“As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.” -- Rudyard Kipling, The Gods of the Copybook Headings
Ideas and money are not totally dissimilar in some aspects of their nature. Both of them are essential parts of everyday life. Without either, we find ourselves in trouble and if we have a false kind of either thing we will discover that we have been duped when it comes time to show what you’re worth.
The history of currency and the history of ideas are varied and bizarre. Shells, fabric, beads, and more have all been considered valuable at some point in time by some culture here or there. Likewise, we once believed that the body was composed of humors or that four pillars held up the earth from falling into the Abyss. At the same time there are some forms of wealth and there are certain ideas that continue to be relevant from the ancient days until now. Is this pure luck or human nature?
Gold, silver, and copper since being successfully acquired have been considered valuable by rich kings, wise merchants, and thrifty common folk. One might say, “these things are only valuable because we place value on them.” This statement, while partly true, also misses the point of what makes them worth putting or placing value on them. These things last.
Contrast this to something like wampum, the shell beads strung together by Native Americans to at least the early 16th century. The people placed value on the craft of the shell strings, but the shell strings themselves became useless once basic industrial technology from some of the colonists of the region allowed for vast inflation of the currency. Money that can be scrapped up from the ground here or there is no more rare than the other detritus or debris spat up from the ocean’s tidal yawn.
The tulip mania of the Dutch during the 17th century, while not a currency issue in itself, presents a similar kind of over valuation issue. As tulip bulbs ran up in value due to rampant speculation and market forces, almost purely due to aesthetic value, they quickly saw a dramatic collapse of value after the reality of what this good’s worth was. According to Charles Mackay, 40 bulbs were recorded to be sold for one-hundred thousand florins. Eight pigs could be bought for 240 of those. That is about 333 pigs in total or .012 pigs per bulb! (Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds 1841).
A tulip could be described by any aesthetically driven man as a pretty thing worthy of appreciation, however I doubt he would sell his car for one. A gold bar on the other hand, may be worth the sellout. Gold, unlike bulbs or shells, is much harder to reproduce, though we may discover some clever way to do this. Scarcity makes this good incredibly resilient to fickle desires of Dutchmen and their tulip fever. Additionally, it lasts. It conducts electricity excellently, is malleable and ductile. It has been a serious form of currency for most empires.
The tulip and wampum examples bring to mind a pattern of human behavior that we can see very clearly in recent history of how ideas function in a similar way. We quickly adopt new ideas before we understand how they will work for more than a few minutes. Flashy things that promise progress catch the eye and please the imagination of self and humanity. Why accept boring old solutions when new ones could change the world?
Modernism, of whom Bertrand Russell’s is well known for purporting and evangelizing for, embraced that the metanarratives of yore were collapsing but attempted to enjoy and bolster its fruits. Additionally, they embraced that the metaphysical world had nothing to do with anything in our reality (by and large they believed did not exist.) Optimism in pure rationality explaining human nature, our history, the mysteries of the universe, and how to design human prosperity through the machinations of institutions. It lasted less than a century.
Postmodernism, which we are debatably leaving behind already, replaced it. The failures of Modernism to recognize the core of their civilization’s mythos had been eroded swiftly fell to incoherent worldviews that had no basis for Truth. Here is where Postmodernism picks up the dregs. Why struggle to maintain a sense of realism based on any ideal if the whole thing is falling apart? Tear it down baby. In a much more rapid drama of decay, the idea has no pillars or foundation and is falling by the wayside. The people want something to believe in.
The natural law, expounded on by Thomas Aquinas, discerned in biblical writings, and largely ordered by Aristotle, remind me of the “Gods of the Copybook Headings.” By reason and observation, we can observe that the natural world has a correct order to it; disorders may still exist and exceptions do not nullify the rules. There is an unwritten but universal aspect that reality must necessarily be ordered towards in general.
Our friend Paul writes:
"For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another." Romans 2:14-15
The thinkers of old, pagan or otherwise, understood that our reality, though chaotic and full of danger, still was under a higher order. Men of good character are inclined to follow it while evil men eschew it. This intuitive and observational philosophy built the West. All of the ideas that have undermined it have fallen. Even as the natural law has lost much of its presence in the minds of modern men, we still find that most people’s intuitions rely on it. We inherently understand that it is better to help someone up from a fall than to throw them down to the ground even if we cannot explain why.
The Christian ethic, philosophy, and metaphysic all account for these intuitions and feelings. In unison with the natural law, it is what we have used to develop our understanding of science and reason to the birth of the Enlightenment. The Christian worldview brought about hospitals and universities. Like the “Gods of the Copybook Headings” and like gold it has lasted through many ages. And like gold, it still provides value. Even as swathes of people have left the church, younger generations are returning to seek out a metaphysical rationale for existence. If our lives are given no value inherently, inventing that from a chaotic and crumbling cultural unity certainly does not help. Two thousand years isn’t a bad track record for the church. We will see if it will regain its prominence once again in our lifetimes. At the current rate of cultural entropy, we might just be around to witness such a thing.