19 highlights from The History of Money by Jack Weatherford: “The great struggle of history has been for the control over money”

I’ve always enjoyed Jack Weatherford’s books, beginning with “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World” [Amazon].

Below is a collection of highlights from “The History of Money” [Amazon], a relatively fast read with a self explanatory title.

Highlights

…the Aztec Empire was like virtually all other empires in the era before the spread of money. Ancient Egypt, Peru, Persia, and China all functioned as tributary systems rather than market systems.

The modern English word salary and the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese word salario are derived from the Latin word sal, meaning “salt” or, more precisely, from salrius, meaning “of salt.”

Gold has relatively few practical uses outside of decoration and some sophisticated modern technological applications; yet people throughout the world have been attracted to it. Even if it lacks utility, empirical evidence shows that humans everywhere have wanted to touch it, wear it, play with it, and possess it. Unlike copper, which turns green; iron, which rusts; and silver, which tarnishes, pure gold remains pure and unchanged.

As money became the standard value for work, it was also becoming the standard of value for time itself.

Greece was the first civilization to be transformed by money, but in a relatively short time, all cultures followed the Greeks down the same road and underwent the same metamorphosis.

Money represents an infinitely expandable way of structuring value and social relationships—personal, political, and religious as well as commercial and economic.

The Roman desire for Asian luxury goods created the first great trade imbalance on a global scale.

Founded in Jerusalem around 1118 by Crusaders, the Military Order of the Knights of the Temple of Solomon dedicated their lives to serving the church and, specifically, to the task of liberating the Holy Land from the Infidels. The Templars later became businessmen who ran the world’s greatest international banking corporation, which they operated for nearly two hundred years.

The trouble with paper money is that it rewards the minority that can manipulate money and makes fools of the generation that has worked and saved. — ADAM SMITH

Even though banking emerged during the Italian Renaissance, it acquired little respect. Their work as money changers and as barely disguised moneylenders placed bankers only marginally above pimps, gamblers, and other criminals.

…the introduction of Arabic numerals “had almost the same effect on arithmetic as the discovery of the alphabet on writing.”

John Kenneth Galbraith observed that “if the history of commercial banking belongs to the Italians and of central banking to the British, that of paper money issued by a government belongs indubitably to the Americans.”

When asked “Why gold?” one monetary expert reportedly answered, “because you can’t trust governments, least of all democratic governments.”

Those people who voluntarily surrendered their gold to the Department of the Treasury within nine months of Roosevelt’s order received compensation of $ 20.67 per ounce in paper notes. One year after confiscating the privately owned gold, on January 31, 1934, the federal government devalued the paper money from $ 20.67 to $ 35 for each ounce of gold. Thus, everyone who had complied with the law and exchanged gold for paper lost 41 percent of the gold’s value.

Governments have three primary ways of financing their expenditures: taxing, borrowing, and printing more money.

In a democratic society, politicians are often unwilling to raise taxes because of the expected voter anger. For them, inflation and the devaluation of the currency serve much better because they constitute a hidden tax.

The great struggle of history has been for the control over money. It is almost tautological to affirm that to control the production and distribution of money is to control the wealth, resources, and people of the world. Over time, competitors have aligned themselves into various factions, institutions, governments, banks, guilds, corporations, religious orders, and great families; but from the minting of the first coin until today, the struggle has never abated for more than a brief respite of a century or two.

French president Jacques Chirac expressed a general mistrust of the currency markets when he labeled currency speculation “the AIDS of our economies.”

Money, like the calendar and the system of measurements, is a cultural construct that may have arbitrary aspects, but to function properly it needs stability and predictability.

22 highlights from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle: “Most people are in love with their particular life drama”

The Power of Now was for me a slow book. I limited myself to reading just a few pages, say 5 or 10, each time I picked it up, even though the writing has an easy flow and Eckhart’s signature clear voice.

So it took many months to finish, but I’m glad I did. Its messages are timeless and deep yet practical, as I hope the snippets below will show. I felt like the book should be approached more like my personal bible, or like any healhty daily habit – something you do a little of each day because it’s good for you, but not something you want to do too much of for exactly the same reason. Like exercise. And prayer.

Other books that have had this kind of impact on my life include The Power of Habit (hmm, sensing a pattern in titles…), So Good They Can’t Ignore You, and The War of Art (see the books here).

