Money

Why has money become the focus of all media publications and broadcasts? The struggles of labor against corporate greed, the terrors of war and the civil strife in many parts of the world are fare for page two. The answer isn't hard to figure out. The media is owned by those who seek to rule the world through money manipulation. 

The inevitable effects of this are disturbing. There are those who say that money is the neutral object which will overshadow national, ethnic or racial divides. This may be true, but at what human cost? Capitalism has no conscience. Money has no ultimate value. You cannot eat it. You cannot cook with it. You cannot drink it. Money has never brought forth humanist values in those engaged in its pursuit. If it did, the wealthy of the world would have been the fixers of poverty, famine and drought all over the planet. Thousands of years of monetary obsession have not yielded this result.

Money is the refuge of those who do not wish to get their hands dirty with human problems. Few capitalists amass a fortune in order to give it all away. Most of those who do dispense their wealth to good causes have ulterior motives. This is the way it has been, and the way it is. But is it the way it must always be? The fiscal failure of the great socialist movements of the early twentieth century have set back the cause of universal social justice considerably. However, it must be acknowledged that these movements were brought down by corruption of personal avarice from within as well as by sabotage by capitalist nations, led by the U.S. and the U.K., which did their best to abolish socialist movements for economic justice and equality for all people. 

The capitalist victors, in their minds, against socialist ideals see themselves as morally and ethically superior. Thus the merging of capitalism with fundamentalism across belief systems. The socialism of the early twentieth century was atheist and agnostic. It held humanist ideals above religious dogma, which is a tool of political and social control by the wealthy. 

Money may make the world go 'round, as the camp song from Cabaret asserts, but can the way the world is going 'round at present be satisfactory to any humanist? I do not think so. The heavy-handed assertion of monetary control over politics and social institutions is taking us back to an age of aristocracy and oppression. This is an old cycle of history. How seriously it sets back social progress is in the hands of those who are awakened to it. As a humanist, I am pleased to see the young faces protesting against corporate oppression across the planet. They represent the finest instincts of human intelligence and compassion.