I got extra understanding of an old economic tale.
This Nepalese guy said that along the river behind his school fishermen would gather every day. Some days they would fish into the afternoon and some days they would just fish in the morning. When asked why they did this they said:
"we fish until we have what we need"
The school boys then said well why not fish all day to get more than you need and sell the surplus to make some money.
The fishermen said:
"why do we need money, when we want something we just come to the river and fish"
Now I had not fully understood this before.
The point is that the fishermen knew there were always fish in the river, and when they wanted anything they could just fish them, and sell them at market and get what they wanted.
What the boys was proposing was similar but instead of using the river as a bank, they wanted the fishermen to do the work up front, sell the surplus fish and put the money in a bank account for the future.
So what is the difference between the two methods?
Well the key thing to note is:
"Bank of Nature" has been in operation for millions of years.
"Money Bank" literally only a few thousand.
And since the invention of Money Bank all the World's resources are depleted and Planet Earth is facing a catastrophe.
Now I came to this from a video about how to become wealthy. The key insight was attributed to Jewish families and in my own language it is "never sell assets." So that is an individual starts some business. They invest the profits and the business grows. They then open up a new business and apply the logic to that. When they die they pass the business to their children who do the same, and you can see that this mushrooms over the generations. Sure there are rocks in the road, bad economic times, businesses fails, even unreliable members of the family spending too much capital, but as long as the key concept is there, and people pick up again from disasters and start investing back into the business it will grow. But of course this is "Money Bank" thinking because all the while the individual is doing more work than they need and banking the surplus.
Now it is interesting that this Capitalist type thinking is attributed to Jewish thinking. It reminds me of a key story in the Bible in Genesis 14
41 When two full years had passed, Pharaoh had a dream: He was standing by the Nile, 2 when out of the river there came up seven cows, sleek and fat, and they grazed among the reeds. 3 After them, seven other cows, ugly and gaunt, came up out of the Nile and stood beside those on the riverbank. 4 And the cows that were ugly and gaunt ate up the seven sleek, fat cows. Then Pharaoh woke up.
5 He fell asleep again and had a second dream: Seven heads of grain, healthy and good, were growing on a single stalk. 6 After them, seven other heads of grain sprouted—thin and scorched by the east wind. 7 The thin heads of grain swallowed up the seven healthy, full heads. Then Pharaoh woke up; it had been a dream.
This is where Joseph turns up and warns pharaoh of a 7 year famine so the pharaoh puts Joseph in charge of filling grain stores to hold out the famine.
This issue of times of plenty and times of famine of course is something well known to anyone in the Northern Hemisphere due to the seasons. The cyclic nature of times and abundance is I could argue is the most important thing in these cultures apart from the cycle of birth and death itself. Everyone is familiar with the Greek story of Persephone and her annual visit to Hades which explains winter, and in Norse mythology the character of Balder dying each year is very reminiscent (and possible derived from) the story of Jesus visiting the underworld and then being resurrected.
So we could argue that the idea of "Bank of Nature" got tainted in the North by the annual removal of abundance, and in the Middle East by the periodic famines. I remember working my way through translated Babylonian tablets in the British Library and a key feature was the common sign off "see you if we survive the coming famine." The spectre of Nature letting you down seems to have been forefront in people's minds at the time.
But let us not forget that even by the time of the Babylonians 4500 years ago the world was deeply into the world of "Money Bank." All our modern thinking was firmly established by 5000 years ago. You need go back to 12,000 years ago to get to the remnants of Bank of Nature thinking, which is why that story from Nepal is so extraordinary because that is literally a window into our really ancient Past.
SO if we go back before the Neolithic to the days when "Bank of Nature" was the normal way of thinking we go through a really profound change which is possibly hard for modern humans to make, but a change that is embedded and preserved in all the religions: the idea of Ego.
Genesis is a record of this transition from Bank of Nature to Money Bank.
Remember how the Garden of Eden is described in Genesis 2
8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work (לְ×¢ָבְדָ×”ּ) it and take care of it.
Remember But then after the fall Mankind's relation with the world is different:
through painful toil (בְּ×¢ִצָּבוֹן) you will eat food from it all the days of your life [Genesis 3: 17]
So while mankind was never free from "work" it transitioned from taking care of a garden to hard labour.
In Genesis 2:15 the word for work is לְ×¢ָבְדָ×”ּ. I have literally no knowledge of this so just making tentative exploration. This meaning seems cognate with the normal English word "labour" and especially under Capitalism where you will work for a master.
After the fall the sense is of anger and pain בְּ×¢ִצָּבוֹן at the labour needed to eat. The land is cursed and food is not easy to come by.
If we return to our Nepalese fishermen they do not toil. The river is forthcoming with fish. Sometime they are easy to catch, sometime it takes until the afternoon but there is no especial toil or pain involved. People trust the Bank of Nature to be generous.
