Weltanschauung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Cynicism

  • Middle East Slaughterhouse

    Middle East Slaughterhouse

    Who’re you rootin’ for?

    A vicious and bigoted Dark Age Theocracy? A bunch of murdering thugs in the Likud Party? The Hesbollox religious nutters? The delightful Houthis? Or perhaps the Ginger Pygmy and his ill educated rednecks?

    Let’s face it, it’s not much of a choice. The similarities are more striking than the differences and god help us if the November mid terms are high jacked by the moron in the orange toupee.

    So much for the War to End All Wars. So much for the UN and all the rest of the useless related paraphernalia.

    So much for the equally absurd religions of the US Christian Right, the insane Jewish extremists (whose god promised them dominion over the entire Middle East) and the Arabs.  Hilarious to think they all worship the same god, and all believe god is with them in their murderous endeavours.

    Equally amusing to realise the Jews of Israel and the Arabs of the Middle East are of the same racial stock.

    I was at evensong last night, listening to Numbers 21. Guess what, the Jews kicked the shit out of King Og of Bashan – a Syrian gent.

    “And they turned and went up by the way of Bashan: and Og the king of Bashan went out against them, he, and all his people, to the battle at Edrei. And the LORD said unto Moses, Fear him not: for I have delivered him into thy hand, and all his people, and his land; and thou shalt do to him as thou didst unto Sihon king of the Amorites, which dwelt at Heshbon. So they smote him, and his sons, and all his people, until there was none left him alive: and they possessed his land.”

    Nice bloke old Yahweh, innit. Trouble is he’s playing a double game. Whose side is he on? God knows (no pun intended).  The US and the Jews? Or the equally pleasantly behaved Mohammedans?

    It’s anyone’s guess really, and always has been.  Some god eh? The treacherous swine.

    How sadly pathetic that the past is endlessly repeated. How sick and evil our species is.

    Endless wars over endless thousands of years and all over the same petty human concerns.

  • Cynicism and LinkedIn

    Cynicism and LinkedIn

    What makes a cynic? Reason and experience in life or the cold hand of genetic inheritance?

    Are cynics just born? Or do they become imbued with cynicism as they travel through life and become convinced by absurdity?

    According to Wikipedia, a contemporary cynic has an attitude characterized by a general distrust of others’ motives. “A cynic may have a general lack of faith or hope in the human species or people motivated by ambition, desire, greed, gratification, materialism, goals, and opinions that a cynic perceives as vain, unobtainable, or ultimately meaningless and therefore deserving of ridicule or admonishment.”

    In ancient Greece, where the term originated, Diogenes lived in a barrel on the streets of ancient Athens.  Again as per Wikipedia, ancient cynics believed “people can gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which is natural for themselves, rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, sex, and fame. Instead, they were to lead a simple life free from all possessions”.

    The cynic should be using LinkedOut, not LinkedIn.  I was browsing LinkedIn this morning and my immediate and strong emotion was one of cynicism.

    Behavior in life is truly fractal. We all spring from the same simple cells which first divided to form life millions of years ago; and so it is of little surprise perhaps that the behavior of life is fractal from the smallest microbe upwards.  Life fights to the death. Bacteria struggles to overcome and dominate. The fungi battle against competing species to achieve dominance so they can fruit and spread their spores. The fox kills and eats the chicken to survive and spread his selfish gene and so on up to the level of the human race.

    Business is a battleground. In some countries of the world, life is still largely physical and hence violence is too.  The rule of law is such in many of the world’s ghastly corners that humans can still behave like the fox or the jackal. Or indeed like bacteria or fungi. They club and fight and kill for land and possessions so that they too can pass on their unworthy genes. And so on into the next unworthy and unpleasant generation.

    In the more “civilized” West, fractal violence has had to adapt to a better enforced and more sophisticated rule of law.

    Social media has become the latest battleground where, instead of clubbing your fellow man to steal his food, shelter and wife you have to convince him to part with all three without violence.

    Commerce is the new violence. In the beginning was the mouth and the tooth and the claw. In the beginning was physical violence. And since behavior is fractal, for most species on earth outside of humanity, violence is still the means to survive and prosper.

    Think of cancer cells.

    But oh so clever man with his gift (or curse?) of consciousness now uses business to conquer and survive. Where he can, man will still use genuine violence in business. He seeks to ruin his competitor and drive him out of business. He seeks to convince the hapless and foolish consumer that his goods or services have value and more value than those of his competitors.

    Nowhere is Darwinism more evident than in the world of finance. The tooth and the claw have been replaced by marketing and sales.  The bookies and the forex dealers, the stock brokers and the sellers of investment systems must at one level know that they are selling poison and destruction but they don’t give a damn. If they did they would not survive.

    How can any man in good conscience sell bets or betting services when he knows that ruin is the outcome for the consumer? How can men sell endless seminars promising to teach fools to trade when they must know they are selling moonshine and bullshit?

    How can the forex broker and execution only stock broker fill his website with useless trading tips and promises when he knows (or ought to know) that he is selling snake-oil with the intention of transferring wealth (and hence Darwinian survival) from the punters’ pockets to his own?

    Someone quite rightly recently admonished me by pointing out that there are good things happening in the world.

    I must scour LinkedOut for good people doing good things. They must be there.

  • The Destructive Power of Cynicism

    The Destructive Power of Cynicism

    Reading of the demise of renowned fund manager Neil Woodford, I was reminded of my deep capacity for destructive cynicism.

    The fellow had had a good run for many years but like all gurus, investment or otherwise, he eventually proved to have feet of clay like the rest of us.

    But cynicism and its close relative schadenfreude are undoubtedly not the correct way to “greet” the news.

    Cynicism seems to be one of my default settings and it is not a healthy one. It strikes most vehemently after a bad night’s sleep when I am feeling (just for a change) irritable and grumpy.

    It is my view that active fund managers succeed more by luck than skill (however intelligent they may be, or otherwise). They also prosper by good marketing. Fund managers are by definition “Andy Average” and the stars, over the long term, revert to the mean.

    While that may be true, the correct response to such a decline such as that suffered by this long successful manager should be quiet understanding of the laws of the market which humble us all eventually.

    My natural temptation on bad hair days is to crow. To say “I told you so”. But this is not helpful. He, along with all the other fallen stars, have presumably done a good and honest job as stewards of our pensions and savings over many years.

    It is entirely our own fault, not his, if we believed the hype which inevitably follows such people on their rise towards what (inevitably) turns out to be their zenith. If we were so convinced that such stars are eventually pulled by gravity to their nadir then so be it, we were right all along. But so what?

    If we believe in fairy tales we will eventually be disappointed, but we have to believe in something or we will not get through the day, let alone life.

    Cynicism is such an easy and yet self destructive trap to fall into.

    Instead of commenting on such things (or even noticing their occurrence) we should be quietly promoting views which we consider to be more appropriate.

    To concentrate on the positive and to ignore the negative.

    This post is not intended to be about my investment views. But I should concentrate on the positive; I should tell people about what I consider the “correct” and more durable approach to investing.

    Negativity serves no purpose whatsoever.