Time: 70 000 years B.C.
Location: Earth
The prehistoric human was walking the Earth. He was walking, lost in the wilderness of his own ignorance. In the wilderness, man lived with all the wild animals. He lived among the trees just like the bees. Humans lived in caves and made the other animals their slaves. Occasionally the human went outside, but fear always brought him back to his cave. Many secret monsters dwelled in the unknown lands.
Outside the caves, humans looked for their savior. But their savior never showed his true face. The savior also never appeared in their caves. Humans had to save themselves. From whom and what they needed to be saved, they knew not. Perhaps they needed to be saved from other humans. Maybe they needed to be saved from themselves. In order to co-exist with their fellow humans, man needed something that will unite all humans.
Above all man needed a common story.
One day, a loud voice arose out of the noisy crowds. It spoke louder than the rest. It spoke with great clarity words of truths that no other man had heard before.
“We have been created,” said the voice “to honor thy creator. God created us so that we can serve him. God requires our sacrifice of blood and tears so that we can become worthy of our own name. We humans came from the grounds, and onto the grounds, we shall return. But in the light of day, we should sacrifice ourselves to God.”
That was the truth what the voice of truth foretold. That became the story in which people believed.
Humans sacrificed their work for God. They offered sacrifices of infant lambs, and sometimes they offered their own human infants. The greater the sacrifice they gave, the greater the reward they expected.
The reword sometimes arrived, but many times didn’t. Those who reaped the rewards kept offering their sacrifices. They were the lucky ones. They kept believing in the story of God.
But the others, those whose sacrifices were never honored, eventually stopped believing in the story of God. They stopped believing the words of truth that the voice had shared with them. These hollow people now needed a new story to fill their empty hearts. They needed a new story in which they can place their trust.
Time: 7 000 years B.C.
Location: Earth
Millennia passed. Many new generations of humans were born and died. Humans came and went, but the stories they shared with one another always remained. There were many who still believed the story of God, but the number of those humans who called themselves nonbelievers kept increasing.
These people lived their lives seeking the new voice of truth. They were waiting for the voice of truth to share a new story that they can believe in. And those who patiently waited had their patience richly rewarded. Out of the crowds of man, there came a new voice. This voice of truth sounded the alarms of reason and logic and foretold into their fellow man…
“We have been created,” said the voice” so that we can help one another. We shall work day and night for our fellow man. We shall sacrifice ourselves so that other humans will reap the benefits of our labor. We shall sell our labor for golden coins for its only gold, just like God, never perishes. Gold always remains the same. We should not sacrifice ourselves for God, but for Gold.”
That is what the voice of truth foretold and that is what the people believed. They sacrificed their time and talents in exchange for golden coins. Gold became their new God.
Some people learned how to hunt, others learned how to farm. Some became builders and others storytellers. All the people had different skills and different talents. They used their skills and talents to contribute something of value to their fellow man. Although they made different contributions, they all had one thing that united them. They all believed that gold stored the value of their sacrifice.
In the story of gold people trusted.
From one generation to the next they passed down gold coins. From father to son, they passed that which shines for all eternity. On the shiny metal, they inscribed stories of kings and peasants, and they passed their stories to the new generations. Before the death of the father, the father gifted to his sons all the golden coins he had earned through his sacrifice. The father wished his sons to reap the benefits of his sacrifice.
This too went on for millennia.
Time: 70 years ago
Location: Earth
For centuries gold shined as bright as the morning sun. Under the morning sun, people woke every day and went to work. For their hard work and labor, they received golden coins. The golden coins shined brightly for they reflected the rays of the morning sun. In the luminous reflection of the shiny golden coins, humans saw their immortal nature. People lived and died. But the things for which they lived, the things for which they died were forever stored in the gold they had preserved. Gold became the new God of man.
By exchanging golden coins with his peers, man learned how to communicate value with his fellow humans. Gold became the anchor through which the value of everything was recognized. A house was worth seven golden coins, a palace seventy golden coins. Everything was measured in terms of gold coins. Everything. That included the labor and life of man. Humans sold their life in exchange for golden coins. More than life, man needed gold. More than God, man wanted Gold.
All the heavy earthly elements, such as gold, were produced in the furnace of the Sun. Burning brightly for billions of years, the Sun created long-lasting gold of fixed supply. It took the burning Sun billions of years to create one ounce of gold, but it took man only a minute to spend it. Thus, gold became scarce. While gold was scarce, the greed of man was unbridled. Man forever needed more and more gold.
