There is a widely held belief among those working in media that audiences prefer “softer” content on weekends, despite statistics not really supporting it. It’s an idea I encourage, though. The pace of news is so fast that it seems difficult to pause and think things differently.
I remember the Sundays when my father would go out early for a coffee and come back with the newspaper and the weekly magazine supplement. I found the magazine really amusing, especially the children’s section. I didn’t pay much attention to the newspaper, with its hard news. Of course, I must have been 10.
So you understand that I’m biased towards weekend content, and it’s in that spirit that I write this post. But I won’t stray too much into the softness. What I propose is something akin to a thought exercise so we can reconsider some of our commonly held views.
It is said that we live in the age of the homo economicus, although it is not technically a true depiction of human behavior, as humans are not perfect risk-assessing machines trying to maximize their profits. And even if they try to be, other nuances, like emotions, biases, and desires, get in the way.
However, we live in an age where almost every aspect of human existence has been commodified. Even rest must be ‘productive’ rest. Financial benefit seems to be the driving factor, the motivator at a personal and social level. Though GDP as a measure of growth is really only partial, we still refer to it constantly. Our relation to ourselves, to others, to society, and the world in general is almost always mediated by something we can’t agree on how to define: money.
Money As the Tao of Today
The first principle of Taoism, according to its founding text the Tao Te Ching and the West’s most famous proponent of it, Alan Watts, is that “the Tao that can be defined is not the Tao”. Watts expresses it like this:
“There is no definition for it. It’s called “the Way,” or “the course of things.” It is what everything basically is — what you are. And it cannot be defined, and should not be defined — in just the same way that you have no need to bite your own teeth, or to touch the tip of this finger with this finger, or to look into your own eyes. It is basic to everything — eternal; it’s what there is; it’s the which for which there is no whicher.”
We could say that that which we can’t define, yet is everywhere today, is money, and the money we define, is not money. What is it then? A commodity? A medium of exchange? A store of value? A means of payment? An accounting entry? A digital annotation? A social contrivance?
You see, we understand money to be all of that and more, but we can’t reduce it to a single definition because the moment we do, that definition becomes obsolete due to a new definition of money. So we can’t really point to something and say that is money, but money is everywhere. It is the way of things, what originates them but also their purpose.
There was a time when people needed very little money to live because they had everything else required for sustenance. Today, in many if not most parts of the world, we need money for everything necessary for life. We have engineered a society dependent on the constant supply of money. It’s unclear whether money is a medium for something or an end in itself.
Being that which allows us to satisfy our unsatisfiable desires, it has become the object of our desire because it promises to hold the key to all of those desires. But our desire can never be satisfied because that which is at its core is a lack, what Lacan called “objet petit a”. That lack is the realization that we have no ontological reality, that everything that we are is a product of our circumstances. Money becomes the reality we cling to because through our desires we exist.
And that becomes the principle upon which we organize our societies. The satisfaction of our desires is the principle, because without them we have no purpose. Money then is the physical manifestation of the drive to satisfy our desires and like them we can’t define it because the moment we do, it has mutated. So money becomes that which can’t be defined. “It is basic to everything — eternal; it’s what there is; it’s the which for which there is no whicher.”
Capital and Labor Arise Mutually
The second principle, following Watts, is that of mutual arising: “That is to say, that all the great contrasts of life — black and white, positive and negative (or as the Chinese call it, yang and yin), self and other, long and short — are not, as it were, things in conflict; they are like the north and south poles of a magnet: they go together.”
From money as Tao, as that which is the way of everything, capital and labor arise together, not in conflict, but as the two ends of the same stick. Labor creates capital, which is then used to create more labor that creates more capital, ad infinitum. Money is what gives reality to both.
If there was no money, labor would not exist. Labor is that for which we expect to receive a monetary payment, whether we receive it or not. So for there to be labor, there needs to be money, and if there is money, then there is capital, either as a form of accumulation of its undefined form, or of what can be acquired by it.
Capital needs labor to increase, with that increase measured in monetary terms. But if money is the way of things, the enabler of our desire, then the desire for capital has no end, which then engenders more labor. Money becomes the means and the end from which capital and labor, as the forms of maintaining a constant supply of money, are begotten.
Marx’s critique of capital, as that which subjugates labor, does not consider the role of money in their mutual arising. In the Taoist way, it would be like criticizing the day for subjugating the night, but there would be no day if there was no night.
