Chapter 1016 Midrash

At this moment, three hundred years have passed. The speeches of dead men from three hundred years ago are no longer needed.

What the Six Dragons Sect needs is these people's recognition of their identity as "human beings" and their pride in "progress."

It is the absolute belief that "the future will be better".

"The future is supposed to be better, and if it doesn't get better, there's something wrong."

This is a "faith".

A man named Hayek once said: "History is a history of inflation. Only after the rise of the modern industrial system and under the gold standard did prices remain unchanged for two hundred years (in Britain from 1714 to 1914, The United States from 1749 to 1939). "Under the gold standard, the government gave up the right to decide on currency issuance. In Hayek's view, unless the government gives up this power, it will naturally have a tendency to issue money indiscriminately. Modern people attribute mild inflation to independent banks and the system behind it, and regard autocratic dynasties as habitual offenders who rely on inflation to plunder people's wealth.

But when Xiangshan learned about this passage, the person who told him this view also told him that this view only applies to an extremely narrow historical time period.

In fact, throughout history, the inflation rate in the feudal era was so low that modern people are outraged.

Unless the country has been corrupted to a certain extent, or the emperor has huge intellectual and cognitive flaws, the feudal dynasty will not start haphazardly. Once the indiscriminate casting is started, the world will fall into turmoil.

Outside of such "special periods", in most normal times, the stability of feudal society is higher than that of the capitalist era.

For modern society, an inflation rate of five percent is still considered "normal," and even a slightly lower inflation rate can be considered "moderate." But if the inflation rate is less than one percent, it will cause people to worry about the speed of social development.

What is the concept of an inflation rate of five percent? This means that a person's personal purchasing power will drop by almost half after ten years of storage.

But for modern people, this is still "normal" and "reasonable".

In the feudal era, it was completely different. For a truly stable feudal dynasty, an inflation rate exceeding one percent would be considered terrifying. Although ancient Rome was notorious for its inflation in the third century, on a longer historical scale, this was just an extremely accidental episode. From around 150 BC to AD 50, the price of wheat in ancient Rome increased by only 50%. In terms of price stability, the centuries before Britain implemented the gold standard were no less stable than the two hundred years after the gold standard. During the five hundred years from 1200 to 1700, with the exception of the 16th century, when wheat prices increased by an average of 1.5% per year, price changes in other centuries were almost zero. In the more than 300 years of history of the Song Dynasty, the weight and fineness of the one-wen and two-wen copper coins, which were the main types of circulation, were extremely stable. Although Houjin was famous for its two excessive coinings at the end of the dynasty, grain prices only increased 3.5 times in the two hundred years from its founding to the mid-19th century, equivalent to an average annual inflation of 0.6%.

Some people believe that this is precisely because of the fundamental difference in "cognition".

For people in the feudal era, "tomorrow" is a repetition of "today", and "future" is a reproduction of "now". The world has never changed, and huge changes have been completed as early as in myths. This is where the saying “there is nothing new under the sun” comes from.

Human beings in the feudal era rarely took out loans willingly. When the poor are about to die, they will borrow money to extend their lives. This is the so-called "emergency". It is rare to hear of wealthy people taking out loans. They just have a tradition of lending money. Behaviors such as "investment" are even rarer.

This is commonplace for modern people.

Because after entering capitalist society, the rapid development of science and technology and the improvement of productivity have given everyone a consensus - "tomorrow will be better than today."

Because "tomorrow will be better than today", some human beings will bear huge debts today for the sake of greater profits tomorrow.

There is a fundamental cognitive gap between humans in the capitalist era and the feudal era.

What's even better is that human beings' imagination of the future, in turn, guides the development of society.

It is precisely because everyone feels that "the future will be better than the present" that some people are willing to invest resources in technological research and development. Because they believe that the money invested in research and development will actually push the world forward and make themselves better off.

Well, so the belief that "the future will be better" is not entirely an illusion.

Following the guidance of "future imagination", borrow "possible resources in the future" in advance to influence the "now"...

Well, in the eyes of the ancients, this must be a terrible magic.

However, "borrowing the power of the future" ultimately has its limits. However, due to overdraft, the pace of progress unfortunately failed to keep up...

In other words, if the speed of "progress" is not as fast as the "overdraft person" expected...

Repayment and settlement of the price will occur in time.

This is a general law of human society.

If the common imagination that "the future will be better" is shattered, the entire modern social order established because of this will collapse.

Why would people endure an inflation rate of five percent if not for the thought of "better things"?

What the leader of the Six Dragon Sect needs most now is to strengthen this belief.

The future of mankind is ultimately something built by mankind itself. Human imagination is the blueprint for building the future.

If the blueprint is not supported enough, then ignore the details.

Let it really leave the world and become a dogma.

Use the most barbaric way to fill the logical loopholes.

——The future will be better, so why can't we feel it?

——Because you are not pious enough...

——Because there are still sinners in the world, and there are sinners who prevent you from feeling it...

——Because of these sinners, we have forever lost the qualification to go to the previous "future paradise"...

——And now...

"Let's go to the sea of ​​stars." The Six Dragons leader called to the sky.

"Let's go to the sea of ​​stars!" All the believers echoed the leader's actions and made a unified shout.

This is the last step of consciousness. In the hall, one figure after another disappeared, and only a few people walked towards the leader. They spontaneously lined up according to their positions, waiting for the leader to meet them in turn.

This is the second half of the entire ritual.

There are always some people who will be shaken by the doctrine.

After all, the world is not always getting better, and the cause of an organization or a force is not always smooth sailing - this is real, and everyone can feel it intuitively.

It was the same in the old society. Capitalism relies on the common imagination of "the future will be better" to obtain the extraordinary power of "overdrawing the future", and the profit-seeking nature of capital will allow society to use this ability. But once development is frustrated, the fantasy will dissipate like a bubble, and crises will be born.

History has repeatedly proved that capitalism has a strong tendency to self-destruct.

However, it only takes a twist and change of logic...

In the eyes of an individual, the world will immediately be different.

That's right, Xiangshan does not need to strictly persuade everyone who has wavered in his heart from a rational level. He only needs to fully mobilize the emotions of the opposite side in this occasion with a strong religious atmosphere to make them believe more.

The leader himself jokingly called this behavior "preaching." In order to avoid duplication of work, he also blurred this memory to support an independent blockchain, codenamed "Midrash" (this word originally means the Jewish commentary on the Old Testament, aphorisms, proverbs, metaphors, folk stories, legends, and sermons.)

Due to the existence of this part of external memory, this work is getting easier and easier.

However, this time, Xiangshan saw an unexpected object.

"Tihufa?" The leader was a little surprised, "You also come to ask about the truth?"