The Bigger Picture: Money pre-occupies us. It organises and shapes our lives. It is the access point to nearly every resource available on the planet and the only way to gain the basics for life - food, shelter, warmth, clothing, sanitation and even water.
If you have it, you can expect to live longer, benefit from the best healthcare and foods, even hire others to take charge of your health and well-being. If you don't, your basic needs are considered surplus; you are seen as a burden to society.
People with money have access to education. They're encouraged to develop skills of innovation, organisation and management, and trade them for more resources and better treatment. They spend this extra money on expensive personal items to make them feel better about themselves, all the while becoming isolated from the community. They learn to see themselves as more important, having worked harder and deserving more.
Well, we all work hard. Many people work their bodies to the ground without a day's sick or holiday pay, and never gain one ounce extra. This injustice is seen as normal. Well it's not.
It was a mistake to trade money for labour. Having been raised in a profit-driven society, we believe money defines an economy. Well it shouldn't. Our original societies were not individualistic and profit-based. They promoted mutual independence, empowerment, dignity and respect. People contributed to their full ability and benefited equally. In fact, reaching for your potential was encouraged. People understood that the more one person flourished, the more the whole community benefited.
In our modern, settled societies, resources are wasted, selfishness is justified and hierarchies are defended. Money is a symbol for trading resources, but love, parenting, support and encouragement are not recognised or valued by money. Competition is favoured, where individuals corner as many resources as possible, instead of cooperating to generate resources to benefit the whole community. This system is inherently unjust.
So far, our best thinking to correct it has been to insist on waging all our contributions. This does not eradicated inequality. The problem is having a system that assumes a few should profit while most everyone else is used to generate that profit.
Could you imagine not working for money? What if we all took care of and worked for each other, prioritising real closeness, human connections and getting everything we need to lead big, full, wonderful, fun-filled human lives? What if we weren't interested in one bit more, how would our lives change?
I'm convinced that behind our urge to hoard resources is a deep sense of loneliness and insecurity. These feelings drive our current anti-human system and have been the target of successful marketing campaigns. In the absence of feeling empowered for change, we become robots trying to fill an endless hole, making a few rich.
Justice will mean taking charge of feeling and acting against these deep hurts. We are going to have to pull together even closer and make our fears known to those who insist on loving us completely, who will listen without mirroring back more worry and fears, and encourage us to act powerfully against them. Believe it or not, developing such communities is probably our key to ending poverty and transforming the economy.
I was raised middle-class. Somehow I was taught that to think about money was greedy and to pretend it didn't matter was good. I was raised to be afraid to talk about money with conviction, strategy, insight and care. Complete freedom of our creativity, bodies and minds, however, requires us to talk about and take charge of money like never before.
There can be no denying it: our society is built on greed, hoarding, profit-seeking and consumerism. Billions of phantom dollars suddenly disappear and reappear in fictitious markets while our planet and all the resources we rely on are destroyed. The work of hundreds of millions of good, deserving people is erased in a moment while the health of our bodies, minds and communities are eroded.
Change is urgent. We can abandon the world's systems and give-up yet again, or move in closer, reach each other on human levels and put into action a new plan. Our chief executives and politicians are struggling, this is clear. They need us to model to them the abundance of support and resources available in the world and teach them to see what's right.
Despite how bad things might seem, there is no reason why this generation can't really move in next to each other, commit to believing in ourselves and put in place the mechanisms needed to move us from this oppressive system to a human system. By developing a plan now, we allow the next generation to build on it and a generation ahead to live more profound lives.
• Shalini Sinha is an independent producer, counsellor and journalist. She is a counsellor on equality issues. She has lectured on Women's Studies in UCD and co-presents Mono, RTÉ's intercultural programme.