I look forward to reading more of his work; The New Earth is already loaded on my iPad Kindle app.

Everyone can learn something from Eckhart, despite the easy criticism that is often leveled at messengers like him. I would put Alain de Botton and David Brooks into the same broad category.

His blend of modern faith, selected wisdom from mainstream traditions like Christianity and Buddhism, simple writing style, calm demeanor, and deep advice make him a potent messenger, and I am a fan.

If you read just one quote from below and try to remember it fully, simply this:

Give your fullest attention to whatever the moment presents. This implies that you also completely accept what is, because you cannot give your full attention to something and at the same time resist it.

Enjoy!

Highlights from The Power of Now

Give your fullest attention to whatever the moment presents. This implies that you also completely accept what is, because you cannot give your full attention to something and at the same time resist it.

Thought alone, when it is no longer connected with the much vaster realm of consciousness, quickly becomes barren, insane, destructive.

Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body’s reaction to your mind or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body.

…the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.

Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry all forms of fear are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.

Stress is caused by being “here” but wanting to be “there,” or being in the present but wanting to be in the future.

Your outer journey may contain a million steps; your inner journey only has one: the step you are taking right now. As you become more deeply aware of this one step, you realize that it already contains within itself all the other steps as well as the destination.

Already for most humans, the only respite they find from their own minds is to occasionally revert to a level of consciousness below thought. Everyone does that every night during sleep. But this also happens to some extent through sex, alcohol, and other drugs that suppress excessive mind activity. If it weren’t for alcohol, tranquilizers, antidepressants, as well as the illegal drugs, which are all consumed in vast quantities, the insanity of the human mind would become even more glaringly obvious than it is already.

Silence is an even more potent carrier of presence, so when you read this or listen to me speak, be aware of the silence between and underneath the words. Be aware of the gaps.

All spiritual teachings originate from the same Source. In that sense, there is and always has been only one master, who manifests in many different forms.

You see time as the means to salvation, whereas in truth it is the greatest obstacle to salvation.

The root of this physical urge is a spiritual one: the longing for an end to duality, a return to the state of wholeness. Sexual union is the closest you can get to this state on the physical level. This is why it is the most deeply satisfying experience the physical realm can offer.

You cannot love your partner one moment and attack him or her the next. True love has no opposite. If your “love” has an opposite, then it is not love but a strong ego-need for a more complete and deeper sense of self, a need that the other person temporarily meets.

First you stop judging yourself; then you stop judging your partner. The greatest catalyst for change in a relationship is complete acceptance of your partner as he or she is, without needing to judge or change them in any way.

As a general rule, the major obstacle for men tends to be the thinking mind, and the major obstacle for women the pain-body

“Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs?” This was written 2,000 years ago by Marcus Aurelius, one of those exceedingly rare humans who possessed worldly power as well as wisdom.

Most people are in love with their particular life drama. Their story is their identity. The ego runs their life. They have their whole sense of self invested in it. Even their usually unsuccessful search for an answer, a solution, or for healing becomes part of it.

The down cycle is absolutely essential for spiritual realization. You must have failed deeply on some level or experienced some deep loss or pain to be drawn to the spiritual dimension. Or perhaps your very success became empty and meaningless and so turned out to be failure. Failure lies concealed in every success, and success in every failure.

Many people never realize that there can be no “salvation” in anything they do, possess, or attain.

Taoism, there is a term called wu wei, which is usually translated as “actionless activity” or “sitting quietly doing nothing.” In ancient China, this was regarded as one of the highest achievements or virtues.

God is Being itself, not a being.

The mind always adheres to the known. The unknown is dangerous because it has no control over it. Thats why the mind dislikes and ignores the present moment.

What’s your ministry?

Jim Carrey’s commencement address at Maharishi University is quintessential Carrey: mostly hilarious, sometimes awkward, and very deep. Among the many parts that stayed with me, this was one of my favorites:

I realized one night in LA that the purpose of my life had always been to free people from concern, like my dad. When I realized this, I dubbed my new devotion, “The Church of Freedom From Concern” — “The Church of FFC”— and I dedicated myself to that ministry. What’s yours?

To a young Carrey, his purpose wasn’t just to tell jokes onstage and get paid. It was greater: He wanted to free people from their everyday concerns, from the worries of their workaday lives. The Church of FFC. And over his almost 4-decade Hollywood career, he has preached his message to countless acolytes.

