What Does Go Well with Fava Beans and a Nice Chianti?
After writing the latest home page piece in my webzine "The Catholicist Nation," I thought I had offered a pretty good anecdotal example of what it is like for the highest ranking value extractors to do their thing. Money managers are so obsessed with hacking out the souls of spiritually dead people, I likened them to the hordes coming to worship the propped-up remains of a popular 20th century Catholic saint.
Wow. I feel so behind on things. Turns out a few years ago a mortgage dealer actually did use dead people in a scam to defraud investors.
This year in my webzine I'd been focusing on the economic conditions that arise from those committed to human sacrifice in some form. Sometimes an act of sacrificing another on the altar of the World may take place with a simple unkind word, other times it may be widely and intractably institutionalized, such as that which occurs in the financial markets. Words and markets are in an of themselves of no matter, they become a part of good or evil from what someone does with them.
Much of what I've shared is nothing new. The grandest machinations of powerful people are seen and have been seen everywhere, throughout history. I wonder at times whether the reader may see me "playing the class card." That is, am I seen as complaining that some have so much while others have so little and whine whine whine? Ugh, may it never be. Forgive me, please.
What I want to do is highlight the things people don't seem to pay much attention to. A few of the significant ones include
- When people exploit they are doing human sacrifice, and it is a completely spiritual endeavor, the poor doing it just as much as the rich.
- People without Christ must do human sacrifice, "those who have the Son have life, those who do not have the Son do not have life"--it cannot be more succinct.
- Many who claim to be Christ's still do human sacrifice by tying themselves to the World through W-4's, 501c3's, SS#'s, and a myriad other contractual entanglements that belie their claims and have them running around with wolves who they just can't see are wolves through the sheep outfits.
One thing I considered adding to all of this was an explanantion about that idea of "surplus value," really the concept that we can produce more than we can individually when we are duly inspired, genuinely incentivized, and vibrantly work with community. The note was about the fact that Karl Marx spent a great deal of time speaking of this, how the powerful exploiters -- ooo, that dratted bourgeoisie -- routinely steal that value from the poor victimized workers.
Am I on Marx' side in all of this and playing that class card by decrying the way people are sacrificed? Well, I am writing about the reality of exploitation, but the key difference is that Marx and all the Radical Selfists who follow him endorse a course of action quite common actually: Rebel against the tyrannical exploiter. Commercial exploiter, political exploiter, whoever. From the World's megaphone (sometimes just whispering in your ear): "Rage, rage, rage against them all..."
The result is always the same: Exploiters will replace other exploiters wearing different-looking sheep outfits. The Marx plan is really to have his exploiter take over and schlurp up the surplus value the exploitee lays on the chopping block for him. I guess it is better to have someone you like hack off your soul. At least it feels good to be in the club and have people say nice things about you while they are doing it.
Funny, today in the Economics class I teach, the very last class of the day actually, while we were talking about banks and inflation and some of those kinds of macro things, I found myself asking my students a question I'd never asked any class of students ever before. If you know about banks and what inflation really is you may be able to see how I can come around to asking this question--and I address it a bit in that latest home page piece on my webzine.
Here is what I asked them.
"What would you rather know about, what everyone thinks is the value of things, or the real value of things?"
Naturally all the students, about 15 young bright-eyed 17 year-olds (it was a small class), all nodded and muttered firmly in favor of the latter. Who wouldn't?
Later driving home from work it came to me. The most critical part of getting at that is the answer to this question:
How are they going to know that?
The only way is by some transcendent value assessor.
You know Who that is.
Otherwise you're left with the World. The people in it have all kinds of boffo ideas of what's valued, some of them even waving their handpuppet Jesuses in your face.
They'd just like a little of you to go along with the fava beans and a nice chianti...
Wow. I feel so behind on things. Turns out a few years ago a mortgage dealer actually did use dead people in a scam to defraud investors.
This year in my webzine I'd been focusing on the economic conditions that arise from those committed to human sacrifice in some form. Sometimes an act of sacrificing another on the altar of the World may take place with a simple unkind word, other times it may be widely and intractably institutionalized, such as that which occurs in the financial markets. Words and markets are in an of themselves of no matter, they become a part of good or evil from what someone does with them.
Much of what I've shared is nothing new. The grandest machinations of powerful people are seen and have been seen everywhere, throughout history. I wonder at times whether the reader may see me "playing the class card." That is, am I seen as complaining that some have so much while others have so little and whine whine whine? Ugh, may it never be. Forgive me, please.
What I want to do is highlight the things people don't seem to pay much attention to. A few of the significant ones include
- When people exploit they are doing human sacrifice, and it is a completely spiritual endeavor, the poor doing it just as much as the rich.
- People without Christ must do human sacrifice, "those who have the Son have life, those who do not have the Son do not have life"--it cannot be more succinct.
- Many who claim to be Christ's still do human sacrifice by tying themselves to the World through W-4's, 501c3's, SS#'s, and a myriad other contractual entanglements that belie their claims and have them running around with wolves who they just can't see are wolves through the sheep outfits.
One thing I considered adding to all of this was an explanantion about that idea of "surplus value," really the concept that we can produce more than we can individually when we are duly inspired, genuinely incentivized, and vibrantly work with community. The note was about the fact that Karl Marx spent a great deal of time speaking of this, how the powerful exploiters -- ooo, that dratted bourgeoisie -- routinely steal that value from the poor victimized workers.
Am I on Marx' side in all of this and playing that class card by decrying the way people are sacrificed? Well, I am writing about the reality of exploitation, but the key difference is that Marx and all the Radical Selfists who follow him endorse a course of action quite common actually: Rebel against the tyrannical exploiter. Commercial exploiter, political exploiter, whoever. From the World's megaphone (sometimes just whispering in your ear): "Rage, rage, rage against them all..."
The result is always the same: Exploiters will replace other exploiters wearing different-looking sheep outfits. The Marx plan is really to have his exploiter take over and schlurp up the surplus value the exploitee lays on the chopping block for him. I guess it is better to have someone you like hack off your soul. At least it feels good to be in the club and have people say nice things about you while they are doing it.
Funny, today in the Economics class I teach, the very last class of the day actually, while we were talking about banks and inflation and some of those kinds of macro things, I found myself asking my students a question I'd never asked any class of students ever before. If you know about banks and what inflation really is you may be able to see how I can come around to asking this question--and I address it a bit in that latest home page piece on my webzine.
Here is what I asked them.
"What would you rather know about, what everyone thinks is the value of things, or the real value of things?"
Naturally all the students, about 15 young bright-eyed 17 year-olds (it was a small class), all nodded and muttered firmly in favor of the latter. Who wouldn't?
Later driving home from work it came to me. The most critical part of getting at that is the answer to this question:
How are they going to know that?
The only way is by some transcendent value assessor.
You know Who that is.
Otherwise you're left with the World. The people in it have all kinds of boffo ideas of what's valued, some of them even waving their handpuppet Jesuses in your face.
They'd just like a little of you to go along with the fava beans and a nice chianti...
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