The disturbing fact regarding human life on planet Earth is that we are, all of us, and I include myself, living the life of lunatics, because we are all out of touch with Reality. I except from this condition, the few remaining tribes of primitive people living in the remote jungles of places such as Borneo, the Amazon river basin and other similar locations.

Some few humans, among whose small number I count myself, know that this is our condition, but the vast majority of humanity are not aware of the dire situation in which we live.

One result of the collective insanity which prevails in our modern world is that it has allowed the very worst of the lunatics, possessed by destructive impulses, to rise to dominant positions in human societies.

Whether a few of us humans are aware of our deplorable condition of living out of touch with Reality – the definition of lunacy – or not, this is the situation in which we have to live.

The prevailing condition under which humanity lives today – the loss of contact with Reality – began at the time of the Renaissance of Learning, in the 16th Century. It began with a revolt against the Catholic Church of Rome, which during more than one thousand years had been in control of the great “narrative” regarding human life, that held that the condition of human life under Creation, is unalterable. What the Church narrative held, in this regard, was not a religious dogma, but a simple statement of fact, which remains a fact today.

The English Puritans of the 17th Century rose up in revolt against the Church and disregarded the fact of life postulated by the Church. As an example of the Puritan flight from Reality, we have the celebration of Thanksgiving: the Puritans who arrived in North America in 1620, decided to adopt an unrealistic policy in their social organization, where each man would contribute to a social stock of food, from which each family would be granted a portion for their sustenance.

This policy, essentially Communistic, was a flight from Reality and had disastrous consequences: after the first Autumn harvest, it became evident that the Puritans were facing starvation, and a change of policy was imperative. Under the force of circumstances, the Puritans resolved that henceforth, each man should work for himself and his own family. Not surprisingly, at the next harvest there was abundant food. In celebration of this event, the Puritans gave thanks to the Lord, for his benevolence – the first Thanksgiving. The Puritans had been forced to correct the mistake of adopting an unrealistic policy.

By the 18th Century, the Church had lost control of the “narrative” regarding the unalterable condition of human life. More and more thinkers began to feel quite certain that human life could be improved by taking thought and imposing adequate measures; and this confidence in the possibility of improving human life found support in the vast increase in scientific discoveries, which were daily impacting upon society.

In the 19th Century, the novels of Jules Verne, a Frenchman, convinced young people that the future of humanity was very bright indeed, made possible by the miraculous advances of Science. Other thinkers began to make plans for the establishment of improved societies, or even totally altered societies – pre-eminent among them, of course, Karl Marx.

The fundamental statement of the Catholic Church, that the condition of humanity under Creation is unalterable, came to be regarded, as it is regarded today, as a statement that unfairly favors the rich against the poor, those who think as against the unthinking; as a cruel statement that some must starve while others gorge, and that some must freeze to death while others wine and dine in palatial comfort.

The idea that personal charity should operate to alleviate the suffering of the poor was discarded as ineffectual: in the new, improved version of the State, it was the State that would look after the poor. The wealthy approved of this, as it allowed them to indulge in the enjoyment of their wealth, relieved of any humane responsibility regarding their fellow humans.

In brief, in this 21st Century, we live in a world totally disconnected from Reality, where we all – willingly or not – must take part in efforts to establish a more perfect and just world, and repeatedly see that those efforts lead to even worse conditions than those they sought to remedy.

However, as I stated in my first paragraph, there are still some small, primitive societies in existence in the world, living in the remaining jungles of our planet, who are quite sane; they live their daily lives just as their ancestors did many centuries ago. Why have they remained sane – ignorant perhaps, but sane – while the rest of the world has gone mad? Why do these societies live in peace, while we are going mad?

The huge mass of accumulated historic information which is available to us, gives us no answer to these questions. We must resort to an understanding of the nature of the puzzle, cutting through statistics, which are historic in nature.

History tells us what has happened, but what we want to know is why things happened as they did, and how things might have taken place differently.

During the past 500 years, humanity has been in revolt against the dictum of the Catholic Church, that the condition of humanity under Creation is unalterable – which, I repeat, is not a religious statement, but a simple statement of fact.

