mammon

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Mammon

 by Hat Bailey

Originally, the word Mammon came from the ancient Chaldeans (remember Ur of the Chaldees where Abraham came from?) and actually has its roots in the word ‘confidence.’ I expect this may have reference to having confidence in something that appear legit and reliable, but may not be. Like the term “confidence game” or “confidence man.”

At its most basic level, the word meant ‘riches’ or ‘wealth,’ but it connoted an idea of personified wealth gained with avarice. It often took on a deified nature. This was especially true in the Middle Ages where Mammon was depicted most commonly as a kind of demon or demi-god.

Now I want to be completely clear, I do not intend that anything I say here is meant to imply that money itself is evil, or that it is bad or wrong to be wealthy. Money, like a crutch, is neither evil or holy. It can be helpful by temporarily substituting for real value as crutches do for a broken leg. I define that real value in our case as love of God, or if you prefer, all that is real and true, as well as our fellow man with whom we share it. Perhaps one day we will reach the point at which we are ready to grow up and learn what real wealth is. There is evidence that God, or the Intelligence which created us, is loving and intends us each to be truly wealthy, but this is not strips of paper or large bank account balances.

I have absolutely no envy or resentment of those who are very wealthy in the world’s terms. I don’t believe that because someone has earned millions that therefore there is less for me, or that I therefore have less opportunity to be wealthy. In fact the opposite is most likely true. Those who have earned it through hard intelligent work that I haven’t been willing to perform for it, those who have added value to our world, such persons deserve to be the ones to have it and take full stewardship over it. They don’t deserve to be robbed legally or otherwise of the fruits of what they have produced. Such material wealth is a heavy responsibility, one that I would be very reluctant to take on myself.

Those who get it through criminal acts, clever manipulations, banking scams, lies and exploitations of others are not people to be envied. We should be ashamed of ourselves for allowing ourselves to be so gulled, and pity these people, not envy them. These people are pathetic empty shells in most cases, and will discover eventually that the empty void within themselves will never be filled by any amount of money, and no amount of worldly power will ever make them feel truly secure.

Today we live in a world where we have the advantage of seeing just what results from this love of money, or greed, when pursued to an extreme degree. Few are aware of just how many wars, plagues, enslavements of peoples and mass starvation, as well as the destruction of our supporting earthly eco-systems are owed largely to this very cause. Not satisfied with relatively honest money, the greedy further corrupt it in their favor by using it to suborn public leaders and pass laws taking away any intrinsic backing for what is used for money so it can be more easily manipulated in their favor. The substitution for love of God and fellow man is further substituted with worthless paper. This eventually destroys its value, crashes the economy of nations, and results in unbelievable suffering, war and starvation.

The conspiring cabal that created the Federal Reserve managed to take complete control of the creation and manipulation of what we use in this nation today as money. Similar central banking cartels owned by the same self-styled elites control similar scams in almost every other nation of the world today. The few holdouts, mostly in the Middle East—such as Libya, Iraq and Syria—due to their religious beliefs regarding usury, have, or are being subdued and supplied with more compliant ruling regimes.

Thomas Jefferson prophetically said: “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered…I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies… The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

Kennedy attempted to do an end-run around this cartel by executive order 1110 authorizing the Treasury to issue silver certificates backed by real precious metal in competition with the unbacked FRNs. Like Lincoln who attempted to issue greenbacks to pay the debts of the Civil War without borrowing the money at interest from the international bankers headquartered in London, he also lost his life to assassins and as the successor to Lincoln, his whole project was quickly dropped by LBJ. More recently, Bernard von Nothaus was prosecuted, jailed, and his life and business were destroyed because he was producing a private currency, the “Liberty Dollar,” backed by real silver. He had not harmed or defrauded anyone(actually the so-called “government” people were the criminals, since they stole all the silver coins and backing he had, and thus made it impossible for Bernard to honor many outstanding orders from customers who were waiting for their coins or certificates).

