Is money evil?

Conversations with the Muse

In this discussion with the Muse, I pondered the question of whether money is “evil.” It came from a discussion I had with an old friend recently, where my friend mentioned the idea that, essentially, money is the root of all evil, that money is to blame for the situation developing in the US, and that we’d be better off with a system that does not operate on money. I found the take from The Muse quite interesting, especially when it pointed out that the real source of “evil” is our human idea that we often strive for some kind of “heaven-like” perfect situation, and in the process of trying to create that, create Hell instead. It makes the point that money is not the real problem; it is our distorted beliefs around money, and our allowance as a society for money to be so gamed and manipulated, that are the true sources of problems.

Morgan: Is money evil? An old friend that I spoke to recently was taking this point of view: that money is the true source of our woes as a society. That essentially, money is “evil.” It is hard to ignore this point of view, given that it seems like the billionaires are in charge right now, leaving everyone else to struggle.

Yet I don’t see a good alternative to money. It seems like a kind of “necessary evil.” Is there a different way of looking at this?

The Muse: You collectively see money as something “hard and fast” in your lives, yet it is nothing but a concept representing an energetic exchange between people. For as long as people exist, you will never be rid of the need for “energetic exchange” and some way to represent that more flexibly than direct exchange of goods and services.

This energetic exchange is a good thing – it is so much of what leads to growth, development, quality of life, the building of anything great, and more.

If that is so, you may wonder, why do things seem so off the rails because of it?

It’s because you’ve collectively allowed the system to be “gamed” far too much. By “gamed” it means allowing things to happen that are far beyond just an exchange for the purpose of building or creating or providing services.

Those things include gambling in all its forms, and other monetary manipulations where people receive “something for nothing.” In the United States, this has become your national zeitgeist – the idea that you can and should get as much money as you can for as little investment of your energy, time, and attention as possible.

This is unsustainable.

There has developed a collective psyche of “I deserve it just because I’m X” where X can be replaced by all sorts of justifications for why you should get money in return for nothing but being part of some special category or group.

The combination of this entitlement plus all the games that go on with money have distorted its core purpose almost beyond recognition. The present mess you perceive is a result of that. It is an opportunity to “reset” your relationship, at least to some degree, to get back to making money represent real exchanges of value between people or groups of people, not just something to be gamed, manipulated, and taken advantage of in asymmetrical ways.

There is an inherent trend towards balance in all things, and your system of money is presently very unbalanced towards those who’ve become very good at gaming it. This unbalanced situation cannot be maintained forever; it will collapse under its own weight – it’s just a matter of time.

Morgan: What about social security and programs like that, which are “entitlements?” If as you say entitlement is an unbalancing factor, then do we need to get rid of things like that?

The Muse: No. There is a difference between claimed entitlements where there is no social contract, versus those where there has been developed a mass, agreed-upon social contract. In the case of Social Security or similar, this is where collectively enough of you have agreed that it is part of your contract with one another; it is not the same as the kind of entitlement that causes problems.

It is more fundamental and less obvious. One of the big sources of this is the entitlement thinking that many people take on of “I worked hard therefore I deserve lots of remuneration.” There is an entitlement thinking that “hard work” is equal to “created value for other people.” It is just not the case.

For example, you could go out in your yard right now, and dig a deep hole with a shovel. Then you could fill it back in. That would be hard work. Yet you would have created zero value for anyone. If you expected pay in return for that work, you would be expecting something for nothing – the nothing being the value created for someone else in doing the work.

The example may seem far out, yet there are millions who take this attitude every day.

It is inherent in the career ladder climbing mentality, which is ultimately about “I want more status and money because I have done my hard work gaming the system,” as opposed to “I want more status and money because I created more positive value for other human beings.”

Not all career ladder improvement represents this kind of thinking – there are many situations where through maturity and skills development, you do create more value for others, which would naturally equate to more money flow in a system where things aren’t so often distorted.

But when you have a society where you have psychologically detached your “work” from “creating value,” things are bound to get very out of balance, the effects of which you are seeing.

Morgan: What about my friend’s statement that this always happens with money?

The Muse: This is a sort of statement that could be said about any human endeavor, i.e., that “such and such tragedy always ends up happening.” The statement is tautological, due to the cyclical nature of humanity. Each new generation – and each individual human – must face their own challenges.

There is this very false, imagined state of perfection that could be achieved, a sort of finished, heavenly state where everyone is wonderful and everything is great. Worse, it is imagined that once this is achieved, it will persist.

It is just not so. Imagine a forest: at all times, trees are growing then dying. Animals are being born and dying. Nothing static is going on. Fires may sweep through and eliminate most of the trees. Seeds then sprout, to rebuild the forest. Each generation of trees faces its own “challenges” and there is no “heavenly state” of perfection.

Your human idea that such a state can — or should — be achieved is one of the big lies you’ve bought into. It is the source of more Evil — as you’d call it — than monetary exchange is. That’s because, in trying to achieve this perfect state, this ridiculous nonsensical ideal (whatever that may be), people will justify all sorts of malfeasance in its name.

That is happening at this very moment in the US.

Because of your skewed, manipulated monetary system, a large number of people have ended up feeling “left behind.” This produces anger, which energy is then translated into an ideal of a new kind of “heaven on earth” where all the supposed causes of their misery are wiped away.

The problem is, any time humans have attempted to create such a “heaven,” they have just created a hell. They end up creating something that is antithetical to the very nature of the reality you live in: something static, fixed, and “perfect.”

Money exists as a flow of exchange; it is not a static entity.

So when you try to create static situations with it or about it, you are working against yourself. You are working against reality.

The problem is not the money (exchange); the problem is the set of skewed beliefs that distort your relationship with it, making it seem that “money is bad.” When you buy into that, you weaken your ability to participate in money’s true purpose, which is to facilitate effective energetic exchange between people.

To “fix” the problem, you, collectively, will have to shift your attitude towards what money is. And even if you manage to do so, you have to realize that any such fix is in the here and now, and will not last for all people everywhere. It will not be a perfect solution for all time. It will only be a fix for that time, place, and people.

 

**This article was hand-written, with light grammatical and spelling checks by AI. To learn more about the muse you can visit our About The Muse page.