Money. Is it worth it? (by anon)

Most of us love money. We dream of the day that we either win the lottery or take up a high paying job, and we fantasize about having everything we desire from a private island to a spectacular car, an extravagant house to hoards of designer clothes, and of course everything in between.

Is it in our nature to want money, to collect possessions, and live a life filled with as much luxury as possible? Are we humans wired to dedicate our life to acquiring things, above and beyond our basic needs? Is there something more we should be looking for in life? When we have everything we need (food, water, clothing, shelter, a loving community of friends and family), why do we seem to think we need more? As long as we’re healthy, safe, and have people around us to love and share life with, shouldn’t we be able to enjoy life without the desire for capital gain or a bunch of unnecessary shit that makes us look cool, feel better about ourselves, or just keep us entertained?

Everyone seems to be upset in America – the rich aren’t rich enough, and the poor aren’t exactly getting less poor. So why wouldn’t the rich want to put their money towards things that could make society work better as a whole, while living a practical life for themselves, with a modest home, modest possessions, and a modest, less extravagant lifestyle overall?

Why don’t the richest people care to put their money towards things like research for new technology so we can have cleaner energy, advanced medical care, a better waste collection system, better transportation means, better food, a better environment, and better infrastructure overall? Basically, why do people who have a lot of money think they need to use it to buy material possessions for themselves instead of use it to support and benefit their community? And no, I don’t want to hear that rich people buying tons of shit actually helps the economy because “that money eventually trickles down the stream to the less wealthy”. We all know that in a capitalistic society, the workers sell their labor in order to get by, while the corporate leaders take advantage and make profit from that labor. So any money that gets spent by the rich on things like yachts and vacation homes ends up going to some other corporate leader in the end anyway, while the workers themselves, despite at least having jobs, still only earn a tiny fraction of what they actually produce. Thus, the corporate leaders get richer while the workers continue to lose money on their own labor, and when their paychecks come, they pay a bunch of taxes, and when they finally decide to spend money, they barely afford what they need, and if they’re lucky, they can still spend money on a bunch of crap they don’t need (while most of what they spend still goes back to a corporate leader who makes a majority of the profit, while workers are paid unfairly to make the crap in the first place, and the cycle just goes on).

The most well-off people are the most stupid and backwards, and none of them know how to solve anything, because they rely on money to solve all of their personal problems, while they leave the rest of the world’s problems untouched. Then they all run in circles worrying about what personal, tangible assets they have and how to retain them, when all they need is right in front of them, and has been all the time, yet it is cluttered and overcast by objects that hold no true significance. Money destroys spirit, nature, good character, beauty, love, and everything else that’s good in this world. Lives are lost all of the time over money.

So next time you hear someone (or yourself) griping about money, or how this country’s economy is fucked and our president won’t do anything to help us, remember it’s that human desire for money that brought us here in the first place, and there are people out there with the means to help bring society to a better place. Unfortunately, those who have the means don’t care because their life is set, and they’d rather have the money for themselves and those who happen to be in their direct line of descent than actually use the money to make the world better. And they think spending their money on possessions somehow does help society. No one who makes a large amount of money really cares enough about the rest of the world to even start thinking about how do anything to make it better, so all they do is think about what to buy and how to make more money (and make it look like they’re trying to help the world) instead of ways to truly improve life around them. Money is pointless and it controls people. We can’t be free until we stop living for money. From now on, let’s try to make our main objective be something other than money (what’s that thing they talk about in the Bible? Oh yeah, Love), and we should see how much better life gets.