Whom do you trust, and why? Would you trust someone who believes in a fiction that you know is a fantasy?
On the neoliberal understanding of international relations, trade fosters international peace since war is an obstacle to trade and wealth creation. Money is transpersonal and transnational -- like math and music, it is a universal language, math a measure, music an emotional manipulation, money a price of value.
Like religion, money is also a kind of fiction based on a faith. In the case of religion, the faith depends a bit more on the individual's investment in the religion than on the coreligionists or their investment. If one's coreligionists all turn atheist, one may maintain one's religion without loss of belief. The faith in money depends entirely on the collective investment. Without that collective faith, no value.
Unlike religion, money is most valuable to those who have the least of it, yet those with a lot of it stand to lose the most if the currency collapses. These paradoxical asymmetries are not only ironic but socially dysfunctional.
(Compare, for example: I have no religion, so I have no use for religion at all, aside from an intellectual curiosity about those who believe and the history of believers. And those who are most invested in their religion are impervious to any attack on it. The contrast with money is stark.)
The classical economic idea is that all people have needs, creating a vast demand for certain kinds of goods. On that view, trade and comparative advantage are the most efficient means of wealth creation for everyone. Religions, however, are not universal needs and don't respond universally to any basic needs they might serve. Some of us believe in multiple gods, others none but ghosts of ancestors, others have only one, some none at all. Religions are like local currencies, except that there's no currency exchange rate, in fact there's no exchange market at all. When you convert someone to another religion, you expect the convert to give up the old religious doctrines and values, and you're frustrated if they don't. On the contrary, currency is not essentialist at all. One of its main purposes is to serve as a medium of exchange. It's anti-essentialist. It serves some other purpose than itself, and it's a universal purpose.
One might conclude that religions, lacking an exchange market, wouldn't interact with money, a medium of exchange. But they do in national contests, especially in war, and despite the universal recognition of trade trust. It's because religion is a non fungible fiction. Both properties -- non fungiblility and fictionality -- are essential to its interactive character.
Suppose I have a carrot and I want to sell it. It's not a fiction, but a local resource -- I have it with me, you don't. It has a value on the market, so anyone can see and understand its price, and so anyone can buy it either to use or to resell. It requires only a little trust between buyer and seller to achieve an exchange.
Suppose I have a religious belief. It has a value to my coreligionists, but it's really a fiction, so not only does it have limited value to the non believers but I know that others don't see its value. Can I trust those others? How can I, when the belief I hold is a fiction that no one else would buy unless sharing that fiction.
The assumption that others will not share the fiction, should incline the believers to justify the fiction to strengthen it. No one is more entrenched in their views than when challenged by criticism. The fact that the religion is an unbelievable fiction doesn't make it any the less believed. On the contrary, its fictionality inspires more steadfastness of belief. The unbelievabilities flourish and multiply in religions -- djinns, angels, devils, ghosts. It's a Pandora's box, an open door to common-fare imaginings (very unlike the extraordinary revelations of science, which are far beyond common imagination, see the post on the mediocrity of art and the unbounded imagination of science).
Religion, like property, leads to conflict. In the case of property, the threat of violence is essential and definitional: "it's mine" means no more nor less than "If you try to take it, imma hurt you" or I'll get someone or some authority to hurt you. But trade, the exchange of resources through money, overcomes this obstacle on the property side. It's the difference between trade and sharing.
Religion has a dual relation to property. If you adopt my religion, I'm none the poorer for it. That's one reason why many are surprised by woke objections to cultural appropriation. You adopt my religion or religious ideas or values, I don't lose; if anything, I win! But if you try to take my religious beliefs from me, then my beliefs are like property, my loss.
It's often observed that money is a fiction. This is misleading. Money is a fungible fiction, so it facilitates exchange. Not so with non fungible fictions like religion.
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