What is your view, and the view of the occult or alternative spiritual traditions on debt, and particularly interest based debt?
I ask cos I’ve been fairly embedded in the world of finance the last decade and and am starting a banking and credit business, and thus the moral nature of what I’m about to embark on has been heavily on my mind lately.
While I am not from the Abrahamic tradition, all 3 of them seem to heavily prohibit interest rate based lending as a type of corruption. This proscription have been severely watered down via both legalistic interpretations (as among the Jews) as well as the general reformation and dilution (only high interest rates, rather than all interest rates as was previously considered) of the scripture that happened in the renaissance as banking took off and was closely linked to the church (incl the medicis installing one of their own).
In the world we are in now, this financial structure of debt based currencies, trade, finance and payments seems impossible to unseat without massive collateral damage.
Also, it’s hard to dispute that time value of money ( measured by interest or discount rates) has been a very useful capital allocation mechanism to finance all types of entrepreneurship and science, which was very difficult before when it was only accessible to elites.
Yet, the argument that interest rate based structures may have pernicious effects on the human mind, spirit and society weighs on my mind. I’m spending time thinking of how I can try to do things differently (there are many interesting attempts on-going at non-commodity money or local credit networks/ledgers, mutual credit obligations to trade goods and services directly etc but nothing that has truly cracked it and can be a viable alternative to the world of finance we’re subject to).
Any thoughts are welcome.
PS. I cast a I Ching asking “what is the moral nature of interest rates” and it returned Unchanging 18 (corruption). Hah, funny.
Q
This question is open to you and others.
What is your view, and the view of the occult or alternative spiritual traditions on debt, and particularly interest based debt?
I ask cos I’ve been fairly embedded in the world of finance the last decade and and am starting a banking and credit business, and thus the moral nature of what I’m about to embark on has been heavily on my mind lately.
While I am not from the Abrahamic tradition, all 3 of them seem to heavily prohibit interest rate based lending as a type of corruption. This proscription have been severely watered down via both legalistic interpretations (as among the Jews) as well as the general reformation and dilution (only high interest rates, rather than all interest rates as was previously considered) of the scripture that happened in the renaissance as banking took off and was closely linked to the church (incl the medicis installing one of their own).
In the world we are in now, this financial structure of debt based currencies, trade, finance and payments seems impossible to unseat without massive collateral damage.
Also, it’s hard to dispute that time value of money ( measured by interest or discount rates) has been a very useful capital allocation mechanism to finance all types of entrepreneurship and science, which was very difficult before when it was only accessible to elites.
Yet, the argument that interest rate based structures may have pernicious effects on the human mind, spirit and society weighs on my mind. I’m spending time thinking of how I can try to do things differently (there are many interesting attempts on-going at non-commodity money or local credit networks/ledgers, mutual credit obligations to trade goods and services directly etc but nothing that has truly cracked it and can be a viable alternative to the world of finance we’re subject to).
Any thoughts are welcome.
PS. I cast a I Ching asking “what is the moral nature of interest rates” and it returned Unchanging 18 (corruption). Hah, funny.