Money

No-one knows what money is, which seems odd. We know about strange things like quarks and quasars. But not about money. Everybody claimed wisdom, starting with Economists and ending with academics. Money is 'nothing but numbers', a 'measure', a 'means', a 'liberator', 'money is, what money does'. In fact, money can be anything we believe it to be.

Theories about money are plentiful and can fit any circumstance.They are comforting to us, but fundamentally unreliable. Experience suggests that having confidence and trust in our understanding of money is important for our well being. But our current 'wisdom' oftentimes engenders faith at the expense of the truth.

Say to people, "money is power" and few will disagree. It's our everyday experience of it. It transforms our needs and wants into comfort and satisfaction. That's akin to magic. There is a sense of the sacred about money. It has 'other-worldly' qualities. Money can be also considered as metaphysical; existing outside of our consciousness. like time.

-Money is so involved with what we are as beings, and who we are as people, that it remains a 'fuzzy' idea.
-Money determines the price of everything because it knows the value of nothing.
-Price is to Money as weight is to gravity. They are both mundane measures of profound powers.
-Money is not a limited resource. Its not like coal or oil, wheat or cotton, guns or diamonds; its a force.
-By being able of appropriating all objects desired, money is thus the object of eminent possession. The universality of its property is the omnipotence of its being. It is therefore regarded as omnipotent.

The growth of commerce subverted the power relationships in society. Money is seen as something negative because it corrodes social bonds. When hiring servants became possible, the demand for their services and the desire for money, drove (mainly) young women from their family, to serve others. They stopped working for free, and chose to sell their work to the rich.

Charity is a way to transfer that force to others about whom we feel guilty. sometimes we feel guilty because we feel responsible for their plight, and sometimes we feel guilty just because we have stuff and they don't. But by transferring ownership of the 'money-force' through charity, we make it harder for them to understand their own relationship with money. We cannot bear to see their suffering, their otherness, so we give away our power to make them more like us - except not quite as good. Charity is always more about the giver than the receiver. Charitable exchange sustains social imbalance in a way that commercial exchange does not. Charity is a quicksand that pulls the poor further into poverty with each donation.