HANGING BY A THREAD

HANGING BY A THREAD

By Peter Fredson

February 17, 2006

Yesterday I wrote a blog about the possibility of administration printing presses “counterfeiting” money. What happens when a nation keeps printing paper money without a backing in gold, silver or platinum reserves?

I pointed out that Germany once printed postage stamps which sold for thousands or hundreds of thousands of Deutschmarks, and that people to buy bread would take a wheelbarrow full of paper money to the store.

I was making a point, that all of civilization, all Democracy, hung on imagination. In the case of money, it was the illusion that pieces of paper with numbers stamped on it would be “worth” bread, houses, clothing, or other kinds of goods.

When Revolutionary soldiers were given pieces of paper they would go to someone who had food or clothing and offer the paper in exchange. Local legislation made exchange mandatory.

However, in those days many political entities issued their own paper money, and if one traveled any distance they would reach someone who would refuse the bit of paper. In fact, one might be tried for being a spy and shot for having that bit of paper.

It all depended upon “trust”, upon “confidence” in someone’s integrity, reputation, or “trustworthiness” that the bits of paper could be exchanged for goods or services. But the thread of trust snapped when crossing a certain border.

In the long run the bits of paper were just that, nothing more. The difference lies in perception, in imagination, in “convention” which holds groups together.

There is an analogy to life itself. Each organism is born with varying ability to survive. Some creatures upon hatching can immediately find shelter or food and operate successfully to survive if no predator is around. Humans cannot. Human babies are among the most helpless forms of life, while baby chicks begin running around, and pecking at anything edible.

Sociobiologists point out that each species is born with the ability to perform traditional tasks without help. Ants build their complex tunnels, surround a “queen”, defend their nests, and operate independently of other colonies. From observing humans we know that sex/reproduction occupies much of their time and attention.

Without going into specific details, the subject of many textbooks, we can say that a great deal of human behavior is built into our makeup, and that a great deal depends upon experience or training, and is tied together by spider-web thin threads that hold us together in complex patterns passing through our neurons and synapses in our brains.

I like to think of it as imagination which informs us and by which we act out our daily lives.

All the elaborate schemes of humans, all of the massive undertakings, all the wars, death and destruction, all the songs, poems, edifices, gods, hopes, and dreams, rest on imagination, perhaps illusion, and endlessly plough the sea of life.

Individuals must know upon whom they can depend for survival and all good consequences of human relationships. They should also be aware on whom they cannot depend, to avoid pain, destruction and death. Some individuals never learn. They suffer or die when “trust” turns ephemeral.

Never in human history has this awareness of “trust” been more crucial, if for no other reason that there are billions of individuals, and that, although the percentage of untrustworthy individuals may now be the same as in Medieval or Neanderthal days, the number of untrustworthy individuals bodes an immense amount of pain and destruction will descend upon us.

I’ll let individual bloggers be more specific.