Money & Evil

Of late, it is becoming extremely hard to deny the “money is the root of all evil” connection. Over many years, I have been forced to conclude that the twin sources of all evil in the world are Money and Organized religion.

But the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether “Evil” isn’t simply an inherent part of Man’s nature. It seems built into the basic design of humankind. So, if that is true, then perhaps Humans are actually the root of all evil.

Think about it.

Who invented Money? Humans of course.

Who invented Religion? Humans of course.

Now at one level, money isn’t Evil per se. Money is simply a transactional device that allows humans to value things—activities and commodities. Before money, these things were valued by a trading mechanism. That is, one goat was worth XX bushels of corn. Then, likely because such trades began to get too complicated, someone decided on a neutral device—money. Although hard metals were likely first used perhaps as early as 5-7000 BC, metal converted into coins was likely first used around 600-700 BC.

So money has been around and fairly useful as a trading device for many centuries.  But then Man began looking at money a little differently. Say the guy with the goat for sale wants to sell his goat to the corn man. But he really doesn’t want or need corn. So, they have to figure out a different method of getting the goat to the corn man, without relying on corn. So, the corn guy sells his corn to a dude in exchange for some shiny metal pieces made out of some pretty metal. Then he and the goat-guy debate how many of the shiny metal pieces the goat is worth. So, the goat guy winds up with some nice shiny metal, and the corn guy gets his goat for some nice goat stew.

And so it went.

But then some guy figured out that, if he got more of the shiny metal, he could buy a nice boat, or maybe a nice house.  And then, if he was clever, he could arrange to sell the nice boat or the nice house for more of the shiny metal pieces than he had paid. And so it went.

Enter the guy who doesn’t actually make/raise anything. He decides that he can make even more of the shiny metal if he becomes the guy who arranges the sale of boats, or houses, or goats, or corn, and takes a cut of each sale.

And so, on and on, until we arrive at our present, a present in which humans can bring in huge amounts of the shiny metal for doing little that is useful, except maybe arranging deals.  And then some other guys decide they can make some shiny metal by predicting how much each deal will be worth a year from now, or maybe even 30 minutes from now.

And on and on it goes, with humans figuring out newer ways to make some of the shiny metal without ever doing anything actually useful.  And money itself then becomes its own commodity, and acquires a value independent of anything real.

And then enter the Donald Trumps of our world—humans who conceive of ways to create fake things of value, sell those fake things, and then make off with the money, without ever actually delivering anything of value. And when people yell that they are being cheated, they construct fake arguments showing that the people received value, just not the kind they were expecting.

Because money is so highly valued, especially by unethical humans, we have entire fields of human behavior that trade unethical activities, in many cases illegal activities, for money. And if the unethical/illegal activities don’t get exposed, those humans make off with their money, and go off to buy a waterfront home on the Riviera, or some other exotic place.  Precisely because there exists some percentage of these unethical/illegal activities that always seem to escape the attention of law enforcement folks, the groups of people so engaged continues to grow and continues to prosper. And then, remember, Humans invented things called Banks. And some of those Banks figured out that, if we allow the crooks of the world to transfer their money to unguarded places, they can extract a nice fee for facilitating such deals—see HSBC, for example. And the Money=Evil connection strengthens.

But see, it was not Money itself that decided to become unethical/illegal. It was Humans, unethical Humans who made and continue to make such decisions. Money, as it turns out, is simply a relatively easy commodity to corrupt.

 And then there is religion, my second source of Evil.

Now, what is “Religion”? Religion is simply a collection of belief systems. Belief in what you might ask? Well, belief in an entire magical world that comes into being only after you die. Yeah, we live in this world we can all see, touch and feel. And we sort of understand that world. But then we also understand that we exist in that world for an indeterminate, yet fixed period of time.  That “fixed period” is not exactly the same for everyone, but for each human on Earth, a fixed period of Life exists; we simply don’t know in advance what that fixed period is.

But the Fixed period matters little, because Religion offers us an infinite second existence.  Now all religions don’t offer the same assurance, but the biggies offer such. That second existence is a bit weird. Some pretend that you will be floating up in the sky with a vision of Earth down below, and that, much like watching a movie, I guess, you can observe what the actually living humans are doing down below. And you can chat it up with your long lost relatives, and even God—I have often wondered what a chat with God would be like. Odd, one would think, since God is all knowing, and you’re just a dude who spent a few years down below pretending to be human.

Some suggest that you might get to play an instrument, although a harp is the only one ever mentioned.  And you float about on clouds. It remains uncertain whether you ever get to eat a nice meal, or have a nice glass of Cabernet Sauvignon up there. It would seem not.  That is so Down Below.

But at least you might get a chance to query your mom, or grandmum, or even your errant father figure, and finally get some answers, on why your life was so crappy because they behaved in such idiotic ways.

Now all this floating about on clouds thing, nice as it might be, is only one of the two after-life options as it turns out.  There is actually a second, less desirable option. That option is Hell, a place where folks who misbehaved pretty badly have to go—say Hitler I guess.  And in that option, you don’t get to float about chatting it up with your past relatives, and maybe even God. Nope, there you enter a world of fire, where you continue to burn in fire forever more.  Yep, you never get released to that nice cool place up above, having to spend your second, infinite existence on fire and in pain forever.

