Tools and how we use them

Tool is a word used for many sorts of things, the least one not being a slang name for a certain type of person.  To be honest, I’m not 100% what calling a person a tool actually means, although I know the meaning enough to call someone a tool in certain cases.  This is not what this blog entry is going to be about.  I’m more going to focus on how certain tools can be wielded for good or harm.

For starters, a very basic tool comes to mind, that being a hammer.  A hammer can be used for incredible good like when it’s used to build a house.  It can also be used for incredible harm, like when it’s used to kill someone by crushing their head to a pulp.  In both cases, the tool is the same, a simple hammer.  The differences in how it’s wielded are astounding though, aren’t they?

Capitalism is another tool, albeit more controversial naturally.  Capitalism and how it grows economies can be extremely good.  It can help create jobs, increase people’s standards of living and all sorts of great things.  It can also be used to enslave people.  Capitalism can easily either lead to greed or perhaps better put exploit the greed that already exists within a person down.  It can also easily lend itself towards extreme inequalities in wealth.  What’s worse is that people come to a point where they defend the inequalities as being okay.

Money is yet another tool.  Money is not the root of all evil in spite of what many well meaning Christians will tell you.  The LOVE of money is the root of all KINDS of evil.  The problem is that we find it extremely easy to slide down the slope towards loving money when we have access to it.  Money can be used for many good things.  It can be used to empower people when they earn income in order to provide for themselves.  Money generally allows more generosity.  That’s not to say the poor don’t have anything to give, anyone who has been alive for more than 10 years knows that is simply untrue.    Money can fund businesses, churches, schools and churches.

However, money can also enslave people.  It can easily fund war and cause severe inequality.  As we saw in the Wall Street movement it can also easily lend itself to envy.  Money can also easily lead to enabling someone as opposed to empowering them.  For instance, if you give a beggar a $20 bill, maybe they’ll spend that on food, but maybe they’ll spend it on alcohol.