Why the money in your pocket is as outdated as religion

Image via Thinkstock

No, it is not because new printed money is more counterfeit proof or capable of stimulating a deflated market. The reason paper, polymer, or whatever they make money out of nowadays is comparable to religion is because, like religion, it has been a tool for bartering for a long time. This is not a shot at religion or a mockery of the rich person’s accumulated wealth; it is strictly an observation. You may decide whether a better way of distributing our resources can be formulated, or remain content with systems that disadvantage the unprivileged.

When we say outdated, we usually mean something is clearly past its prime. Philosopher William James and his colleagues contested several ideas relating to “truth” and its usefulness. The more an idea was useful, the more truth was evident about it. The notion of a flat Earth is my favourite example, as that assumption—based on a narrow perspective—served civilization to map out the landscape so long as they were careful not to get to close to the edge and fall off. As technology and vision expanded, the “truth” of our flat world became outdated. This doesn’t mean it is complete garbage.

If you are a scientist, you take what was once assumed, revise it, test it, and make a new and improved truth, which serves a more useful function. What could our community be, if only we reconsidered the customs and traditions we have inherited at birth and critiqued them? Would we find a new way to ensure everyone isn’t caught in the trap of poverty, so people aren’t forced to ask for change every day outside of a Tim Hortons?

Society needs to critique its own traditions, a statement constantly repeated by several scholars and philosophers, yet there is a perpetual taboo against this. Maybe it’s because we want to be polite. Some of us were raised that way, but does being a part of a society mean challenging it when it is not all it can be?

The first thing a person on a stranded island asks a genie for is food, water, friends, and animals, not $100,000. Wealth is not equal to the contents of your wallet and any system that convinces a person of that should be critically revised.