Money On My Mind

A couple of years back (and by a couple, I mean two), I was at work and it was my lunch break. And I was going to eat at the back of the salon, when a lady walked in with a bright green dress and one of the stylists welcomed and complimented her saying, "Girl, I luh (love) your dress, it's so bright." And the lady responded, "Aww thank you, it's my favourite dress because of the color." Then she said something that caught my attention, she said, " Green is the color of prosperity, I bet you can't name something bad that's green." That's when I went on a mind journey. I started thinking about anything bad that's green and all I could come up with then was cyanide and Green Goblin from Spiderman. I even texted my friends asking them to mention bad things that are green, some said weed, some said jealousy, others couldn't even mention one [Quick note, if you can name more other things that are green and bad, please post them in your comments, thank you]. But one of my friends texted back, "Money." How ironic, the same thing that feeds you, clothes you, gives you a good education and makes you feel on top of the world if you have a lot of it is considered a bad thing? So I thought about it: Is money which provides so many good things really the root of all evil? I started noticing the money greed when before I rarely pay attention to, like rap/R&B lyrics such as these ones: "Money on my mind, because money is what I'm thinking"-Lil Wayne, "Get money fuck bitches"-Lil Wayne, "I don't understand the language of people with short money"-Mase, "If you ain't getting money then you ain't got nothing for me"-Beyonce, "Cash Rules Everything Around Me C.R.E.A.M"- Red Cafe etc, "..and I will do anything for the root of all evil"- Lil Wayne. With all these you can clearly see a money craze within the mainstream music, but it's a lot deeper than that, a lot lot lot deeper. I once told a lady that I wanted to major in Engineering and she told me to reconsider simply because they're not hiring a lot of engineers now and "that's not where the money is at." So is that why we all go to school? So we can major in something "where the money is at?" What happened to pursuing goals, are we now abandoning goals for money? When I look at a classroom I wonder how many students would be there if it weren't for the pursuit of money. Imagine if the Ph.D and Bachelor degree holders were making less than janitors and fast food restaurant cooks, how many people will still pursue knowledge? I know knowledge is power, but is money more powerful?

Hmm, I found out when I created a survey to see what kinds of things people would do if you flash a gratuitous amount of money in their face. The survey was simple, it was a yes and no optioned survey with ten questions and a fake price of $5 billion if the "contestants" checked yes to at least 5 questions. I gave a copy of this survey mostly to college students, teachers, people I work with and some random people on the street. Some questions were gross, others ok, and some challenging, they went something like this:

For $5,000,000,000.00, would you.........

1. Run a non-stop 15 mile marathon.
2. Change your first and last name.
3. Eat 6 elephant testicles.
4. Disown your family.
5. Stay up 96 hours without sleep.
6. Shave every strand of hair on every part of your body.
7. Cut out a body part completely.
8.Be used as a crash test dummy.
9. Eat 15 live cockroaches.
10. Dump everyone you know.

Would you believe out of 51 people this survey was given to, 10 checked yes to at least 5 (and one guy even did 6!), 19 checked yes to atleast 4, 28 checked yes to at least 3, 39 checked yes to at least 2, 50 checked yes to at least 1, and only one chick handed the surveyed checking all no's and said, "I don't want your money!" Now after they've completed the survey, I usually ask them if they'd do what they checked yes to under normal circumstances and all I got were a lot of "nope's," "no's," hell naw's," "fuck no's" and many other negative responses. So in a broader scale, for $5 billion I can make 98.039% (50/51) of the population do unusual things, and that's a powerful political tool. So politically powerful, it influences human beings to destroy other human beings.

Most average Americans always claim to "Support the troops," which is a patriotic thing to do, but they might not be supporting the troops for the same reason most wealthy CEO's do. What a lot of American's don't know is that there is a sea of corporations making profit from the destructions of war. Companies like Haliburton, of which Dick Cheney was the former President of, get huge contracts to make tanks, gears and weaponery for the soldiers (and when i mean huge I'm talking about billions here). Oil companies get a share too, that's why the US is still in Iraq and all the military camps located in Iraq are within a mile to the oil pipelines. Even fast food companies like McDonalds and Jack In the Box get contracts to feed the soldiers at war. Do you think these greedy assholes would want the war to end with all the profits they make from it? I don't. Even the United States mainstream media (which is owned by only four corporations) gets a piece of the pie. Their sponsors like McDonalds, and Chevron petroleum get more profits which means more money to advertise and that's how the media eats (off advertisement money) . The word "news" no longer bears its true meaning; in the mainstream media, "news" actually means propaganda. They tell you whatever you want to hear as long as they get higher ratings, and higher ratings means they can charge more for advertisement. This is all money controlling the strings here. Because of money we kill (war), steal (oil), and lie (news), yet we fiend for this drug without realizing what it really does to us. This drug even controls countries, just like Mr. Jensen (one of the characters in the 1976 movie, Network, a must see) said, "There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multi-national dominion of dollars.......We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business." And the number one rule in business is: Profit is good. Even if it creates a sweat shop (like Nike production plants in China), or a human killing business (Haliburton), as long as they made profit they did something good. So I guess the rappers weren't exaggeration when they say," Cash Rules Everything Around Me C.R.E.A.M.," and people don't lie when they say, "money rules the world." My question is: Does money rule you?

Look, I'm not here to tell you not to use money because it's the root of all evil, or for your to alienate yourself from this money hungry systematic society we live in. I'm here to preach the gospel of using your brain when it comes to money. See, I hate money, but in order to survive I need it. So I see it the same way a player sees his rich girlfriend that he doesn't love; I only use it. My message is: Don't let money control you, you control money. Don't be money's bitch like most people, let money be your bitch. Be like the chick who said yes to dignity and no to $5 billion. This has been the Gospel According to the Messiah, have a wonderful one Blogsville.