God and Free Exchange
How the etymology of God exhibits deep roots into the phenomenon of free exchange.
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God is Ghut
God. It is assumed that the meaning of the word relates to a patriarchal father figure—a “guy in the sky” who, from a throne in clouds not yet created spoke a world which includes clouds into existence. Seen this way, the idea of God is seemingly paradoxical. However, it is a modern bias that makes us believe this “guy in the sky” is the meaning of God: a bias that was no doubt encouraged by institutions like The Medieval Church, whose monopoly on knowledge was predicated on propagandizing an all-powerful authoritarian figure who controlled the entire universe from His throne in the sky. However, despite His omnipotence, He still needed your money…
With a little digging, the word God shows itself to have more nuanced meaning. Looking deep into the evolution of world languages, all are traceable back to Proto-Indo-European (PIE) from 5000 BCE. Sanskrit is one of the earliest attested PIE languages, and possesses the largest ancient literature of any language in the world.
A walk backwards through the fractal tree of language leads us to a surprising realization. The word God has etymological roots in the Sanskrit word ghut. The practical Sanskrit-English dictionary has several interpretations of the word ghut, none of which relate to a greedy, bearded man in the clouds. Here is one of them:
*Ghuṭ- (घुट्)
"To barter, exchange"
Bartering is a form of direct exchange where money is not used. To barter implies that both parties freely choose to engage in the exchange, otherwise the exchange would be unfree—as is the case of violence, theft, and other forms of coercion. Through this etymological lens, we can say: free exchange is immanent to the idea of God.
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Free exchange may be the most Godly action humans can take. Indeed, timeless moral principles such as freedom, truth, and love require a reciprocity of free exchange. It is not possible to impose freedom, truth, nor love: these three key creative principles cannot exist without a pure mutuality among parties to any exchange. Acts of unfree exchange—such as lying, theft, and murder—are almost universally condemned, which reinforces the value of free exchange in all fruitful, sustainable human relations.
If the Bible is, as we believe, a set of archetypal metaphors exploring the biggest questions facing conscious beings, such as—“what is the nature of reality and how should we act within it?”—it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to learn that the most important concept in the Bible is that which relates to the most important component of any culture aimed at human flourishing—free exchange.
God and Free Exchange
Exchange is the very essence of reality—it is the first principle. All phenomena in the known universe are processes of exchange: subatomic particles are bound together through the exchange of yet smaller particles, human cultures are bound together through mimetic exchange, and economies are interconnected through trade. All universal exchange occurs within the immutable bounds of thermodynamics.
The First Law of thermodynamics is the law of conservation of energy. The First Law states that the total energy of an isolated system is constant; energy can be transformed from one form to another, but it can neither be created nor destroyed. Energy itself cannot escape the closed system, but it can and does continue to exchange with itself to transform the state of that system.
According to modern astrophysical theories, it is asserted that the universe has been in the process of exchanging energy within itself for 13.7 billion years, since the “Big Bang” (or Genesis, depending on your metaphysical perspective). Since “the beginning,” novel phenomenological patterns have continuously emerged as a consequence of ongoing universal exchange. Such universal, compounding complexity has even crystallized into the most inexplicable phenomena in the known universe—consciousness itself. It is as if reality has gained self-awareness and a capacity to comprehend its animating process of exchange, and the free will to redirect it. Some could even argue that we are the universe engaged in self-reflection.
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We are the sensory organs of the universe participating in its intrinsically ubiquitous exchange process. As such, each and every one of us—in all of our glorious uniqueness—is an aspect of God. Our metabolic processes are marketplaces of exchange among microorganisms. Our thought processes are forums of free exchange between minds. Our emotions are an exchange of energy with others and our environments. God is the process of exchange occurring at every level of reality: inorganic, biological, social, and intellectual. Reality is therefore, ostensibly, a marketplace of everlasting exchange at every resolution, and at every scale. This is the territory of reality, while all our descriptions of it (including this written work) are mere maps, or “useful fictions.”
All is Exchange. Exchange is Ghut. Ghut is God. God is All (but these words are mere maps, and can never fully convey the ineffable, endlessly exchanging territory of God). Through countless exchanges across history, both free and unfree, many of which are reflected in the moral development of humanity chronicled in the Bible, we have discovered that freedom of exchange is essential to human flourishing. When we mistake the map (knowledge) for the territory (reality) and attempt to substitute our models of the world for the world itself, human civilization fragments and fails.
For these reasons, I consider the Biblical God as symbolic to the ideal of free exchange in the pursuit of cultivating greater freedom, truth, and love in the world. The “Kingdom of God” can only be found through free exchange. If we embrace God, we will flourish. If we do not embrace God, we will be impoverished. As Jesus said:
“If those who lead you say to you, ‘See, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.”
Thank you for reading God and Free Exchange.
(h/t to Mike Hill for contributing to this written work)
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Ghut - God - Free Exchange certainly contrasts with Marx critique deployed on the communist manifeto regarding the freedom exchanges:
"The bourgeoisie.... has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom – Free Trade."
Communism walks away from freedom, from god and from truth.
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