Go back into times very old. You are in a situation where you have lot of grain but you don’t know how to cook. You are feeling hungry. So you go around looking for somebody who can take some grain and give you some food in exchange. Accidentally you come across a person who too is hungry. He has some salt to make your food tasty. But, alas, even he does not know how to cook. You continue your search and after a while you come across a person who knows cooking. But he has just had a huge meal. He only wants a mattress to sleep on and is not at all interested even in talking about food. There is mismatch of needs and you would have to go hungry till you can find match.
Somehow you manage to find this match and get some good food. Then you go to pay taxes to the king. Every farmer has to pay one quintal of rice to the king. You have a very good quality rice with low yield. You feel sad to part it off. Your neighbor has very low quality rice. Even then he has to give same quantity. You feel cheated.
You would not need to suffer in these manners if you had money in those times. You would just sell your grain for some money and then go to a person who would sell you food in exchange of your money. With this money he can buy things, immediately or later, to satisfy his other needs. King’s taxes would have been in money terms. You would fetch higher money for your better quality rice and would not feel cheated in giving same money as your neighbor.
In those times men with desires for wealth, abundance or power would need material acquisitions to feel that way and to demonstrate to others. Men would accumulate land, slaves or animals. Some men built grandiose buildings. Some men kept huge harems. Kings were on continuous pursuit to expand their kingdoms. Some emperors were not satisfied even with this, they wanted to rule the whole earth. There were umpteen ways, but all those lacked commonality or standardization. A harem as a sign of wealth and power could be looked down upon in another culture. A big herd of camels of a desert king would be worthless in the hills of
Money solved all such problems. It became common exchange denominator to replace cumbersome and uncertain barter system and valuation system. Money came into use as commonly valued (within a community) natural articles (like beads, shells) and developed into metal coins to currency notes and then to purely conceptual money terms. Nowadays only a fraction of transactions are carried out with actual exchange of money coins or notes. Money has enabled complex and diverse trade transactions. So much so that money itself has become a tradable commodity. Money has replaced the need to own physical assets.
Tatas, Mittals, Sores and Gates of today do not need move around with large armies wielding weapons, destroying enemy properties and killing people. They can buy or sell assets without having to get out of their offices. They do not need to destroy properties, they simply buy those. They do not need to kill people, they just hire or fire people. Money has enabled ownership without needing physical possession or occupation. Money has enabled convertibility of economic value across nations. When something is said to be of so many pounds, a Japanese, Chinese, Indian, European and American immediately know what it means in his respective country. Money has transcended boundaries of nations, races, cultures, classes, religions, castes, everything. It’s a common global language that everybody understand.
This omnipotent ability of money has lured people into expressing all value into money terms. So much so that if money value can not be attached to something then that thing is not considered valuable. Money actually originated as representation of economic value, but it has now become value in itself. Instead of doing things to earn money to own, possess or buy something valuable, we are doing things just to earn money. From being means for an end, money has become an end in itself. Money is becoming a purpose, the purpose, the only purpose.
Money has crossed boundaries of usefulness and has actually acquired many harmful qualities.
Go back again into time very very old. As humankind evolved out of its animal ancestry, it developed lot of abilities, physical and mental. An interesting aspect of evolution is that it is largely additive type. As human brain gathered new abilities to perform more and complex rational and cognitive tasks, those were additional abilities. Its original emotional brain remained almost unchanged. As the superior brain acquired abilities to tame, win over or direct emotional responses, those are learned abilities. These newly acquired abilities are learnt through awareness and perseverance. Some time in future, maybe, these abilities will get genetically coded into our beings, but today our emotional responses are very similar to animal behaviour. We feel awed or scared by big size or physical force. When threatened our expressions become similar to animals. We shout or grind our teeth in anger. We are basically insecure, just like animals. Animals are constantly under threat of attack, fear of injury or death, constantly worried whether they will be able to get their next meal, anxious whether they will be able to retain extra food they have been able to gather, so on and so forth. These fears probably are the roots of our habit to continuously amass things. Our need for appreciation and applause from others probably stems out of our instinctive fear of getting attacked. Our basic emotions need to be grounded into concrete material things. When we need something or are deprived of something we feel angry, sad. When we feel that we may not be able to meet our needs we feel anxious, worried. When we possess something we feel happy and satisfied. Combine all these emotions and we may find a basis for our desire for accumulation, our desire for ‘more’ and ‘more’. Though we have developed abilities which far exceed all our basic needs, we have not developed abilities to shred these emotional apprehensions. Money is universal assurance to all these apprehensions. Money enables you to satisfy all your material needs. Money can be amassed for any future use, it can be stored safely and indefinitely, and it can be made to grow. This way money addresses our anxiety about future. Money is universal language and so it enables us to get universal applause without fail.
All these qualities of money are extremely useful. There is no doubt about utility of money. Problems arise when it expands well beyond its utility realm, and singly and completely envelopes our emotional horizon.
As humans developed abilities far exceeding needs for survival and sustaining, human mind was left with capacity unused. So it developed intangibilities. It flourished into rationality, logic, philosophy, religion, various art forms, and what we call values and special human emotions. These enriched to such an extent that they could become aim, goal, purpose for human activities, for human life. But with evolution of money human intangibility lost its ground to money and money engulfed all intangibilities. Any human intangibility started to be viewed, to be judged with reference to money.
