Darkness

This entry is not nearly as depressing as the title makes it sound; this is merely a nod to the fact that I am attempting to write with no lights on, using naught but my knowledge of the general layout of a keyboard (on an unfamiliar laptop, no less!) and the light of the computer screen. So, there will be typos. Deal with it.

I am astonished at the ways in which you can diminish the value of something. A man once said "whomever invented cards was smart, but whomever invented chips was a genius" and it is so undeniably true. Take a stack of ten hundred dollar bills, and it feels like a significant sum of money. Yet, in my hand I hold a single chip that can be redeemed for $1000 and it feels like it has almost no value. I could place it as a bet on a single spin of the roulette wheel and feel significantly less bothered than if I pulled out ten hundreds and used them to place the better.

This raises an interesting point: why do things have so much more value when there is more physical effort involved in their handling? I feel that it is because this chip is so small and lightweight that it feels like almost nothing, while ten hundreds would make a bulge in my wallet and would be unwieldly to use outside of a casino or bank. For the same reason, the transfer from silver and gold to paper money, followed by the recent transfer to electronic money, are equally revolutionary.

We like to think of value as being objective and real, but really, it is transient and relative. A $100 means something different to me and a billionaire, and at the same time, a $100 means something different to me whether it is in cash or chip form, and whether I am in a casino or in a clothing store.