Modern society consists of a number of institutions. From political, legal, religious institutions to institutions of social strata, family values ​​and professional specializations. Obviously the profound influence that these structures have on the formation of our consciousness and relationships. However, of all public institutions, among which we

born who guided us and on whom we depended, there seems to be no system so taken for granted and misunderstood as monetary system.

Taking almost scope of religion, the established monetary system exists as one of the most undeniable forms of faith there is. How money is created, the rules governing cash flow, and how it really affects society is vital information that is withheld from the vast majority of the population.

In a world where 1% of the population owns 40% wealth planets. In a world where 34,000 children die every day from poverty and from curable diseases and, where 50% of the world's population lives less, than 2 dollars per day ... One thing is clear - something is very wrong.

And, whether we realize it or not, the lifeblood of all our major institutions, and thus society itself, are money. Hence, understanding This institution of monetary policy is critical to understanding why our way of life is the way it is.

Unfortunately, economy often seems confusing and boring. Endless streams financial jargon coupled with intimidating math quickly turns people away from trying to figure it all out.

However, there is a fact: the complexity attributed to the financial system is just mask, designed to hide one of the major social paralyzing structures humanity has ever endured.

[ PART 1. " There is no more hopeless slavery than the slavery of those slaves Who consider themselves free from fetters.” - Johann Wolfgang Goethe - 1749-1832]

As dysfunctional and regressive as it all seems [the monetary system], there is one more thing that we left out of this equation. This is the element of the structure that is truly fraudulent entity the system itself.

The use of percentages. When the state borrows money from the Central Bank, or a person takes a loan from a bank, the loan must always be repaid with the original interest. In other words, almost every existing dollar (hryvnia, ruble), in the end, must be returned to the bank along with the percentage.

But, if all money has been borrowed from the Central Bank and multiplied by commercial banks through loans, only what will be called "principal" is created in the money supply. So, where is the money that covers all the accrued interest?

Nowhere. They don't exist. The implications of this are staggering. Because the amount of money we owe the bank will be always more money in circulation. This is why inflation is a constant in the economy. For it always takes new money to cover the never-ending deficit arising from the need to pay interest. This also means that, mathematically, defaults and bankruptcies literally built into the system. And there will always be poor niches in society that are treated unfairly.

An analogy would be the carousel game: as soon as the music stops, someone is always the loser. And that's the whole point. This invariably moves the existing money supply from the individual to the banks.

Because if you can't pay your mortgage, they take your property. This is especially infuriating when you realize that such a default is not only not inevitable due to the methods of the fractional reserve system, but also because the money that the bank lent you is legally never even didn't exist.

There is a common misconception that a slave is a man in chains, only thinking about how to break free. A real slave is most often not locked up. The main horror of slavery lies not in the fact that a person is not free, but in the fact that he cannot and does not want to live otherwise. When I came across a study by Kevin Bales that explains the psychology of modern slaves in the West and Southeast Asia, I was surprised at how much it explains about our Russian life.

Few hold on to slavery, most hold on to their slavery.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

In India, where official slavery has long ceased to exist, there is a very common practice of debt bondage that can be passed down from generation to generation. As part of this practice, a person, borrowing money, gives himself and his descendants into slavery to the creditor. But this is a boring prehistory, and I hope to interest you in the story of the Indian Baldev, a hereditary debt slave. This is a positive, happy story. After all, one day his wife received an inheritance, and Baldev was able to pay off the debt. Further, the story of Baldev himself:

« After my wife received her inheritance and we paid off the debt, we could do as we pleased. But I was worried all the time. What if one of my children gets sick? What if I have a bad harvest? What if the state demands money from me? Since we no longer belonged to the landowner, we no longer received food from him every day as before. In the end, I went to the landowner and asked him to take us back. I didn't have to borrow money from him, but he agreed to take me back as a debt slave. Now I don't worry about anything anymore. I know what to do» .

