What does the love of money mean to you?

Some say that (love of) money is the root of all evil. To want more money than you can spend or need for a materially secure and comfortable life is what Buddhists call an attachment. Attachments are the basis for deep spiritual suffering--or perhaps I should just say obstructions to a joyful life.

Great reply I did not know what Buddhists call an attachment. Attachments are the basis for deep spiritual suffering--or perhaps I should just say obstructions to a joyful life.
Thank you for sharing

It seems that most of us are taught to fail at joyful living.

What would be the point of trying to love anything that can't love you back... I do trust that much of what people say they love really has love at the end of it, that if, for example, they have money, that they will be loved... What money is, is a certain form, ultimately, a moral form, and one given meaning by those who subscribe to it... If you can contrast money with something it must be honor... Where there is no money, honor is essential, and where money is dear, honor is cheap... Where honor is dear, money is non-existent....If you have no money, it is likely you have little of anything, and it is all the more essential for the purpose of social living that everyone in the community have honor... Money is really a substitute, or replacement for honor... We presume when we see some wealthy person that they came by their wealth honorably, and presume as much of the poor, that they have no honor, and are rewarded for their dishonor by poverty... We presume as much of the maimed and injured because we think a just and kind God would not reward injustice and punish virtue, but I have yet to see where justice or even kindness has ever been shown a quality of God in the Bible or anywhere... It is some belief out of our childlike simplicity of mind, and it does not bear rational examination... Yet, it motivates people to the greatest of sins that more fully destroy society and social amity better than anything... Some people accept a tangible justification by God, so that if blessed by God, or found worthy, that God rewards in a tangible fashion... I trust that many Jews believe so, but that they suffer a great deal to show themselves as blessed even if it comes at the price of much social resentment... In its proper light, money should be seen like honor as a curse, and a worse curse than honor...To have wealth above the mean one must take it out of the wealth of others... To have honor one must defened it, like money, but all could be equally honorable, though the reality is that some were considerqbly more honored and honorable...When wealth is honor it is possible for some people to destroy the entire meaning of honor and wealth, of wealth as honor...It is because honor as a moral form cannot be lived without.. If all the money departs into the hands of the rich, the poor still need to be perceived and to percieve themselves as honorable, and in the process of demanding the honor they need to survive, the rich might find themselves deprived of honor and their money devalued to meaningless...

This seems true to me but I wonder if we both see it as closely as I think we might. Could you give more detail of what you mean or an example? Thanks

That is one of the stupidest things ever.

Wealth has never been equally distributed nor is it a finite resource. Since wealth is not equally distributed half will have a wealth above the mean and half will be below.

Wealth can be created without taking it from anyone else. One can do it any time. If I buy a stock for $50, hold unto the stock for 4 years and don't sell it and the value of that stock is $100 then I clearly have more wealth, but I haven't taken that wealth from anyone.

Thanks for sharing your view points because I need all of the opposition I can get to disprove what I will be talking about in this thread.
It will be like a peer review for me!



I do agree with you but not your example!

...actually you took it from what people ought to value more at one time or another...nevertheless wealth was produced certainly not out of your own effort in the example you provide us with...

...the problem with wealth is not that it may be concentrated at some point but rather that it does n´t circulate for the benefice of others...(it should work a bit like the sun works...instead sometimes it works more like a black hole....a matter of bad linear accounting regarding for instance the intricate web of universal resources consumption and their impact...)

Regarding ideas for instance one should constantly be reminded that human brain and learning processes work like a control copy/paste machine through imitation since young age...in a global economy and in a web culture ideas hardly could bottom to top come out of one mind alone...and yet the profit coming out of them hardly benefits the majority...

...by benefit it is to say or to mean paying the rightful price for them...monopoly's, trusts, and market manipulation, make it hard to work...

...it is not that I am against profit in some sort of moral absent minded cliché...I am just against indecent profit !

