"In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Thereafter any attack, even on the least of men, is an attack on Christ, who took on the form of man and in his own Person restored the image of God in all. Through our relationship with the Incarnation we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin and recover our solidarity with all mankind." Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship 1937
“You felt secure in your wickedness. You think, ‘No one sees what I do.' But your so-called wisdom and knowledge have led you astray. And you believe that, ‘I am the one, no one else matters.’ Disaster will overwhelm you, and you won’t be able to talk it away. Misfortune will descend upon you, and you won’t be able to buy your way out. A catastrophe will strike you suddenly, one which you cannot avoid."
Isaiah 47:10-11
"Listen well. Hear the cries of those whom you have cheated of their justice. The cries of those who work for you have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts. You have spent your years on earth in luxury, satisfying your every desire. You have only fattened yourselves for the day of slaughter. You have condemned and killed the innocent, who offered no threat to you."
James 5:4-6
"Woe to you who add house upon house, and join field to field, until you leave no space for others, and you dwell alone in the land. Woe to those who draw their sin along with cords of their deceit, and are tied to their wickedness with cart ropes, to those who say, ‘Let God hurry; let him hasten his prophecy so that we may see it. The plan of the Holy One of Israel – let it approach, let it come into view, so that we may know it.’ Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."
Isaiah 5:8,18-20
"You who make wicked judgements, who write oppressive laws to deprive the needy of justice, and rob the poor of their rights, that widows may be your victims, and orphans your prey. What will you do on the day of reckoning, when the consequences of your sins come from afar? To whom will you run for protection, and where will you hide your possessions?"
Isaiah 10:1-3
"You are a sinful nation, weighed down by lawlessness. A race of corrupt and wicked children, you have forsaken your Lord, despised the Holy One of Israel, and turned your backs to him."
Isaiah 1:4
Stocks did a rather impressive pop and flop today, with big tech soaring to an impressive new high based on the Nvidia 'earnings triumph for big tech.'
But alas, after the wash comes the rinse.
The transfer of wealth continues; the spice must flow.
Gold and silver were beaten down again, ahead of the futures option expiration next Tuesday after Memorial Day.
The Dollar rallied.
The VIX rose.
It's hard to believe, isn't it? How easily greed makes the masks fall off.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.
"Psychopaths can be found in legislatures, hospitals, and used-car lots. Because they have no conscience, they're natural predators. Psychopaths love chaos and hate rules, so they're comfortable in the fast-moving modern corporation. Dr. Paul Babiak, an industrial-organizational psychologist based near New York City, is in the process of writing a book with Bob Hare called When Psychopaths Go to Work: Cons, Bullies and the Puppetmaster. The subtitle refers to the three broad classes of psychopaths Babiak has encountered in the workplace.
"The con man works one-on-one," says Babiak. "They'll go after a woman, marry her, take her money, then move on and marry someone else. The puppet master would manipulate somebody to get at someone else. This type is more powerful because they're hidden." Babiak says psychopaths have three motivations: thrill-seeking, the pathological desire to win, and the inclination to hurt people.
"A lot of white-collar criminals are psychopaths," says Bob Hare. "But they flourish because the characteristics that define the disorder are actually valued. When they get caught, what happens? A slap on the wrist, a six-month ban from trading, and don't give us the $100 million back. I've always looked at white-collar crime as being as bad or worse than some of the physically violent crimes that are committed."
The best way to protect the workplace is not to hire psychopaths in the first place. That means training interviewers so they're less likely to be manipulated and conned. It means checking resumés for lies and distortions, and it means following up references.
Paul Babiak says he's "not comfortable" with one researcher's estimate that one in ten executives is a psychopath, but he has noticed that they are attracted to positions of power. When he describes employees such as John to other executives, they know exactly whom he's talking about. "I was talking to a group of human-resources executives yesterday," says Babiak, "and every one of them said, you know, I think I've got somebody like that."
“They often make use of the fact that for many people the content of the message is less important than the way it is delivered.
A confident, aggressive delivery style - often larded with jargon, clichés, and flowery phrases - makes up for the lack of substance and sincerity in their interactions with others ... they are masters of impression management; their insight into the psyche of others combined with a superficial - but convincing - verbal fluency allows them to change their personas skillfully as it suits the situation and their game plan.
They are known for their ability to don many masks, change 'who they are' depending upon the person with whom they are interacting, and make themselves appear likable to their intended victim.
