experience

Some men are only to be made cautious by their own experience,
they must suffer before they become wary.

"The entire world of modern human experience is built upon a story.

Such is the power of word.

What is property, for example, but an agreement?

What is money, but another agreement about the meaning of yet other symbols, pieces of paper and bits in a computer?

What is time, but an agreement as well that something we have constructed means something?

The coordination of human activity, necessary for anything beyond Neolithic technology, rests on a shared interpretation of symbols. It rests on meaning, and these meanings together comprise our story about the world." - Charles Eisenstein

"Perception is mysterious thing. One hundred people can witness the same event and yet many will recount very different descriptions of what they experienced. Usually it's because so much of what we perceive is a product of interpretation. How we interpret what we experience is largely based on descriptions of reality we adopt from other people. Over time, most of us form rigid ideas of how the world works and what things mean. As we age, it's as if lenses are put in front of our eyes that color every experience." - Bruce McDonald

Experience is defined as:

To undergo.

To live through.

An event as sensed.

To participate in personally.

Trial, as a test or experiment.

The knowledge or skill derived.

Undergo an emotional sensation; "He felt regret".

An event or a series of events participated in or lived through.

Of mental or bodily states or experiences: "get an idea"; "experience vertigo".

First hand knowledge of states, situations, emotions, or sensations; "I know the feeling!"

The content of direct observation or participation in an event; "he had a religious experience".

The accumulation of knowledge or skill that results from direct participation in events or activities.

The understanding of an object, thought, or emotion through the senses or mind: a child's first experience of snow.

Active participation in events or activities, leading to the accumulation of knowledge or skill: a lesson taught by experience.

The effect upon the judgment or feelings produced by any event, whether witnessed or participated in; personal and direct impressions as contrasted with description or fancies; personal acquaintance; actual enjoyment or suffering.

An act of knowledge, one or more, by which single facts or general truths are ascertained; experimental or inductive knowledge; hence, implying skill, facility, or practical wisdom gained by personal knowledge, feeling or action; as, a ruler without experience of war.

"The most permanent lessons in morals are those which come, not of book teaching, but of experience. It is from experiences such as mine that we get our education of life. We string them into jewels or into tinware, as we may choose."- Mark Twain

"Television and video games are attractive because they (temporarily) assuage our hunger for experience; yet at the same time they are a primary contributor to the separation from reality." - Charles Eisenstein

wars float financial bubbles

"When new money is created, its effect is not felt instantaneously across all market sectors. The effect moves from one individual to another individual and thus from one market to another market. Monetary pumping generates bubble activities across all markets as time goes by. Once, however, the central bank tightens its monetary stance, i.e. reduces monetary pumping, this undermines various bubble activities. The bubble bursts. Since monetary pumping generates bubble activities across all markets, obviously the eventual bursting of the bubbles will permeate all markets." - Frank Shostak

the Mississippi bubble

Louis XIV, the "Sun King," had consolidated French power in Europe but the Nine Year War and the War of Spanish Succession had effectively bankrupt France by 1715 the year of Louis XIV's death. France defaulted on its debt, high taxes burdened the economy and the value of gold and silver currency fluctuated wildly. Louis XV turned to, the Duke of Orleans who turned to John Law, a Scottish adventurer, economic theorist, and financial wizard/engineer.

In 1716 John Law established the Banque Générale, a bank with the authority to issue fiat bank notes. In 1717 John Law established the Compagnie d'Occident ("Company of the West") and obtained a 25-year monopoly to develop the vast French territories in the Mississippi River valley of North America. John Law's company soon monopolized the French tobacco and African slave trades, and by 1719 the Compagnie des Indes ("Company of the Indies"), as it had been renamed, held a complete monopoly of France's colonial trade.

John Law took over the collection of French taxes and the minting of money; in effect, John Law controlled both the country's foreign trade and its finances. An effective marketing scheme was developed describing the Compagnie des Indes as a future profit generator due to its monopolistic controls of the exaggerated the wealth of Louisiana. This marketing scheme sent the price for a share from 500 to 10,000 livres , completely out of all proportion to earnings.

By 1719 John Law had issued approximately 625,000 stock shares, and he soon afterward merged the Banque Générale with the Compagnie des Indes. In 1719 the Compagnie bought the right to collect all French indirect taxes, took over the collection of direct taxes, purchased the right to mint new coinage. The center piece of this financial plan was the retirement of Louis XIV's debt. Shares of the Compagnie des Indes were exchanged for state-issued public securities, or billets d'état, which consequently also rose sharply in value.

The French government debt, 1,000% of the annual budget, became property of the Compagnie des Indes.

A frenzy of wild speculation ensued that led to a general stock-market boom across Europe. The French government took advantage of this situation by printing increased amounts of paper money, which was readily accepted by the state's creditors because it could be used to buy more shares of the Compagnie. Excessive issue of paper money stimulated galloping inflation, and both the paper money and the billets d'état began to lose their value.

