Donella Meadows outlined twelve archetypal points of leverage for shifting systems. She counts the Goals of the system as one of the highest points of leverage. What is the goal of our current monetary system? What old cultural stories are programmed into it? Is one of the goals the maintenance of privilege? What other unwritten goals are encoded in the culture of money?

If the economy is the DNA of a cancer cell that is ravaging this planet, how might we reprogram this DNA to be on a different mission? Currencies are definitely tools for regulating information flows in a system, but might they also be a medium for transforming the goals of a system? How might a currency transaction actually be a conversation about our values and vision, enabling us to “vote” on what future we’d like to live into?