His use of the word “ministry” is particularly interesting. He doesn’t use the words mission or passion, not once in the speech. He specifically calls his life purpose a ministry, and he uses the Church metaphor to hammer his point.

Wikipedia defines Christian ministry in the following way:

Ministry is an activity carried out by Christians to express or spread their faith, the prototype being the Great Commission. [It is] “carrying forth Christ’s mission in the world”, indicating that it is “conferred on each Christian in baptism.”

Religious wisdom is a big interest of mine. I try to spend some time each day learning from and practicing different religious traditions. Even if it is a few minutes reading from my Personal Bible, or ten minutes of quiet morning meditation. I don’t consider myself a dyed in the wool member of any labelled tradition (here is more about my approach to faith, inspired by Sri Ramakrishna). I find uplift and community in going to Church on Sundays (and like to sing the songs). I receive calm and clarity from long meditation sessions. Feel a sense of discipline and rigor in learning about zakat and salat in Islam, wisdom in reading excerpts of the Talmud and Midrashim. So Carrey’s anecdote got me thinking: What is my ministry? What is yours?

Within the realm of self help and productivity, we are often taught the value of having a life mission, a personal mission statement. To me, the concept of a personal ministry differs from a mission in at least two important ways:

  • A ministry is evangelical. The root of “evangelism” is good news. As an evangelist, your job is to spread the good word, the good book, the good news. If you have a ministry, a core part of your job – if not the entire job – is to spread your message, because it is the right thing to do. A mission, on the other hand, could be something you keep to yourself
  • A ministry is about changing others first. A minister’s job isn’t to transform herself but to serve and lead others. Your mission could be to visit every country in the world. But you wouldn’t call that a ministry unless the main reason you were doing all this travel was to inspire others to follow you. To help others, it helps to be clear about your potential community, your hoped for target audience. Pastors call this their flock. A mission, meanwhile, could start and end with yourself, and doesn’t require an audience

Put differently, you can think of a personal ministry as an outward focused, people first mission. Seen this way, it becomes clear that many of today’s most successful people are essentially such ministers:

  • NYT columnist David Brooks’s ministry is to teach his educated audience how to think deeply about the moral and spiritual dimensions of life. To live more conscientiously and purposefully amidst all the new technology, the fomo, the hyper speed distraction. Brooks uses the term “moral geniuses” to describe behavioral exemplars like Atul Gawande and Dorothy Day. They are saints in his ministerial canon
  • Startup investor Paul Graham preaches the value of starting a company, and the power of writing software. His flock is some combination of everyone who can write code and everyone who wants to start a company to control their career destiny. His good news is captured in 100s of essays. His church is the Y Combinator school and his many thousands of dedicated essay readers.
  • Tim Ferriss has a very dedicated flock who will follow him anywhere: These people want to achieve the dream of a 4 hour workweek, want to optimize every aspect of their lives from their bodies to their relationships to their morning routines. He ministers through his podcast, his blog, and his books

What’s your ministry? I’m slowly discovering mine. Some themes on this blog include the power of habits to give your life structure and meaning, the value of studying all religious traditions for their life advice, and the need to free yourself from outdated and perhaps even harmful social structures — whether the corporate ladder, the addiction to prestige, or the college admissions mouse trap (I prefer “mouse trap” over “rat race”).

Who are the flock you want to attract, inspire, and support? What is the insight bigger than yourself that motivates you to get up every morning and spread across the world?

I leave you with a favorite Indian proverb:

Every morning you wake up and ask yourself, what good things am I going to do today, remember that when the sun goes down at sunset, it will take a part of your life with it

Ramakrishna, Life of Pi, and learning from multiple religions

Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of non-violence and Sri Ramakrishna’s testimony to the harmony of religions: here we have the attitude and the spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together into a single family–and in the Atomic Age, this is the only alternative to destroying ourselves. – Arnold Toynbee

Ramakrishna is a fascinating figure: A youth whose spiritual capabilities were recognized and developed early. An Indian mystic steeped in the Hindu tradition. Yet someone who spent years fully committed to practicing and understanding Islam and then Christianity. He even began to have dream-like visions of Jesus and Allah. Through these experiences, Ramakrishna came to realize that all religions share a core, that they contain a shared truth:

