Guest Post: Holding Metals in a Post-Western World

Written by roguefaction

A recent Chairman of that private corporation in control of the finances – perhaps even, the destiny – of the USA for the past 100 years, famously referred to the yellow metal as “a barbarous relic”. Although this Ph’d prophet of policy-managed markets has hardly been a fount of wisdom in the course of his career… in this case he stumbled upon a truth.

Yes. Bernanke got it right! Gold has all the attributes of  a primitive thing – and as such belongs in essence to a different cycle in humankind’s journey. In fact, it’s the very primitive nature of gold [&silver] which renders it a potentially deadly kryptonite to the modern financialized world.

In the hands of those determined to resist the nascent neo-feudal project becoming more visible with each passing day, the precious metals take on a likeness to the primitive weaponry wielded by the tattooed Picts who enveloped and destroyed a Roman Legion in the mists somewhere north of Hadrians’ Wall. With an arsenal of such potency, one might even dream of rolling back the DEBT-USURY EMPIRE, and restarting the course of our history from a much fresher page.

As outlandish as that idea may seem ..and although it’s probably true that gold has no place in the modern day fully-financialized crony-capitalist economy…

it may be equally true that the future holds no place for the fully-financialized crony-capitalist economy! And that our archaic past just may hold the keys to our still unsketched future. Like many “1000 year Reichs" before it… the INDUSTRIAL AGE CIVILIZATION we are living the tail end of now may prove a mere blip on the chart of humankinds’ longer timeline… and the western world’s resource extractive, imperial hegemonist model may be fated to go the way of the Dodo any day now!

One might think that calling gold a relic of the past is a damning indictment of its value to the denizen of the modern world. HOWEVER, I come here not to damn, but to praise the shiny metal…for the light it casts upon the perils of our times… and the dim outlines of that road which leads away from doom. Stripped of the mythologies accorded it by both it’s major detractors and it’s chief cheerleaders, the precious metal[s] offer perhaps a last, best chance forward to a new era of economic equilibrium in a world which seems increasingly fated to drift into war and chaos.

But for that happy ending to come true, we need to be able to separate the fools’ gold of myth & pseudo-history from the .999 pure fact of how we have arrived at this point in the western worlds’ trajectory from periphery… to central player… and back again. Only via exegesis of the myths and legends we have been taught about gold/silver and those who hold it can we hope to complete that sifting operation… and thus be able to make strategic investment decisions based upon a understanding of a rapidly shifting global power dynamic. It’s no accident that Ukraine occupies the headlines of the moment – it’s the middle of the hour glass where the sands of fate and fortune slide in accord with the demands of gravity!

Lucien Levy-Bruhl, French anthropologist of the 19th century, gained a modest fame in his time through writing several books on the subject of the “primitive mind." It was his conception that the ‘primitive mind’ was different from the ‘western mind’. Although the works of scholars of the past centuries are routinely cast aside by the aspiring luminaries of the generations who follow, many a nugget of insight can be mined from these old ‘lore bodies;’’ Levy-Bruhls’ case is a good example. Like his fellow académique Bernanke, he unwittingly laid out the case for what makes gold/silver – by the very ‘primitiveness’ of their tangibility – relevant to our ‘post modern’ age. A much later French Levy…Claude Levy-Strauss…similarly embarked on a mission to distinguish what the archaic, or primitive mind represented, in contrast to the modern mind.

“Savage thought, Lévi-Strauss argues, continually gathers and applies structures wherever they can be used. If scientific thought is represented by the engineer who asks a question and tries to design an optimal or complete solution, savage thought resembles the bricoleur, who constructs things using whatever materials are at hand….Mythical thought, according to Lévi-Strauss, attempts to re-use available materials in order to solve new problems".

By which, this more modern anthropologist gave us the keys to unlock the conundrum of gold as relic of our past as well as  potential arbitrator of our future! There is no greater ‘contrarian’ play of the moment than investing in the precious metals. In the course of this series, I will leverage that fact into making the following case: those who do choose to follow thatroad less taken may be the inheritors – and potential beneficiaries – of the SAVAGE MIND necessary to surviving an age of modern savagery!

For, unlike those around us who look to virtual currencies/virtual realities as the antidote to the irreality of the banksters’ cynical Carnival of debt-enslaved Souls… primitivist metalheads (of the monetary metals kind) can see and utilize materials invisible to others… with which to build a bridge back to the status of free personage! The inclusion of precious metals in one’s tools of resistance to that project of neo-lib/con crony-capitalism – which seeks to reduce us back to serfdom – is a mark of the iconoclastic individual who I call FUTURE PRIMITIVE… aka…the post-collapse survivor.

