance. I want to live in a world of infinite diversity and possibilities. I do, actually. It just needs to be unfettered.
People are bad. Some intentionally. Some by ignorance. Some by manipulation. Many and diverse reasons are involved in making people bad. Accidentally being bad may be the most common reason people are bad. The subject demands an incredible amount of elucidation. Words must be narrowly defined and plain enough to negate the possibility of misinterpretation. Concepts are difficult to develop and still more difficult to articulate. Even then, articulation is not enough. The best written or spoken discourse more often than not is not received as intended. Communication is at best crude still. Human consciousness is too complex to align with another in accurate transfer of thought by words. Ultimately, everyone is left to decide and do alone. Communicating is still being attempted and the influence of the effort adds to the complexity of reasons people are bad. Let mankind gather together in great numbers and persist for long periods of time and the badness of people is multiplied while the complexity of the human mind, communication difficulty, and accidents combine to perpetuate the badness. A human born and grown to maturity develops psychology influenced by all that is experienced. That influence is so profound it can be considered something like the programming of computers. Anyone and everyone receives their programming, and, according to the psychologists, much of it is subconscious. People become powerful beings acting on the complex psychological state of their minds mostly unmindful of what they are doing. It takes nothing extraordinary or special to act in synchrony with one’s psychology. It is virtually automatic. To change the repeating history of mankind from bad to better, something different must happen within each human. Psychology must become a product of intelligent design. In other words, we must exceed our programming.
A vast litany of outbursts erupts from people when you say people are bad. When you attempt to inform an individual that he is bad, the outburst can be violent. Humans are programmed from birth to respond to stimuli. Before clarification is possible, a stimulus of words that say people are bad results in involuntary responses too complex and subconscious to comprehend. This alone proves the statement. From a convulsion of incomprehensible and unrecognized psychology a response manifests outwardly. It is automatic like the response the key on the keyboard has when pressed. Unlike the key, people do many things when stimulated. Actions are done and the mind is modified. All experience modifies the mind. This is the consequence of consciousness, but it is incomplete consciousness riddled with errors. One could and many do spend a lifetime studying the responses to stimuli demonstrated by human beings. As human history is known, responses to stimuli by humans is a new area of scientific study. In all accounts of human history, the consideration is found, but it has reached a new level recently.
Many prominent historical figures have gained acclaim by discovering elements of human psychology. Herman Rorschach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Rorschach developed a system that could detect personality traits using responses to inkblots. Ivan Pavlov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Pavlov conducted heartless experiments on animals to develop concepts of reflex responses, conditioning, and more. As time passed more and more people advanced the study of human mental functions, behavior, and responses. While Pavlov was conducting his experiments, and being bad, others were using the new science to develop ways to manipulate human responses and behavior for specific purposes. Walter Lippmann https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Lippmann published Public Opinion based on the manipulable nature of human psychology. His work was complimented by Edward Bernays https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Bernays in his development of means to shape the responses of large numbers of people. In his books, Crystallizing Public Opinion and Propaganda, proof of the means was demonstrated by real life events. What we know as Public Relations in business was created by this man and his helpers. His business was contracted by the tobacco industry to increase cigarette sales by changing the attitudes of the female population from abhorrence to smoking to acceptance. The company was successful, and the tobacco industry enjoyed a near doubling of customers for cigarettes. All these men and many others stand as historical figures who pioneered and proved that human minds and actions are not the result of comprehensive and accurate information or rational processes. The responses to claims that people are bad being just one tiny example.
That people are bad requires expounding if reflexive responses are to be managed. There is a litany of responses that must be ignored to understand what I mean. There are too many responses, and anyone can guess what they might be. Let us construct a line of thought that should bring anyone into agreement with the statement that people are bad. This is not to condition or persuade. It is simply a means of expounding the thoughts behind the statement. They are mine and mine alone. You can consider them as you will, but when you read the words before you, you are being influenced by them and me. So far, this is a fact of life that I cannot escape. It may be an inviolable natural law, or not. What is important to me is that people recognize what I have to say.
