From Farfel, just received

Dear fellow-members of GATA,

Gold is the key to culture.
Take gold out of the economy and you take the heart out of the economy.
Take the heart out of the economy and culture is destroyed.

Culture? what is culture?
Culture happens when the individuals that make-up a society reach for
the sky, dig deep for love, and establish heaven to earth values to live
by.

Dig deep for love? what is love?
Love, like God, is brought down to prosaic levels by definition.
It is enough to say, I need love like I need God like I need salt with
my food. Don't ask me why.
Those who understand this are the salt of the earth.

They know that love is nurtured through suffering well-borne, through
sacrifices not easily made, through giving till it hurts.

Metaphysically-speaking, Gold is the standard of love. That is why we
say, "He has a heart of gold." Or, "She has a heart of gold." And we
wear gold wedding rings.

In the Book of Revelation, the New Jerusalem is measured with a
golden rod. What does this mean? To me it means that a sound measure has
been established. Not a fixed measure whereby you give me two hours of
your labour for two hours of mine, but the open and flexible quid pro
quo measure of the heart, of love.

Thus I am content to spend several hours a day, often through the early
first hours of the morning, at an Olivetti pc for GATA, without pay
(curse the thought!) knowing that most of you in your turn are content
to give generously to the GATA cause, without a tax break and without
certainty as to the outcome. Together we are applying the golden
standard of love.

Now as regards Gold's future: -- Those who hold Gold have a special
responsibility to preserve values and not fall into the golden calf
economy trap.

The gold calf economy trap? Well, to shape the golden calf, the
marginalised Hebrews whom God had delivered from enslavement in Egypt,
pooled and melted down their gold stock and jewely and thereby
surrendered their individual responsibility for a return to the slavery
they had known. They opted for a collective surrender to a foreign
power.

One falls for the golden calf economy trap when one imagines that there
will be an economic benefit to surrending one's own God-given power to
an economically more powerful, worldly authority; historically, the
Pharoahs of Egypt, the Roman state, the British Empire and today's
transnationalised dollar imperialists and Euro Bureaucrats.

Those who hold gold have the responsibility of understanding gold to be
the symbol not the substitute, the icon not the reality of love and
culture as I have presented these.

In the future that I anticipate, people will earn their right to hold
gold through the way they ensure that
# the mining of it is environmentally safe and sustainable;
# the mine labour for it is well trained and well cared for;
# the society at large is not dependent on their own or anyone else's
gold for their living.

Only in this way will gold come through on earth as a measure of true
worth, in the fullest sense of the word.

In the emerging new world this will mean a return to two levels of
economic activity, now at a higher level of technology.
One, there will be regional subsistence economies.
Two, there will be co-ordinative, inter-linking economies of commerce
and culture, managed by gold bugs for love.

Now in a subsistence economy every one has access to what is available
by way of food, shelter and culture (via communal decision-making,
spiritual uplift and body-mind care) and this access to what is
available is not gold-dependent but people dependent, not bureaucratised
but personal, through an interweave of people-manageable community
structures.

In the future that I anticipate, such subsistence living will become
possible again through every homestead and/or village having its own
zero-point energy generator and through every community having free
access to the advanced, biodynamic and permaculture farming know-how,
seeds and tools needed for intensive, self-sufficient farming.

There is not yet enough but much work being done today to open the way
to future subsistence living. There is still little to nothing being
done to allow the emergence of a new order of inter-regional merchant
adventurers who respect gold and golden rules enough not to resort to
military force and/or political and economic bullshit and debt
oppression to make their mark in the world.

This is where we human kind have failed again and again and again.
Except perhaps in 13th century Venice and Florence, in my (perhaps
over-romanitised) reading of history.

Yes, I like to see the gold florin and gold ducat of Florence and Venice
as symbols of an economic, spiritual and political harmony since lost.
These gold coins were internationally accepted gold coins not because of
their weight but because of the reputation of Florence and Venice as
cities of culture, poised between heaven and earth between love of God
and love of material and physical beauty. Out of this harmony, it was
possible for the merchants to be inter-linking agents not for power over
people, nor for self-enrichment so much as for the advancement of
culture.

And I see the other cities of Europe Genoa, Antwerp and Amsterdam
misreading this in their envy. They had their sights set on gold as a
means to riches instead of on the cultural values that generate golden
prosperity. So they financed expeditions Columbus to America and
others round Africa to go find gold as cheaply as possible, and never
mind the methods adopted, even under the sign of the cross. They
idolised gold that is to say, they lost sight of what gold represents
for worship of gold itself.

Said Columbus, "With Gold a man can do anything; it even sends souls to
paradise." Said Herman Cortez, who followed after in terror-raising
fashion, "We Spaniards know a sickness of the heart that only gold can
cure."

Times have changed.
Today's new frontiers are metaphysical, into zero-point energy and
completed human, alongside scienced relativity. As an adventurer across
these frontiers, I say, "We humans know a sickness of the soul that only
love can cure."

I know that we will not uncover the secrets to materially good living
and spiritually better living until we have put the heart back into the
economy, and for this freed gold from the clutches of greedy men (and
women).

Therefore, in signing off, let me type in again, as is my custom,

GO GATA, Go Gold.

Boudewijn Wegerif (Bodwin)
Moderator GATA E-mail Group.
Idaberg, 153 92 Holo,
Stockholm, Sweden.
Telephone: +46.551 57841.

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