Mind on my Money. Money on my Mind.

After listening to at least 1000 rap songs about money, I know that at least some people are thinking about it.

I have a few questions about money, but I think they all come down to one in the end:  “Why does money exist”?

People often get asked the question, “If you won the lottery, would you keep your job?”  Winning the lottery is potentially a liberating event - something that would free you from the societal need of money for survival, but would it free you from the desire for more?

I have another question:  if money didn’t exist, what would you be doing?  Would it be anything like your current occupation?  How would you spend your time? 

Here is what I think about money.  I have no idea what people think about these and I’m doing this without any research – let me know if you disagree.

1.     Money was created to provide humans with an incentive to serve others.  Would you dedicate your life to serving others without receiving something in return?  Would a construction worker build a house for someone out of the good of his heart if he weren’t being compensated?  In my mind, no one is going to totally sacrifice themselves for others.  “You help me out and I’ll help you out.”  Or,  “I’ll help you out if I get money, which will satisfy my personal needs/wants.”  With money came other social concepts – status, power, etc.  Even if you think about jobs which appear to be more “human-driven” than others - say a doctor or a teacher - I’m not sure if these jobs would have ever existed without a monetary system in place.  Granted, you may also feel better about yourself in jobs like these that might make you believe you are doing something useful for others.  Without a monetary system, I think anarchy prevails.

2.     Money has fostered competition, jealousy, and greed amongst humans.  Money is responsible for the concept of “invention”.  Money is also responsible for most of the crimes in the world today (I have no stats to back that up).  Money is a distraction from boredom.  The monetary system controls human life.

3.     The “value” of anything is based on whatever someone else will pay for it.   The stock market and monetary system were created by humans, and their success or failure will continue to be driven by human emotions relating to those systems.  If humans no longer “buy-in” (pun intended) to the idea of the stock market, it will fail.  “Expert” investors can claim that their “success” is a result of genius, sophisticated mathematics/formulas, or whatever, but unless someone else agrees with whatever they are doing or “values” something similarly using a different methodology, their “genius” or “sophisticated formula” is worthless.  In business you often hear the expression “it’s an art, not a science”.  Really, it’s about manufacturing ideas and a story and getting someone else to believe in it.

      Thought experiment - you and I are the last 2 people on earth.  I have a supply of water and food that will allow me to live for 100 days.  You have a supply of gold and try to exchange some gold for my water.  Who has more "value" now?  I guess neither of us cause that situation would be awful for the both of us and I probably wouldn't want to live alone, but hopefully you get my point.

4.     In our society, money gets you a lot of things.  Your basic necessities – food, housing, health.  After your basic needs you have things that you don’t need, but you might desire.  These include pleasure, power, status, etc.  Examples include a “bigger” house, “better” food, entertainment, a really big TV, etc. You might think, “people will like me more and I’ll feel better about myself if I can afford to live in a mansion”.  Who knows?  In my mind, money can’t get you happiness.

5.     Money is a self-propagating or self-fulfilling concept.  If money never existed, the big TVs you need money to buy would never have existed.  Also, in general, it costs money to make money (i.e. college degree required for high-paying job).

6.     The function of the finance arm in our economy is to facilitate the growth of all industries in the monetary system including the finance arm itself.  If I want to start a business in our society right now, I need to have someone give me the money.  The money had to be created at some point in time.  A bank will help me get money – either by creating the money or connecting me with someone who has money which has already been created.  The bank will also make money just by creating money (the concept of interest) and collect fees for their services.  Right now it seems like a lot of people are unhappy with the level of complexity in the financial industry and with the amount of money people in finance are making.  There is a perception that many or all people who work in finance are greedy.  Why is the majority of the country’s wealth held by a small percentage of people?

7.     Creating money out of “nothing” (leverage) is the driver for all past economic “growth”.  There are ebbs and flows, but generally people seem to agree with the foundation of debt and the leverage “bubble”.  I mean, more and more money needs to be manufactured or else more of it would never exist.

