Submitted by SnowballtheSage t3_10kyx7l in philosophy
SnowballtheSage OP t1_j5xafgx wrote
Reply to comment by postart777 in "Like painters bring brush to canvas and sculptors set chisel against marble, so do the magnificent use their wealth to bring about beauty and inspire wonder in their people's eyes. Thus Aristotle calls them artists" - On Generosity and Magnificence, Nicomachean Ethics by SnowballtheSage
Money was a boon for every community and readily embraced as an institution. Money was made to serve us.
Yet today, more than any other point in our history, we live to serve money. Once upon a time we transacted to gain the goods we needed. Today the purpose of most transactions is to make more money. Spread across the histories of different people we will find celebrated instances of industrious chieftains, leaders and mayors who gathered goods and money to safeguard the growth and wellbeing of their community. Now we celebrate business oriented individuals who know how to organise humans into companies and corporations, i.e. communities whose purpose is to safeguard the growth and wellbeing of such and such a business person’s money accounts.
The means have become the ends. The ends have become the means. We entertain the fantasy that humans are higher than other animals. Have we considered that we have perhaps fallen lower than other animals? There are parents in the USA - out of all countries - who work multiple jobs to afford rent and utilities. Woodpeckers dig a hole in a tree and get their housing rent-free… and what exactly is the difference in labour conditions between a child cobalt miner in the Congo, a Foxconn factory worker in China and a battery caged chicken? Chicken in battery cages are animals we reduced to our own image. Afterall, we let ourselves be managed as resources by the human resources department when we could have been managing money resources as participants of the department of communal wellbeing.
[deleted] t1_j6299d0 wrote
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