The Riddle

I’m going to be saying things in this essay that will confront your very existence. I’ll start at the “bottom line” and work from there. Here goes… 

We are not free. We have been training ourselves for slavery. 

The mechanism that enslaves us and keeps us in bondage is a very insidious device. It was designed by members of our species long ago, people who are unsatisfied with themselves and seek to exert control over others. The presence of these types of people within our species is an ongoing phenomenon, it has always been with us and always will and that is how it should be. They are a very small minority. We need to be challenged constantly on our consciousness (otherwise we don't grow) and for that these people play an important part. We deal with these people daily, we sometimes live with them, we work with them, we obey their orders, sometimes they are our blood relatives. 

When we look at ourselves we see that humans have a “default” setting, which is a set of belief systems that were handed down from previous generations, and have been reinforced over and over. We were injected with these belief systems from birth and often, we are barely aware that we hold them. 

Some generations ago, people were born with the default setting that told them to believe that the world was flat and that the sun went around the earth. It didn’t spoil their lives, they lived that way as did everyone else. It’s understandable enough that they accepted these notions, as they stemmed from the deficiency of knowledge we had in that era. In the very early times of our civilization, in caveman times, humans didn’t even know that sex creates a new baby. Because birth was nine months after conception they just didn’t make the connection. The same thing is true for seeds because the generated plants were not apparent until well after germination. Due to the delay between the cause and the result, the connection between the two was not made until someone who was evolved enough to, one, have had the curiosity to survey the situation and two, to have made the connection to the result. Prior to the discovery of the knowledge, humans went about their lives unaffected - pretty much. What did it matter after all if the earth was flat or round? Or that babies came from the act of sex? 

Usually a new concept brings about much controversy. We saw the kafuffle Galileo caused by bringing the truth to peoples’ awareness when he mentioned his discovery that the earth goes around the sun. 

Today, in this wonderful 21st century with all that we have become, and the amazing array of technology at our behest, we have the opportunity to face more new truths. What was it like to be around at that moment when the first caveperson “got it” that sex creates a baby? The knowledge probably didn’t happen overnight because there would have been much trial and speculation beforehand and going down the wrong road before arriving at the proper conclusion. But can you imagine the excitement and the confusion of bringing this new concept into a society that had always believed having a baby was due to god’s favor or disfavor, or that having a crop fail or succeed was also due to his favor? Imagine when “the penny dropped” and they came to the realization that the power to have a baby lay with themselves, or the power to harvest a crop depended on whether they watered the soil! The power for the things they outsourced to god was actually in their own hands and they could have been saving themselves a heck of a lot of anxiety if they had that knowledge earlier. 

Now fast forward to today. What if we are currently at the crux of such a reshaping discovery once again in our human history? What if these new truths shatter our previously held default positions but on the other hand, make life infinitely less anxiety-ridden because the power will lay in our own hands and therefore simply be a matter of choice? 
Having babies and growing plants is something that comes to us from nature and is probably immutable. But some of our missed observations are intrinsic to us not from nature but from our own choice. And because we are not thinking about them, because they are unquestioningly accepted as immutable, we remain disoriented in a sea of severity when we could be having a good time. I am referring to something very ingrained in our psyche, have you guessed yet what I am referring to? Here are some more clues, for those who haven’t quite: 

Something that you forfeit your day for, something you feel you have to do rather than what you’d prefer to do. 

Something that even if you like doing it, you don’t like having to adhere to a schedule, you don’t like waking up to an alarm, you don’t like having to rush around frantically in order to fulfill a timeline that you unwittingly feel obligated to fulfill. But often, you don’t like doing it, period, but do it nonetheless. 

Something that gives you pleasure when it’s in your favor and anxiety when it isn’t. 

Something that determines almost all the choices that you make. 

Something that makes you feel constantly anxious although you’re usually not aware of it. It brings anxiety in a myriad of ways – when you have it, you’re anxious about keeping it and when you don’t have it, you’re anxious about your very survival. 

Ahh, by now you surely have decrypted this little riddle. It’s money of course! Yes, money! 

Think about it a little. Aren’t we all so embroiled in it that we rarely stop to wonder if there is any other way besides this form of exchange? We don’t stop to question if money is serving us or if we are serving it. Who makes these rules? Why can’t we have money exist like we do a broom or a microwave – to serve our lives at all times, without having to be clobbered by it at all? 

I bet you’re thinking that if money were to consistently serve our purposes, that it would surely cause us to run amok. Yet with money everything is running amok anyway. Perhaps money has been good for you and all the best with that. However what if you were to be struck by a serious disease tomorrow, can you say the same would be the case? 

Money is a rather haphazard thing at best and full of holes in its logic. In one of the rare constants of money, value is placed not on natures’ renewal which is the source of our very lifeblood, but on its exploitation. Not only that but it incentivizes the exploitation of workers and resources that belong to everyone. It pits colleagues against each other. It breeds a desperate zeal for superiority usually in one discipline, while disregarding the bearing upon others wholesale, or the relationship to other disciplines. Money offers the greatest rewards to those who have laser focus on their goal regardless of anything in that path. Is this good? Is this desirable? 

Now as we are positioned at the pivot point of our civilization’s continuance, we should reconsider if money indeed serves us and if it doesn’t, what it is we would we like money to represent. Should money value clean air, water and soil? Should money place value on people helping each other? Should money value competition or rather co-operation? Should vigor and health and practices that lead to health be valued moreso than results that are apparent on a quarterly profit and loss statement? 

Historically the rules of money have been imposed by others long ago, the likes of whom we have no idea about (they could have been pedophiles or rapists or who knows what). The rules of money are adjusted at the discretion of those we have come to describe as the “one percenters”. Much like the circumcision of baby boys, these rules may no longer serve us and precipitate brutality. Besides, what kind of a system has more anomalies than consistency? The rules are confounding, anxiety-producing and lack justice. But here’s the good news - they are not immutable. 

Therefore, let’s give money some thought shall we and engage in discussion? Let’s toss around what we would like money to be for us, to explore how it can open doors to the fulfillment of everybody and not to only a small percentage of people who have managed to conform to the inconsistencies imposed from without. At least let’s have it make sense! At least have it be easy! At least have it updated! 

Have you seen the picture of the elephant that was fettered to a chair as a baby and as it grew up to become a big, strong adult elephant, it remained fettered to that chair without another thought even though it could easily break free of that chair in a second? That is the power of unquestioning habit. There’s also the story of the boiling frog…