Money is the life blood of this world. Why, then, is “the love of money the root of all evil?” This is a familiar way the text is translated, but we could put it like this: “The root of all evils is the love of money.” What is entailed in the idea of money? What is money? How does money work? How is value built in this world? I’ve written before that the love of money is also a love of status. I want to dig deeper on this topic built around trying to answer the series of questions I just laid out. Firstly, money is human effort, energy, and intelligence made tangible. In this sense, money is the commodification of human-energy exertion. Money represents effort, and this is why money is also status. The implication is that the more money you have the more status you have. It is plain that in our world we humans understand money in this way, and it is pervasive, no matter what country or culture you may belong to: you have money, you have status.

Hence to understand the biblical text above while also understanding how humans go about their business in the world of money is to know that “the love of money” is likewise the “love of status” or even more specifically, “the love of self-elevation.” Status is a tricky idea because it can be accrued without a tangible monetary thing, like a dollar, attached to it initially. At the end of the day, however, when something is full of status, it ultimately becomes enduringly tied to monetary wealth. Hence, the online influencer goes about putting up posts, and, through this behavior, eventually is able to gain status and finally to monetize that status to make a living. The reason for this is because money represents human energy output; that energy output is the intangible raw material that can become status. This intangible status later becomes tangible wealth. Status is the raw material that underscores or constitutes tangible wealth.

Money in this world is founded in limitation or scarcity. Humans as we go about putting out effort to build, grow, work, or otherwise be productive, do so with limited amounts of time and energy. This is a result, on the Christian view, of God’s curse put on the world after humanity’s first sin. That curse made production more difficult and roughly put pain in the processes of both work and procreation, and it put enmity between man and women, between humans and other life-forms. Humans are an interesting conjunction of the finite and the infinite: again on the Christian view, we humans have a beginning (finite) but no end (infinite). Arguably, although humans have a lower limit of activity–I.e., complete lifelessness–there may be no upper limit to human activity. These great merits of humanity, however, do not obtain in the present, cursed world. Paul writes in Romans 8 that the whole creation longs to be freed from its slavery to futility. Money, status, wealth, in this world, are all born from and framed by scarcity. Gaining wealth has a definite time-line on it with death as the end point. That humans have a certain limit of total output they can achieve in this life places a hard cap on energy exertion. Human output is a resource, and it is a scarce resource due to the ticking time bomb that is death. Scarcity defines human output in this world. As such, since human output is the raw material of status, status is defined by scarcity. It is obvious to everyone who works in the world that money is scarce; i.e., people live pay check to pay check, and such an expression colloquially captures this sense of scarcity.

With all this said, we may now go further thinking through our biblical text: “the love of money” is likewise then “the love of scarcity.” To be clearer on this, we might expound and restate it: “the love of money” is “loving the value-system built from and constituted in scarcity.” In this world, scarcity is tied to the continued ability to live. In this world, scarcity will increase until it reaches critical mass, which is max entropy, or what the physicists call the “heat death of the universe.” According to the 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamics, energy cannot be created or destroyed, it goes from more organized ever towards growing disorganization, which is why, at some point in the distant future, the universe will be nothing but darkness and absolute zero. Even when we think about the light from the stars, at some point all stars will fail to give light, leaving the universe in pure darkness. If we imagined ourselves the final observers of the last star burning out, we might know that there were still planets out there, and we might still feel rock beneath our feet, but all light and heat ending effectively makes everything nothingness to a hypothetical observer. It is only through light/heat that all things take form and have their being–that’s a endorsement of biblical thought if I ever heard one.

Therefore, scarcity in this world is of the ever increasing type; said differently, things we need to live will become ever more scarce as time ticks by. This is why the universe “longs for the revealing of the children of God . . . for the creation was subjugated to futility, not by its own will but by the one who subjected it, in hope, that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Romans 8:19 – 21).” The love of money is a dedication to a system whose ultimate end is annihilation. We can make it even simpler: the love of money is the love of nihilism.