I have practised all religions—Hinduism, Islam, Christianity—and I have also followed the paths of the different Hindu sects. I have found that it is the same God toward whom all are directing their steps, though along different paths. You must try all beliefs and traverse all the different ways once. Wherever I look, I see men quarrelling in the name of religion—Hindus, Mohammedans, Brahmos, Vaishnavas, and the rest. But they never reflect that He who is called Krishna is also called Siva, and bears the name of the Primal Energy, Jesus, and Allah as well—the same Rama with a thousand names… – Ramakrishna

The main character in Life of Pi, Piscine “Pi” Patel, bears a striking resemblance to Ramakrishna. Pi was also raised Hindu. Pi also added Christianity and Islam into his religious repertoire.

The examples of Pi and Sri Rama have shown me that practicing one religion doesn’t have to exclude an interest in others, just as we have diverse and shifting interests in career paths, relationships, and hobbies.

If the purpose of religious practice is to help us lead a better, deeper, more meaningful life, then why wouldn’t it be a strictly better idea to understand more than one? If we draw an analogy to academic fields, we could say that genetics is by itself a powerful discipline, but how much deeper our understanding and capabilities if we also study computer science and combine the pursuits.

You might think that religion should be a monogamous relationship: like marriage, you’re better off committing to one person. And this could be true for many if not most believers. Yet even the most faithful of couples still have multiple healthy relationships in their lives, that provide different things: close friends, managers they see at work, role models they admire and study, exes from whom they learned and grew.

You could have a mother religion, like Judaism. You could have a Buddhist practice for its tranquility and detachment. And even – yes – an Islamic practice for its rigor and passion.

At the very least, a world where some form of multi-religiosity was common could improve understanding and reduce religious conflict. But I believe it goes much deeper than that.

There are many people who came to the same conclusion long ago. Besides Sri Rama, there have been movements, among them Omnism and Pantheism and Humanism and Unitarian Universalism, each with their own wikipedia entries, which take distinct paths to identify what is shared between the faiths or even try to unite them like Tolkien’s one ring. Jewish Buddhists, or JuBus for short, attempt to merge their Jewish practice and culture with Buddhist meditation and Eastern philosophy. Aldous Huxley was a proponent of the Perennial Philosophy, which recognizes that beneath all of the spiritual practices there is an underlying shared reality:

The Perennial Philosophy is expressed most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula, tat tvam asi (‘That thou art’); the Atman, or immanent eternal Self, is one with Brahman, the Absolute Principle of all existence; and the last end of every human being, is to discover the fact for himself, to find out who he really is. – Aldous Huxley

Our third president Thomas Jefferson tried to approach the Bible and Qu’ran as sources of textual wisdom. He even cut and pasted his own TJ Bible by removing references to what he considered supernatural events, leaving a book of aphorisms and timeless wisdom.

Then there is intellectual giant David Foster Wallace’s insight into the nature of worship:

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. – DFW

The way people camp out for days only to spend half their weekly paycheck on the latest iPhone; the way women obsess over luxury handbags and men over collector watches, how they devote fortunes and careers to their pursuits; the way helicopter parents spend life and limb to obtain Ivy League admissions letters for their kids. We invest as much time and emotion and hope into these dreams as devout Christians do in following the miracles of Jesus and Buddhists in securing karmic reincarnation.

We live in a label driven world and we ourselves are obsessed with labels. We are YouTubers, lapsed democrats, ovo-lacto vegetarians, and unicorn startup employees. Muslim and reform Jew and Southern Baptist are labels, but they’re just some among many. We could open ourselves to more of these “religious” labels and all be better for it.

To be clear, I am not convinced that religion is a human instinct, a genetic endowment that we all share. Maybe this is true, but I don’t begrudge an atheist or an agnostic their convictions or lack thereof. Yet I don’t believe like Daniel Dennett that religion is a spandrel, a kind of appendix of mental activity in human evolution.

The fact is – and the numbers prove, over and over – that the world is becoming more religious, not less. That’s right, the world is religio-fying. Primarily due to demographics. But also because while we economically lucky ones who live in North America and Western Europe may feel like God(s) is shrinking from our lives, the catching-up world, from sub-Saharan Africa to greater Asia, is spiritually awakening.

