Friday, August 21, 2020

#234 / Don't Waste Your Money



Here is a very quick comment, imported from an article in Aeon, an online magazine. You can click right here for the entire article, which is well worth reading. "Money and modern life" is how Aeon  titles its exploration of the ideas of the German sociologist/philosopher Georg Simmel. The article about Simmel contains this very pertinent observation: 

The analysis in ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’ centres on two interlocking social forms: money and the city. As they become dominant, they erode natural rhythms of production and traditional social bonds. This is liberating: cash doesn’t care about birthright, it is ‘concerned only with what is common to all: it asks for the exchange value’. Yet, there is a hidden cost: money reduces what is uniquely valuable to a number, a price. In the right ratio, fine hand-crafted goods are equal to mass-produced junk. This devalues commodities – nothing that can be bought is unique – while simultaneously accelerating the search for whatever is truly unique and incomparably valuable.

Our entire economy is, if we can admit it to ourselves, almost totally based on "mass-produced junk," including, even, our entertainment and "celebrity" industry.

When such is the case, we "waste" our lives, quite literally using our time on Earth to turn natural resources into .....

WASTE




Image Credits:
(1) - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/show-us-the-money-cash-is-the-coronavirus-vaccine-we-need-now-2020-03-19
(2) - http://www.lafourchegov.org/departments/public-works/solid-waste

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