Let me distill down the former paragraphs into a tight line of thought that shows how the love of money is the root of all evils since I have just spent the time in long form to explain it. Money itself represents human effort and status. In this world, both human effort and status is limited and has its final end in the death of the human. Human effort, human status, and human wealth are all defined by scarcity, and not just any scarcity, but a scarcity that grows over time. Since human effort, human status, and human wealth will grow ever more scarce as time passes, we can also say that human effort, human status, and human wealth, in this world, have only one inescapable end: nothingness, annihilation. Evil is the tangible and intangible influences that moves life towards and ultimately to death. We see the final end of the matter. Why are we loving a thing (money) whose final utility is nothingness? To love money is to be a devotee to a system of value which cannot preserve value. To love money is to be dedicated to a failing system. To love money, therefore, is to love absolute nihilism.

Dr. Scalise

There is a recent uptick in governments putting regulations into place to censor speech, which is a direct censorship of thought as well. The Western governments of this earth have no choice but to give up on the charade of “being for individual rights.” I note the Western oriented governments because the communists, autocracies, and the Islamist States, do not pretend to protect or value individual rights. The DSA, the European Union’s 2023 “Digital Services Act,” is already trying to establish the EU has the arbiter of online speech. The sovereign value of the individual, which is most profoundly displayed in the authenticity and freedom of his or her speech, has been discarded as though it is some worn-out, antiquated notion. The EU, recall, is a transnational entity, and its leaders are far from being born out of populism. This is a problem for the United States as well despite its wonderful Constitution enshrining the Freedom of Speech in the First Amendment. The US’ leaders have largely enacted a form of fascism to effectively outsource its censorship behind the scenes. Elon Musk’s Twitter Files exposed this in a carte blanc sort of way. By fascism here, I simply mean that there is a collusion between the State and corporations in order to perform the will of the State. It can be out in the open or done in secret; in the US, during and after the exposure of these censorship efforts, this violation of the 1st amendment has been flushed out into the open. The Biden administration appointed a disinformation Czar, Nina Jankowicz, had openly called for the government to verify, edit, and even remove online speech deemed “inappropriate.” Appropriate to whom is the critical question. I will drop a bunch of links from left leaning and right leaning sources that corroborate these details. What changed in the 21st century that forced so-called “governments of the people” to become god over what you can say? In a word, internet.

The 20th century centralized all information provided to the people through radio and TV. This provided the god-like ability not only to tell the people what to think about, but it allowed for the framing of the Overton window. Take this montage as an example of just how the news is artificially scripted and then I will discuss this Overton window a bit.

This window is framing the two sides of any conversation, and it sets the parameters of how far speech should go on a particular subject. Hence, the notions of Right vs Left, or Democrats vs Republicans or Conservative vs Liberal. Such a framing sets up the Hegelian dialectic with its harrowing “solution” needing to be some medium or tertium quid. If radio and TV can set the parameters of the topic, then it can advance a definite agenda albeit slow moving. Why should radio and TV control the framework of how and what can be discussed? My point in all of this is that TV and radio in the 20th century enabled governments to control speech and thought through these media agencies. The governments could promote themselves as the good guys, as the defenders of freedom and speech while at the same time control speech and limit freedom. I have to admit I admire the pure craftiness of it while also hating it. The alleged CIA “project mockingbird” is a long known and discussed conspiracy; this project was designed to craft the narratives for the news rooms across the nation in order to craft the Intelligence Agencies’ narratives. Interesting as the allegation is, it is moot at this point. The montage ab0ve–along with many more if we cared to look–provides the evidence of coordination. The topics discussed and how they are presented all point to a fascist collusion between government and media. Figuring out if it is the CIA or what have you is irrelevant for my purpose here.

