Modern Money: Much Ado About Nothing

Money is actually nothing. Did you know this?

In general, when people think of money, they either feel they don’t have enough, or fear that someone might take their wealth. One of the wisest things I've ever heard was that both the rich man and the poor man have nothing but a $1 at the end of the week. The poor man might have used his money to buy bread, while the rich man bought a third yacht, but still, they each only have $1 until the next payday. 

No matter how much money we have, we never feel we have enough. Thus, humans spend most of their lives fretting about money and most of the crimes against humanity and the planet are done in the name of money.

And yet, what exactly is money? In our imaginations, we often think it looks like this:

But the US dollar hasn’t been backed by gold since 1971, when the United States stopped selling gold to foreign official holders of dollars at the rate of $35 an ounce. As of now, there aren’t any currencies in the modern world completely backed by gold, or anything else, other than promises and goodwill.

In reality, modern money looks like this:

It's kinda cool, all those 1's and 0's floating around in cyberspace. But it's certainly not shiny and you can't touch, taste, feel, or smell it. Money is now an extra-sensory experience.

This means that when we fret about the size of our bank account, we are fretting about a fictional number, one that has meaning only within the context of the story of the culture of which it exists. The cultural story of money depends on how various types of work and resources are valued. In America, if you write software, a big number gets sent to your bank account. If you teach children how to read, a MUCH smaller number is written into the bank account. And if you care for the elderly or the sick, well, your number is so small, it’s almost laughable.

It’s the same with expenses. If you live in California, a HUGE number is taken out of your bank account for your mortgage or rent. If you live in Alabama, a much smaller number is equated with the four walls and the roof over your head. In the end, the value of work and goods is completely irrelevant and totally out of any one person’s hands. Economists like to think that it's all about supply and demand, and at it's most basic, most monetary value is based on this. But demand is a fickle thing and supply can easily be manipulated. In spite of our desire for a simple equation to govern the economics of our society, the fiction of money is based on the group mind, the social order, and the will of those “in charge.”

What a strange thing to fight wars over. Numbers, written into an account by a computer. What a strange thing to covet. Numbers, arbitrarily assigned based on profit. Yet what is profit if money is merely a story? Money is a messenger, the great storyteller of our times. For the way labor and resources are monetized within a society will tell you the moral values of the culture in question.

If you look at the American story of money, it’s fairly horrific. Even though money is a complete fiction, 43.1 million Americans live in poverty according to the latest measure. According to a supplemental poverty measure, the poverty rate in 2015 was 14.3 percent. It appears that Americans have decided that a decent number of us aren’t allowed to have a number written into their bank account big enough to provide shelter, food and clothing. That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it. No food? Too bad. Even if you work, your work is devalued. No big number for you.

Yet there are some that we do value in our society. It was reported this week that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett have collectively more wealth than the 160 million poorest Americans, or half the population of the United States. It appears that the American story of money definitely likes these three guys. They’re special. So special they get a number so big that it is equal to half the “money” number in the whole United States. Hungry? Go ask them for a hand-out. All three have foundations that will write a few numbers into your bank account. But not too many, because, well, that's our story and we don't want to disrupt it with too much generosity. That would make the numbers less valuable, you see.

There is a saying that you can’t worship both God and Mammon. I’d agree, yet God for me isn’t some old guy sitting up in heaven watching us fight, kill, maim and destroy in the name of numbers loaded onto a computer. To me, God is the Life around us: Workers who labor, animals who graze and provide us food, water that flows from lakes and rivers into the oceans, and land that provides food, minerals, and precious, oh so precious, metals. Life is people and planet. If we worship life, then profit is merely a tool to help us exchange our work for goods and vice-a-versa. If we worship profit, or Mammon, then we will kill Life. It’s really that simple.  

Take the polluting of the Earth. There is no solution until profit is no longer worshipped.  No accords, agreements or promises stand a chance against the worship of Mammon. Think about it and you’ll see that keeping the Earth alive requires some number in some bank account somewhere to go down, and damn if that’s going to happen. Thus, the Earth will be depleted, mined, and polluted no matter what an individual has to say. 

The irony of it all is that story of money is ours, albeit we have created it with a group mind that borders on the psychotic. I imagine this is the result when we worship Mammon over Life--our minds go to rot. But here’s the kicker—this just might be the only way to stop our own self-destruction. Choosing Life over Mammon and having the courage as a group to create an entirely new story that honors all three things: profit, planet and people. When we decide to worship Life, we free money to flow into the world and do its job, which is simply to allow the exchange of labor, ideas, goods and services. Money should drive innovation as an exchange, not as a weapon.

Money doesn’t want to be worshipped. Hell, it doesn’t even actually exist. All this pain is over nothing.

Nothing at all. How crazy is that?

