Spirit Of Salt

    As long as I’m waxing textual about dubious self-improvement schemes I might as well let go of my attachments to money too. It’s always disappointing to come up on one of those territories where you are largely at the mercies of your emotional, socialized proclivities rather than your intellect, but there it is. As much as I know about the disconnect between wealth and happiness, indeed about the fact that I stand among the wealthy of the world on all but the most extreme scales, as much as I’ve seen with my own eyes the unique miseries that wealth can breed, I cannot fully shake an internal conviction that a tidy pile of currency (the currently debased notes of the Federal Republic would do) would go a long way towards alleviating all my problems.
    Indeed, whatever I may know about the nomics (so far removed in all practical respects from the oikos these days), I persist, like the indoctrinated petite bourgeoisie I am, in seeing money as a commodity, in limited supply, up for grabs, ready to solve all the problems of the world if only we could find enough of it. Like water, like energy, like dirt, I forget again that money is none of these things. That it is nothing in itself.