Why is The World System All About Money?

Is the world system all about money? Well, from the beginning of time, humans worked for sustenance. The wife stayed in the house and kept the home because it was dangerous outside. The man went out and brought back food for the household. With time, there was a need for transactions. A group of people seem to have an abundance of some goods and a complete lack of others. Both parties agreed on the value of goods being exchanged. This began the concept of the monetary system.

As civilizations began to take permanent shape and populations became denser, governing bodies created a legal tender to cater for commerce. I’m not here to tell you the history of money. Long story short, humans now work basically for survival. Both man and woman step out the door in search of monetary gain. Yet, families barely take three square meals daily. What has happened to society?

Mom and Dad wake up early in the morning for work and come back late at night. This doesn’t make sense. We work for the money we don’t have to gain a life we lose in the search for money. You will find kids who grow up with parents in the same house but they barely know each other on a personal level. The kid must learn hard to find a good job in future. Dad must work hard to get promoted and earn more. Some fathers measure their worth by their ability to cater for their family financially, yet they don’t have time to build a personal relationship with their children.

Kids are not allowed to chase their dreams and goals because apparently, that industry does not guarantee financial stability. We are even choosing courses for people based on income, wow. There are some who are simply religious because they don’t have enough. Once they have enough money to rely on, that’s their release clause from religion. People would rather marry a rich guy they don’t like than a poor guy they like as if we can determine who will still be rich in future. In some countries, old people can’t even afford to die, literally. Funeral bills are so high that they will crush the family expenses. Some pulled the plug for their mother and father to die because it was eating up all their financial gains.

We say rich people have rich weird diseases but that’s not really the case. When your family cannot afford the healthcare for your illness, it’s bye-bye for you. It’s the rich people who can continue living on medication. Go to hospitals and see desperate mothers negotiating with doctors who cannot possibly do anything about the situation. More people die due to lack of financial aid but no one takes note of such statistics. Imagine doctors and nurses who aren’t paid their worth. Now they look inhuman when they go on strike or refuse to cater for patients who can’t afford the bills.

As aforementioned, people on the brink of survival act instinctively. We are slowly losing our humanity because of monetary gain? Not necessarily. At the instinctive level, human behaviour and animal behaviour are very similar. When you reduce people to survival, they become instinctive. There won’t be enough room for compassion for others. Many are equally dying due to medical negligence because medical practitioners are not comfortable consistently looking with compassion at dying patients.

In urban design, we don’t mix the community of the rich with the poor. The poor will build more resentment toward the rich. As a result, rich neighbourhoods keep on looking “fly” while poor neighbourhoods look like slums. See, when you’re always broke there are very few things in life you care about. Sanitation is definitely not one of them. This explains why poor countries always look filthy and vice versa. With comfort comes the luxury of thinking. Imagine telling a man with a nagging wife and three kids in the university not to walk on the lawn. There are more important things in his life to worry about.

Whenever I walk through town, I see it on every face. It’s the face of survival. It’s not about chasing after money, but about surviving for the day. It makes almost everyone slightly irritated, a consistent complainer and a little insensitive to strangers. That tomato seller has two kids in Nursing Training School. Don’t let the iPhones of the kids fool you. You are annoyed because she is selling in the middle of the street? Don’t you think she knows that it’s dangerous? Don’t even talk about the beautification of the streets because she doesn’t care. All she cares about is making it through the day for another day.

When you’re poor, it is easy to blame the system on rich folks. Poor people believe so much in progressive tax. They don’t see why we should all be taxed the same. The richer you are, the more taxes you ought to pay. In reality, it is more difficult to stay rich than to stay poor. To stay poor, do nothing. To stay rich, you need to beat the system. The system is tougher on rich people than on poor folks. As such, rich people lose more of their humanity in trying to stay rich.

It will shock you to know what you will be willing to do to survive. It will shock you, even more, to know what you will be willing to do to become rich and stay rich. To me, this is one of the major reasons why this life is hard. Not just because it’s all about money. It’s because if you don’t run, the system will overtake you and you’ll become miserable. The monetary value of goods and services inflate and deflate but the standard of living is always increasing. It’s almost like the system is forcing everyone to chase after money. If you don’t run, you can’t even survive.

I throw the question to you? Why is the world system all about money? Is the world system all about money in the first place? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Can something be done about it? Let me know your thoughts.