By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Our monetary system is in direct conflict with the basic rule of “Though shalt not steal”
It is becoming clearer day by day that we must, already from ethical and moral reasons, urgently put our monetary system on a different base. But not only that. We also need a fair distribution of resources of this Planet.
All over there world basic rules for life have been established, which make it possible for us to deal with one another in a more or less trusting atmosphere and which, at the same time, create the foundations for a life that is more or less free of fear.
However, all around the globe we, the people, are becoming aware that those basic foundations and tenets are being eroded and they begin to shake.
The number of crises around the globe as well as the more and more ailing society is proof enough that the inner forces, which are supposed to be holding our communities together, are breaking and failing.
On the other hand are the worldwide protests a vehicle that clearly permit us to see and read the feelings of the people, that we need to move in order to reverse the trend of the destruction of our society and the world as a whole.
A most urgent problem here is presented by the monetary and banking system which has brought greed into our world and which, in the last years and decades has become more and more unrestrained in that there remains but one direction of transfer; that from the poor to the rich.
This flow is breaking a number of basic tenets. The “thou shalt not steal” in but one of them. It might be better to formulate it a little more positive like “thou shalt share”.
Sharing is the one cooperative act and basic need and “rule” that has made us strong as humans and able to withstand the often fickle nature of Nature in community.
This principle of giving, of sharing, has been burned deep into our neurons and psyche. When we give to another person something of ours, and that can be a simple smile, holding an umbrella over him during rain, a bed for the night, or whatever, then we see in the face of the recipient happiness and joy.
This happiness and joy in turn stirs in us also a happiness and joy of a different kind and on a different level and by this mechanism humans are being molded and welded into a community and a caring society. That is why we already our youngest ones to share fairly and those youngest ones often feel the sense of unfairness better and faster than do us grownups; or so at least it would seem.
Often it is also our children that have the most affinity for the World, the Planet, the environment, Mother Nature, and our neighbor. We, when we grow up, somehow, via the career path or whatever, seem to lose this sense of justice for all and everything.
It is, simply because of the fact that as children we seem to have, often, this deep sense of justice and injustice, to watch how, as grownups, we find it good and acceptable, when someone is being rewarded in the lending of money with interest, when it should be a matter of course to help someone in need. Would it not be much better to punish those that hoard money as means of exchange and in doing so create bottlenecks in the economy.
A fair number of religions, theoretically, including Christianity, Judaism and Islam, make usury – the lending of money on interest – an ethical issue and a crime even but it is, and this is not intended as an anti-Jewish rant, Jews that are the big money lenders and bankers.
But, worse still than lending money on interest is the practice of creating money from thin air, the quantitative easing, often referred to as the “printing of money” and other such actions. Why do we permit banks to then demand interest also for this money that never existed before? And worse still is the practice to demand collateral, often of several times the value of the loan, plus interest, should the lender default. This is robbery, not just simple theft, in my eyes and view and something that goes against the most basic tenets of our societal rules.
When we now come to realize that this theft and robbery has been going on for years, nay decades and centuries, and that those stolen moneys and assets were used to buy concessions for the exploitation of the resources of Mother Earth, it is then that the dimensions of this perverseness of our society becomes clearer still.
For what reason should individual people and corporations have the rights to call resources of this Planet theirs when such resources belong to all of the Earth's children and not just those with the right amount of money and assets and where such assets that were used to buy those “rights” to exploit those resources were stolen in the first place?
It is high time that we begin, once again, to share the resources of our Planet fairly and to use them sustainably. Utopia, you say. I do not think so. But it requires a change of mindset and a return to the understanding of a child in certain aspects.
It is in this context too, it would seem, where the words of the New Testament come in that there state “you must become as little children”. And it is the churches that best begin with themselves there.
This could be the beginning of a new world order, one where all of the Earth's children have enough, and that should be enough, to have enough.
© 2011
