"Pride is the beginning of all sin. Every sin is a contempt of God, and every contempt of God is pride. It is pride which brought down the angel into devil. It is the origin of sin when with malice and envy the devil pursued man, who was yet standing in his natural innocence. It subverted him in the same way in which he himself fell. For the serpent sought for the door of pride through which to enter when he said, 'You shall be as gods.'"
Augustine of Hippo, On Nature and Grace, 415 AD
"Evil is the force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness. And goodness is its opposite. Goodness is that which promotes life. When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to restrict myself to corporeal murder. Evil is that which kills spirit.
The evil deny the painful awareness of their sin, inadequacy, and imperfection by casting their pain onto others through projection and scapegoating. They themselves may not suffer, but those around them do. Evil originates not in the absence of guilt but in the effort to escape it.
Malignant narcissism is characterized by an unsubmitted will. All adults who are mentally healthy submit themselves one way or another to something higher than themselves, be it God or truth or love or some other ideal. They believe in what is true rather than what they would like to be true.
To a greater or lesser degree, all mentally healthy individuals submit themselves to the demands of their own conscience. Not so the evil, however. In the conflict between their guilt and their will, it is the guilt that must go and the will that must win.
This willful failure of submission that characterizes malignant narcissism is depicted in both the stories of Satan and of Cain and Abel. Satan refused to submit to God's judgment. For Satan to have accepted God's judgment, he would have had to accept his own imperfection. This he could not or would not do. It was unthinkable that he was imperfect. Consequently submission was impossible and both the rebellion and fall inevitable.
It is no accident that Church authorities have generally considered pride first among the sins. By the sin of pride they do not generally mean the sense of legitimate achievement one might enjoy after a job well done. What is meant is rather a kind of pride that unrealistically denies our inherent sinfulness and imperfection — a kind of overweening pride or arrogance that prompts people to reject and even attack the judgment implied by the evidence of their own inadequacy.
The fact of the matter is that some of us are very good and some of us very evil, and most of us are somewhere in between. We might therefore think of human good and evil as a kind of continuum. As individuals we can move ourselves one way or another along the continuum. Just as there is a tendency for the rich to get richer, however, and the poor to get poorer, so there seems to be a tendency for the good to get better and the bad to get worse. Erich Fromm spoke of these matters at some length:
"The longer we continue to make the wrong decisions, the more our heart hardens; the more often we make the right decision, the more our heart softens—or better perhaps, comes alive. Most people fail because they do not wake up and see when they stand at a fork in the road and have to decide. With each step along the wrong road it becomes increasingly difficult for them to admit that they are on the wrong road." Erich Fromm, The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good or EvilAs a result of their refusal to tolerate the sense of their own sinfulness, the evil ones become uncorrectable grab bags of sin. They are, in my experience, remarkably greedy people. All sins betray — and isolate us from — both the divine and our fellow creatures.
It is almost common knowledge that the best way to cement group cohesiveness is to ferment the group's hatred of an external enemy. Deficiencies within the group can be easily and painlessly overlooked by focusing attention on the deficiencies or 'sins' of the out-group.
Evil individuals will flee self-examination and guilt by blaming and attempting to destroy whatever or whoever highlights their deficiencies. Group leaders in all places and ages have therefore routinely bolstered group cohesiveness in times of failure by whipping the group's hatred for foreigners or 'the enemy.'
Since the evil, deep down, feel themselves to be faultless, it is inevitable that when they are in conflict with the world they will invariably perceive the conflict as the world's fault. Since they must deny their own badness, they must perceive others as bad. They project their own evil onto the world. They never think of themselves as evil; on the other hand, they consequently see much evil in others.
We are all in combat against evil. In the heat of the fray it is tempting to take hold of some seemingly simple solution—such as 'what we ought to do is just bomb the hell out of those people.' But we run up against the old problem that the end does not justify the means. If we kill those who are evil, we will become evil ourselves; we will be killers. If we attempt to deal with evil by destroying it, we will also end up destroying ourselves, spiritually if not physically.
Evil people feel themselves to be perfect. At the same time, however, I think they have an unacknowledged sense of their own evil nature. It is this very sense from which they are frantically trying to flee. The essential component of evil is not the absence of a sense of sin or imperfection but the unwillingness to tolerate that sense. At one and the same time, the evil are aware of their evil and desperately trying to avoid the awareness.
Utterly dedicated to preserving their self-image of perfection, those I call 'evil' are unceasingly engaged in the effort to maintain the appearance of moral purity. While they seem to lack any motivation to be good, they intensely desire to appear good. Their goodness is all on a level of pretense. It is, in effect, a lie. This is why they are 'the people of the lie.'"
M. Scott Peck, The People of the Lie, 1983
“When pride comes, then comes disgrace. But with disgrace comes humility, and with humility comes wisdom. The humility of the righteous will guide them, but the deceitfulness of the proud will destroy them."
Proverbs 11:2-3
Trump tried to promote some news about Iran desperately seeking ceasefire talks again today, but most normal people just saw it for what it was.
In addition to their usual dismissal of this sort of whopper, Iran also came out with a funny statement, saying that they estimate that Trump et al. have made billions of dollars in manipulating markets, and would like to have a cut of the profits.
Sorry guys. You have to go along with the grift to get paid.
The Dollar fell.
Bitcoin bounced a little, but is still in its trading range.
VIX fell of course. There is no risk when you are the masters of the world.
Gold gained a little, with its biggest gain early in the day.
Silver was hit fairly hard but managed to gain back much of its losses.
Did I mention that there is an option expiration on Friday?
Even in time of war, the pampered elite are fully capable of multi-dimensional profiteering.
It's how they maintain their privileged lifestyles and standards.
'Quote sites' on the internet and ChatGPT are abundant sources of red herrings about quotations, many of which are self-referential and utterly spurious. It takes patience and a willingness to look for the originals and search them to find out what it real and what is not.
It is very much like making sense of the 'news' about the economy and the markets these days, with plenty of spurious nonsense being put out by the financial spokesmodels and ChatDJT.
And after the bell, Argentina 2 - England 1.
Have a pleasant evening.
