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A Brief History of Money

NO ONE KNOWS for certain when money was first invented. We know that money is a man-made invention. No animals have ever created a system of barter or trade that involves money. Although there are instances of animals hoarding food, there is no evidence of animals trading foods or goods. Animals for the most part live in the present moment and are not primarily concerned about the future. Money is mostly about the future.

Money is a marvelous invention. It allows human beings to not just barter and trade but to create and plan. Physical goods and resources can be magically transformed into storable, durable, lightweight currency in its myriad forms: paper, checks, credit cards, electronic transfers, bitcoins, and so on. This magical ability to set aside resources for future needs without creating additional work was a breakthrough without which modern societies could not have evolved.

Of course, once money was created, human ingenuity took over and numerous ways of utilizing money were devised. Money experts emerged and, along with them, the concept of banks, and eventually our present economic systems evolved. Capitalism today favors those with large sums of money at their disposal. Money itself under capitalism generates money whether or not the owner of that money contributes to the production of goods and services. To some extent, this has always been true from the beginning of moneyed societies, but never to the extent of today’s modern capitalism. In many ancient societies, it was considered immoral to charge interest when lending money. Money was considered a tool and a mechanism to benefit the entire community and to ensure trade and commerce, but not to create tiered societies in which some groups controlled a disproportionate percentage of the wealth of their community. One of the clearest demonstrations of a society that valued economic parity is documented in the indigenous potlatch ceremonies in the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and the United States, where every year the wealthiest village members would hold festivals during which they shared or even gave away the majority of their possessions, in effect trading material goods for social standing and prestige.

In the majority of primitive civilizations, people had few possessions and little ability to store possessions for future needs. Even today there are Amazonian tribes who move with the seasons, carrying all of their possessions with them and recreating living quarters from whatever plants and trees might be growing around them. These and other nomadic peoples barely recognized the concept of private property. When hunters caught a wild boar or other animals, everyone shared the meat. When the hunt was especially abundant, there would be festivals and celebrations, and neighboring tribes would even be invited to share their bounty. Oftentimes these invited guests would become allies and share their bounties, creating a safety net against less abundant times.

Individual tribe members had differing statuses, but these distinctions were based on inherent abilities and not on accumulated wealth. A skillful healer would be venerated as a shaman, and his or her knowledge of the medicinal value of plants would be highly valued and honored. A great hunter would have status, as would a wise leader who could guide community decisions, but their rewards were not more possessions or greater accumulated wealth.

As human beings moved from hunting to agriculture, the accumulation of property became possible. People developed fixed, permanent villages where they could build structures to store grain and other commodities. Once accumulation became possible, there was a true need for currency to enable economic trade and economic planning. A farmer could sell his excess wheat, buy a goat or cow to supplement his diet with milk, and diversify his dependence upon a single crop or activity. A goat herder could sell goats and invest in buying seeds to diversify as well. In the beginning, these simple transactions could be handled by bartering, but with the invention of money, the ability to involve multiple members in a transaction not only accelerated the frequency of such transactions, but created transactions that could have never occurred through bartering alone.

Scarcity Is a Human Invention

One of the unexpected outcomes from the evolution of money was the creation of scarcity. That’s right. Before money, there was no scarcity. This does not mean that there were no instances of calamities, which resulted in starvation for an entire community, but there was no relative scarcity. There were no rich or poor; everyone had similar possessions and “economic” opportunities. There were those with greater status, those who had more wives, those who had more power, but in hunter-gatherer societies that did not use money, there were no significant economic differences. There was no scarcity as we think of scarcity today.

Scarcity is a concept that relates to having insufficient resources to accomplish a task or goal. For most wildlife, scarcity is related to natural cycles of the seasons, the migration of food sources, or the impact of seasonal change. Nature in and of itself has no scarcity. There may be drought and other weather-related challenges that create less abundance of resources, but generally there is a group survival instinct in the animal kingdom.

The relationship to scarcity for human beings is quite different. With the advent of money, opportunities were created to hoard money and to use money to control basic goods and services and to develop and control luxury goods and services. In the process, ever-increasing economic disparities have formed to such an extent that today the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of humans on our planet own and control more resources than the poorest fifty percent. A consequence of this economic pattern is that over one billion people on planet Earth today live in abject poverty, barely able to generate enough money to feed themselves and their families.

This economic disparity and daily experience of scarcity by billions of human beings is not a natural development or an unavoidable consequence of a free capitalistic system. Of course, no one wants to be among the bottom billion and since you are reading this book, it is unlikely you are. In the following chapters, you will learn specific techniques that will ensure that your experience of scarcity will be limited or absent. Paradoxically, you will learn that part of your overcoming scarcity will include helping to reduce the scarcity of the less fortunate.

Prosperity Rituals

One of the most-used statements of scarcity in the world is “I can’t afford it.” If personal finance were a category on Family Feud, I can’t afford it would be the number-one statement on the board.

For example:

• I’d love to go to Hawaii, but I can’t afford it.

• I’d love to hire someone to help me with my business, but I can’t afford it.

