You’ve heard of the “butterfly effect“. That’s where a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil and causes a tornado is Texas. Well, here’s my version.
This week I took a day off – no work, no emails, no Facebook…. Instead I made a mulberry pie. There’s a quote from Carl Sagan I like (and have used in my Thought For The Week): “To make an apple pie from scratch first you have to create the Universe”. I didn’t actually create the Universe, but I did go and pick the mulberries (from a tree in the front yard, not a supermarket shelf), I collected the eggs from the chicken & duck pen out the back, spent time cutting the stems off the mulberries, made the pastry etc.
In addition, I collected and split the wood for the fire to warm the house (I did cheat and use an electric oven for the cooking). This brought to mind the quote from Henry Ford (also used in my TFTW): “Chop your own wood. It’ll warm you twice.” It certainly did.
You get the picture. This process took hours.
Now you could say, “why didn’t you just go and buy one? It would have been much simpler.” The point is, doing all that gave me a sense of achievement and satisfaction not possible by buying a ready-made product.
During this time, a neighbour came around to take care of one of the resident canines. I gave her a large bag of celery from the garden, where that morning I’d cleared a large area of celery and planted other things. (There’s still a large amount of celery left.) This was a transaction where she took care of the dog and in return received lovely fresh produce.
This set of events got me thinking about money. While money is important, we need to understand that it’s primarily a means of energy exchange. I provide a product or service you want (there’s a really interesting discussion about whether you NEED it, but that’s not for now). In return for this product or service you give me money which I then use to pay for products or services I want.
The impact of this is we lose the connection between what we do to generate money, and how we meet our needs or wants. We become locked into a mindset of “if I want ‘x’ then I need to work for ‘y’ hours in order to make ‘z’ dollars” (or something to that effect). We become blinkered to other possibilities of how we might get what we want. How many times have you heard the comment “I’d really like that but I can’t afford it”?
What would happen if we could take money out of the loop? That’s where we bring down the global economy. How do you tax a direct exchange? Don’t worry, the government has been working on that question for some time.
Clearly, replacing money completely is not possible. However, by recognising that money is A means of exchange and not THE means of exchange we start to open ourselves and others to all sorts of possibilities.
Now, I’m off to make celery soup.