Money Management And Being Managed By Money
 |
| [click image to view larger and clearer] Although the near $1B total amount was a glitch, it was something interesting to look at. And isn't that what riches and the things that wealth brings are for? To look at? It is that ridiculous, yes. |
Whoever loves money never has enough;
whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.
This too is meaningless.
As goods increase,
so do those who consume them.
And what benefit are they to the owners
except to feast their eyes on them?
The sleep of a laborer is sweet,
whether they eat little or much,
but as for the rich, their abundance
permits them no sleep.
- Ecclesiastes 5: 10-12
I hate what today's money can cause some people to do or become.
The idea of today's money has become so grotesque and detestable to me in several ways.
The money, by itself, is not the issue... for it is simply another 'thing', a 'tool'.
It is the idea behind the money, the emotions that propel and compel some of those who chase after it... those who believe they will be changed if they only had some, or more, or a certain amount.
What certain concepts of money tempt people to do is outrageous, we see its evident devastation all around us.
Hearts are hardened and tempted to act ways unusual with the addition of only a little bit of money to one's name.
Like a small drop of poison that can cause a major death to the soul is money's poisonous allure.
Much how a certain tool can garner a meal when it harvests an animal (a weapon for the hunt to feed the stomach), so also can that same tool be used to cause harm to a human being instead of it being used properly.
Such it is with money.
Instead of money being a tool utilized solely to assist man's exchange of goods and labor, that tool can often be used in ways harmful... corrupting the systems of fair trade and fair dealings between fair minded humans.
 |
| [click image to view larger and clearer] I include this image not as a slight towards the Catholic Church, but rather a sobering reality of how systems of men can easily misguide those with the best intentions (they reflecting the world around them). [image taken at Ojai Valley Museum] |
An unbridled and unhealthy attitude towards money can wreak havoc on those who are unable to handle money for what it is.
What exists, instead, is an idea about money (and what it can promise) that overcomes the simple.
I too can be simple.
Unbridled when people treat money as an idol.
Unhealthy when people think that wealth somehow brings wisdom, or righteousness, or purity, or goodness, or validates them in some way.
Wreaking havoc on those unaware how they are subject to the whims of greed... even their own greed when they think none exists.
I cannot stand this: although I better understand the idea of money now than when I was younger, I still struggle with money's allure.
I am still disgusted when I see others brought low similar to how I have been brought low.
The ideas that accompany wealth; ease, comfort, prestige, respect - hollow promises and how wealth is marketed to people.
Not every person is tempted or overwhelmed with these things, but far too many are... and they haven't a clue.
What is evident is that I must still use and utilize money.
It is a 'medium' between people, and this is a sad situation... for it often times clouds the mind and heart.
How is a human society without the tool of money, but rather the trade / barter of real things?
 |
| [click image to view larger and clearer] I include this image not to idealize one society over another, but rather to reflect how far man can be taken away from things that are grounded and built on real-world realities... [image taken at Ojai Valley Museum] |
 |
| [click image to view larger and clearer] ...and how not every person may do well in societies that are fixed instead of flexible. The natural is flexible and accommodating, while man's mind can be quite fixed and hostile [image taken at Ojai Valley Museum] |
If people are already at odds with one another regarding external things, how much more are they divided and instigated when they think themselves now 'better' because they have more money / wealth.
This is how many acts of evil, or aggression, or unloving ways are justified... because of the money dynamic in our lives... instead of the love dynamic, the human dynamic, the real and not the made up.
Money is made up from an idea in man's mind, but mankind and nature were not conceived in man's minds.
The strings are still attached to me somehow.
A taste of wealth did not snip off those strings from me, but turned those strings into chains (for a time).
Neither were the strings cut when I went broke and later purposefully threw the rest of it away (and almost threw away my own life).
It seems there are some things that, while in the flesh, will not be fully removed from my side.
This thorn of money's mystical misleadings.
This pain from profit's penetrating persuasion.
Do not wear yourself out to get rich;
do not trust your own cleverness.
Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone,
for they will surely sprout wings
and fly off to the sky like an eagle.
- Proverbs 23: 4-5
When I went reckless several years ago and decided to implode my economic endeavors, I stopped paying the credit card debt.
I don't recall ever shortchanging another human being, at least not purposefully and blatantly.
And those I have clearly mishandled financially I believe I have restored our relationship while also making them whole and meeting their expectation of whatever agreement we had between us.
I cannot say the same about the faceless entities behind unsecured debts or those considered obligatory.
I had earned myself some money, and also accumulated debt... and thought I had it all under control and I had 'arrived' in some worldly sense.
Instead of me having 'it', it had me... and a harsh reality was to strike me on the face like nothing before.
Our common bond to debt, debt being yet another idea argued as real in courts of law and enforced as real at the end of a gun.
I didn't like who I had become after tasting a teeny tiny taste of financial success.
I had no one I could honestly share it with (no one I trusted and loved from my heart), and those whom I did share it with were hangers-on and opportunists.
It is so interesting how we only realize the kind of friends and relationships we have after the fact.
Drug users usually have other drug users (or pushers) as acquaintances / friends... and so do the greedy.