The Invisible Hand as Wu-Wei
Alan Watts defines the third principle of Tao as wu-wei: “It means, essentially, “not interfering” — not acting in such a way as to go against the grain of things.” But on the other hand, it doesn’t mean passivity; it means acting in accordance with the course, in accordance with the Tao, the Way.”
If money becomes the Tao and capital and labor arise mutually from it, then not interfering with it becomes the natural thing to do. Labor and capital meet each other in the markets, in their abstract and concrete forms, and man cooperates with them by not going “against the grain of things”. By letting labor and capital work with each other without interfering, man is acting in “accordance with the course”, in accordance with money, the Way.
Adam Smith called this the invisible hand. It is the way in which self-interested individuals respond, even unintentionally, to supply and demand, therefore balancing labor and capital. In Taoism “man is seen as part of nature, or at one with nature”, in this case, money, and he cooperates with the markets “in the same way as the sailor of a sailboat cooperates with the wind”.
Intrusion in the Way is akin to destabilization and should be avoided. Those who interfere are those who give primacy to labor over capital or capital over labor, without understanding that they arise mutually. It would be like legislating that the day should extend into the night, or that the night should hold on into the day.
But Money Can Never Be the Tao
Now, of course, I understand this thought exercise to be a stretch of imagination. The Tao, as meant in Chinese philosophy, cannot be literally equated with money. For Taoism the Tao is the substance of what everything is, including the plant and animal worlds, other galaxies, and even dark matter. The matter of matter if you wish. And that entirety cannot be encompassed by money. Although we are really trying.
But in our social realities—where a baby is born, not with an original sin, but an original monetary debt—comparing how the principles of one can illustrate the principles of the other might help us understand the magnitude of the economy in our lives.
It may also, due to the ironic image that emerges, help us relativize the magnitude of the economy in our lives.
But, who created the Tao?
If you see that a line has two directions, and only two directions, then you created it.
A clarity so clear it only seems real, whose child could it be? Apparently it precedes gods and creators.
I recall a little book I once read that told the story of the confrontation between a Jesuit missionary in Japan in dialogue with a Shinto priest, and at some point the crux of the discussion went that the Jesuit argued that everything had to have a beginning, therefore there had to be a God that created all; but the Shinto priest rebutted by noting that by that logic something had to exist prior to God to create it. In the end, this is a more fundamental question than it seems!
That’s easy:
“I do not know whose Son It is, It existed before heaven and earth.”
Chapter 4, Line 9, random grab from teh interwebz
I recommend Ursula K Le Guin’s edited translation, and especially her side notes, of Lao Tzu’s Tao te Ching.
She was heavily criticised by purists for some of her interpretation, which she does explain and justify, (but then so has Alan Watts been heavily critiqued)) but it is truly poetic and empathetic and imo captures the spirit of Taoism.
I think the stretch to economics goes way beyond any definition of malleability or elasticity.
I recommend it as well. I keep it on my nightstand.
I agree it’s quite a stretch, but don’t you also agree that by illustrating one with the concepts of the other, it takes a different light?
Personally I wouldn’t wish to degrade the Tao by associating it with Mammon, but each to his own.
I think it healthy to show in this light, a way for reflection and analogy on how we perceive money. The same could be thought of for concrete! It’s use follows the ‘magic’ rise of ‘wealth’. I mean by that the slum Mega cities of the world and the concurrent rise of population. It is out of kilter, (as you can build without limits) and so produces what it produces. There is a difference between money as a means of exchange and money as invented from nothing, (as we’re aware) and the same for stone and brick building to concrete. A form in use which allows the mega scale beyond the human to be built. Just to say if things, even number, become manipulated, it leaves the way of the Tao and so moves out of balance, it then reverts again to a mid-way, even if it creates a crash to do so!
Yes. Definitions of malleability or elasticity are suspect. They may not fully capture malleability or elasticity. You have to keep your eyes open.
What’s her version of Chap 18?
An amazing list https://terebess.hu/english/tao/_index.html
A marvelously provocative essay, thank you.
‘What is it then? A commodity? A medium of exchange? A store of value? A means of payment? An accounting entry? A digital annotation? A social contrivance?’
All of these, but importantly also a debt instrument, a consensually authentic IOU payable on demand. At least that’s what it says on the note from where I hail. I did, one lunchtime long ago, knock on the big double doors of the Bank of England demanding some of the ‘shiny stuff’ they apparently held in their vaults in exchange, but was shortly dismissed by a guy in a serge blue dress coat and top hat. So much for the Chief Cashier’s signature on behalf of the Governor, BoE!
Alan Watts was a GEM.
