Why I Hate Money

My stepfather used to say that if the government took all of the money in the world away from everyone and then redistributed it back to them equally that the rich would have it all back within five years. I have never doubted that this is exactly what would happen because without setting up an equitable for all economic system before they redistributed the money there is no way in heaven or hell that the previous “haves” wouldn’t go right back to what they were doing before the money was taken. It would take firmness on the part of every government on the planet to make sure that financial equality was maintained, and I don’t believe there are enough people in charge who would stand firm on anything that didn’t set them and their kind on a higher pedestal from the get go. So, is financial equality even possible on this planet when unbalanced class systems have always existed?

I would love to say that spiritual awareness and Astrology provide answers for the trials and tribulations that have always beset humankind - but it doesn’t. What it does provide is a guide and a road map to balanced living and higher intelligence and ideals that can keep you from falling into the traps that the corrupt and the egotistical among us set to control and deceive us as we go through life. Its focus is on individual understanding of the self and our relationship to the creator of all life. It does not set down a plan to eliminate all social injustices except at the individual level which is the only level at which one has any power that isn’t a corruption of energies. When many people are connected to the higher intelligence then you have the makings of real social change if you realize your personal potential as it was given to you at birth. Then together with others who have realized theirs you have the combined elements of real change which can only be realized in the combined efforts of those who have transcended personal ego. This is a very tall order to attain. Few will take on the task because it is a lifelong commitment to yourself and it has to exclude selfishness. This can go a long way toward living in mental and emotional peace, but it cannot stop the ravages of a society that has set up a system that is reshaping the world to exclude those of us who believe in fair and equal treatment toward each other and would not be able to live with ourselves if surviving meant that we had to steal from and cheat others to do it.  If we were all the same, we would have no real need to be here. We were given free will to either create or destroy in this life and there are reasons why few people believe that they have an obligation to care about anyone but themselves. Those reasons would fill a gigantic book. Why we didn’t start writing that book as soon as we knew how to write one might take another book to explain.

When we got here, we had already lost much of our connection to spiritual and universal truths, so we had to take some hard knocks to get to a mentally receptive place in our evolution to comprehend those truths again.  Without chaos and crisis, we would never shift our focus enough to ask “why the hell are we here?” We have come to the point in human evolution where we have a pretty good idea why things have gone so wrong in the world but there are not enough of us willing to change what went wrong and a large percentage of the population have taken the position that they would rather destroy than create now. Religion, spirituality, education, and access to information all have a potential for helping to undo the damage that we have done in our world but they are like the old saying about leading a horse to water.

What I know from being a student of Astrology and the spiritual arts is that ego is at the root of every issue that has plagued humanity since day one. How to balance one’s ego is not something that humans want to bother with, and when you don’t bother with it you never solve the problems that have forever lingered despite the fact that many of us never stop trying. The problem of inequality, the problem of misunderstanding and abusing sexuality, the problem of crime and criminality, and the problem of mental illness has never been overcome in any generation. 

Upon our arrival here the planet already had most of what we needed to survive. It had air to breathe, water to drink and bathe in, plants to eat, places to shelter from the weather, and sunlight and darkness so we would figure out that sleep was necessary. We weren’t bright enough to know that sleep was a time for reconnecting with spirit. Many people still don’t realize that. Everything else that was brought into existence was developed by us.  Money was one of those things, and like in the song Hard Headed Woman it has “been the cause of trouble ever since the world began”. Only sexuality has been the cause of more trouble. The money itself is useless. It only has power and value because we say it does. We could have chosen many other things to assign power to like oranges or tree stumps or pine cones but we chose paper and coins once we had created them. So, every problem that has manifested from its invention is totally human made. Sexuality issues were given to us by the creator but we have literally “screwed” ourselves into a multitude of life-devastating problems with it. And though it is the portal that brings us into human form we have abused the energy so much that it creates disease, mental illness, crime, and death every single day by our stupidity of it.

