Money

I find myself in a very strange relationship with money. I love to spend it, it's great; very much aware that the feeling that 'I want something but I don't know what it is so I'll go and engage in capitalism,' is bound up with a nonessential lacking that is foisted upon me I am quite happy to try to satiate the unsatiatable by buying larges amounts of shit (proverbial, not literal... though if shit were a commodity I would quite likely desire it as well). I have a frequent fantasy which involves my winning the lottery. If I won a few million I would squander it by hiring the lobby of a hotel (similar to the one that Christopher Walken dances in in the Fatboy Slim video), pay Pink Floyd to play 'Money' while I danced about naked, rolling gratuitously in piles of notes with small children throwing notes from the balcony to flutter through the air like the sweetest of capitalist rain.

On the other hand, I hate money. Not just because it inspires me to buy things that I don't want, but because of what it does to relationships between persons. Despite my dire money problems I try my hardest to not borrow money from friends. The lending of money seems like a fairly innocent exchange, when I am feeling flash I'm quite happy to lend friends whatever amount that they wish. This brings the level of the friendship, if not explicity then definately implicity, to debtor - debtee. a contractual relationship becomes formed on the abstract quantity. Things continue happily enough until debtor needs some cash and asks debtee for their money back. Sometimes the debtee is unable to give the debtor back their money and an argument occurs. A argument based up the breaking of a contractual relationship which capitalism forces us to engage with. I have had such arguments myself 'How dare you not return the flow of capital which I so willingly gave you?' Debtor is put in place of feeling bad for having to ask for money back, debtee feels bad because s/he is unable to return the amount which has little founding in any reality beyond the machine of capitalism. Thus friendship, along with everything else, falls within the sphere of money. Why can't we just exchange things that matter rather than abstract quatities... 'I give you 3 sheep for your cow.' (Though maybe the Pink Floyd 'Money' / hotel fantasy wouldn't work so well with a herd of cattle stomping about and shitting over the balconies).

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