From the editor

The Global Intelligencer is designed to be an international publication, However, as I live in the United States and it's July, I couldn't resist tuning into the independence/freedom theme for this issue.

Guy Finley's wonderful article on "Eleven Laws of Spiritual Freedom" outlines thought processes we can use to increase our self-understanding and thus obtain greater personal freedom from self-imposed limitations. The articles on money, "BerkShares: investing in community" and "Making Art the Bank," focus on money's relationship to personal freedom, individual expression and the ability of complementary currencies to create healthy local communities and strong local economies.

Money was not an original focus for this issue. The topic of alternative currencies made their appearance as I meandered around the web one day looking for God knows what, and stumbled across a Reuters article about BerkShare notes. A couple long distance phone directory inquiries later and I was talking to the source of this Massachusetts-based currency, Susan Witt, executive director of the E.F. Schumacher Society.

I considered myself relatively well versed when it came to the American Constitution. Like most people I knew that only the U.S. government had the right to coin money. (Never mind it has given the Federal Reserve – a private corporation - the right to print money). But I had never taken the thought any further to realize that "coinage" and currencies are not necessarily the same thing.

Money as an energy exchange medium I had contemplated many times, and often wondered what the alternatives might be. Years ago I dabbled in the ITEX barter system that utilizes ITEX dollars to exchange goods and services and facilitate cashless business transactions across North America. (ITEX currently processes over $250 million a year in transactions across 22,000 member businesses and 95+ franchisees and licensees). But somehow working for ITEX dollars that could be exchanged at local restaurants and stores just didn't grab me. I could only eat so many bagels from Bagel Brothers, and as much as I wanted to support the system, it just seemed too limited – at least in its early days.

In retrospect, I believe the awkwardness I felt working within a barter system was due to my lack of education about its value. Now, years later researching BerkShares and other complementary currencies, I am shocked to realize how much my life has been driven by something I really know nothing about. And I am deeply impressed with the alternatives that are available to us should we only care to investigate them.

Over the next two months The Global Intelligencer will continue to run articles on complementary currencies, including a wonderfully informative interview with Bernard Lietaer, the economic mastermind behind the Euro.

Every single person I know has at some point or other, complained bitterly about money... having it, not having it, frustrated with the means of getting it, worried about how to get it without compromising internal values. Who in the West doesn't go through this? Certainly I've put my own two cents worth of bitching about money into the pot on far too many occasions. And then we have all the deprecating expressions and notions around money - dirty money, money as the "root of all evil," etc.

Having investigated the subject more deeply, I believe we feel this anger and frustration with money because we really don't understand it. As a result, it has power over us rather than vice versa. As Lietaer puts it in his interview, "Have you taken an inventory of the number of days you spend in life getting ready to make money? And when you have money, to manage the money or spend it? But then, think about how many hours you've thought about what money is. I suspect not very much. We are spending a huge amount of energy to get something about which we have surprisingly little understanding."

Most of us have been raised with a subconscious program that makes us feel as if we have to choose between God and money; the spiritual life versus the material. Everywhere we turn we seem to be faced with an either/or proposition when it comes to dollars. For example, Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, "Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort." And of course this is true. But there's another equally true expression: "You can't eat happiness."

Most people have experienced creating or doing something that felt really wonderful, and then when they tried to "sell it" discovered their work was not highly valued enough to reap the dollars to compensate for the time and effort of creation. So they drop what brings them happiness and settle into mundane jobs just to pay the bills. The flip side is the Starving Artist Syndrome, where the act of creation is made more dear than bread. I have a friend who is an exquisite artist, and he lives in a moldering shack in the wilderness next to a much nicer workshop stuffed with incredibly unique works in all sorts of mediums. But he is not a promoter. He is not a businessman. Dollars elude him and his life – though rich in creativity – suffers accordingly. He is not a happy man.

Life doesn't have to boil down to either/or choices. What people want is to expand to be able to have choices that are more far ranging. We want both the happiness that comes from personal creation and money. The fly in the ointment always seems to come when we make these two things interdependent – at least in the old ways of doing things.

The basic tenet of the American Constitution is its promise of the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Unfortunately we're not taught how to accomplish this. We're stuck with tools and systems and educational institutions that are not up to the job of facilitating both emotional and economic wealth. They don't even explain what wealth is. As Lieteaer points out, "Most textbooks don't teach what money is. They only explain its functions, that is, what money does.

"I define money, or currency, as an agreement within a community to use something as a medium of exchange. It's therefore not a thing, it's only an agreement - like a marriage, like a political party, like a business deal. And most of the time, it's done unconsciously. Nobody's polled about whether you want to use dollars. We're living in this money world like fish in water, taking it completely for granted."

This state of ignorance is rapidly changing. Books such as Lieteaer's Access to Human Wealth: Money beyond Greed and Scarcity and The Future of Money, as well as the Internet are making information on complementary currencies available. Because of their flexibility, personable flavor, and the fact that they strengthen otherwise marginalized populations and regions, complementary currencies are flourishing. In 1990 there were less than one hundred complementary currency systems worldwide. Today there are over 4,000.

From knowledge comes the ability to change and forge new agreements. Money may have been a surprise topic this month, but as far as the issue of freedom is concerned, it couldn't be a more appropriate one. I hope you enjoy this issue of The Global Intelligencer and those to come. I hope you are encouraged and inspired by the information – and that you run with it and make it work for you.

Cate Montana
Editor/Publisher