The Virtue of Money: How Money Contributes to Peace, Happiness, and Goodness

By Daniel Nelson

Think about all the myths you’ve been taught about money. Money does not contribute to peace of mind. Material things do not contribute to happiness. We can never honor things if we use them as a means to self-enhancement.

Author Daniel Arthur Nelson sweeps those falsehoods aside. He contends that money helps people achieve great things, and wanting it is an honorable desire.

Money can bring economic security and allow you to enrich the body, mind, and soul. Underestimating the peace and happiness money can bring you is a dire mistake that could have devastating consequences.

While there is nothing intrinsically bad about poor people, the notion that there is virtue in poverty is misguided and harmful. On the contrary, the sensible and moral view is that the love of money, properly balanced, is indeed, righteous. Seeking material success allows you to live a more productive life and enjoy The Virtue of Money.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daniel Nelson
• Release date: Jan 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215438220

Book preview

                Copyright @ 2018 Daniel Arthur Nelson

                       ISBN-13:  9798363765209

                          ISBN-10: 149272064X

To Doris, Rita, and Rachel—

friends who are no longer with me

Contents

1        Money and a Good Life

2        No Virtue in Poverty

3        Objections to the Virtue of Money

4        Count Your Blessings

5        Creating Financial Success through Work

6        Learn to Be a Good Steward of Money

7        Parting Thoughts

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Gina Mazza for her initial review of my book and for offering constructive suggestions that I incorporated into my manuscript. I am also grateful to Cheri Madison and I must thank her for her excellent professional editorial review of my manuscript which greatly improved the quality of my written work.

Money and a Good Life

Never underestimate the significance of cultural conditioning in creating beliefs that you have held for all your life. The world’s major religions often falsely teach us that many things are evil that are, in fact, intrinsically good. Sex and money come immediately to mind as examples.

Some religions and even some New Age philosophers put forth the extremist notion that all desire is evil and that it is wrong to want. We need to distinguish between right desire and wrong desire, but moral desires provide impetus for moral acts. I most certainly should desire wisdom. I should want knowledge. And good sex. And good friendships. And a host of other goods.

And I should also have a proper and moral desire for financial success and material goods. Money, ethically earned, provides for a better quality of life. Money provides for enrichment of body, mind, and soul. Money can be used for education. Money can be used for charitable giving. Money can be used for much good. But I digress …

Never underestimate the power of suggestion.

All of us heard sayings when we were young that we immediately and passively accepted as true without giving them any logical scrutiny. Some of those sayings are false. And it would only take a modicum of good logic to reveal the falseness of these sayings. These false clichés, accepted in an instant of suggestion without critical scrutiny, are often retained for a lifetime. These false clichés get passed from generation to generation, and sometimes this continues literally for centuries.

Some of these false statements, accepted as true when they are not, have deleterious results. Many of these false and deleterious sayings are related to money, material possessions, and financial success.

First consider, as I have already asserted, that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with the simple desire to want financial success and material goods. A good life is a life of