For 500 years, humanity has been under the spell of the idea that human nature can be modified to serve the social interest rather than its own selfish ends, and that society can thus be transformed into a better, more just society.

This spell of idealism is a revolt against Reality; experience has shown that it is not effective and leads to worse conditions than those it wished to correct.

However, this is the spell that dominates humanity today, and the product of this spell is politicians who promise to fulfill the idealistic project, which is to improve human beings and thus create a perfect society, a transformed society.

In order to carry out their promises of new, improved societies, the politicians require money; they can do nothing, they say , unless they have the money to carry out their mission to create a transformed society. A prime example, but certainly not the only example, is Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America, who has promised to “Make America Great Again” – and of course his project requires money, enormous amounts of money.

The primitive societies which I have mentioned, do not look for any transformation of their way of life; they are content to live in the jungle, with its problems and dangers, just as their ancestors have lived for uncounted centuries. They have no need for money – simple barter serves all their needs.

They have no politicians promising a better life – these people are not looking for a better life, they are content with the life they have. Lacking money, they cannot empower politicians to promise them “improvement”.

The fuel which moves the leaders of the world, in their commitment to the improvement of humans and the transformation of society, is money. Real gold and silver money has always been scarce, and cannot serve to support the programs of the leaders of the world, which require endless amounts of money. And so, the world has been led to abandon the use of gold and silver, in order to make possible the programs of improvement of the politicians.

However, what the entire world – except for the primitive peoples in the jungles – has to use as money, is not money at all. It is “make believe” money, that consists of bits of paper or plastic printed with pretty designs, base metal coins, and digits in computer discs: such is our world’s “money”. It is the unavoidable use of this false, fake, simulated money, that has placed humanity out of touch with Reality, which is the definition of lunacy.

When we tender this money in payment of a purchase, we are deceiving the seller: the seller is giving us a tangible good or some valuable service, and we “pay” him with – a symbol which has no real value, only an imaginary value. So we are all shysters, some in little, some in enormous transactions. Thus we – the entire world – are engaged, willingly or not, in a massive fraud, a huge deception that goes forward, unceasingly, day and night, the world over. But we don’t know it, because we are out of touch with Reality.

When we are paid money for some good we offer, be it a service or a tangible good, we are accepting being defrauded, we are accepting being lied to: the money or credit card transaction we accept, has only an imaginary value.

We are living like lunatics, living in a make-believe dream; we lie to those to whom we pay money that is nothing at all; and like lunatics, we accept payment for tangible goods or services which we render, in fake money.

This is the result of the revolt against Reality, which began in the 16th Century: consciously or not, we are all behaving like lunatics because we are out of touch with Reality; we are all engaged, like it or not, in our masters’ attempts to modify human nature to serve the public good, and we are forced to endure their attempt to create the perfect, transformed society. Our masters keep us in this state of lunacy, by imposing upon us the use of fake money.

The madness of our present civilization has endless manifestations other than in the monetary field, where it originates. Once humans become mentally deranged – in other words, once they have lost contact with Reality – all sorts of curious human phenomena appear on the scene. We are in a sort of Shakespearean “Midsummer Night’s Dream” writ large. Fluid “monetary” affairs allow for a totally relaxed attitude toward life: people no longer have any life-threatening problems to be faced.

Funny money allows everyone to have his cake, and eat it too. Life becomes a carnival with endless entertainment, and no one to present the bill.

It is as much to expect any sort of unanimity amongst a deranged population, as it would be to expect a hundred cats to march together. Everyone becomes his own political party, so to speak, and sexually, everyone is entitled to select his desired sexuality – the fact of being born either as a male or female no longer is any impediment to assume any sort of selected form of sexuality, according to individual taste.

This is not the result of real money; it is the result of the loss of contact with Reality that is the consequence of the Flight from Reality facilitated by false money, which, in today’s world, is the medium through which we are forced to perceive Reality: a false medium produces a false Reality.

The world may not be conscious of living in a false Reality, but Reality itself will present the bill, sooner or later.

