What is Money anyway?

Many things can be called "money". Formal textbooks generally harp about concepts such as "unit of account" and "store of value". Blah blah blah. 

Big Money Gazer is only concerned with the kind of intangible, immaterial "money" that people in a particular time and locality accept in exchange for their goodies and efforts when they are not really receiving anything inherently valuable. The creature usually called "Fiat Money" and usually represented by a real number and a unit (dollar, pound, peso, schilling, rial). Like in 50 British Pounds, 10.5 Euros, or 80.25 Pesos. Backed and enforced by nothing but belief, trust, custom, laws, and should all that fail, armed force. Like in an Army, a Navy, or at least a police force.

So I really mean to write about Fiat Money. That utterly weightless and invisible thing (or maybe I should say un-thing) that pervades the workings of every modern society. It contains no molecules, atoms, energy, or anything physical, and yet we seem unable to live without it. Or at least we feel really miserable without it. It is not unusual to hear of persons committing suicide when they lose their "money". 

Fiat Money has been around since ancient times, generally under the guise of representing "real money" like gold, silver, or grain. It has repeatedly waxed and waned, appeared and disappeared, but in its current form, pure and naked and devoid of all pretenses, Fiat Money is an extraordinarily new phenomenon. Many of us were alive when Richard Nixon "closed the window". That's when the ghost came fully alive. And for the most part, we barely noticed.

If you are perplexed, so am I. Yet, I can not ignore Fiat Money. Something or somebody constantly contrives to remind me of this very real fiction, of its presence or-more frequently-its absence, and just how important it is. And so I find myself all too often gazing at the "un-gazeable", trying to discern its shape and hues and inner workings.

I thank you for your company.

Note: I fully appreciate that the title of this posting is rather misleading, and the posting itself is vague and utterly incomplete, and I sincerely apologize. I am doing my best to point at this very elusive topic within the space of a few paragraphs, using my very limited knowledge. Thank you for your forbearance.