The internet and more specifically the social media platforms introduced the first cracks in the governments’ ability to frame public conversations. I used to teach epistemology, and I always taught that if I can frame a conversation, then I can win that conversation. To cite one hotly disputed recent event in American politics, was January 6th an insurrection (hard left) or a riot (Fox news Rino position)? This is the Overton window or the framework that has been set for how this event must be understood by the public–the boundaries the conversations must stay within. Before this gets entirely too political, the takeaway is to realize that someone is settings the frameworks for thought. Social media has now enabled the population to set their own frameworks and to popularize them without the governments consent or meddling. This came to a head in the past four years, culminating with Musk buying Twitter, Trump starting Truth social, and the ascendency of Rumble. There are other platforms too that are not guilty of the fascist censorship collusion with government: i.e., bitchute.

We know Twitter was guilty of massive censorship under the directives of government via the reporting of Matt Taibbi in the Twitter Files; Taibbi testified before Congress with the subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in 2023. If you want to read all the exposure of the Twitter Files–it is voluminous–go to Musk’s twitter and search for Twitter Files. If you search for it on almost any search engine, you’ll be met with some AI or top search result designed to discredit it. I just did a search on Brave–which is arguably “freer”–and my top result was Wikipedia, which only three paragraphs in asserts: “A major aspect of the examination surrounded false assertions by Musk and others that Twitter had been ordered by the government to help presidential candidate Joe Biden in the coming election by suppressing an October 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop.” If you watch this clip from the testimony before Congress, you’ll see that Taibbi discusses in detail the collusion and direct line of control the government had on Twitter in respect to not only the laptop story but, according to Taibbi, 100,000s of accounts and their content.

This testimony effectively contradicts wikipedia’s reporting on the matter, which is a disappointment, since I had so much hope in wikipedia in my 20s that it would be a democratization of knowledge, yet here we are.

The argument before all this exposure went something like this: the 1st amendment only prevents the government from stifling speech, it does not apply when a private company like Twitter censors speech. Back then, we would have to take the line of argument that twitter is now the new town hall and therefore should allow for just as extensive freedom of speech as what could happen anywhere in public places, which would entail allowing all speech. In Taibbi’s exposé, he likewise reports that ex FBI and ex CIA agents all had long and prominent positions inside of Twitter. The government could say, “hey we are not censoring speech, that’s Twitter, and they can do what they want.” We now know that the FBI and other agencies had a direct line to Twitter and worked together, which made Twitter the enactor of the will of the State while allowing the State–before all this came out–plausible deniability.

The Western nations “had it good” in the 20th century; they could set the frameworks of thought and speech without many even thinking to question it. Internet has produced two very different routes. On the one hand, the internet can provide the governments of this world the ability to control, collect intel, and obliterate all privacy that every historic tyrant would be jealous of. On the other hand, the internet can become the most powerful tool for the protection of a free press, protecting a people’s ability to become or stay free. Freedom of speech only matters when someone’s speech is disagreeable to my own. If someone echos my opinion, then her speech doesn’t need to be protected from me trying to stop it. That governments in Europe–and to some degree in the US even if beat back in our courts many times–are criminalizing certain speech as “hate speech” may be a very dangerous slippery slope. The pertinent question is, “hateful to whom?” The free exchange of ideas cannot survive governments determining what speech is hateful and what is not because ‘hateful’ and ‘protecting government power’ will align to some degree at some point. To suppose otherwise is a fundamental naiveté and abysmal misunderstanding of human nature. Lord’s Acton’s quote lives on infamously: “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Who has more power than governments with militaries? Who has more power than transnational entities like the EU that represent many militaries?

Dr. Scalise

https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2023/12/sen-cruz-presses-biden-administration-on-taxpayer-funded-censorship

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/damning-report-details-biden-admins-big-tech-censorship-push

Former Biden Disinformation Czar Launches Group to Defend Online Censorship

https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-seeks-stop-biden-administration-censoring-american-media-companies

https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/weaponization-committee-exposes-biden-white-house-censorship-regime-new-report

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/biden-administration-blocked-from-working-with-social-media-firms-about-protected-speech

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook/2023/07/07/bidens-former-disinfo-czar-would-like-a-word-00105251

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/12/18/brussels-launches-legal-action-against-musks-x-over-illegal-content-disinformation

https://european-union.europa.eu/easy-read_en

https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-services-act/europe-fit-digital-age-new-online-rules-businesses_en

