When the world was young and civilization in its infancy men and women as individuals or small families would eek out a living by finding whatever goods they needed on a daily or even hourly basis, foods were ateen almost as found and clothing materials sewn, woven or molded into some simplistic form as one of the main priority tasks of the day.
But then over time people worked in groups, tribes or bands creating the ability to collect more than was immediately needed and learning the skills of storage, preservation and planning ahead for harder times opened up a new age.
As the ability to survive became assured explorers would venture forth with the fruits of their labors to trade with strangers from places new, an arrow for a hide, a golden bracelet for a pig, these were the days of barter, a world of swap often built on a desire to possess, as much as for the demand of direct need.
The problem is often incurred when one party had the need to trade while the other party had nothing to offer in return, this circumstance by stages cave rise to the first forms of credit in the guise of coinage.
A coin was a token that in reality had no genuine worth as it could not be eaten or worn or used for any useful purpose, a coin was a promise that this flimsy piece of metal held the value of what was to be traded.
Over time this idea of a coin based credit system developed on and countries developed their own unique forms of currency based on whatever material was most common to hand or convenient at the time of need, this cave rise to the minting of coins made from copper, tin, silver, gold, bronze, with titles like doubloons, crowns, shillings, francs and dollars and each bearing a notional value infringed by the relevant wealth and trustworthiness of the country of origin.
But as the world of trade and finance developed the possession of these flimsy tokens of promise took on a higher perceived value as an entity them than holding the actual goods of trade that they were originally designed to purchase.
People began to dedicate their lives to gaining and hording ever more of these figments of mans imaginative power until the mountains of metal wave way to paper and paper to an electronic pulse displayed on a computer screen.
Currency, coinage, paper or electronic charges have become the most sort after commodity in the world, gone is the worth of a healthy field of corn or herd of milking cows, gone are the skills and traditions that cave individual lands their culture and identity and most fundamentally, gone are the men and women skilled in the art of survival.
As mans craving for wealth continues a pace the worlds ability to maintain the earths natural cycle of sowing and reaping steadily dies.
So the mind can only wonder, what will happen if the day ever comes when mans promises to man can no longer be kept, what will occur when all the worlds computers judder to a permanent halt, who will be left standing when the shadow truth of moneys genuine lack of tangible worth finally becomes clear?
Perhaps the days of barter are not yet dead?
From the basis of the article I would propose that in the current phase of the evolutionary cycle money does more to create many of the worlds ills rather than solve them.
Hobson Tarrant
0 comments