What We Have Failed to Learn from Gold?
The soul will never become pious and purified except through undergoing afflictions. It is the same as gold that can never be pure except after removing all the base metals in it.
Gold has had an exalted position throughout the ages as a highly coveted and glorified material but mostly for ridiculously wrong reasons. The early history of gold is shrouded in myth. However, because of being attractive in colour and brightness (due to which it was even linked or likened to the sun), durable to the point of virtual indestructibility, highly malleable, and usually found in nature in a comparatively pure form, it is even a worshipped material.
According to Biblical narration, when prophet Moses went up into Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments (Exodus 24:12–18), he left the Israelites for forty days and nights. The Israelites feared that he would not return and demanded that Aaron make them “a god to go before them”. Aaron gathered up the Israelites’ golden earrings and ornaments, constructed a “molten calf” and they declared: “‘This is thy god, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:1–4). The incident of the worship of the golden calf is also narrated in the second chapter of the Quran, named Al-Baqarah (meaning cow)
Regardless, the archaeologists cannot pinpoint an exact moment in human history when gold was discovered, but traces, according to some sources, have been found in ancient caves dating back to 40,000. It has been used since ancient times basically for two purposes: to make jewelry (rings, necklaces, bangles, bracelets, anklets, earrings etc.) and idols or icons (Krishna idol, Buddha idol, Mary and Jesus Christ idol etc.) for worship. Thus worldwide fascination with gold also led to its wide acceptance as a store of value and a means of exchange– making it a symbol of wealth, success, prestige, power, and majesty. Whilst gold jewellery can be traced back to 4400 BC, it may have been crafted and worn much earlier and has also long been associated with a divine sphere, both in pre-Christian and reportedly in Christian religion.
Thus shine of gold, its indestructible nature, its malleability and its relative scarcity made it an ideal material to even embody or symbolize divine qualities. Consequently Gold has been valued extremely highly by nearly all societies over much of human history.
According to a story of Washington Post, “Wealthy Hindu temples such as old Shree Siddhivinayak Temple (where gold coins, heavy wedding necklaces and lustrous pendants are kept in a closely guarded “strong room) are repositories for much of the $1 trillion worth of privately held gold in India — about 22,000 tons, according to an estimate from the World Gold Council.” Report further reveals that in 2011, (just) one temple in south India was found to have more than $22 billion in gold hidden away in locked rooms rumored to be filled with snakes. Another has enough gold to rival the riches stashed at the Vatican.”
Moreover, as some sources reveal, to display his imperial glory, Napoleon gilded Paris in gold, while even more recently Hitler sought to control all of Europe’s gold as support for his “1000-year Reich.”
It is not just because gold itself has some inherent or intrinsic value like shine, softness, malleability, density, indestructibility, in addition to being highly reflective of heat and light that makes it so important and thus desired metal. Instead, gold is also valuable because throughout human existence people have been willing to accept it in exchange for something else. Supply and demand is a human constant, and gold is no exception.
In other words, because gold is demanded and desired by humans, it gains value.
Although, it is said that gold is a scarce metal and it is estimated that just over 200,000 tons of gold have been mined (out of estimated one million tons that are in addition to about 100 times more gold on the moon) over the course of history, the bulk of which has been in the last 70 years, according to the World Gold Council, however, reportedly its natural scarcity has continually been reinforced by an artificial scarcity arising from how powerful groups, especially in government, have used it. And the “Gold Standard” was the main culprit. Gold Standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. In other words, it is a monetary system where a country’s currency or paper money has a value directly linked to gold. With the gold standard, countries agreed to convert paper money into a fixed amount of gold.
The use of gold as money is said to have begun around 600 BCE in Asia Minor and has been widely accepted ever since, together with various other commodities used as money. It is believed that the earliest known coins were changing hands in the 6th century BC in Anatolia, in the kingdom of Lydia. Around 550 BC, King Croesus minted gold coins , made from electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver found in the River Pactolus.
However, according to historians, about 600 BC, Spartans (Lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta) banned the use of gold and silver, and adopted iron discs as currency. But they were heavy (difficult to handle), and rusted (not a good store of value). Thus, Plutarch, who was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi (born around a.d. 46 in east-central Greece, he lived in his own golden age), is said to have posed a very meaningful and ironical question: “Who would rob such a person with heavy iron money? Who would take money as a bribe?”
Zooming in on to 2oth century, according to Wikipedia, the gold standard became the basis for the international monetary system from the 1870s to the early 1920s, and from the late 1920s to 1932 as well as from 1944 until 1971 when the United States unilaterally terminated convertibility of the US dollar to gold, effectively ending the Bretton Woods system.
And, although, currently, no country uses the gold standard, and the same has been abandoned for fiat money, however, still these countries maintain gold reserves, apparently, to support the value of the national currency or insurance in case of an economic crash. The gold held by each country’s national bank is referred to as a gold reserve. The justification for these reserves is that If the fiat currency system collapses, the country’s gold reserve allows the government to still be able to repay debts and issue money. Thus gold as a tangible asset has been used as a store of value for thousands of years in every part of the world and it is still the practice.
