Cover Sheet

Adam Parker

Money is extremely important in our society. It is a language that everybody understands. People live for it, people kill for it, and so people die for it. It is the symbol for the American dream, and acquiring it is a necessary stepping-stone to success. However, it is simply paper. It is an icon that shows how much you own, how hard you have worked, and generally where you should be placed in our societal hierarchy, but it seems we have lost the logic that it is merely a symbol.

It is understandable that society made a choice, or rather some members of society made choices for the whole. We chose to establish an economy based on dollars, and just like the next person, I wish to acquire enough of it in my days to keep myself living a style of life that is comfortable to me. Capitalism is an excellent idea, perhaps the most efficient way to run the economy of a country. However, Americans have skewed the idea to the point of it becoming evil. So many people are oppressed by the way our economy is run, but why? The problem lies in the immense amount of competition. People find their place in economy, they make money, and immediately they are fueled to make more. Our system always allows upward progress, but it only grants it to those who are already on their way up, leaving those that are still looking for their way in chained to the ground. Money is no longer about having enough to sustain a certain lifestyle, but about getting as much as possible before you die, whether you use it all or not. If people understood when they had enough money to live happily, there would be enough money for everyone in our community to live contentedly. This unstated rule of capitalism is ignored, and so most of society is forced to suffer as those that were lucky enough to establish a good foothold in the economy rise higher and higher.

Something that has fueled this obsession with money is the fact that throughout life we are so pressured by what we see going on in movies, television, and other media, that we are conned into thinking that this is the way life has to be lived. We need all of these extra things in order to be happy. Similar to the effect of the introduction of the printing press, the invention of television has spread a new means of propaganda, but now with the addition of colors, video, and sound to the information, making people want what you are selling is that much easier. Celebrities tell us what to wear, how to look, and even how to smell. People buy in because they see these same celebrities on television, and hear them on the radio, and they sound like they are happy and having fun. So, maybe if I buy what they tell me to buy, I will in turn be happy and lead an exciting life.

As this game progresses, money becomes life. The need to make money is so stressed that our lives are literally formed around it. People are forced to learn things they aren't interested in to perform a task that they don't want to do in order to feed themselves and their family. When one chooses a career, they choose how the rest of their lives will play out. So money directs the lives of those in society completely. This creates an interesting effect for those that fail. When a person is unlucky, and their career choice fails to bring them enough money to sustain their lives, then life is essentially over for them. As Shiva points out, suicide of farmers in India have risen to the tens of thousands, all because they have failed to make their money. Suicide becomes a reasonable way out of financial problems, and everyday debt drives more and more people to kill themselves.

This is not just a current issue. During the great depression, many people felt compelled to kill themselves when they learned their stocks were worthless. Their life savings had disappeared, and so they had nothing left to live for. Thirteen floors seemed like a good leaping point for many of these people, and enough of them jumped for a superstition to be created. Even today, many buildings fail to include a thirteenth floor, jumping from twelve to fourteen.

Are we forgetting something though? Is this economy we have created so beautifully blinding to people that they can no longer see beneath it? Thousands of individuals are dying at their own hands for the sake of a game. And that's all the economy is: a huge game of monopoly, played simultaneously by all those in society. We forget that there was life before common economy. At some point in the past, people lived without money and without an economic system to support it. People forget that there are ways to live outside of this system.

Suicide as a form of protest is not an efficient way to get your point across. If a farmer wanted to show that corporations had caused him to become too poor to live, starving to death would be a better form of protest. If you starved to death people would understand that you were so poor you could not even afford to buy food, and the point would be made clearer. However, being farmers, it isn’t exactly probable that they would starve to death because they professionally grow food, and so growing enough to live off of, even with no money, would be fairly easy.

Our world is designed to sustain life. Our economy, our money, and our trade with other places provide us with a variety that is very pleasant, but it is not necessary. An individual can successfully live off of the land. Growing enough food to feed a few people on a very small portion of land is very possible. People have been surviving off of the Earth without the help of society forever. Thoreau's study of economy in the woods of Concord, Massachusetts proves that a completely individual life is possible.

Capitalism adopts the scientific theory of "survival of the fittest" and places it on economy. The difference is, in reality, if you are not fit to survive or are not strong enough to protect your life, you will die. In the economy, if you are not fit to survive, or you cannot defend your money, you simply fail. You don't die. Life goes on. A person living completely separate from society off of only what he grows or kills is just as successful in sustaining life as the wealthy man who devotes his life to acquiring money. They are both equally alive. Capitalism is successful because both sides win. The corporations get money, and the people are supplied with jobs and a large variety of products to choose from. However, because we have so much variety and material to consume, it becomes more of a necessity than just a luxury.

Another thing that comes along with this is selfishness within communities. It’s a never ending competition to gain as much money as you can, and that begins to mean that you need to keep others from making money, and therefore from living comfortably. This doesn’t seem to bother many people in our society, because it is so accepted that a person needs to do whatever is possible to make that extra buck. Survival of the fittest works in nature, so it must work as basic law in economy, right?

I am grateful for all the work of everyone in the past that led to the society in which I live. There are so many choices, and so many directions in which one can take their lives. We no longer have to worry about growing or killing our own food, or building our own shelters, because society set up a system for this all to be taken care of (as long as one has money). However, that lifestyle is not beneath me.

Money is not the definition of life, it is merely something that makes life easier. There is too much beauty in nature to live only for money, and far too much beauty to die for it. Nature doesn't care how much money you owe the government. The sun still shines, and the rain still falls.