I was forced to set the clock for early this morning - early now that the wife and I have been set aside from the work force - to discuss money matters with the local accountant. Towards the end, he veered off into future possibilities for saving money, something he did with a certain amount of glee. Hopefully keeping a game face - he was only trying to help - I mentioned something like, oh, well, maybe, seems like a lot of trouble though, to which he replied, "no one ever has enough. Every ceiling is seen as a blockage. Spending money makes people happy, and the more they have to spend, the more they want to spend." Whoa! Too early for my delicate sensibilities!
My mother was a genuine member of the communist party in her youth. Thta she was also very religious shows that she didn't truly understand what she was getting into, but I was taught from an early age that money was literally dirty; that it had been in everyone's hands and on barroom tables and, although she didn't mention it, whorehouses and privies and who knows what. In this she was right, as analysis now shows that most 100 and 20 dollar bills have trace amounts of cocaine on them (or had - this was a study of 10 years ago or so), meaning they have been up one or many people's noses. But I think there was something more to this dirty money thing - that it was and is a dirty thing altogether. That it, money, is not simply an expression of honest wages, of hard work turned into an easily transferable (fungible, I think the accountants say) item, but rather a symbol of greed, of accumulation, of hierarchy, of rich and poor.
It seems obvious that both ideas are right - it is a handy fungible resource as well as a handy way for some people to accumulate resources vastly greater than what they need or what others have. The point being, money is both dirty and not dirty, like, say, sex, which is both a gift of fertility and love from God, as well as the source of the oldest and, one might argue, most disagreeable professions.
And so I had to analyse my own recoiling at the accountant's expression, for what he had said - that spending money made people happy - was both a reflection of the natural and of the pathetic, both the good or at least neutral, and the bad.
Bad in that people need to spend their life's blood on things to be happy, when things that are not essential for life should never form a basis of happiness. It is rather love that we should concentrate on. Money, as any priest will tell you, would be better spent buying food for starving children, or medicine for the poor and sick, or dental care or any number of other things besides, say, gold chains for our ego and ATV's for our childish amusement. Feeling bad yet?
And then the good, or perhaps neutral; I can almost say that I am above this need to spend money for happiness. On the other hand, I get a kick out of having it saved tightly in the bank - again, where no starving orphan can get to it, as if this will safeguard me from harm for the rest of my life. But I DO find happiness in sheer spending sometimes, and it is usually when I am out with friends buying mugs of beer at the ridiculous prices they charge at bars. This is an odd thing; for, yes, beer does make me happy, but I can drink it at home for a third or a quarter the price; more still, I can invite friends over and buy for everyone at less than the price of my own mugs at a bar. Why, then, enjoy spending money at a bar?
For one, it is a different and a neutral place for all too meet. But for me, there is something more: spending money on beer, once I am loosened up enough to do it, loosens me even more. It makes me feel free. And I think that this is what spending money is to others as well - the feeling of being free, of not having constraints. In this, then, the greater happiness would lie in the greater freedom, and the greatest freedom would be gained by having unlimited money.
Thus having and spending money is not necessarily about selfishness or pigginess, although it could be; as said, money, like many things, has its dirty side. Rather, it is often about freedom - not from immediate want, or fear, but from constraint; freedom, that is, to run and fly, to do everything that comes to mind, to party - in short, to live in the ecstasy of the moment.
Oddly, and in this most of us have to take the rich's word for it, this formula does not work. The wealth in time, like a drug, does not deliver, and in that, life is devastated, for there is then nothing new to live for in this material world. The only alternative is to place restrictions on spending, as many of the old wealth families do (making them tighter than the rest of us, and disagreeable for it), or to turn to spiritual study and practices - again, something that the wealthy often do. While these seem remedies for the main malady, money, they are really remedies for life's problems in general. "All things in moderation," as maddening as such a thing is to people like myself, is truly wise, as it keeps all things new enough, never using them until they become worthless or harmful. And the spiritual - that I have mentioned enough. In it lies the meaning for everything else. And in it, money becomes neither dirty or the source of happiness, but just another life resource that may give us or others material life as well as time to pursue a greater life, or life's meaning. And if we see that greater meaning, we become, as Jesus and Buddha and probably every other great spiritual soul has said, free; free from want beyond life, free from social pressure, free from anything more than is necessary to live (and free from fear of death, if necessary).
