The Root Of All Evil
For my entire life, to the best of my memory, I can recall one persistent narrative:
“For the love of money is the root of all evil, therefore selfishness must be the seed.” — M. D. Birmingham (which is a take on the quote from 1 Timothy 6:10).
In the most recent decade of my time among the living, I have learned how this belief is wildly misguided. Allow me to defend my reasonings why.
The Ultimate Currency
In the grand scheme of things, money has played a massively important role in the development and progress of history. From the use of seashells as a “money” to the gold coins of Rome or the first fiat currency — the jiaozi of the Song Dynasty in China — to the U.S. dollar today, money has played a pivotal role for humanity.
What money has done, what made it so revolutionary, was that it allowed our species to give physical form to our time and our energy.
Please, take the time to consider that thought.
Time.
The passage of time is one thing that we can never get back. Once it has been spent, there’s no refund. Time is the ultimate currency, forever passing without the ability to return to a prior moment: ever passing, ever spent, ultimately and unequivocally finite.
Whether you go to work every day or you have a hobby that allows you to make a profit from your efforts , you are monetizing your time and your effort that was invested into that job or hobby. That’s precisely what a wage or salary represents — the opportunity cost for
