do we really need a money system?

[undergroundpanther]

16. how?

What Money Is & What Money Is Not
Money is coined liberty, and so it is ten times dearer to the man who is deprived of freedom.
If money is jingling in his pocket, he is half consoled, even though he cannot spend it.
--Dostoevsky (House of the Dead, part 1, chapter 2)

Money is incarnate desire.
-James Buchan (Frozen Desire)


Money is not a dollar bill or a check or a penny, nickle, or dime. Money is not gold or silver or copper, nor is money cowrie shells or gems or salt blocks or cattle. Money is not a credit card. Money is not even an electrical current or binary code in a computer! All of these things represent money, but they are not money.

Money is not a material substance.

Money is a belief in the head.



Money is a shared belief of two or more people. A German mark is nothing but a piece of paper with pretty pictures on it to a Yanomamo in the Amazon jungle. The Yanomamo sees it with the eyes of reality.



Both the buyer and the seller must

believe in money

or it's not money.


Money is credit.

Credit is belief.


The very first definition of credit in The American Heritage Dictionary is: ‘Belief or confidence in the truth of something”

The word credit comes from the Latin credere, “to believe.”

So does the word creed. Creed is another word for religion, for both refer to a shared (cultural) belief.

Money is credit, a creed, a religion.

Credit is also praise (also called honor, glory, award, prize). Praise is the opinion, the beliefs, of others.

The word praise comes from the Latin pretire, meaning “to prize”, which comes from the Latin pretium, meaning “price”! And this is derived from the Indo-European root per-, which means “to traffic, sell”!


The words prostitution and pornography come from per- [see Love & Possession - Sex & Money for a discussion of prostitution, the root of all professions].

Working for money is ulterior motivation.

When you work for the sake of working itself, you are being real.

When you work to gain the credit of others, you have ulterior motivation; you are pretending, not being real; you are prostituting yourself; you are adulterating yourself; you are an adulterer; you are serving an image in the head (your imagination); you are thus an idolator.

The word hypocrite is actually the English form of the Greek hupocrite, which means actor, pretender.

You cannot work for both Reality and imagination. For either you will hate the one and love the other, or else you will be loyal to the one and despise the other.


Yes, Money exists no place but in the mind!


In the same way that we could point to a dollar bill and call it money, we might point to a photograph of John F. Kennedy and call it John F Kennedy, even though we know the photograph itself is not John F Kennedy, and that's okay, the nature of symbol. Now if we actually believe the photo itself is John F. Kennedy, then we are deluded, superstitious. We might point to Michaelangelo’s painting of God on the Sistine chapel and say “This is God” knowing that the painting itself isn’t God. But if we actually believe it is God, then we are idolators. Idolatry is simply an archaic word for superstition. Idolatry is mistaking the symbol for the thing it symbolizes, blindness to Reality.

You can pledge allegiance to a symbol or you can pledge allegiance to Reality. You can't do both.

You can pledge allegiance to stars and stripes, to scriptures, to money, or else you can actually care about real things, real people. It's impossible for you to do both.

You can't serve both Reality and Mammon.

But most adult people in the world believe money to be a real substance. Most adult people in the world are deluded, superstitious, idolators. This is not a statement of judgement, but of simply what is. Look around: are not people, at this very moment, sacrificing living beings, human and animal, and even whole nations, as well as destroying the natural environments they depend upon, for this delusion, this imagination, this idol, that exists only in the mind?

People bicker and war over symbols, over creeds, not over Reality.

Many natives in the Americas were astonished at their European conquerors’ lust for a yellow substance called gold – a lust so great they massacred whole populations and environments to get it. Natives, like Black Elk, commonly called gold "the yellow metal that makes white men crazy" and the thing that they worship [Black Elk Speaks]. Why do people lust so much after something so useless? Many Christians and Muslims and Jews love to condemn other religions as idolators even as they themselves sacrifice themselves and their fellow human beings before this idol called money, this idol they serve with all their hearts, minds, and souls, even as they mouth praises to God. And they eat food offered to this idol.

Wars and animal exploitation and environmental destruction are all sacrifices to this idol, hopelessly beyond rationality.

http://io9.com/5872764/the-greatest-mystery-of-the-inca-empire-was-its-strange-economy

http://www.countercurrents.org/steinsvold110708.htm

http://www.sikantis.org/sikantis.org/?p=247

http://www.realitysandwich.com/end_money_future_civilization

https://sites.google.com/site/livingwithoutmoney/Home/1--why-do-you-live-without-money