However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.
Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.
The real test is this. Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible?
If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black.
Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952
"It seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the foolish person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him.
He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison
"The lofty mind of man can be imprisoned by the artifices of its own making. If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves."
E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World
Stocks had another wide ranging day, with the broader markets lower, which is unusual for a Monday of late.
The NDX 100 finished higher, thanks to the Bloviating 7 of big tech.
Surprisingly the VIX was lower.
The Dollar declined.
Gold and silver declined.
Like the spokesmodels and talking heads one could spend quite a bit of time looking for triggers in today's wildly swinging action.
Some fairly inconsequential remarks by Ackman, Gross, and Powell during the day would seemingly be suspects for the 'big moves.'
But at the end of the day it seems fairly obvious that investors are not in there moving things.
This is a market completely overshadowed by the smoldering powder keg in the Mideast, as well as a few other places where the big powers are shoving and pushing, like the Ukraine, the China Sea, etc.
Troubled times of exogenous risk make for volatile markets.
Traders may spot certain groups of bulls and bears leaning too heavily in some direction, and seek to foment a powerful technical move in the short run to take some scalps.
In a fundamentally broken market these short term technical trades can easily dominate.
It is not capital allocation in the traditional sense. It is all a game. And it has been becoming moreso and for longer terms, year after year.
This is the harvest of the moral hazard and the steadily PR campaign against the rule of law.
Nevertheless, the risks of a big even-driven move are unusually high.
Be ready for a dramatic move when it comes, but try not to feed the sharks by taking obvious long shot positions early on.
Remember that in the aggregate they can read the hands you are playing, and have stacked the deck as well. Yes it's a simple scam and a lot of informed people know it, and go along to get along.
It's what they do. Blind themselves.
Have a pleasant evening.