8.     Given the current level of dissatisfaction, some changes will probably be made to the system that satisfy enough people with social status to get the monetary system moving again.  People seem to generally have confidence in Obama and the government and people tend to forget about the past.  The rich will continue to be rich and the poor will continue to be poor, and the wide disparity in social status will persist.  We’ll ultimately run into another period in which people are unhappy with or lack confidence in the system, and the cycle will continue.

Judging a Leader

I have always wondered what makes a good leader.  Before I start, I want to define "leader" as someone who is elected by people to make decisions for those people - for example, the president of the United States.  I guess there are all sorts of other types of leaders, but whatever.

First of all, I want to say that I'm not sure how to evaluate a president or if I should be judging a president at all.  I have no insight into the inner workings of the government. Whether it's lack of access or laziness, I have no idea how the president is making decisions and what his thought process is.  I don't what kind of information or technology he has at his disposal.  I don't know why he even wanted to be president and I don't know what his personality is like. I've never spoken with him - I'm limited to what I hear from others, TV, Internet, news, etc.  I look at it as all a big "show", but maybe that's just me.

I also think it's extremely easy to judge decisions in hindsight. Everyone wants to criticize George Bush and Republicans now.  It's been a fad for a while and people really seem to get excited about it.  I view things in a different way.  I look at events and decisions that happened and I think that in our course of history, there is no other decision that could have been made at that time.  What happened, happened.  Life will continue to flow and there's no sense in criticizing the past.  We are where we are now and our lives and our society will be molded by our present and future desires, beliefs, and choices.

I could also look at events in a different way.  I could say, what if America didn't engage Iraq in a war?  What would our country and the rest of the world be like?  Would a positive or negative outcome have resulted? Would America still be around?  But like I said, this thought process won't get me anywhere because one choice was made and we are living the consequences of that choice and all other historical choices up until this point.

For some reason, people always want to verbally attack and judge others for past activities. I do it myself and I don't know why.  Even now I am just criticizing the "criticizers" and I probably appear to be a hypocritical idiot. 

Anyway, I think I may be arguing against myself because I've shown that I think judging decisions is kind of a pointless activity, but I still want to think about 2 types of leaders.

First:  

A powerful, opinionated leader.  This is someone who makes choices on his own.  Someone who doesn't listen to anyone.  Someone who will pick an alternative even if everyone else in his country disagrees with him.

Second:

An analytic decision maker.  Someone who can clearly understand what other people are thinking.  Someone who isn't entirely sure about how things should be.  This person likes to listen to others - maybe an expert on a particular topic - or listen to everyone, and makes his decisions based on what he believes to be the collective will.  This person will even reach out to everyone who voted against him and embrace their thoughts.

I'm not sure if leaders in these specific characterizations exist.  I'm guessing that most people are somewhere in between.

I think the 2nd type of leader can be judged in a few ways:

From what I've been told, our current president likes to listen to as many opinions as he reasonably has time for.  I see remarks in the news such as: "Bush would never listen to me. It's a totally different White House now."  At the same time, I see people chiding Obama for "flip-flopping" on issues.  Some people perceive him to be a weak decision-maker.  Some of his campaign ideas apparently haven't held (I'm not personally sure if they have or have not, nor do I care).  There are trackers that look back at everything he said during the campaign and accuse him of lying.  I would argue that if anyone was tracking me, I would be a "flip-flopper" on a ridiculous amount of things I say or do.  My opinions change all the time.  I take in new experiences and hear new thoughts from other people and I am a different person because of it.

For the 1st leader: 

Some don't want a "flip-flopper".  They want a strong leader who has a belief system that they elected him for and that they believe he should stick to.  What would "Democrats" think if Obama had a change in his overall ideology and his thoughts were more aligned with what people consider to be "Republican"?  Others will argue that a strong leader is out of touch with the public if they perceive that he has made multiple/meaningful "incorrect decisions".