Top 10 Countries With the Most Gold Reserves
- United States: 8,133 metric tons ($480.84 billion)
- Germany: 3,355 metric tons ($198.35 billion)
- Italy: 2,452 metric tons ($144.97 billion)
- France: 2,437 metric tons ($144.08 billion)
- Russia: 2,299 metric tons ($135.92 billion)
- China: 1,948 metric tons ($115.17 billion)
- Switzerland: 1,040 metric tons ($61.49 billion)
- Japan: 846 metric tons ($50.02 billion)
- India: 785 metric tons ($46.41 billion)
- Netherlands: 612 metric tons ($36.18 billion)
Regardless, according to many economists, unfortunately, a gold standard (or gold reserves) is not a guarantee of inflation control or price stability. Moreover, they also argue that although, gold is supposed to provide an anchor of stability in a rough economic sea, but, like any other commodity, gold is subject to speculative bubbles. As we can see, since long time, especially over the last two decades, gold prices have been tossed high and low, more like froth in the wind than a sturdy anchor. Moreover, practical examples of Russia, Iran, Sri Lanka etc. show that their gold reserves couldn’t help much during the times of financial crisis.
Even then fairytales about the gold standard or reserves continue to be spun by the powerful vested interest groups like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and other global financial corporations that are most responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown and the Great Recession. Thus hard money like gold is part of the policy mix that has opened a chasm between the rich and poor.
Story of king Midas (who ruled the kingdom of Phrygia, in modern-day Turkey, during 700 BC) very adroitly emiptomizes the whole idea of gold’s real value in the time of financial crisis. I spite of being rich and living a life of luxury, he was still not satisfied and wished that everything he touched become gold. When his wish was finally granted by Dionyssus, the god of wine and revelry, everything including even his daughter and the food he wished to eat turned into gold. Thus the wish instead of being the cause of happiness and blessing proved to be a curse and source of misery. And as Dionysus heard about his predicament that instead of being happy the king had become hapless, he felt sorry for him. He told Midas to go to river Pactolus and wash his hands. He did so and after his touch became normal again, Midas hugged his daughter in full happiness and decided to share his great fortune with his people.
Long story short: what we need to learn from the above facts is that “instead of amassing and foolishly displaying or worshiping gold, we ourselves need to become gold i.e have the qualities of gold.”
In Paulo Coelho’s famous and bestselling novel “The Alchemist,” Santiago (a shepherd boy from a small Andalusian town, and the protagonist of novel who is in search of a treasure and thus was determined, headstrong, and curious to learn all he can about the world) asks the alchemist to tell him the secret of alchemy before the two part ways, and the alchemist says Santiago already knows alchemy because he can penetrate to the Soul of the World. Santiago asks how to specifically turn lead into gold. The alchemist says that gold represents the most evolved metal, and that successful alchemists understand evolution.
However, instead of being a symbol of evolution of metals and thus of humans (from iron to gold) the gold became the basis for conflict as king Midas like avarice and greed, still playing havoc with the humanity, is the main cause behind various bloody adventures and wars in history and majority of humans are still in chains of ignorance and poverty everywhere. Conflict between mining companies and local people in Sudan (reportedly one of the poorest countries and the third largest producer of gold in Africa with production of more than 18 tons of gold in 2022 alone) is one glaring example. Suspicion and tension between the communities towards the investors, companies and the government (that allows the mining operations) is visible as incidents of burning of vehicles and the several processing facilities belonging to the investors are increasing.
Christopher Columbus, a master mariner, or rather a pirate, then in the service of Spain, was also searching for Cipangu (Japan), the island of “endless gold,” about which he had read with great excitement in Marco Polo’s Travels. Looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and merchandise whatsoever” that he had promised to his Spanish patrons, Columbus and his crew set sail from Spain in three ships: the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria and ultimately he stumbled upon the Americas paving the way for European countries to colonize and exploit those and many other lands and their peoples.
And ironically, Columbus Day is a national holiday in many countries of the Americas and elsewhere, and a federal holiday in the United States, which officially celebrates the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, at Guanahaní, an island in the Bahamas, on October 12, 1492.
Thus from the earliest age of Roman empires to earliest years of European expansion onto the American continents to the search and wars for gold in colonized countries like India and to the Africanization and localization by the global mining companies in postcolonial era, gold is one of the driving factors in the exploration and colonization of the vast lands.
The ruthless colonization and loot and plunder in the name of civilization is still going on in one garb or the other and black hearts and golden crowns continue to rule the world with blatant hypocrisy. And instead of evolving and shining like gold and purifying our hearts (as the gold liquefies in the smelting furnace, unwanted properties called slag rise to the surface and after cooling, the slag is chiseled away and the purified metal remains), we are still worshiping it like god in the hope of becoming false gods rather than authentic humans.
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References:
i) https://kinesis.money/blog/gold/why-gold-so-valuable-what-makes-it-precious/
ii) http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ355/choi/golds.htm
iii) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gold-standard-idUSBRE98G07E20130917
iv) https://www.madisontrust.com/information-center/which-world-countries-have-the-most-gold/
v) https://www.greeka.com/greece-myths/king-midas/
vi) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Day
vii) https://landgovernance.org/blogs/blog-series-the-golden-conflict-in-sudan/