Do you think this is specific to Indian psychology? Alas, as Edmund Burke said, “Slavery is a weed that grows in any soil.”

Reflex of slavish obedience

There is no hopeless slavery
Than the slavery of those slaves
Who believes himself
Free from shackles.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Do you know that the abolition of serfdom in Russia in 1861 did not cause any rejoicing among the people? In the first 5 months after the abolition of serfdom, there were 1340 mass unrest of the peasants. Of course, socialist historians attributed these riots to the unjust conditions of liberation. Even if we forget that Alexander II sold Alaska in order to provide peasants with a 49-year loan to buy land, the phrase “unfair conditions for liberation” is puzzling.

• First, doesn't liberation have a value in its own right? What, freedom in itself is unfair and nobody needs it?
• Secondly, both the land and the serfs were the property of the landowners. Under the terms of the reform, a significant part of their property - the labor force - is taken away from the landowners without any redemption. Moreover, in a number of cases, this labor force leaves with the plot of land. But it is not the robbed who rebel, but the liberated!

Let's take another time jump and visit Stockholm in 1973, where two robbers armed with pistols and dynamite took over a bank, took four hostages (three women and one man) and held them for 131 hours. What is interesting in this story is how the hostages began to behave after their release. These people, who were threatened and bullied for a long time, during the investigation began to protect these robbers, one of the women fell in love with one of the attackers, and another former hostage began a campaign to raise funds for a lawyer for the criminals. This story gave the name "Stockholm Syndrome" to a very common psychological phenomenon - the slave addiction reflex.

Here is how Pavlov describes this syndrome: “ Obviously, along with the reflex of freedom, there is also an inborn reflex of slavish obedience. Fine known fact that puppies and small dogs often fall on their backs in front of large dogs. This is, surrendering oneself to the will of the strongest, an analogue of human throwing to one's knees and falling on one's knees - a reflex of slavery, of course, which has its own definite justification in life. The deliberate passive posture of the weakest naturally leads to a fall in the aggressive reaction of the strongest, while, even if powerless, the resistance of the weakest only increases the destructive excitation of the strongest. How often and in many ways the reflex of slavery manifests itself on Russian soil, and how useful it is to realize this! Let's take a literary example. Kuprin's short story "The River of Life" describes the suicide of a student whose conscience has stuck because of the betrayal of his comrades in the Okhrana. From the letter of the suicide it is clear that the student became a victim of the slavery reflex inherited from the accommodating mother. If he understood this well, he would, firstly, judge himself more fairly, and secondly, he could, by systematic measures, develop in himself a successful delay, suppression of this reflex.» .

Perhaps the example of Pavlov sounds somewhat controversial, but the suicide of a freed slave is not fiction, but a fact of our time.

Christine Talenz, of the Anti-Modern Slavery Committee, told the following story from her own Parisian experience of freeing slave servants brought in by Asian diplomats. “Despite the violence, horrendous living and working conditions, people in slavery have a certain integrity of attitude and protective mechanisms of thinking. They even enjoy certain aspects of their lives, such as security or their understanding of how the world works. If their world order is destroyed, everything gets confused in their heads. Some liberated women attempted suicide. It is easy to explain everything by the violence they have been subjected to all their lives. However, for some of these women, slavery was the cornerstone of their lives. When slavery was taken away from them, they lost the meaning of life.

But let's get back to the "reflex of slavery on Russian soil." One of the brightest manifestations of the "Stockholm syndrome" is the love of Russians for Stalin, who innocently killed many millions of our compatriots. Characteristically, even the children of the repressed showed love for him. This syndrome was so strongly developed among the people that its rudiments are still visible today.

Since we are talking about the times of the Soviet Union, we should deal with one ideological confusion that arose at that time.

One of the cornerstones of communist ideology was the slogan about the absolute value of freedom. This meant that a socialist person is free, although poor, and a worker under capitalism is a slave, even if he lives much better. This example of Orwellian "doublethink" greatly skewed the consciousness of Russians. As a result, even today we perceive freedom as an absolute good, while not thinking about its meaning.

