All that glisters is not gold. Shakespeare wrote that. it’s a message written on a portrait of death found inside a gold casket in the Merchant of Venice. It is followed by “Gilded tombs do worms enfold.”
And what does it mean? Well, I think it’s pretty plain; not everything is as it may appear. More specifically, not everything that is attractive or shiny has actual worth.
And it is a lesson that can be applied to things or people; not everyone who is witty or charming or charismatic is moral.
So not everything that looks nice (glisters) has intrinsic worth (is gold.)
And that, we can surely all agree with.
Except.
Gold. It has no intrinsic worth.
(I know there are some industrial uses that gold is critical for now, but there aren’t many, and anyway they hadn’t been invented in the 16th century, and they are certainly not the reason why the ring on my finger is made from gold.)
Gold is valuable because it glisters. Because it glisters and there’s not much of it.
It is valued purely for its appearance.
(Yes, yes, it’s rare, it doesn’t tarnish, it can be worked easily and beaten very thin. But if gold had all those properties and instead of a warm, ermm, golden glow, it gave off the lustre of say, baby shit, would we still love it so? Thought not.)
It’s valuable because we value it. And we value it, because it’s valuable. In that respect it’s a bit like those shares which go up in price so more people buy them. Which drives the price up. So even more people want to buy those shares which are doing so well.
It’s a confidence trick we play on ourselves.
It’s also interesting that this seems to be a surprising thought. When I mentioned my theory at a dinner table, my friends got quite heated in trying persuade me that gold was intrinsically valuable. We have accepted its worth for so long that it has become self-evident.
But there it is. All that glisters isn’t gold. It’s true. But it is also true that if ‘gold’ for Shakespeare stands for intrinsic worth, then gold, also, is not ‘gold’.
