Money Is Life

[I’m posting this by request. It’s the polished form of an essay I wrote in June in response to someone’s claim that the rioting and looting beginning at the time were good and that it doesn’t matter if things are stolen and businesses are destroyed because the owners have insurance.]

“Money is the root of all evil.”

That’s the popular quote, attributed to the Bible, that encapsulates the vast majority of people’s thinking about money.

[The actual quote is “The love of money is the root of all evil,” but that doesn’t change anything. In fact, it exposes the nature of this essay’s topic. What is it we are supposed to not love?]

For thousands of years, people of all backgrounds, creeds, religions, cultures, regions, and eye colors have all but universally condemned money. Its existence is deplored as some kind of regretfully necessary evil that is a product of human depravity which we only use because that depravity is so ingrained in us and in the civilizations we have created that we have no choice. If we could, we lament, we would do away with money in a split second.

However, no one ever asks, “What is money?”

Of course, that question has been answered academically and practically, in economics. Money is a commodity that is durable, portable, divisible, scarce, acceptable, and useful in its own right. Money is a convenience that makes the exchange of goods and services easier than plain barter. Throughout history, precious metals have been used as money since they fulfill all those criteria better than anything else. In particular, gold has been the primary metal used as money.

But that answer merely describes money’s physical and practical qualities. No one, to my knowledge, has ever completely answered the deeper, philosophical question of what money is, except to condemn it. That deeper answer is what I will attempt here.

So, why do we hate money? What does it mean that we do?

We are said to spend our lives worshipping the almighty dollar as we grub for mammon so we can make a killing and grease the palms of the stinking rich with filthy lucre. That’s evil, right? Sure sounds like it.

Communism claims to be able to provide life’s needs to everyone for free, allowing us to live in a state the Bible describes as the way things were in the garden of Eden, where everything is given to us at the cost of merely wanting it. Adam and Eve were evicted from Eden for figuring things out and thus had to enter the disgraceful state of having to work to stay alive. Death and entry to Heaven were left as the only passage back to the blissful initial state before the Fall. (Communism leaves out the supernatural but doesn’t dispute that we are disgusting.) The Bible says we can achieve that utopian state in the afterlife by surrendering ourselves to God. Communism says we can achieve that utopian state in this life by surrendering ourselves to the collective. Other religions and ideologies differ in their details but all offer similar claims that we can somehow make life effortless. This effortless life is considered by all, of any persuasion, to be the goal, whether while living or after death.

Money is called evil precisely because of the belief that it’s a result of this low state we live in, our lack of perfection, our existing in the deplorable material world. That state is called lesser than a spiritual or collective existence and since we cannot survive by wishes and magic, life is considered a terrible burden, a horrible struggle, a punishment. Money is therefore taken to be a vile consequence of our disgusting nature.

Anyone who believes beyond doubt that supernatural realms or earthly utopias do or can exist may stop reading at this point. Good luck to you.

The fact is, reality is what we live in, right here, right now. What the universe is and the way it operates is nothing more or less than exactly what we experience. Its nature and our own are what we have discovered them to be through observation and reasoning. Relative to the topic at hand, the only, the necessary, nature of things is that effort must be exerted if we want to live. (If anyone reading this doesn’t want to live, well, you know what you have to do.)

Stones and stars are not alive, they are incapable of valuing anything. The matter and energy comprising them may change form but they exist no matter what. Only life can cease to exist. Living things must act in order to keep living, they must expend effort to obtain the values necessary to remain alive. Food and water don’t matter at all except that they are necessary for life. Otherwise, they merely exist and do what they do, to no end. But for a living entity, those things are required to go on living, therefore they are values.

Life is the ultimate value. Everything else that we consider good or bad is only that way relative to life. Values are values only for the sake of life but life itself is different in that it exists for its own sake. Life doesn’t serve something more fundamental than itself. As living beings, we value life itself above all else. Our actions prove this. Consider: would you give up your last sip of water if the alternative were immediate, instant death? You would, because remaining alive leaves you the chance, however slim, to find a way to go on living. Life is as fundamental as it gets.

We must perform some kind of work to remain alive. From picking berries to directing multinational conglomerates, it is only work that sustains us. Over time, we have grown as a species from picking those berries to supporting worldwide economies that include those conglomerates. Our lives, all of them, everywhere, are immeasurably better than our ancient ancestors’ lives because of it.

In order to do what we need to do to survive, we expend three things: time, talent, and toil. Time, in that nothing can be done instantly. Talent, in that we have abilities that apply to the work being done. Toil, in that nothing is effortless, action is required to accomplish anything.

Time, talent, and toil. Think of what those three comprise. Look at a typical day. In every moment, you are expending all of them. But what occurs over the course of a day? A portion of your life is what occurs. Time, talent, and toil add up and equal life itself. Your life is time, talent, and toil.

In the modern world, unless you are living completely self-sufficiently, producing on your own everything – and I mean everything – that you need, you perform some kind of job. And what do you receive in exchange for doing that job? Money.

[I’m leaving aside the difference between money and currency. That’s an important issue but it’s tangential to this topic. And some people still barter but the amount is a tiny fraction of all exchange.]

Since life consists of time, talent, and toil, by doing your job you have effectively converted life into money. The money we receive for work is equivalent to the life we expend to get it.

Life is the most basic and most important value. Think about what that means. Money is equivalent to our most basic and important value.

In that sense, money is life.

When you condemn money you hold in contempt the value that money represents. That value is your life.

To say that money isn’t important, or is worthless, or is evil or the root of evil, is to say that life isn’t important, or is worthless, or is evil or the root of evil. Equally, saying that the love of money is the root of evil is to say that the love of life is the root of evil.

You acquire your possessions only via the expenditure of life, either directly through time, talent, and toil or indirectly by acquiring the results of the time, talent, and toil of others by trading them your time, talent, and toil – your life – in the form of money.

Money is life.

To put all this in a contemporary context: There are many who support the 2020 riots. One popular rationalization for them is that it doesn’t matter that things are stolen and that businesses are destroyed because their owners have insurance and so will be made whole again. But, ultimately, what is being stolen or destroyed is the life spent on creating those things. To riot or loot is to destroy lives. To support rioting and looting is to support taking lives. Saying that insurance makes up for this merely defers the destruction to those who provided the money – the life – for the insurance funds. Everything in life must be paid for, by someone, by actual lives.

When we condemn money, we condemn ourselves. We condemn our own lives. So we must ask, why do we hate ourselves? Why do we heap such contempt upon our own existence? Doesn’t it mean that we truly are the disgusting creatures that religion and ideology say we are? Doesn’t it mean we must hate ourselves? Doesn’t it mean we deserve destruction?

I will not take that path. Life is an amazing thing. I will not condemn it. I cannot think of myself and my fellow men as beings who only deserve hell, in whatever form it is claimed to exist. We are magnificent creatures who have reached incredible heights in an indifferent universe. Money has enabled all of that. Life is glorious and money is life.