Eugene C.

Soyosa

The Money Illusion: an Introduction to Living with Money

In our age today, when someone becomes hungry and discovers that there is nothing in his or her wallet, one should just go to the nearest ATM machine and withdraw cash to buy food. In some cases, one can even use the ATM or credit card to pay for basic goods and services like gasoline, shopped items, movie tickets, and haircut. Nowadays, there are calls on making our society a cashless society to make it more convenient and secure. One can get through a day without using the traditional bills and coins. One could ride the train to work by using electronic money, buy lunch through a debit card, call a friend through a prepaid loaded cell phone, and end the day by treating a spouse for dinner or movie through a credit card. All of these one could do as long as there is credit or in essence, money, in his or her account. On a larger scale, top financial managers of companies buy and sell assets for an agreed price in the present, to be delivered and payed in the future. One of the assets bought in the futures exchange is oil. This is to assure a company that it will be able to have oil in the future for its production. Companies could also issue stocks to private citizens and these people could invest in the companies whom they believe could generate large profits, and in turn benefit themselves through dividends or increased stock shares. These are just some of the countless ways on how humans experience money in everyday life.

Certainly, money has many uses. It has a standardized value which people can use to exchange goods and services, and these goods and services fulfill the needs and wants of humans like food, shelter, and clothing. Through money and technology, some would think that man would be happier. So it is also no wonder why some people treat money as one of the main goals in life, for having more money entails more access to available resources. In fact, if we watch Philippine television regularly, we would observe that when Filipino parents are asked what would be their wish for their children when they grow up, they would normally answer with lines such as, Sana makapagtapos siya ng pag-aaral at magkaroon ng magandang trabaho. A literal translation would be, May he/she finish school and find a beautiful work. While the parents do not explicitly say that they would want their children to have a decent job that pays well, the growing number of people taking up courses in business and other related courses which promises a higher income could be seen as an indication that money is an important thing for them in selecting careers in life. Indeed, money is an important thing, particularly in a monetary-market system that holds in most parts of the world. But in a world where most people experience poverty, in a world where some men still die as if they are mere statistics in a table because of money, and in a world where high inequality still pervades many countries, I think it is just appropriate to question how humans live in relation to money. In this paper, however, it is not my goal to determine whether money is good or is indeed the root of all evil, as some would say. Instead, I will inquire on how men live in relation to money, and how money appears especially in the recent times.

Money as Medium of Exchange Textbooks on economics, money, and credit banking are correct when they define money as a medium of exchange, for it is through money that people are able to exchange and trade goods and services. If we look at our worlds early civilizations, we would observe that money has appeared in different places that were not even connected at all. The American Indians used Wampums to exchange goods; the Africans used metallic objects called Manillas, and the Fijians exchanged whale teeth. The appearance of money replaced the barter, a system where one exchanges his own good directly for another good. Eventually, this system of exchange became difficult for people to use because the person who has what one needs might not need what one has to trade. But why do people trade their goods? Man did not trade mere needs for other needs, like water, food, and shelter. Man traded things which were made by their hands like pots and ceramics. Man traded their cultures works of art. Luxury goods like silk and spices and other things one could not find in ones home land were sought after by traders. And when traders go back to their home lands, they not only bring back new items, but also new stories and customs. It could be said that money brought things nearer to each other. It made possible for a person to share the product of his or her work to others. And it came to a point when cultures, as well as languages were exchanged and assimilated, and now we enter a new phase called globalization, where almost everything from politics, products, and even ideas, are integrated and freely exchanged. With all the examples above, perhaps we could say now that the essence of money is medium of exchange, since through money, culture, ideas, and things are exchanged. It makes a way for people to fulfill a call to share and give their work to others. It makes way

for people to know more about the world they live in, and discover how other people live. It encourages people even more to work and trade, since having more money means having more paths to discover and experience what some say, What the world has to offer. When we think of money, indeed we think of it as a medium of exchange. But while this statement may be correct, it seems that by claiming that money is a medium of exchange, we are reduced to a thinking that is instrumental; that it is a means to get or acquire something. We depend on money for us to be able to acquire more and more and to be able to control our lives. I see this as parallel to what the philosopher Martin Heidegger said in his essay, The Question Concerning Technology:
Modern technology too is a means to an end. This is why the instrumental conception of technology conditions every attempt to bring man into the right relation to technology. Everything depends on our manipulating technology in the proper manner as a means. We will, as we say, get technology intelligently in hand. We will master it. The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control. 1

As humans, we are very much inclined to causal and instrumental thinking that most of the time the truth gets obscured. By thinking that money is a medium of exchange we have a relationship with money that is correct but not yet true. Again Heidegger says:
Only at the point where such an uncovering happens does the true propriate. For that reason the merely correct is not yet the true. Only the true brings us into a free relationship with that which concerns us from its essence.2

But how do we as humans, inclined to thinking calculatively and instrumentally, approach the truth? Heidegger tells us that the things around us tell us how they are to be seen. Things around us come into appearance in a way that it reveals; it brings-forth ( poisis). These things come not only from nature, but also from an artists hands, for an artist also brings-forth, in a way that it brings out something concealed into unconcealment.

Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row), 5. 2 Ibid., 6.

Technology revealed itself through money An inquisitive mind could ask, doesnt money reveal more things to us than ever before, especially now in the age of modern technology. Now we can just buy a plane ticket through the internet and go abroad as a tourist, and with a lot of pocket money we could do a lot of things in a foreign country and enjoy life. Today we could just view a lot of things that we like in an online shop, pay for our order online, and wait for it to be delivered to our homes. However, while it may be true that money enables humans to discover many things around the world and bring everything nearer to us, it does so in a manner that is hindering the appearance of things. Money in the age of modern technology lets things be ordered and delivered to us. As a consequence, man forgets his primordial relationship with things and prevents the bringing-forth or poisis. For example, an ordinary human being in the modern age would most likely choose to buy food from a supermarket or a fast food, rather than sow seeds and grow his or her own food. With the high-technology in the modern age, it is not so expensive anymore to just buy food from the supermarket than invest time and energy planting and growing vegetables in the backyard. Furthermore, in a city where everything is cramped up and every square foot of land is very expensive, a small space to till the soil and plant food would now be a luxury. With almost everything now at our control, there is now a forgetfulness of humans with their relationship not only with nature, but also with the way we work. We do not know anymore where the food on our tables came from. We do not know how the chicken or swine that we eat was raised before it was brought to our tables. When we look at the ingredients of our favorite sodas and soft drinks, we are bombarded with different figures and names of elements we can barely understand and pronounce. Some would probably care about these

scientific terms, but they could be only minding the number of calories these different kinds of food contain in order to burn them again to look fit and healthy. Heidegger said that questioning technology brings to light our relationship to its essence. This essence of modern technology is called Enframing (Ge-stell) by Heidegger. According to Heidegger:
The revealing that rules throughout modern technology has the character of a setting-upon, in the sense of a challenging-forth. Such challenging happens in that the energy concealed in nature is unlocked, what is unlocked is transformed, what is transformed is stored up, what is stored up is in turn distributed, and what is distributed is switched about ever anew. Unlocking, transforming, storing, distributing, and switching about are ways of revealing. But the revealing never simply comes to an end.3

Indeed this is what is happening with our experience with money. We experience money in different ways. On one hand, we experience it as a tangible object with standardized value we can use as a medium of exchange. Money is saved, but only to be used again to trade. But money is now not just a medium of exchange. It is not like a bridge which joins two people because both have what each other needs. However, in the age of modern technology, money is revealed in a way that it is stored up and distributed. It is also an instrument that stores up and distributes. It also unlocks and challenges nature in the way that is profit-maximizing. And perhaps in the age of modern technology, the essence of money is profit maximization To maximize the returns to the owner of a stock. It works under the presumption that the profit that man can get from nature would never end. Man forgets that we live in a world where damages to nature are harder, if even possible, to restore. We live in a finite world but we are living as if the earth will never end, as if it will simply provide us with resources forever, and everybody will be happy as long as profits are optimized, as long as there is
3

Ibid., 16.

equilibrium in the supply and demand, and as long as the natural resources are correctly valued and priced.

The Forgetfulness of Economics and the Economics of Forgetting It is now important to look more closely at Economics, a social science that claims to study how the scarce resources of our earth should be allocated and maximized. With the emergence of the fields branching out of economics like finance, economics has become so scientifically complicated, bombarded with highly technical terms and methods an ordinary person would not understand. Terms like future contracts, options, fundamental analysis, technical analysis, and derivatives, are full of heavy mathematics and computations that are designed to value and manage an asset correctly and optimally. Man is often encouraged to think the future in a way that is controlling and challenging. In the modern age, man is always encouraged to save and invest ones money to reap the benefits in the future. The prevalence of insurance and life plans assures the financial sustainability of the retirement age and removes the unwanted uncertainty and risk that the future brings. People could also now put their money in any investment instrument, say, a stock or a mutual fund, wait for time to pass and the markets to move, and one could make or lose money the next day, month, or year, without doing anything. Profit maximization makes people invest in anything that would yield a high return without even knowing and seeing how the corporation or company works, as long as it would maximize the profit. Before, money was used as a medium of exchange to trade goods and services. But now, money itself is traded and stored up like a standing-reserve. Man saves money, invests it in an investment instrument, grows the money through interest, and enables man to extract from nature. This could all happen without man doing anything and just letting the power of

