Sacrifice

Cathedrals and High Finance

The Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore is one of those iconic buildings that feels surreal when you first clap eyes on it. The past and the present blur together like a pair of dancers. The soaring Duomo has crowned the skyline of Florence for six centuries. It looks like a giant wedding cake frosted with ornate patterns of pink and green marble. In the crowded piazza below, beautiful girls preen in front of their phone cameras, eager to distinguish themselves on social media. They seem adorably oblivious to the multiple generations needed to complete an architectural masterpiece like the one in their selfie backdrops. The people who first broke ground on this project knew they would be rotting in their graves by the time Florence finally received her crown. They poured out their hearts and their souls, content in the knowledge that they were making a sacrifice for the benefit of future generations. That sort of sacrifice is conspicuously missing from our modern society. It’s the surest sign that we are damned. 

Above the main entrance to the cathedral sits a statue of Mary with her child. It’s a religious icon that goes back at least to the days of dynastic Egypt, when the mother was called Isis. And it represents the sacrifice to which we all owe our lives. Each successive generation of parents exhaust themselves, shot-putting their kids as high up the ladder of progress as they can. Those children hopefully go on to repeat this sacrifice when they become parents themselves. By this mechanism, as the generations unfold, humanity gradually bootstraps itself upward along a mystical trajectory. The raising of a child and building of a cathedral are both examples of sacrifice on behalf of others. And when these are done well, the exquisite beauty brings tears to our eyes. 

A Ponzi scheme is a kind of fraud where no money is actually being made. Instead, old investors are paid out using the money of new entrants. Once no new suckers can be found, the fraud is exposed and the scheme collapses spectacularly. Remember Bernie Madoff? Our modern economy has become a Ponzi scheme, predicated on infinite growth. Housing prices, for example, are on the cusp of reaching the point where new bag-holders are priced out of the game. What will happen to our society then?

The concept of interest started off as a way to mathematically reflect the way the grain seeds multiply themselves after the harvest, or the way cattle beget more cattle over time. But it has become a rationale for the old to steal from the young. The student debt crisis is another example of a massive transfer of wealth from young to old. It’s no wonder the taking of interest is forbidden by most religious traditions. It eventually becomes an abomination.

As a species, we’re supposed to be running the opposite of a Ponzi scheme. It’s the one model that can carry us forward into the future. Our only hope of avoiding the Armageddon of economic collapse is to abandon self-glorification and start making blocks for our running backs again. Il Duomo stands as a monument to what can be achieved when we act not as individuals, but as an inter-generational team. The great cathedrals of Europe are really sculptures, in the medium of time, of the beautiful sacrifice. If we can put down the selfie sticks and listen carefully, their exquisite message holds the key to staving off disaster. 

"A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit."

-Elton Trueblood

If you enjoyed this read, be sure to click the orange “Subscribe” button in the upper right corner of this page. Much more discussion is yet to come regarding the strange historical connection between finance and religion. You won’t want to miss it; it’s a topic that is about to become highly relevant once again.