The root of all evil…

…is not money. Perhaps that was a bad way to introduce what I’m saying. Money is NOT ONLY the root of all evil, but everything wrong with society. It is the very thing that holds us back from becoming the utopian societies we see in novels and science-fiction shows.

Let me just use one example I’m currently reading about for class. Google has an excellent idea when it comes to creating an extensive online library of every book ever written. The only obstacle it seems is the lawsuits being faced by Google from the publishers who stand to lose billions of dollars while Google stands to make just as much. So instead of getting a massive knowledge database, we get nothing and the only reason is that someone is upset they will be losing money.

This brings me to another point. There are professional artists (writers in this case) who make a living by selling their work to the public and so often we here about the starving artist. If money was not the only motivation for the creation of such art, there would be more sharing of work and less red-tape surrounding the issue of who gets the money.

It seems that because the creative arts rely so much on the making of money that money itself is making us less cultured. Paradoxically, it is large sums of money that give us the opportunity for higher education. This all confuses me immensely, so I will stop here for now. Perhaps I will elaborate more at another time.

~ by Jake on 13 September 2007.