The Aquarian Imperative and The Return of The Gold Standard

Astrologers, perhaps even more so than other kinds of analysts, believe in cycles. Some of these cycles, like those of the Moon and the fast moving inner planets, relate to daily, weekly, and monthly turns of events. The slower moving outer planets tend to correlate, over time, with a tale that may be told over years, or even generations. And then there are the Astrological Ages - those great periods of human historical and philosophical development that unfold over periods of thousands of years. As the Sun's galactic relationship to the surrounding 360 degree Zodiac puts it in a new astrological sign every 2,160 years, the affairs of humanity are prepared for a fresh metaphysical expression and a new emphasis of philosophical direction. Such "reality shifts" can have a profound influence on social and economic systems.

The Astrological Ages work their way "backward," or clockwise, across the otherwise counter-clockwise wheel of the Zodiac. The Aryan Age (the Zodiacal Age in Aries), technically begun around 4,320 years ago, ushered in a period for mankind of martial and legalistic activity. Government created civil codes for the people, and armies solidified the state's hold upon the lands and the fortunes of tribes. Notable examples of the foundational ancestry of Western Civilization were ancient Israel and the Roman Empire. As the Aryan Age drew to a close, the established great governments of the world degenerated and crumbled. The transition from one age to another may stretch invisibly over hundreds of years. Over time the philosophy of the Piscean Age which dawned roughly 2000 years ago took hold.

The philosophical keynote of the Piscean Age has been the theme of Martyrdom and Self Sacrifice to a higher good. This philosophical influence was meant to soften the legalistic militancy of the previous age. It was meant to leaven the hearts of humanity so that communities could progress together while accommodating human imperfection. It was a philosophy of the "part" expressing obedient willingness to contribute to the "whole" for the benefit of all. Human frailty eventually aberrated this Piscean overlay into Utopianism, and then forcibly imposed Socialism. Sentiment overcame objectivity in human social relationships, and the individual was increasingly sacrificed to the collective. This phenomenon did not occur on a grand scale, of course, until there was something available to sacrifice.

The final manifestations of this philosophical distortion came in the form of Communism and Fascism - the two sides of the same coin of modern state despotism. Prior to this ultimate degenerate expression of the waning Piscean Age, however, the Aquarian Age began to emerge. Its early seeds were planted in the late 1700's in the spirit of the American Revolution. The great Aquarian thought that emerged was that man was not born to mindlessly serve government (the King, or the State) but that government was meant to serve man. The sanctity of the individual, and freely associating citizens, was recognized. Institutions were initiated to maintain and promote the expression of this truth. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness were seen as natural rights of which no authority or renegade could deprive man. Due process of law was enshrined to protect those rights, and to protect society from those who would violate them. The function of government was seen to be the protection of those rights, and the adjudicator of disputes concerning them.

But the fading embers of the maturing Piscean mentality superimposed their glow upon the tender Aquarian sprout. As one cosmic mindset withdraws and the other gathers force, we have seen, and will continue to feel, the conflict between the two. But eventually the Aquarian concept of a liberated eclectic humanity, free to associate and pursue independent goals as it sees fit, will prevail. The sentimental and mystical sway of altruism and imposed sacrifice must step aside for objective, systematic thought, individual responsibility, and free choice. In the Aquarian mold, a contribution to society is not moral, valid, effective, sustainable, or worthwhile unless it is voluntary.

Nowhere in this transformation between the Ages has the conflict been so apparent as in the socioeconomic sphere. For it is here that we appraise the true measure of human progress. Of one thing all intelligent, thinking people are agreed: We wish to see competence, power, and prosperity conferred upon all our brothers and sisters. And we honestly wonder what is the best way to help the least fortunate among us in this regard.

Civilizations and societies have always had their "haves" and "have nots." Disparities in knowledge, productivity, and wealth have always been a part of the Human Condition. It is likely that they always will. Nevertheless, man's progressive spirit has always sought to include those less fortunate or less endowed in the advance to a better life for all. In that noble process, mistakes have often been made.

Even with the best of intentions, imperfect humanity must depend upon trial and error to discover the cause and effect relationships in Natural Law that provide some measure of Cosmic guidance. To the degree we harmonize our thoughts and actions with what we discover in this regard, we will progress and create the conditions whereby all may benefit. To the degree we allow sentiment, ignorance, greed and indiscipline to cloud our apprehension of truth, we will create the conditions that threaten civilized life itself.