By 1720 the value of the shares of the Compagnie plummeted, causing a general stock market crash in France and other countries. The financial engineer John Law was made the scapegoat and was forced to flee France. The enormous debts of his company and bank were soon afterward consolidated and taken over by the state, which raised taxes in order to retire it.

the South Sea bubble

In 1711 the South Sea Company, a joint stock company was granted a monopoly to trade in Spain's South American colonies as part of a treaty during the War of Spanish Succession. The South Sea Company assumed the national debt England had incurred during the war in return for the monoploy.

Speculation in the company's stock led to a great economic bubble known as the South Sea Bubble in 1720.

The primary trading business of the South Sea Company was transporting slaves from Africa to America.

In 1719 the South Sea Company proposed a scheme by which it would buy more than half the national debt of Britain (£30,981,712), again with new shares, and a promise to the government that the debt would be converted to a lower interest rate, 5% until 1727 and 4% per year thereafter. The purpose of this was to allow a conversion of high-interest but difficult-to-trade debt into low-interest, readily marketable debt and shares of the South Sea Company.

The South Sea Company then set to marketing the stock with "the most extravagant rumours" of the value of its potential trade in the New World which was followed by a wave of "speculating frenzy." The share price rose from from £128 in January 1720 to £890 in early June even though trade with Spanish colonies was limited to one ship carrying not more than 500 tons of cargo and the slave trade.

When the speculative adventure collapsed the estates of the directors of the company were confiscated and used to repay some creditors, and the stock of the South Sea Company was divided between the major creditors - the Bank of England and East India Company.

tulip mania bubble

Tulip mania or tulipomania (Dutch names include tulpenmanie, tulpomanie, tulpenwoede, tulpengekte, and bollengekte) was a period in the Dutch Golden Age during which contract prices for bulbs of the recently introduced tulip reached extraordinarily high levels and then suddenly collapsed.

At the peak of tulip mania in February 1637, tulip contracts sold for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman.

The mosaic virus spreads only through buds, not seeds, and so cultivating the most appealing varieties takes years. Propagation is greatly slowed down by the virus. Tulips bloom in April and May for only about a week, and the secondary buds appear shortly thereafter. Bulbs can be uprooted and moved about from June to September, and thus actual purchases (in the spot market) occurred during these months. During the rest of the year, traders signed contracts before a notary to purchase tulips at the end of the season (effectively futures contracts).

Short selling was banned by an edict of 1610, which was reiterated or strengthened in 1621 and 1630, and again in 1636. Short sellers were not prosecuted under these edicts, but their contracts were deemed unenforceable. In 1636, the Dutch created a type of formal futures markets where contracts to buy bulbs at the end of the season were bought and sold. Traders met in "colleges" at taverns and buyers were required to pay a 2.5% "wine money" fee, up to a maximum of three florins, per trade.

Neither party paid an initial margin nor a mark-to-market margin, and all contracts were with the individual counterparties rather than with the exchange. No deliveries were ever made to fulfill these contracts because of the market collapse in February 1637.

On February 24, 1637, the self-regulating guild of Dutch florists, in a decision that was later ratified by the Dutch Parliament, announced that all futures contracts written after November 30, 1636 and before the re-opening of the cash market in the early Spring, were to be interpreted as option contracts.

This change of law was done at the behest of major Dutch tulip investors who were trying to recoup lost money because of a German setback in the Thirty Years' War. They did this by simply relieving the futures buyers of the obligation to buy the future tulips, forcing them merely to compensate the sellers with a small fixed percentage of the contract price. This trade was centered in Haarlem during the height of a bubonic plague epidemic, which may have contributed to a culture of fatalistic risk taking.

In summation all three of these speculative run-ups in the value of tulip bulbs or stock was caused directly by war. Tulip investors were trying to recoup loses from betting on Germany's success in the Thirty Years War while both the South Sea and Mississippi bubbles were designed to retire onerous government debt due primarily to the expenses involved in the War of Spanish Succession.

See memory

See Aldous Leonard Huxley

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This website defines a new religious ideology to which its author adheres. The author feels that the falsification of reality outside personal experience has created a populace unable to discern propaganda from reality and that this has been done purposefully by an international corporate cartel through their agents who wish to foist a corrupt version of reality on the human race. Religious intolerance occurs when any group refuses to tolerate religious practices, religious beliefs or persons due to their religious ideology. This web site marks the founding of the religion aptly named The Truth of the Way of Life - a rational religion based on reason which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme leader, no church buildings and in which each and every individual is encouraged to develop a personal relation with God through the pursuit of the knowledge of reality in the hope of curing the spiritual corruption that has enveloped the human spirit. The tenets of The Truth of the Way of Life are spelled out in detail on this web site by the author. Violent acts against individuals due to their religious beliefs in America is considered a “hate crime.”

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American social mores and values have declined precipitously over the last century as the corrupt international cartel has garnered more and more power. This power rests in the ability to deceive the populace in general through mass media by pressing emotional buttons which have been preprogrammed into the population through prior mass media psychological operations. The results have been the destruction of the family and the destruction of social structures that do not adhere to the corrupt international elites vision of a perfect world. Through distraction and coercion the direction of thought of the bulk of the population has been directed toward solutions proposed by the corrupt international elite that further consolidates their power and which further their purposes.

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