The Visionary – a Large head with 5 faces for a total of 6 eyes. While dormant, the visionary has a smooth head of obsidian, no facial features, and exposed muscle fibres on its neck. When the priests insert their hands into the muscle fibers, nerve fibers invade the skin. The priest’s head loses all features, turning black. The Visionary’s faces appear, and its eyes open. The priest and the visionary are one, and he can now see in every direction for many miles.

Look forward to our comic. it won’t make sense probably.

Trumpuant old bratriarchs did aplutarp their friends,
when astrogothic misanlips were worply on the mend.
So Mantagorianius and Vilkar of the North,
extrafoluated, and on their horses sallied forth.
“Grelhere” he snaped his miterfork, grelhering all the while,
“I grelhere to utmost max, and yet perforce grelhere in style.”
The Bulwark of the North, Vilkar, was mightily impressed,
and on a wooden table top he scribed little vest,
a pair of slacks, and borlant straps to keep them all athwaite.
Maltruviantic periworts began to integrate
themselves into the dia-gram of gramo-dia-cloths,
the type defined by treaty as those victimized by moths,
the type that, when encountered carved upon a table top
must hastily erasured-be by table ‘rasing cops.
The force of table ‘rasers raced their tabular tontoons
toward the little sketch of vest and straps and pantaloons,
but Mantagorianius rose high his sabre’s spear!
And shouted in a voice both soft and low and high and clear,
“Dear sirs! Grelhere, grelhere at once, don’t rantipariate!
These scribbled scrabbles scrumbled ‘pon this table here of late
are little more than dendrophagographic vest-i-ments,
And gazing ‘pon them suddenly not 15 moments hence
you shall not see these clothes, defined by law as heinous things!
But wait and wait, vesperiate, ’till the moment-weasel sings!”
Waited they amongst the tables on the table trees,
A whistling, sitting deep in saddles, leaning at their ease,
until the weasel weaseled out to sing his weasel song.
Some moments had transpired, 15 full and aptly long.
Turning they their gazes down to oculate but good,
there somehow all the clothing drawn had eaten all the wood.
So Mantagorianius and Vilkar of the North
excused themselves from Hepstiburt and Amilcar the 4th,
those Erasing Cops who had this afternoon enforced
the dictates of the Lemon-Man their matriarch divorced.

You’ve heard the legends say that if you leave here, don’t look back,
keep facing to your destination down the trodden track,
don’t hearken to the snigglements of Periworts behind,
or turning round you’ll view a sight to nullify your mind!
Facing you a riddle whose solution no one knows…
why Maltruviantic Perwirorts are wearing little clothes

DUUUN DUUUUN DUUUUUUN!

As a university student, i remember this debate and how frustrating it was to get basic concepts across to people who just knew how to parrot the lines they have been fed. THis is true i guess for all controversies and conflicts, but this one raises my ire more than most. They argue that bank notes have no intrinsic value, that they only have value because people agree they have value, and that they are “based on nothing.” Its just paper with images printed on it. Gold, however, has intrinsic value, and a certain weight of gold is worth a certain amount. Objectively. Without referrence o anything else, gold has a value.

The problems with this concept are apparent immediately.

1) Gold has no intrinsic value. its just a lump of yellow metal, soft and heavy. Humans ascribe it value based partially on its visual attractiveness, partly on its utility as a non corrodible substance, and partly on its assumed rarity (gold ain’t so rare as people assume).
2) The value of gold is determined by what you can get in trade for it. For instance, 3 oxen for 1 gold coin. Or say, 160$ in bank notes for 1 gold coin. As a coin, its a medium of exchange, more valuable as a coin than as a metal for casting ornaments. Because as a coin, it has symbolic value. It symbolizes the ability to attain any goods you desire.
3) metal coins are surprisingly easy to counterfeit
4) Their value is not set, but rather, fluctuates like the values of all goods and currencies.

