I once participated in an intriguing Sufi exercise where participants were separated into pairs. One would ask the other, “Tell me, friend, what do you know of money?” After the question was posed, the questioner stared into his partner’s eyes and waited for the answer. When the respondent provided it, the questioner asked once again, “Tell me, friend, what do you know of money?” The process was repeated until the responder had exhausted her abilities to answer the question, generally after five or six rounds. Each time the question was posed, the respondent was forced to reconsider the limitations of her answer. In turn, each answer went deeper, much past the usual “more is better” response.

Now, dear reader, it is your turn. Stop reading for a moment and put yourself in her spot. Now imagine a friendly inquisitor asking you to thoughtfully respond to the query: “So, tell me, friend, what do you know of money?”

Now consider your answer carefully and completely. It might even be helpful to write it down. Now, with your answer complete, allow the question to be repeated again and then again until you have exhausted your abilities to go deeper. If you are honest with yourself, new insights should emerge.

We work with money every day, handling it for both clients and ourselves. Most of us have studied its workings and tried to maximize its virtues for others and ourselves. We know how important money is to individuals and how much folks hurt when they don’t have it.

That said, I’ll ask again. What do we know of money? Do we even know what money is? Or where it comes from? Do we understand its requirements, its need for integrity? Do we grasp how much it has changed over the decades and centuries? Or perceive its psychosocial implications and imperatives for individuals and communities? Have you ever experienced authentic poverty, not ramen poverty but true desperation? If so, how did you deal with it?

There may be nothing more intimate than money, but it tells the truth. It contains our darkest secrets and our brightest lights. It illuminates our souls like nothing else. In profound manners, money shows us where our hearts are.

Accordingly, money remains a taboo. Culturally, most don’t talk about it; mostly they can’t talk about it. Even between spouses there are secrets and deceptions. We know that good money habits are survival issues, yet many of us do not take the steps required to ensure thriving and surviving in later life.

Some claim that money is the second most addressed topic in the Bible (the first being the kingdom of God). Without getting into an excruciating biblical exegesis, suffice it to say that my studies show that notions of integrity, life purpose and spirituality/anti-materialism are among those concepts generally underscored.

From the wisdom perspectives of the ancients can we see how money has changed its demands on people from the early 20th century until now while imposing strong existential challenges? Could we conceive of alternatives to currently employed international trading currencies for certain functions? Or do we imagine how much we are now asked to subsidize/enable our extended life spans with an esoteric something based solely on promises? Where are the counterbalances to those impersonal macroeconomic conversations of academics and industry thought leaders who generally forget there are real humans on the other ends of the statistics?

I suggest we have a deep and collective need for intelligent conversations about money. This is not only useful for helping folks get a grip on money as a force, but for grasping its social relevance. Today, the psychological aspects of money are receiving ever greater attention as psychologists and others finally notice that money is at the root of many crucial personal issues. As their work matures, they will undoubtedly develop better techniques for addressing the relationships between people and money.

But even that field misses the point that money is a quite meaningless social construct without the human beings who create it and trade in it. It is not enough to talk about how money affects “me.” We have to talk about how it affects “us.” We have to expand the personal questions to relevant social explorations.

Yet even this approach too often treats money as an immutable sort of proposition foreordained by God. From goldbugs and the hard money crowd to fiscal dimwits who fail to grasp its limitations, few folks seem to grasp what makes money money. Regrettably, they fail to recognize that our everyday money is, in fact, created by keystrokes at the Federal Reserve plus our need to pay taxes in dollars. While effectively dismissing complementary currencies as potentially viable approaches for addressing pressing social issues, they bury themselves in the notion that money is finally all about the shiny stuff. 

Yet our social structures are increasingly reliant on money, and these things are hard to measure: physical and mental health, child and elder care, public safety, education and other intangibles. 

For millennia, “money” was mostly understood in terms of international trading currencies and, accordingly, used primarily for trade and conquest. Modern money’s social uses are valid and valuable but they need not be confined to international trading currencies. We have to examine whether effective social uses could mean different approaches to the concept of money. 

Could complementary currencies do some jobs better? Or are there dangers in using money inappropriately, as when we use inappropriate materials for building construction? Equitable valuations are tough when intangibles are involved.

