Wealth
_I: Throughout history, humans have forged a sense of security in material goods, in the things they can accumulate. They feel secure having things that affirm them in life. And, the strange thing is that although everyone seeks to obtain things to feel secure, at the same time they criticize or detest those who managed to have them. Where does this dichotomy in relation to wealth come from?
_AM: We have ever talked about what “wealth” means. In Latin languages, Wealth comes from the Indo-European “reg”, which means to govern, direct, set limits, which gave rise to the Gothic term “reiks” which means Powerful, and therefore originated the words king and queen, or the concept of be financially rich. In English, the word “wealth” comes from “wel” which means to be well, with the suffix “-th” denoting the general concept of being well in all aspects. Welfare.
_I: Therefore, etymologically it is the ability to govern one's own well-being.
_AM: That's right. But to achieve this well-being, it is necessary to fight for it. Nature seems harmonious, and it is, but in a constant battle for resources. We do not see that battle, because each being has managed to interact with the other in a state of symbiosis that allows the continuity of the species without destroying each other. But in essence, the energy exchange is primordial and sometimes voracious. All in order to get a little energy. The plants looking for light, stepping on each other, the animals consuming the plants, the predators hunting their prey... And then, the human appears. He himself is not out of this game, and therefore he must strive to obtain this energy. The more energy it can store, the more time to develop new things. When an individual accumulates goods necessary for basic survival, he achieves something very important that will define human societies and their development.
_I: What?
_AM: Time. The time previously invested in getting food or water, or a place to sleep, begins to be invested in other things, in developing tools, ideas, art. In this way, an individual has more time to plan strategies that allow him to obtain greater security to maintain what he eats, where he sleeps and what he produces. Time is the most important unit of value, since things obtain their value more from the time required for their production than from the product itself. Buying a bottle of water, which is easily produced by purifying the water from springs or lakes, is not the same as buying a bottle of aged tequila, for which the agave needs about 7 years to be harvested and 12 to 36 months in be produced. The development time of something has more value than the object itself, it is precisely what gives value to things. Thus, the work of people to achieve something is what gives value to the result. This was creating a work culture that sought one's own well-being. This created the ideas of wealth. Do you remember what it was like in Atlantis?
_I: Yes. In the Atlantean colonies they did not talk about poverty as we do today, and this was because the different social sectors were considered to be “rich” in different aspects. There were those rich in fish, those rich in cows, those rich in wheat, those rich in goats, those rich in knowledge, those rich in transportation... Different riches that made everyone prosperous.
_AM: This idea is useful during times of stability, but it wasn't always that way. When moments of social instability, climate changes, insecurity due to invasions arrived; The regent (or king) took the reins of society and commanded. In many cases, the growing planetary instability turned Atlantean society around, turning to autarchies, to authoritarianisms, which, as in many parts of the world, ended up becoming absolute monarchies. Absolutism is a form of regency in times of crisis, which became systematic because it is a tool of greater control and generator of power. The kings and queens ensured the stability of a country, since their life and its succession to their children implied an image of balance and state strength in the face of its possible enemies. And, to show that they had power, they had to show the things they were capable of achieving. An austere king denoted poverty of resources, someone who did not have finances to support warriors, armies. But a king dressed in gold, which showed the opulence of his life, denoted respect, because if he possessed so many things, it meant that he could also maintain a large army.
_I: A matter of appearances… He dressed up, in a way, to show power…
_AM: And that power, as we have seen before, was granted from the divine, when since the shamanic era, thousands of years ago, the regent was anointed by totemic voices. The ruling families of civilizations continued this tradition, and thus, the internal spiritual power with the external material power came together to form the powerful social class. Their appearances could not be like that of a normal citizen, they had to impose themselves almost on the level of the gods. This made their opponents see them as divinities on Earth, and they feared facing them. The accumulation of wealth was a symbol of security, but due to these absolutisms, it also became an image of dominance. Many regents did not use these decorations to scare away enemies, but to even make their own people afraid. In the towns you could see how those who previously worked to obtain resources in life became corrupted to get a place closer to the king or queen. After the revolutions, the feudal lords became bourgeois, and created the first businesses, which gave security to the most common citizens. There were opportunities for growth. However, tradition maintained the belief that those who became rich, by having more, were also more. And like the regents, they began to empower themselves at the expense of their employees as if they were slaves, subjects. This ancient tradition that he who has more becomes more empowered generated a string of individuals who sought power over all things, beyond the material; They pretended to be masters of everything. That is where the idea of wealth is corrupted. You understand? It is there where wealth stops being seen as a symbol of security, and becomes a symbol of oppression.
