Modern Philosophy of Work and Money - Part I

Working for Money or money for work?

We all work for money and there is no philosophy in it. It is just a way of life, and nobody has time to think or understand any philosophy or view on it. In ordinary life money is usually the prime factor which makes us work, they only reason we seek work. If we are unemployed and searching for work then we are not searching for work because we are unemployed or have enough spare time which can be used for some useful purpose. Our search for job or work is primarily a search for money which we think is the sole root of comforts in life, job or work is a medium through which we lay hands on money. We may or may not be interested in the job or work we are searching for or that we have to do but we are definitely interested in the money that it will fetch.

Why do we need money?

I know it is a stupid question in modern economic scenario. Money is today the only standard scale which is used to scale virtually everything in modern life whether its rank, prestige, name, fame or game. Today everyone and everything is measured in this unique scale, which automatically decides how much happiness or wellbeing we ought to get with these stats. Money is no more treated the way it used to be, artificially printed stationary has overtaken natural laws and instincts. Money is no more a basic requirement to fulfill basic needs of survival. Today our requirement for money gets more serious when these basic requirements get fulfilled to a satisfactory level or even beyond that.

Modern necessities are actually artificial beyond a limit. Any amount of money is little in modern world, we can spend any amount not in years or months but in hours or minutes, which can even happen without leaving our chair. Nothing visible to our eyes or any of our physical senses can eat up an amount which may have taken years or months to accumulate. This type of necessities or hobbies for activities with money were either non existing or unavailable to a common man earlier. There availability means anyone can make a costly mistake and then hop hopelessly for life, if he is unable to recover throughout the rest of his life.

Today when we initially start to work (for the first time) and make some money, we have only few things to manage with this money. When we start earning more, our artificial necessities also increase in proportion a bit more than what we can pay for. Its like a seed we sow, which turns into a plant and then ever expanding tree with ever increasing demand for more air, water and nutrition in the form of money but without any fruitful fruit.

Making money and more money to satisfy ever increasing demand for money to fulfill our artificial necessities can also be compared to a fire we lit for light. We feed this fire of desire with fuel of money. Now, this fire of desire becomes more aggressive or responsive and demands more fuel. This cycle continues until we reach a condition where there is either no fire or no fuel. When we reach this condition, if we are fortunate we inter speculate and rethink our strategy for life and if we are not then we may blame some external source and try to lit the fire again to reach the same conclusion one more time. This todays philosophical story of money.

......to be continued.......