Me: Money, which is one of humanity’s greatest inventions is not the root of the problem, and neither is it capitalism or socialism per se. It’s THE PARADIGM OF FINANCE and the unwillingness and/or inability to think integratively and combine only the particles of truths in apparent opposites.

If the non-comprehenders and/or non-lookers on this blog would read my book they would see that it ends the idiotic and fruitless contention between capitalism and socialism by pitting the self interests of the individual and of enterprise against THE REAL PROBLEM which is finance and its monopolistic monetary and financial paradigm….while simultaneously accomplishing the best aspects of both of those ideologies. Hence it is politically integrative of traditionally opposed constituencies and so much more likely to bear fruit politically, economically and ecologically than obsessively battling viewpoints that are both passe’.

DT: I have seen and answered this argument so often it has become boring. It is not so much I disagree with it as that it misses the point that ‘money’ (while indeed a great invention) is a word whose meaning as changed, and the paradigm of finance with it. The word has become paradoxical: it means opposite things dependent on which meaning you take it to have. To integrate these apparent opposites one has to make the one include the other, and as reality includes words, one needs to stop financiers telling lies by governments making the declared meaning conform to the reality. Money by now is just a number in a computer, not a compact store of value which can be rented out at a profit.

As this blog is about moral philosophy, let us phrase this argument in the language of the Mosaic ten commandments: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour”.

The Christian position is that all these ten commandments are included in the Christian ethic: if you love God and your neighbour you will not want to break them. But the reason for loving God (gratitude) was already implied in the preface to the first commandment: “I am the Lord your God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, and out of the house of bondage”. We are all inclined to forget that now, but it is hardly insignificant.

Me: Sorry Dave, YOU’RE the one missing the point which is that we need to align money creation and its distribution with the relevant economic aspect of the philosophical concept of grace, that is Gifting, and to integrate it into the Pharasitical/Mosaic/ “Ye shall earn thy bread ONLY by the sweat of thy brow” present paradigm and so create a thirdness greater oneness. Such a present time continuous reminder of grace implemented at the point of retail sale and at note signing will do more to self actualize gratitude and so love in action in the temporal universe than all of the preachments ever uttered.

AR: DT sounds like a religious fanatic to me. Is there any other kind? I rejected the notions of sky fairies when I was about 8 years old. And of course, he is illustrating my points about cognition and what we are learning about how humans think and form their multiple bad beliefs.

Religion and belief in god have justified a lot of child abuse throughout history. Not to mention woman abuse. Read some George Lakoff to understand the difference between the strict, authoritarian, punitive, parent who believes discipline (ie often punishment) as the road to success (Republicans but some Dems too) vs the nurturing, kind, understanding parent who teaches rather than punishes.

Me: Inveighing against religion is more a tilting at wind mills kind of habit than doing so against neo-classical economics or the monetary paradigm.

There is such a thing as genuine religious experience and it is nothing more and certainly nothing less than our/your internalized consciousness letting loose of its habitual pre-occupations long enough to directly experience the present moment in all of its infinitesimal, electro-magnetic and spatial glory. It’s utterly natural, rarely experienced in an obsessive figure-figure-figure non-contemplative world and nothing about its naturalness detracts from its wonderfulness.

“Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”