Money is a form of writing, nothing more. It can be used in aid of memory, analysis, or communication. The important communications tend to announce who has power over whom; and who is an insider verses an outsider. For instance, David Graeber argued that mutual outsiders like to settle accounts with money, while members of a community like to owe each other favors, which are not reduced to writing.
Although it’s a useful way of conceptualizing, I’d argue that not everyone would agree with that definition. That would make it just another definition of money—which, in a way, supports the argument that we can’t agree on a single one.
Now that is a crucial point. That means money is basically just a contract.
According to Polanyi, (amongst others) it was reciprocity that drove social and economic relationships before the Industrial Revolution, and not the raw transactionalism that drives capitalism.
As one of the definitions of reciprocity is a mutual duty, and/or exchange with others for mutual benefit, then there is some kind of ethical perspective, which money does not confer.
In Roman times 120 bronze uncias were equal to one silver denarius, a denarius containing 3.4 grams silver [so in terms of silver dollars uncias were worth way less than our pennies…what our pennies used to be worth silver wise]. The uncias were both fiat and not fiat. If a Roman merchant and his workers rode out east trying to get in on a silk shipment early, and they met a caravan out in the sticks, I doubt the caravan guys would take payment in uncias. They wouldn’t want to haul the uncias to the closest metalsmith. So, in a way in that case the uncias would only amount to fiat, or…IMO symbols. But if the merchant met the caravan inside a settlement (way out east), a couple caravan guys could trade bags of uncias for maybe so many arrows?
Yes, of course—a debt instrument. And if that’s so, debt is a kind of lack; it represents something that isn’t there. That opens new speculative possibilities.
Money used to be made out of something scarce or rare, but now its more ephemeral, especially so with 95% of transactions all done in the ether.
Schrödinger’s Cash
A Nickel costs about the same to mint as a $100 banknote to print.
I’m sorry, but I think you commercialise, and foster misunderstanding of, Tao Te Ching through this.
“Money as the Tao of today”. No, Tao is timeless, spaceless, and non-conceptual; it cannot be known because to know implies duality, and the Tao is non-dual.
“The invisible hand as wu-wei”. Wu-wei literally means non-action, but probably can best be understood as non-volitional action, detached action, or action not initiated by personal desire. It is comparable to the Advaita concept of Niskama karma, the pinnacle of karma yoga.
Ultimately the tao is about stripping away man-made concepts and living simply as one with nature. Supply-demand are concepts that just do not apply in this space.
How many people you know are concerned with the Tao, and how many with money?
That’s my point. Not that money is literally the Tao, but for most of us it has almost taken its place in our lives.
I guess if I have to explain it, I didn’t do the best job writing. I’ll try better next time.
This essay brings to mind the poison of neoliberal economic thought and it’s impulse to monetize everything. Money as the Tao is certainly true for many people. But there is a lot of faith based and salvationist belief there. Like Ima win the lottery tonight. No one says we live in enlightened times. Goes back to that old question: How’s it working out for you?
The Tao underpins Buddhism and Shintoism so an awfie lot of people are concerned with it culturally and religiously, as well as it being a philosophical concept that balances Confucianism.
I don’t see it as a peripheral notion at all, but central to notions of existence, including many elements in western ‘existentialism’.
I agree with ventzu here on ‘living as one with nature’ – so the whole environmental movement too.
Thanks for the essay. I have to admit that I also accept ventzu’s criticisms, above: There is a bit of stretching for effect here, even as the Tao urges naturalness. As the Zen saying goes (and Zen Buddhism incorporates many Taoist ideas): After ecstasy, the laundry.
I have been thinking about the famous first lines of chapter 60 of the Tao Te Ching, which, I also think, overrules some of the economic ideas in the essay:
To wit (Ursula LeGuin’s translation):
60 Staying put
Rule a big country
the way you cook a small fish.
If you keep control by following the Way,
troubled spirits won’t act up.
They won’t lose their immaterial strength,
but they won’t harm people with it,
nor will wise souls come to harm.
And so, neither harming the other,
these powers will come together in unity.
Manage the economy the way you cook a small fish: Assess your fish, your resource, for quality. Decide how many you can feed. Be delicate and exact in cooking it. Don’t overload the fish with spices and sauces (too much theory, too much intervention do in naturalness). Use only the best ingredients. No fakery — because the finished dish will betray you. Don’t look away from your work for a minute, because the fish will dry out.
Sounds like a recipe for fried sardines, Sicilian style — thinking of recent dinner in Palermo. With a glass of white wine. A canolo siciliano for dessert, filled with ricotta and pistachio paste.
