Money Is My Mind

"**Money Is My Mind**" is an open letter by Lupe Fiasco where he discusses generational wealth, effective ways to spend money, and understanding beyond just physical but also mentally and conceptually. Split into five parts, he posted it to his Instagram account on August 4, 2015.

## Part 1

MONEY IS MY MIND.

A Letter.

Part 1 of 5

Every single one of us is terrible when it comes to money. No matter how smart we are or dumb we are, we are all equally bad when it comes to money. Great at spending, terrible at saving. Great at saving but terrible at spending. Great at spending and saving but terrible at making. Terrible at making but great at spending and saving. Terrible at all three. Great at all three but terrible at communicating to others the merits of being able to be great at all three and how to get there. Great at communicating the need for an understanding of all of the parameters of money but lacking the experience of having money at a particular level to validate the facts of what you are communicating. Great experience with money, great communicator, great at all three of the aspects but terrible at timing and at understanding the variety of circumstances where money is only part of the issue. And we can go on endlessly with various combinations and additions to simply make the point that money is complicated and more importantly it is fluid. Its definition changes endlessly because its contextual relativity changes just as endlessly. Money is not only physical it is also mental. And just because I used the word "physical" first in the last sentence to describe money and "mental" last that doesn't mean I think money is more physical than mental, I actually think quite the opposite. I think money is 99.9% mental. There is not enough physical money minted on this Earth to justify as evidence for how significantly pervasive it is in our lives. The concept of money fills our every waking moment and even our dreams. What's the tried and true cure for the systemic woes of poor people? Money or programs that need money to operate. What are the readily available cures for the systemic greed of the rich? Take away their money or create tax policies or philanthropic avenues where their money can be transferred to those that "really" need it. The entirety of our existence is structured around the pursuit of money and its material and spiritual ends.

## Part 2

Even religious powered heaven has a deposit box here on Earth and a celestial real estate agent hard at work on your behalf either negotiating mansions or the best possible seat by the fire all dependent upon the balance in your account. What started as a unifying upgrade on the barter system long ago has now indeed achieved universal acclaim by becoming the single most important thing in all our lives even if we don't have any of it. Even the heroic star of the show that is called education is a far, far second place in relation to money as it is either looked at as just a pathway towards money or one of the fruits of having it but always effectively impossible without it. How we understand money is important to how we view ourselves and how we view the world. But that can't be right because we were here before money right? I mean money isn't natural. Money is a product of us? Right? Or nah? I mean shouldn't the creators of the money be the ones in control of it as opposed to the other way around? What if it wasn't about how WE view money but how MONEY views us? But how could money view us? Money has no sensual faculties attached to cognitive processors that would give it the analytical powers needed to view and thus judge us. Money can't "understand" us. Then one must ask if money can't understand us then why does it control such vast regions our lives? How does it know so much about us to the extent that it can predictably make us become puppets in its unseen hands? How did it gain sole gatekeeper rights over our experiential affairs from the cradle to the grave and beyond? Let's get back to that later but first a little bio about the author and a short narrative of why I'm writing this. In my spare time I get to sneak around the world on behalf of the Aspen Institute as one of their very grateful yet fully undeserving Henry Crown Fellows (The Baby Illuminati as I playfully call it) don't ask how I got in but I did and it's the best thing ever!

## Part 3

At one of our recent events called the Aspen Action Forum which I attended the concept of "Generational Wealth" was tabled and discussed at length. I came out of it with the understanding that whether we like it or not every single person on this planet is "born into money." Yes even poor people are born rich! And not in some alternative mystical paradoxical type of way of viewing no money as somehow having money. That is not true. We are born rich with the "concept" of money which to me is just as real as...well...real money! Real in that we structure the trajectory of our real lives and the real environments they take place in in terms of our relation to the ideals of social status completely dependent upon money even if we don't have it. We are either "preparing" to make it or actively pursuing it or positioning ourselves to benefit off the money of others. We are born into families and communities and societies that are bursting at the seams with conceptual dollars and all of the tried and true accounting practices that come with. Because money is more mental than it is physical even when its not tangibly in our pockets it exists as potentials in the wallets of our brains. We accumulate this mental money every time we see a commercial. We actually buy it every time we listen to rap songs whose sole purpose is to celebrate the acquisition and subsequent distribution of a new round of that guap. We "buy it" in the sense that we buy into that particular understanding of money and thus begin to design actions in regards to money via that particular understanding. How many of our heroes are our heroes because they have made or claim they know how to make money? How many people do we look down on or disregard because they don't? How many billionaires have we walked passed and not recognized them because they don't "look" or "act" like it? And how many "actors" have we taken for the real thing when we probably are better off financially than they are? Of course we all have idols that we feel we admire regardless of any relation to money. James Baldwin comes to mind for me immediately.

## Part 4

His intellect and diplomatic perspective I think are what draw me to him in the primary. But it makes me also think would I even know who he was if it wasn't for his major successes as a writer and playwright which to me is totally secondary in terms of why I admire him so deeply. However did his economic visibility contribute to his intellectual visibility or was it neutral? And even if we admire someone purely for intellectual reasons is that admiration heightened if that intellectual work translates into a financially lucrative application later down the road? Can we and do we ever completely separate "money" from our motives and our heroes? The dominate cultural, religious and political practices across all human civilizations all surround the acquisition and distribution of money in some capacity. The Pacquiao/Mayweather fight was notable not solely for the fight but also for the price of the chairs in proximity to it. Sometimes we aren't even looking at the fight but at the people who are sitting in the chairs who are able to afford to be so close to the fight and that is what gives value to the event. Money is everywhere not because it is actually everywhere but because we filter mostly all of our acts and thoughts via a neural conceptual filter that is "made out of money" and we take this filter everywhere we go because it has been literally hardwired into our brains. Even our passive moments when we are "not thinking" about money are made possible by money. Think of how much free time you are able to "buy" for yourself because you have worked hard and satisfied your tangible economic needs in advance to make such inactive moments possible. Even if you are a devout Buddhist monk somebody somewhere has to buy the rice for you to be able to beg them for it. Ok! Enough giblet bogglin & soapbox preaching! So what does all this mean? Simply let's just get really good at money. Meaning lets try and get a full understanding of what it is in all its formats, physical and conceptual.

## Part 5

Let's try and get a grasp on the consequences of thinking that all problems can be solved with just an injection of physical cash without the need for knowledge of how to manage not only the physics of money but also the mental conceptual side of money as well. Sometimes the fix maybe just a change in who and what we "buy" our mental money from. Because what we really maybe buying from our sacred cultural rituals is how to waste money as opposed to how to spend it effectively. And a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Too un$ure to be $incere,

Wa$alu "Lupe" Jaco

## References

1. ↑ "Lupe Fiasco (@lupefiasco)". *Instagram*. August 4, 2015.