A Destructive Relationship
In an interesting conversation with a client today, we discussed how money impacts on our behaviors. It started off with an interesting comment where he said,
If I won a few million dollars, the first thing I would do is work out how to hide it from people.
This is not an uncommon thought here, because this is a culture that is jealous of other people's wins, not celebratory. But, it also indicates another issue which is common globally, that most people have a poor relationship with money. Which led into another branch of the discussion, which is how a friend of his, a very wealthy person, is also very, very cheap and when they meet up for a beer, it is never their round.
Now, my client puts this down to the personality of the rich, where they are stingy with their money, which is how they got rich in the first place, and this might be the case. However, I don't think that is the norm and instead think there is a different reason - that they also have an unhealthy relationship with money.
Several times through various posts, I have noted how percentage gain can be an irrelevant factor to report, where for example, someone can say "I made 400% in a month on xxxx token!" as proof of their trading prowess. Yet, most of these announcements don't measure the volume of the trade, so while the percentage might be amazing, the impact could be completely irrelevant. If for instance, I made 400% on HIVE, it is going to matter a lot whether it is on 1 HIVE, or 100,000 HIVE. If the former, I can't buy a cup of coffee. If the latter, I can buy a Ferrari.
Impact.
And this is why I think there can be an unhealthy money relationship in play, because the person in question that is stingy on a beer, is not considering the impact of the transaction on their life, which is essentially zero. Instead, they are focusing only on the cost of the beer, with the position that all expenses should be avoided. However, this doesn't factor in the actual value of having a beer with a friend, nor the greater impact the cost makes on someone who has far less resources. Again, this is common here and I have a couple of friends who are equally stingy on what are for them, irrelevant costs. And I think this can indicate a scarcity mindset, even in times of abundance, which can be unhealthy.
I think it would be healthier to think of money in terms of the impacts it makes on our lives, as this will also give us an indication as to how much we may need to get to where we want to be. Most of don't have all the possibility we would like and that might always be the case, but what goals do we have and what do we need to get us there? And, once we reach that level, how are we going to behave?
Quite often, once we reach one level, we will look to reach another, but like in the hierarchy of needs, we might change what our focus is. If for example, we are looking to improve our quality of life, we have to also think about what that actually means - rather than it being some abstract form where "money increases quality", because there are no boundaries on how much money and as we know, more money doesn't automatically mean better life. We also know that not enough is a pretty good indicator of a lower quality of life too.
As a society, cultures and through individual behaviors, the vast majority of us have a poor relationship with money due to our conditioning. We are taught that it doesn't buy happiness, yet at the same time, our experience tells us that not having enough to get what we want, impacts on our happiness. We also know that having enough, doesn't automatically make us happy, yet we are also driven to spend money in order to get that dopamine kick from feeding desires.
It really is an area where we are filled with conflict, which is natural, because money is a concept that has been introduced to represent value, but it isn't actually valuable itself.
And to end with, one of my colleagues was also talking about this today, where he was saying how we started to get sick once we began farming. This led to a conversation where I believe that most of what we do now, doesn't have any meaning, but when we were hunter gatherers, everything we did had a purpose.
Even though there may have been no tokenized trade among a single tribe, each person had a valuable role to play, and activities were centered around creating value for the tribe, or the individual. Activities weren't done for entertainment alone, they were part of something larger, which brought value to the community, and therefore brought purpose and identity meaning. Now however, we do a lot of useless tasks and ascribe meaning to them to build our identity, even if the activity itself doesn't add any value - making it very precarious as a platform for personal purpose.
If we have a healthy relationship with money however, we see it as a tool for access to value, not as valuable itself. This means that if we are looking to make a positive impact on our lives, the money itself is not the relevant factor, but what we are able to do with it and for most people, sitting down and having a beer with a friend is more valuable and makes more impact on life, than the cost of the beer itself.
And maybe this is what we should also consider in terms of our relationship with money. As a proxy for value, is the goal to collect all we can, or enable a better life for ourselves and those we care about. Looking from a tribal perspective, all the money in the world, doesn't mean that society is healthy, if there are massive disparities between conditions and opportunities within. It is equally unhealthy if people feel that they can get all the benefits of the community, but not add value themselves.
Something to mull over a drink with friends. No matter who buys the round.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
