The Nothingness of Money
The Nothingness of Money
By Lawrence Yeo
When I was in junior high school, I heard a riddle that blew my mind.
It went something like this:
Rich people need it. Poor people have it. If you eat it, you die. And when you die, you take it with you. What is it? Feel free to sit with the question for a moment.
Okay. Ready? The answer is… NOTHING!!
Even today, this riddle puts a smile on my face. But when I first heard it, I remember being floored after hearing the answer and funneling it through each statement.
Back then, I enjoyed the riddle for its cleverness.
But today, I enjoy it for its simple profundity.
The claim that “rich people need nothing” is not a literal one, but it points to how the pursuit of money is the unifying struggle of the modern era. We can opt out of the stories of religion or politics, but we cannot opt out of the story of money. It is so interwoven into the fabric of society that even our physical health depends upon how abstract numbers on a screen can be converted into tangible meals.
At the same time, however, the riddle states another truth: Nothing passes through the great wall of death. Whether you’re a billionaire or a homeless person, everything goes to null in the face of the great equalizer. The only thing you may be able to preserve is a legacy, but that legacy is for other conscious minds to perceive, which is no longer a luxury you have upon hitting that wall.
So herein lies the Great Tension:
Money is a required pursuit for life, but a pointless pursuit upon death.
If I were to illustrate what this tension looks like for your average person, it would look something like this:
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