ENCOURAGING ANGELS: A Cautionary Tale of the Golden Bones-An ‘Aesop’s Fable’ For the Fiat Masses

©️2023 Stanley J. Szymanski. All Rights Reserved.

Dogs of all breeds who were sick of the way they had been treated by their earthly owners came together from different neighborhoods to found Doglandia. Doglandia was a nation made up of barkers from the four corners of the world. The dogs were of every color, face and breed.

Originally, they lived to serve the one true Master. Their Master blessed their land and made it abundant and prosperous to all who would work hard. Even though they fought like dogs will do, they patched up their civil differences and had good and productive lives in the land the Master had given them.

In the beginning, the dogs were very industrious and self sufficient. They gathered their food and policed their land to make it safe for all ‘Fidos’-great and small.

A young adult pup named Sure and his bride Worthy vowed to honor and worship The Master as they started out their life together.

A very hard working group of dogs dug and found a very large vein of bones in the ground. These were not just any bones-they were Golden bones! The Leaders of the Pack (LOTP) immediately recognized the uniqueness of their find and commissioned the working dogs to keep on digging up the golden bones.

The LOTP had already been discussing that they needed some sort of currency with which to transact dog business. Like it had already been prepared ahead of time for them (because it had been), the ‘golden bones’ were just the ticket to grease the wheels of the economy of Doglandia. The golden bones had been placed in the ground by the Master just for this purpose. The golden bones had an inherent intrinsic value (because they were gold and they were bones). They would always have value because it took a lot of effort and dog power to pull this currency out of the ground. The golden bones would always be ‘rare’ and ‘precious’ to each and every dog.

And so the golden bones were enshrined as a medium of exchange on a clay tablet in the National (Dog) Park of Doglandia. All of the LOTP put their paw print on the freshly formed clay tablet on a Dewey mid-summer morning. The nation of curs now had sound money with which to operate the dog business of the land. And the Master blessed the work of their paws because the faithful dogs acknowledged and honored Him with how they had planned to live.

Sure and Worthy began putting a few small Golden Bones away in their hole in the ground every month because this was the currency that came from The Master. And they believed Him when He told them that the gold of Doglandia was good.

The dogs had numerous skirmishes and some division among themselves as dogs do. But one day a few of the LOTP had an idea – an evil idea.

___________________________

Please refer to our proviso at the end of the article regarding any reproduction of this writing and consider a donation to Encouraging Angels today.

—————————————-

They said amongst themselves: We can make our own Golden Bones to use among the dogs for dog business. First, it is indeed very tiring to dig up enough Golden Bones for our growing economy. The fact that we have to employ dogs to dig them out of the ground limits the scale at which we can grow the economy. Right now we can only put more currency into the economy by adding a new bone that comes out of the ground.

If we instead make our own bones at will we will be able to increase the bone supply and really get the economy going! In order to do this we will make the new bones out of paper (Since dogs slobber a lot, we will spring for really nice cardboard) instead of gold. It will be easier, faster and less messy than digging those old barbarous relics out of the ground. And best of all, we will be able to pay for the things like a war against the dogs that we don’t like. Of course, we will skim some off of the top for ourselves to the tune of say, a 6% dividend every year. After all, we are The Leaders of the Pack (LOTP)! We are above the other dogs because of our superior intellect!

And so the new paper bones became not the currency, but the money of the land. The monetary bone supply did increase as the LOTP said it would. But along with the growth of the bone supply, the actual value of the new paper bones decreased every time the Treasury of Femurs and Tibia (TOFAT) printed the new cardboard carrion from the imagination of the LOTP.

Inflation in the price of dog food, collars, the cost of an annual license and everything else related to living a dogs’ life would skyrocket every time they issued new paper bones.

The LOTP started a war they couldn’t finish paying for. While the original Golden Bones were still being pulled out of the ground and used for currency or money alongside the paper bones (which were currency only), the LOTP could see that the bone supply (that was printable at their whim, but paper) was not growing fast enough to pay for the war against ‘The Old Dogs That Still Hunt’. The LOTP decided to go completely off of using any of the Golden Bones in their bone supply. In order to pay for this war they had to debase the bow wow money by telling the Treasury to print what the LOTP needed to pay for the war. Now the value of all of the thin, disposable puppy pesos had dropped virtually to zero and thus making the only option for survival (because of inflation) was for one to work like a dog.

