The Measure of all things

• 2023

• 100,000 US Lincoln Memorial Pennies

• 30.5 inch (77.47 cm) cube , 540 lbs (244.94 kg)

Bread, medical treatment, a poem can all be measured, relative to one another, with money. Money allows us to weigh the worth of anything on a common scale. With it, we can translate any good, any service, any space, even time into comparable units. 

Money is an instrument we use to exchange diverse things. We use to price fruit in the market, or value an education, or even quantify the cost of our wars. Blood and treasure, both easily convert to dollars in a society where lives are lived paycheck to paycheck. We want to live in a world where money cannot buy happiness, or love, where personal integrity cannot be bought and where a price could never be placed on a human life. But we know the dismal truth: everything has a price and anything can be negotiated. 

We think of money as Dollars or Euros or Rupees but money is deeper and broader than currency. Coins and banknotes also are not money, they are just tangible tokens, Handholds of a vast abstraction, an idea that saturates and shapes every aspect of our lives, and communities, our cultures, and countries. Money binds all humanity together beyond any geographical barriers or national borders. 

Money is a great structured symbol for balancing and healing and growing closer.[1] It can fuel the engines of peace as well as war, be used to drive positive change, promote fairness, and enable dreams. Money can help bridge gaps, uplift communities, and support the common good. With it we can fund education, foster innovation and feed children. How much we spend to do those things is also a gauge of our generosity, compassion, and “a final measure of our devotion”[2] to pull each other out of darkness and into the light.

[1]Robert Heinlien, Stranger in a strange land. [2]Abraham Lincoln. Gettysburg Address.