When a human does something, and that includes the simple fact of existing, effects happen. Every person is responsible for the effects and distance, ignorance, defect, and all other considerations cannot change this fact. What we do causes all it causes. Simple. Being causes, too. So, existence and actions combine to create effects that radiate across the universe in cascading continuance forever. Diminishing effects are like gravity, both exist even though they diminish to imperceptible levels. One thing effects another and another until the end of time and space or whatever. Responsibility is not eliminated by diminishing effects. It is only made less perceptible. Are we to cease to exist because we cannot know all the effects of our being and acting? Ceasing to exist is an action. There seems to be no escape. So, we are left to live and try to be good or not. Try as we may, we are as yet unable to ensure, even to verify, that all we do is good or whether it is bad. If we are too ignorant to do so, we cannot be all good or all bad. If we are some of both, we must be bad. For some bad is still bad and being mixed causes of good and bad by definition means we are bad. To be all good is the only way to usurp the statement. It can equally be said that we are good by the same reasoning. So, we are at best a mix of good and bad. If you can be the controller of your mind, you can choose which way to see it.
Regardless of outlook, people are bad, and people are good. What will help us the most is becoming all good. Everything we do and everything we are can be good. All good effects can radiate from each of us. There are abundant reasons to become all good. We can become all bad, too. History shows us a lot of bad. We may be becoming more bad than good or more good than bad. The factor that bears on what you choose as your outlook, good or bad, is that it is easy to see people as good and loose the motivation to correct the bad. All humans can do the things they are naturally predisposed to do. Being cordial and friendly comes easy for many. It does not require any special effort for them. Being mean does. Likewise, a mean person has no difficulty being mean, but being cordial and friendly does. In other words, programming is being run. We are programmed by birth characteristics and experience to think, feel, and behave the way we do. Everyone does what they are programmed to do, think, and feel. To become all good, that programming must be exceeded.
I have made the case that we must exceed our programming. How? How can we exceed our programming? That is the question that ultimately comes from the thought. One thing seems clear to me. The relaxing of effort slows the accomplishment. Someone said we should not rest on our laurels. We can spend our time utilizing our strengths and abilities, or we can give some to our weaknesses and inabilities. Progress toward becoming all good must depend on improving. What is improving if not using our best assets to improve our worst ones? If we are to exceed our programming, we must become more capable in both our strengths and abilities and our weaknesses and inabilities. If we look at people as good, we could lose some of our motivation to improve. If we see people as bad, the motivation might be increased. Either way, the choice is yours. Don’t let my words define limits for you. There is a third option to the question of whether the glass is half full or half empty. Clearly, it is both. People are good and bad, but the bad is the part that I want ended.
The longer I study and observe, the more I come to the thought that there is far too much bad to permit ourselves to choose the view mankind as good. Indeed, there seems to be some who are so bad they may be all bad. Human history and current status are awfully bad. The glimmers of goodness that have persisted all along and today do not change the fact that bad has been bad. To exceed our programming, we can take an objective and rational approach. That is likely the most common approach. But there is another way. We can give our emotional capacity more say in our lives. Such is the case for love.
Love has always been said to be the answer. It is true. Love is the answer when it is unconditional and greater than self-love. Love that is not greater than self-love is not the answer. This is proven by history and reality today. Love in romance is way too common to be the answer for if it is the answer, we would already have answered the questions and history would diverge from its current path. Instead, the path of man seems to be headed toward our extinction along with as many other living things and inert things as we can take with us. The words before you are proof that there is a force acting on the momentum of mankind to deflect it onto a better path. That path is beyond expounding here. A glimpse of the future on that path would enrapture the most obdurate among us. It is not a destination. It is a starting line. Unless we turn, we will cross a finish line. Our tendencies are compelling us. Our tendencies come from our programming. We must exceed it. Love will do just that.
Love can benefit the universe if humans attain it. All good. Bad is the opposite of good, but opposites do not have to manifest. So, don’t fall for that old sophistry. Love will answer all our needs and questions. It will put us on a path of ineffable adventure and happiness. It is clear that man has relegated love to a conditional feeling that is exceeded by love of self. When we love our children, and in some cases our lovers, we put their wellbeing ahead of our own. Not everyone does this, but many do. Here in is found the love that is the answer. To attain the manifestation of the answer, we must exceed our programming. We have been programmed to love conditionally and temporarily. Unconditional love beyond self-love never dies. It cannot be killed or diminished. It lasts through all forever. Anyone who attempts earnestly without giving up can attain love. It requires that we go from where we are to a certain place. That defines the path for each of us. We all go from where we are. None can do otherwise. So, the path is unique for each individual. Patience may be required. Time and effort may be necessary. Exceeding your programming will be required. You can do it.
