## Metadata - Author: [[JMR Higgs]] - Full Title: KLF - Category: #books ## Highlights - As he told his friend Margot Adler, "If you do this type of thing well enough, it starts to work. I started out with the idea that all gods are an illusion. By the end I had learnt that it is up to you to decide whether gods exist, and if you take the goddess of confusion seriously enough, it will send you through as profound and valid a metaphysical trip as taking a god like Yahweh [The Jewish/Christian/Muslim God] seriously." ([Location 748](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ABFHOS0&location=748)) - "It may be a form of OCD or just an attempt to give life more meaning than it seems to have," Drummond replied, "but as far back as I can remember I have had a habit of trying to create patterns in the games that I played or the things that I was doing. In my childhood this could be climbing 10 different trees before the sun passed the spire of the parish church or walking out the shape of a square on the map of our town when going to the shops and back to get the messages for my mum. I was never that interested in organised games or religion because someone else had already worked out what all the patterns were." ([Location 878](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ABFHOS0&location=878)) - Quantum physics is so alien and baffling that it can be trotted out by non-scientists to justify all sorts of freaky claims. In this instance we should be careful about what we mean when we refer to 'the observer'. In quantum physics, the observer is entangled with the observed in such a way that choices made by the observer can alter the object that is being observed. The passage of information between the pair is the important element here, but does the observer have to be 'conscious' as we understand it? When you put a cold thermometer in a glass of hot water, the thermometer both measures the temperature of the water but it also affects it: it cools it down a little. Here the final measurement produced is a product of both the observer and the observed, but a thermometer is not conscious, or if it is, it hides it well. ([Location 941](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ABFHOS0&location=941)) - Today, all money is loaned into existence. A central bank will only physically create money, in other words, if some individual or organisation has asked to borrow it. The bank will then loan the money, and charge a small percentage – the interest rate – for its efforts. ([Location 2535](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ABFHOS0&location=2535)) - Imagine that a new bank opens in a new country, and imagine that it produces a currency that we will call shillings. Now imagine that this bank then attracts ten customers, all of whom wish to borrow ten shillings. The bank charges interest at 10%, so that everyone has to return 11 shillings to the bank. But how can these ten people all return 11 shillings when they not only don't have that amount, but there isn't even enough money in existence? The debtors will have to find a way to get the extra money from each other. Competition, therefore, suddenly becomes necessary. Should one debtor have all his money taken from him by the rest, then nine people will be able to return the 11 shillings to the bank, while the losing debtor will have no option but to borrow more money from the bank. More money is thus created, and the economy grows. ([Location 2539](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ABFHOS0&location=2539)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - The word 'usury' is now used to mean the charging of excessive interest for loans, but the original use of the word meant making any charge at all for lending money. Writing developed after money, so it is not possible to know how far back into history this taboo goes, or why our Bronze Age ancestors were so set against the idea. We do know, however, that the earliest recorded laws explicitly forbid usury. In the New Testament, when Jesus overturned the tables at the temple, his anger grew from the fact that the moneylenders were engaging in usury. Jesus, it is generally accepted, was a pretty non-violent type of guy, so when you note how all the other sins, cruelties and injustices of the world failed to tip him over into anger you get a glimpse at just how taboo usury was. Others… ([Location 2546](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ABFHOS0&location=2546)) - Why was making money from financial loans so unacceptable in the Ancient World? This is open to interpretation, but one possibility is that it appeared to go against the natural order of things. Work created wealth, so wealth accumulating without work was unnatural. It was seen as a form of tyranny, or theft. Usury was a corruption, a… ([Location 2554](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ABFHOS0&location=2554)) - But if usury, in the original meaning of the word, was so taboo, how did it become acceptable and establish itself as a cornerstone of modern economics? Much of the answer to this question involves the behaviour of different religions. Usury is still forbidden under Islamic law so a complicated system of Islamic banking was developed which does not include interest, but instead has many charges. It doing so it manages to remain true to the letter of the anti-usury law, if perhaps not the spirit. In Judaism, they took the approach that usury was only forbidden between Jews, so charging interest on loans to non-Jews was religiously acceptable. Jews were then able to travel to non-Jewish communities and act as money lenders, a trade that brought them wealth but also a