Is the love of money, truly the root of all evil?

It’s a cliche for men to complain that their wives don’t understand them, but it is also true of writers, philosophers and pretty much everyone. I can recall reading about Karl Marx distancing himself from Marxism because they had misunderstood him. I think it’s true that every great idea and philosophy has been misinterpreted to some degree. That’s why we have 33,820 different denominations of Christianity, many types of Buddhism, Islam and every other major philosophy.

Here’s a clip of my favourite comedian, Ricky Gervais, tackling this exact issue.

I also remember reading a humourous part of Richard Bandler’s book about Neuro Linguistic Programming.

Bandler was sitting on a plane and got talking to the passenger next to him. He asked where he was travelling to and it turned out he was flying to attend the course Bandler was delivering. Without disclosing his identity, he questioned him to see how well his ideas and philosophies were understood. The Student was not a beginner, he was well versed in the subject, but he had completely misunderstood the nature of NLP.

He believed it was about techniques and strategies to get certain outcomes. When really Bandler had intended and saw it as a framework for a deeper understanding of the way that people’s brains work.

Many times we think we understand someone, but we really don’t. That’s why I wanted to write this post. You see I, and people like me, spend a lot of time focused on impressing on people that money won’t lead to happiness. That’s only because the natural default thinking of the world is that happiness is a simple equation.

It isn’t. Money has little effect on happiness.

However, the stark truth about me and money is that;

I LOVE MONEY

• I would love to have cupboards filled with cash.
• I’d like the postman to deliver sacks more every day.
• And I’d like to sleep on a bed with the mattress filled with cash.

There I’ve said it. It’s out in the open now.

Seriously though, the most common problem, challenge or conflict people have in their live relates to money. Let’s be honest we all want it, don’t we?

Whether it’s to feel secure, to have more time, to avoid certain tasks, whatever we want money to help us do it.

Oh sometimes we’ll struggle without it and say ‘I didn’t really want it anyway’ as a justification.

The fact is, is that money is a part of our experience. And the secret to living happily is to live without hate or conflict. You have to love every part of life, the good or the bad. Whenever you try to cut a whole chunk out of your life, you diminish your integrity. It is actually the least ‘spiritual’ thing you can do.

Love all, does not just relate to people. It relates to every idea, symbol, object and so on that you come across.

To say I don’t like money or whatever else, is in effect the same dynamic as a white person having had bad experience with black people saying ‘I don’t like Blacks’. Or vice versa.

Let’s do our bit for political correctness and stop the moneyism that is endemic in our society.

The path to happiness, nirvana, Godliness, or whatever you want to call it, is through wholeness. Life is holographic. The whole is encapsulated in each aspect. So once you reject one element of it, you reject it all.

We must work to understand what money means at a deeper level, so that we use it as the tool it is supposed to be rather than as our Master.

Money is an idea. An idea that represents;

units of appreciation

Over time people have gone to war, martyred themselves and so on for the right to vote. Yet every time you spend money, you are voting more specifically and more powerfully than you will ever be capable of politically. Products, ideas, and businesses live or die by your economic votes. The landscape of our society is shaped by your, minute by minute, economic decisions.

Of course it is not a perfect tool. Sometimes you will pay out lots to someone who promised far more than they delivered. And sometimes we pay money in anger, from fear and with heavy hearts. But this is a reflection more of our confused operating systems and relationships than of the idea of money itself.

A great drill won’t make perfect holes with a hopeless DIYer. A great car won’t drive safely with a hopeless driver.

Money is magnificent. It means that anyone, in western society at least, can work at a minimum wage rate for one hour and feed themselves. Much more efficient than hunting for a day to hopefully eat.

But the real reason why we have such a powerful entwinement with money is that we crave appreciation and validation. Money is the default way that we can measure this appreciation. Sure it’s nice that the Boss congratulates us, but when the lazy bugger down the corridor gets a bigger payrise, we feel unappreciated.

The problem with money is that it reflects our true nature. We can lie ourselves into believing what we say, but where we spend our money shows our true thoughts.

We might prefer Open Office (an open source version of MS Office), but donate little or nothing. Yet when we need Microsoft software we pay hundreds because we need it. It is for this reason that Machievelli wrote that, politically, it is better to be feared than loved. Because fear guarantees compliance. Appreciation is too infrequent, too weak and too fickle to be trusted or effective.

It is not the love of money that is at the root of all evil, it is the lack of integrity. It is the fear of not having money, of not being worthy of money that causes people to compromise.

And underlying that…

coming to this blog soon

Tags: Finding Happiness // 4 Comments »