Next obvious thing to fall was quality, quality in all its widest interpretations. Religions offered special treatment to rich. In logic, money was treated as hypothesis. Artists were respected by their earnings. Van Gogh was talked about after his death when his paintings started fetching millions. Even love was quantified in cost of gifts. ‘Enriching’ got confined to getting rich. Science lost its ‘pure’ness and it became ‘of commerce, by commerce and for commerce’. Good became that which fetches money and better is that which fetches more money. Corruption has become accepted social behaviour as money has become more important than ethical values.
Just as ‘purpose’ has been equaled to money even enjoyment is being equaled to luxury. This was another important intangibility to change its meaning to money. Gone are days when getting together, doing nothing and having a good time were treated as enjoyment. ‘What you feel’ has got lost behind veil of money. Only expensive is enjoyable. This way enjoyment gets separated from heart. People work solely to earn money. You don’t have to like your food. Simply ‘yeh dil mange more’. More the merrier, it doesn’t matter how it is. On one side people don’t know what to do with extra money they earn and on other side they don’t know what to do with the spare time they are left with. This is a perfect set-up for commerce of entertainment. You have both time and money, both in excess, and you don’t know what to do with both. So commerce lures you on a path. Buy leisure, buy sports, buy entertainment. It does not matter what you buy as long as you keep on buying. If you don’t know what to do with what you have bought, it doesn’t matter. Simply throw that away and keep buying something, anything anew. So much so that buying itself is presented as entertainment.
For entertainment industry to flourish it is imperative that work and pleasure remain separated. If people find pleasure in what they are doing their need for buying pleasure would be greatly reduced. So work is looked down upon, so daily chores are looked down upon. Pleasure is sucked out of normal life, it is packaged and is sold back. It is not important that people live a lifeless life, but economy flourishes, money reins supreme!
Number of times I have heard a story of a fisherman. Each time it was a fisherman from different place, but story was same. It goes something like this. A fisherman was sitting on a bank of a river, merrily fishing to his pleasure. A businessman walking past saw him sitting idly and happily. Businessman walked upto the fisherman and prodded him to act towards prosperity. Everytime the fisherman would ask, “for what?” and the businessman would try to tell him, “so that you can more money” and would show him the next step. This went on for a while and finally exasperated businessman told him, “…oh, then it would make you happy”. “What do you think I am right now?”, enquired the amused fisherman. It was always told as a joke of a stupid or lazy fisherman, but what I notice is his wisdom. He knew that happiness was not confined in prosperity. He did not question the businessman who felt that there could be no happiness without prosperity. For the fisherman happiness was a intangible entity to be felt, to be perceived within. For the businessman it was an otside thing to be found only in prosperity. For him there could be no happiness without money. Like him, we too do not see beyond money. Success is defined only in terms of money. ‘Successful’ person is a wealthy person, by definition. An adept sportsman, a creative artist, a skillful artisan, a mother of a happy child and an entrepreneur are not ‘successful’ if they have not converted their expertise into money. Instead of widening human horizons, this restricts human efforts into narrow band constrained by concept of money. A skillful housewife or involved mother is made to feel worthless because her work, her love does not bring money.
A person committed to his career has no time for his family, his children. His guilt is covered under sweet topping of ‘quality time’. This is probably the only place where ‘quality’ becomes more important than ‘quantity’. Human mind becomes mechanical following this career path to money goals. Everything is calculated in terms of profit and loss. Human relations too become means to achieve something else. Social networking is aimed for collective commerce.
I was once told story of factory worker who amassed a huge fortune by the time he retired. He was living alone, had no relatives or friends, had no ‘extra-curricular’ interests. He did not know what to do with time, so he simply kept on working for maximum hours he was allowed. He took no vacations, collected all the possible over time allowance. He had nothing to spend on. So till the end of his career he could accumulate huge sum. He was a successful man in the conventional sense. What kind of success is this, is it a fortune or misery that he had accumulated. This extreme story gives us a shock, but how far away are we from this gentleman! How many of us have strong extra curricular interests. how many of us watch TV because they want to watch TV and not because they don’t know anything else to do. All this may seem unconnected to money, but it is not. So much of our mind is at slavery of money that hardly anything is left for other things. So much of our physical, intellectual and emotional abilities are left to rot. We are so attached to money that it is difficult for us to empathize with others, difficult to relate to others. Heart of the matter is that heart does not matter, only money matters.
There are large number of people who need to work hard to earn money for sustenance and there are significant number of people who have so much money that they would not need to work for generations. The poor and the neglected people of society look up to the powerful, wealthy, respected, watch their steps to follow. Wealth and success are defined in terms of money. Power, wealth, respect all necessarily and sufficiently related to money. Powerful, successful and respected all walk the walk of money. Consequently it happens that money necessarily and sufficiently defines ‘development’. Everything else within us and between us becomes insignificant. Whatever be the monetary situation, everybody stands to loose from over-focusing on money. Money has its value but there is lot lot more to value.
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