Is Money A Religion?

Money is valuable because we believe in it. The more we reflect on this, the more we realize religion is far from gone from today’s ’secular society’. We’re just calling our religion ’the economy’. Here we follow philosopher Ernest Becker in his book Escape From Evil on a quest to discover the religious origins of money. Our journey takes us to scholars as diverse as A.M. Hocart, Grafton Elliot Smith, and Mary Douglas. Money is valuable as a source of power, freedom, security, and self-confidence. All these things, Becker tells us, ultimately go back to the same fundamental human drive. The drive to more life. Here we answer the question of how countries came to depict their monarchs and great people on their money. We find the origin of this practice in sympathetic magic, where the image of a god is believed to grant the magical powers of the god to whoever possesses it. Finally, we reflect on how today money has lost its spiritual appeal and remains a strictly material