So let's first separate the flies from the cutlets and answer two questions:

How is freedom different from slavery?

Freedom is to face situations

into which you have fallen of your own free will, and take full responsibility for them.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Let's start by defining the concept of "freedom".

In the time of Socrates and Plato, freedom was understood as "freedom in destiny." In the future, the philosophical understanding of freedom revolves around the choice between good and evil. There is also a political interpretation of freedom. However, for our purposes of the psychological analysis of slavery, none of this is relevant. Dictionary Ozhegova offers the following interpretation of the word "freedom": "in general - the absence of any restrictions, constraints in anything," which sounds extremely unrealistic, because it is impossible to be completely free from everything. So I suggest sticking to Sartre's definition: "Freedom is the ability to make any decisions of your own free will and be fully responsible for the consequences decisions taken". And the key word here is "responsibility", which so frightened the hereditary slave Baldev.

It is impossible to understand what freedom is without understanding the concept of "slavery". Real slavery is not quite what is usually understood by this word.

What is slavery?

- I want to offer you, - then the woman pulled out several
magazines bright and wet from the snow - take a few magazines in favor of children
Germany. A fifty piece.
"No, I won't," Philipp Philippovich replied curtly, glancing sideways at
magazines.
Complete astonishment was expressed on the faces, and the woman was covered with a cranberry coating.
- Why do you refuse?
- Don't want.
- You do not sympathize with the children of Germany?
- Sorry.
- Do you regret fifty dollars?
- No.
“So why not?”
- Don't want.

Bulgakov "Heart of a Dog"

In an article examining the psychology of modern slavery, Kevin Bales writes: “The widespread idea of ​​a slave as a man in chains who is ready to run away at the slightest chance of freedom has nothing to do with reality. Baldev's story, like many other stories, proves that such an idea is naive. I know from experience that often slaves understand the illegality of their enslavement. However, coercion, violence, psychological pressure make them accept their position. Once slaves begin to accept their role and identify with their master, they no longer need to be forcibly kept under lock and key. They perceive their position not as someone's malicious actions against them, but as part of a normal, if not ideal, order of things."

Bales has studied the lives of illegal immigrant slaves in Western countries and debt slaves in India, but how accurately his observation reflects the evolution of the Soviet system! Let's remember Soviet Union in the Khrushchev and Brezhnev times. Anna Akhmatova called these times "vegetarian". By that time, the punitive component of the Soviet regime had practically been abolished. For anecdotes and reading samizdat, not only were they not imprisoned, but they were not even fired from work. If a person wanted to be free from the system, he could work as a janitor or a stoker, think anything, chat in the kitchen with like-minded people. However, there were few such people. The absolute majority of the Soviet people continued to play by the rules “with deep enthusiasm”: join the party and the Komsomol, go to meetings and demonstrations, donate money to help the children of Germany.

In the Brezhnev era, the people voluntarily delegated to the party and government the responsibility for their present and future, no matter how meager this present and unpromising this future may be. Doesn't matter. The main thing is the exemption from responsibility.

But then came the restructuring. The brief euphoria of the 90s, when exotic food appeared in the refrigerator and beautiful clothes in the wardrobe, was replaced by 1998 with deep disappointment. The Soviet people realized, like Baldev, that they had to bear full undivided responsibility for their fate. And he didn't like it. According to a recent poll by the Levada Center, only 13% of Russians believe that citizens should take care of themselves. And 73% are sure that the state should take care of them 5 . It seems that the Russian people are now repeating the path of Baldev.

And here we logically approach the second question posed above:

Is freedom an absolute good?

And what is will? So, smoke, mirage, fiction... Nonsense of these ill-fated democrats.

Bulgakov "Heart of a Dog"

In my favorite series Once upon a time the phrase “For every magic you have to pay” constantly sounds. The magic of freedom is not cheap!

