Jacob Needleman, Philosopher Essay

Andy Gutierrez

4/28/2013

Business 1050-004

Bill Moyers wrote the text, “Jacob Needleman, Philosopher” in the year 1989. Bill Moyers is an American journalist and public commentator. He served as White House Press Secretary in the Johnson administration from 1965 to 1967. He worked as a news commentator on television for ten years. This text was written or the interview was done in the year 1989 for the television show “A World of Ideas” which was aired by Public Affairs Television. The interview is Bill Moyers talking with philosopher Jacob Needleman about his new study of the role of money in our culture in 1990. This interview is about Needleman discussing money and its power to shape life’s meaning. This text relates to modern business because obviously business is all about money, but that’s the problem. We’ve become obsessed about money that we’re neglecting and forgetting what life is truly about. I thought this was a great read. It really opened my eyes to how obsessed this world is over money and how everything revolves around it.

Business, religion, philosophy are all interconnected by one main thing. That main connection between all those three things is money. Money is everything nowadays which means that everything is somehow interconnected with money. Money has consumed our world so much now; you can almost say that the purpose of life was totally different, but in the Middle Ages than it is now. The chief focus back in the Middle Ages was honor, power, love, respect and beauty; all among the obvious greed and avarice. Those focuses are totally different than what they are today. The main and possibly only chief focus in today’s modern society is simply money. That’s what everyone wants and what everything is all about. The idea of money can drive people absolutely insane and lose their sense of who they are. Just like animals prey on food and kill for it, we do the same thing for money. We prey on the idea of having a lot of money and will screw someone over if it’ll help us achieve that goal.

Personal indebtedness has a couple of negative effect on us, it increases the debt, decreases the value of the dollar and it causes inflation. The notional value of the dollar bill is pretty ridiculous. It’s ridiculous because in reality, without the faith of the people, the value of the dollar or the ten vanishes. It’s just a piece of paper that says how much it is worth, but if you don’t believe in it, it doesn’t mean anything. Having a sense of wonder can have an interesting effect on us. When people are in a state of wonder and all have the same inner feeling, no one commits crimes; you’re just all sharing and caring for each other. In some cases, being in state of wonder can open up your mind to many different things; one of them is being in complete consciousness. Consciousness is us being aware of our own being, our own self. Consciousness is in itself a valid and reverberating inner experience. “Hell is the state in which we are barred from receiving what we truly need because of the value we give to what we merely want.” This quote from the text can be interpreted in probably a few ways. What I get from it is that hell is when you can’t receive what you truly need rather than what you just want, which are Earthly objects. What we need is love, food, shelter, serving others, etc. There was a lot of philosophy in this entire text, but what is the true value of philosophy. The value of Philosophy isn’t measured in wealth, money, objects, etc. It doesn’t produce any physical things, but rather opens your mind to the most important things in life. For every assignment 10 vocabulary words that are important to the reading have to be chosen and give the definition to each vocabulary word. These are the 10 vocabulary words that I chose for this assignment.

Philosopher - a person who offers views or theories on profound questions in ethics, metaphysics, logic, and other related fields.
Indebtedness - the state of being indebted.
Notional - pertaining to or expressing a notion or idea.
Value - relative worth, merit, or importance
Moral - of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong; ethical
Consciousness - the state of being conscious; awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.
Philosophy - the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct.
Hypocrisy - a pretense of having a virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not really possess.
Intrinsic - belonging to a thing by its very nature
Impinge - to make an impression; have an effect or impact (usually followed by on or upon)