Moral Money
“Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of a civilized nations.” – Thomas Jefferson
Introduction
What if we told you that a new neighbor’s children had to pay their parents .08% taxes on every transaction they made, pays market value rent for their room, is charged interest on the money they borrow, and have credit cards and a cell phone at the ages of 5 and 7? Furthermore, if the children did not pay the interest, they would go to prison in the basement and work doing slave labor until they paid off their debt. In this prison, they would work for even worse pay and lose all right to participate in society, but can have all of their expenses and room and board paid for by their parents without having to pay taxes, be told what to do, or play a part in their conditioning game of vying for power and control.
With the preview of what future generations will say about our choices today, what if we told you that the parents are so in debt that it can never be repaid even though they make trillions, they don’t pay their fair share of taxes because other professions also have money to protect, they can just print money without being personally or professionally accountable for their fiscal irresponsibility or spending, they state that no fight is allowed at home but are involved with wars abroad, and they made up this prison thing just so they could instill fear into the population so their pyramid scheme of a society that they call democracy and capitalism comes the end that we want to see in our shared predictable future. What we will highlight in this work, is professionals, businesses, and public officials are legally required to spend money in ethical and moral ways (HERE). As for our purposes here of addressing moral money, as it relates to addiction, to state it clearly: any licensed profession is required by law to be ethical and moral with money; therefore, any governmental official or professional with a professional license who is not acting “morally” with money is subject to legal review by state licensing and professional boards (HERE; HERE). What should be noted is that not all professions have this legal requirement and codes of ethics differ, but as the system holds citizens to the letter of the law (e.g., IRS), maybe this means that they should also be following the letter of the law? Clearly, this is not the case (HERE; HERE) and with exponential debt and profits available, addictions are rampant in Western culture that needs more more and everything to be more better.
Orientation
Are exponential and compounding profits moral? Isn’t a sign on bonus is a bribe that you are consenting to? What are the morals of printing money? Is the market not based on cheap or slave labor? Aren’t student loans a form of debt slavery or indentured servitude? Is the government being moral when it charges interest to citizens for student loans or when taxes not paid on time? While the government itself has a pile of debt, how come government officials and agencies do not have to pass a financial audit or a moral character clause (HERE)? Why have professions not questioned other profession’s behaviors? For example, it was illegal to shut down society in the case of COVID and the fields of psychology and law would not stop it. Why? What stopped professional organizations from speaking out against this illegal governmental activity? Aren’t sign on bonuses bribing? Aren’t paychecks classical conditioning. Aren’t employee reviews operant conditioning? Isn’t advertising psychological manipulation and incentivizes addiction through dissociative means? Isn’t government spending our money on their foreign wars to protect their business interests and apparently our public safety?
Reorientation
In the name of addiction, how can the government sponsor legal gambling that enables addiction culture while it keeps psychedelic medicines illegal when they are safe and effective and are known healing agents (HERE) based on common sense logic (O’Brien, 2023b)?
Data
Power, corruption, control, shopping, money, and sugar are addicting no? Psychological science does not think so because these conditions are not in the current diagnostic statistical manual; therefore they are undiagnosed, untreated, and unresolved. Why does psychology not have an operational definition of addiction? We could say that the answers to all of questions thus far is addiction, but we know that the real answer is recovery. Is addiction transdiagnostic? We see that it is and we brought an operational definition of addiction (O’Brien, 2023a). Also, we searched the literature on transferring addictions to see how far behind the literature is on understanding it (HERE) and found that it exists as a concept but is not properly researched. Again, addiction research has been outsourced to bariatric surgery, but yet again, we bring our addiction research and see addiction in perfectionism, altruism, and ambition (O’Brien, 2023a).
Discussion
Whether it is logical or societal, without a choice, the next generation maintains what the previous generation built and cleans up what they left behind. What previous generations have really left us are their wild addictions: money, material, convenience, comforts, and a good retirement. Their behaviors can become ours, but there is a choice. This is what the moneylender, governmental worker, and professional fink compromises by going into their profession. Because they are paid to do what professions are doing, then this is the personality that they are relying on. Selling and making citizens dependent on their products, professions, technology, and reasoning will continuing to lead the masses into their undiagnosed addictions all because, ironically, psychology could not see that their symptoms of denial were addictive and the law was so addicted to not applying their reasoning and logic publicly that that is why an operational definition of addiction has historically been missed.
Dissociation is how they missed it; addiction is why (O’Brien, 2023a). The issue is that the learning curve is even steeper with the intergenerational gap (Adlerian family constellations and child order); and that is even getting smaller and smaller with each passing generation. For the incumbent generations, the next right thing is not always easy to see because people are addicted to and dependent on not seeing it. Etched into our biology, society, and culture we are bound to our past because it provides some sense of safety, which is a dependence issue (e.g., addicting), but what buys safety is what is most addicting. What people are mostly addicted to is what they have tried to break forever (e.g., addiction or dependence on the past).
One would believe that working for oneself is better than working for someone else, but when one looks at the tax burden and cost of that freedom, it seems like the system is draining those who are willing to put themselves out there instead of those who took stable, comfortable, and dependable jobs or careers. Those who thrive in chaos cannot conquer it, but they sure know how to ride the wave. But for those who settle and compromise their values for future reward, what is it that they settle and compromise? Are we a nation of professional finks (HERE)? Why have professions not questioned other profession’s behaviors? 4 trillion dollar transfer of wealth during COVID. Musk, Cook, Zuckerberg, and Bezos are 233 Billion dollars richer since Trump’s election win (HERE) and they want to hold citizens to a moral character clause (HERE) around psychedelics (HERE)?
