Money & property - (powerless) useful artificial belief structures - seen anew & supplemented ... Respect, responsibility, common-sense value

A wonderful good morning dear compassionate after-thought reader!

I wish you and me and all of us a refreshing, creative, innovative and mindfully changing 2023.

For many years I have been teaching business law, especially contract law, international law and entrepreneurship.

In all these many years, it always strikes me that many of our students are very captivated fascinated,

 in the haptic sense of possession and ownership and also a sense of "having made it" and gaining recognition as a manifestation of "having money", that is, gaining virtual numbers on the screen and printed sheets of paper with different numbers.

I always have to remind myself of Jürgen Habermaß's book "Haben und sein", which I have never read. 

It is a read that I would recommend to everyone in the business world.

The "being" of our people and their "having" are too closely knotted together and should be unknotted again.

I am not because I have something but,

but I am because I am self-aware of myself. My having is my belief and consciousness that makes my being possible in the first place and makes it VALUABLE.

And that is something, namely this I am aware of being worth something to myself, without external criteria or evaluations and 

consciously giving and feeling a meaning in this life,

this is the greatest value we can give ourselves in society.

And you can already guess, this value has little or nothing to do with haptic concepts such as property and possessions, and certainly nothing to do with money. 

and certainly nothing to do with money,

those abstract artificial thought-concepts we all believe..,

these auxiliary constructs of words and belief in them, designed for a simple exchange of goods and services.

Often I have the discussions with my students, what is the value of money, 

and then I ask them what happens when money is no longer worth anything overnight,

no one believes in the numbers and the colours on paper any more and everyone only exchanges things with others for realistic values.

We then quickly get the idea that money and possessions and property are not eaten, possibly the only reality of our lives?!

 Unless it's fruits and gardens, good to know for the future :)

I find just after travelling for over a year in different parts of the world that it never ceases to amaze me,

with exchange costs, country inflation and the price of food, how different our price worlds are.

When I roam through the Asian jungle, no one comes up with the idea of saying whether this tree, this land belongs to whom, at least not outside villages.

When I pay in Asia with a bundle of banknotes that have an infinite number of zeros before the one,

 I always ask myself, is this play money or is there really a value behind these papers printed with numbers in colours to distinguish them in "value" and if so, where does it come from. Certainly not from the stuff of banknotes!

And of course I also ask myself,

 how do exchange rates come about, is food really cheaper in Asia or do we not always have a price system artificially created for our benefit,

that makes us think our European currency is "worth" more than the currency of a normal earner in Asia.

Of course, only people can ask themselves all these questions,

if we take the time and muse to do so and also have the opportunity to compare,

the normal 8 to 12 hour worker,

who has to be afraid

who is afraid of losing his little "belongings" will certainly not be able to indulge in these thoughts.

So I take the muse and the time,

to discuss these exuberant concepts, possession, property and money, which have been filled with too MUCH POWER in the course of history and which I had to learn semester after semester as a lawyer,

namely ownership, property and indirectly money through loans and mortgages.

in a friendly and contemporary way.

And so I would like to take the time with you dear Lser and compassionate thinker,

to ask ourselves if there isn't a better way..,

can we not define possessions and property and money with new lower, for the world healthier, meaning values and 

and give respect, community SENSE (altruism) and solidarity just as great a value as money, property and ownership!

I believe yes

When our society has succeeded in anchoring money, property and ownership so intricately and powerfully in our minds through rules, laws and social beliefs that we believe they are really reality, which they are not.

Money, property and ownership are abstract concepts that only exist in a socially-cultivated, educated mind and can only develop this power there.

So if we have given this power in the last centuries through our faith and our non-contradiction.

Then we are also at any time in a position to redefine these powerful centuries-old concepts and to "disempower" them as necessary for a peaceful and healthy society and to supplement them with equally or even higher values such as

Respect Responsibility and a sense of community in solidarity also called altruism.

If we manage to

create things in our minds and make them seem powerful and valuable with faith,

then we can also change and re-evaluate them with our ideas and visions.

We have the mental power of belief,

to believe our money in a new way, that it is only a useful tool but no longer a goal worth investing all of our life for.

We have the power to redefine ownership, property and money and its value,

We have the power to redefine ownership, property and money and its value, to limit it further so that it is not abused by a few people on this planet who are overwhelmed with this power due to a lack of self-reflection and ethical awareness, and to give them the opportunity to use these instruments of faith to harm the world.

"Please do not enter this property, this lake, this airspace and this planet - my private property!

Who gives people the right just because a community of unreflective beings does not think, does not ask questions and accepts everything,

to give half the planet to a few people as private property?

There is no moral, legal and social cultural basis for making this use of private property available to a few people in this unrestricted manner.

On the contrary, there is much to be said for the fact that this planet, the water, the air, the earth and the light have been made available to us as humanity and not more water to a few people.

There is no natural reason for a few people, through their cleverness, higher education and better strategic thinking, to have more power in the abstract than the whole community.

Property and possessions as well as money are useful tools, abstract thought-sentences that we believe in, made to believe by society in school and at home, and thus make them "work", they are useful thought-tools in the economy of benefits, nothing more!

They are neither suitable nor intended to give a small greedy minority, which never gets enough, the power over the entire planetary life.

It is time, and the year 2023 offers itself, that we put this overpowering power of the word money ownership and property into perspective and shrink it back to a healthy level, not to say "think" and believe it down to a lesser value in our minds and imaginations.

The year 2023 lends itself to this, that we start to give more power to what we already know to be worth with more focus, more appreciation and more belief,

words like respect for self for colleagues for family for loved ones and for this planet.

Words and values like responsibility in our leadership positions and as direction givers, 

responsibility for the whole of society's well-being,

responsibility for family, taking time for one's body and for friendships.

And this also includes a community-global responsibility that includes all life on this planet including humanity as a whole.

 Responsibility for how we use resources, responsibility for how we manage what we leave behind and responsibility for the social and cultural conditions of production.

And not to forget, the common good, the collective benefit of each production responsibly and respectfully in focus with the greatest value.

It represents the greatest value of society,

that we all, for our private and economic activities, live in a world where there is peace, a minimum of social living conditions such as food, education and a home.

Peace, harmony, educational opportunities and respectful interaction to a peaceful conflict-free and self-supporting society are the highest value

A healthy, peaceful and self-supporting economy and society is priceless and must be placed above property, money and possessions to secure the future of humanity as a whole and to promote development.

The greatest value we can hand over to ourselves and the following generations and mentally create.

We do not need in the future beliefs of capitalism, socialism communism and property ownership and money.

In the future, we need a consciousness-raising and belief system that guarantees peace, respect, balance, harmony and security in dealing with ourselves and others.

This global whole-society healthy economy and society has the greatest value and 

limits, 

where it proves necessary,  

an abusive selfish and narcissistic use of property, possessions and money,

to modify these words of power into a useful mental tool to facilitate economic transactions and exchange of services.

With best wishes

Frank Uwe Gladitz

ethical economic philosopher and economic visionary