Lamentably, intelligent discussions about these social aspects have become strangely taboo or buried in the nonsensical rubble of political diatribe. Too often, it seems the best we can do is pit variations of two old and tired theories against each other, namely Smith’s and Marx’s. And these two theories are merely clumsy aspirants in an era of Moore’s law, population growth, climate change and an expanding nuclear club. Can we continue to rain hate and hellfire down upon one another without understanding the fact that money is a social construct that ideally maximizes mutual cooperation and general well-being? Can’t we do money better?

In the 21st century, the entire world has been in the throes of economic crises. Certainly, the broad U.S. economy has had its share of bubbles and blues. Budget deficits, tight money, austerity, increased joblessness and escalating personal financial insufficiency and illiteracy have made their marks on us all. But so have the taboos on talking about it intelligently and compassionately.

Yet how can we be expected to make intelligent social decisions about money if we don’t know what it is, or if we have not asked about the suitability of our international trading currencies for doing some of the jobs currently assigned to it? 

How can we make intelligent decisions when we continue to confuse money with “wealth” and “rich”? What are the critical differences? First, you cannot eat money. Second, one year’s income hardly ever makes one “rich,” even in the entertainment industries.

Here is what we know: Money in its current form is a relatively new phenomenon. In post-World War II America, our populations moved from resource-based economies where the stuff of life was manufactured or grown in reasonably close proximity. And even though modern money is relatively new, with unknown social implications, we have built virtually all of our social and physical structures on the foundation of modern money, as if it were actually substantial.

We have continued to expand governmental budgets with it. We have told people they must depend on it to take responsibility for their own financial care.

In view of all this, I suggest that no society in humanity’s history has relied so much on something as intangible as modern money.

So what do we know of money?

We know our basic needs have become more and more intertwined and delocalized. For the first time in history, “care” is mostly institutionalized, professionalized and monetized. Care and compassion have been substantially removed from family and community and now rest on foundations of money in ways unknown and unseen before World War II. Too often, this money is tax money.

Life now asks people to plan to live for an extra 30 to 40 years past the asserted “retirement” age of 65 and to finance it primarily with unearned income. For now, this means people use either their own investments or their fellow citizens’ resources. Families and neighborhoods are no longer as essential to daily life as they were just a half-century ago.

This is not all bad, but it is unprecedented. As I see it, money, as we know it, is simply humanity’s best effort at self-organization to do what must be done to get us through the day. It is an effective mechanism for matching needs with energies. It achieves results in manners (mostly) nonviolent and non-coercive. In theory at least, but also mostly in practice, it enables the creation of wealth more effectively than any other incentive system ever seen. In truth, money is pretty amazing.

That being said, we can’t take it for granted. It is not impervious to injury, misunderstanding or misuse. These issues require our attention.

Money is a motivator. With humans, the fundamental beauty of money is that it serves as a primary incentive. With Adam Smith’s famous “invisible hand,” money encourages self-organization and efficiency. Of course, it can also be used violently and forcibly to push, pull and thrash folks about. That is not money at its best, but of course it happens. All the more reason we have to talk about it.

Unfortunately, these discussions generally deteriorate into models of intolerance. I suggest we can no longer afford any such arguments. As we have watched the national debt climb to unprecedented levels and the international monetary systems hint at unraveling, these issues take on greater importance. The fights, the pocketbook politics and the political prejudices threaten our republic and our world.

Financial advisors need to know how to create powerful learning conversations and allow people to talk honestly about what is happening. We need to create new partnerships with our clients and inspire them to learn. We also need to allow them to take responsibility for the decisions they make in the uncertain environments in which we live.

As financial advisors, we are frequently in closest proximity to ordinary people, including our clients. Accordingly, we are in unique positions to see how money affects them. Perhaps most important, we need to have conversations with other professions and the public for purposes of collaboration and for learning how to deal with money issues at all levels of the system.

The simple fact is that “money” is actually an agreement. It is only what essentially everyone within a particular society says and believes it is. Better still, it is a deal we make with ourselves.

Money is important. It is our species’s primary relational tool with distinct implications for thriving and surviving. Accordingly, we must talk about it and help others talk about it. These are conversations that matter.

What do we know of money? Let’s keep digging. The answers will emerge.