Original Sin

The Delusion of Individuality Drives Wealth Addiction

Key takeaways:

1. The Platonic conception of a hidden, perfect realm informed both Christianity and Renaissance alchemy.

2. Science and finance share a common lineage in Renaissance magic, and carried human civilization to historic new heights.

3. Our sequential experience of time creates a delusion of individuality that obscures the reality of human interconnectedness.

4. Wealth addiction has blinded science and finance to that reality, and today these institutions hinder—rather than promote—human transcendence.

Platonism

We experience time differently from the way we experience distance. Our brains model length, width, and height at orthogonal 90° angles to one another. But that leaves no geometrical space to cram in another dimension. So we conceptualize a 4th dimension as a temporal dimension instead of a physical one; we measure it with a stopwatch instead of a ruler. Before/after is just a different way of perceiving front/back, above/below, or left/right.

It’s no coincidence that the Greek philosopher Plato chose two-dimensional shadows for his iconic Allegory of the Cave. He compared our limited perception of reality to that of a bound prisoner, forced to watch shadow puppets flickering on a cave wall. Just as shadows are lower-dimensional versions of higher-dimensional objects, Plato believed that we inhabit an imperfect copy of a hidden, idealized realm.

The idea of escaping from an imperfect world into a hidden, idealized realm is one of the most impactful in history. It informed early Christian conceptions of heaven and earth. St. Augustine was a Neoplatonist prior to his conversion to Christianity, and he thought that morality and virtue were the paths to heaven. Early alchemists in 4th-century Alexandria believed that a great work (or magnum opus) was the best way to ascend between Platonic realms.

But the up-and-coming Roman Catholic Church backed Augustine and denounced rival conceptions of Platonism as heresy. Alchemy would have to wait until the intellectual thaw of the Renaissance to make its comeback.

The Rise of Science & Finance

At first blush, science and finance appear wholly unrelated. But these two seemingly disparate domains both arose out of Renaissance magic, such as alchemy. Their shared genealogy is vividly illustrated by the life and times of Sir Isaac Newton.

Newton’s Three Laws of Motion, his formulation of gravity, and his work on optics made him a colossal figure in the Scientific Revolution. No single individual before or since has contributed more to the sciences. But Newton was also fascinated by alchemy.

The manufacture of gold was the quintessential magnum opus undertaken by Renaissance alchemists. During Newton’s time, the goldsmiths of central England realized the alchemical dream with the advent of Fractional Reserve Lending. This banking trick allowed them to call into existence the vast pools of money that financed the Industrial Revolution. This astonishing development captivated Isaac Newton, who later parlayed his fascination with money into a job as Master of the Royal Mint.

But Newton’s landmark contributions to society didn’t end there. He also invented calculus: the mathematics of rates, and of rates-of-rates. Speed is the rate at which location changes over time, and acceleration is the rate at which speed changes over time. Newton revolutionized the field of physics when he figured out how to make calculations between compound rates like these.

Calculus also forms the mathematical backbone of quantitative finance, risk management, and algorithmic trading. Where we measure distance with units like miles or inches, we measure value in dollars and cents. And rates of change in value across time are the primary concern of finance. Newton’s invention of calculus unlocked the domains of physics and finance.

Science and finance play complementary roles within the capitalist mode of production that arose with the Industrial Revolution. Entrepreneurs borrow money from banks in this system, and then repay their loans by bringing labor-saving technologies to market. Science is the source of labor-saving technologies like the spinning jenny or the power loom that revolutionized textile manufacturing in central England.

The Delusion of Individuality

The way the human mind models length, width, and height prevents us from perceiving a 4th dimension simultaneously. So instead, we observe it sequentially, moment by moment. Being locked into this time signature gives rise to the animated reality that Plato identified as illusory. He called time “the moving image of eternity.”

MRI machines take two-dimensional images. But doctors can perceive the full three-dimensional bodies of their patients by viewing such images one at a time. The same logic applies to our sequential perception of time. The past and the future are like the images not currently being viewed by the doctor. Like those hidden images, our births and our deaths are hidden around corners in time.

