18 Jul 2011

Love for money is the root of all evil

Love of money causes tremendous damage and destruction not only at home level but in all over the world. No doubt money is needed to fulfill our basic needs of life but extra ordinary love of money is really the cause of all evils. When our necessary needs leads to luxurious we are getting involved to gather it more and more.
Our strong Urge to get more money and living a better lifestyle indulge us in many evils.
Lust of money affects the human relations badly. Person, having desire for money, try to accumulate it at any cost and means. Love of money becomes the cause of antagonism between father and son, between brother and brother and between friend and friend. All moral values are ignored and set aside where money is involved. The love of money poisons friendship and relationship of all kinds. It is the desire of money that causes human beings to commit a theft or a fraud, or to involve in terrorist activities. It is the desire of money that causes to commit a home robbery or a bank dacoit.
Now-a-days, all the newspapers are full of stories of crimes, murders and kidnaps that are committed for the sake of money. A recent example of lust of money where Somali pirates released four Pakistani and 18 other hostages after huge ransom was paid to them. Pirates had kidnapped a group of 22 crew members, included Egyptians, Indians and a Sri Lankan in August last year, on board vessel MV Suez of an Egyptian company and had demanded $2.1 millions for their release.
Being the Muslim, we must spend our extra incomes for the welfare of poor people instead of hoarding it. Islamic history contains a various examples of Ashaba Akram (RA) who spent their huge portion of income as charity. When we spend money in the name of Allah and for the service of mankind we get a lot of blessings from Allah.
Lust of money becomes the cause of all social and economic evils such as smuggling, illicit distillation of liquor, hoarding of commodities, adulteration of foodstuffs and black marketing, gambling, speculation and cut throat competition in money are to be attributed to people’s love of money. It is the love of money that forces sales man of medical store to sell spurious drugs to make extra profits. It is the love of money that forces shopkeepers to sell cigarettes to underage even banned by Government. It is the love of money again which leads to the exploitation of poor by rich. Love of money spoils the peace of a nation more than any other evil.

Is love of money the root of all evil?

Yes it is because money causes greed and money can give people power so the more money a person has the more power they hold. There are many crimes committed due to money.
No, it isn't. The phrase indicates that ALL evil lies rooted in the use of money.
The quote is different in the original: "all kinds" should be interpreted as "a limitless quantity of kinds".
Money is merely a measure of value. Were we not to use the system of money, theft would be possible, rape would be possible. Maths has no morality to speak of, it's impossible to commit evil with pure maths, merely possible to break or bend the rules, and that hurts nobody.
That which we measure with money is where the evil is at. Money is one of the tools of civilisation, and as such can be used more like a weapon, turned to evil purposes.
I'd argue that the love of life is the root of man's evils. Greed for example is evil because it is an excessive lust for those things which one likes in life. Greed precedes money. It's being unnecessarily hungry.
Much of man's evil ability lies in the ability to abstract and dissociate, to deal with measure & system rather than the physical world. Money allows us to liquidate and transfer almost anything. To make all things interchangeable, to put it all on the trading table. Thus money becomes manna, a measure of livingness, and renders money a form of material. I'd argue that money is one of the languages of man, and it records our abuses as much as any of our other languages. Where the language differs is in the fact that the use of the language is a token of a real thing, and that real thing must follow in some way the token. Money is language to be made real, an intention, a promise, or promise-ability.
If you say that money is evil inherently, then you must condemn language. And if you must condemn language, then put down that holy book.
No no no, but just as our language can only reflect our thoughts, the spartan yet liquid form of money as a language of organisation can be deemed one of the very basest of languages, and with it people can express horrific intentions, ignorant of the money's overall direction and provenance. Money loosens social bonds and therein lies its power. Anybody's money is as good as anybody else's.
Today's money is a very complex system which nobody entirely understands. Some peoples' money is better than other peoples'. We add to its systems all the time, to prevent its abuse and keep it as a civilising force of trade & sharing. Often we fall short of this.
Money is one of man's self made measures, a ruler. Sometimes the money isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
The issue really is that the love of money is stupid. It's the love of the symbol, the graven image, rather than the real thing. One requires a real thing to do real evil. The guns kill people, the money that paid for them doesn't. Money is simply a contract. For it to be evil, it has to be something like a contract killing, or one man buying 10,000,000 potatoes picked by the starving.
When money is involved in evil, the evil isn't in the money, it's in the hand taking it, or the hand giving it, or possibly both.

AYN RAND's "Atlas Shrugged" answers this qusetion best. I can put it no better:

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

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