So I'm reading David Milch's book about his show Deadwood which just came out last week and I'm telling you right now that if you watch that show, you will be truly missing out if you don't read that book. (And if you don't watch that show, you're getting idiot points for every day you don't go out and buy both seasons on DVD and eagerly await the third).

The reason this book is so great is that Milch approaches his work from a very intellectual and spiritual level and this book is much more of a philosophy of life and how the radiance of the divine shines through a work of art grounded in a specific conceit than it is a "making of a television show book."

On page 55 of this book, Milch makes the statement about the value of gold as the agreed upon standard of value between human beings compared with the power unleashed from a strong symbol:

The saving power of an agreed-upon abstraction is enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, where our founding fathers declared, "We hold these truths to be self evident." All men are not created equal, but we're goign to accept the fiction that all men are equal. The same way that we are going to accept the fiction that gold is worth something.

Milch does bring up a good point--anyone with common sense knows that everyone isn't created equal but I think that the Declaration is a statement of the principle that every human being should be considered to have the same opportunity to pursue happiness given whatever state of faculty, talent and passion they are born with.

Do you think he's right? Is the Declaration of Independence a lie agreed upon?