• Economic crises have to be paid for market economic freedom.
• Behind political freedom- extremist parties and groups.
• For freedom of speech - the flowering of sexual perversions.
• For the freedom to choose your path - the possibility of error, disappointment, complete collapse of hopes.

It seems that this postulate of communist ideology (that freedom is an absolute good) does not stand up to scrutiny. It is no coincidence that the vast majority of the Russian population welcomes the return to the old order. They hope to push responsibility for their lives, and at the same time for the future of the country, onto someone.

As Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev said, "man is a slave because freedom is difficult, but slavery is easy."

So what happens, “one who is born to crawl cannot fly”? Slaves don't need freedom?

Freedom reflex

Freedom is the main inner sign of every being created in the image and likeness of God:

in this sign lies the absolute perfection of the plan of creation.

Berdyaev

« For Mira, a radical change in life began with one rupee. When a social worker came to the sad village of Mira in the mountains of Uttar Pradesh three years ago, the entire population of the village was in hereditary debt slavery. The villagers could no longer remember when, during the time of their grandfathers or great-grandfathers, their families gave themselves into slavery for money loans. The debt was passed down from generation to generation. From the age of five, children began to work in quarries, crushing stones into sand. Dust, flying fragments of stones, dragging weights made many villagers disabled.

The social worker gathered several women and offered them a radical plan. If 10 women unite and set aside one rupee each week of the meager money that the creditor gives them to buy rice, he will keep this money for them in a safe place, and in time the women, one by one, will be able to redeem themselves from slavery. Then Mira and nine other women formed the first group. The rupees gradually accumulated. Three months later, the group had enough money to buy Mira out. She began to receive money for her work, which greatly accelerated the redemption of the rest of the women. Now every month one of the women of their group became free.

The rest of the villagers followed suit. The social worker took me to this village twice,” says Kevin Bales. - Now all its inhabitants are free, and their children have begun to go to school» .

This story is explained by Pavlov's statement: “... The reflex of freedom is a common property, a common reaction of animals, one of the most important innate reflexes. If it were not for him, every slightest obstacle that an animal would encounter on its path would completely interrupt the course of its life.

However, liberation from slave psychology is not always as painless as in the case of Mira and her fellow villagers.

Worse than prison and domestic violence

To be able to be free is nothing, it is difficult to be able to be free.

André Gide

Sidney Lytton, an American psychiatrist who counseled freed slaves, notes: Human suffering is hidden under different masks, but the horror of slavery is difficult to hide, it is clearly visible to those who face it. Even if a person has not been beaten or physically tortured, slavery leads to psychological degradation, which makes the former slave unable to live in outside world. I have worked with prisoners and victims of domestic violence, but slavery is much worse».

At the same time, it is noteworthy that the psychology of slavery is shared not only by slaves, but also by slave owners. Kevin Bales says: The psychology of slavery is also mirrored by the slave owner. This is a deep mutual dependence, from which it is no easier for the slave owner to escape than for the slave.". One government official from where Baldev lives also has debt slaves. Here are his words: There is nothing wrong with debt slavery. It is beneficial to both parties. You know, the way it works, I'm like a father to my employees. This is the relationship of father and son. I protect them, I guide them. Sometimes, of course, I have to punish them, as any father does.».

Kevin Bales insists on the need for psychological rehabilitation of both slaves and slave owners. Yes, in the West, freed slaves undergo a long psychological rehabilitation.

The fact that Anton Pavlovich Chekhov squeezed a slave out of himself all his life, drop by drop, is perhaps not such a figure of speech. Let's face it: we Russians are, to one degree or another, hereditary slaves or slave owners, we have inherited the psychology of slavery from many previous generations of our ancestors. It is no coincidence that at the beginning of the 20th century, when the socialist revolution won not only in Russia, but also in Germany and Hungary, the Soviet system took root only in Russia, where the rudiments of serfdom were alive in the psychology of the people, and Western Europe has been free from slavery for many generations.

