Money: The Chief Insanity of Our Time

For the last time internet, no, I don’t want to become a millionaire.

By MARTIN REZNY

I intended to stay quiet on the issue, since I am not the kind of person who enjoys telling other people what they should be thinking or doing, but since everyone seems to be hellbent on telling me what I should be thinking and doing, consider this an act of mental self defense. I don’t want to be making money, or spending money, not even to be having it, and you shouldn’t either.

But you need it! How else will you make do?

Well, strictly only because you people say so. I need it in a way that in the medieval Europe, people needed to be going to church, or in the way that in ancient Sparta I would have needed to be fighting in wars. In a way more real sense, I actually need to breathe, drink, eat, sleep, and such, and in the only ultimately real sense, I need but to die. Making money, you see, is optional.

What it depends on is the extent to which all of the people around me believe that money has value. I do respect laws of nature, but when it comes to the bullshit of man, my respect is conditional. For instance, what does one have to do to make money and how much harm does it cause to others? What does monetization do to the previously money-free fields of human endeavor?

Without money, I may go hungry, I may be driven to live out under a bridge somewhere, but it is extremely important to understand that it is exactly the same thing as being publicly shamed or left to die for any other bullshit reason, such as being an ubeliever, subhuman, witch, the list goes on. It would be a choice of all of you other people, it would be your judgement.

What about your family! Wouldn’t they be forced to pay your bills?

This completely common-sensical argument is actually so insidious if you don’t think about it, that I don’t even know how to quickly unpack it all. What are you saying, exactly? Are you saying that the purpose of having children is to create money making machines to take care of you? Are you saying that parents shouldn’t take care of their children or should force them to work?

For starters, people don’t ask to be born to someone, and unless you consider people to be things, parents don’t own their children. In my personal case, I consider my parents to be free to stop supporting me in any material sense at any time they see fit, and I mean it. It’s not an emotional extortion scheme, this argument about “what about your family” is emotional extortion scheme.

Sure, as an adult who cares about his parents, I do try to contribute even though it requires doing work that disagrees with my principles. But on the other hand, I do recognize, and more people should start doing so, that there are more important things than one’s own life or family, like the greater good of the whole society or humanity, which the institution of money undermines.

There used to be a time when as a general rule, humans lived in communities that actually cared about their own members. You wouldn’t let a neighbour starve, let alone a family member, if they were in need and you could provide for them. Money didn’t even enter the equation, you just knew they owed you, and they would be ashamed if they didn’t “repay” you somehow later.

If you don’t believe me, check out Debt: The First 5000 Years by respected anthropologist David Graeber. Arguably, this is the normal human state in regards to caring after one another. Translated globally, money-mindedness is the only reason why some go hungry. The only one. We can feed everyone, we choose not to. Homelessness is also unnecessary, we are just assholes.

You must be lazy or lame! People who work hard or have talent succeed!

And here comes the judgement. People who make money are better human beings than people who don’t make money. A bestseller or a blockbuster must be a better work of art than a bomb. I got fed up with this bullshit right at the point when I was told that I am lazy after spending god knows how many hours doing volunteer work for a non-profit. By the boss of that non-profit.

Even though my work has benefited the organization in particular in a very significant way, he would still call me lazy simply because I didn’t make money during that time as well. He would constantly bitch about having to cover my work expenditures that I couldn’t cover myself only because he was not paying me for performing said work. I might’ve as well worn a dunce hat.

What about all the hard work that doesn’t get financially rewarded? What about good deeds that don’t get financially rewarded? What about great works of art and advancements of knowledge? What about being a decent human being? How much is it worth, if nobody with money deems it worth a dime? On the basis of what are moneyed people sound arbiters of anything?

I do get the concept that people should be rewarded for contributing to the society, but you need to finally realize that MONEY DOESN’T ACCOMPLISH THAT. Do you feel like most of the people with the most money genuinely deserve it several million or billion times more than almost everyone on the planet? Are they really such hard workers and all around great chaps? Nope.

Just look at the example of Tesla. Here you have a conundrum if you believe that making money is a measure of one’s contribution. Tesla honestly wanted to improve the human condition, he had all the talent and genius, and he succeeded. But because he was at the mercy of businessmen only interested in monetary gain and of money-worshipping public, he died broke and ignored.

But what about all the progress? Just look at how great America is!

If I choose to ignore that in great part, it is precisely because of people like Tesla, I‘d like to get one thing straight. I don’t think that America is great. I have actually been there recently. I mean, I do like some aspects of American culture, but what I came to realize is that what I fell in love with is the idea of America, not at all it’s reality. I will use an example of a communist fairytale.

Nobody in America probably knows this one, but there’s a character called Neznaika (translates to something like Know-Not), created by a Soviet author Nosov, who in one book travels to the Moon, which is an allegory of America, of course. It looks all big and shiny and whatnot, but whenever he wants to do anything, he must throw a coin into the thing to make it work for a minute.

Amusingly, the currency there is called “Swindling”. Shennanigans ensued, like this perhaps more famous Mr. Bean sketch. Given a random opportunity, I went to Orlando. Those of you familiar with the place may begin to see the problem immediately. Orlando is just a huge shopping mall crossed with an amusement park, everything looking like it was a movie set built yesterday.

There I was, sitting in a luxury condo in a luxury resort, and there was nothing in the whole of Orlando that I wanted to see or do. Not that I could go anywhere, without there being any public transportation system whatsoever. Unfortunately, I had to go shopping with the rest of the people in our expedition a number of times, and had to eat something somewhere.

There was nothing authentic about any of it. Every object for sale was made in China, which is also irrationaly wasteful and likely involving inhumane working conditions for whomever made it. Every place selling food or drinks was a franchise that I can find anywhere else, or it was an incredibly overpriced hotel, with food that was in no way different from the cheapest.

It felt like going on a vacation into a demented child’s fever dream. All colors and tastes were oversaturated, all messages infantile or predatory, security measures paranoid, and overall nothing whatsoever of substance anywhere to be found. Sure, you can say that this is extreme even for America, but that’s the point. Orlando is the analogy for a world fully conquered by capitalism.

But isn’t that still better than all of the alternatives?!

No, if you know and understand what those are, I wouldn’t even put it in the top ten. The thing is, I had no intention whatsoever to ever find America to be exactly like what it was in the parodies in the Czechoslovakian films from the communist era, but it is. To give you an example that you will know, I don’t think that anybody thought that Robocop will predict the future of America.

I don’t even have anything against the existence of money as a tool, before you peg me as a Trekkie or something. The problem is when everybody believes that everybody needs money, must be making it, must want to become rich, that rich people are great because they’re rich, that money making is a measure of all good things and that money should do everything.

In short, the problem lies in the worship of money. If I had to choose a thing to worship, I’d choose love, knowledge, truth, honor, happiness, and a long list of other things before money even enters the consideration. Life is a miracle and it is precious, and every moment you spend doing something you’d rather not be doing is a tragedy. Having to sacrifice is not a justification of a wrong.

That means that yes, your bullshit can force me and all the people like me to serve the whims of your god, money, but that doesn’t make you right. It is a display of greater power, not of greater wisdom. If you want to talk reality, okay, let’s talk science, resources, technology, politics even, but please, no tips on how to get rich. Until people start using money responsibly, count me out.

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