Money is not the point of life- but the trick is, if you can convince people that it is, you can make yourself rich in the process.


   I always think we the story of the Israelites escaping Egypt is so important in the world's religions- and why are religions from the Mid East so dominant? Why didn't west african religion or religion from the south pacific spread over the whole world? The fertile river valleys of the middle east are probably where people migrating out of Africa landed and it's where civilization has been the longest as far as we know.

   The Egyptians were really wealthy and had a hierarchical society- the closer to the Pharoah you were, the more power you got. Power is the freedom to do what you want, and property confers power. This is the problem in the liberal paradigm of liberty- liberty is a zero sum game- some people increase their liberty at the expense of others.

      The reason people want money is to satisfy their desires, but the more you feed the desires, the bigger they get, like feeding a fire. If you drive a fast car it is fun for a while, but soon you want a faster car. If you are doing cocaine, you just want more and more. If you have a hot woman, you want a hotter one.

   That's why the spiritual teachers have taught that the key to happiness is not money, but appreciation. If we focus on being grateful for what we have and making the best of it, we will be happy. A good way to be grateful is to remember that we didn't create any of what we have, and to remember where all of what we have, body, health, air, water, food, family, where it came from.

      The American revolution was essentially about property- the feudal system was that God owns everything, and the Pope or Cardinal says that the King is the King because God says so, and then everyone just leases their property from the King. The American revolution said that anybody can own stuff- this was also the same basic message of Islam. So probably these ideas worked their way up into Europe, resulting in the Enlightenment and then the American revolution. But people are missing the message that property is not the purpose of life- the purpose of life is to remember where we came from, and to use our property not just for unlimited personal gratification, but to use for to do good. Property is just a means to live and an opportunity- what we give we take with us when we die, and what we keep for ourselves we leave behind.