What’s the Matter with Money?

Thomas H. Greco, Jr.

MONEY  IS  THE  VITAL  MEDIUM within which we live our economic lives.  It is the central element around which many of our interpersonal relationships are organized. It is no exaggeration to say that the quality and essence of our medium of exchange, our money, are crucial to the quality of our lives – our social interactions, our personal priorities, our relationship to the earth, and our very ability to satisfy basic human needs. As water is to the fish, so money is to people. Though we are largely unconscious of it, its quality (as opposed to quantity) is crucial. When the water is polluted, the fish sicken and die; when money is ìpolluted,” our economy malfunctions, and people suffer as their material needs go unmet and social dynamics are distorted.

Although the existing systems of money, finance, and exchange are severely flawed, few people understand the structural nature of these flaws, much less how they might be remedied. Money is a human invention that has changed over the years, and if it does not perform the way we want it to, we can reinvent it. Most of us take money for granted. Oh, it occupies plenty of our attention as we try to get enough of it to make ends meet, but we don’t normally stop to think about what it really is, where it originates, or how it comes into being. We pay a huge price for our ignorance. Money has become an urgent problem.

… Money is an information system. However the present official monetary system has become a misinformation system, the information that it conveys is inaccurate, incomplete, or false. … As the tightly controlled news media in totalitarian states are the antithesis of a free and independent press and political democracy, so is our monopolized and political system of money and finance antithetical to free exchange and economic democracy.

Just as the news industry can be perverted into a propaganda machine to serve the interests of a dictatorial government, so has the finance industry been perverted into a machine of privilege to serve the interests of a power elite.

THE FOUNDATION OF POWER and centralized control in today’s world is the power to create and manipulate the medium of exchange. Because money has the power to command resources, and because most of us take current monetary practices for granted, those few who control the creation of money are able to appropriate for their own purposes vast amounts of resources without being noticed. The entire machinery of money and finance has now been appropriated to serve the interests of centralized power.

It was a close friend and colleague who first impressed upon me more than thirty years ago the truth of the saying, “The chains that bind are in the mind.” It is what we believe, or refuse to believe, that limits us, both individually and collectively. But it is not belief alone that limits us. We must also have the courage of our convictions. We must be willing to act on our beliefs if we are ever to realize our dreams. While it may appear that our liberation is mostly constrained by external forces and the material aspect of our being, we are actually more powerful than we are willing to admit.

Many of us have a sense that all is not right with the world, that maybe we can do something to make it better. My own struggle has taught me some important lessons, the most important of which is that I cannot change anything without first changing myself. Freedom is not free. It has to be earned. Freedom cannot be had without taking responsibility. When we seek to make change in the world, we must make it at every level, beginning with ourselves. Change at the personal level then enables change at the inter-personal level, then at the societal, structural, and institutional level, and maybe even at the biological level.

For me, the process has been one of opening up to a greater Spirit, of being vulnerable, of allowing even my cherished values, attitudes, and beliefs to be called into question. Taking greater guidance from within and letting go of erroneous and limiting beliefs has allowed me to better grasp my connectedness with my fellow humans, my environment, and the entire web of life.

When we have taken the “beam” out of our own eye, we can see more clearly to take the speck out of our brother’s eye. Then we can begin to heal our relationships. We have to find a way to transcend disputes and differences, to be able to accept one another as we are and relate to one another in compassion and love. Healthy relationships in functional communities provide a stable platform from which we can examine the adequacy or inadequacy of the economic, political, and social structures we have inherited from the past and then start creating structures that are more consistent with our highest values, dreams, and visions. We can abandon those that are flawed, dysfunctional, and beyond repair, and we can build new ones that support greater realization of the human potential.

I believe that there is something beautiful trying to be born in the world. The new world order will not be dictated from the top down. It will not be something arranged in private by some global elite. It will emerge from the bottom up, revealed by a higher Spirit accessible to everyone. We humans, in our role as cocreators with the “higher power,” have plenty of work to do. There is work to be done at the personal level, confronting our own fears and doubts and taking responsibility for resolving our dilemmas; at the community level, using inevitable conflicts as opportunities to transcend our petty selves and limited perceptions; and at the societal level, building new structures that support and nurture rather than coerce and brutalize.

Gaia Consciousness and Human Unity

The past four decades have brought a new period of enlightenment in which humans in increasing numbers have become aware of their oneness as a species and their place in nature, not as dominator or controller, but as an integral part of the whole web of life. Many cultures have held the view that Earth is a living being in which each living species plays a vital role. It is a view that is now becoming current in our own culture and that sees humans as the “global brain,” the Earth’s center of self-awareness. This changing identity is beginning to have profound effects on the way we live our lives and, if we allow it, can change the course of history. Imagine a world in which war and abuse are only dimly remembered, in which everyone has enough to live a dignified life, in which harmony among the species prevails and the rape of the earth has ceased.

In order for us to realize that vision, we must believe that it is possible; then we will find a way to make it happen, for “faith is the substance of things hoped for.” Our actions emerge out of our visions and ideals. Yet they are also grounded in current realities. Economics drives politics, and money is the central mechanism through which economic power is exerted in the modern world. The history of the United States shows how power has progressively migrated from the people, local communities, counties, and states toward the federal government in general and the executive branch in particular. It is only through a study of monetary history, however, that a clear picture can be gained of how this has happened.

Humanizing globalization requires that money be reinvented, so that the new rules work in harmony with deeper values that most of us cherish. Among the primary obstacles to the improvement of the human condition are the general reliance on the current structure of global finance and the nature of its primary element, money. The dominating nature of these institutions is akin to that of the monarchies and ecclesiastical hierarchies of past eras. Their time is quickly passing.

New, transformational structures based on different values and assumptions are being developed. These structures need to be more equitable, democratic, and “ethereal.” They must be established in ways that promote the expression of values such as service, fairness, fellowship, and cooperation rather than greed, privilege, and self-seeking. Thus, they will not compete with existing institutions but develop in parallel with them, providing operational alternatives that can better serve the needs of people and the earth as the old order continues to decline.

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