This article is playful look at the origin, etymology, purpose, and psychology, of the term ‘approval’. As part of a series we’ve created, the article is intended to be a humorous and poetic dig at the word that has become central to our discussions, and as a historical reference to deepen our understanding. Of course, one of the underlying primary goals we work towards on a daily basis is getting into the housing or investment market, increasing your equity and building wealth through your various property strategies, and our debt reduction methods are central to this end. Other articles on serving your loan should be referenced for a more practical understanding.
In an era where the metaphysical and the digital converge, Approval has become a ritual of both transcendence and subjugation, a moment of divine affirmation mediated by cold, indifferent algorithms. What was once the privilege of human decision-makers, steeped in wisdom, judgment, and perhaps even mercy, is now entrusted to the hands of the machine — that impassive, omnipotent, and often inscrutable deity of the digital age.
The very term approval derives from the Latin approbare, meaning to “approve” or “to accept as satisfactory.” But what does it mean in a world where the very concept of “satisfactory” has been codified into ones and zeros, where the judgment of an applicant’s fate is entrusted to an impersonal sequence of calculations, risk assessments, and data points?
Let us consider that in the medieval courts, approval — a royal grant, a lord’s pardon, a bishop’s blessing — was often a sign of favour, a human act that reflected grace, mercy, or a form of patronage. It was not simply a transactional act but one imbued with a sense of benevolence, compassion, or at the very least, the weight of human interaction. To be approved was to receive the stamp of human authority, an acknowledgment of your position within a society that operated through relationships, allegiances, and hierarchies.
But today, approval is no longer the act of a monarch or a judge, nor even the hand of a benevolent banker. It is the cold, logical extension of machine intelligence, where the question of whether you are deemed “worthy” of a loan, a mortgage, or a line of credit rests not on the warmth of human interaction but on an algorithm’s capacity to weigh, measure, and predict.
This transition from human judgment to algorithmic approval has profound psychological and sociocultural implications. The system we have now is rooted not in empathy but in data-driven efficiency. Where once the bank officer might have understood the narrative of an applicant’s life — the hardships, the triumphs, the moments of resilience — today the system asks only for numbers. Your credit score, your debt-to-income ratio, your history of repayments, and yes, even your shopping habits, are laid bare in an abstract tableau. These statistics, impersonal and devoid of nuance, become your identity.
And therein lies the psychological sting. Whereas the medieval subject might have sought approval from a monarch or a community of peers — institutions imbued with human emotion, frailty, and empathy — today, the subject seeks approval from the machine. There is no room for the personal, the particular, or the unquantifiable. In a sense, this new form of approval is totalitarian in its efficiency: it gives no consideration to who you are beyond your ability to fit a profile, to adhere to a set of defined parameters.
We must also recognize the blessing implicit in the term “approval.” In some ways, it is a blessing, indeed: the granting of credit, the possibility of homeownership, the manifestation of dreams. Yet, as Faust found with his bargain with Mephistopheles, approval comes at a cost. It is not simply a pass into a future of wealth or prosperity; it is an entry into a debt-laden labyrinth. What, after all, is “approval” in a world where acceptance is predicated not on the fullness of your potential but on your capacity to repay?
In this sense, approval is not a divine sanction — it is a Faustian bargain, a contractual agreement between the borrower and the lender. It is the machine that decides if you are worthy, if you fit the bill, if you are deemed worthy of the privilege of debt. It is a complex and often insidious game of probabilities — the machine does not care who you are, only that you are predictable.
This kind of approval — or rather, the ritual of approval — strips away not only the personal but also the philosophical. For once approval is granted, the subject becomes part of the machinery. You are no longer a person; you are a cog in the machine of finance. The loan becomes the contract that binds you to the system, and the loan’s approval is merely the moment when you step into that system, forever bound by the terms of the debt.
It is a strange, paradoxical blessing — the approval that opens doors and simultaneously locks you within a cycle of obligation, where repayment becomes the measure of your worth and the resolution of your future. For the machine, your identity is not so much a human one as a series of calculated variables — a function of your credit score, your income, your payment history. The machine is blind to who you are, to the depth of your human experience, your ambitions, your fears, your character.
At the same time, approval feels like an elusive golden ticket, the doorway to a better life. It is the moment we have been waiting for, the approval that signifies a step toward financial security. But what happens when the machine, after all the documentation, after all the checking and balancing, decides that we are not worthy of its blessing? The psychological burden of rejection is not merely financial — it is existential. We are told, in effect, that we are not enough, that our lives, our dreams, are not worthy of the privileges we seek. The rejection comes not from a person, but from a cold, indifferent code that measures our lives in terms of digits, percentages, and statistics.
Thus, approval in the modern financial world becomes a complex web of power, control, and fragility. It is not merely the granting of permission; it is the formation of a new identity — one that is defined not by human worth, but by an algorithmic assessment. The machine does not approve or disapprove based on kindness or empathy. It simply executes a function. And yet, we live for its approval, for it is the gateway to a life of security, stability, and possibly even prosperity.
We have entered an era where approval has become not a moment of grace, but an act of cold mechanised judgment. It is a world in which the human spirit is weighed not by its dreams or desires, but by the numbers we generate. And in that quiet, automated decision, we find our fates sealed — for better or for worse.