Psychopathic workers very often were identified as the source of departmental conflicts, in many cases, purposely setting people up in conflict with each other. The most debilitating characteristic of even the most well-behaved psychopath is the inability to form a workable team."
Paul Babiak and Robert Hare, Snakes in Suits
"What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and the power itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is increasing— that resistance has been overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but competence. The first principle of our humanism is that the weak and the failures shall perish. And they ought to be helped to perish. What is more harmful than any vice? Active pity for all failure and weakness — Christianity."
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886
It seems likely that the relativistic 1970s spawned the 'greed is good' meme of the 1990's, and provided a Petri dish for the development of abnormalities by rewarding even latent tendencies to antisocial behaviour. What was once frowned upon is now encouraged and rewarded.
I think you may have already heard that in the modern era certain Wall Street firms screen for sociopathic tendencies in prospective new hires. Not to screen them out, however. On the contrary, like organized crime families, such shameless and conscienceless drive towards personal greed is highly desirable and rewarded by the modern financial corporation. The white collar criminal and the street criminal are both criminals, using different tools but similar means and mores.
I think this may also be applicable for other organizations that are focused primarily on money and power as their primary objectives without a strong commitment to moral responsibility and the public good, such as some of our corporate behemoths, and perhaps even other self-aggrandizing monopolies like the major political parties.
'Greed is good' is not just for the traditional white collar criminals anymore.
Do you think that the situation we have today is somehow different, exceptional? Are traditional sources of moral guidance like the good news of scripture silent on the subject, unfamiliar with it?
Or is the depth of this fault primarily in us, and in our deluded and hardened hearts?
Whom do we reward and admire the most? The humble saint, or the clever and successful sinner?
And so we are where we are.
Religion used to be the opium of the people. To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serfdom, religion promised the reward of an after life. But now, we are witnessing a transformation: a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged. Czeslaw Milosz
We don't want to hear it. We who murder the prophets and abuses the messengers that God sends to us.
But sooner or later we will sit down to a banquet of consequences.
Stocks were wobbly today after the reading of the Fed minutes, but ahead of the oh so important reveal of Nvidia's financial results, in what Bloomberg termed 'the final hurdle for Mega Tech's earnings victory.'
Gold and silver were off. As a reminder there will be a futures options expiration next Tuesday on the Comex.
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, 1941
"The world would be better off if people tried to become better, and people would be better if they stopped trying to become better off. For when everyone tries to become better off, nobody is better off. But when everyone tries to become better everyone is better off."
Peter Maurin, Better and Better Off
"What we would like to do is change the world— make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And to a certain extent, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, of the poor, of the destitute— the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor in other words, we can to a certain extent change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world."
Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker, June 1946
"At bottom, what should you do to avoid being an idiot or a swine? Merely this: you should do something great, you should become resigned to the fact that you will seem ridiculous to a race of janitors and bureaucrats if you are to enter the service of Splendor. Then you will know what it means to be the friend of God. The Friend of God! I am on the verge of tears when I think of it."
Léon Bloy, The Secret of Léon Bloy by Jacques Maritain, 1912
"In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Thereafter, any attack even on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took on the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all. Through our relationship with the Incarnation, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our solidarity with all mankind."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 1937
The equity markets are on a pause, waiting for some news, or earnings from Nvidia.
Gold and silver were off a bit.
The Dollar was flat.
VIX continued to wallow down into a dull complacency.
"A thriving upper class accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of untold human beings, who, for its sake, must be reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings,to slaves, to instruments. One cannot fail to see in all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast, prowling about avidly in search of spoil and victory; this hidden core needs to erupt from time to time, the animal has to get out again and go back to the wilderness.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886
"As a very young man, and it seems so long ago, I spent some time walking with those who spoke out against injustice. Later, as a grown man, I stood in the same dark cells of the Mamertine Prison in Rome, where Paul and Peter were imprisoned, and where Paul wrote his second letter to Timothy, a letter from jail, where he was held by the power of an empire that, at that time, ruled the world.
And I walked along some of the paths in the catacombs, the hidden places of the early believers who did not yet even have the name of Christians, but simply called their beliefs 'the good news' and 'the Way.' And they loved one another, and watered the roots of their faith with the blood of martyrs.
We are travelers through history, although slowly, one step, one day at a time. But we are in it, in history, and we play our part of it. It is not something distant, but real. This is our moment. And Christ calls us to follow him now, even as he did then, in those days when he walked the earth, when he was a passing figure in the crowd, and beckoned with a simple wave of his hand, and the sound of his voice.
