Banks profit as fools and their money are parted

Banks are implicated in the adage that a fool and his money are soon parted.

A cursory look at the present success of Australia’s banks suggests this country is populated by fools as those same banks sell nothing and yet they profit by exploiting a paradigm we endorse.
The banking industry is a human construct pre-dating the invention of money with initial deposits being grain, livestock and various goods.
Temples, being safe, was where gold and early coins were first stored and so the priests and monks were the first to empower traders by lending that resource.
Today’s banking benchmarks might seem sophisticated compared to that ancient trading, but stripped of its finery little has changed – there was, is and has always been a lender and borrower, with those providing the advance mostly enjoying the profit.
Evolution is more than just dinosaurs and apes, rather, it is a social dynamic happening right now to impact on both you and I and if watched closely can trace measurable inter-generational changes.
The banking business is not free of such changes and although its fundamentals are intact, its behavior has evolved, and along with societal addiction to economics, to the status of virus.
Most everything in the developed world is judged good or bad through the prism if economics and although they have evolved to dominate modern life, that is not an indication of their worthiness.
Evolutionary biologist at Binghamton University, Professor David Sloan Wilson (above), has said evolution is not about niceness, rather helping us understand the good, the bad and the inconvenient.
Your place on the ledger probably determines your opinion of Australia’s banking system, which is now entangled, wrongly, in the world’s commercial milieu from which it should stand apart.
This is not a lament for socialism or its ilk, instead a plea for the breakout of good sense – banks are little more than a reservoir for public money and so human ingenuity should be applied not to making profits for a few, but the enrichment of all.
Banks pitch their public persona to suggest the earlier mentioned adage doesn’t apply, but record profits argue its truth.

Considering the power of language

Language used inappropriately, and inaccurately, can completely derail projects and ideas.

However, even if language is used correctly and as intended but interpreted incorrectly, similar damage can be done.

The danger of words and their misinterpretation was discussed by a speaker at a Melbourne conference about walking some four years ago.

He was expanding on the idea of making communities walkable arguing that the first and most significant hurdle to be overcome was that of language and so that perception and interpretation of what was actually meant.

An understanding of what is a walkable community is not is not what is sought here, rather we need to have a sense of what we are saying and what it really means.
Superstition and our cultural upbringing can distort a word’s intended meaning to such an extent that friendships wither, business relationships dissolve, the world’s religions debate right and wrong and countries go to war – all over a misplaced, or misinterpreted, word.
A word is a word and its meaning, or meanings, expands of shrinks as we knowingly, or unknowingly, add religious or cultural implications, or technological emphases.
Interestingly it was Lewis Carroll (above right) writing in Alice in Wonderland – Through the looking glass who explored the meaning of words when one of the characters said: "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
That was in the 19th Century, but just recently somewhat aggravated discussions were happening in Malaysia over the use of the word “Allah”.
As that conversation collapses into violence we should remember what American poet, Mary Angelou said – “Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning”.
Thinking about what Humpty Dumpty said, the views of Mary Angelou and what is happening in Malaysia, we need to respect a word’s independence, the fact the no one actually owns it and, in fact, it is only us who give it meaning.
My advice, use the appropriate language and avoid embellishing it with cultural implications.