asakiyume | where moth and rust destroy

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy (Matthew 6:19)

That's a common enough adage and moral lesson, but for some reason the portrayal of it in our current Colombian series was visually super affecting and got me thinking.

One of the secondary characters is an army officer, undercover in a mission to take down the supply portion of a drug operation, but he seems at times to have lost himself in his role, though he insists to one of the main characters that that's not the case. In a scene about halfway through the series, he hies himself off on his own in a canoe, drags it ashore, and heads off into some portion of the rain forest armed with a map. He digs into the wet earth and uncovers two pots that contain guns on top and underneath---

Cash money! Benjamins!

Cackling with delight, he plunges his hand in and pulls out a fistful.

And then...

It comes apart in his hands. Turns out a shallow grave in a humid location isn't the best storage decision for paper.

And the character is almost driven mad ...

(The actor's name is Toto Vega. The show is called La Ley Secreta/Undercover Law)

In that moment, the money goes from being a symbol and source of power to rotted paper. When an authorized agent prints money, it's like it imbues the money with a kind of soul. A soul of commerce, I guess. A soul of exchange. No longer a piece of paper, now it's a token that gives you access to things.

But he went and buried it in the ground, like a dead thing, and deprived of its role as a token of exchange, it did in fact die. And now he's holding mere corpses.

.... Well then! That concludes my weird meditation on cash.

Current Music: Mangle Rojo: Lloraba la criatura

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

sovay

But he went and buried it in the ground, like a dead thing, and deprived of its role as a token of exchange, it did in fact die. And now he's holding mere corpses.

That's great. Sympathetic magic doesn't care if you believe in it.

From:

asakiyume

Also: You have to watch out--the ritual you're enacting may not be the one you think it is.

From:

sartorias

That got me to thinking about all the things that get buried, that have value in a time and place. Silk bolts, cowrie shells, salt . . .

From:

asakiyume

Yeah, I was thinking about that too: how some of the things that get used as currency--like all the ones you mention--have lives *apart* from their lives as tokens of exchange. Bolts of silk can make clothes, cowrie shells can be adornment, salt flavors food and preserves it. And even if they have a role/soul as token of exchange bestowed on them, they don't lose their other role/soul. But when we take paper and cut it up into those little rectangles and cover it up with dye, it's like we ruin it for any of the other purposes of paper--it sacrifices its role/soul as paper when it gets given its soul a token of exchange.

... Silk bolts wouldn't do so well buried in a rain forest, but cowrie shells would survive. I wonder how salt would fare.

From:

sartorias

I think it would have to be a dry climate or it would simply poison the ground.

From:

amaebi

I recently drafted poetry on a one-dollar bill.

But in fact the more useless the currency, the more functional it is as money. When you use things of value as exchange tokens and stores of value you tie up usefulness and deprive society of its good.

From:

asakiyume

Yeah, there's a wonderful magic in taking something that has no intrinsic value (or very very little), and deciding to use *that* as your token. That takes guts! It shows you really understand symbolism, and you're committed.

Paper money as a token is a super powerful example of a game we all play together, which *can* be of such great benefit to us all (though of course it can also harm us tremendously).

From:

amaebi

Yes, faith is a substratum of functional specie. But you know? we humans tend to take the mundane faith required for specie to function and inflate it to Mammon. Its substance really isn't enough for it to be anything but the shabbiest of gods.

From:

amaebi

And also: blame the games we choose, not the tokens (maybe). The same tokens can be used for games of cooperative creation and for games of beggar-thy-neighbour. Our choice.

From:

asakiyume

That's true: we need to choose better games.

From:

queenoftheskies

What a great observation/lesson.

From:

asakiyume

Sometimes my thoughts just go on weird trips to strange places....

From:

anna_wing

He should have converted it to gold bars before burying it...

I wonder how polymer banknotes would have survived?

From:

asakiyume

He should have! They would have been less portable, but more durable.

Funny you should say that about the polymer banknotes--my husband said the exact same thing!

From:

minoanmiss

Intriguing.

From:

asakiyume

Hee, I'm glad you found it so ^_^

From:

shewhomust

Traditionally, the Bank of England will honour very badly damaged banknotes - I think all they need is the serial number. But I don't know if that's still the case - and anyway, your reading is more interesting!

From:

asakiyume

Also, am I right in thinking that English banknotes are now made of something that's either not paper or has something note-paper mixed in? Perhaps they'd survive better being buried.

I got curious about what the rule is for US banknotes, since that's the Colombian drug trade's apparent currency of choice, and the kindly internet told me this:

"Any badly soiled, dirty, defaced, disintegrated, limp, torn or worn out currency note that is clearly more than one-half of the original note, and does not require special examination to determine its value, is not considered mutilated and should be included in your normal deposit."

When I saw the scene from which the screenshots were taken, I had the impression that the money was literally disintegrating, but looking at the screenshots themselves, I'm thinking maybe it wasn't as bad as all that!

From:

shewhomust

Also, am I right in thinking that English banknotes are now made of something that's either not paper...

Good point: they are now made of plastic!

...but looking at the screenshots themselves, I'm thinking maybe it wasn't as bad as all that!

No, the images don't entirely convey what you describe. You had me thinking of fairy gold, that turns to leaves the morning after...