More Threads in Life

I wrote about the threads in life last time. That was really a rather light hearted take on two days in my life and to draw attention to the unpredictability of life generally. There are, however, many far more serious events to talk about.

Take what has been going on in the American financial markets. This has to be the result of pure greed – more, more, MORE!! Sufficient is never enough. The threads that the various financiers drew together to weave the complex packages, now valueless, and at the centre of the current storm, had their links elsewhere. As the new packages were being carefully woven, something was unravelling in unimagined places – stretching to far flung corners of the world.

As I say this was pure greed. Money was not seen as the servant of Man. Man was seen as the servant of money. Money came first. Money was good and let people go hang! What was forgotten is that without people (human beings just like the originators and manipulators of these financial packages) there would be no money!

Money is, for God’s sake, just a medium of exchange. People are linked together – it’s called relationships. Money is what is used to equate the values of disparate items. It has no relationship with anything; money is something inert; it cannot make you happy or unhappy – that is reserved for what you do with it – what you exchange it for. You could very well use cowrie shells or different coloured stones, or for that matter just barter items.

As soon as people, human beings, are left out of the equation, are ignored or treated as unimportant, things start happening. It is called Hubris and Hubris calls the Law of Cause and Effect into play. I did not invent it – it just is. This is the basis of ethics and is behind the only rule for life, the Golden Rule, “Treat others the way you would like to be treated”. There is no viable alternative. You may also like to ask yourself the question, “If everyone, (yes everyone), did what I am doing, or propose to do, would the world be a better place?” If you are not applying the Golden rule and the answer to the question asked is, “No”, then what you are doing, or propose to do, is not ethical. Stop now – do not proceed beyond go. Remember what goes around comes around!

It may also be pertinent to ask why the Financial Regulators never saw this coming - were they asleep at the wheel?