(Corollary: Governing a state is like keeping a canolo siciliano delicate and fresh, filled at that moment to be eaten at that moment.)
The current U.S. economy and the U.S. body politic are being managed like hamburger: Beaten into submission and offered up with fraudulent ingredients. What could go wrong?
I think I went for the effect, not exactness.
As you point out, it would be ludicrous to pretend modern economies are following the Tao. But it doesn’t seem ludicrous to me to think that we have substituted one for the other.
The Tao requires the continued existence of something undefined—whatever it is, it is eternal. I think we discarded that idea, at least in our public discourse, long ago.
But for those, like you, who can read into it, some wisdom still holds true. And it offers a chance to look at serious things less seriously (a Zen principle as well).
To grasp all beneath heaven, let it alone. Leave it alone, that’s all, and nothing in all beneath heaven will elude you. (48)
Time to once again spend time with the Master.
Nice essay…
I lived in two worlds for the longest time, one revolved around money-the aged kind, bought or sold with shiny new manna-typically in the guise of a check.
The other world had nothing with a price tag on it, and the wilderness doesn’t take Visa cards either. It’s the one place on this wonderful orb we got, where economics or what passes for it, held no sway.
Who could put a price on an Ansel Adams like vista, each work of art a limited edition in its own right, as you stroll upon the very canvas.
I’ve come across maybe a dozen people in the back of beyond over the years that needed assistance or more, on account of hurting themselves somehow, or maybe they forgot their headlamp and I always carry a lightweight cheap extra headlamp-what if I gave it to you?
Money wouldn’t help in either instance, and who takes money into the wilderness anyhow?
I keep a Nickel in my kit bag to open the bear canister, that’s it.
Taking a headlamp is the best guarantee of not being caught out after dark; forget your raincoat and it will rain.
Most Americans wealth is largely in their homes and if your house halves in value in our latest version of boom & bust housing bubble, you’ve only lost the illusion of gain-your domicile doesn’t look any different.
Reminds me of a comment I made once upon a time at Wolf’s place, about the value of homes:
Your mortgage is secured by the value of the house,
Which is to say, by the market value of the house,
Which is to say, by the amount someone else will pay to buy the house,
Which is to say, by the amount a bank will lend someone else to buy the house.
So the mortgage is secured by the chance of someone getting another mortgage, which somehow doesn’t seem like what we set out to prove.
Which is off-topic, unless we can pull in “Dimly visible, it seems to be there…” (D.C.Lau’s translation.)
The Le Guin translation is great. Ames and Hall’s Daodejing: A Philosophical Translation has some pretty useful notes that expand on the Chinese meanings of the ideas that English doesn’t capture, and a good introduction on the historical and intellectual climate the text emerged from. They translate Dao as “way-making.”
Your essay on money falls in line with Spinoza’s idea of god as the one Substance, Hegel’s project to grasp Substance as Subject (and developing through time via the negativity of consciousness), and Marx finding labor and desire as the motives behind the course of things.
The thirty spokes converge at one hub,
But the utility of the cart is a function of the nothingness inside
the hub.
We throw clay to shape a pot,
But the utility of the clay pot is a function of the nothingness inside it.
We bore out the door and windows to make a dwelling,
But the utility of the dwelling is a function of the nothingness inside it.
Thus, it might be something that provides the value,
But it is nothing that provides the utility
Red Pine/Bill Porter’s translation is thoughtful and provocative, and also includes some of the traditional commentaries. It shouldn’t be too much of an investment in paperback.
If readers are interested, Ctext/Chinese Text Project is to the Chinese classics something like Perseus is to their Greco-Latin counterparts. DDJ/TTC section here: https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing
The Blue “>>” (“Jump to dictionary”) feature is a lot of fun if you’d like to play at a rough sense–obviously one needs to understand the language more than just looking at a dictionary to know what you’re looking at, probably especially with regard to what’s acting as a grammatical particle versus a noun or verb, but nonetheless–of the Chinese characters involved.
I still have my Alan Watts tapes (that I recorded on my $120 cassette tape deck which was stolen shortly before I made the final monthly payment) from his Sunday mornings broadcasts on KPFA, Berkeley, when I was living on Shattuck Ave, off Ashby Ave., in the early 70’s, my post WASP religion. Yes, and I had The Book too, I always remember that we can only live history in the present and that we cannot be anybody else but ourselves. Recommend – Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, by Chogyam Trungpa.