Money

 I've been meaning to write this blog post for a while. Ideas have been coming and going about this topic, from many different dimensions - philosophical, moral, material, social even. It may be time to put it into words.

What's money? It's not like I'm asking a question nobody ever remembered to ask. Nevertheless, I think what we should do is never stop to ask it. And that's what we kinda did. We just accepted what others told us that money is, the propaganda we get in our heads since we're kids, the systemic indoctrination. And then we stopped debating what money is - and, perhaps even more dramatically, what it isn't.

Let's start with a very basic example from pop culture. In Ozark - a really cool Netflix show for those who like character development, but not that good if you have no patience for slow plot developments -, already on the first minutes of the first episodes, Marty (Jason Bateman) says that money is "choices". Money is the outcome of our choices, meaning: good choices lead to more money. Bad choices lead to less money.

Is it really though? Of course, it isn't. This bulshit is, first of all, privilege: you can only say money is the result of your choices when you can choose anything you want. And 95% of the world, at least, cannot. A kid in Malawi can always choose the right things: choose the right education, choose the right job, choose the right friends. Everything. If he has no money to take them, though? Doesn't matter for shit. Zero. Studies show that in the UK - a shithole these days but still with some sort of, albeit crooked af, social elevator - mediocre kids from rich parents earn more on average than smart kids from poor parents. What's the choice factor here exactly? Unless you believe you choose your parents. If that's the case, then you shouldn't be reading this blog, you need help.

So we already concluded that money is a barrier - for those who don't have it -, and its absence - for those who have it. What else does that quote from Ozark tell us, though? It comes from an American TV show, and God how I love to trash the US. But this could have totally been said in exactly the same way by a Dutchman, or a German. This is the Protestant moral, the one that while I actually like it a lot regarding religion - you don't need a stupid Pope, just read the Bible yourself at home and let priests marry and have kids like everyone else -, it's what has been forcing us into capitalism for two centuries. Then, it also influenced Charles Darwin to use his Theory of Evolution to justify being selfish aka the fittest. The rationale is simple: God loves you if and only if you work. The fruit of your work is money. Therefore, if you make a lot of money, God loves you more - and others can see that God loves you more. Ironically, at least in Europe Protestant countries are the least religious ones, but this moral remains, and it remains hard.

So money is also morality. And this is the biggest indoctrination we get since the day we're born. Money is all that matters because it's the way it is. And because it's the way it is, not having is bad and you need to have it. This is why people, or at least my mother, talk about the "principle". If someone owes me 20 cents, it's not a lot of money but I should still insist that they pay me. It's about not the quantity, but the "principle".

And while I just did this whole, I believe very rational, essay about the role of money in our society, I still get caught up by these "principles". By what the economists call, precisely, "rationality" - which isn't rational at all, because money comes only after the human being, and not before. But we just cannot imagine a world without it. Even if Marx talked about a society without money, I confess I cannot imagine it. I can see how it makes sense, but I'm so used to it that I can't imagine it.

That's because, on one hand, I managed to get away from the barrier dimension of money - or at least, I am in the process. For the past four years, since I started working in the Netherlands, I don't look at my finances at all. I don't do budgets, I don't save, I don't calculate how much I need for this or that. I just have enough money to know I can do anything I want and still save a lot of it. By anything I want, I don't mean that I waste it - just that my lifestyle is non-extravagant enough so that I naturally do not spend more money than I need. For example, I have money to buy an iPhone. The new model every year, in fact. But I don't. Because I think it's a waste of money for the service it provides, compared to other options in the market. And this is what naturally keeps me in check, these same "rationality" economists talk about.

But at the same time, I still have this morality mentality, the idea that more money is better - which is what we're incentivized to do, to accumulate. I can still go to a restaurant and a Margherita pizza is 10€. While the Regina is 15€. I'd still think, at first glance, that I should take the Margherita because it's cheaper. But I prefer Regina. So why don't I take it? Because in my brain, I still shouldn't spend money. But not because it'll have consequences - like it does when we're students, or we have a low income, where spending money here means not spending there. No: I can totally, absolutely spend these 5€ more. But in my mind, deeply intricated in my brain cells, I "know" I should always take the cheapest decision possible. Because that's the right thing to do.

I'm still navigating all of this, and with time I am indeed proceeding to the point I want to be on - where money is simply a tool and not a goal. In the end, it's what money is for all of us: money is a means to reach an end. If you think about it, nobody really wants money. We just want what money can give us - what barriers it can break, and how moral it makes us feel towards others. Even if you accumulate a lot of money, you are doing it because you know it can be useful in the future. Not to simply have it stay with you. Okay, maybe some people think like that but I think the majority doesn't. 

The majority wants money to spend money because money is access. And no money is no access - which is the case against unpaid internships, by the way. Unpaid internships, in particular, and what in Portugal we've been calling "emotional salary" is yet again another huge contradiction in capitalism. A system that constantly tells you to idolize money, then tells you money isn't everything? They don't tell you because it suddenly stopped being everything, no; they tell you because they want to be the ones accumulating it. It's still everything for them, just not for you because they own the means of production and you need to work for them or risk starvation. And the worse part is that many of us believe in it. Many of us think it makes sense to do an unpaid UN internship, because "you gain experience" and "that's how you start". Funny enough, most of those who say stuff like this are privileged. The ones for whom money never meant a barrier - so why would it mean now? And above all, why would it mean for anyone at all, if it doesn't for me? And even if it means for others, then that's because they have no merit - or not enough merit. This is what they tell us about the homeless too, after all.