We will often hear someone discuss scientific consensus on our news channels. During these discussions, often someone will state, with a confident authority, “Science is not a matter of consensus; it is facts.” In historiography and other scientific disciples, the idea of “Brute Facts” gets bantered around. The Latin for the word ‘science’ simply means knowledge. To speak of brute facts we assume a number of things. First, that there are observers of said facts. Second, that we care to discuss those facts and to perhaps utilize them. Third, we appropriate or accept said fact as part of a knowledge base that contextualizes the fact and gives it both form and meaning. Saying that Jesus “came back to life” means little in terms of the Bible because many people were reported to come back to life. Jesus brought Lazarus back to life. There was a little child, Talitha, that Jesus also restored to life. We could name more in Scripture. The knowledge base that contextualizes Jesus’ coming back to life to give it form and meaning are the prophecies and Jesus’ teaching about the uniqueness of His coming back to life. This is why we say He was resurrected while all the others we simply say they came back to life–and these others had to die again at a later time.

Let us turn to geography for a moment to get at this. Is it a hard fact, a brute fact, that the Mississippi River is the western border of the state of Tennessee? To say yes is to already affirm the influence of other humans on the so-called brute fact. That this body of water is called the Mississippi River came from someone at some time. That there is a demarcated geographic location called Tennessee is again the result of human subjective influence. At some point, a tech company integrated its location in an app, and, before this, humans created representative maps of the area–all designed and influenced by humans. The more accurate the representation of the Mississippi River, the more accurate or scientific our knowledge base.

My point is that science is relative to humans, and speaking of facts is only meaningful to sentient, human life. To read of facts in a book is to read of an initial adventurer who first observed said fact. This would later get penned into the written word. The question of interest is what context to said fact was included or omitted? All human life and recording apparatuses are limited; my smart phone only has so much data in which I can store things. When I record a video on it, what context of my actual experience is left out? Brute Facts are only meaningful as subjective entailments. What I mean by this is that without subjective humans to contextualize, give form, and provide meaning to the notion of “brute facts,” the entire concept ceases to exist. Of course, on my theistic view, I might argue that God would still observe all things and so perhaps “brute facts” would endure, but this is far afield for my present purpose.

If brute facts can only exist in, with, and through subjective humans, then indeed the idea of scientific consensus is more accurate than just saying that science is facts. As soon as we speak of a human’s knowledge (i.e., what the word “science” means in Latin) we are already intimating that human’s subjectivity. Hence, the importance of the scientific method to try to get accuracy in observing the physical universe. The controlled experience of the scientific method still faces the same challenges of everything in the world: i.e., limitation. What conditions are allowed? Who–which scientist–decided on those conditions? What scientists were marginalized and disallowed from weighing in on the conditions? What was reported from the experiment and what was omitted? What order were the results of the experiment laid out? Was one result emphasized more than others? If so, why?

Dr. Scalise

Been working on notions of humanity built from the idea that God is Trinity. The raw framework of the world is unities in diversities. Individualism was roughly cobbled together as a kind of defense of property rights against governments and monarchies. That someone might be considered a “collective person,” having no identity per se apart from the broader community, was a problem for the tyrannical instinct among human rulers. The point is that much of the 19 and 20th century has been a reaction to protect and defend the common man against the elite, against the privileged, against royalty. Individualism, then, is much the birth child of a politico-economic theory even though in today’s parlance is it tossed around in pre-dominantly psychological ways. If every child born is the union of a mother and father, how would this child be an individual? Isn’t the raw makeup of this child already a community event? Once born, isn’t every feature of that child’s thinking an accepting and using of what he or she is taught, mimicking it, and then extending it into new avenues? If every child is biologically already the mother and father, and every thought that child has is already the thoughts of others made his own, how is it that an individual could exist? If we concede that an individual is really “a community in a person,” why bother with the term individual at all? It is misleading.