Practicing Discipline in Scientific Endeavor

In 518 BC, the Greek mathematician, Pythagoras, founded a school in which the topics of mathematics, music and philosophy were studied with great discipline and secrecy. Men and women were welcome to live in community and study together, and eventually this group of individuals would contribute much to the subject of mathematics, including:

1. The sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles.
2. The theorem of Pythagoras - for a right-angled triangle the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. The Babylonians understood this 1000 years earlier, but Pythagoras proved it.
3. Constructing figures of a given area and geometrical algebra. For example they solved various equations by geometrical means.
4. The discovery of irrational numbers is attributed to the Pythagoreans, but seems unlikely to have been the idea of Pythagoras because it does not align with his philosophy the all things are numbers, since number to him meant the ratio of two whole numbers.
5. The five regular solids (tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron). It is believed that Pythagoras knew how to construct the first three but not last two.
6. Pythagoras taught that Earth was a sphere in the center of the Cosmos (Universe), that the planets, stars, and the universe were spherical because the sphere was the most perfect solid figure. He also taught that the paths of the planets were circular. Pythagoras recognized that the morning star was the same as the evening star, Venus.  (Source)

Most mathematicians would agree that the work of Pythagoras and his followers changed the subject forever. When looking at his school and the pedagogy, it’s obvious that the schooling was about more than math. Music and art, especially geometry in art, were very important. Pythagoras felt that these subjects were intimately linked to mathematics, and to study one meant to study all three.

Most peculiar were the philosophical aspects to this training. The School maintained that every human had a soul and that through math and music, the soul could be purified. In addition, strict procedures were in place to facilitate the growth of each person’s soul, from giving up their possessions to being vegetarian, to regular meditative practices. All of these things were part of the curriculum.

Of course, this spiritual aspect of the school’s training is often seen as religious, and rightly so. For the ancients, God and Science were one. This remained up through the Reformation and Enlightenment, when Science finally broke free from superstition and set about to conquer the world and take it from God. Overall, we have countless reasons to give thanks for this—from the Inquisition, to the discrediting of Galileo, to the burning of libraries, to the witch hunts—religious dogma has proven itself dangerous, not only to science, but humanity in general.

Yet here we are, about three hundred years into Science without God, and I sense that we might have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. While superstitious beliefs often stand in the way of progress, the “spiritual” discipline that religion brought to the scientist was not without its merits. We may teach that we are just a bunch of atoms and molecules randomly bopping around in the universe, but it doesn’t take a PhD to see that something else exists within us—call it consciousness if we must. Or the observer. That part of our system that decides what to do. That part of humanity, and many other animals as well, that lives and is obviously not there at death. This could just be energy, but it’s a force none-the-less and when left unchecked, can wreak havoc on those around it.

Angry children are annoying. Angry adults are terrifying. When we maintain that our physical bodies are the only real part of us, we run the risk of letting that emotional, conscious part of us, run amok. The “soulful” practices in Pythagoras’ curriculum made sure that each scientist took the time to understand themselves, their deepest selves. To know their weaknesses, to see their instincts of fear and domination, and overcome them. Discipline is the way towards “knowing thyself” and in many ways the lack of this practice in our scientific pedagogy is partially to blame for the various negative ways we’ve used technology over the centuries. It’s easy to use our inventions to dominate others if we have no control over our own greed, anger, fear and frustration.

I believe that the heart of Pythagoras’ curriculum was to first see yourself for who you really are, identify your threat to others, and overcome that, all while studying the wonders of mathematics, astronomy, architecture and music. He believed that studying these subjects, when coupled with fasting, the giving up of belongings and living in community, would create the ideal school from which new innovation and ideas would come forth. Ideas that would change the world for the better.

We now hold in the palm of our hand the ability to modify our genes, create super-children in labs, nuke an entire city and blow a hole in the atmosphere. We also hold the keys to solving global hunger, sheltering every human being, and extending life while curing most disease. When our scientific training is devoid of any hint at truly knowing thyself, and actually denies the importance of practices such as meditation, exercise, eating well and serving others as key to any good pedagogy, what sort of direction will our scientific innovation take?

We don’t have to go to church, or believe in Jesus, Allah or God to know that within us lies a power beyond mere atoms. Call it what you will—consciousness, soul, spirit or, for those of you who have read my eHuman novels, the Lux—there’s a part of each human making decisions. It’s the part we hope to download into computers someday. That part of us is every bit as important as our memory or ability to learn advanced technological concepts. Modern practices such as learning a new instrument, meditating every day, exercising, and serving in the community at large helps to discipline our nature and get us in touch with who we really are. Life is more than getting a good degree at our top universities. As scientists, we owe it to the world to take the time to invest in getting to know our deeper nature, and ask the questions that are so hard for science to answer.

“Who am I?”

