Thought for today
by Margaret Atwood
This speech was given by Canadian author
Margaret Atwood at a benefit concert produced by St Lawrence
Works for the Toronto Dollar in 1999.
I am honoured to have been invited to share
this occasion with you. I'm here because of Joy Kogawa,
who along with many others has done so much selfless work
on this project.
Now, Joy Kogawa is an artist, and those performing here
tonight are artists, and you may wonder what an artist is
doing getting involved in a project that has to do with
the structure of money. Weren't we all taught that Art and
Commerce were polar opposites? But art has to do with symbolism
-- the human tendency to make one thing stand for another
-- and money is the most deeply symbolic thing there is.
Money as such is, as Oscar Wilde said, perfectly useless.
You can't eat it, drink it, shelter yourself from the cold
with it, wear it, or make love with it unless deeply disturbed.
In and of itself, it has no emotions, no mind, and no conscience.
It doesn't put out flowers or have children, and it makes
a lousy pet. It has meaning only when it circulates, and
is exchanged for other things; and money doesn't do that
for itself. People do that, using money as a symbolic token.
We have all been brainwashed into believing that there
is only one kind of money -- one kind of wealth -- and only
one measure of human worth -- how much money you have --
and one kind of exchange -- traditional buying and selling.
And only one motive to do so -- the Siamese twins of consumer
greed and the profit motive. We've also been told all of
this is controlled by a mysterious god called Global Market
Forces, who is now beyond our control, but to whom we are
forced to sacrifice our children. Thus if international
commercial interests suck up our wealth, stomp out our magazines,
trash our culture, and dictate what toxic chemicals we must
eat and drink and breathe, it is the will of Global Market
Forces, whose ways are dark, but who is thought to have
our best interests at heart in the end.
Now, the Toronto Dollar Project is an exercise in changing
the symbolic structure of money. This project believes that
there can be a different kind of money, and that its circulation
can directly enhance the community through which it circulates.
"Don't touch that money, you don't know where it's
been," we used to be told as children. But with the
Toronto Dollar, you do know where it's been. It's been right
here, and it's staying here, and 10% of it is going directly
to those in the community who need it the most.
There is more than one kind of wealth. A country, province
or city that has embraced the principles of selfishness,
hatred, envy, greed and spite, is poor, no matter how rich
its individual citizens may be. One that incorporates concern
for the well-being of a society as a whole will, on the
contrary, be rich, even though its citizens don't all have
5-car garages.
Thank you again to Joy Kogawa and to our performers this
evening, Catherine Robbin and William Aide, and to all the
others involved in the Toronto Dollar. They are making Toronto
a richer place, through this initially small but very meaningful
step towards the formation of a more human -- and also a
more humane -- symbolism for money.
June 4, 1999, Toronto.