Choice

Slavery is neither good nor bad. This is one way of life. This is a feature of our national psychology. And freedom is not as attractive as it is portrayed. However, it is "one of the most important natural reflexes."

We can follow the example of Baldev, or we can follow in the footsteps of Mira and Chekhov.

We always have a choice.

I will supplement the article with a quote from Boris Strugatsky:

“Freedom is not the GOAL of human life. Freedom is an indispensable CONDITION for the fullness and meaningfulness of life.

Anyone who does not want to have the freedom to choose a creative path, just the freedom to choose the area of ​​\u200b\u200bapplication of his forces, he, in my opinion, is worthy of the dishonorable title of "idiot". Unfortunately, there are a lot of such people. I would not say that this is their fault, rather it is a misfortune (“damned feudal socialist upbringing”), but, objectively, all together they make up the very “corpse of a rotting albatross” that hangs around Russia’s neck like a heavy burden and slows down the transition today to a post-industrial society. That's why I put so many unnecessary emotions into the term "idiot".

In my opinion, the percentage of "intrinsically free" in any society is at least 15% - quite a decent percentage.

A slave, satisfied with his position, is doubly a slave, because not only his body is in slavery, but also his soul. (E. Burke)

Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, but slavery is easy. (N. Berdyaev)

Slavery can humiliate people to the point that they begin to love it. (L. Vovenarg)

Slaves always manage to get their own slave. (Ethel Lilian Voynich)

He who is afraid of others is a slave, although he does not notice it. (Antisthenes)

Slaves and tyrants fear each other. (E. Boschen)

The only way to make a people virtuous is to give them freedom; slavery breeds all vices, true freedom purifies the soul. (P. Buast)

Only the slave raises the fallen crown again. (D. Gibran)

Volunteer slaves produce more tyrants than tyrants produce slaves. (O. Mirabeau)

Violence created the first slaves, cowardice immortalized them. (J.J. Rousseau)

There is no slavery more shameful than voluntary slavery. (Seneca)

And as long as people feel that they are only a part, not noticing the whole, they will give themselves into complete slavery.

One who is not afraid to look death in the face cannot be a slave. He who is afraid cannot be a warrior. (Olga Brileva)

The slave owner is a slave himself, worse than the helots! (Ivan Efremov)

Is this really our insignificant lot: To be slaves to our lustful bodies? After all, not one of the living in the world. I couldn't satisfy my desires. (Omar Khayyam)

The government spits on us, do not talk about politics and religion - all this is enemy propaganda! Wars, catastrophes, murders - all this horror! The media make a sad face, characterizing this as a great human tragedy, but we know that - the media do not pursue the goal of destroying the evil of the world - no! Its task is to convince us to accept this evil, to adapt to live in it! The authorities want us to be passive observers! They left us no chance, except for a rare, absolutely symbolic general vote - choose the doll on the left or the doll on the right! (Author unknown)

He is not worth freedom who can be made a slave. (Maria Semyonova)

Slavery is the worst of all misfortunes. (Mark Tullius Cicero)

It is disgusting to be under the yoke - even in the name of freedom. (Karl Marx)

A people that enslaves another people forges its own chains. (Karl Marx)

... There is nothing more terrible, more humiliating than being the slave of a slave. (Karl Marx)

Animals have that noble peculiarity that, out of cowardice, a lion never becomes the slave of another lion, nor a horse the slave of another horse. (Michel de Montaigne)

In truth, prostitution is just another form of slavery. Based on misfortune, need, addiction to alcohol or drugs. Dependence of a woman on a man. (Janusz Leon Wisniewski, Malgorzata Domagalik)

There is no hopeless slavery than the slavery of those slaves who consider themselves free from fetters. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Almost all people are slaves, and this is due to the same reason that the Spartans explained the humiliation of the Persians: they are unable to pronounce the word "no" ... (Nicolas Chamfort)

The slave dreams not of freedom, but of his own slaves. (Boris Krutier)