What do you think?

Random Thoughts

Up until 4 or 5 years ago, I did not believe in the possibility of God existing.  I didn't believe that the Bible was written by anyone special.  Never looked at it.  I didn't trust religious stories or leaders.  Never entered a church or any place of practice growing up.  I didn't even want to listen to anyone talk to me about God.  I was rude and obnoxious to others and I didn't properly respect other people's thoughts.  I wanted to be rich and have a lot of power - that would make me happy.  I didn't need religion to satisfy me.  

I still don't know what to think about anything, but my mind is open to all perspectives.  I'll listen to anyone and read everything I can.  About a year ago, I set aside an hour or so a night to the read the Bible for a while.  I started praying. Of course, I didn't really know who I was praying to, but I tried.

I'm not sure how this change came about and I don't really know where I am going with this post.  I also don't want to talk about me that much, but I will say that being open-minded has provided me with more comfort and stability internally.  The struggle for knowledge satisfies me and makes me feel like I am actually accomplishing something.  At the same time, I'm not sure if I am really learning anything, and I am still as lost as ever.  I don't know the best way to utilize my time.

I've read many reasons why and why not to believe in God, but these are the basic reasons why I want to believe in God.  These could be selfish desires that are never realizable and maybe it's wrong of me to think that I should ever attain them.

1.  Eternal life.  Death frightens me.  How can life be so tragic?

2.  Happiness.  While I may be temporarily distracted and happy at times, my overall existence is miserable.  I'm dissatisfied with my actions and with my lack of knowledge.  I don't see how I will ever be happy in this life.  Maybe it's wrong of me to think I should even be happy.

3.  Purpose.  What should I be doing?

4.  Understanding.  Why do humans and this world exist?  How did this all happen?

5.  Morality.  I want to believe that all humans are good and have a God-given sense of morality.  I'd like for every human to be valued equally and treated with respect.

An Email

I received an email today.  It was well-written and summarizes an article from the Atlantic.  It also contained a link to that article.  

The email was from my friend, Eric.  It is interesting/unbelievable how life plays out out sometimes.  We were randomly placed together in a room freshman year at BC, and I don't think it could have worked out any better.  We lived together for a couple more years and have remained close friends and will be life-long friends (unless I screw something up).  Eric is a positive thinker, is always looking to help out other people, and is someone I know I can always count on.

Anyway, this email is about happiness.  I'm never happy.  Just saying.

Here it is:

Jon,

Read this article,I know you'll enjoy it. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/happiness

Inside the article, the head of this study summarizes four levels of human defense mechanisms. He believes that consistently utilizing level three and four defenses is a key to overall happiness and contentedness as we age. Here they are, summarized:

 

1)  Psychotic adaptations: paranoia, hallucination, megalomania

2)  Immature adaptations: acting out, passive aggression, hypochondria, projection, fantasy

3)  Neurotic adaptations: intellectualization (mutating the primal stuff of life into formal thought); dissociation (intense, often brief, removal from one’s feelings); repression (naïveté, memory lapse, or failure to acknowledge input from a selected organ)

4)  Mature adaptations: altruism, humor, anticipation (looking ahead and planning for future discomfort), suppression (a conscious decision to postpone attention to an impulse or conflict, to be addressed in good time), and sublimation (finding outlets for feelings, like putting aggression into sport, or lust into courtship)

Also important: further education, stable marriage, not smoking, no alcohol abuse, moderate exercise, healthy weight.

All of his data so far lead to this conclusion: "The only thing that really matters in life are your relationships with other people."

Broken Promise

Every time I say I am going to write a certain topic, I never do, so I'll probably stop doing that in the future.  

