More on Money

Last night I was thinking that spending money can be a spiritual act if it's motivated by love and the impulse to give, rather than a knee-jerk reaction to demons such as boredom, fear, depression, or feeling unloved. Then I happened to pick up a book called Facing the World with Soul by Robert Sardello (one of the Smarty Pants quoted earlier) and found a chapter called "Economics and Money." I wish I could mind-meld the whole thing to you, but instead here are a few highlights:

- In ancient Greece, economics meant "the care of the household of the world." It wasn't until the time of Luther and the Reformation (and the emergence of capitalism) that economics started referring to the pursuit of personal gain.

- "Modern economics comes to the foreground of life as the mythic, imaginative, religious manner of living with the world recedes."

- "The psychic starvation brought about by removing soul from the world produces insatiable greed."

- "Finance operates out of an analogy to war and to imperialism, and thus it is violent, aggressive, and if left to itself will destroy itself." (Sound prophetic?)

- There is a "hidden life force" within economics, "a soul force" that Sardello calls "the gift economy: that is, all that adds to the life of the economic body through the act of giving without seeking return."

Hope that gives you a taste of his ideas. For more revolutionary thinking, check out this documentary about the essentially false nature of money and the inherent dysfunction of a profit-based economy. It's two hours long but highly recommended, especially to fans of The Matrix. Thank you, Keith, for sending the link! (Here it is in a bigger window, in case this one is too tiny to see.)