compound interest do its magic. People who have more money to invest would have more returns than a person who invests a lesser amount of money. This is actually the gist of capitalism. A person need not be the owner or the maker of a business to reap the monetary benefits of that company or corporation. One just has to put capital into the business and take part into the profit making. In return, the capitalist will get some money in proportion to the capital he or she has put into the business. The danger arises when man falls into this essence of money in modern technology which is profit maximization. Profit maximization does not allocate the scarce resources efficiently because profit maximization is in an entirely different realm from allocation, and they are in no way compatible. Today, both distances in space and time are now being abolished. It is now possible to visit outer space for recreational and business purposes. People with huge amounts of money can now literally buy their way to space. Perhaps it will be just a few decades before more people would be able to actually see outer space and again shorten the distances of this world to the outer universe. Moreover, trading futures or buying an insurance plan challenges time in the sense that it brings the future into the present. It gives people assurance and entitlement. It masters nature in a way that it tries to control what happens in the future. So actually, it makes people reap the benefits today and not in the future. A consequence of this is distancelessness between the future and the present. We want to control the future in the present, and abolish all the possibilities of presencing that could happen in between. We want everything in our hands, in our control, even those things which we cannot grasp. Ironically, while distances in time are shrinking, it does not bring nearness. Martin Heidegger said:
For nearness does not consist in shortness of distance. What is least remote from us in point of distancecan remain far from us. What is incalculably far from us in point of distance can be near to us. Short distance is not itself nearness. Nor is great distance remoteness. 4
4

Martin Heidegger, The Thing in Poetry, Language Thought, trans. Alfred Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1975

But looking at this deeper, we can see that the danger arises even earlier. We begin by looking at the primordial meaning of the word economics. It is from the Greek word oikonomia which means household management. Oikos means home and nomos means law. One meaning that could be attached to it is law of the household. The word law connotes something that could not be broken, or that it exists in nature. It could also be imagined that perhaps it is nature itself, because nature has its own laws, its own rhythm, and its own way of revealing itself to us, something we cannot control. On the other hand, home suggests a place where one lives, where one dwells, where one works. It could also be imagined that our home is nature, the environment we live in, the world. And so in essence it could be suggested that economics studies the nature of the world. Thinking Economics in this way, we could clearly feel that maximizing profit is very far from looking at the nature of the world we live in. As economists continue to teach profit maximization or optimization by maximizing sustainable yields, and as it continues to extend its valuation methods even to things which cannot be valued such as biodiversity, water, air, minerals, and forests, it continues to forget the earlier meaning of economics which is to study the nature of the world. The forgetfulness of Economics leads to the economics of forgetting. Consequently, we could feel Enframing or the entrapment of truth from the name itself, economics. It implies that nature, our home, could be studied and mastered. Today we want to study everything and want to be responsible for everything that happens on earth. We forget that we are not always in control; we could not always be in control. There are things that just reveal themselves to us, continuously, like rising of the sun and the moon. There are things that endure beyond us, like the stars. There are things which we cannot measure, like love and pain. But when we try to control everything, the thing that unconceals itself gets covered. We forget to let things unfold. We forget that we are part of this world.

The Revelation of Respect But how do we even begin to live especially in the age of modern technology? How do we start to dwell in this world? To enter the threshold of living with the world, I think we should consider the word respect. However, we must overcome the often misused meaning of respect. Most of the time we think that respect is something that is normally willed, when we give a feeling of reverence. When we were children we were taught to respect our parents, teachers, friends, and God. And by respecting we act in a way that is respectful and we choose words that are respectful. At some point we are taught that respect is something that is earned and not something imposed. So we do our best to better ourselves, compete with others and ourselves to be better persons, worthy of others respect. We study, work hard, and keep our names clean. We also come to know people who earned respect in us. We treat them as idols, as mentors. We try to know everything about them, follow their lives, and even let them guide our own lives. We also hear people say that everyone should be respected. In the television politicians and activists demand for equal rights and opportunities for all, and we should respect each other despite our differences in social status. Doctrines of religions preach respect because it is the right thing to do and it is what God teaches. Environmentalists call for respect for nature, because animals and plants have an equal right to life, and disrespecting nature will have terrible consequences like natural catastrophes. Often we treat respect as an instrument to do right or to stay in a polite manner because that is the right way to act in a society. We see respect in its instrumentality for moral and political use.