Focus has always been a problem for me.  I feel like I should be devoting my time to issues or life questions which are important to me (i.e. religious belief, purpose, etc.), but work, temporary pleasure, laziness, and material distractions get in the way.  For example, I was moving for the past few days and busy with work, and I didn't really think about much the whole time.  That makes me feel useless.  There are books I have been meaning to read for the past 5 or 6 years and I still haven't even started them.  I don't know what's wrong with me.  I don't like the fact that I have a sense that I will be around for another day and can just procrastinate on thought and activity.

One of my former professors posted an article about debate on facebook a few days ago - I just saw it and thought it was interesting.  Here is the link:

http://www.sunjournal.com/story/316614-3/Perspective/Debate_In_the_Public_Square/

Trust Me. This will be good.

When I think about trust, I think of two kinds, but maybe there are more or less – I don’t really know how to define them, but I’ll call them “instinctive trust" and “personal trust” 

Instinctive Trust – An act of trust that one commits without thinking about it

Examples:

Eating food prepared by someone else (a restaurant) > trust that whoever prepared the food knows what they are doing and didn’t put any harmful substances in it

Riding on an airplane > trust that the pilot is properly trained and in the right state of mind to fly, the plane is well-built and won’t break-down mid-flight, etc.

There are a countless number of these.

With instinctive trust, we often risk our lives without doing any research, without personally knowing, meeting, or talking to whoever is providing a service for us, and without calculating the dangers we might face.  For whatever reason, we don’t like to live in fear.  When we walk outside amongst a crowd of people, the idea of one of them flipping out and killing us doesn't typically cross our mind.  Our instincts are shaped by past experiences, we build habits and we establish confidence.  In reality, anything could happen at any time.

Personal Trust

Trust is interwoven into our day-to-day actions; however, when it comes to personal matters, we are far less trustworthy.  We keep secrets.  Relationships are strained because one person doesn’t trust another.  We identify certain people as “bullshitters”.  We’re not sure if a person is right when they are giving us a piece of information.  Some people only reveal information to a small group of friends, the “circle of trust”.  People keep diaries because they need to vent but don’t want anyone reading their thoughts.  Some of us “don’t trust anyone”.

It’s an interesting phenomenon when you think about it because you are instinctively trusting people you have no contact with everyday, but you can’t trust people you have known all your life.

Life Decisions and Trust

Some of the most important aspects in life come down to the element of trust.  Do we trust our teachers?  Do we trust our religious leaders?  Do we trust the story of Jesus?  Do we trust our textbooks?  Do we trust that we know who wrote the Bible?  Do we trust presidential candidates? For a lot of these matters, we can’t actually meet the person we are attempting to trust.  I would be interested in going back in time to meet Jesus, but I can’t so I have to rely on others or my own beliefs.  I don't even know if Jesus existed, but I may trust that he did based on what I have read or been told.

A story I like which relates to trust is presented in the book "The Black Swan":

A farm animal is raised by a human all of its life.  The animal gets treated well by the human only to one day be killed for food.  From the farm animal’s perspective, it might have thought it had a pretty stable life and nothing could go wrong.  The animal trusted the human, but in the end, the human had a different idea in mind all along.  

Ultimately, I think skepticism is a healthy emotion but trust is embedded in every decision we make.

I wanted to think about trust a little bit because I am going to write about miracles soon (not today and maybe not this week because I am moving and won’t have Internet access).  If you don’t have any inclination to believe in supernatural experiences, trusting someone’s story about a supposed miracle is a difficult thing.  I never believed that a miracle was possible throughout my life, but when someone I trusted and respected presented me with the story of a miracle a few years ago, it changed my perspective.

Locked up

Viewpoint 1: 

The fact that there are currently people trapped inside prisons throughout the United States troubles me.  I don’t like the idea of prison.  Why should another being, a human, have no access to the rest of society?  I can’t imagine what this lack of freedom feels like and how terrible living life in a small cage must be.

