“I like money” by Afeeni Islam, NYC

topic: MONEY medium: CONVERSATION

“I like money. Money I need. Gotta get money. Money over bitches! That’s my mantra, so write it down! But seriously, money—or assigning value to human life essentially—is equally evil and necessary. Money is what creates our culture in its current form.  The people at the top of the food chain use money as their main metric for measuring what has worth and what is worth disseminating throughout society. It goes back to how money has created culture. This human culture is built around obtaining and spending money for life’s basic needs. Without money, you can be a vagrant or reliant on the welfare states; however, at the core of it, you are either substituting traditional means of monetary acquisitions (i.e. vagrancy) or being handed money without what American society deems a decent or worthwhile job. Creativity, for example, is awesome and amazing. But overall, it is just a means to an ends of acquiring funds for one purpose or the next. Mind you, I have no real knowledge (i.e. courses, reading) on this subject. I’m just extrapolating from my own sociological background. Just like a real sociologist! But seriously, everything boils down to money. Money = evil = good = life preservation = cultural catalyst. Now the implications aren’t just local because our culture’s gone global. And, well, I certainly like parts of the culture such as: instant messaging deep conversations with my niggas about how we developed and progressed to this point; I like that there is accessible information everywhere; I like that I can learn something new everyday.  Now, I don’t like corporate greed. I don’t like poverty. I don’t like racism. Obviously if I were to make a pro-con list of things I like, I’ll want to kill myself because so much sucks and is unfair. But I am alive, I am breathing, I’m moderately healthy, and the same goes for my family. So, from an unbelievably myopic world view: yeah, I like the culture money has created.”