It's because the values we are taught to live by contradict the things we need to do to stay alive. From childhood we are taught sound moral values, never mind the fact that our wealth in the western world is founded on a large scale, continuous violation of these very same values. Yay capitalism..

U sure that u 've got enuf questions there ???

Really??? Dig up the bones of Michael De Montaingne and call him a liar... He said the gain of one is the loss of another... Maybe the laws of profit and loss have changed since then, but clearly, as the rich grow richer, the poor grow more hopeless...

True... Nature and labor creat value, but it must be expropriate as surplus labor by means of wages to become wealth, and wealth is only what it is in relation to the mean -which is now poverty... If everyone where equally wealthy, no one could be considered wealthy... It is wealth amid poverty that makes wealth desirable...

I would read a small essay by Michael De Montaigne called: The Profit of One Man is the Loss of Another... Of course, this treats of Capitalism as though in a closed system which modern capitalism has often tried to deny, but now we may be beginning to understand how international is capitalism, and how much of a closed system capitalism really is, even internationally...

It does seem true, If people would ponder the thought they may see this as well!

Have you noticed how we may have psychopaths [or some other reason that has not been shared} downing this thread and replies made on it, without standing up and pointing out the fallacies that they are suggesting exist?

Quote:
Demades the Athenian—[Seneca, De Beneficiis, vi. 38, whence nearly the whole of this chapter is taken.]—condemned one of his city, whose trade it was to sell the necessaries for funeral ceremonies, upon pretence that he demanded unreasonable profit, and that that profit could not accrue to him, but by the death of a great number of people. A judgment that appears to be ill grounded, forasmuch as no profit whatever can possibly be made but at the expense of another, and that by the same rule he should condemn all gain of what kind soever. The merchant only thrives by the debauchery of youth, the husband man by the dearness of grain, the architect by the ruin of buildings, lawyers and officers of justice by the suits and contentions of men: nay, even the honour and office of divines are derived from our death and vices. A physician takes no pleasure in the health even of his friends, says the ancient Greek comic writer, nor a soldier in the peace of his country, and so of the rest. And, which is yet worse, let every one but dive into his own bosom, and he will find his private wishes spring and his secret hopes grow up at another’s expense. Upon which consideration it comes into my head, that nature does not in this swerve from her general polity; for physicians hold, that the birth, nourishment, and increase of every thing is the dissolution and corruption of another:

We have collectively increased our wealth over that of the Aztec emperors. I have far more comforts than did Moctezuma. Nevertheless he was considered the wealthiest man in the world while I clearly am not. The size of the pie has increased since the 1500s, so the zero-sum situation many people assume when they consider one man's gain to NECESSARILY entail some other man's loss ain't necessarily so.
The statement you made is too often true: "If everyone [were] equally wealthy, no one would be considered wealthy...It is wealth amid poverty that makes wealth desireable." It is a symptom of spiritual illness if you ask me.
Your quotation suggests that it is, what sociologists call, "relative poverty" that counts most. I know peasants in Mexico who by our standards are literally dirt poor but who--because they own a cow and an old burro--are considered by their envious neighbors to be rich. I suspect that the riots in London reflects young looters' sense of relative deprivation. This is suggested by the goods they prefer to steal: things like sneakers, smart phones and other appliances their wealthier age peers seem to be enjoy.

psychopaths downing this thread?

I haven't thumbed it down, myself, but I haven't worked up a paragraph in response yet, nor have I worked up one for your question about malnutrition (something like, how can that happen?) on another thread, reasoning logic.

Both of those questions/assumptions make me too angry to post.

Very observant of you, I do think that you have made a good point!

I do think that if we continue to look closer that we may be able to see other problems as well with the riots, I think that the citizens are starting to see things closely as they did in this video series!

Not trying to make you mad but your point of view could add value to our understanding of things!
Assumptions are not all that bad as long as you do not believe them to be absolutes!
I try not to believe in assumptions, This is how I kind of see it!