I was in the middle of a conversation happening around me earlier, where people were discussing the current political climate and how crazy the world feels right now. At some point someone brought up the phrase “money is the root of all evil”, to which most of the people around me agreed with. I noted that I feel like money is a scapegoat, but nobody heard me. Apparently it wasn’t a place where this notion would be heard, and that’s okay.



They say that the Apostle Paul wrote that “the love of money is the root of all evil” or “a root of all kinds of evil” and we can regard the nuance here is that the love of money is the issue, not the money itself. 
I’m not really one to go around quoting the bible; I’ve never read any version the bible in it’s entirety and wasn’t raised in a family that followed these teachings. I can appreciate that the nuance of this quote is often lost, and people often circle back around to money itself and the concept of capitalism.



These conversations are complicated for me because I don’t think they’re necessarily incorrect. I think these conversations do lack the depth and nuance required to actually shift perspectives, however. That’s why I consider money in this context a scapegoat—money itself and the desire to prosper are not inherent evils—I think it’s our relationship to these concepts that results in the horrendous acts that we find ourselves witnessing both historically and presently.



Then the question becomes “why do we relate to these things the way we do?”



I’ve been thinking a lot over the years about connection and disconnection and what it means for us as humans. We’re all always connected to everything in some capacity, and yet… I look around and I feel like we’ve hit the pinnacle of disconnection. So many of the ways we’re connected to ourselves, to others, to the world are superficial and feel symptomatic of disconnection more than anything. If we were truly connected to ourselves, truly connected to others, truly connected to our world… could we do the horrible things we do? I don’t think we could, but I’m also someone who doesn’t know the apparent intoxication of wealth and power. I am simply someone who knows the sensation of disconnection deeply and intimately—I know its form and its edges and the absence of connection permeates my existence. I would hope that if I had money, power, or influence that I would not betray my values, and I also can’t know that for sure. I can only think that all the extraction and exploitation and violence and greed must have a deeper root. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking to hope that’s the case because it would mean that somehow, there is a cure for man wrought horrors. What is evil really, anyway?



I get the sense that money isn’t the root of all evil—disconnection is.