• I’d love to move to a nicer neighborhood, but I can’t afford it.

They’re all statements of scarcity. But if you dig deep, there are two critical things to understand about these kinds of statements:

First, scarcity statements are habitual.

We tend to think and speak scarcity statements without real awareness. We’re not consciously saying, “Look, I ran the numbers for last month. We’ve got a twenty-seven percent budget shortfall, which leaves us insufficient cash flow for the Hawaii project.” We’re just knee-jerking a habitual “I can’t afford it” because that’s what we’ve always done. The phrases just pop out of our mouth by default—in fact, we’ve been saying them for so long we don’t even hear them anymore.

This is a crucial insight. If our thoughts of scarcity and, as a result, our words of scarcity are habitual, then scarcity itself is also habitual.

In other words, the lack of abundance in your life isn’t bad luck, or lack of smarts, or the wrong connections, or the lack of an education; your lack of abundance is a habit.

Second, scarcity statements are often untrue.

If you want to go to Hawaii, there’s a good chance you actually can afford it. The truth is that you’re afraid you won’t be able to pay for something else—your car, your home, your bills.

But what if your life depended on you getting to Hawaii? What if your children’s lives depended on you spending seven days in Waikiki? You’d surely find a way to afford it then. Why? Because when the stakes are high, you realize it’s not about resources. It’s about resourcefulness.

“I can’t afford to go to Hawaii” is about resources. It’s scarcity thinking. “I’m going to Hawaii next winter. How will I do it?” is resourcefulness. It’s abundance thinking.

Be wary of scarcity statements masquerading as the truth.

Noticing your scarcity thinking

If thinking correctly is what creates the right action for abundance— if, in essence, the right thinking is what “gets you to Hawaii,” then your goal is to become more aware of your scarcity thinking and shift it to abundance.

You can begin by noticing your thoughts and words. For example, if you hear yourself say, “There’s never enough money to pay the bills,” then ask yourself: Did that thought come from a place of scarcity or abundance?

You’ll know immediately.

Now, reverse the thought. Substitute a new thought or phrase, such as “I always have enough” or “I’m choosing not to afford this right now.”

Declare the new statement out loud from a place of abundance.

Habit vs. ritual

Because so much of scarcity thinking is habitual, it can be a challenge to build that initial awareness. You might read this right now and think, “Okay. I’m going to become more aware of scarcity thinking.” But in moments, your habits can reactivate and you’ll be thinking and saying the same things without being aware of it.

To begin lasting change, it can be helpful to develop rituals that you can use to replace your habits.

On the surface, rituals and habits may seem similar. You may think you have a morning ritual of waking up, making coffee, brushing your teeth, and reading the paper, but what you really have is a series of habits.

The difference is in the level of consciousness. A habit is unconscious. We do it without thinking. A ritual, on the other hand, is something that we do much more intentionally. We do it consciously, with purpose. As a result, rituals can be a tool to deliberately change our habitual thoughts, words, and actions toward complete awareness of what we’re doing and why.

Here are three examples of rituals you can use to shift your scarcity mind-set toward one of abundance.

1. Go on a mental diet.

The Seven Day Mental Diet by Emmet Fox talks about a conscious effort to become aware of negative thinking. For a week, your goal is to try not to sustain any negative thoughts. You may have them—we all do—but your job is to make a conscious effort to let them go, replacing them with something positive. Over time, this ritual can make you very aware of your scarcity thinking.

2. Develop a declaration ritual.

I have a morning practice—a ritual—of several positive declarations that I make each day when I wake up. As soon as I put my feet on the floor, I begin with the statement, “I love my life.” Then I continue with a series of positive declarations about the things I will experience that day, from gratitude and abundance, to love and joy.

It’s a conscious ritual that I do each morning and night. It takes just a few moments to complete, but it delivers every day, without fail.

3. Bless prosperity.

In our culture, we have a habit of speaking negatively about the success of others. We might say, “He might be rich, but I bet he’s unhappy” or “She only became rich by being greedy.”

Even though those statements may appear to be about others, we’re really hurting ourselves when we make them. Tell yourself “money is the root of all evil” often enough and you’ll believe it. And then what will you think of yourself when you get some? When we make negative comments about the financial success of others, we’re in effect cursing ourselves.

To end the curse, develop a ritual of blessing others who have prosperity. “She worked so hard for her money. I hope it brings her great joy.” You can take this an extra step by making an effort to engage with those people, blessing the interaction, and being open to learning and receiving support from them.

At the heart of these rituals is a conscious decision about whether to focus on lack or abundance. Do you see prosperity as a pie with limited size, where some people get bigger slices and some get small? Or do you see it as limitless bounty of abundance?

The former is a scarcity mind-set and it’s extremely common for that mind-set to be an unconscious habit. Ritual is about becoming aware and changing that unconscious choice so you can shift your mind-set to one of abundance.

The best part is that over time you’ll notice something new: Your conscious abundance rituals have become your new unconscious habits. And that’s where the magic happens.