Forum Post: Cain Ascendant

Cain slew Abel because he was jealous. Abel's pastoral sacrifice was "respected" by God, while Cain's agricultural offering was not. As a result of the sin, the bible says Cain was cast out and made a fugitive. He then built a city and named it for his son, Henoch. The sequence of murder and urban civilization may be an anachronism but yet I think it tells the real story.

Pastoral nomads are culturally closer to paradise [hunter gatherer lifestyle] than settled farmers and the concomitant cities agricultures make possible. That newer way, which requires a formal civilization, is not merely farther from the Garden. It's also a threat to the former way of life. The simpler folk of six to ten thousand years ago must have struggled to articulate their perception of and feelings about such things. A concrete murder is easier to understand than the creeping menace of cultural metamorphosis that threatens the freedom and the economic stability provided by the traditional social paradigm. But, like many today, they sensed something was wrong. Like most of us today they couldn't quite explain the threat they felt. There were, no doubt, stories that look childish and silly next to the biblical account. Perhaps none did any better job describing the changes.

Hmmm? How long have we been post agrarian and what threat may be perceived in an economy dominated by the abstractions that are finance, insurance and real estate? [FIRE!!!]

Of course we're not really post agrarian are we? We depend on the production of food and other material goods and services for life. And parts of the economy have been on FIRE since feudal times and earlier. Property owners and bankers have made money by rentals, educational and spiritual monopolies, lending [all mean peonage of the many for the benefit of the few] or straight up slavery for thousands of years. But what is changing today is the percentage of the economy that is parasitic service. Our real livelihood is burning up in the FIRE! The banksters, CEOs and billionaires, abetted by their minion politicians, make something out of nothing. They're parasites operating a perpetual motion of money machine that threatens the survival of the human race.

When they've squeezed the real workers and the bubble threatens to burst or collapse due to shrinking demand, they make more loans to pay the loans and cut more wages [and their taxes] to increase the profits and collect more interest to compound the problem while pushing the inevitable total collapse forward a little more. What can go wrong with a system that attempts to make something out of nothing at an ever increasing pace. Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit!

Here we are. Only Chapter 4 of Genesis and already the end of the world is in sight. It's not if but when and that damn soon!