Blood Gilded Time – Reflections on the Sublogical Bearings Between Passion, Possession, and Perish

This chapter proposes a phylogenetically conditioned background for one contributing factor in the human tendency to amass fortune. Besides natural language and culture as a mnemonic mechanism of non-hereditary information, what distinguishes human behaviour from other animals is the extravagant gathering of ‘things’ that are not strictly necessary for survival or nesting. Human lust for material wealth goes well beyond the scope of personal need, but the one(s) with the most of what is desired have no use of their fortunes in death. Because culture has the characteristics of stereoscopicity, the basic elements present in its formation will be explicated and schematically presented as the stereomeion, which simultaneously displays the foundations for the analogous structure and function of the individual intellect and collective intellect (i.e. culture). By resorting to the sublogical connection between the colour ‘red’, the ‘blood’ of the living body, and the precious metal ‘gold’; their relation to the ‘Sun’ in its ‘rise’ and ‘set’ provides consciousness of the categories of ‘beginning’ and ‘end’, which will be shown to function as a driving factor in the becoming of the lust for wealth in avoidance of death. More specifically, the central claim is that ‘gold’ is sublogically equal to ‘life’.