The Money Complex
If there is to be a psychoanalysis of money, it must start from the hypothesis that the money complex has the essential structure of religion – or, if you will, the negation of religion, the demonic. The psychoanalytic theory of money must start by establishing the proposition that money is, in Shakespeare’s words, the “visible God”; in Luther’s words, “the God of this world.”
Money is both a religion and the negation of religion, because the money complex is motivated by our religious need to redeem ourselves (fill our sense of lack). In Buddhist terms, the demonic results from the sense of self trying to make itself real (that is, objectify itself) by grasping the spiritual in this world. This can be done only unconsciously, that is, symbolically. Today, our most important symbol is money.
Schopenhauer notes that money is human happiness in abstracto; consequently, one who is no longer capable of happiness in concrete sets one’s whole heart on money. It is questionable whether there is really such a thing as happiness in abstraction, but the second half is true: to the extent one becomes preoccupied with symbolic happiness, one is not alive to concrete happiness. The difficulty is not with money as a convenient medium of exchange, but with the “money complex” that arises when money become the desired thing – that is, desirable in itself. How does this happen? Given our sense of lack, how could this not happen?
Money is the “purest” symbol, “because there is nothing in reality that corresponds to it.” In itself it is worthless: you cannot eat or drink it, plant it, ride in it or sleep under it. Yet it has more value than anything else because it is value, because it is how we define value, and therefore it can transform into anything else. The psychological problem arises when life becomes motivated by the desire for that pure value. We all sense what is wrong with this, but it is helpful to make it explicit: to the extent that life becomes focused around the desire for money, an ironic reversal takes place between means and ends; everything is degraded into a mere means to that worthless end, all else is devalued to maximize merely symbolic ends, because our desires have been fetishized into that pure symbol. We end up rejoicing not at a worthwhile job well done, or meeting a friend, or hearing a bird-song – the genuine elements of our life – but at accumulating pieces of paper. How such madness could occur be comes apparent when we relate it to the sense of self’s sense of lack, whose festering keeps us from being able fully to enjoy that bird-song (just this), etc. Since we no longer believe in am original sin, what can it be that is wrong with us? Without some religious expiation, how can we hope to recover? Today the sociallyapproved explanation — the contemporary original sin — is that we do not have enough money; and the solution is to get more, until we have enough and no longer feel any lack — which ends up being never.
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Money (the blood) and economic growth (the body) constitute a defective myth because they can provide no expiation of guilt – in Buddhist terms, no resolution of lack. Our new holy or holies, the true temple of modern humanity, is the stock market, and our rite of worship is communing with the Dow Jones average. In return, we receive the kiss of profits and the promise of more to come, but there is no atonement in this. Of course, insofar as we have lost belief in sin, we no longer see anything to atone for, which means we end up unconsciously atoning in the only way we know how, working hard to acquire all those things that society tells us are important and will make us happy. Then we cannot understand why they do not make us happy, why they do not resolve our sense of lack. The reason can only be that we do not yet have enough. “But the fact is that the human animal is distinctively characterized, as a species and from the start, by the drive to produce a surplus…. There is something in the human psyche which commits man to nonenjoyment, to work.” Where are we all going so eagerly? “Having no real aim, acquisitiveness, as Aristotle correctly said, has no limit.” Not to anywhere but from something, which is why there can be no end to it as long as that something is our own lack shadow. “Economies, archaic and civilized, are ultimately driven by that flight from death which turns life into death-in-life.” Or by that flight from emptiness that makes life empty: by an intuition of nothingness that, when repressed, only deepens my sense that there is something very wrong with me.
In Buddhist terms, then, money symbolizes becoming real, but since we never quite become real we only make our sense of lack more real. We end up in infinite deferral, for those chips we have accumulated can never be cashed in. The moment we do so, the illusion that money can resolve lack is dispelled; we are left more empty and lad-ridden than before, being deprived of our fantasy for escaping lack. We unconsciously suspect and fear this; the only answer is to flee faster into the future. This points the fundamental defect of any economic system that requires continual growth to survive: it is based not on needs but on fear, for it feeds on and feeds our sense of lack. In sum, our preoccupation with manipulating the purest symbol, which we symptom to be the means of solving the problem of life, turns out to be a symptom of the problem.
If this critique of the money complex is valid, what is the solution? It is the same solution that Buddhism has always offered: not any quick fix that can be conditioned into us, but the personal transformation that occurs when we make the effort to follow the Buddhist path, which means learning how to let go of ourselves and die. Once we are dead, once we have become nothing and realize that we can be anything, we see money for what it is: not a symbolic way to make ourselves real to measure ourselves by, but a socially-constituted device that expands our freedom and power. Then e become truly free to determine our attitude toward it, toward getting it and using it. If we are dead, there is nothing wrong with money: not money but love of money is the root of evil. However, we also know that our essential nature does not get better or worse; just as it does not come or go, so it has nothing to gain or to lose. For those who do not experience themselves as separate from the world – as other than the world – the value of money becomes closely tied to its ability to help alleviate suffering. Bodhisattvas are not attached to it, and therefore they are not afraid of it; so they know what to do with it.
© Dr. David R. Loy[[Dr. David R. Loy (born 1947) currently holds the Besl Family Chair of Ethics/Religion & Society, a visiting appointment at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Singapore. He was professor of philosophy at Bunkyo University in Chigasaki, Japan until January 2006. In 1971, he began practicing Zen with Robert Aitken Roshi in Hawaii. and is an authorized teacher in the Sanbo Kyodan lineage of Zen Buddhism where he completed formal koan training under Zen Master Yamada Koun Roshi.]]
– Source : Buddhist Digital Library and Museum
