(Scroll down to read part I)
Part II: Hey, No Fair!
Okay, so yes, in the last week or so, I
have come to love money. Crazy right?
Now when I say 'I love money,' I don't
mean it in the sense of 'Gimme gimme gimme!' I mean it more in the
sense of 'I love my children,' or 'I love Gandhi.'
Crazy as it might sound, right now,
when I think of money, I am filled with love and gratitude. To give a
little bit of a background, I have spent my entire professional
career in service to, and as a champion for the poor. I bet you can
guess how much that pays.
So Full Disclosure: I have historically
despised money to the marrow of my bones. I might have told another
story, if you'd asked me-- something more enlightened about how money
is a natural part of the world, and everything that is natural is
beautiful (gag!). But, at my core, I believed money to be evil!
To give a background, I am no more than
maybe two degrees separated from every undocumented Spanish speaking
immigrant in Boulder County, where I live and work. I thrive in that
community, and I spend as much time there as I can.
And I'll tell you what it's like for
them. They have never even asked themselves the question 'What would
my life be like if I didn't have to work myself to exhaustion six
days a week for minimum wage at McDonalds?' Why not? Because they are
the lucky ones. They left families behind in absolute abject,
mind-numbing, starvation riddled poverty, and for those who got out,
it's not 'I have to work for minimum wage,' it's, 'I get to work for
minimum wage.'
The global economy is driving the car.
It has opened the passenger door, and shoved the faces of the poor
against the passing pavement with it's boot heel. You bet I hated
money! Any human who knows and loves the profoundly poor invariably
faces, somewhere in her soul, a deep and abiding hatred of money. And
that's not even to mention what money has done to all of the
beautiful non-human beings of our world-- our beloved brothers and
sisters. It has ripped the heads off mountains, brought every living
ecosystem to the brink of death. It has filled the air with tar and
the oceans with plastic. It has killed countless fish, birds, trees,
everything and everybody. The destruction that has been done to life
in the name of money is saturated with one grief stricken horror
story after another.
So now I turn around and say that I
love money? In the matter of maybe a week, I have gone from one
extreme to another? What gives?!
Here's why I say that. Here's why, when
I now think of money, I breathe a deep sigh of gratitude and relief:
It has to do with the shift that has happened to the human story over
the last couple thousand years. We have gone from a story of
Murderous Domination to something completely new.
Have you ever bought or sold a used
car? There's sort of a typical tradition associated with the process.
The buyer kicks the tires, looks under the hood-- generally tries to
find everything that's wrong with the car. The seller assures the
buyer that he religiously changed the oil every three months, just
bought new tires, and had the clutch rebuilt. It's as good as new!
This is the trade mentality. The buyer tries to get the car for as
little money as possible. The seller tries to get as much money for
the car as possible. Their interests are at odds, but if the trade is
ideal, it will be fair.
That is the new story. The Story of
Fairness. We went from kill and take to trade.
And there is actually a tool that was
used to accomplish this incredible feat-- to defeat Odysseus and
implement a new power structure. The tool was simple, it was easy to
understand, and it was mind bogglingly effective. The tool was money.
Obviously money had not successfully
achieved its ideal-- the world is wildly unfair. But it did
completely and irrevocably alter our most basic fundamental story.
Previous to this latest cascade of
insights, I had seen the ideal of fair trade as a barrier to our
transformation. And, honestly, I haven't really changed my opinion. I
still do see the story of fairness as a barrier to our
transformation, but I also now see it as the necessary platform from
which to launch ourselves. And far more importantly, I see it as the
product of an earlier transformation. We have done this before.
So here's the story of fairness as told
in the language of modern mythology:
Once upon a time, a super long time
ago, there was a really short guy with an incredibly big heart who
saved the world. His name was Frodo Baggins.
(Isn't that a wonderful beginning?)
He was faced with the almost impossible
task of destroying The One Ring of Power. This ring gave anybody who
possessed it the power to dominate not only all the other rings of
power, but pretty much everybody and everything in the world. And you
know what? That little guy, who nobody had ever even heard of, stood
up, and he shouted, 'HEY, THAT'S JUST NOT FAIR!' And he and his lover
Samwise Gamgee ventured forth on an impossible journey, which
required them both to transform completely. You see, the ring filled
them up with an irresistible passionate need to possess it-- to
possess the power to destroy and dominate everything, and in order to
destroy the Ring, they had to let it go. They had to give up the
desire to destroy and control. And they did it, and they destroyed
the ring and Everything Became Fair, and they lived happily ever
after, yay!
Or if you prefer, how about this one:
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far
away, there was a slightly less short, but still short guy with an
incredibly big heart who saved the galaxy. His name was Luke
Skywalker. He was faced with the almost impossible task of destroying
The Dark Side of the Force. And you know what? That little guy, who
nobody had ever even heard of, stood up, and he shouted, 'HEY, THAT'S
JUST NOT FAIR!' And he and his lover, Princess Lea ventured forth on
an impossible journey, which required them both to transform
completely. You see, The Dark Side of The Force filled them up with
an irresistible passionate need to possess it-- to possess the power
to destroy and dominate everything, and in order to destroy the
Ring-- I mean the Dark Side of the Force, they had to let it go. And
they did it, and they destroyed the Dark Side of the Force and
Everything Became Fair, and they lived happily ever after, yay!
So you could say that the Story of
Fairness came into being as a direct response to the Story of
Murderous Domination. It was the obvious, natural replacement story.
And it has been incredibly successful! Global human violence has been
dropping precipitously for a long time (I remember hearing that on
NPR). As much as you may hate money, you have to admit that if you
had lived in northern China in the 12th century, you would
have hated Genghis Khan a whole lot more (if you were still alive,
which is unlikely).
Now don't get confused. Just because
money hasn't achieved it's ideal of fairness, or fair trade, doesn't
mean that that's not its purpose. A dollar is a dollar is a dollar is
a dollar. It has the same value everywhere. Think back to all those
arguments about how the free market would regulate itself: Supply and
demand, competition, prices stay low, product value stays high, blah
blah blah... Remember that load of horsesh*t that nobody believes
anymore? At least not anybody who is actually thinking? Truth be
told, there is an undeniable reality behind it. Money certainly
hasn't made anything fair, but it's profoundly curbed the wholesale
slaughter that preceded it. War is a totally different thing than it
used to be. Now, instead of someone killing everyone and taking
everything, we have counterinsurgency and tactical strikes, where we
kill a targeted number of innocent civilians and steal their money!
Yay, so much better!
Yet if you really examine it, it is so
much better! Imagine what it would be like if the US Military
decided to use all the force at its disposal to kill anybody if it could get them more power (or who looked at their girl the wrong
way). If the human story had not transformed, we would most certainly
all be dead.
So, is that it? What if it turns out
that money and the story of fairness is actually a beautiful gift
that we gave ourselves-- an ideal for which countless people have
died fighting? What if it turns out that money actually saved us
from annihilation? Does that mean that we should stick with it?
Continue on the path toward ever greater fairness? We've made it this
far. Doesn't it seem reasonable to think that we could make it the
rest of the way? Or does the story of fairness have integrated
limitations? Might it be that we need a whole new story?
Tune in next week for our third and
final installment! Where those questions and many more will be
answered with magnificent flourishnesseses of deft skill and insight!
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