Today we are at such a crossroads. The erosion of the American Revolution for an ever-increasing state power over the affairs of the people has reached the crisis point. The unrestrained confiscation of the people's wealth, rights, and autonomy by swollen government has impaired the ability of many to find, by their own intelligent efforts, the correct goals and standards, and the most efficient means to achieve them. This confiscation of the citizen's autonomy by government is finally showing itself to have been a useless, and destructive charade.

The purposes for which this confiscation has been effected - ostensibly economic security, social progress, and the raising of the "underclass" - all stand betrayed. The debt-laden financial structures of America and the "Western" nations are primed for monumental catastrophe. Untold millions of citizens around the world, formerly members of a prosperous "middle class," are at risk of impoverishment as their standard of living erodes quietly but relentlessly. As well, the savings of many are now unusually vulnerable to the collapse of a titanic bubble in paper assets. A bubble resulting from an unprecedented chronic credit inflation calculated to support an ever-expanding debt structure. A government debt structure.

Citizens have lost their identity as members of a community seeking the expression and development of a shared philosophical vision benefiting all. Instead, special interests jockey for position at the public trough of money, influence, and power. Invariably they seek some special privilege under the "law" which serves only to further limit the choices and actions of someone else. Most politicians are little more than lawyers representing their clients in a monumental grab for other people's resources. As in a giant divorce proceeding, they divvy up the assets of others in an unending orgy of cynical deals and legal subterfuge.

Social relationships are adversarial, fragmented, and unfocussed. Priorities change with the winds of each new crisis, or wave of powerlust and greed. The normal imperfections of humanity, bad enough in a truly free society, are magnified and ossified in their institutionalization by government. And finally, most sadly of all, the underclass that was to have been raised up by the shameless looting of the responsible and productive, now languishes at perhaps its lowest level of ability to contribute anything to its own progress, let alone the progress of the society. Indeed, with the imperative of a first class education and technology's eradication of so many "menial" jobs, the underclass is now on the verge of total irrelevancy. Can rational citizens expect such a condemnation to be accepted graciously by human beings made incapable of being absorbed into the narrowing march of civilization?

The evaporation of a coherent, uplifting philosophy on the part of our statespeople, artists, and intellectuals is ominous. This metaphysical bankruptcy has gone a long way toward encouraging the unrestricted expansion of frivolous, mindless, brutal and obscene entertainments to siphon the energies, attention, and a good portion of the wealth, of the people. Culture as such is practically non-existent. Fewer and fewer seriously acknowledge a duty to cultivate themselves or their offspring in mind and spirit. These are the classic historical symptoms of a civilization at the brink of disintegration and collapse.

These explosive factors face heavily populated western societies with a truly historic crisis. The relentless march of information and technology is leaving growing numbers of citizens behind, and concentrating opportunities for productivity and progress in fewer and fewer persons. Meanwhile, many otherwise intelligent, responsible citizens are falling by the wayside. Their abilities and experience increasingly menialized by rapidly moving technological and systematic developments. If experienced, developed "middle level managers" and executives are finding their futures precarious in this state of flux, how much more so will it be for the ever increasing number of poorly educated, undisciplined, uninformed and uninvolved citizens our adrift society is also turning out.

Public Education, briefly an effective tool of social advancement, has long ago broken down in its ability to keep up with its mission toward those who need it most. It is not so much the inadequate funding of this institution that is to blame, though this is a factor, but perhaps the inflexibility and unfortunate preoccupations of a homogenized and overweening bureaucracy. In any event, it is now clearly evident that the political structures of America and the West can no longer properly support the institutions they have created and subsidized for so many decades. Their inherent nature as government monopolies has transformed them into vampire automatons, requiring more and more of the people's blood for their survival. Meanwhile, the people are close to being bled dry.

The decay of society emerging from these important failures would likely be accelerated viciously should a financial catastrophe emerge. Many people continue to fall by the wayside through indifference and refusal to contemplate their responsibilities as citizens. Many accept the dictum that government will always be there to take care of them, and fulfill its most optimistic promises. They do not consider the dangers facing their savings, their living standards, or their consumption habits. They do not think much about the conditions which create prosperity and the mistakes which could be antithetical to it. If even economists and speculators, those relatively intelligent and thoughtful people who DO think about these things in a disciplined way, are at odds over such principles, how much more in confusion and denial of reality must be the "average citizen" of today?

Already it is evident to any objective observer that government is being forced to disentangle itself from the fulfilling of people's unwarranted expectations. But it must go further. It must relinquish control over the basic institutions of human activity it has monopolized for so long. It must let diverse people and groups find their own diverse solutions to the human equation, without interference or involvement. No other way will demonstrate the truth and effectiveness of a course of action as will the free competition of ideas and human strategies. This retreat by government is already hesitantly underway in such areas as "Welfare Reform," entertaining thoughts about the liberalizing of choice in education structures, and in lip service to balancing federal budgets. But this retreat will likely prove too little too late.

