Unit Thirty
Money
　　Money offers power, an almost unique form of power. Paradoxically money creates a deep sense of powerlessness as well, since technically we are not able to provide money for ourselves; someone or something else must do that for us – our employers or our stocks. All that, money can do: and when such essential, familiar functions are snatched from one’s life, small wonder that people may grow wild, frantic, even murderous.
　　 People work for money to buy things that other people make or do, things that they cannot or will not make or do for themselves but that they deem necessary for some definition of self-improvement. So a baker buys a piano because he cannot make one, and yet he judges the possession of a piano to be necessary for his pleasure, stature, worth. The piano maker, in turn, may buy TIME magazine because he deems TIME necessary for his pleasure, stature, worth. Only God knows who gets the better of such deals, but the fact is that the deals are not only economic but social transactions.
　　Abstractly, then, money is one of the ways, indeed a universally accepted way, we make connections. Cash is cold, so the connections may feel cold, but real blood flows through them. These connections constitute one of central means by which societies cohere; by which they sustain and characterize themselves.
　　 Still, that basic social transaction of buying and selling remains the standard operation of human business. The operation may be standard because buying and selling encompasses, encourages the fundamental, often tormenting, impulse toward human perfectibility; because the simple act of purchase implies a perpetual quest for self-improvement. This is not to say that money is the only way of establishing self-improvement. Spiritual thinkers forswear the power of money because they prefer to have God and not Mammon responsible for human connectedness. Yet the connections that money makes among people are not necessarily a spiritual if one defines money as the oil that lubricates the social machine.
　　 Whoever first came up with the idea of money must have realized that money would not only symbolize the value of objects but that inevitably it would also prove the value of people, sine people could only obtain that proof by dealing with one another. Such values may be illusory, but they are values commonly agreed upon and so function as facts. The knowledge that others exist to produce things for you is a way of knowing that they exist to produce you, and you them. All over the world, these acts of reciprocal production are sustained by money, which moves through the populations belonging to no one and everyone at once, hard, soft, old, new, trying billions of people together in an ancient arrangement that has kept the earth spinning like a coin.
paradox n.1.似乎矛盾而(可能)正確的說法 2.自相矛盾的人(或事物)
paradoxical a.1.似是而非的 2.自相矛盾的
snatch vt.1.奪,奪走 2.一下子拉,一把抓住 3.抓住機會,抽空做
vi.一把抓住 n.片斷
frantic a.1.慌亂不安的,緊張紛亂的 2.發瘋似的,發狂的
[聯想詞]
frenzy n.瘋狂,狂熱,激動
insane a.1.蠢極的,荒唐的 2.精神病的,精神失常的,瘋狂的
asylum n.精神病院
stature n.1.高境界,高水平,非凡的氣質 2.身高,身材
transaction n.交易,業務
[聯想詞]
slump vi. n.暴跌,衰退,不景氣
cohere vi.團結一致;凝聚
coherent a.1.條理清楚的,連貫的 2.一致的,協調的
[聯想詞]
cling vi.1.緊緊抓住 2.粘著,挨近 3.依附,依戀 4.堅持,忠實于
fusion vi.1.聯合,合并 2.聚變
conform vi.1.遵守,適應,順從 2.相似,一致,符合
encompass vi.1.環繞,圍繞 2.包含,包括 3.完成,促成
[聯想詞]
enclose vi.1.圍住,包住 2.把…裝入信封,封入
enclosure n.1.圍場 2.附件
incorporate n.1.包含加上,吸收 2.把…合并,使并入
torment n.1.痛苦,折磨 2.令人痛苦的東西,折磨者
perfection n.完美,完善
perfectibility n.可完美性,可臻完美性
perpetual a.1.永久的,永恒的,長期的 2.無休止的,沒完沒了的
[聯想詞]
transient a.1.短暫的 2.臨時的,暫住的
quest n.尋求,搜索,追求
[聯想詞]
pursuit n.1.追求,尋求 2.追趕,追逐 3.(花時間和精力的)事,嗜好,消遣
forswear vt.1.發誓拋棄 2.堅決否認
mammon n.財神
lubricate vt.使潤滑
[聯想詞]
grease n.1.油脂 2.潤滑油 vt.給…加潤滑油
reciprocal a.相互的,互惠的