The LOTP were earning more paper bones than ever on their 6% dividend on all those bones that had been printed. They were now selfish bloated animals that had bankrupted the country that had been once blessed by their Master. No dog had heard from or seen their Master in a long, long time. The Master had taken His hand of protection and blessing off of Doglandia. The Master would allow another species to rise up and take over the land that once had His divine protection.

Far away, there was a land filled with cats whose history was almost as old as the dirt itself. They were a crafty bunch. Although two dozen or so families of ‘Fat Cats’ had existed for thousands of years and were rich beyond measure with the same Golden Bones that The Master had also placed in their country, they desired to rule the entire world. They wanted every thing that Doglandia had-Doglandia’s Golden Bones and especially the country itself. Catlandia had need of the land and the bounty that Doglandia produced because there were just too many alley cat mouths to feed in Catlandia. The pooches didn’t know it but they were at war with an enemy that they truly did not understand.

The Fat Cats knew about The Master, but in no way acknowledged Him. They made gods of their revered cats and called themselves ‘Children of the Hydra’. They exacerbated any relationship they had with the outside world. Any relationship with the Cats always ended in calamity for the other party.

When the Cats heard that the Dogs abandoned the use of the Golden Bones completely, they made a ploy to befriend the Dogs in a move to get a paw hold into the lucrative Dog market.

“We have many more Cats than you have Dogs and we are willing to work all day for cheap wages”, said the Cats. “You Dogs will make a lot of money using the grunt work of our cut-rate alley Cats”. The Leaders of the Pack loved the idea and the LOTP made lots and lots of paper bones as they sent all their manufacturing jobs to Catlandia in exchange for the almost worthless maché placards.

As soon as the deal was struck, the manufacturing base of the Cats began to grow. In just a few decades it became a behemoth and was now the biggest gaggle of factories in the world. The Cats made all of the hip bobbles that the Dogs loved. The Dogs had it so good (or so they thought) that a famous media host named Hush Limpaw put forth the idea of ‘Doglandia Exceptionalism’. This was not true anymore of course. The true exceptionalism of the Dogs was only there during the days when they worshipped, honored and revered their Master.

Since all the manufacturing jobs were now in Catlandia, all those dogs that used to actually work for a living now had only the option to become a ‘service’ dog. Some dogs now ‘worked’ walking other dogs. A lot of dogs worked at a big chain that made coffee flavored excitatory dog fare called StarYucks where they were called ‘productive’ when they made drinks for apparently upwardly mobile hounds like a drink that was a bowlful of potion called a ‘Crappachinno’.  Instead of working with the fervor of their forefathers, other furry beta barkers worked at the local Pizza shop serving up slices of ‘Pupparoni’ pizza in between playing the ‘Angry Dogs’ game on their Cat-made electronic tracking device.

The Leaders of the Pack thought that they were so smart for having the Cats make Knick-knacks and cheap steel for their kennels. But it certainly was the Fat Cats that were the most cunning.

Sure and Worthy became very concerned as they saw the dog money become worth so much less. They doubled the amount of the Golden Bones that they saved each month. It put a dent into their entertainment budget but the couple knew that things were somehow going to get worse and there was almost nothing of real value any longer in Doglandia. Nothing that is but the original Golden Bones placed in the ground by the hand of The Master.

While the LOTP loved earning all the paper bones they could lay their paws on (as the paper bones were being inflated away every time the Treasury of Fibia and Tibia printed them) it was the Cats who used their new found economic prowess to begin purchasing the currency with the -real- intrinsic value: the Golden Bones.

At first the Cats bought what Golden Bones they could every year and socked it away in their little kitty banks. They also put more of the alley cats to work digging up the Golden Bones that were in the new mines of Catlandia (Cats love bones too). With every accumulation of Golden Bones the Cats’ clout in the world began to grow along with their plans to become the dogs’ ‘betters’.

During this ascent of the Cats, the LOTP became more and more corrupt. And the Cats did everything they could to help bring about the demise of the pooches.

