Evolving Beyond Money

What value does money have in our society? Is it a tool, or an evolutionary cul-de-sac?

Yes, money allows us to trade commodities, and it forms a baseline for exchange of goods and services. What are the value of these things in our society? It's convenient, yes, but think of all the meaningless actions we are all forced into in order to acquire money. No human can deny that deep in one’s soul, there somewhere resonates the truth of the statement: All work is meaningless.  In fact, I’d go as far as to say that our station in life and in society is determined by how much time and effort we wish to devote to fooling ourselves that this is not so.

 Is it possible we could trade based on something else? Is it possible to exchange the necessary goods and services we need to live without currency? Is it possible we as a species are being held back simply by being forced into this fear-based scarcity mindset where we MUST spend—not a portion—but the majority of our day engaged in useless activity, for which we are barely compensated and meagerly thanked, in order to fill our plates and keep our homes? We are giving our lives up for… what exactly? We are living inside the bones of a dinosaur that has been dead before our fathers’ fathers’ fathers were conceived. Can we not conceive of something else?

I am not a communist. I see that that modality failed. I’m just a common man who believes that we as a species are better than this. We are better than money. We no longer need to be wage slaves, for it is our own doing. Perhaps simply acknowledging this fact is the first step in creating a dialogue around how we as a species can evolve.