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Lending, Secret Societies, Canon Law
Another set of threads to tie together out of recent conversations here:
- Religious/ethical prohibitions against usury
- Role of the Knights Templar and consequent secret societies in the origins of modern banking
Obviously, when it comes to secret societies, reliable information is exceedingly hard to piece together. But we could sketch out a tentative line of descent from the Knights Templar to the Freemasons to the Illuminati. The Templars ended up being persecuted by the Catholic church, as did the Freemasons (See also: Knights of Columbus, the Catholic equivalent of the Masons). And the original Illuminati writings which I have seen quoted online were vehemently anti-Church, because they believed (rightly so, I’d wager) the Papacy to be woefully corrupt.
So what we presumably have here is a line of counter-Church thought which connects to both the origins of modern science, as well as the origins of the modern banking system (and that’s without following also the Protestant Reformation and rise of the nation-state thread). Consider for a moment also something called the contractum trinius, a legal method invented in the medieval period to circumvent prohibitions within canon law against usury.
The contractum trinius was a legal trick used by European merchants in the Middle Ages to allow borrowing at usury, something that the Church fiercely opposed. It was a combination of three separate contracts, each of which was deemed permissible by the Church, but which together yielded a fixed rate of return from the outset.
So there is a precedent among the merchant class to use legal tricks to allow them to lend money at interest (a method of generating enormous wealth with little or no actual work). And there is a connection to Church persecution of various groups whose influence heralded the rise of modern banking systems. Where does this line of inquiry lead us to next? Were secret societies invented - at least partially - in order to flout canon law? If they were partly responsible for the rise in usury, could the Church be considered justified in persecuting them?
October 15th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
This must be important here as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild
October 15th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Thanks for posting that Wikipedia link to the Knights of Columbus. Something I’ve been interested in learning more about, but haven’t researched yet.
My grandfather was a “Knight” in southern Indiana. One Saturday night when I was 7-8 I was staying with my grandparents and discovered he wasn’t going to be around for dinner and all the way up to the time I had to go to bed. Disappointed, I asked him what they did and talked about, and if I could go too. I remember him telling me that it was a secret what they discussed, that they drink beer, and that I couldn’t go!
I think the church was justified in going after the usurous money-changers. But I also think the Fed (and this is just a start) creates massive disparty in economics (getting worse by the year)… the poor getting poorer, the rich getting richer.
I work with a guy from Uruguay. He thinks easy credit and loans (available thanks the Fed) is a great thing. In Uruguay it is very difficult to get a loan (capital) to start a new enterprise or business.
The Fed Reserve gets such free reign by the US Gov’t, it can seem to be the wild west at least twice a decade (with the resulting carnage): S&L, late nineties “Tech” Bubble, our current housing bubble. I don’t know much about other countries central banks and their relation to their host state. Wonder if, for example, France gives more direction to their bank, thus making it more socialized while ours seems purely capitalistic with no oversight?
October 15th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
This is an EXTREMELY important topic.
October 15th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
A religious prohibition against usury, in a sense, ensures that the priest caste rules over the merchant class and not the other way around - am I right?
October 15th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
I think you may be onto somthing. Sort of like priest caste is acting to maintain its monopoly.
October 15th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
It might be a righteous monopoly in one sense though: as usury *does* seem to cause a huge amount of problems. But then again, so does rulership by a priest caste… .
October 15th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
well, maybe the goal was not to prevent problems but to prevent competition.
October 16th, 2007 at 12:02 am
Wow, once again incredible ideas across all these posts.
Have you ever read the communist manifesto? It starts out with:
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
What’s interesting about this line is that it programs the mind, it says “review the vastness of history through the lense of the materialist dialectic” and of course, it works, it seems true. But you could also say “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of ongoing technological advancement.” and that would seem true just the same, and program the mind in a different way.
Marx was programming the mind for class conflict while seeming to passively present the truth. But he’s not special, that’s pretty much what everybody does, from arguing in relationships to advertisements; any information we give that somebody else takes in creates behavioral change.
Now the thing about money is that its an incredibly faith based system…literally, the paper has no value, it just has value because we believe it does…and enough other people believe it does. This behavior was programmed in us, through intent and through a germline process, where the intent was strengthened by actual experience, such as when central banks were instituted to prevent runs on the bank, so people learned they could trust bank notes etc.
Now what’s interesting to me about all this is that its entirely really a sociological phenomenon. This is all about how people behave, and that the behavior is created by ideas, whether its communism or currency value or credit or whatever. If you look at the keywords associated with western finance, you hear things like “Trust, Fidelity, Prudence” with images like bulls, big rocks, stable pyramids that stand the test of time. But those keywords are very human traits, and they are talking about very human relationships, or at least that’s the vibe.
Its obvious to me that trust is the basis of all finance, and certain ideas program that ability to trust into us, and do so systematically. But its also really limited what it does, and it obviously directs our trust toward these certain institutions, rather than faciliating the trust in a larger way. This begs a certain question: Is there a better way?
In a world where everybody is psychotic, no value is created for anybody, everything sucks. In a world where everybody loves each other deeply, wealth is infinite and transcended for all. We do not live in either of these worlds…yet for the world we live in, there is some most optimal set of viable “normal” human behaviors for creating wealth and beauty, and therefore, given the fact that behaviors are controlled by our information intake, there is some optimal stream of information for each person to intake to optimize the wealth and well-being of humanity.
The question I’ve pondered for years is: If we could find this optimal stream of information for each individual, would it the information in it be true? Or would it tell little white lies to get us to do things for the good of humankind…
Sorry to ramble.
October 16th, 2007 at 1:49 am
I think this is a major premise of Skip Sievert’s in Beyond the Cloak of Deception or whatever his screed is called.
No but I would like to.
Very succint. Thank you!
Amazing comments all around. Will be deriving further discussion fodder off these for a while…
October 16th, 2007 at 1:55 am
[…] Excerpted from another excellent comment by Svenson: In a world where everybody is psychotic, no value is created for anybody, everything sucks. In a world where everybody loves each other deeply, wealth is infinite and transcended for all. We do not live in either of these worlds…yet for the world we live in, there is some most optimal set of viable “normal” human behaviors for creating wealth and beauty, and therefore, given the fact that behaviors are controlled by our information intake, there is some optimal stream of information for each person to intake to optimize the wealth and well-being of humanity. […]