Flirting with money

Lysande text från The Other Journal om vår samtids syn på pengar. Ett synsätt som kan sammanfattas med Kierkegaards devis "Pleasure disappoints, possibility never".

"The problem is not that we want too many material things; it’s that we want the possibility of all material things without having to actualize any of them. The problem is that money has become, itself, the object of our desire, despite the fact that money is itself nothing but only a representation of the value of something else. Our desire for money, then, is a desire for flirtation."

"From the perspective of real love or goodness, to add is to subtract, because the moral life requires a commitment to the actual, an acceptance of a given person or action that is not infinitely interchangeable, returnable, or amenable to second-guessing. Actuality is the enemy of possibility. To be married is to give up the potentially infinite possibility of romantic partners, to assist one person is to use up resources that could possibly be used for an infinite variety of goods. The flirtatious aesthete thrives on the additive—the more possibility, the better—while avoiding the subtraction that comes with actualizing particular determinations and commitments: “The infinite possibility is precisely the interesting.”

"To think about and use money rightly, then, is to think about and use it as an instrumental good that is always ordered to an end that is not intrinsic to itself."