It should be apparent even to the most ardent supporter of a great leap backwards in currency to a fictional past where the use of gold as the basis for money meant that no one was ever poor, the economies of the world didn’t boom and collapse, and you knew that your money was REALLY worth something.

Consider this: A bank note is worth a specific weight in gold, and you can exchange your note for that gold. This is the concept of a gold based currency. Now consider this. Your bank note is worth a specific amount of chocolate, and you can exchange it for that amount of chocolate. I can take 1$ and get 49 grams of chocolate at any convenience store. what’s so special about gold? i can already spend 1$ and get a specific amount of gold. The fallacy is that by basing the value of the dollar on a certain weight of gold, you have a set value fo the dollar. Since the value of gold changes, however, based on its supply among other things, the value of the dollar is also fluctuating. Based on the cost of goods fluctuations, a certain amount of gold won’t have the same relative value to various goods, and so, in no way is currency based on gold any different than currency not based on gold. Ultimately, its only value is as a symbol we use to represent the conceptual value of goods and services.

Because what is money? Its a representation of labor. 1 unit of labor is worth 10 units of milk. 1 unit of labor is worth 2 units of bread. 1 unit of labor is worth 20 units of bottled water. We are exchanging our labor for goods and services, and rather than going into a store and saying “I worked 45 hours this week, i’d like to transfer my hours of work at 10/hr to your work storange facility, and gather food in your aisles in exchange,” we use money.

How does gold or silver currency differ? In no regard. Silver only has value in what it can buy, same as paper notes. Why was silver used as the basis for coinage? because it was rare enough that the market would not flood with counterfeit currency, its alloys were all easy to spot, and becusae people BELIEVED it was valuable.

That’s the real magic trick. In the past, people BELIEVED that only a currency based on a metal was a REAL currency. When Diocletian tried to move to a different system, making coins only a percentage silver, mixed with tin, people felt that the coins had decreased in value, and there was inflation. We know today that a nickle has no nickle in it, but we still believe its worth 1 wine gum, 1/5th of a gumball, etc. In the modern world when we moved from a currency based on gold to one not based on gold, we did not have massive inflation and economic ruin. We began a period of great economic prosperity. Why? Because people had been using bank notes for centuries, and were so far removed from actual metal coins that they no longer had to IMAGINE that gold or silver were part of the equation. The paper retained its symbolic value, which was abstracted from the symbolic value of the gold. One symbol replaced another.

To recap:
1) Gold has no intrinsic value. God does not decree that one oz of gold will be worth 10 oxen for all history. There is no edict from heaven on the exact prices of all things in relation to one another. Money based on gold is subject to the vissisitudes of gold price fluctuations, and can’t be divorced from those massive fluctuations.
2) Paper notes have no intrisic value either. In this they are the same as gold.
3) While the world used gold and silver coinage, massive economic upheavals were commonplace, as in the modern age. Economics is not based on the medium of exchange, but the nature of those exchanges. The medium is irrelevant, as it is merely a symbol. We dont’ even use currency half the time. We use bank cards. We don’t have actual money, we have electronic records of phantom values which, if we chose, we could exchange for paper currency, much as when paper currency began, you could exchange paper currency for gold. One symbol abstracts its value from the symboilc value of the previous symbol on which it’s based.
4) Basing money on gold is the same general concept as saying that in order to accept the universe as is, it has to be based on a creator’s efforts. Why do we need to regress one step? Why do we need to say “this arbitrary symbol has no meaning, unless it is attached to another inherently meaningless symbol”. If money has no value, gold has no value, but money based on gold has value? its irrational and a fallacious argument.
5) Why gold and not emeralds? Why gold and not 200 year old sections of redwoods? Why gold and not moondust? What does gold have to do with value? Nothing. Any of these alternatives would work. You could buy 1 trillionth of a gram of moon dust for 1$, say. Since you can’t get 1 trillionth of a gram, though, you’d accept the dollar as a symbol of the dust. The nyou’d just accept the dollar as a symbol of what it can buy (a chocolate bar, a can of pop, 10 wine gums, half a container of milk, a newspaper, etc…) and what it took to earn it (6 minutes of work in a call center, .5 minutes of work in a factory) Gold is as arbitrary a symbol as paper. (emeralds are rarer than gold, and rarer than diamonds. They would seem to make a great currency, of course, since emeralds are useless, they can’t be considered something to be bartered for intrinsic value. They would have to remain symbolic, like most currencies)
6) The only currency i know that was based on intrinsic value was salt. Salt was a) hard to mine, and b) necessary for the survival of human life in warm climates. The roman soldiers were paid in salt, becasue of its rarity, and utility. Salt has intrinsic value to humans. We can not live iwthout it. IN the dystopian post apocalyptic future, no doubt water will be a currency. The fremen used tokens to represent the volume of water that belonged to them, kept communally in vast tanks of water. Those tokens were money, but they represented a valuable object, water, necessary for human life.