We are witnessing the growing misfortune that even while it is bloated with the taxpayer's dollars, government can no longer guarantee for much longer the services upon which its citizens have come to depend. Many public schools no longer provide the safety, dedication, and political and intellectual discipline to properly educate society's children. In countless inner city neighborhoods, those youngsters least able to afford missed educational opportunities now have hardly any at all. Public retirement and medical plans are now openly questionable propositions as to how long they will survive. Public services and government functions of all kinds have been pared back, and yet now, in the height of a stockmarket and business boom in profits, government budgets continue in deficit.

Through this all, an enormous percentage of citizen's earning are taxed away with visibly degrading returns on their "social investment." If such unsatisfactory management of the people's purse is the case while borrowed funds make up the shortfall between exorbitant taxes and untrimmed expenditures, how much less will government be able to keep its obligations with a "balanced budget?" The only alternatives in the face of a final deterioration of services will be to get out of so many of the businesses into which it has inserted itself, or to tax the people to the point of total slavery. A financial debacle could force this issue more swiftly than one might think.

Through this all, western society continues to cling to a semblance of the "good life." This is a deceptive illusion, because the continued benefits of the present are being drained from the demands of the future. The current trend of election of leftward leaning governments and political leadership only points up the fact that the people are not prepared to abandon their dependence upon the state to solve their economic and social woes. They have not the resolve to see a political or philosophical point of view through, even when they know that is what they should be doing. Eventually they lose any political or philosophical point of view whatsoever. Then they grab at what is most expedient for them personally, with no thought that they are inviting government, which is other people with as little vision and principle as themselves, to take control of the most important and basic aspects of their lives.

This ominous expression of the citizen's ignorance and frustration will put the nail in the coffin of the financial structure of the bankrupt western nations, and can only hasten the day of crisis and collapse.

Government has occupied the public's realm with ineptitude, inflexibility, chaos and corruption for so long, that like an advancing army that has overextended itself into enemy territory, it cannot now retrace its steps without enduring significant casualties. Those casualties, unfortunately, will be the people. Those casualties will be us.

The inevitable withdrawal of government from the improper areas of human activity it has occupied and befouled will require that free, responsible citizens step in to repair the damage. Citizens will have to repair and recreate many of the institutions that serve their most basic social and economic needs. As they do so, they will require the requisite authority and freedom to do the job right. Those engaged in the task will demand no less. Discredited government will lose the "right" to sanction, or confer its authority upon, individuals or organizations of citizens. Intelligent, capable people learn quickly that it is slavery to accept Responsibility without Authority. Governments must learn that it is despotism to wield Authority without Responsibility.

A financial catastrophe, or series of economic cataclysms, will eventually dislodge government from its overweening throne. Even before that comes to pass, and certainly after it, people will begin to make the associations and structure the budding institutions that will flower in the society to come. As more and more free associations of citizens segregate themselves for the maintenance and provision of their own fundamental interests - those interests government has failed and polluted - a divided society will result. A divided society that is already beginning to show itself even before the apocalypse has emerged.

There will be the enclaves and institutions of the responsible, educated, cooperative, and productive, and there will be everyone else. There will be the voluntary association of people who cultivate their talents, skills, labors, and minds, and there will be everyone else. Those free citizens who become voluntarily responsible for the reformation and recreation of necessary viable human institutions will demand standards of conduct and contribution from all who would be associated with that effort. And they will have that right.

The trend to physical residential enclaves where people who have the financial means separate themselves in protected communities will enlarge to literal districts, and perhaps even regions, where community standards are mutually beneficial, efficient, and responsive to essential social needs. There may even arise quality standards and legal variations between and among such communities, and they will serve to satisfy the differing needs and choices of generally like-minded citizens. In effect, new de facto "states" will be formed as the active members of society break away from both the power and failures of traditional government. Within these "states" there will naturally arise subdivisions of emphasis and variation to accommodate human needs, preferences, and creativity.

These new states will have one thing in common. They will all share the same general philosophical view of citizen's rights and responsibilities. Those who are thought of in the political jargon as "conservative" or "libertarian" will tend to create institutions and structures in communities among themselves. Those who might be labeled "liberals," "leftists," or "socialist," would be free as well to create their own institutions for social progress on a voluntary basis. Each and every group would use its own resources and create its own standards concerning who was to be eligible for their charity, patronage, or largesse. They would not be able to confiscate resources from communities and associations beyond or outside of their own. They would be subject to the laws of cause and effect and the vagaries of human behavior in making their own political decisions.

