The quality of money

There is money and then again there is Money. And it is not always about the amount of it. What the money looks and smells like is always elemental. There is beautiful money and there is ugly money. But to tell the difference one must look at that money from a short distance, in what the modernist philosophers called the “disinterested” perspective.

To recall, the modernists believed that the experience of beauty is immediate and unmediated. It is not subject to reason. When one sees a beautiful thing, the faculty of taste immediately kicks in and tells the rest of the mind, “I am feeling the beauty experience.” This step in the experience process is not rational. You might say, we are all wired this way. And the wiring might come from 2 Million years of collective human experience.

But after the fact of the beauty-experience, reason kicks in and asks the most fundamental questions. Am I the only person feeling this? Will others feel the same way? Why? These are questions that determine whether this particular beauty is universal. The issue is well discussed in modernist philosophy. Beauty is universal when the viewer is looking from a disinterested perspective. If one observes the beauty of something from a position of disinterest, then aesthetic judgment is universal and everyone ought to experience more or less the same aesthetic experience from observing that same something. This is because truth is supposed to be universal. And the truth of anything is best manifested by the aesthetic experience it offers anyone who might look upon it.

But determining “disinterest” is always a tricky thing. It is most certainly a rational act. And this is the reason why modern societies such as we are supposed to have required judges. Judges are institutionally appointed to look at things precisely from the “disinterested” perspective. It is presumed that they do not look at things from a mere personal perspective using any old ordinary aesthetics. They are presumed to be absolutely “disinterested” so that whatever judgment they make is always universally truthful, just and therefore beautiful. When there is any doubt at all regarding this, their credibility as judges is lost. So also society’s trust in their judgment and the whole system of the judiciary.

Institutional judges are there to validate or invalidate, as the case may be, our own  judgement capacities. And humans judge all the time. It is our first guide to behavior. It is not just a right, it is a requirement to survival. And if we were confronted with a bundle of money, say P50 million, we would be excused to ask whether the money looks beautiful or not. For there is money and once again there is Money.

The Cebuano language has words to describe the quality of money and the making of it. Pangwarta is the most base. It presupposes any possible means to make money, usually bad. It is money devoid of moral considerations. Prostitution is pangwarta. This word has a specific usage suggesting a specific meaning inclusive of means usually illegal, gambling, smuggling, theft, graft and corruption, etc. These are all pangwarta.

Pamugas is somewhat similar. It refers specifically to money made in order to fulfill the person’s most basic needs. It is money that is the person’s hedge against starvation. Given this condition, the person is ethically allowed to be liberal with the means for making money. Prostitution can be pamugas. But we are bound to accept this as ethically allowable only if the prostitute is living on the edge of starvation. Beyond that, the act becomes simply pangwarta.

But there are proper and acceptable means for making money. Pangita is a Cebuano word to refer to the general act of looking for one’s money, one’s fortune. It is a wonderful word because it harks at the idea of money and sustenance as something that must be searched for, the way a hunter may search for prey or treasure, the fisherman for fish. But as a descriptive word for the quality to money it is one step below panginabuhi.

Panginabuhi is a word one step removed from the very concept of money. It refers literally to life and how a person may support life, one’s own as well as others, through work. It might refer to the  concept of wealth, the fact that wealth is not necessarily rooted in money or gold. The word refers simply to the relationship between life and resources including a person’s labor. It is a wonderful word that specifically refers to the nobility of life and what a person does to preserve it.

These words lined together, pangwarta, pamugas, pangita, panginabuhi, describe an aesthetic range, which, true to the modernist view, is also a moral range. It tells us immediately that money and the making of money has always been seen by us and our ancestors for quality. It is the marker of our development as a people with a culture and a language that we still keep the elegance to thinking required to see and describe money in all its nuances. These nuances are worth thinking about right now.