This leads to the quest, why not base currency on something with intrinsic value?

The title of this article is gold double standard, because gold backers decry paper money as meaningless and having only symbolic value, value because we say it has value, fiat currency, but then don’t criticize gold for the same reasons. Even worse, immagine a currency sytem based on a truly finite resource? Imagine we had found all the gold there is on the earth, so all gold in circulation today was ALL THERE EVER WOULD BE. the population would continue to increase, but the arbitrary medium for all value on earth, gold, would never increase. Every person’s slice of the pie would shrink. Wealth would remain constant, while the percentage of people benefitting from it would decline. Black market currencies would inevitably surface (as has happened in recorded history when government coinage failed to service th eneeds of the economy), and yet another symbolic system of currency would arise to replace one where dogmatic religious conviction was allowed to ruin the world economy.

In the end, that’s what it is. Its dogma. No one is willing to consider these issues in the gold backers camp. They beg the question of whether gold has value or not. They ignore it. The assumption in the premise of the debate is that gold has value, objectively, so why not use it as the basis of currency? That’s the definition of begging the question. The debate is is not why we don’t use gold, but whether gold possesses the inherent value its ascribed. If it doesn’t, what difference would it make moving to gold? In this case, the only difference, if any, would be negative. The world’s wealth would decline by a factor of 10 or more. We’d all be broke overnight. In one swoop. Or, conversely, gold’s value would be artificially inflated so that 1 oz would be worth 70000 dollars, that way the small gold supplies held by each nation would represent the GNP the countrry had before the change. Then posessors of gold would be rich overnight, while possessors of money would be broke, unable to buy the tiniest fragment of gold. Only survivalists and catastrophists would benefit, while people who actually spend their money and support the economy would be screwed outright.

So yes, let’s switch to a gold coinage. I can think of no finer way to ruin the entire planet in one swoop.

This argument seemed irrelevant to him though. As numerous peoples of other religions, and a horde of atheists, celebrate christmas, as a cultural or social holiday, like mother’s day, halloween, labor day, or easter. Whatever their origins, what religious value do they possess these days?

None, i argue. If you feel differently, please tell me so. If you agree, please tell me so.

Due to his self doubt, he decided to ask an objective third party if he were dead, or merely trapped within a paradigm that was like death (perhaps Hegelianism).  What follows is extracted from the protagoniser’s gleam screamer ™.

…

The other man was in the form of a Methodist, and as his opticulated my torso and limbs with his oculonts, I gleaned from my mood groaner that his was moaning out a strong sense of recognition.

“You!” The waves of his outburst gallopped across my delicate membranes.

“You know me?” I rejoindered.  What a fool, he didn’t know iw as going to do that, i bet.  10 Greevalt Lamb-coins says he’s not prescient!