Between 2010 and 2050, the world’s total population is expected to rise to 9.3 billion, a 35% increase. Over that same period, Muslims – a comparatively youthful population with high fertility rates – are projected to increase by 73%. The number of Christians also is projected to rise, but more slowly, at about the same rate (35%) as the global population overall.

…the religiously unaffiliated population is projected to shrink as a percentage of the global population, even though it will increase in absolute number. In 2010, censuses and surveys indicate, there were about 1.1 billion atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion. By 2050, the unaffiliated population is expected to exceed 1.2 billion. But, as a share of all the people in the world, those with no religious affiliation are projected to decline from 16% in 2010 to 13% by the middle of this century.

–Pew Research (source)

Let’s not forget, too, that a practical and enduring reality is that even religious nones have their own unique, possibly spiritual beliefs:

24% of the public overall and 22% of Christians say they believe in reincarnation — that people will be reborn in this world again and again. And similar numbers (25% of the public overall, 23% of Christians) believe in astrology. Nearly three-in-ten Americans say they have felt in touch with someone who has already died, almost one-in-five say they have seen or been in the presence of ghosts, and 15% have consulted a fortuneteller or a psychic.

…upwards of six-in-ten adults (65%) express belief in or report having experience with at least one of these diverse supernatural phenomena (belief in reincarnation, belief in spiritual energy located in physical things, belief in yoga as spiritual practice, belief in the “evil eye,” belief in astrology, having been in touch with the dead, consulting a psychic, or experiencing a ghostly encounter)

–Pew Research (source)

The world I see is one where religion in its various forms is more prevalent, and more necessary, than ever. As Alain de Botton says, and I am fond of quoting:

The single danger of life in a godless society is that it lacks reminders of the transcendent and therefore leaves us unprepared for disappointment and eventual annihilation. When God is dead, human beings – much to their detriment – are at risk of taking psychological centre stage – Alain de Botton

We are standing squarely on that stage. Given a beaming spotlight. It’s no accident that as a result of our star turn, we are also taking more drugs (prescribed and illegal), committing suicide at higher rates, and being diagnosed with mental illnesses at a higher rate than ever.

Religion has been a powerful and ancient and proven remedy. A timeless anchor amidst the tides of societal change and technological acceleration. If you are a religious none, I believe your life can be improved through even a dispassionate study of the world’s major religions. If you feel comfortable meditating without understanding its place in Hindu and Buddhist evolution, then you should be fine reading the Qu’ran and saying a private prayer.

And if you are devoutly within a faith, there is no harm in learning from others. Start by reading their books. It will probably improve your own practice. Multi-religiosity already has several trends working in its favor: More and more Americans raised in interfaith homes. Mixed-religion marriages rising in frequency.

As the world continues to shrink, exposure to different religions will only grow. People through travels and change will visit more churches and mosques and temples, be exposed to different ways of practicing religion, meet new spiritual communities. This can only increase our understanding and cooperation, and this is a good thing for us as individuals and for global society.

A final point I’d like to make. The multi-religiosity that I am most interested in is one that recognizes and respects the different wisdom traditions. It is not an attempt to merge them. I don’t believe we are better served by trying to create a “best” religious tradition or raising competition between them. Instead, I believe that by reading the Bhagavad Gita, meditating daily, going to Church on Sundays, and participating in Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we can become better people, and we can together build a more peaceful, more patient global village.

9 ways to worship: from nature to nurture to nerding out

I came across this excerpt recently and wanted to share it.

In his book Sacred Pathways, Gary identifies nine of the ways people draw near to God:
1. Naturalists are most inspired to love God out-of-doors, in natural settings.
2. Sensates love God with their senses and appreciate beautiful worship services that involve their sight, taste, smell, and touch, not just their ears.
3. Traditionalists draw closer to God through rituals, liturgies, symbols, and unchanging structures.
4. Ascetics prefer to love God in solitude and simplicity.
5. Activists love God through confronting evil, battling injustice, and working to make the world a better place.
6. Caregivers love God by loving others and meeting their needs.
7. Enthusiasts love God through celebration.
8. Contemplatives love God through adoration.
9. Intellectuals love God by studying with their minds.

This captures many of the thoughts I’ve had around what it means to be spiritual, what is religious versus what is not, what is faith.

Which of these nine do you identify with?

If made to choose one, I’d probably go with #9. But numbers 3, 4, and 5 stand out too.