What is the prison system accomplishing?  It segregates people who have committed acts that the majority of the public disagrees with, but crime continues in an endless cycle.   People who steal come out of prison and immediately begin stealing again.  Same with drug dealing - "either you're slinging crack rock or you've a wicked jump shot" - what is the cause of this mentality that is prevalent amongst some people?  Prison isn't going to fix any of these problems. 

Innocent people get harmed everyday.  Once in a while, a story will hit the news that gets everyone talking about how awful crime is – usually a story about a person with “so much potential” who was murdered at a young age.  Hours later, everyone moves on with their lives and says: “That’s terrible. Good thing that didn’t happen to me.  At least the killer will be in prison so I don’t have to worry about it.”  

Instead of focusing on permanent changes to our social system and solving these issues, we temporarily lock our problems away.

Viewpoint 2:

The fact that there are currently people killing other people, stealing from other people, raping other people, selling substances with malicious and addictive properties to other people, and physically harming other people, troubles me.  Why should a person harm another person in any way?  These people are a danger to society.  They disgust me.  How can we live with these types of people around?   They should be holed up until they die. 

I’m more of a believer in Viewpoint 1 than Viewpoint 2, but I don’t know how to reconcile these two views and what the proper resolution is.

I think in the future I’ll type more about some different crimes like drug use/dealing and stealing for which I believe there may be answers, but I want to address murder here.

Human on human killing is something I can’t understand.  It’s an unfathomable act to me, but killing, in general, is a major aspect of life.  Animals kill animals.  Animals kill humans. Humans kill animals (probably an astonishing number throughout history if you think about it).  Human kills humans.  Killing another human during a war is “ok” but killing another human outside of war is a terrible act.

What is the cause of murder?  I guess in some cases you can point to basic human traits – jealousy, anger, greed, competitiveness, and survival instincts.  Then, there are ideological differences. “Hate Crimes”.  Biological composition - insanity. 

Has anyone ever talked to someone who has killed another person?  I’d like to hear about that.

Killing is an act that I’m not sure how to prevent.  Problem is that I feel like it’s driven by basic human emotion in many cases.  There aren’t really any changes that can be made to societal structures that will stop murder because the cause of murder isn’t related to these constructs.  You can threaten people all you want with the death penalty and prison, but if someone wants to murder someone, they’ll probably do it anyway.

I do think there are better ways to get over ideological differences and that all-out wars can be thwarted, but obviously, history doesn’t agree with me and large-scale battles have occurred numerous times.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

A lot of people have told me that I have a problem with being overly pessimistic.  So when I was reading “Is Life Worth Living?” by Williams James the other day, I was happy to learn that most of it was about pessimism.  Also I think I am losing my memory because I’ve definitely read this before but forgot about it almost entirely.

James’ argument is that pessimism is caused by a conflict between (i) the natural life which we experience everyday and (ii) the desire to experience something greater than nature (a religious or supernatural purpose or perhaps an “afterlife”). 

Put in other terms, “if I am going to ultimately die anyway, and what I do in this physical life has no purpose beyond that, what’s the point of me living at all?”  

Another common question is “why is there evil in this world if God is good and God created this world?”.  Certain evils like death seem inexplicable and absolutely awful.

In James’ words:

“Every phenomenon that we would praise there exists cheek by jowl with some contrary phenomenon that cancels all its religious effect upon the mind.  Beauty and hideousness, love and cruelty, life and death keep house together in indissoluble partnership; and there gradually steals over us, instead of the old warm notion of a man-loving Deity, that of an awful power that neither hates nor loves, but rolls all things together meaninglessly to a common doom”.

The two solutions he offers for alleviating pessimism are:

1.     Don’t believe or think about anything religiously.  Take the world “as is”. 

2.     Continue to view everything in a religious way and build your faith through “supplementary facts” and experiences.

Solution 1 doesn’t appeal to me because I have an inclination to think about a supernatural purpose all of the time.  I guess basic “natural” reasons to live are to improve this world for the next generation or out of respect for ancestors who allowed us to be in the position we are in now.  There’s probably a lot more, but that’s not really how I think.

