Promissory Notes and Childish Delusions

The glue that binds us as a society to long term acceptance of control by the arbitrary moneyed powers that be seems to begin almost as if by magic within our very own language cultures' acceptation of very arbitrary paradigms. The mind's mysterious workings hinge upon certain deceptively simple ingrained habits that form a sort of template for thematic continuing inner dialogues. (This is, for example, why musical dialogue holds us in such sway.)

For instance, take the concept of a promise. Children in preparation for adulthood imitate in their play that pervasive currency of "civilized society," i.e., the use of money. Now anyone who has pondered even slightly on the question will admit that at best money is a useful fiction when it serve legitimate aims and at worst the means of producing great evil among us. (See the history of Hamilton's National Bank and Burr's Chase Manhattan.) All based upon a promise to pay. But then again like so many seemingly simple concepts, most of us hardly even stop to consider of what the basis for their actual truth or falsehood might consist. We instead "live our lives" and are content to "let the devil take the hindmost."

Yet every so often the illusions that so beguile us fall away and we may be able to reflect that our childish beliefs will need to be discarded if we wish to survive. We have been at such a crossroads for humanity ever since the point at which we obtained the terrible power to literally destroy ourselves through nuclear conflagration as a species. And now the promises of the "powers that be" are being exposed for what they always were...