on Money pt3

This is the third post in my ruminations on denominations.  aka on Money.

Money is a disassociator.  Wait a moment!  Disassociator isn’t even a word!  Strange how it takes a word that doesn’t exist to adequately describe money, which shouldn’t exist as it is something with absolutely no intrinsic value.

So what do I mean by a “disassociator”? Finally! Now we’re getting to the reason money is inherently evil.

What is evil? Evil isn’t some malign presence nobody can see or touch or feel, yet which mysteriously motivates people to do terrible things to one another. Evil goes by another word, and that word is greed. Whatever evil exists within the world can be directly traced to greed. Please bear in mind how greed comes in many forms. However, the essence of greed is invariably the same – the greedy want more than their fair share. It isn’t complicated, indeed it could not be more simple, or more obvious. And money finally shows its true colors…

Money isn’t black, it isn’t white, it isn’t silver, and it definitely isn’t gold. The true color of money is camouflage. Money is that which lets the greedy hide in plain sight. How does money accomplish this remarkable feat?

By disassociating true value from perceived value money lets the greedy hide among the destitute.

Have you ever wondered why you can’t see the size of the paycheck of your coworkers and they cannot see the size of yours? Is it a matter of privacy? No, it isn’t. This enforcement of monetary secrecy isn’t accidental, it is deliberate, and it is malignant.

Let me explain through the use of a hypothetical example.

Imagine a hundred people live on a small island which is only capable of producing enough food to sustain those hundred people. Now imagine what would happen if one person attempted to take twice their share. Do you think anyone would notice when they tried to carry off twice the amount of food as anyone else? Let me rephrase the question. Do you think anybody could fail to notice such blatant greed? Now imagine what would happen to that greedy individual. The greedy person would be taken to task immediately, and most likely harshly. There is simply no way such visible greed would be tolerated because when a single person takes twice their share, two people only get half theirs. For that greedy person to get fat requires that two people starve. The math is inescapable.

Or is it? Perhaps the other ninety-nine people could divvy out the remaining ninety-eight portions? And right about now is where money steps in.

Money is a disassociator.   Money lets the greedy take much more than their share by hiding the share they are taking. If nobody knows how much everyone else is getting, how does anyone know who the greedy scum that are responsible for making everyone else go hungry are? And the answer is, they don’t. And that is precisely what money does. Money hides who is taking more than their fair share.

In the hypothetical example above I have difficulty conceiving how anyone could bear the shame of knowing their greed made two other people go hungry. If you were one of those hundred islanders could you do it? Could you take twice as much as you require, knowing two other people would then get half as much as they need? I could not, and I’m pretty sure that if you’re spending your precious time reading my blog you couldn’t either.  And yes, your time is far more precious than money will ever be.

Sadly, an awful lot of awful people can and do take much more than their fair share, every day of their miserably greedy lives.  However money steps in again and hides them from shame.  Money is a sop to their greedy conscience.  Money tells them they aren’t responsible for two other people starving, as they don’t really know just how little others are getting or even who the starving are.  The evil equation of greed not only obscures the greedy from the impoverished, it protects the greedy from their conscience.

Money is a direct facilitator of greed, and greed is nothing more than another word for evil.  Money facilitates evil by obscuring who has more than their fair share.  Period.

{P.S. Period, but not the end…}

About C.G.Ayling

Musing misuser of words, lover of lyrical literature, author, occasional contrary thoughts. An honorable man’s name, in memoriam.
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