When the founding fathers in America said that “All men are created equal.” they were truly only thinking that white men were and they didn’t totally believe that. There are many poor white men and there always has been. It was no accident that women, the indigenous people who were already living in America, and people of color were not included in that statement. The founding fathers didn’t believe that they would ever have to share anything with them or afford them an opportunity to prosper if they didn’t feel like it. It is now close to 250 years later and those chosen people who were supposedly “created equal” see that when they did do some selective sharing with the rest of the human race it got a bit out of hand and exceeded their comfort zone, so since the 1970’s they have been working furiously to take back their “created equal” superiority and they have been doing a bang-up job of it. It was actually pretty easy to do once they got started but they didn’t really expect that people would start raising hell about it and bringing up Karl Marx’s name to make their point. Now, the elitists are getting angry and scared of a revolution that might do some redistributing of wealth, so they have stepped up their campaign to gather up the money and resources in to their greed pots, and since there is precious little government interference in their way, I fear that we have waited too long to call upon the spirit of Karl Marx to redefine the world. Too many roadblocks were set up along the path to their gathering up all of the aces to keep us from breaking their stronghold. Consider what the lack of adequate income and resources has done to us since the time when President Roosevelt set up the New Deal in the 1930s. Since FDR died there has been an extreme effort to dismantle all of the gains for people that he created, and as they say, “the s**t got more real” after the Vietnam War ended. Their efforts are paying off in spades now, and while there is possibly still hope and some efforts are being made to turn the tide, the battle for balance will not be won easily. But these things do not really explain why I hate money, do they?

I have never in my life seen a time when anything that I want to do or need to do wasn’t dependent upon giving someone money for it. Even before I was born someone was holding out their hand to my parents to pay for my arrival. As soon as I did arrive multiple hands were being held out for whatever I might have to have to stay alive. Without someone forking over some cash I would not be able to eat or sleep or stay healthy or become educated. Without paying someone, I could die from exposure to extremes in heat or cold, illness, starvation, crime, natural disasters, and the list goes on and on. Paying others for my ability to have lived will not even stop with my death. There will be people holding out their hands for money from my children when I die. Health care providers will demand it and funeral servicers will expect big bucks to dispose of what remains. Every life is a non-stop potential cash cow for the capitalists and trying to stay ahead of them without losing your mind is a never-ending struggle. This is a sad and disgusting testament to what human beings have created during their time on earth. So many resources were readily available to us on this planet when we first showed up. The Bible says that animals were here first. It is lucky for us that they weren’t standing at the entrance gate with their paws out demanding a payment from us before they would let us in. I would really hate to have to tell a T-rex or a Rhino that I didn’t have any money. (Trying to tell a debt collector that I don’t have any now is pretty awful, too. The threats and insults don’t compare with a large animal but they are disturbing to be sure when you are dealing with someone who has had understanding and compassion trained out of them.) No, instead we began slaughtering them right off because we were ignorant savages whose first thought was to take everything away from them including their very lives so we could be sustained and comfortable. (Notice any parallels between us and capitalists?). Even now, we still do it without giving it a second thought. That is, the majority of us do. There are many humans who realized that there was a better and more humane way to live. Many people provide care and protection for animals without receiving one penny for it, but there are immense rewards that they provide to us in return for their care. Loyalty, affection, devotion, companionship, and protection are just a few of them. How many humans do that without some sort of payment?

The struggle to stay alive and well in our current culture is increasingly more difficult by the day. I find myself now having to decide which is the most critical thing that I need to sustain myself every day. Will I pay the mortgage payment or the utility bills? I cannot do both. If I choose the mortgage payment and not the utility bills I can stay in my home for another month but if my electricity is cut off I could die from the extreme heat that we are experiencing this year. I will also lose my telephone and internet service. Just try to navigate in this world without those now. Should I buy food or should I buy medicines? How long can I survive without both of them? Account payments have had to be stopped which will destroy my credit rating and make it impossible for me to replace my 18 year old car. Repair bills would be impossible to pay for if it finally quits on me. But none of these issues have stopped capitalism from holding out its hand for more money than I ever imagined that I would be paying to just stay alive now. So, this is why I hate money.  If I just truly cannot keep up and finally die trying to, few if any would take much notice. It would be viewed by most as somehow being my own fault. I did not have the right job skills, or I didn’t try hard enough, or I said the wrong thing, or I did the wrong thing somewhere along the line. All these excuses are considered to be acceptable in a capitalist society for denying me a job that pays a living wage and a roof over my head. They are viewed as valid reasons for making sure that I cannot possibly get enough money to keep living because I must have done one or more of these things or I wouldn’t be experiencing this. If I, and countless others like me fall by the wayside, the true reason for it will be an inability to access enough money and resources to satisfy all of those people who are standing in front of us with their hands out. So, why would I have any love for that? Money equals inequality. It is built in to capitalism and guaranteed to ensure that poverty never ends. It is poverty specifically created to make sure that those who call the shots from the top will never have to experience it. I hate it. There has to be another way.