Now as an old man I see a nation that has been given great power, and has come once again to a decision point, where it may choose for the truth, or take a darker road. And it seems as though we have already turned away from the truth, and are going down that fateful path, the way of greed and fear and above all pride, and the worship of worldly power for its own sake, cleverness, deception and the arrogance of money, in our willful blindness. And may God have mercy on us, and our children and our grandchildren, if we do."
"For the general reader, one or two chapters should suffice to convince them that the authors have emphatically proven their points. And to grasp these points and fully realize that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by elements of his own government led by the CIA and that the mass media were accessories after the fact to this terrible crime – to let this really sink in – well, nothing is more important in understanding what is going on today...
I do not agree that we need a new investigation. The facts have long been clear: President Kennedy was assassinated by the U.S. National Security State led by the CIA. What we need to do is draw the implications from that fact. They are profound."
"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."
Ephesians 6:12
Stocks managed to have a somewhat positive day led by big tech.
The rally overall seems tired and overextended. But still seemingly in the driver's seat.
Gold and silver soared overnight in Asia, with silver going up limit in Shanghai.
But the familiar story is the kind of paper games that come into play in London and New York.
This is unsustainable, but very stubbornly supported by the Western financial powers.
"With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made ‘legal.’ Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself.”
Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, April 2010
“Oh where is the noble face of modesty, or the strength of virtue, now that blasphemy is in power and men have put justice behind them, and there is no law but lawlessness, and none join in fear of the gods?”
Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis
"Public opinion has become the object of intensive efforts
to control, manage, manipulate, and increasingly intimidate. In political, military, economic realms, power becomes, in varying degrees, uneasy before the suspected opinions of masses, and,
accordingly, opinion-making becomes an accepted technique of
power-holding and power-getting. The minority electorate of the
propertied and the educated is replaced by the total suffrage— and
intensive campaigns for the vote.
As the scale of institutions has become larger and more centralized, so has the range and intensity of the opinion-makers’ efforts. The means of opinion-making, in fact, have paralleled in range
and efficiency the other institutions of greater scale that cradle
the modem society of masses. Accordingly, in addition to their enlarged and centralized means of administration, exploitation, and
violence, the modern elite have had placed within their grasp historically unique instruments of psychic management and manipulation.
The men of the higher circles are not representative men; their high
position is not a result of moral virtue; their fabulous success is not
firmly connected with meritorious ability. Those who sit in the seats
of the high and the mighty are selected and formed by the means of
power, the sources of wealth, the mechanics of celebrity, which prevail
in their society. Commanders of power unequaled in human history, they
have succeeded within the American system of organized irresponsibility.
Of course, there may be corrupt men in sound institutions, but when institutions are corrupting, many of the men who live and work in them are necessarily corrupted. In the corporate era, economic relations become impersonal— and the executive feels less personal responsibility. Within the corporate worlds of business, war-making and politics, the private conscience is attenuated— and the higher immorality is institutionalized. It is not merely a question of a corrupt administration in corporation, army, or state; it is a feature of the corporate rich, as a capitalist stratum, deeply intertwined with the politics of the military state.
A society that is in its higher circles and on its middle levels widely believed to be a network of smart rackets does not produce men with an inner moral sense; a society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience. A society that narrows the meaning of 'success' to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal. Blessed are the cynical, for only they have what it takes to succeed.
America - a conservative country without any conservative ideology-appears now before the world a naked and arbitrary power, as, in the name of realism, its men of decision enforce their often crackpot definitions upon world reality."
C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, Oxford Press, 1956
"When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven mad by fear and horror, and when chaos has become the supreme law, then the time for the empire of lawlessness will have come."
Fritz Lang, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, 1933
Stocks were parked today, after a week of substantial gains.
Gold and silver rocketed higher, with silver putting in a short-scorching rally.
The Dollar was nominally unchanged.
There are big events on the move behind the scenes.
For now we only feel their tremors.
And when history unfolds, does it matter?
After even the most shocking of events what remains is the rewriting of history and the forced suppression of dissent from the prevailing narrative.
For those who manage the conversations and control the evidence, the truth is a very malleable thing— at least for those who would be as gods.
Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love, abide in God, and God in them.
Let us pray for those whose hearts are hardened against His grace and loving kindness by greed, fear, and pride, and the seductive illusion and crushing isolation of evil.
We pray that we all may experience the three great gifts of our Lord's suffering and triumph: repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness. And in so doing, may we obtain abundant life, and with it the peace that surpasses all understanding.
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