Prime Theologian

Capitalism has done much to improve the world, but a certain dominance of corporations as part of capitalism has produced ill effects on family. Such an assessment of corporations would be unfair if we did not mention in the same breath the endless, fiat money printing happening in the United States. In this sense, my title for this article is too short. Nevertheless, the movement away from an agricultural-centric system, mixed with the growth and dominance of global markets, has diminished the solvency of the family unit.

That a husband in the 1950s could work to provide for his whole family while his wife stayed home does not address the absence of the father in a standard 9 to 5. Enter the fiat, non-gold-backed, money printing that happened in the 1970s and is still happening today. It is strange, isn’t it, that most primary or undergraduate courses on economics teach that a small amount of inflation in a monetary system is good? Why would we ever want to pay more? Let’s illustrate how money printing changes the value of that dollar in your hand. If there are 10 dollars in an economy, and that 10 dollars can buy 10 carrots, what happens when I print another dollar without something backing it, without value behind it? Each of those dollars now is only worth $0.91 rather than worth $1.00–the calculation is 10/11. The value of the carrots, however, is still the same. We now have to pay $10.98 for those carrots, nearly a 10% increase in what it costs me. The question is, has my pay at my job increased by that 10% during the same time period? Doubtful. What does this have to do with the decline of the family. If corporatism and 9-to-5-jobs took fathers away from families most of the day, then the fiat money printing system took mothers out of the home next. When one parent can’t make enough to provide for the family, there is one typical solution: the mother must work too.

The eye-opening question that comes to mind next is who is raising the kids if both parents are out of the home most of the time? There is no magic formula for putting in the time with the kids. Either you do or those intimate connections, influences, camaraderie, healthy rapport, and the like, with the kids decline. The single-parent family due to unnecessary divorce became fashionable in the latter half of the 20th century. This led to the unhappy dependence, for many families, on government: welfare, food stamps, or other government subsidizing. Dad or Mom are now displaced by government. Much of this was sold on the promise that we–those loving, caring politicians, despicable as most of them are, postured themselves as moral preachers for these causes–should just be there to help and to care; what has become potently obvious over the past 30 years is that government helping raise kids comes at a high cost. Firstly, this is the utter, systematic annihilation of the centrality of the family unit. Government displacing parents is every communist and totalitarian regime’s dream: i.e., Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, etc. If this decline in family isn’t abysmal enough, consider those dependent on the government programs in this way are nearly extorted–even if willingly–into continuing to support whatever politician will uphold the life-line.

“Follow your conscience” is a powerful tag line, but taking government subsidies to care for your kids likely eradicates every chance to follow conscience. What is, after all, a more conscience-able act than ensuring food is on the table for the little ones? The answer is obvious if we are brave enough to face it. The more conscience-able behavior would be to work out a living situation or work situation or marriage situation that enables the parent to be free from government and to actually follow his/her conscience. This brings us back to the title, what is it that corporations strain in the family unit that leads to this abysmal reality of government-dependence? Before we lay blame whole-sale on the corporations, it must be recognized that the influence of global markets and a trend towards transience as part of the American project was opportunity as much as it was a gut-punch to the family unit.

Strikingly, Karl Marx penned many complaints about global markets and the destruction of the community and niche-societal structures there contained in his now famous Communist Manifesto, written in the 19th century. His complaint wasn’t centered on the family unit; the concern with the family unit is instinctual in many respects, but the Abrahamic traditions–Christianity, Islam, Judaism–are or were particularly sensitive to protect the family. Marx targeted capitalism while we here explore the destructive effects of corporatism on the family unit. The truth is there might not be a solution to corporatism inasmuch as there is not a cure for the human craving of status and wealth. Capitalism falls prey to what every economic structure falls prey to: human greed or, more accurately, human-craving-recognition, the love of money. The question is how well does a economic system channel and keep greed from excess? Furthermore, how well does an economic system decentralize wealth and status?

