ginny t. Herman & Chomsky

(note from 11/27/06: thus commences my last-ditch effort to not kill my blog grade)

Wow. Reading this text yesterday made me experience one of those weird, blinding moments of clarity in which I was actually able to see outside of myself and my little sphere of awareness to realize that the lives of a good portion of our (post)modern Western society revolves completely around money. These people aren't trudging to a factory every day, toiling away at producing tangible, actual commodities...I'm talking about the people who go to work every day to trade stocks and analyze markets and invest dividends and orchestrate corporate takeovers. Every day, millions and billions of dollars are being made and traded; something that doesn't even exist in reality...just as a concept (and supposedly there's supposed to be the tangible gold that backs up the value of the dollar, but no one ever sees it...) I never really thought about the ephemeral nature of our economy. But maybe that's because I don't really have a whole lot of money myself....

I guess since I have spent the majority of my work life sheltered in the non-profit community, I never really gave these professions much of a thought. Sure, I know money is out there, that it's a thing that people bust their asses to amass, but I never really put much thought into the business of making money. The concept itself seems to absurd to me. The fact that money has no real value other than what we ascribe to it seems criz-ay-zee. It very well may be that I have no idea what I'm talking about...but that, my friends, is why I am a Psych major.