MONEY IS A MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE
Back in ancient times, before the invention of money, people exchanged
goods and services by bartering. They’d do things like build a stone wall for
someone in exchange for a pile of animal pelts and a bag of salt or trade
you a castle for a couple of your daughters. Then it basically got to be too
much of a pain in the ass to carry around pelts and rocks and took too much
time to build stuff so the humans came up with the idea of money, assigned
a value to the coins and notes, and now all you have to do is reach for your
wallet instead of five of your best camels if you want to buy a car or
something.
Money is a unit of measurement used in the act of giving and receiving.
Contrary to popular belief, money itself is neither good nor bad, friend nor
foe, filthy nor clean—it’s just blank, minding its own business, trying not to
get jammed in a soda machine. Money is just the messenger. It’s what you
do with it and how you think, feel, and speak about it that give it a
personality. And depending on the personality you give it, you’re either
gonna want to surround yourself with it or stay the hell away from it.
Which is why thinking money is bad or dirty (without, erm, really
thinking about it), and reinforcing these thoughts by speaking badly about
it, is one of the leading causes of serious brokeness. For example, here’s a
little sumthin’ you may have thought and/or said before:
Money is the root of all evil.
Yes, our world is full of unspeakable horrors and injustices born out of
the things people do for money, but the wrongdoing is caused by the
perpetrators, not the money. It’s like deciding cars are intrinsically evil
because people turn into obscenity-hurling jackasses behind the wheel or
that vegetable peelers are hateful just because you sliced your finger open
with one once. Money, cars, and vegetable peelers are also conduits for
great joy, tasty adventures, and they all make excellent wedding gifts.
In the words of the late, great Ayn Rand: Money is only a tool. It will
take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.
There are lots of words in the English language whose meanings sort of
seep into each other. It’s easy to get confused about where one ends and the
other begins. For example: love/lust, being nice/lying, confident/drunk.
When it comes to the desire to make money, the most common term people
confuse it with is “greed,” especially when discussing the root of all evil
and other such unpleasantries. With all of these examples, taking a moment
to discover the truth can save a lot of disappointment and heartache. So let’s
be clear:
Greed: An insatiable, excessive, selfish craving for more more more.
Another term that’s oft confused with money is “power mongering”:
Wielding influence in a tyrannical and supermean way. And let us not
forget ye olde “corrupt”: Morally bankrupt, focused on personal gain whilst
giving nary a crap how your actions affect others or what the law says.
Here are some other popular ways people use the term “money”
incorrectly:
Money ruins everything.
Money and friendship are like oil and water.
Money makes monsters out of otherwise good people.
Pretty harsh, right? It’s not like money broke into your house and
punched you in the face fer fek’s sake, it’s just trying to help you buy stuff.
Here’s something else that’s important to realize about money if you’re
going to go out and make a whole lot of it.
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