it is hugely ironic and hugely significant that the one thing on the planet most closely resembling the forgoing conception of the divine is money. It is an invisible, immortal force that surrounds and steers all things, omnipotent and limitless

Money is just a representation of value exchange, but it has become an abstraction of value and complicated with human ego and greed, therefore, it became disconnected from real values.

It seems that the increasingly frantic rituals that the financial priesthood uses to placate the god Money are in vain. Like the clergy of a dying religion, they exhort their followers to greater sacrifices while blaming their misfortunes either on sin (greedy bankers, irresponsible consumers) or on the mysterious whims of God (the financial markets). But some are already blaming the priests themselves.

By divorcing soul from flesh, spirit from matter, and God from nature, we have installed a ruling power that is soulless, alienating, ungodly, and unnatural.

“Mass-produced, standardized commodities, cookie-cutter houses, identical packages of food, and anonymous relationships with institutional functionaries” is stripping away the ‘sacredness’ of transactions and value exchange.

A monetized life is a profane life

Mass production has caused a culture of ‘sameness’ where transaction doesn’t feel intimate and unique. We buy tomatoes from the supermarket that just looks like many other tomatoes, instead from our neighbor’s garden.

(Money’s) original purpose is simply to connect human gifts with human needs, so that we might all live in greater abundance

“Are we so broken that we would aspire to anything less than a sacred world?”

Example of gift economy:

Kula system of the Trobiand Islanders