There's nothing like a vivid analogy to open your eyes to the unadulterated truth of life as it really is.

For example, most people like to think of the US as the great American melting pot - so many different backgrounds and cultures, all melted into one. Doesn't it make you feel warm and cozy to be a part of such a diverse experience, based on 'freedom' and 'tolerance'?

Well, how would you feel if I told you that America, and the rest of the 'modern' world, is more like a boiling pot, sitting atop a flaming hot, oil-burning stove?

That's how Hugo Price at 321 Gold sees it.

I bet you lose that warm, cozy feeling once you realize that we're all being boiled alive.
The history of western civilization since the industrial revolution can be likened to a pot of water sitting on a lighted stove. As more and more energy is pushed into the water in the pot, the water begins to circulate in the pot; then it begins to steam; the water seethes and soon it is bubbling and boiling. It will continue to do so until it has all been vaporized.

This is what has happened to all human societies under the influence of the increasing amounts of energy being pumped into them from all sources, but mainly, of course, from burning oil.

All human societies are being destabilized by the energy that is injected into them. As societies are constituted by human beings, we can clearly observe how the more 'developed' a society is, the greater the physical and mental activity of its population; the population has no option [but] incessant activity.

Like it or not, the energy in the societies in which we live propel[s] us: motion, both physical and mental, becomes imperative for each of us, just as motion is imperative for the water molecules in a pot of boiling water.

Each American consumes -- [or rather] 'is being boiled by' -- 27 barrels of oil per year. The figure for Mexico is 7 barrels per year per person. China is down to around 2.

This is destabilizing to any society, because the increased energy which is propelling human beings to an ever more restless life brings these human beings into collision with the stable institutions of a former, quieter age. The institutions themselves can no longer contain the motion of humans. All institutions are giving way; in the United States, the increasing chaos in the face of crumbling institutional restraints has produced a sitution where one out of every 150 Americans is in jail.

I can mention several institutions that are melting away: the family, ancient sexual mores and respect for [a]uthority, just to name three. But I am particularly interested in the institution of money...Price goes on to describe in clear and convincing detail the nature of money and its antithesis - the dollar . . .
The institution of money has completely vaporized! We no longer use money anywhere in this world. What humanity uses as money is a simulation of money, simple vouchers which are used everywhere as a means of exchange.

However, these vouchers are not actually money - money defined as a thing of value the delivery of which, in an exchange, constitutes payment. Money in today's world is not a thing; it is a non-thing, a simple number whether printed on a bill, stamped on a coin, or a number represented by bits on a computer disk. Since money is not a thing, but only a non-thing, tendering it in an exchange cannot, and does not, constitute payment.

What happened to money? . . . [As commerce,] transportation and communications increased in volume and speed, the need arose quite naturally, for an easier and faster way to make payments. So a "derivative" of money came into general use: the redeemable banknote was welcomed by a world population impelled to action by the energy being pumped into society.

The use of banknotes - derivatives of money - instead of real money itself, gave rise to inflation of the money supply. These derivatives were leveraged against their referent, the real money supply. This inflation of the money supply by means of derivatives of money distorted production [and consumption] beyond the real needs of the marketplace.

Bankers are not thinkers. They are quite ordinary flesh and blood people [that's debatable] who want to expand their business so as to collect as much wealth as possible. Their attention is not upon matters of principle [agreed]. The bankers and the economists in their pay devised methods for eliminating the barriers to the expansion of their business, which is lending money.

To make a long story short, the derivatives - which were invented to facilitate the ever increasing speed and volume of transactions caused by the application of increasing amounts of energy to society - ended up by displacing the underlying original referent itself, gold and silver money.

Today, banknotes are no longer derivatives of gold or silver. They refer to no underlying value and promise nothing to the holder. They are now no longer money, though they look like what we think money should look like.

Since August 15, 1971, the world's money has ceased to be a thing, or even a derivative of a thing; consequently, nations have not been settling their accounts between themselves since that date. They have only been shuffling around the vouchers (dollars, euros, yen, pounds, etc.) which are the means of exchange that is being used.

Oil energy has overwhelmed almost all institutions in the world. This is a terrifying fact, for a society without institutions is the definition of a barbaric society. A world without enduring institutions which limit and order human life is a barbaric world. The last remaining institution is the one that characterizes barbarism: the [Military Industrial Complex]. That is what we are approaching today.How did we arrive at this sorry state of affairs?
Thanks largely to [Francis Bacon (1561-1626) an Englishman, and René Descartes (1596-1650) a Frenchman], metaphysics went out of fashion and remains so. Induction - the discovery of physical laws based on experimentation - was proposed by Francis Bacon as the only way to scientific truth; René Descartes helped powerfully with his development of mathematics[.]

Classical philosophy went into decline and materialism ("all science is measurement and only measurement is science") took over the world.

* * *

[Bacon and Descartes] initiated the beginning of the worship of number and quantity in this modem age of ours. Measurement as the be-all and end-all of science is based on Number. René Guenon, a French philosopher of the first half of the Twentieth Century called our age "The Reign of Quantity" in a book with that title. Truly, humanity was seduced; it forgot two thousand years of inheritance of philosophy and turned to the worship of number, and number and measurement are related to matter. So the "Reign of Quantity" is the "Reign of Matter". Materialism is our anti -religion.This atmosphere of materialism - ruled by numbers and divorced from all spiritual considerations - is the recipe by which the PTB are able, literally, to prepare us for a meal that only they are invited to eat.
Those who rule this world today can do so, thanks to the simulated money which we now use - the real money having vaporized 35 years ago. They observe the destabilized state of all societies in the world; the money-masters have the power of issuing unlimited amounts of simulated money and of credit denominated in such simulated money. They come to the conclusion that the World, in this state of flux and semi-barbarism, is soft and pliable and susceptible to formation according to their view of what would constitute a desirable state of affairs. Societies with debilitated or vanished institutions are societies lacking in structure, they are ductile and can be shaped, like red hot iron.

This, the rulers intend to do. There are two imperatives: oil must be abundant; and simulated money must have no competitor. With these two elements, world control and the shape of world society is in their hands.To put it differently, if America is a boiling pot, sitting atop an oil-burning stove - then the money masters control the temperature, and it's our goose that gets cooked!

Finally, Caryl at from the Catacombs, who directed me to this gem of gems, adds this important observation . . .

[W]e have landed in this boiling pot by [stumbling] through the past few centuries like sleepwalkers, while [congratulating ourselves on] how great we are, how advanced our science, how just our laws, [how] free and untrammelled our spirits.

Well, the reality is that a new and insidious form of enslavement has crept into our lives[.] [By] confusing restlessness with progress and mere motion with direction [we have become slaves of a new world disorder].
In short, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee before America's goose is cooked.



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Thanks, Caryl