Our “Gaslight” Financial System

Perhaps the ultimate gaslighting in human history is our current fiat money creation system that benefits the few at the expense of the many.
Generally speaking, gaslighting has been used in the context of personal relationships to describe a manipulative person’s attempts to undermine and control their romantic partner. The terms gaslight and gaslighting are entering the political media lexicon, with partisans of both parties accusing the other side’s candidate of gaslighting in the presidential election. The terms refers to the 1944 film Gaslight in which Charles Boyer subtly manipulates the environment to cause Ingrid Bergman to question her memory and sanity.
As I understand it, gaslighting refers to a specific set of manipulative techniques:
1. Questioning, belittling, discounting and undermining our experience of places and events.
2. Overwriting our memory of events with false memories, again by undermining, questioning and belittling our memories.
3. Discrediting and marginalizing our definitions of self and identity, in favor of the manipulator’s definition of our identity and place in the world.

This post was published at Charles Hugh Smith on DECEMBER 05, 2016.