WILL THE WARS OF OUR DAY SUBSIDE IF WE TAKE MONEY OUT OF THE EQUATION?
By Roza and Margarita Riaikkenen
Looking at media covering the news, talking with friends and family, it feels like there is no end to war.
As it seems to us, the very concept of war is absurd, especially in our days of global interconnection and interdependence, of the seeming lack of resources to sustain human life on a global scale, and of the already accumulated by humanity knowledge of the common roots and likeness of all of us as human beings.
Looking at the wars in the Middle East or Ukraine, let’s try to imagine what would happen if money were taken out of the equation. Will we see a completely different picture, where some groups disappear like in a computer simulation?
As we observe, wars are usually started by the leaders of societies and countries in response to the wishes of some influential power-holding individuals or groups either in these societies and countries, or from outside. And their power lies in money. Money which is nowadays concentrated in the hands of a small percent of the common population.
Money is feeding any war by providing weapons and munition to both its sides. And today’s wars are very very expensive.
Money is an extremely convenient tool for coercion of a person or group to go for a goal of their donor and hide this goal under the pretext of religion, patriotism, democracy, or whatever noble substitution can be at hand. Money received from donors hold together many of the groups that we speak of as “terrorists." They may travel from country to country sowing seeds of war everywhere and confusing young people by their seemingly noble goals.
The common concern of our times is about the lack of resources to sustain the growing Earth’s population. Take money out of the equation. What will happen? Wouldn’t it be enough to provide for the basic needs of everyone? Wouldn’t it free humanity at large from wasting resources on war? Wouldn’t it boost the free and prone to endeavours human mind and spirit to seek new goals in self-development and the development of sciences, arts and humanities?
Some spiritual, religious, historical, ecological and economical questions will obviously remain, but maybe it’ll become possible to solve them by other means such as research and cooperation, and not through war?