Money Is the Root?

I have a lot of opinions about the role that money should play in our society, and have found that they can be classed under three basic headings. Here are my three perspectives on the topic: they are listed as "good", "neutral", and "evil", in each case with this word roughly corresponding to a measure of money's purpose and value in the world. The truth lies somewhere amid these three assessments, I suspect.

The Good Perspective
"Money is the medium of the Sacred Exchange: a web of interactions which binds all of humanity together through mutually beneficial trade. It does not belong to one person, any more than the blood in your body belongs to one finger; it is meant to flow freely throughout society, going wherever it is needed and never tarrying long enough to grow stagnant and become a force of obstruction. When you need money, you should gain it; when you have more than you need, pass the surplus along. Pointless greed is a disease of the mind; learn to evaluate the difference between 'want' and 'have use for', so that you are not tempted to acquire things you won't appreciate simply for the sake of acquisition. Become a valued customer of many businesses, and possibly the good proprietor of one or two of your own; the social networking, not the money, is the objective in either case."

The Neutral Perspective
"Money is an abstraction, a temporary substitute forced on us by reality which we need to make use of, but we should never mistake it for being desireable, any more than a bandage substitutes for unbroken skin. The energy that we spend on trying to get money would be better set on trying to become immune to the need for it; permanent solutions to problems are worth investing a little effort, time, and even money in, but stopgaps are much less so. Never mistake the presence of a full bank account for true stability; the only way you've actually won the game of life is if you can give all your cash away to charity and still be okay for the rest of your life without a dollar to your name."

The Evil Perspective
"Money is totally a drug - you can't get enough of it, it artificially makes you feel good even when your life is otherwise going straight to shit, and you start suffering the moment you run out. The only difference is that heroin and the like have the decency to kill you when you overdose - those who gain an unreasonable amount of money and spend it way too fast remain trapped in their mockery of happiness and keep plunging down the moral slip-slide in search of still more."