Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States (1706-1790), stated:
The purpose of money is to purchase the freedom to pursue that which was useful and interesting. — Benjamin Franklin
A description I hasten to correct to strengthen humanitarian objectives:
The purpose of money is to expand the fractal of human ingenuity to support the strengthening of human renewal. — Georges van Hoegaerden
Old Money
While I have a lot of respect for what our founding fathers managed to accomplish with limited communication capabilities during the revolution, the stated and agreed upon purpose of money must evolve to meet the broader reach and implications of money.
Let me break down to what I consider the expired definition of Benjamin Franklin’s interpretation.
First, the rights to freedom – or liberty – are mentioned many times in the U.S. Constitution, yet the definition of freedom remains sorely missing. Freedom cannot be achieved when the pursuit of individual freedom, as inferred by the reference to “useful and interesting”, is not paired with collective freedom that benefits all. Meaning, a vile-maxim of personal freedom ought not to supersede collective freedom, or many will be less free, and worse, unfree – or enslaved – as a result. Money should not continue to induce a horse-race of individual vile-maxims, all for me and nothing for others, with, in many instances, negative value to humanity.
Second, freedom cannot exist without paradoxical rules to secure trust in collective freedom. Meaning, everyone – within a sovereign nation – must play by the same rules of freedom. Such is what secures the equality and mobility of opportunity that improves a human meritocracy. Put differently, freedom cannot be achieved without establishing obligations and contributions for maintaining the integrity and universal application of freedom. Money should not be awarded to human wants uncorrelated to evolutionary needs.
Third, we should not need to purchase freedom, as we are already free as defined by nature. Humans take freedom away from other humans they wish to control, with money as the mechanism to dose and spoon-feed freedoms lost. All the more reason to take the methods of assigning the merit of money a bit more serious. Money is a manmade construct that currently does little to explain how it is acquired; its assignment often the result of taking or maintaining an artificial and dogmatic advantage over another.
As you can see, the solipsism by which every human on our planet is chasing the mighty dollar, extrapolated by our economic geniuses to suggest the sum of all those individual pursuits will lead to an improved state of humanity, is a foolish and – now – disproven one. A misinterpretation of the purpose of money Benjamin Franklin’s definition was clearly not prepared for.
New Purpose
The purpose, merit, and trust in money must be realigned and reassigned to what matters most to the survivability of humanity.
What matters most to humanity, defined as our collective interest as a species, is for humanity to live as long and healthy as possible in equilibrium with the resources provided to us by nature. Money, therefore, shall be assigned to people who contribute to the evolutionary strengthening of humanity, using a standard-deviation of merit deployed by a new operating-system for humanity much broader, diverse, and dynamic than the narrow, stale, and oligarchic controls innate to feverishly protected self-interests.
My definition of the purpose of money comes from defining a new operating-system for humanity, the cause of a new system that determines what humanity can and must discover as a consequence, and how we must expand the ingenuity of humanity in line with an ever-expanding universe. We cannot leave the direction, purview, and rate of expansion up to people in finance with no interest or understanding of our humanitarian obligations as a species.
Money must be used to reward the evolutionary excellence of humanity, or money will expedite the death of us.
