heretic |ˈherətik|
noun
a person believing in or practicing religious heresy.
• a person holding an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted.
DERIVATIVES
heretical |həˈretikəl| adjective
heretically adverb
ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French heretique, via ecclesiastical Latin from Greek hairetikos ‘able to choose’ (in ecclesiastical Greek, ‘heretical’ ), from haireisthai ‘choose.’
While growing up, I was taught to believe that the worst thing imaginable in the world was to be a heretic. I was raised in a an extremely rigid religious environment, so heresy was like voluntarily choosing to thumb your nose at God and everything righteous and choose to live an evil life.
In spite of being raised in a cult, I will never forget the words of my father, who believed but still had his wits about him somehow. He told me, "You have a brain, you might as well get used to using it." Surprisingly, he didn't want me to have blind faith but thought the cult could be proven correct from the Bible. So despite being raised in a cult, I thank my dad for trusting me to use my brain.
As simple as the advice is, I am convinced that most people don't use their brain and choose not to look at most things objectively. We all have preconceived ideas that we use to get around in daily life and that isn't a bad thing. Refusing to be objective, though, can be a very bad thing potentially.
While looking up the definition above, I thought it interesting that the word is derived from a Greek word meaning "able to choose." What I found in the cult was the only choice you really had was to choose to join, after which your ability to choose anything vanished and you had to accept everything as gospel from the world headquarters or face being a heretic.
I have since found that the "ability to choose" is a good thing. If you choose correctly, you prosper. If you choose incorrectly, you lose but can still win in the long run if you are objective and learn from your mistake. What is a bad thing is blindly following other imperfect people, in effect, giving up your ability to choose by making the one choice of not choosing.
For this, I am "at odds with what is generally accepted" in the cult, so am a heretic in their world. That's ok with me because my life is better now by orders of magnitude. The proof is in the pudding.
Somehow, maybe even because of my past, I have become a heretic in the world of economics.
John Maynard Keynes was a British economist who, in the 1930s, spearheaded a revolution in economic thinking. If you have ever taken an economics class in college, which I haven't, "thank god," you were forced to worship at the John Maynard Keynes shrine. To quote wikipedia:
"During the 1950s and 1960s, the success of Keynesian economics resulted in almost all capitalist governments adopting its policy recommendations, promoting the cause of social liberalism."
Thankfully, Keynes had no children.
I am a heretic when it comes to Keynesian economics. That's why this blog has the label of A Contrarian View. I have no doubt that the entire economic system being used in the world is nothing more than smoke and mirrors, and for this view I am sure that I appear to be absolutely insane. I will proceed to give evidence of my "insanity."
A good friend of mine, Kris, helped me immensely with my golf game starting twenty five years ago. I was still trying to break 100 when I met Kris, and with his help I eventually got in the 70s with a low score of 74. One the best pieces of advice he gave me was to read a small book by Ben Hogan, one of the best golfers in history in anybody's book, called Five Lessons. This was declared in Golf Magazine to be the best instructional book in the last century on how to hit a golf ball. The beauty of the book is its simplicity. It is filled with pictures and even if you've never held a club in your hands, this would be the book for you. Yet, Nick Price, a PGA pro from Zimbabwe who is in the World Golf Hall of Fame, still carries a tattered copy in his golf bag. Nothing compares to basic fundamentals.
Using this book as a model, I have always tried to understand things by breaking them down to their most basic element. For instance, how can you understand a building by its outward appearance? You must understand it has a foundation. And what is that foundation made out of? As you continue to get to the core elements of a building's construction, you become more aware of what a building is really about. Everybody else is looking at the outward appearance.
So to understand economics, I became interested in the subject of money itself. How can you understand economics without understanding what money is and the history of money? This journey has led to some startling revelations and understanding that makes me the heretic that I am. It is one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life. It guides my life. Don't get me wrong, I don't worship money at all. When you really understand something, what is the point of worship? Worship is for people with faith. Knowledge is a thousand times more valuable than faith.
So here is why I am a heretic. Take a dollar out of your wallet and look at it. What is it? It is a piece of paper with ink on it. That is all it is. You can say it represents something if you want, but that doesn't change what it is. To say it has value, you must have faith. Faith is the number one ingredient of paper money, especially fiat paper money. As wikipedia states under "fiat money,": In monetary economics, fiat money is an intrinsically useless good used as a means of payment.
Try reading that sentence again. Fiat money is intrinsically useless. It works for the moment because people have faith in it. If you choose to have faith in it, that is your business. I am a heretic because I believe it is paper with ink on it. I choose not to have faith in the religion that everybody follows. Therefore, I am sure that I appear to be a misled idiot that follows some kook.
But like my dad told me, I am using my brain. Say I'm wrong if you want, everybody else does. But I choose to believe in physics, the physical world. We live in a physical world, not a fantasy world. You hold a piece of paper in your hand with ink on it and a picture of a dead bureaucrat. I need no faith to understand that that is a true statement. If you choose to have faith in it, I only ask why? Because you can go exchange it for goods? That is true, you can do that today, but how much can you buy with that dollar compared to last year, 10 years ago, or 20 years ago? Your must objectively conclude that your faith is in a piece of paper that has been declining in value for many decades. To know why, you need to study the history of money. 599 currencies have failed in the history of fiat money. So much faith, so much failure, so much lost wealth. Call me a heretic, please.
http://dollardaze.org/blog/?post_id=00405
I choose not to have faith. I choose objectivity, free thought, physics, mathematics, and history. Peruse the above link and you will see what happened to people who had faith in something that was intrinsically worthless. Please try to be objective, for your own good. Please do not have faith in me or what I say. Objectively, I am at least as imperfect as you. I do not want followers nor do I want to follow. I only want my friends to be spared from the coming Armageddon of the currencies of the world. I am sure that most people reading this will do nothing about it. That's OK with me, too. I am not on a mission to convert anybody. I can only say that my lack of faith in paper money is providing outstanding results in my investment decisions. Think of me as a heretic if you wish, but gold finished yesterday at an all-time high of $1476/ounce and silver at $40.95. People are losing faith in the paper and the rate of that loss of faith is accelerating. There is a reason for this and the answer is in the physical world. Anything requiring faith is flawed by its nature. That is the first rule of being a heretic. I need no faith in gold or silver because they exist in the real, physical world.
Do what you think is best. I only suggest that you be objective and minimize your reliance on faith. What else would a heretic say?
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