Today the value of our money has sunk to such a degree that the Treasury spends two cents to make a penny out of cheap base metal, and ten cents to make a nickel which once had about the same value as the metal in it. A real copper penny had a penny’s worth of copper, and would originally buy about what a dollar would today. How much lower is today’s dollar value? In 1913 you could buy as much with a dollar as you can with $23.63 in 2014.

Although it only costs the Treasury Department a few cents to print a hundred dollar bill, the public is expected to pay back that hundred dollar face value to the Federal Reserve banksters who created it out of nothing and “loaned” it to the nation. To repay it though, you must actually work to earn that hundred with real productive thought and labor, and then repay it with interest. Since all such money is loaned into circulation, where you might ask will this interest come from? It of course will also be loaned into existence with interest. thus leading to the spiraling and inescapable debt we see today. Now the dollar stands on the brink of a crash to total worthlessness as it becomes revealed for what it really is.

Truth/Reality/God never fails, but the false god of money has failed uncountable times over the centuries. As Ecclesiastes says, “..there is nothing new under the sun.”

According to the King James Version of Genesis 47:15: “And when money failed in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto Joseph, and said, Give us bread: for why should we die in thy presence? for the money faileth.”

Lovers of money often give lip service to higher principles, but it becomes obvious where their hearts really are. Long ago there were some who felt alienated and separate from others as all humans do to some degree. They felt vulnerable and looked for a way to get control over others to make themselves feel more secure in a frightening world. In a more enlightened society people would rely upon building relationships of trust with each other, and with Truth, to gain security.

Then through free will exchanges they would come to find abundance of every good thing. The invention of money made it not so necessary to build such relationships. You could remain isolated and separate from others and yet still use money to get what you wanted. And through the clever manipulation of this money technology you could gain a huge material advantage over others who weren’t quite so clever.

For these people money became in a sense their god, and something for which they felt an insatiable need. There was the false promise that it might fill the empty void within their hearts that only God can truly fill, and they always thought that just a little more money and control would do the trick. One of the sad things about the affliction of which we are speaking is that greed can never be truly satisfied, which is quite characteristic of the lower levels of the human mind.

Ecclesiastes 5:10: “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.” This too is meaningless.

One of the sad things about the love of money is the corruption of justice we have seen in this country where the only “justice” to be had is for those who are rich and powerful. Again, this is nothing new.

1 Samuel 8:2-3:  “Now the name of his firstborn was Joel, and the name of his second, Abijah; they were judging in Beersheba.  His sons, however, did not walk in his ways, but turned aside after dishonest gain and took bribes and perverted justice.”

Deuteronomy 16:19: “Do not pervert justice or show partiality. Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the innocent.”

Exodus 23:8: “Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the innocent.”

In Chapter 14 of Proverbs, we are given solid advice. It says, “The naive believe everything…but a wise man looks well into a matter.”

Bernie Madoff was in the news because many foolish people followed their love of money into his scam. And this advice generally is something that most in America would do well to heed, considering the fact that our mass media is owned by six big corporations run by those very men who have the love of money to an extreme degree. These are the ones who promote and cover up the evils of such corporations as Monsanto, Halliburton, Big Pharma, and the whole military-industrial complex.

Few question the agenda behind those who produce our news and their real motives for including or neglecting the news that is really important.

In the ancient Greek language, there were many words for love, and it doesn’t translate easily into what we think of as “love” today. The specific term used here is philargyria [phil-r-gear-ee-a], which means greed for wealth or material gain. The bottom line is that greed—an extreme, disproportionate love for money and wealth—is unquestionably the root of all kinds of evil.

Just look how the love of money and greed nearly destroyed the entire US financial system through a rolling series of bursting bubbles.

