How deeply unconscious are we about money?

A better question might be, "how deeply unconscious are we in general? Looking at my own life, the answer seems to be,"pretty deeply". I took 3 weeks to change the password for this blog (which I had lost). It turns out to be simple enough, but it was unfamiliar! Oh the stress of the new and unfamiliar! People  yearn for an earlier and simpler time. Except, in those earlier times, it never did seem that simple either. Bernard Lietaer suggests that standing in the way of the creation of "sustainable abundance", apart from the natural opposition of powerful minorities who benefit from the current system, lies a more important impediment: that most people are ignorant of the nature and working of the money system. We are deeply immersed in it, and deeply unconscious about it.

Last spring during Landmark Education's annual Conference on Global Transformation,  as the meltdown of the global financial system was being topped by the mini-May-market crash,  a session promised to discuss  "creating  possibilities in the economy." I showed up early, thinking there would be standing room only. Hardly anyone showed up...the only other woman who came was the wife of the moderator. The men were deeply familiar with bonds, interest rates, credit default swaps, foreign exchange markets, and so forth, but  they didn't seem any more aware of how  money gets created than the people on my street. They had the same question about where the money was going to be "found" to deal with the social goals they wanted. We are accustomed to starvation that continues alongside a sufficient food growing capacity, to unemployment that persists in the face of plenty of work that needs doing and plenty of manpower. We "just don't have enough money" to pay for really fine general education or comprehensive and adequate healthcare.  We don't know that parallel, alternative money systems do exist that can handle these matters without increasing taxes or regulations! I didn't know how to recapture my password, either.

Very recently, a number of offerings suggest these ideas may be finding their way into the public space:

Bernard Lietaer has an accessible website  
(perhaps that makes my blog here unncessary, but I will carry on with it anyway, for the sheer pleasure it gives me)  
*A documentary film "The Money Fix" (easy to google it)
*Last week's PBS documentary "Fixing the Future"

The three great traditional taboos ("the great unconscious that runs the show")  are sex, death, and money, In the spirit of full disclosure, I must add that at the same time as the money workshop was being held, a concurrent session dealt with orgasm....! That was standing room only.