More Money, More Spiritual Life

This blog is a follow-up of 'No Money, No Spiritual Life'.

If money is nothing more than an avatar of life-energy value which facilitates convenient bartering, wouldn't I be able to do more for the world if I had more of this value, if by default I am a highly inspiring, loving, generous and creative person?

It was a knock behind my head when T.Harv Ecker commented about how creative people and activists make justifications for not going out there and making more money; they say other things like creativity, culture, the environment, is more important than just making money. He quotes an example, "What about saving the environment and the rainforests?" I laughed out loud when T.Harv replied, "Well, make tons of money and buy the entire damn rainforest!!!".

It wouldn't have made such a big significance if not for the fact that I know my dead idol, River Phoenix, rose, like his name foretells, from ashes into someone who could buy nature for his family and an entire rainforest to preserve before his untimely death - Exit, poof. (That's how all these candles in the wind seem to go.) But the life River Phoenix had led prior to his death, a life of complete freedom, frugality, creativity and purpose was not his excuse to NOT go ahead and make tons of money so he could do more good for the world.

How many times have we heard about community projects and fabulous ideas that couldn't take flight or couldn't impact enough of people's lives because of a lack of funding? How many productive hours by passionate and creative people, end up being spent going around raising funds when it could've been spent generating more valuable ideas and reaching out to more people hands-on. No money, no spiritual life.

The identity and survival of Penang (or anywhere else with a similar scenario, for that matter) as a heritage, cultural, creative centre depends upon the money-making abilities of the business-minded people. I grew up with enough bad press about the evils of corporations and entrepreneurs who rape, plunder and destroy earth for their mansions and luxury cars. Enough to know that 'corporations, and their never-ceasing bottom-line chant' are not people I will invest my life energy towards.

But then I see Anita Roddick. And then I see T.Harv Ecker. And then I start seeing thousands and thousands of others like them who are holding this world together, forming a barricade against the onslaught of mindless and senseless capitalism. These are people who have used a neutral system to their advantage. It's not the system, it's the people behind them. While the creative, spiritual, righteous, intellectual, professional, ethical ones are sitting in the pasture like lambs holding a tea-party to console each other about the dangers outside these white picket fences, the hungry capitalists lurk just outside, ready to unleash a series of actions that will make this world inhospitable at best, uninhabitable in the end.

So I suppose, if our ultimate aim is to have great spiritual life, then we must push back. With the energy of love, ethics and purpose, we must push the barrier back so that in the end our type of existence becomes the Circle, and not we, the encircled. Capitalism can work our way. Anita Roddick has showed us how. We can choose to live more, or live less, with more or with less money, that's for sure. But in the end, we gotta admit that we can DO more with money than we can do without money. When we live, we live our own life, and we rest in our own grave. When we do, we impact the lives of others, for better or for worse. I say let the good people Do instead of being done to.