Greed led ordinary people to take enormous risks… for bigger and bigger gains… even though the market fundamentals were crumbling right underneath them. Does anyone remember Pets.com and the talking sock-puppet mascot? They used their sock puppet in multimillion-dollar Super Bowl ads and as a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. The sock puppet became an instant Internet rock star! But what you probably don’t remember is that the company raised $82.5 million in their high-profile initial public offering from Wall Street banks, pension funds, and people just like you—only to collapse nine months later

Of course, it’s easy to point fingers at the masses who were sucked in by the Wall Street greed machine. But frankly, the love of money is an insidious foe, and it can take down anyone at any time if they aren’t careful… even the wisest and most successful people. It can be seductive, yet there is a part of us that longs to do what is good, helpful, wise and a blessing to all with whom we feel a connection. The sick perverted souls have so lost that sense of connection that there is no compassion, no wisdom and no motivation other than profit. Corporations are the epitome of this conscienceless organism that cares for nothing but the bottom line. Profit is to be pursued at all costs, even to the destruction of the very eco-system upon which we all rely for life itself.

There is worry in some circles that someday, machine intelligence, or AI as it is called. They believe that computers may someday supplant human life with a cold inhuman intelligence that cares nothing for the suffering or welfare of living organic beings. Yet aren’t corporations already something like this? Companies like Monsanto conceal knowledge of the cancer causing factor of glyphosate they have known about for years in one of their most profitable products, the weedkiller Roundup? Didn’t the tobacco giants also conceal the same sort of thing in their tobacco products? Haven’t big pharmaceutical giants paid millions in fines because they knew some of their products that were very profitable were also dangerous and were seriously harming or killing people?

I would submit that we already are suffering from allowing such artificial persons to be empowered to use their money and influence to bribe our congress critters to make laws that favor their profit driven agenda?

One of the biggest issues of the war of 1776 was taxation without representation. Do you feel represented by the congress we have today? I don’t, and with good reason. The secretive TPA treaty being kept from public eyes, which will further empower these trans-national corporations is being fast tracked, although it will further erode your choices/rights and burden the American people with higher costs and fewer jobs. Human avarice is being tested to the limits.

TPA passed with a mere 219-211 vote with only 218 needed to pass. The real shocker comes from the amount of money each Representative received for a yes vote. In total, $197,869,145 was given to Representatives for a yes vote whereas $23,065,231 was given in opposition.

• John Boehner (R-OH) received $5.3 million for a “yea” vote and was the highest paid legislator.
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) received $2.4 million for his “yea” vote.
• Paul Ryan (R-WI) received $2.4 million for a “yea” vote and came in at the third highest paid legislator.
• Pat Tiberi (R-OH) follows Paul Ryan, coming in the fourth spot having received $1.6 million for his “yea” vote.

Some have suggested it would be helpful if legislators had patches like NASCAR drivers showing who their big-money sponsors are. Congressional approval ratings are unsurprisingly in the single-digits, yet people will undoubtedly continue to participate in the voting charade that gives them an excuse to think they have some control, when it is the money that is all that matters to these people.

I could go on about the other big money powered monopolies enforced by these so called “governments” such as the Healthcare/Big Pharma monopolies, the military-industrial complex monopolies, the prison-industrial monopolies, the education indoctrination monopolies, and so many others all powered by human lust for money and power.

A true change in paradigm is indicated. A return to something simpler will undoubtedly be necessary for awhile after the coming collapse. Something that removes the powerful levers of the stick and the carrot that have been monopolized by a few oligarchs, who other than these clever manipulations have little to offer of real worth, and would stand exposed as what they really are if deprived of the money and corporations they call “governments.” Change is coming, and only those with eyes to see and something of real value to offer will come out of it relatively unscathed. Be prepared for it.

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Hat Bailey is the eldest in a family of nine kids raised in the ’60s in Bakersfield CA, and on the Jameson cattle ranch in the Tehachapi Mountains east of there. He served a two-year volunteer mission for the Mormon Church and graduated from BYU in Utah with a BS in psychology. He has metaphorically worn many hats, a few of them including: computer programmer, mental health rehab specialist, electrician’s helper, hard-rock underground copper miner, salesman, general manager of California Compost Corporation, swap meet business owner, resort maintenance manager, actor, taxi driver, long-haul truck driver, roofing business contractor. Hat presently lives off-the-grid in the Big Bend area of Texas working as rock mason and general handyman, and the shepherd of a small non-denominational Christian church.

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Groove of the Day

Listen to Linkin Park performing “Lies, Greed & Misery”

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