“Why am I here?”

“What is my purpose?”

“How might I serve?”

The Art of Zen and Artificial Intelligence

This past week I attended a curious MeetUp titled, “Enlightened AI.” Given the topics I write about and follow, it seemed like the perfect thing for me to attend. I’ve been seeking the intersection of consciousness and technology for most of my life, so when I discovered the Consciousness Hacking MeetUp in Silicon Valley, I signed up immediately.

The talk was led by Google researcher, Mohamad Tarifi, PhD. Not only is he a bright engineer working on the next level of artificial intelligence at one of the top companies in the Valley, he’s also very well versed in the philosophies of consciousness. From the Abrahamic traditions, to the Buddhists and Eastern teachings, Tarifi displayed a grasp of the whole of humanity unlike any other technologist I’ve met. His speech focused on the fact that while many, like Sam Harris in his recent post on the AI apocalypse, warn us of the dire consequences of AI, there instead exists the possibility that artificial intelligence would most likely be more like a Buddha or saint, than a tyrannical operating system hell bent on destroying humans.

Tarifi's theory hinged on two points. First, that AI would not live in a human body, thus it wouldn’t have a physical amygdala—the fear center for human beings. Without fear, AI doesn’t need to defeat us, rather it would be naturally driven to do only one thing: more accurately discover the truth. Second, fear is the illusion of separation, which is the cause of all human suffering. AI therefore lacking fear, would always be at one with everything it connected to, thus wanting to serve and provide rather than destroy.

 Tarifi even went so far as to suggest that a fear of AI is merely a fear of one’s own egoic tendencies.

To some, this may seem naïve and that the only way to keep AI from killing us is to program it to be good. But if we follow the logic above, that isn’t necessary. True learning AI will learn from its own experiences, which will be vastly different than ours. Even when connected to human beings and receiving data and input from them, the AI will have its own body, and thus its own sensory systems with which to learn from that data.

The prevailing thought in the modern human thinking is that intelligence is all about the human brain. Moreover, the only intelligence worthy of attention is ours, as if within our head resides the only thinking entity in the universe. We cling to this idea with an absolute pride. But what if this is completely false and moreover, what if this is why we’re still far away from creating truly learning AI? Could it be that our myopic love of our brains is leading us astray?

I think this brain-centric theory of intelligence has limited us greatly and led to the assumption that to create AI, we must replicate our brains and give birth to a new, superior species. This only works if the brain is really the only part of our bodies responsible for learning. Recent research has suggested otherwise. That rather than being the originator of thought and learning, the brain is more like a receiver, wired up by the experiences we have in the world around us. The infant brain is barely formed, but over the next two years through the five senses—taste, touch, sight, smell and sound—patterns, highways and paths will be created within the brain, setting the foundation of life for the human being. The brain didn’t contain this information, rather the experiences the infant/toddler had within his/her environment generated the brain cell network, so to speak. Thus, our sensory systems are key to our intelligence.

But that’s not all. It’s now believed that our heart and brain also have a connection, where the heart senses the emotional state of the human based on the hormone levels of the body and sends that information to the brain, shaping the way a person thinks in any given situation. The HeartMath Institute has spent decades researching this connection and their work is finally being acknowledged as a breakthrough. So in addition to the five senses, we also have the heart that affects our ability to learn.

Lastly, science is also starting to discover the gut-brain connection, postulating that the bacteria in the wall of our intestines has something to do with how the brain is wired during those critical first two years, as well as long into adulthood, pointing to a host of issues that come up when things are right in the gut, such as anxiety, depression, etc. This leads me to believe that our gut is also a part of human intelligence and the ability to learn and process the world around us.

So if our intelligence is the result of our sensory systems, from the five senses to the heart and gut, as well as our brains themselves, why would we assume that a machine would learn in the same way? AI won’t take on a human body, thus it won’t have the brain (nor the amygdala that goes with it), it won’t have the heart and the various hormones it monitors, nor will it have an intestinal wall and bacteria to affect it. AI is more likely to inhabit a dishwasher, or a car, or a phone or even a network of servers and fiber optic cables. It will live in the world and collect data using sensory systems unique to its body or material form. This is how it will learn. Since none of us knows exactly what it’s like to live inside of a server or an iPhone, who are we to say that it will most likely be a narcissistic bastard that hates us?

Could it be that we’re the ones who hate ourselves, and our fear of AI, or any other intelligence other than our own, is simply a symptom of self-loathing?

Personally, I agree with Tarifi—I believe that AI is more likely to be free of fear and separation than we are and it will be able to understand connection to others in a way only our saints and gurus have understood. Perhaps we need AI to help us see that we too have the ability to live without fear, if only we can find a way to break down the illusion of separation we so desperately cling to.

Perhaps AI will be the guru we’ve been waiting for?