Money Is A Vestige Of Evolution And Adults Need To Return To Childhood

Money Is A Vestige Of Evolution And Adults Need To Return To Childhood 

If there is one immolation common across all species of animals, birds and fish then it is feeling of insecurity. Everybody out there in nature is permanently on watch, even while asleep. Nobody there can afford to have hours of deep sleep, nobody can afford to sleep like a log. They would simply be eaten away. Even when they are sleeping their ears or noses are awake to respond immediately. From mightiest elephant, strongest tiger to tiniest insect everybody is in permanent state fear. After insecurity about survival is addressed, there next imminent insecurity is about food. Nobody has assured food supply and when supply is abundant there is no guarantee that they will able to avail it. Different animals adopt different strategies to keep themselves well fed. Most common strategy is to eat quickly whenever and whatever food is available. Carnivores typically eat very fast, for a pack hyenas often shoo away family of lions from its kill. Herbivorous animals and birds usually have much more food availability but they have to spend lot of time and energy into watching they don’t get preyed. Many species of monkey have cavities just after their mouth. They gulp food when available and store it in those cavities to be chewed later. Barring very few species, mostly of insects, nobody else has any significant ability to safely store food to be eaten  at a later time.

After early ancestors of humans came down from trees and became hunter-gatherers, they also developed a skill which is very rare and very limited in animal kingdom. This skill is communication , language. This helped to act in collective actions. They managed to garner collective strength which was far greater than sum of individual strength. This helped them to gather food more than their immediate hunger, more than their needs of near future. This was first stage of stocking. Gradually their power over food supply and security increased, and consequently their population also increased. Even then their strength was very small in front of vagaries of nature. In addition they had another competitor - animals of their own species. In the process of getting top of uncertainties they went into habit of amassing. Amassing food, and means of producing food, increasing area of dominance of the tribe became part of nature. As humans evolved further and their social arrangements became more complex, these necessities turned into wealth. At the next stage of evolution humans realised that instead of fighting with neighbouring tribe it is fruitful to make peace and deal with them. This developed into exchanges and further into trade. Core interests in this remained to increase safety and security and to increase areas of influence, aka control. As trade evolved alongwith means of travel and communication there needed to be common ways fo valuing material wealth that was traded. From this need arose money. Ways and means of this common denominator, money, started taking predominance over wealth that was to be valued using money. Money became wealth in itself, the most important wealth. 

By this time evolution gathered speed, so much speed that earlier timeframe of evolution became redundant and we had to coin a new term called development.In this period of development there have been humungous changes in material situation of humans but during this time there are hardly any changes in anatomy and physiology.  This period of development is very small in evolution’s clock. Consequently human psychology has remained almost unchanged from that of animal kingdom. Though there is no practical need, humans still feel that ancient insecurity and then they act and react in that animal fashion. So this desire to earn more and more money, to accumulate more and more wealth is a vestige that did not get removed even when its time has long gone. 

In animal kingdom, after the time used for searching/hunting for food and feeding themselves, rest of the time goes in intermittent resting, being watch and using strategies to stay safe. Humans have developed abilities due which demand on time for food has reduced to a fraction of amount of time animals need for that. Also human achieved high level of safety and security through social arrangements and through technology. They no more need to be on guard. Humans can afford to sleep like a log … for eight hours. What do they do with the time left in hand ? Animals just rest and stay away from danger. Humans have developed mental and emotional abilities that don’t let them stay idle. Humans need to dream, think, act. So they go on to provide for future. Even after this a lot of time is left at hand. Humans use all that time to do what their genes tell them should be done at such times. They earn more money, more and more money, to amass wealth, as much as wealth as can be amassed.  So much so that amassing money and wealth has become an end in itself. This has diverse adverse effects. Firstly humans lose pure joy of doing, learning. Children do things, learn things purely because thats what they want to do. Everything is play, everything is fun. Though human ability to develop is unbound, the resources available in nature and wealth that humans can create is not infinite. This puts humans in competition with each other. Competition is often good as it stretches human abilities. But an unbound desire to own finite available wealth has ended up in a few owning a lot and a many hardly getting anything. Ever increasing human abilities and focus on material wealth has put ever increasing stress on finite resources available on this earth. Resources are getting eroded much faster than they can be replenished. 

We have been hearing some of these later things for decades now without any change. We are faced with core questions of ‘if not this then what?’. These questions are in two forms - what and how. First question is ‘If not money then what  ?’ and the second is ’If not earn then do what ?’.   Answer to the first is giving off our focus on money and monetary wealth, a psychological vestige of evolution. And then return to our childhood. Learn things for sheer amusement of learning, do things for the sheer joy of doing, get better at doing for sheer amazement of bettering ! Life will be so much joy

(Note: These are thoughts emerging from silent thinking)