This limitation on human perception gives rise to the sensation of being an individual. If we could observe the time signature all at once, like music on a sheet, we’d see that we are bodily connected to both our ancestors and our descendants because human bodies physically divide during procreation. Like birth and death, this web of human connectedness is hidden from us under normal conditions.

But like a doctor using an MRI to see inside a patient, our limited vantage point allows us to glimpse the fundamental geometry of the human story: successive generations of parents sacrificing on behalf of their children. The unconditional love experienced by parents for their children is the governing principle that bears humankind aloft on the glorious ascent of history.

The rise of human society is not unlike the archetypal idea of the Platonic ascent between realms that incubated both the Christian and alchemical traditions. But that ascent is not a smooth one. Rather, it’s the classic jagged pattern of one step backward for every two steps forward. Terrifying collapses occur whenever humanity loses sight of its governing principle of loving sacrifice on behalf of the future generations.

The Downfall of Science & Finance

Plato identified pleonexia, or wealth addiction, as the fundamental human flaw that drives those collapses. He saw his home city of Athens ravaged by people who abandoned themselves to the delusion of individuality. Their addiction drove them to accumulate wealth for the glorification of their own egos, not for the benefit of future generations.

After the Middle Ages, science and finance arose in opposition to corrupt authorities who had succumbed to pleonexia during that period. But after these institutions became the new authorities for our modern era, they became addicted to wealth just like their predecessors.

Science abandoned the magical worldview that incubated it, and now insists that reality is limited only to the same material realm that Plato once considered to be an illusion.

Like science, finance is a powerful tool—taking out a mortgage is effectively gaining access to your future income. Finance, in other words, allows humankind to transcend the time signature in which we are trapped. The ability to move wealth across time can be used to plant trees for future generations to sit under. But it can also be used to cannibalize future generations by stealing from them. Look no further than the student loan crisis plaguing America for a prime example.

When wielded by those sick with ego—who have lost sight of humanity’s governing principle of loving sacrifice—finance becomes an abominable implement of child sacrifice. Where finance once bankrolled the Italian Renaissance and raised textile mills in central England, it now harvests children to enrich already-wealthy banking houses. Plato’s warning that wealth addiction is a perennial harbinger of doom is once again coming true.

Conclusion

Christianity once arose as a plucky rebellion against the cruel economic hierarchy of the Roman Empire. But over the course of the Middle Ages, the Church also succumbed to pleonexia. Another rebellion against corrupt Medieval authorities took the form of the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions. But now these institutions, too, have become terminally ill with the disease Plato described. The great lesson of history is that pleonexia systematically corrupts all human institutions. It’s our Original Sin. And as we prepare to go over the falls of wealth addiction in our own barrel, our sole consolation is that a bright new conception of reality itself awaits us on the other side.

Further Materials

The treasure house filled with gold, which each possesses, destroys the constitution. First, they find ways of spending money for themselves, then they stretch the laws relating to this, then they and their wives disobey the laws altogether.
And as one person sees another doing this and emulates him, they make the majority of the others like themselves.
From there they proceed further into money-making, and the more they value it, the less they value virtue. Or aren’t virtue and wealth so opposed that if they were set on a scales, they’d always incline in opposite directions?
So, when wealth and the wealthy are valued or honored in a city, virtue and good people are valued less.
And what is valued is always practiced, and what isn’t valued is neglected.
Then, in the end, victory-loving and honor-loving men become lovers of making money, or money-lovers. And they praise and admire wealthy people and appoint them as rulers, while they dishonor poor ones.
Then, don’t they pass a law that is characteristic of an oligarchic constitution, one that establishes a wealth qualification—higher where the constitution is more oligarchic, less where it’s less so—and proclaims that those whose property doesn’t reach the stated amount aren’t qualified to rule? And they either put this through by force of arms, or else, before it comes to that, they terrorize the people and establish their constitution that way.
Plato’s Republic, Book VIII, Passages 550d-551b, Grube/Reeve Translation, 1992