“God” And The “Root Of All Evil”

As we have seen in the development of history, civilizations as part of an overall superorganism, develop more streamined methods of organization. The historian Toynbee, as pointed out by McLuhan, called it “etherialization”, and Buckminster Fuller called it “ephemeralization“, which simply means “doing more and more with less and less“.

In general, cultures and civilizations form around “formulative” information, and then begin to operate according to “executive’ information, that is, the form of information that helps them ‘execute’ functions in the process of organization and maintenance. In the process of this maintenance, money will tend to validate the knowledge presented to extend the system. Those who contribute best and most to maintenance of the system tend to get more money.

Money, as a medium of exchange, developed later than the alphabetic texts that allowed for greater integration of systems. By that, I am referring to the process by which money became an integrative force in parallel with those developing systems.

It is one thing for any system to learn how to exist according to its own inner symbolic circuitry, but what of exchanges with other systems that possess commodities which the system needs?

In Babylon, two basic forms of written and text communications had competed, with the Jews developing the one that proved to be the more effective later. But in terms of money, Babylon had a very poor system for adjusting and exchanging differences with its neighbors. Babylon, much like Israel, had a system of weights and balances for its money. Historians have pointed out that Babylon, even with its simpler text, also had a priestly caste that valued gold, and used the services of temple prostitutes to lure gold from men traveling through the area. This is referenced by the “whores of Babylon” biblically. While this collection of gold served as value for Babylon, the whole process depended on exchange by the use of “shekels” or weight systems that were divided into larger and smaller portions for exchange.

As trade and influence increased with neighboring cultures, this form of currency proved to be less and less integrative to accompany the development of world trade by those Jews who were working with laws of commerce. This, in fact, has reference biblically in what is called the “handwriting on the wall”, in which the Babylonian king, shortly before the nation’s collapse, is told “you are weighed in the balance and found wanting”. While today we would see it as the “scales of justice”, in that time, weighing in the balance was their form of exchange. the equal balance of value.

If the transition from cuneiform to alphabet had provided for an “etherialization” of communication, with resultant concepts reduced to the interchangeable linearity of the alphabet, a parallel etherialization would be need for money. This, as most all technologies in the superorganism, was introduced and spread by war.

Persia, which would conquer Babylon once and for all, was far more massively organized over time, but their advance and integration was aided by something that accelerated the exchange process: the use of coinage, developed in ancient Lydia.
Coins were pre-weighed. They had been measured in advance, and their use and value was simplified, since travelers could simply carry them in their clothing or purses. This value for value exchange was greatly simplified and accelerated, allowing for Persia’s much greater expansion and organization. The representative value of money, as pre-weighed, controlled by standardization, was quite useful to the state, who quickly saw the relation between the state and control of coinage.

By the use of coinage, money could be recognized as an iconic symbol of value, but the control of issuance was necessary, giving expansive power to the state for standardization and regulation.

While money in ancient cultures was a commodity such as whales teeth, or tobacco in the Virginia colony, or “wampum” for indians, it developed a symbolic value as coinage, along with the development of the alphabet as symbolic internal communication. The use of symbol in alphabet, and the use of symbol with coinage, became iconic, a corporate “sum’ of all community values, accumulated by different persons. Hierarchies of wealth. Money was “corporate”, or even better, a “corporeal” representative that , as a system of symbols, would be subject to future manipulations.

The problem with the Jews, however, is that they were forbidden to use such iconic symbols of value and make, bow down to, or worship in any fashion.(Second Commandment).

As McLuhan writes:

“Money, like writing, has the power to specialize and to rechannel human energies and to separate functions, just as it translates and reduces one kind of work to another. Even in the electronic age it has lost none of its power”.

Money, as pre-weighed coinage in the form of gold and silver, had value everywhere, and allowed for trade worldwide with very few restrictions except the demand that its weight was constant. Putting the state in charge of it, however, allowed greedy men to “shave” coins from time to time, and demand that the same value of exchange be used for coins of less metallic value.

This, of course, is well documented by a number of writers who point out that the reduction of money to purely symbolic value(pictures of presidents on paper, and digital currencies manipulated by computers) can be manipulated virtually any way a state wishes. The “superorganism” can alter itself almost at a whim, while the people have no way of grasping the implications of these changes.

The “etherialization” of money from commodity to “pure symbol” means that virtually any social process can be given “currency” by iconic means. That is, we can create the “corporate image” of most any project, and expand it by using the symbolic value of money. This, in fact, is precisely the thing the Jews were forbidden to do by the second commandment.

The issue of creating social, corporate images by iconic methods is part and parcel with the electronic age, where both money and information become one single process. As Michael Linton pointed out, “Money is the information by which we deploy our productive efforts”.

In the mechanical age which followed the empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, money was the form of currency that developed parallel to the needs of mechanical functions, such as expansion of empire, and THEN the use for other forms of wealth creation.

As print, with introduction of the Gutenberg Bible, had introduced the social stress on linearity, uniformity, and standardization, so money had become the same process, via coinage of standardization, and repitition, which was not only a key element in the development and control of wealth, but also was a basic component of the genetic strategy: replication and standardization. The alphabet, printing press, and money, became the focal point by which the “genetic replicative algorithm” expressed itself.

McLuhan points out, in regard to money, that:

“It is action at a distance, both in space and in time, In a highly literate, fragmented society, ‘Time is money’, and money is the store of other people’s time and effort”.

Whoever controls the issuance of money, therefore, controls the values of society. It takes no special genius to recognize the connection. The problem we face now, however, is that money as mechanical store of value and control of issuance to support mechanical functions, is facing the same crisis that was faced when Babylon collapsed with its weights and balances system. Money as a store of value for labor is being replaced by automation, which is electronic and does not represent physical work as much as it represents programmed knowledge.

McLuhan writes:

“As work is replaced by the sheer movement of information, , money as a store of work merges with the informational forms of credit and credit card. From coin to paper currency, and from currency to credit card there is a steady progression toward commercial exchange as the movement of information itself. This…approaches once more the character of tribal money. For tribal society, not knowing the specialties of jobs or work, does not specialize money either. Its money can be eaten, drunk, or worn…Today, electric technology puts the very concept of money in jeopardy, as the new dynamics of human interdependence shift from fragmenting media such as the printing press to inclusive or mass media like the telegraph(or television).”

Until very recently, language based on the alphabet and print technology acted as a storehouse of information that was standardized and controlled by the issuers. Words and knowledge controlled by publishers, money controlled by banks for the same specialist functions in parallel with printed word. When technologies shifted from print to telegraph to radio and then TV, the iconic form and image took precedence, and power shifted to those who controlled the iconic form.

In all this, however, language has acted as a store of perception and experience, and as transmitter of perceptions from one generation to another. Language, as spoken word, requires the whole brain, as Shlain pointed out, and therefore represents the need for the ‘gestalt” of human experience. Religion has maintained contact with this by the use of spoken “sermons” and “preaching’ to small groups, trying to maintain the full value of the human condition and awareness.

The idea of “separation of church and state”, therefore, is merely a separation of different forms of communication: the gestalt of the spoken or articulated word, and the single left-brain dominant focus of the organized government.

When this separation is extended, as we shall see, the government extends itself and the “superorganism” becomes purely mechanical and oppressive over the people.