But the drug user doesn't consider themselves addicted, but maybe their friends... maybe not.
Much the same the greedy don't think themselves greedy, but perhaps a friend or a business person sitting across from them at the negotiation table.
But like minds and like hearts run with each other at times, just as gravity draws certain matter together.
In trying to gain the respect of certain relatives, my attitude became one of detesting them even more when wealth's pride sprouted in my heart.
I viewed them not as the successful people or peers or superiors I previously viewed them as.
I had instead come to view them as inferiors, those who have not overcome this world's financial mechanisms as I believed I had.
I saw them as larger pawns on a chess board of intrigue.
With me thinking I had went from being a pawn to a better game piece with a different move or had reached the other end of the board, I had swallowed the poison willingly.
How diluted I had become.
I had simply become the hired hand manager.
When I realized what a low life I had become, I cared not what would come of my decision to crash along with the economy.
I knew I was injuring myself regarding the outcome of such decisions, but I was unafraid of the consequences.
I was fighting God and His allowed order in the world and His consequence for the choices I had made.
I could not make excuses, no matter how much I disagreed with it or rebelled against it or desired to overcome it (risking becoming like the world instead of overcoming the world).
Lessons in life are there to reveal His Way and His will... and these are confusing when the heart is captured.
During the world-wide economic crisis of 2008 I personally found it unfair that monies were only lent to the privileged and not to everyone else who had been loyally paying their debts on time and without issue.
I saw the idol worship revealed, yet there I had been participating.
I wondered if others recognized what had actually happened.
So I too justified my choice in ceasing supporting the mechanism of falsehoods, and my effort to keep a pristine credit record was thrown out along with yesterday's trash.
The rug of trust was pulled out from almost everyone, and it was done to me without me breeching any agreement.
It was then I decided to breech the agreements for debt service and consider them worthless like the ink and paper they were written on and the digital blips they represented on my computer screen.
The modern system of finance and monies is one that rewards the faithful servants who pay on time, those who faithfully absorb the mistakes of others, accept indebtedness like some odd badge of honor, and allow their labor to be sifted at every turn.
And you can tell which 'god' is worshipped in any certain place on earth by the way high profile criminals are allowed to stay free while others suffer, lose business and employment and home, and eventually lose their minds and a sense of what is real from what is false.
The law is upheld until the law needs to be ignored or 'changed' to help some escape equal justice.
Laws change, and they usually change to the benefit of some and detriment of others.
There was once a law written allowing a certain entity to make money out of thin air.
The tort that 'money doesn't grow on trees' would at least be a honest argument, for at least a tree takes time to grow and is a part of the natural order of creation.
But that law allowed money to be made without actually reflecting anything of real value in the real world (besides the human beings who are strapped with that money's debt issuance).
I viewed this as the modern tribute system to some faceless earthly king(s).
They have their policing agency, a group feared by many people for their sweeping powers and ability to manage the economic apparatus.
This reveals that no single human being actually 'owns' the money in their possession, but simply is a lien holder of that debt.
It is not called a 'note' for an insignificant reason.
Yet this is nothing new on the face of the earth... but something in disguise until earthly monarchies are once again popular and the knowledge of who holds title to land is honestly presented in clear terms.
This is the very subtle subterfuge of slavery that is not easily expressed in words, but very much felt by humanity.
What is interesting is that both those who manage money and are managed by money are collectively subject to the system.
We are all co-conspirators, unfortunately.
It is like a poison that has crossed all of our lips, somehow.
 |
| Speaking of poisons... consider how gambling may be outlawed locally in certain cities or states, yet is the realm of the wealth and the so-called 'wise'... yet the value is yet another idea evoked in unreal terms, but schemes abstract. |
For the capitalized, it is easier (and encouraged by market brokers) to 'invest' in things large and economically mechanical.
If money was a measure of means, then the world seems very capable of funneling money through the hands of billions of people to allow for the exchange of goods and services.
But this isn't what happens.
I have seen a grievous evil under the sun:
wealth hoarded to the harm of its owners,
or wealth lost through some misfortune,
so that when they have children
there is nothing left for them to inherit.
Everyone comes naked from their mother’s womb,
and as everyone comes, so they depart.
They take nothing from their toil
that they can carry in their hands.
- Ecclesiastes 5: 13-15Money is issued to the populous through banks as a debt.
That debt is demanded back with interest... yet the interest amount is NEVER issued into circulation.
This is why the money is funny, the mechanism insoluble, the game rigged.
This exists because one man's 'god' is not to be shared with others.
One man's idol is to be kept for their own personal use and worship.... and all others made to also worship this 'god' somehow, and the form of such is the taxing of their bodies (with debt charged at interest).
Oh how what is not real (this 'god', false idol) is is protected and considered sacred and more valuable than what is real (nature and humanity).
If only the common man can put into a single sentence how charging interest on debt is the root cause of economic ruin for so many people... and the reason why others worship it and pursue it.
Perhaps that man would desire to trade only in real things, and demand that interest not be a part of his life's equation, but only fair agreements with fair leverage.
Perhaps then that man would cease being a slave by default, but one by choice in the service of his fellow man.
Perhaps then the temptation to enslave others may cease or be better recognized.
Comments