In a totalitarian state, an all-powerful cohort of political bosses and an army of administrators subordinate to them will rule over a population of slaves who need not be coerced, for they love their slavery. (Aldous Huxley)

So, comrades, how is our life arranged? Let's face it. Poverty, overwork, untimely death - this is our lot. We are born, we get just enough food so as not to die of hunger, and work animals are also exhausted with work until all the juices are squeezed out of them, and when we are no longer good for anything, we are killed with monstrous cruelty. There is not an animal in England that does not say goodbye to leisure and joy of life as soon as he is a year old. There is no animal in England that has not been enslaved. (George Orwell.)

Only a person who has overcome the slave in himself knows freedom. (Henry Miller)

So, all the knowledge that scientists with solid diplomas and impressive titles gave him, like priceless treasures, was just a prison. He humbly thanked each time he was slightly lengthened leash, which remained a leash. We can live without a leash. (Bernard Werber)

Power over oneself is the highest power, enslavement to one's passions is the most terrible slavery. (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

- This is how freedom dies - to thunderous applause ... (Padmé Amidala, Star Wars)

The one who can be happy alone is a real person. If your happiness depends on others, then you are a slave, you are not free, you are in bondage. (Chandra Mohan Rajneesh)

You see, as soon as slavery is legalized somewhere, the lower rungs of the social ladder become terribly slippery ... Once you start measuring human life in money, and it turns out that this price can decrease penny by penny, until there is nothing left at all. (Robin Hobb)

Better freedom in hell than slavery in heaven. (Anatole France)

People mince, trying not to be late for work, many of them mutter on their mobile phones on the go, gradually drawing their sleepy brains into the morning bustle of the city. (Mobile phones now also perform the function of an additional alarm clock. If the first wakes you up for work, the second tells you that it has already begun.) Sometimes my imagination paints bales on the backs of slightly hunched figures, turning them into serf slaves who daily bring their masters tribute in the form of their own health, feelings and emotions. The most stupid and most terrible thing about this is that they do all this of their own free will, in the absence of any bonded serfdom. (Sergey Minaev)

Slavery is a prison of the soul. (Publius)

Habit reconciles with slavery. (Pythagoras of Samos)

People themselves hold on to a slave lot. (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

It is beautiful to die - it is shameful to be a slave. (Publius Sir)

Emancipation from slavery belongs to the law of nations. (Justinian I)

God did not create slavery, but endowed man with freedom. (John Chrysostom)

Slavery humiliates a person to the point that he begins to love his fetters. (Luc de Clapier de Vauvenargues)

The biggest slavery is not having freedom, to consider yourself free. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

There is nothing more slavish than luxury and bliss, and nothing more regal than work. (Alexander the Great)

Woe to the people, if slavery could not humiliate them, such a people was created to be a slave. (Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadaev)

Power over oneself is the highest power; enslavement by one's passions is the most terrible slavery. (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

You slavishly serve me, and then complain that I am not interested in you: who will be interested in a slave? (George Bernard Shaw)

Every man born into slavery is born into slavery; nothing can be truer than this. In chains, slaves lose everything, up to the desire to free themselves from them. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

Debt is the beginning of slavery, even worse than slavery, because the creditor is more inexorable than the slave owner: he owns not only your body, but also your dignity and can, on occasion, inflict grave insults on him. (Victor Marie Hugo)

Since people began to live together, freedom has disappeared and slavery has arisen, for every law, limiting and narrowing the rights of one in favor of all, thereby encroaches on the freedom of an individual. (Raffaello Giovagnoli)

Servants who do not have a master do not become free people because of this - they have servility in their souls. (Heinrich Heinrich)

To become a free man... You need to squeeze a slave out of yourself drop by drop. (Chekhov Anton Pavlovich)

Who by nature does not belong to himself, but to another, and at the same time is still a man, is a slave. (Aristotle)

The dream of slaves: a bazaar where you can buy yourself a master. (Stanislav Jerzy Lec)