That generosity comes from natures ability to "grow". Once the fishermen have fished their fish, they come back tomorrow and there are more fish. The river is growing, and they are profiting from that growth. This is why it is a "Bank of Nature."
Once the idea of "Money Bank" started then people started to "own" natural resources like rivers and that profit become something they owners. If a Money Bank lent you money to buy a river, they understood the Natural Profit present there in and they expected a cut of the profit. So the idea of usury was born.
We see here the emergence in Money Bank thinking of the move from simply enjoying the Bounty of Nature to it being exploited for profit. And the thing to note is that this became associated with "toil."
When we go back in time before Money Bank we go back to a time before toil. When we respected, and nurtured nature and if we did anything it was just to encourage the Bank of Nature. For this respect we got an easy life.
But Money Bank thinking broke this and led to hard lives.
But I still need to address the nagging doubt of what happens when Bank of Nature lets you down. The famine years that humans started to work and store up capital in defence of. And then once you have a grain store of surplus then you can start trading and business. Perhaps close covered short selling existed even in the ancient world. Perhaps people bought and sold delivery notes for stores of grain at the start of Money Bank thinking.
So the key, key, key thing to note is that a human being them self is on loan from the Bank of Nature (BON)!
Where does a fish come from in the BON way of thinking? It is somehow created by Nature. And where does a new fish come from? It is born and nurtured by the fish in the river. It all happens by itself.
So where does a human being come from? It is exactly the same.
So a human being in BON thinking does not see themselves as a separate Capitalist trying to maximise profit from a subdued world they own. In BON thinking they are part of that same world. When they profit from that world they profit from themselves. When they exploit that world they exploit themselves.
We sort of see that in modern market place thinking where people are encouraged to see themselves as assets in a market place and to use and exploit themselves for profit that they will then own and benefit from.
So cutting this blog down because essentially everything here has been said before: the remaining link is SIN. While the Bible translates SIN as "missing the mark" or being unskilful to use the Buddhist word, it stems from one key mistake and that is "I."
Yahweh is very important in the Bible because G-d is the "I AM." This reminds us that we are not the "I AM." Yet it is habitual in our lives to think that we are the "I AM." We think that at the heart of our life is this "ME" and I direct and own it all.
This is clearly nonsense.
Saw recently someone asking how the "permanent consciousness" at the centre of our lives ties into Buddhism. The reply simply pointed out that we can barely remember what happened yesterday how can we argue that the consciousness is permanent through time? If the consciousness is only temporary we are really running out of places where we can have this "I AM." It is an illusion. There is no permanent fixed "I AM" at the centre of our lives. This is the weakness of Money Bank (MB) thinking it is built around the idea of an "owner" who takes over the growth and profit of their portfolio. And in so doing the "owner" ceases to be part of the world that is owned. (an example of SRH). This taking the self of into a private world is the essence of SIN. It is unclear to me whether the curse that G-d handed out in Eden was punishment for Eve disobeying God or whether it is the natural consequence of turning from G-d. when you develop the "I AM" within you then life becomes hard.
Meanwhile the BON thinking is inclusive and does not make a distinction between the fisherman and the fish. They are both part of Bank of Nature.
So when there is a famine in MB thinking then the owner will see prices of food rise and it was important to predict this so that their portfolio value would rise. Proponent of free-market will argue that enough Joseph's predicting a famine will lead automatically to stores being filled with grain and people buy grain with a view to future price rising. It all works. Fantastic MB vindicated.
But it does so with the world divided from Capital and Owner.
In BON way of thinking it is quite possible that a drought may dry up the river and the fisherman no longer have any fish. In these times humans look to Nature for a solution. Perhaps they migrate, perhaps they try other food. There is evolution, adaptation, change. And perhaps they starve and die out. Death is not mystery to people it happens to us all. In BON we go back into the soil when the Bank of Nature calls for us. We were always only ever on loan and there is nothing to protect and hide from G-d.
The question then is which is better BON or MB. I have always thought BON is the truth regardless. MB is built upon BON they are not exclusive. Religious people learn to think BON even while running businesses.
But for me I have always thought once you are firmly established in BON thinking. Money Bank loses its relevance. You cannot buy a Sunrise, you cannot buy Love or Happiness. You can save for a disaster, but you will die one day anyone and while you can pass that wealth onto you children at end of day it is not you who will enjoy it, and if all they do is learn your way of doing things then neither will they. Better to let it all go, sell your portfolio, and just visit the river when you need something.
But the problem there is that MB is so incredibly destructive that soon all the rivers will have no fish and the Planet will be destroyed and we will have no choice but to go begging to Capitalist for our food and sell our souls to painful daily toil just to eat. The serpent really was clever in the Garden of Eden and he really did curse us didn't he!