_I: Yes, I understand, of course. For the average individual, the pursuit of wealth is having what is necessary and the security of maintaining it over time; and above all, to be able to save time, to be able to develop other things, ideas, projects, leisure, in a certain way, to be able to live, and stop surviving. But those who saw power, dominion, regency in that accumulation, used the resources of life to control others, putting themselves above everyone.
_AM: This is what created the idea that “rich people are bad.” And society has attributed the problems of inequality to the rich, when that is not the case. It is not the rich who make the world unequal, it is the powerful who make it this way. They are those who save without sharing, those who manage without planning, those who accumulate without development. That is why throughout so many struggles against the powerful, slavers, colonizers, dictators, the world's idea of wealth began to be contradicted.
_I: Everyone wants to win and be rich, but at the same time they blame the rich for making everyone else poor. How is this solved?
_AM: The revolutionary movements of the 18th century that initiated the independence of most of the countries of the Americas, and the migration movements of the oppressed peoples of Europe to the new continent in the 19th century, as well as the wave of separations and independence of the territories of Africa and Asia, gave power to individuals, the poor and slaves that had never been seen before in history, and even though many inequalities continue to exist today, we must never forget that all these achievements do not take more 245 years old. That is, only three complete lives of consecutive individuals in history, each having lived an average of 80 years.
_I: It's very close... Very little time.
_AM: Very little to resolve an inequality enacted for at least 10 thousand years of human history, a time in which about 125 generations of 80 years each would enter (something impossible because living to 80 is something more recent, since the average life span 1,000 years ago it was 60, 2,000 years ago it was 50, and 10,000 years ago it was 40).
_I: Sure… Many millennia of living in a way that has only begun to change in almost 3 centuries, and whose change has only grown exponentially over the last 20 years.
_AM: In these 300 years, the struggles for independence from absolutist powers, the wars for freedom, the ideological revolutions, the end of slavery, the beginning of the free market, human rights; All of this has led to an uprising against the concept of the powerful of the past, against the fiefdoms, kingdoms and bourgeoisie, which developed philosophies such as social communism, which sought to eliminate the possibility of wealth. Another of those mistakes that are made, like with money or the security forces.
_I: We believe that the object or subject is the problem, thinking that by eliminating it, we get rid of the problem, when that is not the case.
_AM: The problem is the concept, it is the handling of the object or subject that makes it harmful. The only reason why someone works is to obtain resources that give them stability and tranquility, but above all, to obtain personal freedom of development. Preventing wealth is preventing the will to develop, since wealth and development go hand in hand; since wealth is produced in development. And on the contrary, wealth without development produces stagnation. You cannot control wealth, but you can enable development mechanisms for individuals. Wealth cannot be distributed, as we have said, since it removes the possibility of development of the individual. And the wealth accumulated and without development, when distributed equally, is exhausted, leaving more people in poverty than before.
_I: This is what is seen in many countries today... I see, especially in Latin America, how many societies have taken from those who produce, to give to others who do not produce, in principle with an equitable purpose, to distribute wealth , but not to provide opportunities, which causes more and more poor people, and this leads to dependency, which is unsustainable, only useful for authoritarian states that seek power over wealth. The discourse of “loving the poor” and “hating the rich”, but at the same time talking about development and growth. Isn't that a bipolar idea?
_AM: From natural laws, it is an illogical thought. The ideas of the poor and the rich were designed in social revolutions, as Karl Marx said: “Class Struggle.”
_I: How is this understood?
_AM: It is one of the postulates furthest from Humanism that you can understand. Well, it distances individuals from their humanity, from their being, to determine it in the concept of classism. According to these ideas, capitalism divides Society into classes, that is, there is a “classification” of people, from those who have the least (indigent) to those who have the most (powerful) through the poor, lower class, class middle, middle class – upper, upper class, rich, millionaires and billionaires. The struggle occurs in the voracity of the system in which individuals of a class must fight to rise to the highest class, competing among themselves, destroying each other, while those of the highest classes put all their resources at their disposal. to prevent those below from rising and taking their place. They abuse money and power to control the mechanisms that regulate those from lower classes.
_I: But… That's something like that nowadays.
_AM: Yes, it is. However, the solution to this is not the best either. Well, the proposal is to take it to the extre_I: eliminate all these classes and distribute the money among all individuals equitably so that everyone has the same, and prevent some from having more.