The scarcity of gold created new problems for the destiny of man. Man had created many homes and castles, but there was not enough gold to go around for everyone. Yet again, man yearned for a new voice of truth to come to the Earth and save humanity from themselves. Yet again, that which they sought, they had found. A new voice of power and strength sounded the alarms. The voice said…
“We have been created,” said the voice “so that we can unite under a common tribe, a common country. We shall work day and night to strengthen our country. We shall sacrifice ourselves for our country so that the country can take care of those in need. We shall sell our labor for our county’s dollars, and have faith in our dollars for the dollars are the new Gold. We shall not sacrifice ourselves for God, nor Gold but for the Almighty Dollar.”
That was what the voice of power shared with the masses. That was what the people believed. People placed their faith in their countryman. In them, they saw their new savior. People worked hard to make their country rich and prosperous.
The mighty dollar became the new measure of success. Nobody worked for gold since everyone wanted the dollar. In the dollar, everyone placed their faith. In the leaders of the country, everyone believed more than they believed in themselves.
This was how people passed their days. Sacrificing themselves for something they perceived higher than themselves. The placed country before man. They placed others before themselves.
That is how humans came to trust their dollars. That is how they placed around their own necks, their new collars.
Time: Present
Location: Earth
The modern man lived in modern times. Modern man lived in the present. Modernity had killed God. It had also rendered gold redundant. Everything that man needed could be bought for dollars. Dollars, unlike the golden Gods, gave man everything that he ever wished for.
With a press of a button, man could order the most delicious food delivered to his own castle. He could fly to the other side of the Earth in hours. He could cure the diseases that had killed his forefathers. The dollar could do what the Gods couldn’t. The dollar took the powers of the Gods. All these powers were granted to the man who had dollars.
Hungry for the powers of the Gods man worked hard for their dollars. The countries grew strong and powerful. The countries grew, but people’s spirits declined. Since people surrendered their powers to their leaders, people grew weaker and weaker with every passing day. The weakness of the people coincided with the loss of faith in their leaders. People could only give to their leaders that which they had. Thus their weakness of self got projected into their weak leaders.
The country could only give their people what the people had produced. When people produced an abundance of food and riches, the country leaders redistributed the abundance among the people. When people produced scarcity, their country leaders took for themselves whatever people gave them and redistributed nothing.
The only thing the country could give back to the people was dollars. The leaders promised the people that there is value in those dollars, for they represent the sweat of their fathers. But when people stopped sweating, they started crying. They cried for without their sweat, their tears and dollars had no value.
People started losing faith in their mighty dollars. Almighty dollar lost its initial might. A new emptiness appeared in society. Without the dollar, man knew not in what else they should place their faith. But the voice appeared again to share a new story in which people could believe.
“We have been created,” said the voice,” to trust ourselves. We must place our faith in ourselves. We have worked day and night, and have invented a new system of electronic dollars which requires no trust. You don’t need to trust God, gold nor rulers for all you have left to trust is yourself. We shall not sacrifice ourselves for the country nor for man. We shall sacrifice ourselves for ourselves. In ourselves, we shall place all our trust.”
Electronic dollars started circulating in the economy of man. Man started to believe in the stories of the electronic exchange of value. There were no longer any golden coins nor dollars changing hands. Value was now exchanged in the mind of giant computing machines that kept track of how much humans are worth. Computers determined the value of man.
Man placed all their faith in cryptographically secured numbers shown on screens. Behind the screens, mathematical formulas calculated how much each human is worth. It told how much a man should eat, and where he could sleep. Computers informed humans if they could afford a house or a castle. The electronic dollar was creating the new destiny of man.
Time: Future
Location: Unknown
Humans used to trust the Gods. They used to place their trust in gold and dollars. They placed their trust outside themselves. They saw the majesty of the world but rejected the reality of their minute self.
One day, one sincere soul decided to reflect on the stories in which humanity believed. Humanity believed in everything, except in their own humanity. A man would rather place his trust in the empty void of the Gods, in the hefty golden coins, in the vain deceitful politicians rather than in their own being.
Nobody had ever questioned who was behind the voice of truth and wisdom. Who was He who always appeared in the exact times of need? Whose was the voice that told stories in which people believed. Who told the stories of truth that always proved to be untrue.
And for one last time, the voice appeared. For the last time, the voice shared His wisdom with the people who wanted to know the truth.
“We have been created,” said the voice“, to hear the story of creation. We are our own Creators. We are the ones that tell stories to ourselves. We are the ones that need common stories in which we could trust. No saviour will come to save us. We must save ourselves. We must become Gods.”
In the end, which of these stories were true? Which story should we believe now?
In the times in which people live, all stories were true. Stories are always true relative to the time in which people live.
But if one takes the perspective outside time, one would notice that neither of these stories are true. Neither are true, but all are faithful.
That is the true power of our creative creation stories.
That is the real power of creation for creation is never complete.
That is the divine power of our Creator for He always creates.
We never truly believed in God.
We only trusted in His stories.