Sir Morgan Mammon & the Pirate
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Think of Blackbeard, the most notorious pirate in the history of seafaring. He preyed upon merchant ships in the New Word. Blackbeard was big and menacing. He terrified his victims by weaving wicks laced with gunpowder into his hair – and lighting them during battle! As feared as he was during his brief career, Blackbeard came to a bloody, ignoble end.
Why the name Sir Morgan Mammon? Throughout history Mammon has been represented in literature to embody human greed and lust for material wealth. It started in the Bible, ‘You can’t serve God and Mammon’. We don’t believe in god -but we do believe in man’s higher nature.
Thomas Aquinas metaphorically described the sin of Avarice as “Mammon being carried up from Hell by a wolf, coming to inflame the human heart with Greed”.
Milton
“By (Mammon) first
Men also, and by his suggestion taught,
Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands
Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth
For treasures better hid.”
Morgan is a Welsh name which means ‘man of the sea’ – a rather good name for the famous Sir Henry Morgan, son of a Welsh squire and one of the most notorious and successful privateers of all time; one of the most ruthless who worked in the Caribbean.
Of course we also have Pierpont Morgan (they’ve just bought a load of the world’s copper reserves). So, Sir Morgan Mammon represents big business/corporate finance.
The world is finite – yet we use it up as quickly as possible in order to get profit out of it. The Pirate represents Free Trade but the results of Free Trade are that big fish eat little fish. The world is now run by corporate business whose very nature is to suck up little businesses.
When the Pirate says I plunder for you he is referring to the belief that maximising market freedom is the best way to generate wealth – we used to call this the ‘trickle-down theory’. – a myth which professes that as the rich get richer we all benefit. The truth is: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Governments believe the myth and therefore help corporate business to run the world through legal back-up, wars and finance (all that money they get from the tax-payers).
The name ‘Progress’ stands for material wealth and the consumer society. When he says We’ll all burn together, he refers to Climate Change and the mass extinction the human race faces caused by the activity described above.
Sir Morgan Mammon says It’s music to my ears. People are encouraged to believe that freedom is doing what you like and having what everyone else as (equality).
Next time, I’ll talk about the background to corporate power and the banking system.
When reading through this, it made me think how many countless human bodies must live in a history of systems that are geared to the valueless pursuits of wealth creation and crass consumerism. Not to mention the bodies of other animals and sentient beings who are used to execute certain services and products! Imagine what could have been created in the fields of science, culture and the arts if we could all breathe, live and exist in our more than human world (including plants and animals here) where our activities were not wasted on creating wealth for the financiers (many of which don’t seem to know how to ethically manage money anyway)!
Comment by Victor on 26/01/2011 at 12:00 pm
My question is “how many uprisings is it going to take to change the opinions and the greed of the mass consumer class?, gimme gimme gimme has been the catch cry for thousands of years, class has absolutely nothing to do money and vice versa.
How many tsunami’s and earth quakes does it take to change a mentality?
I guess I will answer it myself, one strong brave individual at a time, that has the nouse backbone, and impetus to stand up to the very very boring status quo.
I think people should flood the parliaments worldwide,with personal manifesto’s (Tastefully done my dear’s of course ) they would soon get sick of shredding lol and maybe actually open one.
A manifesto Tsunami !!!
cheers
Comment by Julie Di Gregorio on 13/03/2011 at 5:23 am
Dear Julie
You are right – we definitely do need our politicians to wake up! Scientists predict that climate change will lead to an increase in natural disasters – both in number and intensity. We can see this all around us even now. It’s already started. Will the unprecedented tsunami in Japan open politicians’ eyes? We can only hope so.
Vivienne
Comment by Vivienne on 17/03/2011 at 12:07 am
Dear Vivienne
I have been thinking about the idea of progress – an idea associated with inevitability. For example, in connection with the stone chopping tool used by homo erectus two million years ago, it is said that he was able to take advantage of carcasses left by other animal predators by smashing the bones and eating the marrow. This ‘brain food’ caused him to become more intelligent; one step in the inevitable progress leading to man’s mastery of the earth.
We think this way because we’re looking back from where we stand at the moment. What if, instead of becoming a meat eater, man had developed the capacity as some mystics have done to fast for long periods and eat vegetables in season? Mammoths, which ate only vegetation, survived the Ice Age but were finally hunted to extinction by humans. Could man have survived the Ice Ages?
This is so completely different from the state in which we now find ourselves and it is an extreme example – but we and our world could have evolved differently. We make a mistake in thinking there is no better creature than man as he now exists – man who once thought he inevitably lived in the best of all possible worlds but who is now beginning to realise that he is a creature of gross habit whose chance of survival is no longer certain.
Comment by Helen Kelman on 21/03/2011 at 8:03 am
I find it rather interesting that so much is being said against business people for making profits and how greed is mentioned over and over again for being the evil it is and how people obsessed with consumerism are the devil. The fashion industry in general runs on the expectation that people want their life to at least appear glamorous and will spend how ever much it takes to perpetuate this image. Then you have couture design which feeds ego like no other thing, women who will spend and spend more in order to feel one up on their peers and superior. I think it ironic that the majority of people writing their comments on here probably have at least one closet full of $500 jeans. No judgement made here, just an observation is all.
Comment by George 13 Walters on 24/12/2011 at 7:56 pm
George,
Your comment would be totally valid if you didn’t assume that everyone who enjoys or buys into the fashion industry does so because they wish to:
“spend and spend more in order to feel one up on their peers” –
If you have listened to what Vivienne has said and written in the past, fashion is a lifestyle, its part of ones culture, … Your comment about ;
” think it ironic that the majority of people writing their comments on here probably have at least one closet full of $500 jeans”
– is also slightly out of context, as the whole idea and ethos behind what people are doing on this website are buying less, and choosing well. Spending money on one item in which you wear until it falls of your back. Not owning a wardrobe full of clothes because they are expensive.
Again, fashion is a lifestyle. I do not buy into it because I wish to be seen as better than my peers or superiors – I enjoy what i wear, i find it to be a form of creative self-expression to convey art, culture and personality.
Im not judging you either here, but maybe read up and do a little research, especially on the home ground of the minority of people within the fashion industry who believe the complete opposite to your comments.
Comment by Sam on 01/01/2012 at 3:22 pm