The Future of Money By Jesse Osmer

We live in a time where money rules the world, where low prices are set as an ideal, where humanity is enslaved to working for a living rather then unfolding his unique potential. Money, today, has taken on a life of its own. It has started doing business for itself rather then representing the exchange that takes place between one person and another.

The ideal of low prices has crept into the cultural-fabric to such a degree that we do not give a second thought to the devastating consequences it has for the world, namely, the decrease of available income worldwide. On top of this, there is the perception that each person must work for a living, must earn a wage, that he is paid for his time, his labor, rather than the result of his labor.

How did humanity arrive at this situation? Must humanity accept these circumstances or are they in fact maya, illusions we have given effect to because of an inadequate understanding of Money and therefore perceive as real? Are we, in fact, living in a world where each human being has the potential to understand Money and use it as a tool to create a world where everyone receives enough income to support himself and his dependents, where he is no longer a slave to earning a wage? What is Money, anyway?

Money has accompanied humanity since he first stepped foot on the earth. The form has changed from the very concrete barter of livestock and grain to the less concrete form of coins and then paper and finally to the very abstract circumstances of today’s computer transactions. But this development towards abstraction mirrored the development of human consciousness, of human thinking, and enabled him to develop in freedom. Without money in its current abstract form, there would be no universities, or mass air travel; we would be bound to the fields, to the crafts, to bartering.

There is another invisible aspect to money, the flip side of the coin, as it were, that has also accompanied humanity on his journey: Accounting or Bookkeeping, the need to track how money appears and then passes from hand to hand. And just as with money used for exchange, whether barter or today’s debit card, the form has mirrored the development of human consciousness. And we are now at a point in history where money has just become the tracking, the bookkeeping, of the multiplicity of transactions of people worldwide. With the aid of the internet and computers, humanity has quietly and unceremoniously entered an era of a single global currency.

With money understood as accounting, we can perceive that we have at our disposal an organ of perception with which to make economic life visible. Just as a mirror or a lens can accurately reflect or distort an image, according to its condition and design, so, too, our understanding of money can allow us to perceive clearly what lies behind its veil, or to continue to live in illusions that impoverish us as humanity.

After attending High School in New Hampshire, Jesse moved to Pensylvania to attend Lehigh University. In 1995 he moved to Oregon and worked at the Computer Store in Business Sales. In 2000, he founded LiliO Design to provide full service web design and hosting. He has been doing this ever since.