Solution
We challenge our readers to watch the movie “I am” by Tom Shadyac and not hear the word “addiction” as the answer to the movie’s two foundational questions: “What is wrong with the world” and “what can we do about it?” As a society, can we ask “what is right with the world?” but we know that only love can fill the coffers and fear drains them. What if there was no money, resources, transactions, or energy to transfer? Is that blissful or void? Numb or safe?
We suggest that all businesses that produce products have to pay a generational tax, paid to the next generation, for having to clean up. We also suggest that all profits (before taxes) made without producing something tangible for another citizen (e.g., interest on money), is donated to people who need financial resources and they (receiver of money) would not have to pay taxes on it.
Conclusions
Paychecks and monetary rewards are great examples to assist in our understanding the principles of conditioning in addiction and unconscious dissociative programming (O’Brien, 2023a). People work for the reward, and if they profit exponentially without contributing to the greater good, then imbalance has been achieved. When people learn how to get their needs met without having to work to meet them, the issue of competition arises. Psychologically, this may be more of a “identifying instead of comparing” stance, but what is apparent is that trauma and dissociation research is needed to explain why professions are still stuck and unable to keep up with the times. They have to decide if they want to keep doing their job anymore. The next generation has to decide if they want to keep what society has to offer. However, trauma theory and presentations suggest that we already have our answer.
Charged for the pursuit of happiness in a free country, maybe it is a fee country so governmental officials can have well-funded careers and retirement off of the backs of others for existing. Please, tell us again who is being taxed without representation? Please tell us about non-refundable governmental application fees? License to do business? License to fish? License to get married? Of course insurance, law, and government would push for more regulation, more laws, more policies, more vacation weeks, more reward points, more trainings, more education, more licensed professions, more cash back savings, more incentives, more taxes, more conformity, more more more! If you were a betting person, who would you bet on to survive the fall of this civilization? Those who know moral recovery and how to heal, or those who only know how to follow the rules (HERE)? Psychedelics, pain, illness, and disease keep the past alive so we do not forget. We are dependent on that. This is the spiritual knowledge you didn’t know you were looking for. And if dyscalculia is anything like dyslexia (HERE) in our educational system (HERE), then those who have it may not be as good as someone who doesn’t. We would argue that there is emotionia (O’Brien, 2024c; HERE), but that divorce is all predicated on dissociation to understand and addiction to continue (O’Brien, 2023a).
Implications
As children become aware of their parents’ declining mental health, they can start to see the breakdown of their memories, cognitions, functioning, and reasoning. Arbitrary rules that adults make up only serve their level of comfort, development, and spiritual awareness. The same is true for professions, societies, governments, and nations (HERE). While we can believe that laws unite us in a common cause, common sense, common dignity, and integrity, we are all not on the same page with what being moral means (HERE). As we look at the research on moral development and see who is really running our modern show, we have to be honest with our societal level (HERE). Therefore, those who remain dependent on the obedience and compliance stages of development will not be able to do the next right thing without consequence.
Punishment is a matter of abuse and speaks to the quality of the system (HERE). When reason is not able to win out because someone is concerned about the backlash or that someone might sue or report them to a governmental agency that will run you through a bureaucratic maze of fines and punishments, then morality has lost its faith in humanity (HERE). But if you want to regain it, here are our suggestions: (HERE; HERE).
If licensed professions were practicing moral money, then the IRS would allow for self-care to be a write-off for those in the helping professions, allow write-offs for cancelations, and they would allow self-employed to write-off sick days. If the law was practicing moral money (HERE), they would not allow student loans, timeshares, exponential and compounding profits, or legal double-standards to exist. If the government was moral with money they would not support wars, medical experimentation, charge late fees, interest, have debt, print money, or take/”borrow” from social security. They would be able to pass a civil audit. If psychology was moral with money, they would not charge. If the medical administration and insurance professions were moral with money, they would have been able to fund a pandemic response, provide universal healthcare, do better at preventing disease, and would be non-profits and not allowed to own stadiums. Dependence on professions is the psychological addiction that moral money exposes. Recovery provides the way home (O’Brien, 2024a).
Future Directions
It was reported to us that an insurance company’s policy is that when an agent is discussing someone’s last will and testament and life insurance, if the person asks about it or states the word “suicide” (even as a passing comment or joke) they require that police do a wellness check on the individual who asked the question. This involves calling in police officers without informing the customer and sending the police to their house unannounced. This is where this is where the field of psychology is and where it is going. If irony is anything, it is in the reality that we can see.
References
O’Brien, A. (2023a). Addiction as Trauma-Related Dissociation: A Phenomenological Investigation of the Addictive State. International University of Graduate Studies. (Dissertation). Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023b). Memory Reconsolidation in Psychedelics Therapy. In Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023c). Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024a). Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and healing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024b). Diagnostic Privilege: Meta-Critical Analysis. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 2. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024c). Meta-Critical Analysis: The “Science” of Pseudoscience. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 3. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024d). Moral-Ethics. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer andhealing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Chapter 14. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024e). Path of the Wounded Healers for Thrivers: Perfectionism, Altruism, and Ambition Addictions; Re-education and training manual for Abusers, Activists, Batterers, Bullies, Enablers, Killers, Narcissists, Offenders, Parents, Perpetrators, and Warriors. Re-Education and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2025a). American Made Addiction Recovery: a healer’s journey through professional recovery. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2025b). Path of the Wounded Healer’s EMDR, Brainspotting, and Psychedelic Care Open Source Training Manual. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
