Money, I hope I didn't need any

Note: I risk writing this and being ridiculed for my ignorance, but I, with my almost naive thought process want to get this out of my system.

All these scams around me are supposed to make me insecure and they are making me insecure, unhappy and most importantly making me feel stupid. Last night while watching the perennially acrimonious debate on a news channel I began to think of something that existed long long time ago, and am sure the people back then were happier. These days we accept the currency around us as supreme power and would like to have more of it by any means possible -- we evade taxes, pay bribe to pay less fine or pay bribe to get more out of the deals, or we just don't pay and save more for ourselves. These are all signs that we have used and abused money as means of transaction way too much. We have begun to love the idea of owning it so much that we are not able to see beyond ourselves, for all the destruction that this moolah is causing on its way. One simple example in our fast growing cities like Mumbai. Builders, to make money, are eroding mountains, grabbing mangrove lands or even grabbing kids gardens to make housing complexes, making us display our vulgar stashes of cash balance. The direct result of all these natural and social calamities caused by builders is leading to erratic rainfalls, disturbances in the animal life, and kids sitting home when they ought to run free and play.

Somehow we are all looking through macro lenses of our lives' cameras and are happy at the momentary joy that this act is bringing, and are conveniently ignoring the harsh truth in the blur of the background -- that we are abusing our socio - economic system a little too much. Some day all of us are going to get ourselves the zoom lenses with wide angles and will realize that we are already too late. I wish to somehow change this from happening. I very honestly don't know how but I attempt at addressing at least one problem.

The problem I am going to mention is going to make a lot of banks look at me in disbelief and even make me a laughing stalk. According to me, the root of a lot of our problems is Money. We have given it way too much importance in our lives and society, and are becoming slaves of it. Even little kids understand the value of money when they with their joyous smiles accept money as gifts from relatives. Money is, according to me, the current day caste system and like the caste system that prevailed couple of centuries ago is making us weak as a society. Every time we run behind it we give it that much more importance in our life and we make it that much more glamourous than it is. A gentleman on one of the TV debates mentioned that when we buy a house it is an unsaid rule that we have to pay black amount of cash to own the house to the builder or to the seller of the house. Now some might say it is form of corruption encouraged by government by not at all intervening in these matters. But if you look at the issue from a little different point of view, you will notice it is the greed for more money that sellers ask for more so that they can spend more and they can do more in life. I am averse to the idea that I will live all my life making money to make my life happy, but the truth is our families and our society will make us believe so.

I suggest we go back to olden days when people worked because they liked to, they slogged because they wanted to and they bartered their goods with others for necessities. This way we make our current supreme ruler Money obsolete. This, according to me, would bring about a lot of peace in this world and would also make our standard of life better. I know you must be thinking, "but this is a digressive thought! How on earth are we to make any development, break frontiers and make advancements without money?" I have a simple answer to all of that. I think life should be simple with all our needs being fulfilled, just right with no excess. During the cave men time they all lived together and hunted together. Take the examples of some tribes around the world who live without any means of currency with their own belief system and are happy living like that. We have evolved as human beings and have gone so ahead in areas of how we have structured our society and its rules. We can leverage all of this and make our lives so much more simpler for all of us, by helping each other in what we want to do. Remember even before money was intended humans had ways of developing by exchanging ideas, services or products in return of other such benefits.

Also let me mention that none of the scientific or technological advancements needs to stop. We can have all of it and make ways and means for interested people to make and use these opportunities. I consider myself too small a human with very limited knowledge to propose ways to make this change happen, but I am mighty sure if thought leaders in our world came together for this purpose we can have better meetings than our 'peace talks' and more fruitful than the meetings of UN or NATO or SAARC.

I want you to do me a favour by just thinking about ways this can work and means to make it happen. In our lifetime we might not see that we get pay our doctors by giving him a silver plate or we buy a house with rose made delicacies as a gift to the builder (These thoughts as strange as they might sound now were the way of life for our forefathers) but maybe just maybe our grand children or their children could lead a life which is more pure than what we lead right now. Think please.