34865Y169 Such Things Do Happen From Time To Time
Q&@
On November 3rd 1985 the MYANMAR government unexpectedly announced that banknotes of 25, 50 & a 100 KYATS were no longer legal tender. People were given no opportunity to exchange the notes, & savings of a lifetime were instantaneously turned into heaps of worthless paper. To replace the defunct notes, the government introduced new 75-kyat bills, allegedly in honor of the 75th birthday of Myanmar's DICTATOR, GENERAAL NE WIN. IN AUGUST '86, banknotes of 15 kyats & 35 kyats were issued. Rumor had it that the dictator, who had a strong faith in numerology, believed that 15 & 35 are 'lucky numbers'. But they brought little luck to his subjects because on Septembef 5th '87 the government suddenly decreed that all 36 & 75 notes were no longer money! The value of money thus is not the only thing that might evaporate once people stop believing in it?! The same can happen to laws, gods, fashions & even whole entire empires or cultures! One moment they are busy shaping the 'whóle' world, & the next moment they no longer exist! Zeus & Hera were once important powers in the Mediterranean basin, but today they lack any authority because practically nobody believes or trusts in them anymore? The Soviet Union once upon a time could almost destroy the entire human race, yet it ceased to exist almost at once at the stroke of a pen! At 2 p.m. on December 8th 1991, in a STATE dacha near Viskuli, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine & Belarus signed the BELAVEZHA ACCORDS, which stated that 'WE, THE REPUBLIC OF BELARUS, THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION AND UKRAINE, as founding states of the USSR that signed the union treaty of 1922, hereby establish that the USSR as a subject of international law & a geopolitical reality ceases to exist!' And that was that? No more Soviet Union! So it is relatively easy to accept that money is an intersubjective reality. Most people are also happy to acknowledge that Ancient Greek gods, evil empires & the values of alien cultures exist only in the imagination? Yet we don't want to accept that "OUR" God, "OUR" Nation or "OUR" VALUES are mere FICTIONS, because these are the things that GIVE MEANING TO OUR LIVES? We want to believe that our lives dó have some objective meaning, and that OUR sacrifices matter to SOMETHING beyond the stories 'in our head'? Yet in truth the lives of most people have meaning ONLY within the network of 'stories they tell one another'! Meaning is created when many people weave together some common 'network of stories'?!
16 jun 2019 - bewerkt op 20 jun 2019
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