Agreeing

With all the disagreement going on in the world about politics, religion and just about everything else, it's nice to know there's one thing everyone agrees on.

What is that? you may ask.

It's money.

Money is only bits of paper or metal or even references to those things. The only reason it has any value at all is because everybody agrees that it has.

Even the gold standard only worked because everyone agreed that gold was valuable.

You can't eat it, cook with it, build houses or make clothes with it, but it is pretty and rare.

Money isn't even pretty or rare, though most people would like to have more of it.

All of us work for it, trade it for things we want or need, or hoard it.

It would be interesting to see what the world would be like if money didn't exist.

Maybe there are creatures on planets in other galaxies who have advanced societies without money. (Okay, my writerly imagination is coming into play here.)

But here and now, we can be grateful that at least there is one thing we can agree about.

Money

Even before Thanksgiving we were seeing lots of ads wanting us to buy things for the Holidays. Now
That people are shopping for Christmas gifts we're absolutely bombarded with advertising.

Everybody wants our money.

Of course people who make and sell things need income as everyone does. We expect to pay people for purchases and service all year long.

But sometimes I wonder why money even exists. Of course it's more practical than a barter system, but it only has value because we agree that it does.

And that's one thing everyone in the world seems to agree on.

Money is just a piece of paper or metal. And in our technological times, it's often just a promise of paper or metal.

Even the kind of money we can actually see and touch can't be used for food, clothing, or to build a home or furniture. And, if money represents gold or silver, those pretty things can't be used for anything practical except to exchange for objects or labor with people who agree on its value.

Of course, like everybody else, I'd like to have more money. And I've already done most of my Christmas shopping, so I've given it to other people.

But (and my writer's imagination is active here) I wonder if some alien creatures from another world that doesn't use money were to study us what they would think of money.

Money

Our society in the USA and those in most of the world are controlled by money.

But money, like words, only has value because we agree that it does.

Paper money may stand for gold, but even gold is only valuable because people think it is. Yes, it's pretty. Yes, it's rare. But you can't use it for clothing or shelter and it isn't good to eat or drink. And gold - or money - can't love anyone. Today gold may be used in some electronic devices, but historically it couldn't produce heat or light.

Why did humans in ancient times consider it a treasure?

In today's world it would be extremely difficult to survive without money in some form whether that be gold, cash, checks, credit and debit cards or legally binding promises.

But a lot of the things we have or wish we had are simply status symbols, pretty and pleasant like gold, but not essential. We do really need clothes, shelter, utilities, food and water, transportation, medical care and love.

The greatest of these is love, which is priceless.

Bad Words, Etc.

Since my last post, which is about swearing, I've been thinking about what makes certain words unacceptable while others that are literally synonyms, are considered okay. Nobody is likely to be offended by the mention of excrement, and eternal punishment is often mentioned in religious discussions but using other words for those things would be rude.

Once when I heard one man yell at another using words that literally meant "Your mother is a female dog and I want to to mate with you," I couldn't help laughing out loud.

Sometimes perhaps the "bad" words are of Anglo-Saxon origin and the "good" ones are Latin or French based because of the class differences in England during the Middle Ages, but that isn't usually the case. There isn't really much reason for the distinction between good and bad words, it's just a matter of what people agree about.

Come to think of it, that's true of other things, too.

Why should gold be highly valued in so many cultures? Yes, it's rare and pretty, but we can't use it for food, shelter or other things necessary for survival. It made better sense for the Romans to use salt to pay soldiers their salaries.

And money is only valuable because it represents gold but people all over the world now accept it as having worth.

Since humans disagree about so many things I guess its just as well that we do agree about some things, even if only which words are bad.