Editorial

The English word ‘money’ meaning ‘coinage’ or ‘metal currency’ was derived from the French word ‘moneie’ which in turn was derived from the Latin ‘moneta’. Interestingly, Moneta means ‘she who warns’ a title bestowed upon the Roman Goddess Juno in or near whose temple in Rome money was coined. Money appears to have been in circulation during the Sumerian period and whose economics was later refined by the Babylonians with rules on debt, legal contracts and law codes. Prior to this, some 100,000 years ago, history has it that proto money was in circulation, in Swaziland, facilitating the exchange of mutually favoured items between a “buyer” and a “seller”, an exchange known as barter. Many items served as proto-money, like shells and metals and wheat, peppercorn and maize. Later on, the arbitrary use of items was replaced by metals of standard weights as items to be used in exchange for another item. This helped to address the problem of ‘coincidence of wants’. Money as commodity evolved.

A glance at a collection of coins and notes from various countries reveals how each country’s pride in its nationhood or sovereignty is embossed in the motives that are printed on currencies, encompassing its history, its language and its national prides. The symbolism suggests the great importance accorded to money from the highest rungs of society. Each currency is valued against the nation’s economic strength, its lure of investments and its production power.

What about money in an individual’s life? It is this material, money, that fetches food for survival, clothing and shelter, the basic needs of life. It is money that guarantees that little pleasures are taken care of, the little extras of vanity, that little extra that makes one look fashionable, the little bit more of that special bite, that little bit more of convenience to rest our limbs, that little more of comfort and coziness, whichever niche of the world we occupy, even if momentarily. It does not take long to realise that money and the fulfillment of desires are close cousins. The very invitation to think about what money may mean to one, is troubling. It may be troubling because something within resists a revamp of the structure that one has built with money and all the comforts it has helped one to build around oneself.

Money is generally viewed as a material. However, there is an alternate way of viewing our relationship with money. The Mother suggests that money is also a “force” with power behind it, power to make and break, to build and destroy. This then depends on the wielder of this instrument called money. Who is he who is given the use of money ? What drives his motivations, what is his highest need in life? These will determine how he uses this force, money.

We are troubled over the money world of current times, the way it has wound itself into a destructive tension or unwound itself into disarray and breakdown. But how could we have motivated, fueled this chaos (at least as it stands to date) in the money market, with our sets of values on what is important to us?

Some may view money as a curse. Not The Mother. She says that money can become a blessing instead of the curse it now appears to be in many ways. We are left to fathom the knots and tangles and to find a connectedness, between our seemingly unending impulses of desire, their somewhat partial fulfillment and the vehement cry for more and also the real possibility of transcending this state of affairs into freedom from the clutches of this power and to use it in that freedom instead, far removed from personal, narrow, short-sighted gains.

This, one is invited to do without going far; by taking a dive deep down, discovering and recognising first the knots and tangles and then the prime need of one’s life and after that, inquiring into the possible snowball effects of our money moves in every corner of the earth. Read on.