But let us consider respect without stopping at the moral-ethical/political level. Let us consider it by looking at its primordial meaning. In Latin, the word respectus does not just mean giving honor to someone or something. Another meaning is often forgotten, which is regard, or in Filipino, pagsasaalang-alang. To regard is to accept someone or something in its wholeness. It is never conditional. There is another beautiful word in Filipino for alang-alang, and it is pakikisama. There is no direct translation for the word that captures its whole meaning, but it could be translated into English as, dealing-with, living-with, or being-with. Filipinos usually say, Wala kang paki(ki)sama to tell somebody that he or she does not know how to deal or relate to other people. When Filipinos say Matuto kang makisama it means that one has to learn to be with people, or to live with people, for example, the way a person relates to his or her in-laws.

Living with Money Even though the earth appears to be a self-sustaining place which contains what every creature needs to live in harmony with each other, it is still labeled as scarce by humans and everything in earth that could be valued are valued by humans to be allocated for humans own benefit. Unfortunately, man has forgotten to live in accordance to this balance and up to now is struggling on how to move technology forward in order to save the world from problems like climate change. Since 1972, from the Stockholm conferences where there was a mandate to alter the thinking of people with regard to economic development, up to the 2012 Rio + 20, where nations continue to negotiate their countys concerns regarding things like carbon dioxide emissions, nothing has changed much with mans thinking: it is still growth oriented and all countries in the climate negotiations are just putting their own countrys concerns at the top of everything thats why nothing much has been achieved and it

will continue to be so until the human species learn how to think differently and let nature guide its way. It is almost funny but sad to realize that even though allegedly we are the most intelligent, humans are the only creatures that has to pay to live on earth. We cant seem to find our identity on earth and we continue to strive to develop but actually, we are just creating new problems. Money cannot be thought of without thinking of trade or exchanging goods and services. Trade cannot be thought of without work because the products of human labor are what is traded. Working cannot be thought of without building, because we humans build things and we share them to others, and by learning how to build and work we could approach the meaning of dwelling on earth. But in the age of modern technology, humans have been very much concerned with profit maximization. Profit for the sake of moving forward and reaching economic growth. Every economist knows this but no economist knows when to stop or when enough is enough. But the poet Hlderlin said, But where danger is, grows The saving power also.5 Profit could also be thought in its other name, return. But this is not the returns of capital in the sense of investing money, waiting for it to grow, and reaping the benefits when it is at the top of its value. The return we are speaking of here is something connected to working or building, the way the farmer harvests his crops after planting and waiting for the right time, the way we pick fruits from the tree when we have planted it and we let it ripen after some time and we just know when to pick the fruits. The return we are speaking of here is more concerned about giving first to the land before taking from the land. It is one
5

Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row), 28

truth that we regard each other, deal with each other, and so we trade and get something in return. And another truth is when we return to our home, our lives are enriched and fulfilled. Money facilitates this regarding, dealing, respecting, pakikisama, this trade. But money is an illusion. It takes on different forms and colors, it wears different faces and smiles, and sometimes it disguises itself as the goal of life. And when it does this it disappears. When profit maximization and economic growth are continually and solely pursued it disappears towards a moneyless society where dealing only happens in a computer transaction, losing ground and rootedness. Money disappears when the world gets out of control. However, to regard the earth in its balance, money should also disappear. It is not so much about thinking about hindering economic growth, but turning our heads to the other things more rooted, more grounded, like thinking again on our way of life. We should start questioning and learn to think not just for ourselves. We should answer to the call of respect and to what reveals, in a manner that is regarding and with pagsasaalang-alang and pakikisama. As we try to respond and reflect we might find ourselves in a circle, frustrated and empty-handed, but perhaps this is what we need for now. As Heidegger writes:
Reflection is not needed, however, in order that it may remove some chance perplexity or break down an antipathy to thinking. Reflection is needed as a responding that forgets itself in the clarity of ceaseless questioning away at the inexhaustibleness of That which is worthy of questioningof That from out of which, in the moment properly its own, responding loses the character of questioning and becomes simply saying.6

Dealing with other people gives us returns. It could lead us to focus on the growth that these returns could bring. However, the genuine meaning of regarding people calls for more of a looking-around instead of looking-forward. When we have acquired this discipline
6

Martin Heidegger, Science and Reflection in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row), 182

and habit, perhaps we will be able to deal with other people, to live with money, and to be ready for That which reveals itself to us.

References Fajardo, Feliciano. Money, Credit, and Bangking. 4th ed. National Book Store. 2012. Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Translated by William Lovitt. New York. Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. 1977. Heidegger, Martin. Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. 1975.

Mankiw, Gregory. Principles of Economics. 3rd ed. Thomson Learning. 2004