The Cats went as far as using silky vixen tomcat spies to get next to office holders of Doglandia. In one case a little kitty named ‘Bang-Bang’ allegedly entered into a relationship with a legislator named Derrick Paw-Well. This story led to rumors of the fulfillment of the secular prophesy from the original ‘MuttBusters’ movie starring Bill Purry. The Cats claim to this day when Purrys’ character is asked if the city is headed for a disaster of Biblical proportions Purrys’ character explained it to be: …”Canine sacrifices, dogs and cats living together-MASS HYSTERIA!”

The Cats struck with a tactical coup with the release of a catatonic bio weapon-Cat Scratch Fever. The recipients think that they got it from a ‘kitty’ next door but in reality, it came from across the waters: from Catlandia. Some dogs died when they got the feline bug. Many more dogs died from the medicine that was supposedly designed to save them.

Now, Catlandia was an economic powerhouse but in order for them to really become the ‘cat’s meow’ they had to have a currency stronger than the paper bones created by the Dogs. So while the Dogs were caught up in their debauchery and continuing unfaithfulness to their Master, the Cats pulled off the financial ‘Coup de Grâce’-The Final Blow to win the hegemony of world domination.

With the accumulated wealth of the profit from the cut-price dime-a-dozen alley cats and the multiplication of their wealth with their now huge horde of Golden Bones, the Fat Cats of Catlandia bought all of the available golden bones that were on the market-anywhere and everywhere in the world. They bought up -all- the Golden Bones mines on the planet. The Cats bought up -all- the large lots of Golden Bones that were at the refiners fire of Golden Bones on the globe. They bought up all of the large lots of GB’s that they could source in the markets. The only shiny ground sourced currency that existed was in the coin shops and in circulation. For all intents and purposes, all of the Golden Bones under and above the surface of the ground were in the possession of the Fat Cats. With this new level of possession, the Cats could make themselves as rich as they wanted and everyone else (the Dogs) as poor as they desired them to be.

The Fat Cats had literally cornered the market and were now set to turn the tables on the Dogs.

The Cats proceeded to tell the Dogs that if they wanted to buy anymore of the goods from anywhere, that they (the Dogs) would have to possess a gold poker chip that represented a Golden Bone. If the Dogs didn’t own any Golden Bones, there was no way for them to obtain a Golden Poker Chip. This is because the business between the two countries would now be settled with the Golden Poker Chip. The Chip represents the actual store of value (the ‘Golden Bone’). But if you don’t actually have a golden bone in storage or reserves, you will not be given a Golden Chip by the Fat Cats. The Poker Chip also has a silicon chip in it that settles all accounts through a Fat Cat custom made blockchain. The Fat Cats named their accounting mechanism ‘The Librarian of the Barbarian (LOTB)’ because no canine could buy or sell without it. All Dogs who wished to transact in the world system run by the Cats had no choice but to use the totalitarian token. The paper bones of the Dogs were now completely worthless.

The Cats would be the cruelest master that the Dogs had ever known. Oh how the once faithful Dogs longed for and cried for the benevolent Master of the youth of their canine country. The Master had given the Dogs over to their earthly desires where there was no longer any mercy for them, only an excruciating life and time of final judgement. The Cats had built the Dogs a doghouse from which there was no escape.

The only free and independent souls in Doglandia were Sure and Worthy. They were able to get whatever they wanted because everyone now saw the real value of the Golden Bones. Sure bought Worthy a huge doghouse in the mountains, away for the concentrated cities and all of the dog droppings in the streets by dogs with no master. Sure and Worthy could afford all of the food, water, shelter, energy and protection that a dog could need simply because they were faithful to the truth and to the guidance of The Master.

———-

If you appreciate this article can you consider a gift to Encouraging Angels for the intelligence we provided today? Click this link to give. We need the support. Links to this article are encouraged. Reproductions of this writing are only allowed by written permission of the author and those reproductions must include this proviso of request for support, how this writing may be reproduced and following disclaimers.

All rights reserved.

Stan Szymanski (or Encouraging Angels) is not a medical doctor. This is not medical advice. In all matters pertaining to the health and care of a human being consult a medical doctor. This is not legal, financial or personal advice. Consult appropriate professionals in those fields for that type of advice.