Think carefully about every fairy tale you have ever heard in your life that stems from the Grimm or Tolkien-influenced literary tradition. Every single one of these heroes and heroines ends up with bountiful riches that are found in precious metals as their prize for vanquishing a dragon, saving a princess, or kissing a frog. It is critically important that our hardest working members of society be compensated for their efforts, and we have a rich international literary tradition that boasts expensive alloys as the ultimate reward for having achieved a great victory in the face of dire and dangerous circumstances.
Think of the numerous international oral traditions that feature discussions of dragons who guard, hoard, and protect vast wealth for the people they protect from outside foes and forces. How is it that cultural fantasies that were written in the 1200s on the Judeo-Christian calendar discuss the importance of having gold and silver at the end of your hard-won victory in battle? Why do you think such a concept is so internationally pervasive and understood to be significant and beneficial to the recipient? You can learn more about the concept of gold’s historical importance on the internet because have to ask yourself about the significance of such a cultural throughline.
Even in cultural traditions that do not feature precious metals as the ultimate prize or path to success, such costly items are still considered to be proper adornment for those who are elites in that culture. For example, in the Caribbean basin, the Taino Indigenous community did not trade in gold for their own currency but rather recognized its importance as a bringer of great social status. In this way, even those cultures like West Africans who traded in cowrie shells instead of gold and silver understood that such gorgeous alloys possessed an inherent value based on their luminosity and aesthetically pleasing presentation.
Will This Tradition Continue?
You may wonder if you write a short story these days if platinum and palladium will be useful symbols of riches and wealth that will make elements of your story timeless and translatable across cultures and eras. The answer is a resounding yes because these items will not lose their cultural cache over the course of the next several centuries, if ever. That is because the futures of these items are still bound to the social capital that they possess, which is robust enough to withstand cultural changes over many generations. As the international influence and power economically shifts from the United States to China, we see that this concept is still holding constant.
Many argue that the United States and the United Kingdom still retain cultural hegemony over the world via Hollywood and the music, film, and fashion industries. While this is debatable, what is not debatable is the relative power that the Chinese are accruing while America implodes due to unrest, gun violence, racism, income inequality, and homelessness. Even as we live through this major shift where the United States is obviously weakening and The Republic of China is clearly strengthening, through this transition period, we will see that valuable metals will retain their economic value because that value is tied to the cultural capital it possesses across the globe.
We still expect gold to possess and retain its value because of these very fairy tales we continue to tell our children and grandchildren. Hansel and Gretel were motivated by food, but the witch in the story was hoarding gold. Cinderella was motivated by love and the desire to be married, but the evil stepsisters were focused on gaining great financial gain and status. Sleeping Beauty is a creepy story featuring a woman who is kissed by a man without her consent and is expected to marry him instantly, which is extremely disturbing, and even said Prince is motivated to achieve his social victory because he knows that if he becomes King via his quest, he will immediately inherit great wealth that is likely held in precious metals.
The Little Mermaid is also incredibly disturbing, as in both the animated version and the original story, the young mermaid is interested in pursuing the love of a complete stranger by permanently altering herself, while the Prince is coveted for the gold (https://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/science/chemistry/elements/gold) and fortune his family has amassed. When we consider the first half of the story of Aladdin, he spends his earliest moments gaslighting the Princess into thinking she is interacting with a wealthy member of her kingdom, as Aladdin has almost exclusively considered his attachment to her to gain great wealth.
What Does This Mean for You?
I have just described several classic fairy tales that exist in the public domain that we have consumed via books, magazines, movies and television shows — and all these entities have the accumulation of financial freedom via acquiring precious alloys as a feature, not a bug. Therefore you have already been socialized to see an online presence like Provident Metals review as an opportunity to understand what you have already known all of your life, which is that gold, silver, platinum and other amazing pieces of the earth as valuable and important materials. This is why if you are considering investing in today’s market, even if the market is a bull or a bear you should buy and hold onto some expensive metals.
You may be struggling to understand why you have been socialized to see these metals as so important and why the fairy tales you read or watched or had orally told to you were invested in making sure you grasped the value of these items. This is because the cultural throughline of their international importance is so great that even children can grasp this concept and can explain to anyone why we as a global society place such value on gold and silver. Children can instantly recognize the aesthetic importance, without any contextual information to buttress their tiny minds understanding what they are really conceptualizing.
If fairy tales and history both teach us anything, it is that human beings are wise beyond their years when it comes to recognizing the value of metals and items that can be traded for financial gain. Just as a small child understands that these items hold an intrinsic value based on their brilliance and beauty, a grown adult can grasp the concept that these items are eminently tradable due to their international reach and historical provenance.