We end it here today. Take care,

P

From my balcony

Been a while, huh? Here I am, writing from my balcony in my rocking chair. Just got it like what, two weeks ago, and it took quite a while to assemble together. But now it's alright, and it's chilling. Also, the new table for the balcony is here, with four chairs - I'll add one when my whole family comes - and we just put the old one in this area, called "esplanade", both for recycling and for leaving stuff we think other neighbours might want.

By we I mean with Marija, my friend/housemate/tenant. We thought about renting together, but then I told her, what if I buy and you rent from me? Makes much more sense in this economy, doesn't it. And here we are now. She's great: met her in Copenhagen four years ago, we kept in touch more or less till she came to Algarve in 2021 and then coincidentally moved to Brussels too. She's a bit more extroverted than me, about which I often have the same reaction most of my friends have with me - like Oscar and Andrei being like "how come it's 9am and you're already so active and happy?". But this means she also suffers more from my problem in the Netherlands, which is not finding people that vibe your way. And instead of always being "too much", being too generous and empathetic, and not getting enough reciprocity. This adds up to the fact she's very - stopping it a bit but still - into her standards for the "right man" in Croatia, which often conflict with the more feminist standards in a place like Brussels.

I say this a lot, maybe never here: Brussels is the right place to be right now in my life. I can't say I love it - although, if I really think about it, I don't really love any place. The closest to it it's Olhos d'Água, but even there after living one month straight in 2016 I wanted to leave already. So I think this is just how life is: you live here now, there later, "acolá" in the future and you should use the people as the main criterion. And my people are here. Intellectually, this is the place where I am right now, and I do remember feeling it wasn't in Lisbon a year and a half ago. And being so international means the local culture is more international than the local culture, which I can super coordinate with wanting to be involved with the community here in Schaerbeek. French also helps, compared to Dutch from when I lived in the Netherlands.

And so that's how I bought this apartment. I wrote this almost a month ago, before getting back to it just now. I should really write more, but I haven't been doing it. There isn't really a reason why I haven't other than I just opt to watch more and more Netflix. I mean, I watch stuff that I like but still I should diversify my time at home more. And it was during the first half of this week, when I was in Albania, that was talking with Henrique about it, as well as reading more. I haven't been reading books that I like to read the ones people give me first, but that's stupid because then it never ends. And there's this Spanish one my aunt gave me years ago, called Four Friends, that I'll start this afternoon.

Speaking of books, and Albania, they are connected by the fact that I've been reading Attached on kindle. It's a book that talks about different attachment styles, from anxious to secure to avoidant, and how to identify them, both in yourself and others. It's super enlightening and life-changing, because it puts into words what I've been thinking for a while: it's okay to be anxious, to wanting to be attached, connected, and that the people that always call this as "being too needy", that you should be independent and not needing anyone, are simply wrong. No, they are. My main two takeaways are: we all need someone, including avoidant people, to satisfy needs and wanting that, biologically, we obviously cannot and will not to alone. And I mean not as much about sex, but about care, affection, chemistry. And the second is that if you are like that, if you are more anxious and need more reassurance, more touch, contact, then you need to find someone that understands it and loves you for it. And not someone that tells you constantly that you're "too much".

Why is it connected with Albania? Because I finally met Sindi. We've been texting since late August, after - in a very millennial way - I saw her on a story from Lea. She's already been in Brussels last May but I was in Portugal by then/I didn't know she was around, and this actually goes back to her telling Lea I looked like El Profesor two years ago during the college. With some ups and downs since we started texting, we finally met after so much anticipation. And it was really awesome. She came to pick me up at the airport, had dinner cooked and then we spent every single second together, both in Tirana and by the beach in the south - amazing, super recommend. The best thing about being with Sindi is that not only I can apply what I learned in Attached - and we seem to be very much in sync about being both very passionate, very touchy, wanting to reassure one another -, but also helps me better understand the way I want to be with a partner following the experiences within my circles.

I wrote about this already but for some years now, I feel feminist men are struggling a bit to find themselves between the world they told us worked in a certain way, the way women around us expect us to behave and, last but not the least, the way we want to behave/feel comfortable. I've been feeling it in Brussels, where people are tendentially more progressive but 1) sometimes I just don't know and I can end up be more or less progressive with a girl that wants the opposite and 2) Brussels is a place where the "European" way of doing things - often simply the way it's done in France and Germany - is seen as the correct one, and that others need to catchup. And it's not like that. About feminism in particular - cause about politics it takes another post -, I found out it's really more about me, as a man, to behave in a case-by-case situation. For example, Sindi wanted to iron one of my polos and my first reaction was "oh, well, no, I mean I can do it myself, you don't have to". But then I realize, if she wants to, what's the problem? I also do things more "manly" to her, like sending flowers, and I do it because I want to. Because love is about taking care of each other, making each other happy. So I learned that yes, I have my way of wanting to be a particular type of man, which is a feminist one, but above all it's about feeling good with someone behaving the way they also want to be behave - also because the way feminism is pursued needs to be adapted to particular contexts and particular times. 

And I felt very good with Sindi. I felt we connected a lot and behave in a very wholesome way towards each other. And that's why just less than half-an-hour ago, I booked our Louvre tickets to be there within three weeks from now. Can't wait.