Solution 2 is how I live.  I’d like to think there is a greater purpose to life than just this physical world that I can sense around me.  I have a desire for it (along with other things, like knowledge).  Maybe I’m wrong, but if I don’t believe in a greater purpose, I’ll never have any chance of finding it.

When you think about it (or at least when I think about it, if you disagree with me), everything hinges upon belief or desire:

Belief that I might get a job if I apply >>>>> application>>>>> interview >>>> job

Belief that my girlfriend will marry me if I ask >>>> proposal >>>>>>> marriage 

Belief that there can be a cure for cancer>>> clinical trials>>> cancer treatments and maybe a cure someday.

Belief that someone might read my thoughts >>>> writing >>>> blog>>people reading

Belief that life might exist outside of Earth >>> telescopes/spaceships/satellites >>>> discoveries about other planets, etc. 

All of these beliefs are driven by a human desire – knowledge, love, health, etc.

If you have a desire within you for a religious/supernatural purpose, why not continue to believe?  That’s that only way you will ever have a chance of fulfilling your dreams.

For "agnostics" – you should definitely check out James’ essays.  May lead you in a different direction or affirm your agnosticism.  Either way, I think it’s time worth spending.

There are some people out there who always seem happy or always seem depressed.  I’d like to hear your view on this subject.

I've been thinking about using thesaurus.com more so I don't repeat words like belief and desire 1 million times, but I was too lazy today.

Philosophy of Physics

I am having trouble focusing right now after a long day out (including private karaoke with someone who may have been the lead singer of Journey) but I wanted to type something.

In college, I took a class called Philosophy of Physics.  Never liked physics, but it sounded cool. It ended up being one of my best classes, so I was thinking of blogging about quantum this weekend (I like the word "quantum" by the way).  Quickly, my thoughts moved to another subject.

The best thing about that class was my professor, Father Ron Anderson.  He was undoubtedly one of the most passionate, intelligent, open-minded, mild-mannered and articulate people I have ever met.  He truly cared about his students.  

At one point when I was enrolled in the class, I was in a "funk".  It was the first semester of senior year.  I was having a difficult time finding a job, and I was skipping a lot of my classes and not really doing anything useful with my time.  I skipped Father Anderson's class (at the time, I felt awful about it because of the great deal of respect I had for him; it was already a really small class, and it only met once a week).

So, I emailed the weekly paper to him and created an excuse for missing class.  He offered for me to come into his office on another day to talk about the readings.  I accepted and when I got there, we didn't really talk about the paper.  I think he could sense I was struggling, and we had a conversation about what my aspirations were and what I wanted to do with my life (the kind of conversation that makes you think "why does this person care so much about me and my happiness?").  I was blown away by his thoughtfulness.

After this conversation, things went back to normal.  I started attending class again.  That was the only time I had an extended one-on-one talk with him.

In class, Father Anderson used to go around the room and ask each student for their opinions on the week's reading.  I was always nervous because I was often ill-prepared, didn't fully understand the topics, and am not the most eloquent speaker.  What I realized from this activity was that Father Anderson was an outstanding listener.  Every time someone spoke, he understood their thoughts, expanded on them, and offered suggestions to that person.  He quelled all of the anxiety I had and made my thoughts seem relevant.  In addition, Father Anderson would send emails to the class about articles he thought were interesting and maintained a website with links relating to different philosophical subjects - if there was a man who lived for others, in my mind, it was him.

About a year after I graduated, I was looking at the BC philosophy website and learned that Father Anderson passed away at the age of 57.  It was unexpected and truly shocked me.  I was upset about it for a while and it really made me question what I was doing with my life.  How could this happen to such a great man?  Even with limited personal contact outside of class, Father Anderson was instrumental in shaping my life.  Why didn't I thank him for any of the things he did for me and others?  I should have done more.  I will never be as great of a person as he was.