The Magic Beans Phenomenon

By Anna Von Reitz

When the Europeans showed up hunting for gold, the Native Americans were confused, even amused.  

The Indians used gold and silver for jewelry, the only obvious use, and thought nothing more about it. 

Indeed, what more was there to think?  

It turns out that both gold and silver are excellent electrical conductors, a use that wouldn't occur to anyone for another three hundred years, but even then, so what?  Copper gets the job done.  We don't need gold or silver for that purpose. 

So, ask yourselves--- if gold was so very important and valuable, why are there vast storehouses of the stuff, millions of tons of it, stockpiled in the Philippines, sitting around doing nothing?  

The obvious answer is that gold is really quite useless and should, as a result, have little value.  It's only tradition ----a tradition of human stupidity in this case--- that assigns gold any great value at all. 

I call it the Magic Beans Phenomenon.  

A guy with a lot of beans (and a big imagination) dyes his naturally white beans red and green and purple---  and starts telling people that his beans are magic beans, offering their color as proof.   And the people buy into this clap-trap.  Soon his Magic Beans are selling like wildfire and people are ascribing all sorts of benefits and wonders to these beans. 

So a guy with a lot of gold (and a big imagination) takes the metal and shapes it into uniform round flat pieces and stamps a fancy image of an eagle on the front and the image of a woman on the back, and starts telling people that the coin he made "represents" the value of all other things. It's a Magic Metal Bean.  And the people buy into this clap-trap and start believing that these little round pieces of metal are equivalent in value to bushels of apples and bushels of wheat and barrels of oil. 

Because the people have been duped into trading actual, needful commodities for useless little pieces of gold, gold acquires value --- in a completely backhanded way--- not because it actually has any great value of its own, but because people give it a value by being willing to trade their labor and goods for it. 

Objectively, the whole premise is ridiculous. 

Objectively, we are acting like little children pretending that rocks are dinner plates and paper cups are fine wine glasses---- and taking it seriously, too.  

We actually think that there is such thing as "real money" and that it is different from "Monopoly Money", but in fact, they are all exactly the same kind of commodity, and at the end of the day, all we are arguing over is the brand name and form.  U.S. Mint versus Hasbro Brothers.  Little gold coins versus fancy pieces of paper.  Fancy pieces of paper versus digits in a bank ledger. 

It's all Magic Beans and nobody above the age of five should be fooled by this at all, yet here we all sit, seven billion people unable to face the fact that we are, ourselves, the source of all "value".  

Read that over and over until it sinks in not only to your brain, but your soul.  

We are the source of all value.  

If we don't give something a value, it has none.  

What you value defines who you are.  It sets you free, or, it enslaves you.  

And it is all your choice. 

It is only because of our needs and our often ridiculous beliefs that things are assigned a "marketplace value" in the first place. 

Don't believe that?   Just imagine the Earth without people on it.  

There is no consumer to buy bananas, so the monkeys eat their fill and throw away the peels and scamper away on little monkey feet.  And God smiles because He made bananas for just such a purpose and gave them away for free.  

Everything that we trade is given to us for free--- even our ability to do work and to think creatively is a gift.  That, and the trees and plants and waters and rocks and minerals and metals --- all the raw materials are given to us, collectively, for free. 

But then, arbitrarily and often stupidly, we begin assigning "values" to everything, according to our actual (food) or perceived (gold) need for whatever it is, the scarcity of whatever it is, and so on. 

If we had our heads screwed on and weren't deluded by the Fakirs and all their Magic Beans, we would realize that the most important job in the world --- bringing up healthy, happy, wise children --- is disrespected and unpaid.  We would know with great certainty that love is the ultimate Standard Commodity, and that the only way to obtain it, is to give it.  

If we all just stopped and really thought about money and Magic Beans for ten minutes the world and everything in it, would change, because we would all know that this current situation is beyond silly and stop chasing after gold, which in turn would render it without value. 

And then, maybe, we could turn our attention back to the things that really do matter: sharing and caring and enjoying all that has already been given to us for free.  

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See this article and over 700 others on Anna's website here:www.annavonreitz.com