Those who have never had either a political philosophy or a concern for the thought and action required for human progress, would quickly be thrown on their own devices. They would be forced to reform, adopt a structured viewpoint or ethic for their life, or degenerate. Eventually there would emerge a divided society. Voluntarily responsive, cooperative people and their institutions would exist alongside, but separated from, a class of modern barbarians. As the divisions grew more distinct, the likelihood of physical armed conflict would arise. There would then ensue a tragic period of upheaval and apparent chaos, but it would be the unfortunate but necessary adjustment that would prepare a new cycle of civilizational progress. It might even seem like the "end" of civilization itself, and, for a time, might very well come close to it.

In this process, the productive, cooperative, self-sustaining elements of the population that have associated in networked communities and regions will have agreed upon a reliable standard of monetary exchange. The new communities will be mindful of how previous blanket community authority (government as we know it currently) enlarged itself to the point where it literally ended competition for monetary soundness among human institutions. It will be recalled how government confiscated the one universally agreed upon currency of humanity - gold. It will be remembered how government then issued to the people in exchange for their gold its own paper note, which it could manipulate at will, usually to the detriment of those from whom the gold had been taken, never to be returned. The new progressive communities will return gold to its rightful place as the true money, and the paper note to its rightful place as merely a convenient receipt, or claim form, for the true commodity.

Then individuals and institutions would be free to issue their own paper notes as tradable receipts for gold on deposit in banks, vaults, or safes. The process would be no different than modern checking or credit card purchasing. Only the money ultimately debited for each expenditure would be real. It would be gold. People would establish real accounts of real money with the institutional system of their choice. This would not insure a perfect world. That cannot be so long as man himself is imperfect. But it would insure, as much as humanly possible, that institutions competing for the citizen's monetary business provide the best possible safeguards and integrity as part of their service.

Those found guilty of issuing or passing fraudulent notes for which no gold existed (banknote inflation) would be liable to criminal prosecution much as those who pass worthless checks are now. Institutions which inflate their note issue face values beyond the worth of the gold they store would be guilty of criminal activity, theft, and deception. Citizens would have the right to sue and prosecute such malfeasance, and would be free to shift their assets among competing institutions, knowing that they have successfully cut ties with those whom they find suspect or inconvenient. No one government would have sole power over the issue of currency, and no currency would be exempt from any effective, real relationship with gold.

Any other form of co-existing community, or authority, that did not operate on a commodity money standard, be it gold, or platinum, or wheat, or sugar, would dissolve into chaos and barter. Out of barter would eventually spring, of necessity and by its nature, a renewed commodity money standard. The renewed commodity money of choice, or the many commodities grown, fashioned, or traded by such segments of society, would be exchangeable for gold. As members of such peripheral societies saw the value in obtaining gold for their products and services, they would gradually accommodate their financial and production systems to this advantage. At first they would ally themselves for mutual benefit with certain Gold Standard communities. They would become something akin to what was once called "colonies." Over time, after paying their social and marketplace dues, they would earn their independence, or be voluntarily absorbed into a commonwealth.

The cycle we are all familiar with from the study of the political and social history of man would be repeating itself. That is what cycles inevitably do. The excesses of the previous cycle, in this case the extraordinary buildup of an entire age, must lead to the toxic disintegration of the old structure, and a fragmentation from which will come the seeds of the new. The Aquarian principles and influences of independence, personal choice, and intellectual eclecticism and experiment will permeate human activity for centuries to come. Indeed, for most of the next 2000 years.

The foundation of the renewed integration of social elements into a progressive community under an enlightened philosophy will be established, once again, on a Gold Standard. A human brotherhood will be conceived where no one is sacrificed to anyone else, but each takes up his own burden, and thus makes the burden of his brother and sister that much lighter. The truest respect one human being can show another is recognition that none is slave and none is master, but each owe each other value for value. Anything less is theft or fraud. Anything less is not worthy of a civilized human being.

It is in the ownership, first, of one's own soul from which progress springs. In the ownership of our own destiny, both good and bad, we find the objective way to know what is right to do, and what is wrong to do. While ultimately the power to accomplish this is a function of intelligence and will, the process cannot be effective if there is no objective standard in the world that is impervious to man's propensity to stray from reality and the path of progress. Gold is the physical representative of that spiritual process. It will continue to be either servant or master for humanity to the degree the faculties of intelligence, responsibility, and discipline are either recognized and cultivated, or shamefully abused. The choice is always ours.