Yesterday afternoon in the post, "Donations Needed to Keep This Blog Running," I briefly broached the notion that a lot of people view a blog or website as a moneymaking enterprise. I pointed out that this blog is not one of the those. While I listed a reason or two as a way of explanation, I didn't truly tell you the real reason: the dash for cash tends to complicate life more than it already is.
If you look at what's going on in Washington, DC or in most national capitols today, the various debates about what strategies each nation should embrace are, by and large, about money. The international meetings and discussions about climate change always come back to money. Just about every war that is ever fought has money as the centerpiece of the equation. And the religious institutions of our day spend an awful lot of their spiritual capital on trying to amass more and more earthly capital.
When money enters into the picture for any endeavor -- regardless of whether or not it may be deemed significant -- priorities change. It tends to impact the overall process and, for too many people, turns into a de facto god. In terms of the Taoist sages, money is one of those items that becomes insatiable desire.
Money also tends to commodify everything. Ideas, concepts, and even people become things to be leveraged for a commercial advantage. This offers one of the reasons why the vast majority becomes alienated in a capitalist society. People no longer look at each other based on intrinsic worth; others merely are used as pawns to further our financial goals.
Money itself is not evil. It doesn't even truly exist. It's merely a mechanism humankind has created to order and control how resources get passed around. The evil or disharmony creeps in because humans tend to want more than is sufficient and, of course, more for me tends to mean less for you. In essence, money breeds selfishness and selfishness complicates life.
It's the kind of complication I don't want for this blog.
If you look at what's going on in Washington, DC or in most national capitols today, the various debates about what strategies each nation should embrace are, by and large, about money. The international meetings and discussions about climate change always come back to money. Just about every war that is ever fought has money as the centerpiece of the equation. And the religious institutions of our day spend an awful lot of their spiritual capital on trying to amass more and more earthly capital.
When money enters into the picture for any endeavor -- regardless of whether or not it may be deemed significant -- priorities change. It tends to impact the overall process and, for too many people, turns into a de facto god. In terms of the Taoist sages, money is one of those items that becomes insatiable desire.
Money also tends to commodify everything. Ideas, concepts, and even people become things to be leveraged for a commercial advantage. This offers one of the reasons why the vast majority becomes alienated in a capitalist society. People no longer look at each other based on intrinsic worth; others merely are used as pawns to further our financial goals.
Money itself is not evil. It doesn't even truly exist. It's merely a mechanism humankind has created to order and control how resources get passed around. The evil or disharmony creeps in because humans tend to want more than is sufficient and, of course, more for me tends to mean less for you. In essence, money breeds selfishness and selfishness complicates life.
It's the kind of complication I don't want for this blog.
While I agree (in practice), the real issue is one's attitude towards money, not money itself. Kinda like "guns don't kill people, people kill people" thing.
ReplyDeleteTook the words right out of my mouth RT
ReplyDelete