In all the doom around, and all the gloom that looms ahead, I was mightily cheered by this forecast for 2011 by the celebrated "trend spotter" Gerald Celente. This is Forecast #7:
Journalism 2.0 Though the trend has been in the making since the dawn of the Internet Revolution, 2011 will mark the year that new methods of news and information distribution will render the 20th century model obsolete. With its unparalleled reach across borders and language barriers, "Journalism 2.0" has the potential to influence and educate citizens in a way that governments and corporate media moguls would never permit. Of the hundreds of trends we have forecast over three decades, few have the possibility of such far-reaching effects….
So I raise a toast to all those at Google who have made blogging possible, and to Google Image that gets me the pictures.
And to the season of jollity that lies ahead.
Long, long before Christmas, the winter solstice was celebrated as the birth of the pagan god Mithras - the "patron of contracts": the very word means "contract" in Old Persian. And the "Unconquered Sun" lies in that little word:
Mithras stood for Contract, and therefore for fairness, therefore for Justice, therefore for honesty, therefore for Truth, therefore for light, therefore for The Sun.
The above quote is from Paul Kriwaczek's In Search of Zarathustra: The First Prophet and the Ideas that Changed the World - a wonderful history intermingled with travelogue written by a former BBC television programme-maker with special interest in Central and South Asian affairs. Kriwaczek is a Jew from Vienna - who successfully fled the Nazis and was raised and schooled in London. He was born in 1937 - and this, his first book, appeared in 2002. It is a testimony to wide travel, knowledge and a continuing deep interest in the "culture" of Persia and its surrounds, an area now known as "Islamic" but from where Jews and Christians also originated. The central story, his "search for Zarathustra," reveals that the sacred spot in Zoroastrian temples is named after Mithra - and that this is the very same Mitra of the early Rig Veda. This book is about Persia, where the Aryans came from - and it was a learning experience to read that in modern Iran, the Shiite Muslim population celebrates the Navroz with huge jollity - just like our Parsees. Muharram is sorrow; Navroz is The Party!
Note that Parsees are an "urban business community" - and, further, that they are "migrants."
Mithra is the "patron of contracts" - and Contract is the "Mystery of Capital" that Hernando de Soto finally solved. When Property is "represented" in pieces of paper, and these are exchanged and honoured, the entire Market Economy system kicks in with two huge advantages: first, that you can better Plan your own future, for all contracts are over a future period of time; and second, that Property, through exchanges into the future, becomes Capital.
In other words, what matters is not just property, but something representative of that property - the Title. With titles, you can enter into written contracts - so you have rent, mortgage, loans, collateral, sale, purchase, wills, bank deposits and, finally, the paper "banknote" of the goldsmith. Contract is covenant; it is promise.
Kriwaczek takes his reader through the bombing of London in WW2 - which unearthed a temple to Mithras under the Olde City of London - and then to where this temple has been re-built: next door to the Bank of England on Threadneedle Street!
I am now halfway through Kriwaczek's second book on the Yiddish civilisation. This "lost civilisation" is recreated with emphasis on its achievements - and it offers a fascinating glimpse into eastern Europe, both past as well as present, and to religious hatred. It is a tale of urban living, urban communities, urban trades. It is also a great story of the intermingling of races and faiths, and languages - and the fascinating tale of how an entirely new language "spontaneously" arose. How a "backward" area was "developed." I began my post with the "good news" of Journalism 2.0 - and Paul Kriwaczek is a great journalist I have found, thanks to my friend Varuna. Her name, coincidentally also from the Rig Veda, is that of the sky god worshipped alongside Mithra!
Sound Money and Free Banking Under Law - humanity's escape from fiat paper currencies and inflationism - require nothing much more than Contract: which is Private Law, conduced freely between Individuals, just as in the case of actual market exchanges.
This great journalist from the BBC has found for all of us the Ancient God of Contract - whose traces can be seen all the way from Hadrian's Wall to Samarkand right down to Mumbai.
Mithra is the "Unconquered Sun" - born during the winter solstice because that is when days start getting longer. This time of the year was celebrated 2000 years before Christ.
So I raise a toast to Mithra, the ancient god of contract - and pray that he may bless my journey through Journalism 2.0.
Sound Money and Free Banking under Private Law.
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