The Silver Coin

Even though I didn't need to, the other day I recalled that when I was eight my father gave me a big shiny coin, even though he didn't need to. It was exactly one troy ounce of pure silver that had been minted by a private company to sell to people like my dad so that they could give the coins to their sons like me. He said that he had bought the coin in order to teach me something about value and then he pulled a dollar bill out of his pocket. My dad asked me, holding the silver coin in one hand and the dollar bill in the other, if I'd ever wondered why stores took paper bills in exchange for things that people need, like food.
"Because it's money," I said.
"But it's just paper," he said. He explained to me that all paper money represents the value of precious metals that are stored by the government in big vaults somewhere. (At least I think that is what was said because he was always saying things like that. For practical purposes, let's just assume that that is a pretty accurate representation.) My father then told me that the paper was worthless without the silver and handed me the coin. I still have it, though it doesn't quite eclipse my palm the way it used to.
Even though my dad told me that the coin was valuable and that the paper was really worthless, and I value his opinion highly, I think that in a way he got it all backwards. If I were to take the coin to a store and attempt to trade it for something I needed, like food, I would be scorned by the shopkeeper for trying to swindle him. So the silver coin is really worthless, because I can't spend it on anything. First I'd have to trade the coin for paper money that represented the silver coin and then I could spend the paper. But that isn't the sort of thing that I would want to do, because I deal with paper money all the time and it would feel much more satisfying, even though I wouldn't need to, to trade a big shiny coin for something that I needed.
So the more closely I look at the coin and at value itself, which is something that I very much enjoy doing, the more they begin to divide into separate parts. There is inherent value in the silver coin and there is representational value in the dollar bill, the bill representing the inherent value of the coin. Something familiar, like representational value, is needed in order to make anyone believe in a value that is never actually present. Value would seem, then, to be based almost entirely on word of mouth. No one would see value in silver without the buzz that surrounds it and thus all value under scrutiny reduces itself to rumors and nothing appears to be worth anything.
Of course there has to be something of value because there are things that people need, like food, and those have real worth that isn't based on word of mouth but rather the need of a mouth to be fed. Silver could also, I suppose, be traded for something that someone needed. So then the silver represents the value of food. The dollar bill, then, represents the value of silver which represents the value of a necessary thing, like food, which itself can be bought in a store with dollar bills. The logic seems circular. So the different levels of value don't have a source from which the others flow but rather they all draw from each other in an eddy that leaves everything equal, even though the bills are only paper and the silver only shiny rock and the food nothing but specifically arranged atoms.
But I don't like that. I do not need to think about value, so thinking about value is completely worthless. I prefer (a questionable thing to do, preferring) to leave value as a concept made of solid rock rather than fleeting smoke.
This leads me to acknowledge, something I feel I need to do, that value is a concept that does not only exist in economic cycles. It is also in any system of exchange, like, for example, the exchange of ideas between two people. When ideas are exchanged, just as when money is exchanged, there are units of inherent value (silver) and those of representational value (paper bills). A pure idea, one that is still inside a head and has not yet been expressed, is like the silver coin that my dad gave me. It has inherent value but if I tried to use it in an everyday exchange then I wouldn't get anywhere fast. When I go to the store, and when I speak to a stranger, like you, I need something that is more common and is widely recognized as having value. But these words are just my thoughts in the order I had them. I didn't bother to exchange them into a more accessible currency; not very valuable, or perhaps more.
So there are silver ideas that are more pure, but useless in the world at large, and there are dollar bill expressions that are basically meaningless but have the recognition of value. Of course, "silver" ideas and "dollar bill" expressions are not discrete designations and any given idea expressed is on a scale between the two. Further, it is completely necessary, as necessary as eating, to compromise oneself over to cliches and metaphors, for there is no other way of interacting; an idea which itself has worth or is maybe just a cliche. Because it would be a shame to live caught up in a world that was full of value but void of function.

However, in the hard landscape of function there is needed a few sprinklings of unnecessary shine. Life is fuller and more enjoyable because of the unneeded things, like the silver coin which my father did not need to get for me. In fact, the fact that he did not need to get it for me is what made it so valuable to me. And though some of that value is lost in the exchange from my feelings into these words on paper, I want to put them down, even though I don't need to.