_I: Communist distribution.
_AM: In theory, both capitalism and communism work. In practice no.
_I: But why do we use one or the other? Or, why does capitalism seem to work?
_AM: Communism in theory is a story of equality that destroys personal freedoms and goes against what truly gives value to things. Do you remember which one it was?
_I: Time.
_AM: In communism, if a simple and mechanical job, like delivering mail, takes you 2 hours a day to do, you will earn 1000 dollars a month, and your neighbor who has decided to be a cardiologist and to do his job has had to Study 6 years of your life, plus specialties and annual improvement courses, you will have to carry out operations for long hours, you will earn $1,000 at the end of the month. Everyone will have the same thing, but one will have invested a month of practice and the other years of his life saving lives.
_I: One would say that it detracts from a job in this way. But does this mean that one doctor has more value than another, or that medicine does not have to be public and free?
_AM: Deserve, Merit, comes from the Indo-European “mere” which means to share, which led to the concepts of “the parts” and ended up being interpreted in Latin as obtaining a part, and from there to gaining something. Being part of something of which you take a fragment, is the merit. It is the basis of work, the physical, emotional and mental enrichment of a being. All work is worthy of merit, from the person who sweeps the street to the greatest businessman. Merit is a personal achievement, of an individual, that no one can take away from you due to ideology. On the other hand, life is a right and, as such, health, from teaching how to live to curing an illness, should be available to those who contribute to its healing. Merit and public health could go hand in hand if it were understood that health is not a service given by the government to the people, but a right paid for by citizens' taxes.
_I: Sure, I understand, the government is like that box where citizens deposit to be able to obtain services in exchange…
_AM: One generates wealth by working freely to achieve one's own merits, and sharing a part with society, returning it in the form of services. But when these services are merely useful for policies, it stops being a system of wealth and becomes a system of poverty. This is why communism and socialist ideas usually fail without merit, because the basis of every individual is development, and it can only be shared from wealth, not from poverty. So, to oppose the rich is to lose the battle. We must not make people less rich so that others can have and stop being poor, but rather we must encourage the poor to be richer.
_I: And why isn't this done?
_AM: Because a rich person feels confident in their power, is capable of developing themselves, saves time, thinks, grows, is free, and therefore does not depend on policies. Politics, which instead of seeking wealth seeks power, needs people who depend on them, both rich and poor, to sustain their state.
_I: So the problem is the politics of the powerful.
_AM: And you can't eliminate them... Because they are not the real problem.
_I: Which one is it?
_AM: People do not feel rich inside, they do not have their own power, strength, or abundance, and this leads them to look for it outside, devouring what is around them. This is how a person becomes disharmonious and loses his or her core. It is internal growth, the development of the being, the real key to the solution of all problems.
_I: And what about capitalism as a current symbol of wealth?
_AM: Businessmen are the equivalent of politicians on these issues. Those businessmen who live to obtain power generate inequality and competition. The fundamental key is freedom of individual development, but at a very high cost: the famous class struggle. It is a devastation of people, taken as generating resources, energy producers, and not as humans. It doesn't work because, even though it boasts of its ability to generate wealth, there are still poor people.
_I: Why?
_AM: For the same reason there are powerful politicians, because they forget that the fundamental basis of abundance is sharing, and sharing is not giving, but generating opportunities. When we provide opportunities for others to grow with us, we grow much more. The group's momentum generates greater growth and expansion.
_I: So the solution to wealth is to change the concept we have of it, understanding it as a way to govern ourselves, to develop ourselves, and that to achieve it, we must do it in a network, growing among everyone, and not against everyone, no giving us the result, but the process.
_AM: The balance lies right there. In transcending the idea that you have to take from some to give to others, or that you have to free everything so that everyone can compete and grow as they want. We must come to the idea that what should be given is the opportunity for constant growth, interactively, in networks. And this is achieved by awakening the will of individuals to develop their being as human as they are, physically, emotionally and mentally.
_I: Arduous task…
_AM: We have lived in the same systems for 10,000 years, only 300 since we began to transform them... I think we will continue to have time... Well, time is our true wealth.
_I: Patience then…
_AM: But without stopping. Time is the true value of life, and what you do with your time can make a difference in history.
_I: I recognize the wealth in me, and I accept myself as being rich, in order to spread that wealth in the networks of the future.
_AM: Start by reminding everyone of their worth. Take a deep breath, and regain courage in yourself.
_I: And with that courage, I set out to develop a new world.