Ah, the won­der of a lazy Sun­day. I revel in how lit­tle I accom­plished today and sim­ply how much com­fort I enjoyed. Hot choco­late. Music. Video games. Blogs. Aside from the occa­sional dis­agree­ment between my five year old and I about our meth­ods of leisure, it was a day quite full of delec­table nothing.

But tonight, as I sit on futon and lazily pon­der my exis­tence through the lens of Thoreau’s Walden, I real­ized for how lit­tle of my per­sonal sur­vival I was respon­si­ble today and began to feel hol­low. Yes, I par­tic­i­pated in the gro­cery shop­ping which allowed me to con­sume two banana pecan crepes, a bowl of mac­a­roni and cheese, a tuna fish sand­wich, and two red pep­per tofu bur­ri­tos. But I couldn’t tell you where these foods came from or how they were cre­ated. I don’t know how long ago my tuna was canned or where it was fished. I don’t know what my mac­a­roni was made of and I cer­tainly don’t know how they make tofu, or what it is. I did load and start the washer and dryer, but I didn’t acquire the elec­tric­ity that ran them nor did I make the soap that cleaned my cloth­ing. I didn’t make my cloth­ing or ever meet the peo­ple who did, and in fact, I’ve never been to coun­tries in which they were made. I don’t know of what kind of metal my machines are made, nor how to ser­vice them when they break. It was snow­ing quite a bit out­side, so I did man­age keep myself warm by stay­ing inside my house. I’m not quite sure who made this house or who last lived in it, nor do know what it’s actu­ally made from. A home inspec­tor once told me there were cin­der blocks in the base­ment and I did install the cab­i­nets in my kitchen. I think they’re made from par­ti­cle board.

Why should I want to know these things? Mil­lions of peo­ple labored for mil­len­nia to enable this qual­ity of life. These com­forts save me from pain and suf­fer­ing, from aches, from man­ual labor. What value could being respon­si­ble for such things have if his­tory has marched so steadily away from them since the dawn of humanity?

Maybe value is the wrong con­cept, or too shal­low of one. Plac­ing a value on being directly respon­si­ble for my sur­vival pre­sup­poses some pur­pose in life, as if the mean­ing of life was to sur­vive. But isn’t it, and so much more? For what other pur­pose would I slave to achieve these com­forts in my life? I cer­tainly don’t work for the com­forts them­selves. They only give me mar­ginal joy; I can only gar­ner so much hap­pi­ness out of the lat­est inde­pen­dent film or the newest in gro­cery store fine din­ing. For what pur­pose do I live my life that has the longevity to bring me joy for a lifetime?

For me, it’s not god or any­thing else so imma­te­r­ial. I like the mate­r­ial world. It’s all I have and all I’ll ever have, and I mean to make the most of it. But if this is the case, what bet­ter joy-giving pur­pose in life is pro­vid­ing for myself and my chil­dren as directly as I can?

Con­sider two sim­ple alter­na­tives. My daugh­ter and I are hun­gry and so we step out­side and pull an apple from the tree I planted and cared for through ten win­ters. We take two apples from the lower branches and sit in the shade, shel­tered from the sum­mer heat and talk about the lat­est in kinder­garten drama. In this case, I made those apples, I pro­vided the shade. What could give me more pur­pose than being directly respon­si­ble for feed­ing and shel­ter­ing myself and my loved ones?

Now con­sider the real­ity of my actual life. My daugh­ter and I are hun­gry and so we put our jack­ets, hats and gloves on and search for the car keys. We get into the car, remem­ber to buckle our seat­belts, and drive fif­teen min­utes through traf­fic to the near­est gro­cery store and look for a park­ing spot in the Sun­day rush to redeem coupons. We walk through the lot, cau­tiously avoid­ing cars on the way, and find the fruit and veg­eta­bles upon entrance, sift­ing through the soiled apples from Wash­ing­ton. They’ve had a long jour­ney to the east coast in a trailer, but it’s been an impor­tant jour­ney, that enabled my daugh­ter and I to enjoy the con­ve­nience of “fresh” and ripened fruit, straight from the branch.

Not only is the lat­ter case more com­pli­cated for myself and the world, but when this actu­ally hap­pens, I get absolutely no joy out of my jour­ney to the store and back. I could have been enjoy­ing con­ver­sa­tion with my daugh­ter instead of focus­ing on the road, and the sym­bol of my con­tri­bu­tion to her sur­vival would have been reach­ing for an apple rather than swip­ing a plas­tic debit card at the store.

What’s at the core of this prob­lem? Our civ­i­liza­tion has pri­or­i­tized the need for indi­vid­u­al­ity, which requires flex­i­bil­ity in inter­change. For indi­vid­u­als to thrive, they need the abil­ity to trade inde­pen­dent of their prod­ucts. A chicken farmer can­not always trade chicken for what she needs, hence the need for legal ten­der. And with this legal ten­der comes a soci­ety in which all of human­i­ties needs are pro­vided not by them­selves, but by oth­ers through money. Money is the inter­face between every­thing in our mate­r­ial lives, whether for sur­vival and enter­tain­ment. The core of the prob­lem is that we spend our lives inter­act­ing with this mon­e­tary inter­face between needs and the things that sat­isfy them, rather than inter­act­ing with and pro­duc­ing these need sat­is­fy­ing goods directly.

Money is not evil; it’s a com­pro­mise that enables indi­vid­ual free­dom, which I believe is para­mount. But the con­se­quence of it is the loss of joy that comes from being directly respon­si­ble for ones sur­vival. This is a joy that very few in indus­tri­al­ized nations are even remotely famil­iar with, and one that I long for.