Saturday, May 5, 2012

Arguriophilia


From wikipedia:
Philia (φιλία) as an ancient Greek word for love refers to brotherly love, including friendship and affection. This contrast to the ancient Greek terms Eros, or sexual/romantic love, and agapē, or detached, spiritual love.
Suffixes with the common part -phil- (-phile, -philia, -philic) are used to specify some kind of attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something. They are antonymic to suffixes -phob-.
MMT commenter 'Leverage' made an interesting observation in a previous thread related to how many people who are not capable of understanding even some of the most basic assumptions included in MMT that really are just basic points of cognition and logic; are exhibiting astonishing behavioral characteristics; from 'Leverage':
"There is something about this human construct, "money"... that makes apparently normal human being to degenerate in an inferior mental state, sort of irrational where natural logic operations do not longer apply. It probably has to do with the fact that money induces similar mental states than drugs in most humans, increasing neural activity in certain areas of the brain and production of certain neurotransmitters. It's a total takeover of the limbic system over the neocortex. TPTB utilize this as a powerful propaganda tool then to make us think that we are 'borrowing from the future' at the 'expense of our grandchildren'.
Neocortex does not function then telling you that is physically impossible to 'borrow from the future' or consume production that has not been produced. Is very hard to fight this takeover of the emotional feedback over cognitive reasoning, just try at your personal family meets or with friends, you will encounter heavy opposition and even indirect violence."
This is fascinating.

Leverage identifies here how actual normal brain functions are affected by the abstract concept of "money". 

In 1 Timothy 6, the Apostle Paul writes:
9 Now, those intending to be rich are falling into a trial and a trap and the many foolish and harmful desires which are swamping men in extermination and destruction.                             10 For a root of all of the evils is the fondness for money, which some, craving, were led astray from the faith and try themselves on all sides with much pain. "
The KJV of the scripture here has it: "For the love of money is the root of all evil"; probably most people have heard a form of this scripture (I do not believe it is THE root but rather A root).  But the actual word that Paul uses to reveal this truth is philarguria, which is better translated: "fondness of silver", you can see this word in the original Greek at the link to the inter-linear tool just above.

Paul was an Israelite who was writing to his fellow Israelite Timothy and using economic terms that they both would be most familiar with.  Here Paul uses the term argurion (and fondness for it), to identify to Timothy in a term they best would both understand, an abstract "unit of exchange" or "money thing" used by Israelites,  silver, that could become a focus of obsession (a "-philia").  An abstract concept presented to the human as trial and a trap.  If we are caught up in it, we exhibit a harmful desire, a 'fondness' for something abstract instead of something real, we are caught in a trap leading the human into extermination and destruction.

I believe Leverage has identified some of the physical or biological effects that this destructive spiritual force can foment.  These spiritual forces can apparently cause actual physiological effects on human brain function effecting both the cognition and reasoning of what should be normally functioning people.  If we put people caught up in this falseness in positions of great civil economic authority and influence, we perhaps can see why the rest of society suffers economically.

So we may have happened upon a new "philia" here.  Perhaps call it Arguriophilia, a "fondness of money",  that is taking a severe mental toll on the people caught up in it.  Right now it seems very powerful, pervasive and destructive. Stay invigorated in the truth.


9 comments:

Leverage said...

Yes, is ONE of the origins of 'evil', in the post you quote you can read I compared it to drugs (which is what the actual studies compare it too).

EVERYBODY knows how dangerous can drugs be, them can make some human being do very stupid and evil things. We know how drugs have been abused in some of the most violent conflicts humans have had to make these human being do things that they couldn't do in normal conditions (very nasty sadistic things).

I'm not sure I would compare, at least in all cases, what money can do to certain people (is important here to note that not every person has is as permeable to these motivators), but it surely has an effect. Power, which is a related 'instrument' is also a strong motivator for certain personalities, in fact I would say that most people who can be conditioned by money to do certain things in reality is pursuing power indirectly.

This addiction to power and money is very harmful for humanity as a whole, specially if it falls in the hands of people with psychopathic or sociopathic traits. The probability that people with these traits end up in influential positions is higher than for the normal people, as recent studies have pointed out (I think some posted in this blog) the percentage of psychopaths in finance is way higher than in a bigger sample of the population (10% in finance vs. 1% in all the population).


Very, very dangerous.

Letsgetitdone said...

Thanks Leverage and Matt. This is a great post It accounts for the willingness of the top .01% to subvert our democracy, and perhaps also for the inability of many of the rest of us to see what they are doing.

Tom Hickey said...

@ Leverage

"...the love of money is the root of all evil...." 1 Timothy 6:10

Note: Most contemporary scholars doubt or reject that 1 & 2 Timothy were actually written by Paul, but the quote is characteristic of perennial wisdom. For example, Ramakrishna reiterated the Vedic view that the roots of evil are lust, anger and money (greed) — kam, krodh, kanch.

Anonymous said...

lust, anger and money (greed)"

Sounds about right (though 'greed' is caused by a form of 'lust').

Tom Hickey said...

Right. "Lust" is self-centric desire for anything, so the biblical quote could be rendered "Lust for money (greed)....

Frustration of lust as ego-centric desire leads to anger.

So it is all basically just an articulation of lust as narrow self-interest in contrast with love, which is of the whole, i.e., universal.

The basis of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths, too.

Mario said...

GREAT post here and great comments fellas. Right up my alley on all fronts.

Add to the list a "silver calf" now as well (as if a golden calf didn't get the message across clear enough!). False gods are well...false. What more need be said?

And if we look at the patriarchs of Israel, we see GREAT abundance and prosperity, indicating that truly the One God blesses those who ask and exchange with It. MMT sheds economic light upon these spiritual axioms and that the Universe truly does have infinite supply for all. Someone tell chicken little (and the blasted Peterson foundation) that the sky is not falling!! Perhaps a singing telegram would do the trick!?!??! ;)

Go team!!! We are all moving things along one post, one comment, one idea shared at a time!!! yes!!

Ryan Harris said...

I wouldn't underestimate how smart the public can act when it comes to money. The outright rejection of anything that even appears irrational is understandable and shouldn't be dismissed as a dysfunctional brain. New Classical and Keynesian economists have represented the profession for years and spouted nonsensical gibberish to a savvy public. The public is beyond angry at the arrogance of economists and rightly dismissive of anything they claim as fact.
The real challenge is to immediately get the public to understand that MMT isn't in anyway associated with the orthodox quackery. While at the same time engaging the orthodoxy, monetarists and others so MMT doesn't fall into the same narrow minded traps of elitist academia.

Matt Franko said...

Ryan I see what you are saying and I think you are right to suggest we guard against that type of thing...

But I dont see anything in MMT that is not true.... They are not coming up with some type of "model" or something, not treating economics as a true positive science.

All MMT seems to be saying is that we should look around and see if anyone is involuntary unemployed and then accordingly find the best way to straight away get them employed... this is just based on basic truths, justice and righteousness.

So I am not too worried at this point that MMT is going to run off the rails so to speak.

Resp,

xan said...

"orthodox quackery"

should be an oxymoron, but it is not...