You’d be surprised at the complicated reactions that bubble up out of collective unconscious in response to such a simple statement.
I mean, to me, it seems obvious. Money is power. The more money you have, the more power you have. And people are perfectly comfortable with the concept if you confine it to talking about the excesses of the rich and how they use their money in order to magnify their political power.
That’s all cultural boilerplate stuff, no controversial at all, no problem.
But when you start talking about money being power in a more general sense, people become quite uncomfortable. Quite irrationally, they argue against the idea.
This is an argument they can’t possibly win. Money is power. It gives its wielder the power to acquire belongings. It allows its wielder to command the services of qualified professionals. It lets them recruit people to do unpleasant tasks. A person with enough money can order the demolition and reconstruction of entire city blocks purely to benefit and/or entertain them. Enormous, complex vehicles can be constructed to your exact specification if you have enough money. And the list goes on and on.
On a more prosaic level. money lets even people of modest means like myself buy groceries, and in doing so, cause the products of the labor of hundreds or even thousands of people to come into my possession. I can go to a restaurant and have a temporary servant bring me food. I could go to a movie theater and watch a movie that cost millions to make. And so forth and so on.
By any reasonable and intelligent measure, money is, incontrovertibly, power.
But you tell people that and they get quite antsy because if money is power, then it follows that anyone with a nickel to their name has power and as we all know, with power comes that dreaded word, responsibility.
If money is power, and with power comes responsibility, then money is responsibility.
And wow do people hate that idea.
Because it flies in the face of the consumerist message that we have all absorbed for our entire lives, namely that money is pleasure.
Since the first time we buy candy with our own money, we learn that money is used to please oneself. All through life, we buy things purely for our own pleasure, and consider this to be so normal that we don’t even think of it in those terms.
In this role as hedonistic consumers, we live better than the kings and queens of old. And like the kings and queens and other grand poohbahs of old, we greatly resent the notion that our money/power comes with any responsibility to others.
From the the point of view of the spoiled consumer, money is for their own pleasure and other people’s needs are unwelcome competition to be resented and ignored.
And yet, we wonder why the rich behave in the exact same way we do with THEIR money. They don’t want other people’s needs competing with their own either.
Are we really so different?
More after the break.
BRIEF UPDATE : Tried Foodora again. Got all the way to checkout, Click “place order”. “An unexpected error has occurred, please try again or contact customer service. ”
At this point, I am not even surprised.
So I try again a bunch of times. No dice. So I emailed customer service. AGAIN.
So then I decide to order from Bamboo Express. This involves using an actual telephone and speaking to a live human.
It makes me feel feisty and dangerous.
Most of the way through my order when the nice lady on the phone tells me that it’s a minimum $30 order for delivery.
Curse you, reality. Foiled again.
So once more I have gone back to good ol reliable Pizza Hut. Using the free 2-topping medium pizza I earned via the loyalty program, plus getting them to bring me a couple of 2L of Diet Pepsi.
I WILL DINE. Of this, I swear! SKAAL!
About Money Being Power
Oh my god, sudden and totally unexpected return to the topic!
THE CROWD GOES WILD.
Anyhow. SO, if money is power and power is responsibility, then money is responsibility and we sure as fuck don’t like that idea.
Responsibility is like, the opposite of fun. Plus, when we think of money as being a responsibility, it wakens a latent sense of empathy in us and that makes us feel uneasy and out of place.
This empathy says, “Hey….. shouldn’t we be doing something for like…others?”.
This is the voice of our communitarian instincts trying to wake up up to the fact that we are not meant to live as individual hedonistic consumers but as part of a larger community in which we have a role and a job and responsibilities.
We pretend that our jobs give us this role and responsibility, but it’s an extremely poor substitute because so many of our jobs have no obvious connection to our communities and seem utterly pointless to the point of existential implosion.
Boomf, and it’s all gone. And does anyone even care?
The modern human lives in a state of spiritual crisis so deep, profound, and pervasive that billions of us are asking “Is this really….it? This is life? This is…. all there is?”.
And then they wonder why they have this enormous empty feeling and are deeply unhappy even though they “have everything”.
Hint : If you think you have everything and “should” be happy. try challenging your assumptions on what is “supposed” to make people happy.
Odds are there are universes of things vital to human happiness that are not included in your recipe for happiness but you can’t see them because they lie in the direction that society has trained you not to look.
So try this out :
“This isn’t it. This is not all life has to offer. This is just the small slice of reality that modern consumerism lets me see. Reality is so much bigger, brighter, bolder, and realer than what I see before me. All I have to do is open my eyes and see the world as it really is and has always been, and let that old grey version fade away forever, and I can be as free as I want to be. Not because of something I purchase or obtain, but because of something I cause to exist by believing in it. ”
That should be enough for tonight.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.