the exchange is no longer monetary, instead it is vanity, but it still controls you, just like the money did. it is not just because money happened to be the medium of exchange. it is something else.
What is at work are human emotions. We all have them.
The trick is to get them under control and life's experiences tend to work wonders when people treat their life's experiences as priceless learning opportunities. When I was younger and didn't know the rules of money, I often felt jealous of people who had more "stuff" than I did because I equated it with wealth and my lack of self-worth.
Now I realize what is often behind appearances (which are high levels of debt, although not always). When I travel through a wealthy neighborhood that is on the waterfront and see yachts anchored in peoples' backyards, I no longer feel jealous. Instead I feel inspired (i.e., "if they can do it, so can I if I should decide to do it"). I now know how to turn money into more money over time, which is something I didn't understand very well when I was younger. I'm assuming here that "rich people" know how to manage their money (as in "how did a fool and his money ever get together in the first place") and "poor people" do not, but that is perhaps a bias I have.
Beside money, there are also other aspects of life. I could never understand as a kid why Hollywood celebrities had so many problems. After all, they were good looking (usually), famous, and probably wealthy (at least the movie they starred in was a box office hit). Then as I navigated through life, I discovered that sometimes beauty is only skin deep and sometimes ugliness goes all the way to the bone.
We like to compare ourselves with others. We want to know who is at the top of the Forbes list of richest people, who wins the Superbowl, and who wins the World Series (and so forth). When I was younger, I compared myself with others more and felt inadequate when I didn't measure up to the image I had of them. As I get older, I realize my own inner peace is more important. I'm content with my station in life now (as in "I'm having fun now"). Much of that feeling is based on successfully overcoming all of the hurdles I encountered along the way.
Most of the time, I could afford several of the toys I see people with. I would just have to sell some of my income-producing assets to be able to buy those wasting assets. I'm not willing to do this. Instead, I will use the income from my income-producing assets (when it gets large enough) to buy wasting assets (i.e., nonessential toys) if I still want to buy them at that point. I feel in control of my financial destiny now because I've learned the rules of money (at least some of them anyway) and am following them. Knowledge and self-discipline is the key.