Cashless society...yes or no? Pros or cons?

[hunter]

59. I missed out on that "hard wiring."

My parents are artists. They live in a rain forest, drink and wash with water that falls on their roof, and eat locally grown food.

My dad had a union job somewhat related to his art so he earned a decent retirement.

Everyone in our family who has money got there by accident.

The rest of us are perpetually starving artists, scientists, dreamers, and altruists.

I may die on the streets, and I've been homeless as a young man, but it's still "just money." There's something odd, unnatural, and even distasteful about distilling most everything humans do into a single metric.



My own "hard-wiring" evolved long before there was money. The reality of most human history, going back millions of years if you like, was to live within a community of people who shared, or more dangerously, not sharing, leaving the community, and living entirely alone.

Money as we know it now is a recent invention. Trade measured by diverse metrics and simple sharing are what we, as a social species, are "hard-wired" to do. Money is a recent invention.

Of all the intelligent social species on earth (there are quite a few) only modern urban humans relate almost everything to money. I think that's a failing, not an accomplishment, and one of the root causes of the current mass extinction event.

Nature will restore herself and your money will be worthless. We as humans can hold onto our money and become just as worthless and extinct, or we can let go of our money and live on in some kind of harmony with our own nature and the nature of life on earth.