"The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil. Perhaps this is inherent. In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them...
It is difficult not to marvel at the imagination which was implicit in this gargantuan insanity. If there must be madness something may be said for having it on a heroic scale."
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929
"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."
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist
"It is always the soul that dies first, even if it's departure goes unnoticed. And it always carries the body along with it... Man is nourished by the invisible, man is nourished by that which is beyond the personal. He dies from preferring the opposite."
Jacques Lusseyran, Poetry at Buchenwald
"Those who are at present so eager to be reconciled with the world at any price must take care not to be reconciled with it under this particular aspect: as the nest of The Unspeakable. This is what too few are willing to see... Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God."
Thomas Merton, Raids on The Unspeakable
Stocks soared to new highs today.
On light volumes.
Disproportionately led by big cap darlings such as Amazon and the rest of the new era big cap techs crowd.
Come on in. The water's fine. Everyone is making money but you. Get some.
Gold and silver rose a little on Dollar weakness.
You are not one of the elite, the .1%, except in your own misplaced aspirations, and maybe delusions of grandeur. To the power of darkness you are prey, and your purpose is to be devoured.
I know, like so many others who have seen and who have said so to me, that our society, which is based on greed and the self, is becoming coarse. And the hearts of many have grown cold, and harsh. It will get worse before it gets better. But as Dostoevsky said, 'If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.'
Besides, who can resist the opportunity to read and write poetry, make music, love beauty, even in times of plague of the human spirit.
Have a pleasant evening.