great deal of historical resentment. In Christianity, usury was banned by Papal decree, but when… ([Location 2557](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ABFHOS0&location=2557)) - In The Eye In The Pyramid, the first volume of the Illuminatus! trilogy, the character of Joseph Malick is told the history of the formation of The Justified Ancients of Mummu. The story stretches back to a time when a series of stones called The Seven Tablets of Creation were carved, around 2500BC, at which time the chief deity was called Marduk and "the official religion of Marduk [...] was based on usury. The priests monopolized the land, and extracted tribute for renting it. It was the beginning of what we laughingly call civilisation, which has always rested on rent and interest." It is at this point that the JAMs were formed. "When the first anarchist group arose, they called themselves Justified Ancients of Mummu. Like Lao-Tse and the Daoists in China, they wanted to get rid of usury and monopoly and all the other pigshit of civilization." Here, then, is the raison d'être of the JAMs. They are… ([Location 2568](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ABFHOS0&location=2568)) - Should you talk to even the most obsessive KLF fan, one who has gone to the lengths of reading Robert Anton Wilson's 800+ page novel a number of times, they will probably be unaware that the destruction of usury is the reason that The Justified Ancients of Mummu were established. It is stated clearly, as the quotes above show, but the book is such a torrent of information that, unless you are looking for it, a detail like that is unlikely to stick in your mind. Nevertheless the fact remains that the fictitious organisation The Justified Ancients of Mummu, who became a physical group… ([Location 2578](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ABFHOS0&location=2578)) - The reason why a positive-interest currency has been favoured is because it encourages economic growth. Indeed, it demands it, for the system would collapse if there was no growth to pay the interest charges to the bank. Bankers are very keen on economic growth because, without having to do anything else, it automatically translates into more wealth for them. For this reason, a steady-state economy is unacceptable. It may seem reasonable for a tradesman to wish to perform a regular amount of work each year, enough to pay them sufficient money to live on, but our system cannot work like that. The existence of interest charges - usury, by the original definition - requires that economy must continually grow, which means that more work must be undertaken, year in, year out. ([Location 2592](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ABFHOS0&location=2592)) - Growth is exponential, so even small rates such as 2% or 3% a year cause doubling in a generation and soon become absurd. The physicist Tom Murphy has calculated that projected rates of energy growth, for example, have the Earth using the same amount of energy as the Sun in about 1400 years, and more than the entire galaxy of 100 billion suns in 2500 years. In human terms, 2500 years isn't that long. We are still reading books that were written 2500 years ago. ([Location 2605](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ABFHOS0&location=2605)) - Years after the K Foundation had ended, Drummond had a flash of insight. "Most of the people who wrote about what we did, and the TV programme that was made about it, made a mistake," he said. "I was only able to articulate it to myself afterwards with hindsight. They thought we were using our money to make a statement about art, and really what we were doing was using our art to make a statement about money." This tallies with comments made by Cauty at the time. "We nail [the money] to a bit of wood so that it can't function as it wants to. It's to do with controlling the money. Money tends to control you if you've got it, it dictates what you have to do with it, you either spend it, give it away, invest it... We just wanted to be in control of it." ([Location 2631](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ABFHOS0&location=2631)) - Cauty and Drummond initially described the K Foundation as an 'art foundation,' which led to their actions being viewed from the perspective of the art world. With hindsight, it is easy to see how they fell into this position. With The KLF over, they knew they still had work to do together but they did not have a framework to define what that work was. It was not music, that was clear, for those days were behind them. But if not music, then what? There is no established tradition of tainted money cleansing and dispersal foundations. 'Art', meanwhile, was a vague enough term with which to hide all sorts of strange behaviour. What else could they call themselves, then, but an art foundation? ([Location 2641](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ABFHOS0&location=2641)) - In From Hell, Moore claimed that the Ripper murders were a magical act that gave birth to the twentieth century itself - a century with all the horror and violence of the world wars, but also a century of fame and celebrity. And indeed in this Moore may have a point - the public fascination with the Ripper murders was such that it is frequently claimed to have started our current tabloid culture. It is plausible to view the Ripper murders as a microcosm of the century that followed. ([Location 2740](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ABFHOS0&location=2740)) - "All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense." ([Location 2936](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00ABFHOS0&location=2936))