God -- as depicted in the Judeo-Christian Bible -- is no longer the nation's final authority. Money is. Americans "can't afford" to be good to each other. They have to compete against each other. This is the iron law of declining sum $arithmetic, when all the money is issued as interest-bearing "loans" by commercial banks as a for-profit business that systematically creates more debt than it creates money; rather than money being issued debt-free and interest-free by governments as a public utility.
Like Revelation's image of the beast that is given power to speak and command, Money talks. Though it is the bankers' lips that move, channeling the voice of the god. So the people meekly accept the destruction of New Deal restraints on capitalism and the dismantling of social welfare, because Money says they must.
Money is the god of capitalist religion. Money is $numbers, which work by arithmetic. Money is issued as loans by bankers. The loans are debts, which are negative $numbers. Debts must be repaid with money, which is positive $numbers. Banks create money in the amount of loan principal, but they simultaneously create debt in the amount of principal plus interest. Banks issue more negative $numbers than positive $numbers. And bankers exercise a near absolute monopoly on the issuance of money. So debts cannot all be paid. But, DEBTS MUST BE PAID. This is the First Commandment. All other commandments are subsumed within this first. Religions specialize in making necessities of impossibilities, to keep us all in awe.
We are ruled by $Numbers that have been given power over our lives. Even the money-issuing bankers are subservient to, and stoop to serve, the impossible laws of $arithmetic. We live in service to non-human, inanimate, immaterial $Numbers. Money is a pretty crappy god. But it's "our" god. So we bow and scrape and serve as best we can. And we never commit the mortal sin of questioning the authority of its rule. Or questioning the bankers' monopoly on issuing the money.
The goal of Christian people is to become rich in the goods of spirit. The goal of capitalist people is to become rich in money. The disparate goals motivate striving in opposite directions. Jesus put it starkly: No one can serve both God and Money. Being rich in money is "proof" that you are a virtuous servant of the money god Mammon. Capitalist culture will raise you aloft as a shining example to be emulated by all and sundry.
Nobody will say, "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he should lose his own soul?" Capitalist science says the soul -- the spiritual aspect of humanity -- is imaginary. Being rich in money and ownership is a visible, empirical "sign of election": you are being displayed as a chosen one of your god. The god has set you as commander of all that you own.
It doesn't matter how you "get" rich. "Being" rich is proof that you did it "right". Who are we to question the unknowable ways of the god? Being poor is proof that you have been found unworthy by the god. A sinner. An anticapitalist. It is written, There will be many anticapitalists in the end times. Or at least it is written now, for your entertainment and elucidation.
Why do Americans keep voting against their own interests? Because they perceive themselves as capitalists, living within a capitalist worldview, and they cannot see from outside the box that they are harming themselves. They can only see the shiny baubles and fantasies of riches that they have been taught to value above all else. Images of those desirables shimmer and flicker from the big screen hanging on their cave wall. They are captivated, possessed. They have incorporated the cultural beliefs and values and goals of capitalism as "my" beliefs and values and goals.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
6
5
4
