What is your ultimate aim in life? Don’t waste time with the middle — go get what you really want.
Money as a means to an end
Everyone wants money. But why? I think people want money as a means of buying their personal freedom. Freedom of time, thought, and how to live your life.
But I can say this:
Money doesn’t buy freedom. Your approach to life does.
What do you want to do once you have freedom?
Let us not get suckered by money. Let us imagine:
Once you can control all 24 hours of the day just to yourself, then what do you wanna do with your life?
The ultimate end
The reason I like space and future movies:
How would you live your life in a post-monetary society?
A good view is that of the ancient Greeks— before they invented coin and monetary based systems. It seems the virtues or goals of the ancient Greeks were:
- Victory in battle and war
- Eternal individual glory via death in battle (courage)
- To spread an empire — to subjugate “barbarians”. The goal of Alexander the Great to propagate Hellenism with the whole world.
Also it seemed the highest ideals of the ancient Greeks were to either become a king, warrior, or philosopher. Ideally all in one — like Marcus Aurelius.
Currency as proof
This is also why I invested around $25k of my own money into speculative Bitcoin/Digibyte/crypto currency. I am fascinated by currency and money as a technology and a tool of mediation between human beings. Also what led me, Jun, and the ARS team in developing ARS COIN for arsbeta.com.
Screenshot of how to commission a critique with ARS COIN // arsbeta.com 
Design choices for ARS COIN (created by ANNETTE KIM)
What do we really want as artists?
Some of us have ideas or notions of making money from our photography art — but towards what end?
I think we don’t want to make money in our photography for the sake of it. We simply want respect, admiration, and “proof” that others truly admire us and our photos.