Money and Morality
MONEY AND MORALITY: Gifts of eternal truth in moments of the mundane
By Cheryl Leis, PhD, Management Consultant/Practical Philosopher
As inhabitants of this 21st century Western world, we all have to deal with money. We participate in the world of commerce as a means to obtain those things considered necessities of life. Money plays the role of the most commonly accepted means in this giving and getting from others. And the more money one has, the greater one’s power to regulate the particulars of survival – one’s own and that of others. We use money to participate in the exchange of products or services, individually and corporately – whether employed by or leading an organization. In some cases these organizations are publicly funded non-profits, and in other cases they are private, for-profit ventures. Money and morality is a topic that has surfaced on many occasions in my line of work. One such instance was during a contract with CBC TV to work on the development of a six-part national series titled: “Beautiful, Filthy Money and the Search for Soul.” The title itself speaks to the ambivalent nature of our responses to money and its presence in our lives. As part of the contract, I appeared as a guest on the panel, where I was asked to complete the following sentence: “Money is…” Yes, what is money? My response was: Money is a tool for finding out who we really are. What you do with money, and how you live with money’s presence in your life, tells a lot about your values. Or, as Ralph Waldo Emerson puts it: “A dollar is not value, but representative of value, and, at last, of moral values.” This is apparently pretty close to what Buddhists believe about money. There are times when many of us are faced with an imbalance between money and morality and find ourselves asking in some form or another: How we can put “Money” and “Morality” in the same sentence and not end up with an ethical contradiction? The incompatibility of these Mwords is an inherent, yet
By Cheryl Leis, PhD, Management Consultant/Practical Philosopher
As inhabitants of this 21st century Western world, we all have to deal with money. We participate in the world of commerce as a means to obtain those things considered necessities of life. Money plays the role of the most commonly accepted means in this giving and getting from others. And the more money one has, the greater one’s power to regulate the particulars of survival – one’s own and that of others. We use money to participate in the exchange of products or services, individually and corporately – whether employed by or leading an organization. In some cases these organizations are publicly funded non-profits, and in other cases they are private, for-profit ventures. Money and morality is a topic that has surfaced on many occasions in my line of work. One such instance was during a contract with CBC TV to work on the development of a six-part national series titled: “Beautiful, Filthy Money and the Search for Soul.” The title itself speaks to the ambivalent nature of our responses to money and its presence in our lives. As part of the contract, I appeared as a guest on the panel, where I was asked to complete the following sentence: “Money is…” Yes, what is money? My response was: Money is a tool for finding out who we really are. What you do with money, and how you live with money’s presence in your life, tells a lot about your values. Or, as Ralph Waldo Emerson puts it: “A dollar is not value, but representative of value, and, at last, of moral values.” This is apparently pretty close to what Buddhists believe about money. There are times when many of us are faced with an imbalance between money and morality and find ourselves asking in some form or another: How we can put “Money” and “Morality” in the same sentence and not end up with an ethical contradiction? The incompatibility of these Mwords is an inherent, yet