Barbarous materials… there are dozens, if not hundreds of variations on the theme of what happens after the unraveling of the western financial ponzi scheme. In many of them… gold/silver factor in as a large part of the proponents’ recipe for how to deal with a societal collapse. From low-tech farming enclaves to your standard Rambo-style last-redoubt type mountaintop hideout… guns, gold n grub! Most of those which I have read are very poorly thought out. In fact, I consider it well overdue to take a stab at looking at the common post-collapse memes through the eyes of the post-western observer. Through such a perspective, many a myth currently dear to the Smeagol-like amongst us…infatuated with  ‘my Precious’ thinking to the point of being immune to both common sense and reason… can be deconstructed, so as to allow those truly intent upon survival to throw off their golden/silver blinders  in favor of a more, umm, fluid approach to arriving safely at the Grey Havens.

Many blogistas and hired guns of the moneypower -with vested interest in pretending that merely by hunkering down with a stash of  shiny can one expect to ride out the coming storm –vociferously oppose any challenge to their bizarrely blinded formula… while mainstream knowitalls pour withering scorn on any notion that going to the metals makes any sense at all! Both sides of that truth-debased coin betray an agenda of deceit… which those serious about coming out alive post  collapse of the west need view with a skeptical/deductive eye…and a survivors’ instinct for the main chance!

Precious metals, in other words, are a double-edged sword – used well and wisely, they might just help you cut your way out of Babylon. Misunderstood, they will merely serve as a reliquary to be melted down and pasted – as an easily looted veneer – on one’s burial casket! Those few western investors savvy enough to truly ‘think outside the box’ will definitely want to utilize the former, rather than the later of those two options.  And that means going to great lengths to see past what the available media – mainstream OR “alternative" – organs in the west have to say about gold/silver. For we are very much, at this time, like unto those former citizens of Rome, provincials left behind in the wake of withdrawal of the forces of law and security… waiting in the false calm before the arrival of pillagers and pirates… to fend for ourselves in the new Dark Age to come.

The “western mind” at this point is so inculcated with the false teachings of a cabal of manipulators dedicated to robbing us of our heritage of freedom (gifted by the forebears at considerable sacrifice), that effective resistance to their planned destruction of our world has been almost snuffed. We need to effectuate a ‘guerrilla resistance’ of the primitive kind to their machinations… with the ultimate aim of a renaissance of that unique legacy of personal freedom and empathy for others which was the ultimate pinnacle of western culture before it became a tungsten-coated imitation of itself. The precious metals have the potential to be the battery which charges this resistance… as a store of energy/store of value… to be drawn upon as circumstance requires!

Alternately, they can be misused as mere appendage to the goal of seeking personal profit at the expense of others less lucky! Via their various complicit on-line tools, the shadowy puppetmasters behind the curtains hope to employ the classic Leninist strategy of controlling all sides of the debate… in order to mislead investors into such a dead end strategy. It is my purpose to oppose that distortion of what the monetary metals represent. And in following parts of this series, expose the real aim behind the phony left/right divide used to inveigle the unsuspecting metalhead into supporting an agenda inimical to their interests!

To great extent, opposition to that nefarious purpose can only be effectuated by a detailed examination of the psycho-cultural background to the current hijacking of the high ground of debate by the dupe minions of the moneypower who flock to the banner of so-called ‘hard money’ Austrian economics. Their ability to impose a blackout upon reasoned discussion about the true nature and purpose of monetary metals has gone unchallenged from within the ranks of the metalhead community for too long. An EROI perspective allows for the assemblage of a counter-narrative to the fatuous barkings of the running dogs of Mount Pelerin-based metals orthodoxy. And to the great dismay of that orthodoxy, I do not intend to let that opportunity go wasted! Indeed, in the course of this journey to the center of the metal holders’ mind, apple carts of several peddlers of the party lines which I have met in my own meanderings will have to be upset – the solidified notions about the purpose and method of investing in the precious metals…and about the parameters of debate as to what is or is not an acceptable scope of interest for those so invested.

As gatekeepers of this institutionalized blackout on free-thinking and empirical investigation, a coterie of well-groomed academic hacks has been cultivated and foisted upon western societies for almost two centuries. Their job has been to bury the simple truth about money, currencies, trade and free enterprise under a tidal wave of phony discourse about ‘natural laws’, and an avalanche of rhetoric which presumes to give “scientific" credibility to the barking mad projections of a tenured intelligentsia whose circular arguments have in fact reduced “Economics" to the level of comedic farce.