“Of course, or rather, i will know you–” he paused for effect “–IN THE FUTURE!”  The latter part of his sentiment was expressed with ominous arm motions and a grim look on his face.   The ocean of his face (a metaphor) became like a grim ocean face.  You see how I’m able to make you see images?

“Old man, how can you recognize me if you will only know me in the future?”

He just laughed at me, and gave me twenty canadian dollars.  He then combed my hair, while still laughing.  He pulled out a range of ties that surprisingly rated over Four Hearts on the suitability scale, and chose a 4.8er and gingerly tied it around my neck.

“This is the first time i’ll meet you, but not the last.  The last time i meet you will be the first of the last times i meet you.  And because it’s a first of something, i’ve technically met you one first time already, long long years from now.  Since firsts carry forward, in the direction they are facing, a first last faces the reverse, you see?  So that first is carrying forward relative to its own frame of reference.  That forward is our backward.  Thus, I know you already because of our final meeting, years from now.”

The chasmic void which we inhabited began to blow with warm gusts of stale air.

“That’s remarkable.”

“Yes it is.  Purely by logical construct i am able know anything, for you see, I’m a Rativore, an eater of Reason.”

“Ahh,” i said knowingly.  he had no idea i didnt’ know what he was talking about, but i squared my shoudlers to his, and mimiced his bodily attitude, while maintaining eye contact. i was winning this conversation.

“That and i live in three directions in time at once.  Forward for you, backward for you, and forward for ex-girlfriends.”

“A third direction in time?” I asked, while touching his body in a dominant way, witha broad open handed motion.

“Have you ever wondered with ex-girlfriends never seem to move on?”

In many ways i had, but i wasn’t going to show my hand.

“Maybe.  Maybe not.”  Booya.

“Well, that’s because ex-girlfriends live in a perpendicular timeframe.  They don’t move forward in the timeframe that you do.  For me, obviously, ex girlfriends move on rather quickly.  We Rativores are the third luckiest race in the known universe.  Not me though, as I am stuck in here.”

“Ah, the afterlife.  Kind of an anuser, eh?”

“Bummer.  Not Anuser.  But uh.. what do you mean afterlife?”

“Well.  I died.  In the frown?”

“Ahahahahaha,” he said each Ha as a separate syllable in a dry monotone, whie inflating gas sacks on his neck.  When he was done storing his laughter, the gas bags compressed, shooting his jocularity fog into my face.  I must admit, the effect was very amusing. “We’re not dead.  You idiot.  You’re only dreaming.  You are asleep, right now, inside the frown, after successfully giving up some of your personality by twittering on your iphone.  None of this is even real.  Except me.  I moved into your dreams last week, while you were awake, because it seemed like you had basically given up on having any dreams.  Since you clearly are using them again, i could move into your aspirations.  That’s a far more tractless void than this cavern.  But uh.  I have all my shells arranged here.”  He indicated several rows of beautiful seashells which he had arranged from smallest to largest.  “It would be a shame to have to move them.”

“It would.  It would.  Still…”

“What?”

“nothing.  You know.  It’s just… ”

“Ugh, okay, i’ll move if you want.  But look around, there’s lots of space.  If you realy dont’ ahve that many dreams, i mean.  I could even put up some of my own.  My goals are pretty great.”

“Gimme an example.”

“I want to own a boat.  Nothing too fancy, a 12 footer. And maybe retire with my 2nd wife to smalltown Ontario, and integrate into the community by volunteering to help it’s local historical society.”

“Say, that’s not bad.  You ahve a deal.”

“Good, becuase you’re about to wake up.”

“Oh, wait, what’s your name, and tell me about my future!”

“I’m Phile Maven, and actually you asked me not to tell you anything.  You made that very clear at our final meeting, just years from now.  You can’t even imagine, time is nuts!”

“What?  Why!  tell me!”

But it was too late, he already had his earphones in and was listening to his sleek, 3Gs black iphone, available at apple stores across the country.

to be continued…

Stay tuned.