Doesn’t seem really nice, huh?

So, what do you have to do to make it to one place or the other? Well, turns out it isn’t real complicated.  All you have to do to make it into the cool place up above is to behave yourself. And how do you do that? Well, if you follow orders. Whose orders? Well, the dudes and dudettes who are in charge of the places of religiosity. And now, enter the Evil. See, it turns out that, if you endow humans with the power to send you to one place or the other, they begin behaving a bit differently than they might otherwise have behaved. That is, they can tell you what to do, or not to do, as they see fit. And if, say, they don’t like Gays, they can tell you, Don’t Behave Gay! Because, if you do, I will guarantee that you will go down below rather than up above.  Now that’s serious power. Think of all the “Don’t, do’s” they might construct.  And, of course, they can also construct a whole bunch of “Do, do’s”.  As in, “Do give me some of your money each week, and in exchange, I will tell you what to do, or not to do”.  Or, “Do build me a really grand building in which I can enlighten you each week”.  Or, maybe, “Do buy me a nice airplane, so I can fly around and tell others what to do.”

And so the story goes on. With each century of such power over folks, organized religion became grander and more powerful. Powerful to the point that, its followers became aroused to kill non-believers in their name.  So, we not only had religious wars, but more simply, believers who decided on their own to kill other people who refused to follow.

Oddly, organized religion rarely stepped in to stop human behavior that simply seemed, on its surface, to be unethical. Like War, for example.  Organized religion probably caused more Wars than it ever stopped, to the extent that it ever stopped any wars.  And Slavery. God, how could organized religion sanction Slavery? And yet, it never stepped into that subject. The folks buying and selling slaves were welcomed into the churches of the world, so long as they were willing to pay the Ponzi Masters and listen to their chattering.

So religion turned into the greatest Ponzi scheme ever created.  And, think of it, the Ponzi scheme never gets exposed because people always die first.  Yeah, Thoughts and Prayers indeed.

So, if it’s the case that Humans are the ones who are evil, and they just create these things—systems really, that subsequently get labeled as “Evil”, then it’s Humans we need to watch out for, rather than money, or religion.

Now, the Evil seems to creep into systems whenever we grant Humans power (and too much money also = Power). It seems that we need to accompany grants of power/authority with careful independent oversight.  Enter two recent examples:

Police – precisely because humans are capable of Evil, great or small, we needed someone to hold them to account. After all, some Humans actually think it’s ok to kill other Humans, just because they can and they own a gun, or some other lethal device. So, we need to both stop such behavior, and take such evil-doers off the streets.  So, we invented police. And when did that happen? Well, several thousand years ago it would seem. In Asia, things called “prefectures” were invented and began serving as checks on illegal behavior. That concept spread throughout much of Asia, and thence into various parts of Europe, as it became settled.  So, this concept of imposing a check on illegal behavior is a very ancient idea, stemming from the basic problem—that Humans are given to unethical and illegal behavior, whenever possible.

But the concept of police and policing is itself subject to unethical and even illegal behavior.  It turns out, if you grant power/authority to Humans, unethical behavior will inevitably result. Now, we understand that not all Humans behave unethically, but equally, we know that some percentage will behave so.  If that is the case, then we need, in a sense, to “police” the police.  And so, we appoint committees to oversee such activities. And sometimes, those committees behave unethically.  In Policing, we have Police Review Boards. But even those Boards do not always work as intended.  And so we have to educate folks. People of color have to educate their kids that sometimes, “Driving/Walking/Jogging/Living While Black” might be seen by unethical police as illegal.  How awful, right? Yet, without such instruction, we see awful results, as the recent protests all over the globe illuminate.

Churches - And we decry the inbuilt habits of people within the profession of protecting their own—policemen who refuse to decry such bad behavior by their colleagues.  And we are shocked, shocked. But, then, remember that other profession to which we grant huge authority—the Church? And remember the hundreds, probably thousands of Churchly priests who routinely raped children within their parishes. And remember again that the Church officially covered such awful crimes by shipping the errant priests off to a different parish without so much as a “by your leave”. For Centuries. Yes, the churches of the world experienced such behavior for centuries, and nothing was done—no worse, something was done routinely, to hide such disgraces.

And so we are left to wonder. Is all lost? Are Humans finally simply a flawed experiment by either God or Evolution, and the universe of things needs to await the end of such creatures at their own design?

Well, we are not all inherently unethical, even if we are all built with our own flaws. We can and desperately need to observe human behavior around us. And, when we observe obviously unethical behavior, we need to call it out, report it, regardless of where and by whom the behavior occurs.

When we elect people to higher offices and we observe obviously unethical/illegal behavior—Donald Trump comes to mind—we need to call it out, and act so as to ensure such individuals cannot continue in those high offices.  And if we observe behavior by policemen, or Congressmen, or judges, or clergy, we similarly need to bring those actions out into the light.  We act by Voting in part. That’s why we invented Voting. But Voting is only part of this game. We need to always observe. And then take action when what we observe is unethical. And by Act, I do not mean we need to get out our guns and take action independently. No. That is in itself unethical behavior. Instead, we need to utilize the systems of justice, and open inquiry to bring such behavior to the light of public opinion.

We always need to act ourselves as ethically as possible.

Try it. You’ll like it.