Let’s have a little fun and put the stretch on our imaginations. Try to visualize a world without money or even the concept of money. Imagine if there were no more money, no word for it, and no physical or emotional reference to it. The whole idea of money simply doesn’t exist.
Why are we thinking like this? Because so many people spend the majority of their life in the pursuit of this bizarre, manmade invention. For the most part money is a necessary yet insidious detour away from everything that really matters.
Like a bottomless pothole on the road of life, there’s money smack dab in the middle of almost everything meaningful you want to do. You can’t ignore it and it’s almost impossible to get anything done without it, so you are forced to deal with it.
Money calls the shots
In the name of money and career we may invest years of our life on specialized education and training. Why? So we can spend another 30-40 years earning a living. What’s at the end of the rainbow? The hope of being able to retire with enough money to enjoy whatever time and health we have left.
It becomes especially challenging to maintain a balanced view of money when we are confronted by economic hardship. Lack of legal tender can threaten our sense of security and even corrupt our sense of self-worth. No inanimate object is more emotionally charged. That’s a tremendous amount of leverage for an artificial commodity, don’t you think?
Can we really imagine no more money?
It’s difficult to wrap our minds around the concept of no more money because it is outside the realm of our experience. How would society be structured if there were no such thing as money? What would we focus on and how would we make value comparisons?
We don’t really know because it’s never been tried on a large scale. One thing is for sure; most people’s lives would probably be a lot more realistic. Maybe we should just abolish the stuff and start focusing on things of real value.
