Apparently when I was born, I was entered into this huge game, the Game. I never chose to play it. Apparently I can't opt out.
Money: There's nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.
--Sophocles (496 BC - 406 BC), Antigone
Restart.
Once upon a time, some women bought some prints of my graphics. I sold them at a Women's Project Retreat, I think for $10 a piece or so. Mostly I had a "booth" to let my artwork display to the community I wished to be a part of a little more about who I am.
Occasionally when I have shown them in the world of solids, someone has asked how much I would sell a print of one of my graphic/poem combinations for, I've asked back, "What do you think it is worth?" Truthfully I haven't got a clue. I've always ended up not making a sale. I have given some as gifts to people who have meant something in my life, on occasions where it seemed appropriate. But truthfully I have no knowledge of their value.
Nor do I want that knowledge. Isn't that a hell of a thing? I have absolutely no interest in money. I don't want to play the Game. But I'm not allowed to opt out. Helluva thing. And people talk about losing freedom?
Roll back, then slowly roll forward.
After I spent two years of involuntary servitude in the Army, I took advantage of a program called the GI Bill in order to return to being a student, the only thing in my life I had ever been successful at. I got 5 years of money for education in return for that "service." [For new readers, I received an honorable discharge as a Spec 5 correctional specialist at the US Disciplinary Barracks at Ft. Leavenworth, where I received a Presidential Commendation for work performed in the Prisoner Pay Unit of the base Finance Office. It was signed by Richard Milhouse Nixon. No comment.] I attended Portland Community College's Sylvania Campus for 8 months and then Portland State University for 22 months and graduated with highest honors. Got to sit on the stage of Memorial Colosseum in Portland during graduation and everything, after which my father once again managed to not say he was proud of me. But that's another story. And with what was left I got a start at the University of Oregon graduate program in mathematics where they let me teach some classes. And paid me some money. Damn little money, not enough for a family of three to survive on in the economy of Eugene, OR, but some money anyway.
There is some magic in wealth, which can thus make persons pay their court to it, when it does not even benefit themselves. How strange it is, that a fool or knave, with riches, should be treated with more respect by the world, than a good man, or a wise man in poverty!
--Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1764
And I was hooked. I'm addicted to teaching. I would do it for free if I could gather an audience. Sort of like here. And now. I do admit that a bigger audience brings me more enjoyment.
At some point they decided that I was so good at being a student, I should be called a teacher. And they paid me marginally more money. Subsistence as far as I was concerned, but I didn't have control of my money. Ever. Until I began transition and got divorced. And that's another story, too, and one I shall quite possibly never publish.
He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.
--Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
Rolling back even further, maybe into causes.
I've sometimes wondered if other kids had to lie to someone to whom their parents owed money. My sister has told me that she had to take on this responsibility in later years. Our parents were buying a house privately from a Mrs. Palmer. Too many months I had to answer the phone in case it was her and lie to her, explaining that my parents were not home. This was my introduction to economics.
No one can earn a million dollars honestly.
--William Jennings Bryan (1860 - 1925)
Money was borrowed so that I could go to school, but I flunked out...placing a huge financial burden on my family. So I ran away, to become a homeless hippie sleeping in the parks and the occasional crash pad, living on the streets, panhandling for spare change or a cigarette, or, you know, food in the Haight, and working with the Diggers so that other people would not go hungry or unclothed.
The rich are the scum of the earth in every country.
--G. K. Chesterton, Flying Inn (1914)
And on the streets of Skid Row in Seattle I had to make the choice about whether surrendering control of my body was a good price to charge in order to avoid freezing to death. One meal a day at the gospel mission had to do for food.
The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.
--Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)
Working in a car wash in Coral Gables, I learned that people could push slave wages up to maybe subsistence level by stealing change that had fallen down the cracks of the seats of the cars...subsistence level as long as we were willing to live on coffee and day-old donuts.
If all the rich people in the world divided up their money among themselves there wouldn't be enough to go around.
--Christina Stead, House of All Nations (1938) "Credo"
I met a woman and she got pregnant. We had a child in Joplin, MO, to where we had run when the Haight became too dangerous for homeless folk like us. There began the worst case of codependent behavior my therapist had ever encountered...or heard of. But I had a mission. I worked up to 60 hours a week with no medical benefits, for $400 a month, schlepping pizzas while my wife worked as a waitress in a Pizza Hut so that we could feed and clothe our baby. Our budget allowed $25 every two weeks for food for us...and a variable amount for milk for Jen. Everything else went for rent to live in a freezing apartment...our heat coming from running the oven with its door open. And for gas so that we could get to work. Once a week we splurged and spent more money than we should at a bowling alley with the few friends we had.
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
--H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
But for getting hunted down by the FBI and arrested during my first week at a new job in Venita, OK in 1971 and choosing the Army over the penitentiary, I wouldn't be here writing this now. I don't know where I would be.
Penniless somewhere, I have no doubt. Or dead. I suck at the Game I never wanted to play.
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
--Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967)
Truth is, I didn't want anything to do with money. Some people would call it a phobia. They would include my therapist. I break out in a cold sweat if I have to play the Game for any length of time at all.
I do not keep track of my bank account, other than to know an approximately value to avoid bouncing checks. I let the bank keep track of the actual number. Maybe they're cheating the hell out of me. Could be. I don't care. My object is to be able to get up in the morning and either learn or teach. Preferably both.
I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.
--e e cummings (1894 - 1962)
It's nice that I have some place to live in. It's not mine. I've never owned, you know, property. Except the car I bought in the mid-90s so I could visit my friends, who mostly lived hundreds or thousands of miles away. I donated that car to charity when it started to breakdown.
