Discuss: Breaking the Spell of Money

Want to have some fun with your kids? Make jokes and laugh with them about print, television and billboard advertising. This stuff is absurd, even (especially?) to a child. Wish they would never even have to see it, but let’s be realistic. Vaccinate them now.

Kids can be quite clever. My five year old once told me while watching a television commercial that the advertised toys were no good. His reasoning was that kids told each other about the good toys and that only junk was on TV.

I am grateful for this article, one of the best, most concise, and accessible I’ve read. Thank you.

I’m a progressive-minded fundraiser who teaches stewardship education, and I’ve been reading about alternatives in micro- and macro-economics for years. It’s hard to find an essay that doesn’t just restate the bad news and tell us that we should all be living more simply. 

This article seems to conflate a bunch of Bad Things that might be better examined by teasing them apart.  We read that we are poisoning the earth’s natural systems; okay, yes.  We read that corporations and their executives are greedy; okay, yes.  But look: the soil, air and water are choking *not* because of the actions of a few, but because of all of us.  Even the virtuous ones. It’s a cumulative effect: all of our driving, our air travel, our foodstuffs, our electricity.  And that’s not even counting “luxury” items.  The problem is that we are stuck in an us/them mindset that oversimplifies the issue.  And if we can’t even name the problem correctly, how can we ever hope to get to a solution?

As noted, it will take generations to re-establish some of the lost values such as neighborliness and community-oriented outlooks…those old enough to recall the spirit of the 60’s know that it is possible for positive values to seep into the culture. The challenge is to resist the whole scale efforts to disrupt that point of view. Each one of us can take steps to contribute to the whole, and as with all good things, the more you do, the better it gets.

In the article, the author states, “Until the mid-1980s, the U.S. financial sector never accounted for more than 16 percent of all corporate profits, but over the past decade it has averaged more than 41 percent”.

No source of this statistic is provided and the data from the US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis shows the financial services industry averaging 22% over the past decade.

This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking essay.  However, the statement “Beyond meeting our basic needs, money cannot give us any of the things that actually bring happiness—family, community, good health, good work, experience of art and nature, service to others, a sense of purpose, spiritual insight” seems naive and inadequately considered. Presently, in the small city on the eastern seaboard where I live, supporting a family is an expensive proposition: beyond housing and food, to help children reach their potential in sports or music and arts costs mightily; the degraded school system no longer providing these options, which are also community builders. My own good health, in my seventies, is supported by food that is grown organically or locally to the extent possible in this climate, but at high cost, and by an intensive vitamin and supplement regime that takes the place of ineffective anti-depressants and pain medication.  It works well, but costs my husband and me over $1500 per year, and is not covered by insurance, the price of which goes up yearly. Anyone whose chosen work is outside the financial industry or the top tier of corporations or their professions, needs to work at more than one job to survive.  The cost of going to the art museum is now prohibitive if one wants to take more than oneself with a library pass.  Nature is a joy for which I give thanks daily, aware that my enjoyment of it is very much the result of living where many people cannot afford to live. That leaves service to others, spiritual insight, a sense of purpose, hard-won privileges at this end of life, hard to access when struggling to raise a family on inadequate income, as I see the younger generation doing.  It is very difficult to get out of the prison skilfully constructed over the past hundred years by the Military/industrial, Corporate imperialistic and Financial Industry, with the help of people like Vincent Lebow.

This article hits the nail squarely on the head: the rich and powerful are destroying our world. Those who cannot or will not see this are truly deluded. To wake them from their cultural trance is the first order of business to save the possibility of a world based on justice, mutual care, and higher values. From there we might be in a position to consider how to check the destructive influence of these sick people, and turn the direction of our world culture towards more healthy and positive outcomes. As long as the mass of people believe the lies being promulgated by the wealthy, nothing will change, except to become progressively worse, ending in a nightmarish situation on Earth beyond imagining. It is being able to really understand this that leads folks like Derrick Jensen to say that we must stop these folks by any means possible. Until you understand that the danger he points to is real and imminent, you may consider his views to be extreme or improbable. Unfortunately the voices that tell it like it really is are rare in our world at this time. The author of this piece has dared to confront the monstrous elephant in our living rooms. Let us take heed, and lay our plans to counter those who are now plotting to enslave and ultimately destroy us.