I’m going to bet that this isn’t going to be the post you think.\u00a0 This is a post about how fictional things affect our lives.\u00a0 And how money is like religion.<\/p>\n
Open your wallet and take out some money.\u00a0 Just look at it.\u00a0 In the US, it’s a piece of paper (special paper, but paper), with some ink on it.\u00a0 Yet, you can trade that piece of paper for a meal, or other goods or services.\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n
US money is a fiction.\u00a0 The money has no intrinsic value (aside from certain gold and silver coins, whose face value is much less than the value of the metal in the coin).\u00a0 You can’t even trade the bill for a set amount of silver or gold (as you could do in the past).<\/p>\n
Most people don’t even see the majority of their money.\u00a0 The money is transferred electronically between various banks, based on commands given by various bank customers.\u00a0 My employers bank sends a note to my bank saying that I now have x<\/em> more dollars in my account.\u00a0 Then I go online and send a memo to my bank saying send some of that money to the electric company, the city, the phone company, etc.\u00a0 They get a message when it’s done.<\/p>\n I may take a couple of dollars out in cash just because.\u00a0 But probably not.<\/p>\n The entire world monetary system is based on fiction.\u00a0 The fiction that certain pieces paper (or electrons) have a value and can be exchanged for goods and services. There is no reality to money except what we choose to make it.\u00a0 If a business chooses to no longer accept dollars, then they will probably lose all their business.\u00a0 But what happens if a bank refuses to accept dollars or if that trust is shaken.\u00a0 (Tom Clancy’s book Debt of Honor<\/em> explores this in a bit of detail.)<\/p>\n But what’s even more interesting is the lengths that people will go to collecting more and more of these pieces of paper and\/or special electrons in a bank computer.\u00a0 With enough of these pieces of paper, people can be controlled.\u00a0 Yes, controlled.\u00a0 Without access to these pieces of paper, people can die.<\/p>\n This fiction has a direct and powerful influence in people’s lives. Policy decisions are made based on these pieces of people.\u00a0 People are murdered for these pieces of paper with no intrinsic value.<\/p>\n It’s the same with religion.\u00a0 There is no intrinsic value in religion. Religion is as much of a myth as money.\u00a0 We never see god (any god), the fundamental basis of religion.\u00a0 Yet people die because of religion.\u00a0 Policy decisions are made because of religion.<\/p>\n I believe that all the good things about religion can be done without religion.\u00a0 And the bad things about religion are a direct result of the influence of that religion.<\/p>\n Some say that money is the root of all evil.\u00a0 That may be true, but I’m starting to wonder if that’s not general enough.<\/p>\n Perhaps, believing that fiction is real is the root of all evil.\u00a0 Maybe basing decisions on fiction is the root of all evil.\u00a0 I don’t think that fiction is evil, I love fiction.\u00a0 But I do think that there is something inherently unhealthy about basing your life and your decisions on fiction.\u00a0 (NOTE: I thinking about this as I type, welcome to my stream of consciousness writing style.)<\/p>\n Money isn’t going to to go away anytime soon.* And, I suspect that religion will not be going away anytime soon as well.<\/p>\n But that’s OK.\u00a0 Again, it seems to me that the biggest problem with both of these concepts is when they are used as determining factors in policy and decision making.<\/p>\n It’s not that money or religion is evil, but it’s use can be.\u00a0 Buying a meal for a homeless person is a good thing.\u00a0 Killing a person for his wallet is a bad thing.\u00a0 Donating time to a mission that provides clothing to kids in need is a good thing.\u00a0 Murdering doctors because they perform abortions is a bad thing.<\/p>\n When a wealthy person gives money to political campaigns, expecting certain votes to be made in his favor is bad.\u00a0 When a church requires that policy makes of that faith vote a certain way on policy issues, is also bad.\u00a0 In both cases, a fictional thing has taken over and resulted in a decision that may not be the best.<\/p>\n Now, these are just my thoughts on the subject, and your mileage may vary.<\/p>\n Part of my thoughts are based on a comment I heard today… that militant atheists are basically the same as fundamental Christians. I want to emphasize the fact that skeptics, even atheist ones, should really think about the points and issues that they are talking about.\u00a0 So many of us attack religion, I do it too.\u00a0 What I try to do (and may or may not always succeed) is to attack specific points of religion using reasoning.<\/p>\n We always hear about the fundamentalists that picket funerals and kill abortion doctors, but we never hear about the millions of people who quietly do their thing, are quite reasonable, and still believe in a religion.\u00a0 I disagree with them.\u00a0 I do think that gods are myths.\u00a0 I think that they are fundamentally harming themselves with belief in myths.<\/p>\n But, as long as they don’t harm others (directly or indirectly), then I’m OK with people believing whatever they like.\u00a0 Note that I include special privileges for those of faith as indirectly harming others.<\/p>\n But when we make decisions for our lives or our government or hospitals or science based on myths, fiction, and\/or faith, that is where the problem lies.<\/p>\n Thoughts?<\/p>\n _________________________________ Money is a fiction. The paper we see has no intrinsic value. The vast majority of money is merely exchanges of electrons between banks. Yet people will kill, destroy, and corrupt to gain more of this fictional stuff. The same could be said for religion.<\/p>\n Is it that money is the root of all evil or can a more general comment about basing decisions on fiction be made?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,36,35,11],"tags":[508,509,507,38],"class_list":["post-1237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-life","category-religion","category-skepticism","tag-fiction","tag-harm","tag-money","tag-religion-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n* There’s a myth of a post-scarcity society.\u00a0 While entertaining, I don’t think it can happen.\u00a0 First, even the entire universe has a limited amount of resources and while I don’t think humans can use all of it, we are still limited by it.\u00a0 Second, even if nanotechnology becomes common place, the templates that nanotech could be used to manufacture things would be copyrighted and made single use.\u00a0 So, yes, we could create a warm meal from component atoms, but the expert chef who created the template would expect to get paid for the original work… just like any artist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"