Everything You Think You Know About Money is a Lie

Everything you know about money, everything you were ever told about money, is a lie. We're not talking conspiracies here. Conspiracies are not necessary because we are stupid enough to lie to ourselves enough to make them unnecessary. As the man said, "It isn't what you don't know that can hurt you. It's what you know that isn't so."

What tipped me over the edge on this was reading a blog about how the writer hated her job and wanted to be home with her children and writing but had to work to make money. I would estimate that roughly 99.99% of the workforce (interesting term, "workforce," and one that bears examining, which I will a bit later) is kept enslaved by this almost universally accepted lie. Baldly stated it goes something like this: "You have to work at a job you hate so that someday you can ________________________." Fill in the blank with the illusion of your choice.

Actually, it isn't whatever you're putting in the blank that is the illusion. It's "someday" that is an illusion. There isn't any someday. Did you wake up this morning and it was someday? Did you ever wake up and find it was someday? We do wake up in the morning and find out that the children we wanted to stay home with are grown up with children of their own-probably children that they say they want to stay home with but can't because they have to work to make money so that someday…They learned it from you, dummy. That happens. That kind of day happens for sure.

Another kind of day that happens is the day you die. That's the day you look back (if any of your functions are still operating) and notice that you didn't do any of the stuff you said you wanted to do because you had to work to earn the money to do it.
So what is this "money" in pursuit of which we tender up our lives passively and receive nothing in return except illusions that never happen? It is the tangible form of sex energy. I had better explain that term. Sex energy does not have any necessary connection with the act of procreation, fucking, or whatever language suits you to denote the intriguing and compelling experience of orgasm. (Note that I said "necessary connection," although I am fully aware that the use and abuse of sex energy in pursuing that experience squanders a great deal of it.) Sex energy is the life force that animates us-and its depletion results exactly in the absence of animation, the feelings of boredom, depression, anxiety, resentment…and on and on with terms describing that negative sludge we wade through as we convert our sex energy into money.

The "workforce," then, comprises billions of human beings (about six billion currently on the planet) who are mindlessly converting their sex energy into this mysterious concept, "money." Money is a concept. It is only attitudes, beliefs, ideas-lies in fact-that invest money with its power over us. Usually the symbol comes in the form of pieces of paper. What is a piece of paper worth? Go to another country and change your money into the local currency, you will easily see that it is only pieces of paper. So are dollars.

But let's get back to the idea of sex energy. It isn't only the energy that goes into sexual acts. It is also the energy that responds to beauty and experiences joy and is enlivened by interesting activities and enjoys the company of good friends and plays with children. Why would anyone trade sex energy for pieces of paper? Oh, you may say, but the pieces of paper will enable me to experience beauty and interesting activities and good friends and playing with my children some day. Bull shit. Once the sex energy is gone, it's gone. Poof. There isn't any more.

I found out about the lie early on, and by accident. When I was fourteen, I wanted to be accepted, I wanted to wear what the other kids were wearing and do what the other kids were doing. Alas, my family was short of money, and the clothes and activities cost money, so obviously what I needed was money. I convinced my father to talk to his friend who owned a tomato farm so I could work picking tomatoes. "Fine" sez he, "but if you start the season you have to finish it."

I agreed readily to this and embarked upon two weeks of hell. Actually, if there is a hell that's what they do there, pick tomatoes in 110 degree heat and 100% humidity. But I did it. Not rapidly or well, but I did it, sniveling and whining the entire time. And I got some money and I got some stuff and school started and I was accepted by the other kids and everything seemed to work the way it was supposed to. But a week or so after school started they announced that there was going to be a contest painting on store windows to publicize the opening of a new shopping mall, and any kid who wanted to could enter. So my friends and I entered the contest and went to the mall and had a very good time for a couple of hours, painting on windows and on each other and being loud and annoying people and so forth. As it turned out, the money I won in the painting contest was exactly the amount I had earned picking tomatoes. And I understood immediately that everything I had been taught about money was a lie.

If you want to stay home with your children, stay home with your children. If you want to get a boat and sail around the world, get a boat and sail around the world. If you want to write, write. If you are doing something you hate day in and day out, stop it. Just stop it. There isn't any such thing as money. You are going to die. There isn't any someday. It's always now. Again: IT'S ALWAYS NOW.