For the Love of Money

“The love of money is the root of all evil”

The majority of folk have heard this famous saying at some time in their lives (1). But how helpful is it in a world where having money (or not) seems to define every concept of well being? Many of us go through life with a semi perpetual undercurrent of wondering (worrying) where our next payment credit will come from and legion are the cautionary stories of those who fall by the wayside into poverty and debt without it.

I am not normally one to be quoting from the Bible, although from time to time I have been known to cite the more famous sayings of Jesus, given they are one of the two key guides for my life (together with the Bhagavad Gita). Here is what are told in Timothy (New Testament, 1 Timothy 6):

¹⁰ For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, in their eagerness to get rich, have wandered away from the faith and caused^[f] themselves a lot of pain.

And also, as importantly, pain to many others in their voracious acquisition of wealth.

and further:

¹⁷ Tell those who are rich in this age not to be arrogant and not to place their confidence in anything as uncertain as riches. Instead, let them place their confidence^[l] in God, who lavishly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. ¹⁸ They are to do good, to be rich in good actions, to be generous, and to share. ¹⁹ By doing this they store up a treasure for themselves that is a good foundation for the future, so that they can keep their hold on the life that is real.

Which is really only building on what Jesus himself advises anyway:

For myself I have generally tended to dispute the literal veracity of the saying, feeling that it is the pursuit of power per se which is actually a root cause of evil, but, probably unsurprisingly, money and power are often inextricably entwined and always have been. We see it operating most notably in these current times with the present administration in the White House, with its curious duo of a political leader known to have little money and a track record of bankruptcies, sustained in office and pursuit of global hegemony by a side kick known to be the richest person in the world. Together they represent a kind of co-joined twin of an operation, the one dependent upon the other for its viability.

For those who need to have some kind of independent verifier rather than putting all their faith and credulity in one basket of spiritual wisdoms, we also have the ancient Vedic Upanishads, earlier even than the New Testament, with its rich cautionary tales about the fates of those of us who fail to find the true meaning of life during our lifetime. Of these the Katha Upanishad has the most compelling story to offer. For if the acquisition of material wealth is what you aspire to, or earthly power, or even just wanting a nice comfortable life, then Death is what awaits at the end of the line. This might seem unduly harsh, but I would advocate that readers look more closely at the story it presents. In the story, the Hindu lord of Death – Yama- explains pleasantly to the spiritual aspirant Nachiketas, that he is able to carry off all sorts of people at the end of their lives given that most of them always choose earthly wealth and power over the highest spiritual truths that lead to eternal life.

This is simply a version of the same old story cautioning about the transience of wealth and power found from time to time across humanity’s long history. In medieval times it was accepted to be a truth that life and destiny were cyclical – wheellike –  and that those who experienced wealth and power at some point would almost inevitably find themselves losing it again, cast down into the proverbial gutter:

“Oh Fortune, like the moon, waxing and waning ”

with the repeated chorus:

“Weep with me all of you!” (4)

Or even and still more anciently:

For not all of the wealth of the world as we experience it will save us from death. Unless, of course, we now entertain notions that science, and its relative technology, will ultimately deliver us a quasi eternal existence permanently caught up in this material manifestation through the dark arts of gene editing and sundry, if still speculative, methods of ageing prevention that are now increasingly being posited. You still can’t take it with you. But perhaps in the end what you do take with you is the revelation of some final truth, of the person you became and the deeds you performed in the realisation of these godless pursuits. Like some picture of Dorian Gray (7), at the end, your earthly beauty as you have envisioned it will disintegrate back into what you allowed yourself to become in fact. A culpable victim of some Faustian pact that persuaded you to part with all that it means to be human in order to amass a material wealth itself fundamentally worthless. To realise the scale of the avoidable misery and suffering that these pursuits ignored, if not actively condoned, to become what you are.

“Weep with me all of you”!

Featured image from: David McBee: https://www.pexels.com/photo/bitcoins-and-u-s-dollar-bills-730547/

1. From the traditional King James version. Later translations gloss this slightly differently, as with the New International Version ‘the root of all kinds of evil’ etc.

2. New Testament. New International Version. Matthew 6:19-21

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yama#/media/File:Yama_on_buffalo.jpg

Unknown author – https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_2007-3005-41

4. Carl Orf. Carmina Burana. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Fortuna_(Orff)#

Lyrics in Latin and English at: https://www.classicfm.com/composers/orff/o-fortuna-carmina-burana-lyrics/

5. Image of Wheel: Anonymous – http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/bsb00085130/image_5

7. Oscar Wilde. 1891. The Picture of Dorian Gray. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray

Image of the Picture of Dorian Gray from: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/93798/picture-of-dorian-gray