Corporatism can take two faces: a drive to produce capital thoughtful of family units or a drive to produce capital for capital sake, whatever the cost. The former can only maintain its integrity while tied to a belief system that radically prioritizes and values others. The latter form of capitalism does not have resources in itself to place the other above self or corporation. It is the instinct to provide for the family, the so-called darwinism “survival of the fittest,” that removes all possibility of prioritizing others. It is a simple thought: the more money the corporation makes, the more money I bring home to the family, or at least I hope the corporation shares. Too bad it is the parent that the family needs far more than money. Money provides opportunity; a parent’s presence provides the character and training for a child to optimize opportunities. We can argue about which belief-systems actually uphold the inherent value of the other, but for now, we simply presume the death of the Christ on the Cross for humanity as an obvious belief that centers value on the other. Further, this death of God-incarnate to bring family into His fold is an interesting sharing of power; said differently, this is a decentralizing act for the sake of reunion.

The historic centrality of agriculture tied family-units both to the land and to one another. Communities were small, and resources were often locally sourced. The family unit strove together for food and for trade. There is hope on the horizon with the big uptick of both home-schooling and self-sufficient families. The next step is to broaden these into self-sufficient communities and then to begin bartering and trading with other self-contained sufficient communities. Sick of taxes? Barter. Sick of paying uncle Sam, set up local trade. Simply solved, hard to enact. The goal is not to be separate, like the Essences in Qumran, isolated from the wickedness of the world. The task is to disengage the global currents and controlled markets in order to reestablish the primacy of the family. Corporatism as it now slides deeper and deeper into entrenched secularism simply does not have any resources for elevating the importance of others, and families. Corporations will always offer a bit of self-proclaimed victory in caring for others by providing their product and providing jobs/livelihoods. This is not unimportant and credit should be given. Better to have jobs than anarchy. The test of being other-centered, or family-centered, only comes when a corporation stands to lose considerable and extended revenues from prioritizing families. We might object and state that we would not want to invest in said company since shareholders need a deep and unmoving commitment from the corporation to generate and prioritize profits. This highlights how the corporate-finance-systems likewise devalue the importance of family. Before I start sounding like a snob, I do not claim to know of better investment mechanisms that are similar in structure. What I can wonder about, however, is what the world would become if we invested in our families like we invest in our 401ks, or if we invested in our families like we dedicate ourselves to our corporate jobs? This might be a city on a distant hill, but its distance away doesn’t make it unattainable or undesirable. And, yes, I work a corporate job. I am not just some academician protected from what I speak here; I endure such trials and decisions daily.

Prime Theologian

I’ve written before on how AI will mimic the biases of its creators. Given the woke (Chat GBT) and hard-conservative (Gronk, Musk) AIs created and deployed at this point, my prediction on this end is proven true. This is not really all that amazing, however, given the nature of sequential thinking and algorithms. What do I mean by this? Human thinking and computer processing is tied to sequence. Implied in all sequence is bias. Why is one topic or thought at the first place in the sequence of thought or processing? We must select what starts a chain of thought. What is more amazing is that the age you live in–for instance, 5th century BC versus A.D. 2024–will influence and control your thought as well, giving us a different starting point for thought than what a different age would offer. This is long known. What we presume in 2024 is not what was presumed in the 5th century BC. Much of what we assume in A.D. 2024 was questioned in 500 B.C.; what those in 500 B.C. assume, we now question in our day and age. What we assume today, I have no doubt will be questioned in A.D. 2124. My point is that if we program our AI to presume 5th century B.C. assumptions, the conclusions that our AI users come to will be quite different than if we give the AI a woke agenda to roll out. For the public to really know the danger and promise of AI, the public must first understand that AI is an AI amplifier for the AIs’ controllers. Further, we need the public to know that AI has precisely zero hallmarks of non-bias or non-partisanship nor can it achieve either. Moreover, we must finally arrive at the mass-public conclusion that AI is inescapably a slave to the thoughts and sequences of its creators. We could even dare say that it is a tool of propaganda, but this would be misleading since propaganda assumes malice in the misinformation it delivers in service of its agendi. If we can achieve little more than getting 60% of the populace to understand that non-bias is a myth, both for humans and AIs, we will have a huge victory in the public opinion battle, which, sadly, controls virtually everything.

Dr. Scalise