Today’s edifice of human life, erected on a false foundation, will come crashing down, at some point. The result will be Hellish, perhaps including nuclear war. Russia and China have been accumulating vast amounts of real money – gold – and perhaps they may mobilize this gold when the inevitable crash overtakes the rest of the world, and thus allow their populations to survive.

Let us conclude with excerpts from a clever song by Cole Porter:

ANYTHING GOES!

In olden days, a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking.
But now, God knows,
Anything goes.

Good authors too who once knew better words
Now only use four-letter words
Writing prose.
Anything goes.
If driving fast cars you like,
If low bars you like,
If old hymns you like,
If bare limbs you like,
If Mae West you like,
Or me undressed you like,
Why, nobody will oppose.
When ev’ry night the set that’s smart is in-
Truding in nudist parties in Studios,
Anything goes.

*******

The world has gone mad today
And good’s bad today,
And black’s white today,
And day’s night today,
And that gent today
You gave a cent today
Once had several chateaux.
When folks who still can ride in jitneys
Find out Vanderbilts and Whitneys
Lack baby clo’es,
Anything goes. ~ Cole Porter

Hugo Salinas Price ~ December 18, 2018

The Last Act Crowns the Play

For uncounted ages, the world’s thinkers accepted, unquestioningly, the fact that human life is what it is, and cannot be changed: that its nature is unalterable.

Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (306 -337 AD) legalized Christianity but allowed the existence of other religions. Emperor Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 AD; other religions were considered foolish.

The ancient view regarding the unalterable condition of earthly human life continued to prevail, but a new and powerful element was introduced into human life during the reigns of Constantine and Theodosius I: the element of Hope for humanity, the hope of eternal and blessed life after death for those who accepted Christ as their Savior.

The ancient view of human life as unalterable continued to prevail in Europe up until the “Renaissance of Learning” in the 16th Century.

The Renaissance (i.e. “the re-birth”) of Learning was made possible by the invention of the printing-press in 1452, by Gutenberg. The reading of books led in turn, to an intense interest in the nature of the physical universe and to the development of experimentation; experimentation became a feverish occupation of thinkers who proceeded to create physical inventions for the manipulation of the physical world.

By the 18th Century, the progress of Physics had so overwhelmed the Western World, that the idea that the nature of human life was unalterable came into discredit. “Progressive” thinkers began to outline new systems which they thought would change human life – previously thought to be unalterable – to an improved condition.

It was these “Progressive” thinkers who generated the French Revolution: in an “Age of Reason”, it was unacceptable to hold on to the ancient view, that human life is essentially unalterable.

Intellectually, our present age functions as an extension of the idea which was the seed for the French Revolution: that human action on the part of the State can and should be taken to improve human life and eliminate its trials and tribulations; the opinion of most thinkers today, is that only “reactionaries” can object to Progress, and Progress will come with State action to improve the lot of humanity, and lift it out of the suffering implicit in human life.

This is where we stand today; this is why things are the way they are today, with World Debt standing at $325 Trillion dollars, and World Gross Domestic Product at only $100 Trillion dollars: the whole world is under the spell of the mistaken idea that human life can be altered, from what it is and must be, to an improved state of universal, worry-free bliss. Such an unrealistic objective has to be financed with equally unrealistic money.

Our world cannot, and will not be able to return to a “Gold Standard”, until the world’s Progressive thinkers die off, and the world once again realizes and embraces the truth – that the nature of earthly human life is unalterable: that some humans will be wealthy, and others poor. That some will be happy, and others miserable. That some will wine and dine, and others will have to starve.

That who does not work, shall not eat. That misery cannot be eliminated but only attenuated when humans work together in peaceful collaboration.

It seems to me, that the world will not give up its unrealistic fantasies, of health-care for all, food for all, education for all, housing for all, income for all, pensions for all, until a huge disaster overtakes humanity and carries off a large percentage of the world’s population. Only then, will humanity once again be forced to accept the fact that human life is problematic and that nothing can be done to change that fact.

“My soul, sit thou a patient looker-on;
Judge not the play before the play is done:
Her plot hath many changes; every day
Speaks a new scene; the last act crowns the play.” ~ Francis Quarles, 1592 -1644.

Hugo Salinas Price ~ January 8, 2019

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