There is a widely held belief among those working in media that audiences prefer \u201csofter\u201d content on weekends, despite statistics not really supporting it. It\u2019s an idea I encourage, though. The pace of news is so fast that it seems difficult to pause and think things differently.<\/span><\/p>\n I remember the Sundays when my father would go out early for a coffee and come back with the newspaper and the weekly magazine supplement. I found the magazine really amusing, especially the children\u2019s section. I didn\u2019t pay much attention to the newspaper, with its hard news. Of course, I must have been 10.<\/span><\/p>\n So you understand that I\u2019m biased towards weekend content, and it\u2019s in that spirit that I write this post. But I won\u2019t stray too much into the softness. What I propose is something akin to a thought exercise so we can reconsider some of our commonly held views.<\/span><\/p>\n It is said that we live in the age of the homo economicus, although it is not technically a true depiction of human behavior, as humans are not perfect risk-assessing machines trying to maximize their profits. And even if they try to be, other nuances, like emotions, biases, and desires, get in the way.<\/span><\/p>\n However, we live in an age where almost every aspect of human existence has been commodified. Even rest must be \u2018productive\u2019 rest. Financial benefit seems to be the driving factor, the motivator at a personal and social level. Though GDP as a measure of growth is really only partial, we still refer to it constantly. Our relation to ourselves, to others, to society, and the world in general is almost always mediated by something we can\u2019t agree on how to define: money.<\/span><\/p>\n Money As the Tao of Today<\/strong><\/p>\n The first principle of Taoism, according to its founding text the Tao Te Ching and the West\u2019s most famous proponent of it, Alan Watts, is that \u201cthe Tao that can be defined is not the Tao\u201d. Watts expresses it like this<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere is no definition for it. It\u2019s called \u201cthe Way,\u201d or \u201cthe course of things.\u201d It is what everything basically is \u2014 what you are. And it cannot be defined, and should not be defined \u2014 in just the same way that you have no need to bite your own teeth, or to touch the tip of this finger with this finger, or to look into your own eyes. It is basic to everything \u2014 eternal; it\u2019s what there is; it\u2019s the which for which there is no whicher.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n We could say that that which we can\u2019t define, yet is everywhere today, is money, and the money we define, is not money. What is it then? A commodity? A medium of exchange? A store of value? A means of payment? An accounting entry? A digital annotation? A social contrivance?<\/span><\/p>\n You see, we understand money to be all of that and more, but we can\u2019t reduce it to a single definition because the moment we do, that definition becomes obsolete due to a new definition of money. So we can\u2019t really point to something and say that is money, but money is everywhere. It is the way of things, what originates them but also their purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n There was a time when people needed very little money to live because they had everything else required for sustenance. Today, in many if not most parts of the world, we need money for everything necessary for life. We have engineered a society dependent on the constant supply of money. It\u2019s unclear whether money is a medium for something or an end in itself.<\/span><\/p>\n Being that which allows us to satisfy our unsatisfiable desires, it has become the object of our desire because it promises to hold the key to all of those desires. But our desire can never be satisfied because that which is at its core is a lack, what Lacan called \u201cobjet petit a\u201d. That lack is the realization that we have no ontological reality, that everything that we are is a product of our circumstances. Money becomes the reality we cling to because through our desires we exist.<\/span><\/p>\n And that becomes the principle upon which we organize our societies. The satisfaction of our desires is the principle, because without them we have no purpose. Money then is the physical manifestation of the drive to satisfy our desires and like them we can\u2019t define it because the moment we do, it has mutated. So money becomes that which can\u2019t be defined. \u201cIt is basic to everything \u2014 eternal; it\u2019s what there is; it\u2019s the which for which there is no whicher.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Capital and Labor Arise Mutually<\/strong><\/p>\n The second principle, following Watts<\/a>, is that of mutual arising: \u201cThat is to say, that all the great contrasts of life \u2014 black and white, positive and negative (or as the Chinese call it, yang and yin), self and other, long and short \u2014 are not, as it were, things in conflict; they are like the north and south poles of a magnet: they go together.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n From money as Tao, as that which is the way of everything, capital and labor arise together, not in conflict, but as the two ends of the same stick. Labor creates capital, which is then used to create more labor that creates more capital, <\/span>ad infinitum<\/span><\/i>. Money is what gives reality to both.<\/span><\/p>\n If there was no money, labor would not exist. Labor is that for which we expect to receive a monetary payment, whether we receive it or not. So for there to be labor, there needs to be money, and if there is money, then there is capital, either as a form of accumulation of its undefined form, or of what can be acquired by it.<\/span><\/p>\n Capital needs labor to increase, with that increase measured in monetary terms. But if money is the way of things, the enabler of our desire, then the desire for capital has no end, which then engenders more labor. Money becomes the means and the end from which capital and labor, as the forms of maintaining a constant supply of money, are begotten.<\/span><\/p>\n Marx\u2019s critique of capital, as that which subjugates labor, does not consider the role of money in their mutual arising. In the Taoist way, it would be like criticizing the day for subjugating the night, but there would be no day if there was no night.<\/span><\/p>\n
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