Not so comical is the use that these ravings have been made of by the “praxis-oriented" wing of the moneypowers’ army of dead souls. From Marx, Nietzsche  and Ricardo, to Rand, Rappard, & Reagan…the deluded foot soldiers of a fake anti-authoritarianism have proudly raised a banner under which all kinds of atrocities against humanity... and common sense… have been conducted. In the narrative pushed by the complicit scribblers of precious metals orthodoxy, we must ignore the connections between the use of gold/silver as tools of international terror and hegemony… and content ourselves with watching the charts to see when the next big breakout occurs! That meme is dying…

And the narrow [let’s not concern ourselves with geo-political matters – this is just about an investment!] perspective of those legacy thinkers still well off enough to have no bone to pick with authority and the full spectrum dominance system it is building is now wilting under the influence of the basic fact THAT THE MIDDLE CLASS IN THE WEST IS DISAPPEARING! We are seeing the beginnings of an awakening on internet forums to the understanding that there is no point in limiting the discussion to only those topics which lower our vision to the level of ant-like creatures. Here, on Koos Jansen’s site is my current favorite marker of this shift towards getting real. Better late than never!

I can confidently predict that you will see much more such pushback in days ahead, as the more savvy of western metal holders begin to realize that the deeply inculcated myths they have grown up believing… that the West is the center to the rest of the worlds periphery… must be overthrown in favor of a new understanding of the balance of power – and that their destinies are no longer in their own control, but rather in the hands of other players! Only with this new paradigm in place… that the western world has lost the power to influence events to it’s own purpose… will the investor be able to make those decisions necessary to coming out ahead.

Readers of a site like srsroccoreport.com have a unique opportunity to contribute to the formulation of that understanding… and the successful strategies which can evolve from it! Those of us with practical knowledge of what it means to run a business, hands on… in the day to day slogging of the small scale entrepreneur so despised by the new power brokers and their academic/media enforcers…. must band together to take the momentum back from the monopolists of the monetary metals conversation. Only when their orthodoxy of opinion has been reduced to one of several competing narratives, instead of the domineering consensus which refuses access to all new entrants to the debate…. will it be possible to shine a light on the road which leads away from penury and perdition.

Because the precious metals are so deprecated-/despised/demonetized/demonized/ of the moment … making such a contrarian investment begs the question – what causes individuals to break from mental norms enough to even conceive of them as a safe and profitable destination for their savings. After all, the mainstream message that gets poured out of every available channel is that we no longer live in a world where monetary metals have a purpose… or a future. It takes a certain state of mind, therefore, to become a square peg a round hole, and weather the consequences of being so! This series will examine that ‘state of mind’... for both it’s strengths AND weaknesses…in order to understand the Psychology of the Precious Metal Holder. In both western and post-western formats!

For me, gold is part of a hand I am playing while seated across the table from a card shark who goes by various alibis: Satan…Lucifer…neo-lib/con crony-capitalism….Mordor and it’s Many Minions –takes your pick! The stakes are rather large… freedom of one’s very body and soul!  In this all or nothing GAME OF DEATH…gold/silver are my wild card… and maybe just maybe the trump card too!

In part Two, we will kick off a kind of hermeneutic examination of the interlocking network of hopes, prayers, assumptions, and demands by which the [western] goldsilver community staves off that cold, measured re-appraisal of their situation – an appraisal which I believe to be a necessary step to keeping afloat in perilous times. Gold has been with us for eons. Some even claim that we humans are the product of extraterrestrials breeding a hybrid slave race to mine gold for them! Whether or not one subscribes to such wild ideas, the truth is surely that gold/silver metals are deeply embedded in our collective consciousness as a token of value. Probably nothing has been so fought over throughout the course of history as gold. While their image is often burnished with a false luster of virtue and probity in history, gold and silver have been responsible for untold misery, slavery and death throughout the centuries. They have been used for exploitation and greed more often than for the social good and collective well being of mankind.

Yet in the end, they are not guilty of being anything more than the objects of mankind’s’ lust for lucre. They remain entirely neutral of ‘moral’ value, yet have the capacity to represent the essence of value, even sanctity, as has been shown throughout time in their religious and monetary usage. Are we ready to ditch those traditional strengths in favor of merely symbolic, electronic forms of money? Or is there a way to leverage those strengths into a form which puts control of our lives back into our own hands, instead of in those of the manipulators? Those are the key questions to be answered as we watch the current financial system totter and the dogs of war get released in the usual methodically illogical manner.– The answers will go far in determining whether the future will be dark or bright for humankind.

Stay tuned, brethren of the bar and coin as we boldly go beyond the previously appointed limits… in examining what it takes to Hold[ing]Gold: Cutting Through Myth and Legend – in search of a winning hand.

In Gold We Trust