Nowadays I live with my partner in a condo bought with her portion of her inheritance from sale of her her mother's condo...and we own a car that is a few years old and was bought from a rental car company.
I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something.
--Jackie Mason
I try to have as few things as necessary to do my teaching and learning. I feel bad that I'm using more than my share, in the grand scheme of things. But people around me play the Game and I sometimes I have to keep them happy, or quite frankly, they probably wouldn't be around me. People get freaked by my view of the whole thing.
What I believe (pardon the pronouns, but it is a quote):
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Minus any of the surrounding context or subsequent history.
Save a little money each month and at the end of the year you'll be surprised at how little you have.
--Ernest Haskins
Ideals. We all have our ideals. Sometimes they differ. In an ideal world...in * my * ideal world, people would do what they do because they love to do it and it helps their community. In my ideal world, of course, the community would be the entire planet and people would actually want to make this a better world for everyone. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. When needs are fulfilled abilities may be honed, for the good of all. Of course, in my ideal world, people aren't greedy. They, like me, don't play the Game. Or at least try not to.
My words are free. How can you sell what is free?
Sometimes people have told me that if I wrote a book, they would buy a copy. I'm pleased when that happens. But I also feel that cold sweat thing lurking in the wings. I don't know how to market a book. I don't want to know how to do that. It seems too much like playing the Game.
So I'll continue writing the book. Maybe someday someone else will do what I cannot.
My words are free...which is still a price too dear for some to pay.
Game Pieces
Entropy
Born into a game
I never wished to play
Predestined to lose
while someone else
controls the dice
Not born a winner
Whole industries created
to enticed me into not
breaking even
Escape from the game
impossible
I seek (in vain?)
to avoid becoming a pawn
on someone else's board
--Robyn Elaine Serven
--June 27, 2008
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A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down my pants...
Take an alternate point of view.
Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters, ladies and gentleman, from 1953. This was their first hit. You may be more familiar with the cover versions by either Eddie Cochran (1959) or what's his name...Elvis Presley (1956).
Life once again is dominated by, as Terry Pratchett called it, the "reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits", aka echo-gnomics. It always distresses me when life becomes all about the money. But I live here and I live now. And there is next to no market in the political arena for knowledge, justice, stewardship of the planet and other things that would interest me more. Or any.
Money-grubbing sucks. Accumulation of money sucks the joy out of life. But that's just my opinion.
Etymology Online is my friend, but don't blame them for my rewrites.
money
The word money dates back to around 1290, with its meaning at the time restricted to "coinage, metal currency." It arrived in English from the Old French moneie, which itself derived from the Latin moneta "mint, coinage," from Moneta, a title of the Roman goddess Juno, in or near whose temple money was coined. Perhaps this derived from monere "advise, warn" (see monitor), with the sense of "admonishing goddess," which is sensible, but the etymology is difficult. It was extended to include paper money in the early 19th century.
Use of the phrase to make money, meaning "earn pay" is first attested to 1457. The traditional highwayman's threat your money or your life is first attested to 1841. The phrase in the money (which appeared in 1902) originally meant "one who finishes among the prize-winners" (as in a horse race). The challenge to put (one's) money where (one's) mouth is was first recorded in 1942. Moneybags, meaning "rich person", is from 1818. A money-grub, "one who is sordidly intent on amassing money," is from 1768.
I am not interested in money but in the things of which money is the symbol.
--Henry Ford
currency
This word dates from 1657, meaning at the time "condition of flowing." It derives from the Latin currentum, the past participle of currere, "to run" (see current). The sense of a flow or course was extended in 1699 (by John Locke) to "circulation of money."
Ooooh! Locke:
From wikipedia:
Labor creates property, but it also does contain limits to its accumulation: man's capacity to produce and man's capacity to consume. According to Locke, unused property is waste and an offense against nature. However, with the introduction of "durable" goods, men could exchange their excessive perishable goods for goods that would last longer and thus not offend the natural law. The introduction of money marks the culmination of this process. Money makes possible the unlimited accumulation of property without causing waste through spoilage. ... Locke anchors property in labor but in the end upholds the unlimited accumulation of wealth.
And thus we had people like Henry Ford and the Robber Barons that came before him. It's just my humble opinion that the phrase "robber baron" needs to be resurrected once again:
Robber baron is a term revived in the 19th century in the United States as a pejorative reference to businessmen and bankers who dominated their respective industries and amassed huge personal fortunes, typically as a direct result of pursuing various anti-competitive or unfair business practices. The term may now be used in relation to any businessman or banker who is perceived to have used questionable business practices or scams in order to become powerful or wealthy.
--wikipedia
While "researching" this piece (which consists of following my instincts, copying, pasting, and maybe doing a rewrite...in other words, sitting on the doorstep of plagiarism, but giving credit liberally), I tripped over
a site with slang terms for money. As a public service, I provide it here, in case anyone suffers a deficiency:
dough (counterfeit money was "sourdough"), moolah, rhino, spondulix, greenbacks, bucks, pony (rhyming slanged into macaroni), monkey, C-note, grand, note, bar, smacker, bacon, bread, cabbage, lettuce, kale, folding green, long green, jack, scratch, clams, simoleons...
Finally, since we had Locke, Orson Scott Card demands that Demosthenes be given equal time:
"We need money, for sure, Athenians, and without money nothing can be done that ought to be done."
--Demosthenes (First Olynthiac, 20) - The orator took great pains to convince his countrymen that the reform of the theoric fund was necessary to finance the city's military preparations.
Endless money forms the sinews of war.
--Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), Philippics
I'm left with bewilderment over how the world came to be such a place.
The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any.
--Katharine Whitehorn