Oddly, to spend money is to be free; but to use it for ultimate freedom is to become crushed with disappointment. To not need it, nor the social or personal meanings it holds, makes us truly free, or at least makes freedom possible. Now, why is everything always backward from what it seems? FK
My mother was a genuine member of the communist party in her youth. Thta she was also very religious shows that she didn't truly understand what she was getting into, but I was taught from an early age that money was literally dirty; that it had been in everyone's hands and on barroom tables and, although she didn't mention it, whorehouses and privies and who knows what. In this she was right, as analysis now shows that most 100 and 20 dollar bills have trace amounts of cocaine on them (or had - this was a study of 10 years ago or so), meaning they have been up one or many people's noses. But I think there was something more to this dirty money thing - that it was and is a dirty thing altogether. That it, money, is not simply an expression of honest wages, of hard work turned into an easily transferable (fungible, I think the accountants say) item, but rather a symbol of greed, of accumulation, of hierarchy, of rich and poor.
It seems obvious that both ideas are right - it is a handy fungible resource as well as a handy way for some people to accumulate resources vastly greater than what they need or what others have. The point being, money is both dirty and not dirty, like, say, sex, which is both a gift of fertility and love from God, as well as the source of the oldest and, one might argue, most disagreeable professions.
And so I had to analyse my own recoiling at the accountant's expression, for what he had said - that spending money made people happy - was both a reflection of the natural and of the pathetic, both the good or at least neutral, and the bad.
Bad in that people need to spend their life's blood on things to be happy, when things that are not essential for life should never form a basis of happiness. It is rather love that we should concentrate on. Money, as any priest will tell you, would be better spent buying food for starving children, or medicine for the poor and sick, or dental care or any number of other things besides, say, gold chains for our ego and ATV's for our childish amusement. Feeling bad yet?
And then the good, or perhaps neutral; I can almost say that I am above this need to spend money for happiness. On the other hand, I get a kick out of having it saved tightly in the bank - again, where no starving orphan can get to it, as if this will safeguard me from harm for the rest of my life. But I DO find happiness in sheer spending sometimes, and it is usually when I am out with friends buying mugs of beer at the ridiculous prices they charge at bars. This is an odd thing; for, yes, beer does make me happy, but I can drink it at home for a third or a quarter the price; more still, I can invite friends over and buy for everyone at less than the price of my own mugs at a bar. Why, then, enjoy spending money at a bar?
For one, it is a different and a neutral place for all too meet. But for me, there is something more: spending money on beer, once I am loosened up enough to do it, loosens me even more. It makes me feel free. And I think that this is what spending money is to others as well - the feeling of being free, of not having constraints. In this, then, the greater happiness would lie in the greater freedom, and the greatest freedom would be gained by having unlimited money.
Thus having and spending money is not necessarily about selfishness or pigginess, although it could be; as said, money, like many things, has its dirty side. Rather, it is often about freedom - not from immediate want, or fear, but from constraint; freedom, that is, to run and fly, to do everything that comes to mind, to party - in short, to live in the ecstasy of the moment.
Oddly, and in this most of us have to take the rich's word for it, this formula does not work. The wealth in time, like a drug, does not deliver, and in that, life is devastated, for there is then nothing new to live for in this material world. The only alternative is to place restrictions on spending, as many of the old wealth families do (making them tighter than the rest of us, and disagreeable for it), or to turn to spiritual study and practices - again, something that the wealthy often do. While these seem remedies for the main malady, money, they are really remedies for life's problems in general. "All things in moderation," as maddening as such a thing is to people like myself, is truly wise, as it keeps all things new enough, never using them until they become worthless or harmful. And the spiritual - that I have mentioned enough. In it lies the meaning for everything else. And in it, money becomes neither dirty or the source of happiness, but just another life resource that may give us or others material life as well as time to pursue a greater life, or life's meaning. And if we see that greater meaning, we become, as Jesus and Buddha and probably every other great spiritual soul has said, free; free from want beyond life, free from social pressure, free from anything more than is necessary to live (and free from fear of death, if necessary).
Oddly, to spend money is to be free; but to use it for ultimate freedom is to become crushed with disappointment. To not need it, nor the social or personal meanings it holds, makes us truly free, or at least makes freedom possible. Now, why is everything always backward from what it seems? FK
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