WARP EIGHT IN THE SLOW LANE *** FILTHY LUCRE ***
Down through the years, the concept of money has acquired a less than desirable reputation. This is grossly unfair. The money itself has done little to harm anyone or anything. If we had stuck with the barter system, chickens and gossamer flax would have been saddled with the same bad rep.
It is the way people think of money that causes the problem. Up to a certain point, greed is not really a bad thing. That is only true when the greed stems from need. When the greed stems from want, it is indeed despicable. The problem is that people cannot differentiate between needs and wants. But we’ve already covered that.
Past the point of satisfying the basic human needs, the acquisition of money for money’s sake is not a good thing. When the focus is on money alone, it sorely cheapens the activity that is undertaken to get it. There are much better reasons to involve oneself in gainful activity than money.
The first one is enjoyment. Once the basic needs are covered, it is silly as hell to beat yourself to death in an endeavour which you do not enjoy. When I run across a project that looks as if it may be an interesting one, the first item on my checklist is, “Will it be fun?”. If it doesn’t look like it will be, I just plain won’t do it. A lot of things can go into having fun. There are people and challenge and uniqueness and a great deal more. But whatever your personal standards of fun involve, they should be applied to gainful activity.
The second one is whether or not the activity will benefit the world at large in some way. The second item on my checklist is, “Will this project do somebody, somewhere some real good?” If the answer is no, I turn it down. I fully realize how many people would be out of work if we all did that, but perhaps if we did the world would begin to do all those worthwhile things that are being totally ignored just now.
And that is the end of the checklist. If there are too many fun and worthwhile things to do at one time, there are a number of ways to choose which to do. But having fun and doing someone some good are absolute requirements.
Besides, if it’s fun, it is probably interesting to people other than you. And if it will do someone some good, there will be a return of some sort, perhaps even a financial one. Money is the way I keep score on how much good a commercial project does the world at large. If the world buys a lot of it, and sends me money by the truckload, so much the better. That is not bad gravy when you are already happy doing worthwhile things.
Kermit []