Money And Mankind

MONEY TALK Money is a phenomenon that does not gel with man’s real self. Money making, earning, giving or taking are all unnatural activities. At best, money is a substitute - and a poor one at that - for a sense of freedom and power that we as human beings are unable to experience in its pure, unalloyed form. The brain is an endless ocean of stupefying images and incomprehensible sensations. In such an expanse – akin to being in a state of weightlessness – freedom as we presently know it cannot be experienced and power as we currently understand it cannot be exercised. Thus, the brain searches for a fulcrum to leverage its vast reservoirs of imagination and analytical skills. The anchor devised for this purpose by man’s ingenuity is “money”. However, I believe that our notions of freedom and power are incorrect. Freedom is not a state of action. Freedom is a state of being. Power lies not in changing destiny. Power is making destiny irrelevant. Freedom is absence of need. Power is banishment of desire. In that sense both freedom and power aren’t temporal in nature and, hence, do not need temporal anchors to express themselves. The biggest temporal anchor is money. Therefore, money is as unnatural an entity for man’s existence as freedom and power are natural. Do not get me wrong. Money is not evil. It is amoral. It is neutral. But the human element, when it comes into contact with this substance, corrodes and converts into something far removed from its basic self. Some might argue that it is not money per se but the lack of it which is unnatural and which corrodes or converts; that the poor, struggling men are prisoners but the rich, successful are not. That is not quite correct. The successful might not be seen chasing money and one may be deceived by their nonchalance into believing that money does not rule the roost in such hallowed minds but the rich are certainly not ‘above’ money. No ‘don’ bloodies his own hands. He need not. But blood is still shed behind the scenes at the altar of his ‘don hood’. No one can earn his way beyond money. All that the rich are able to do is to widen the perimeter of the jails they are lodged in but it is a jail nonetheless. A jailed man cannot be free and powerful. It is a contradiction in terms.

Over the ages we have learnt that freedom is not doing whatever we want but whatever is acceptable for the good of all; that power is not browbeating people but entering into a partnership with them; not lording over nature but collaborating with it. But in this process of indoctrination, we somehow stopped trusting our innate self. Our basic nature became something that had to be tutored and kept on a leash at all times lest the veneer of civilization fell off. To that extent, we moved away from being free and powerful. Are we ready to own responsibility for our true selves and have faith enough in ourselves to say that freedom is being whatever we are and power lies in following our free will wherever it takes us? No, we are not ready. We are not ready because we have not quite found our way back to ourselves. And so, we are not ready to be really free or powerful either. And so, we need the clutches of money to stand up and salute a false sense of freedom and power. October 02, 2008

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