Understanding the responsibility that comes with the cultural acceptance of participating within systems of money and trade.

I have written to some very wealthy people who spend their time feeling empty, unable to feel happy, wondering why they feel that way. One individual was seriously stating there is nothing left to live for when I intervened.

It doesn’t matter how much or how little money one has, one fact remains: In order for your own life to be truly fulfilling, one must help others obtain freedom.

But what is freedom, today? It’s become a buzzword. Let’s use another word instead: liberty. Or another phrase: “not required into confinement, servitude, or forced labor.”

Despite our increasingly-complicated modern technological times, obtaining an income is still a requirement of liberty, a fact we do not like to accept and just ignore because we like to say we are living in “the greatest times of all.” Yet the fact remains: one can only truly obtain genuine liberty through improving their financial standing or having it be improved externally.

Poverty is a trap. That is a fact. Poverty is difficult to escape as it was created by the societal and cultural acceptance of the requirement of obtaining an income as a prerequisite for basic things like eating, housing, clean water, and education. The prerequisite for escaping poverty is obtaining an income, or more bluntly: access to money is the power to escape poverty.

Knowing this is recognizing how many people are financially trapped and powerless and not truly free simply because they are being denied access to money by the people (or institutions) around them.

This may come as a shock to some. In order for people to participate in our modern system of trade they require some money, enough to stay out of a poverty-cycle, otherwise they remain trapped in poverty. Even if they are working, even if they don’t do drugs, even if they are not lazy, people still get trapped in poverty.

There is no adult reason, no responsible reason, no lucid or sane reason, no humane reason, no ethical reason, no moral reason, no good reason, not even an evidence-based reason, why we should ever allow the negligence of allowing others to remain in a poverty-trap to the point of criminality to continue, when we can instead choose to implement a proven foundational income floor, like UBI.

Reading about this individual who was already very wealthy, recognizing that they may have financial freedom and being proud for such a freedom just isn’t enough for them. In their own words, they feel a deep profound emptiness that they are unable to fill and they do not understand why.

Why? Because one that is in the position of financial freedom must contribute and improve others freedoms somehow. It doesn’t even have to be monetarily because even small actions can lead to big changes, but one must act in the benefit and wellbeing of others in order to truly feel fulfilled. They must create a change in themselves or in others. That’s what was missing for them.

That’s what they began doing, and it has genuinely helped them. This kind of thinking, coupled with action, shouldn’t be radical or revolutionary but in the current paradigm it certainly is.

Though it may be through no choice of our own, because there now exists money and trade as a prerequisite of freedom we have a responsibility to leverage both for common wellbeing not just for ourselves but for everyone.

Guilt brings emptiness, doubt, and a lack of the so-called promise of fulfillment. In their mind, feelings of greatness and success due to financial success felt empty and non-genuine as they were constantly required to defend their financial success from something called impostor syndrome, as many of us do.

If one wishes to feel truly fulfilled, one must begin acting on improving others’ freedoms, not just your own.

Either you are, or you aren’t, it’s really that simple.