Is Libertarianism Nothing More Than The Glorification Of Greed And Irresponsibility?
The faith in the sanctity of the market is the bedrock of the Libertarian creed. It is not so much a philosophy as a religion- only in place of a benevolent God, we have the omniscient market. The market is seen as a perfect, self regulating mechanism. The implication is that, it is far better to let the market take its natural course, than intervene and cause much greater disharmony in the long run. Supporting their hypothesis with innumerable examples of bungled attempts by governments to meddle in the economy, their basic ethos is: the less government the better.
This argument is a bit like someone arguing that we should fire the gardener of a beautiful English style garden in which nature appears to be a cacophony, which naturally makes room for all and finds its own harmony. If one were to follow this advice and fire the gardener, for a time there would be very little visible effect. Nature would carry on, the seasons would bring changes, and life would appear to be going on very much as it had been before.
However, if you were to return to the garden after an absence of several years, the difference would be noticeable. It would look wild and dishevelled. Eventually, there would be no trace of what was once a beautifully balanced garden. This is because, while subtle and barely noticeable on the surface, beneath the surface, nature is relentlessly taking its course. The longer the garden is left, the more difficult it becomes to restore its equilibrium. If left too long, it simply runs to seed and one will pretty well have to start from scratch in creating a new order in the wilderness.
This is precisely what took place with the deregulation of the financial system. Bit by bit, it began to shift. Practices became steadily more and more aggressive and dodgy. The bubble it created drove up the house prices, which helped to keep it all hidden from view. Eventually, gravity kicked in and the artificially stimulated, housing bubble burst. Without deregulation, the bubbles can form from time to time, but of a much smaller duration and magnitude. The sheer size of this bubble was enough to destabilize, not only the local economy, but sent the entire world financial system into a tailspin.
No doubt, the diehard libertarians will attempt to blame the scoundrels who took advantage of the system. What they chose to overlook is that opportunity makes the thief. There are always hucksters looking for a chance to make a quick return and to bend the system to their advantage. Deregulation created a veritable Mecca for the con man. No one feels sorry for the thief who is caught. But, what of those sages who made his job so easy? Are they not just as culpable, if not more?
Over-managing the economy is, no doubt, a mistake, but simply abdicating control to the whims of the market, is nothing short of madness. It is a course that is only ever recommended by those who either are direct beneficiaries of these practices, or feel themselves so well insulated from financial calamity that they are immune to any and all eventualities
John Berling Hardy is author of the e-book “Have We Been
Played?- The Hidden Game Revealed.” The insights contained in
this series give you the Edge. To find out more about the carefully
guarded secret shared by all those who enjoy power and prestige visit
Have We Been Played.com.
Budapest Tales: A Case Study In Narcissism
Have you ever wondered how it is that there is a certain type of character, narcissistic to the core, almost comically over confidant and smug, who despite a lack of talent or virtue, seems to coast through life, achieving far more than those who surpass them in every way. From my time living in Budapest, I still have a fond recollection of a pair of stories reported in the local paper, which speak to this topic.
In the first story, a young woman was out for a run in a residential area in the southern part of Pest. Out of nowhere, she was set upon by a vicious German Shepherd, bounding towards her with murderous intent in its eyes. The dog chased her for several blocks and would have mauled her had she not changed course, jumped a fence, ran across a park and jumped into the Danube. Fortunately, for our heroine, it was winter, and the dog having an aversion to cold water, elected not to pursue her. When the police finally tracked down the owner of the dog, a pensioner who had moved back from the USA to live out his autumn years in his motherland, his only comment was to refer to the unfortunate woman as a silly bitch who lacked enough sense to climb a telephone pole.
In the second story, an entrepreneur, reported to be a foreigner of Hungarian descent, had purchased an old construction crane, set it up on a bridge across the Tisza River, and set himself up in the bungee jumping business. Akos, a man in his late 40s, known to be a bit of a firebrand, was his first paying customer, and as it turned out, he was also the last. When Akos jumped from the bridge, the stress was seemingly too great for the housing fixing the crane to the bridge. The article went on to say that the injuries Akos would have sustained from the fall would not have been so bad had the crane not dislodged from its housing and landed upon him. At the time the article was written, Akos was languishing in the hospital in a full body caste, but expected to make a full recovery.
As absurd and tragic comedic as these stories may appear, they are very real portraits of players in action.
Denial has a pejorative connotation. However, it is actually a necessary part of our mental framework. It is a kind of disassociation. All of us do it, yet none of us can fully own up to it. Ironically, we must deny our own denial. Otherwise, it would cease to function for us. It helps us not to see what we wish not to see. It acts as a kind of filtering lens, only allowing that information which helps support our beliefs to pass through. In the case of the player, this denial is of such a magnitude that it eclipses everything else. It literally borders on madness. They create reality as they go along. As opposed to maintaining certain fixed ideas as we all do, the object of their denial is constantly shifting.
The pedophile is an example of this phenomenon. They serially commit heinous acts while maintaining an impeccable image of propriety before both the world and themselves. It is not by chance that so many of these deviants cloak themselves in the robes of the minister or priest. Not only does it provide them with a perfect cover, and credibility as well, it also perfectly matches their own view of themselves. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of these individuals is that despite the acts they commit, even when apprehended, they continue to see themselves as virtuous. This narcissistic loop is almost impossible to break, making rehabilitation highly unlikely. Being skilled actors, they have no trouble aping the pattern of behavior of a rehabilitee, but this is just another subterfuge.
Entitlement and vindictiveness are central to the narcissistic personality. They are really two sides of the same coin. Narcissists feel naturally entitled to anything they desire. In fact, in their inner world, desires would be elevated to needs and rights. One of these is the right to always come out on top; to always win!
No matter how much they get, how many times they win, they feel an absence of gratitude. Narcissists are ravenous. When deprived of the material rewards or deference they feel to be their due, they are enraged. Because of their completely distorted sense of their own importance, the slightest provocation can provoke the severest retribution. This narcissistic rage, particularly when not readily vented, becomes a vindictive obsession, which can consume them for years.
As awful as there behaviour is and as much carnage as they leave behind on a certain level they must be pitied. For all their self importance and bombast they are behind it all just silly sad people doomed to repeat the same mistakes ad naseum.
John Berling Hardy is author of the e-book “Have We Been
Played?- The Hidden Game Revealed.” The insights contained in
this series give you the Edge. To find out more about the carefully
guarded secret shared by all those who enjoy power and prestige visit
Have We Been Played.com.
Is It Really So Nice To Be Nice?
Niceness is the zeitgeist of today. When our ancestors look back through the filter of time, what is it that they will find noteworthy about the people who live in this century? It will not be our valour, nor our cruelty. In both, we have been far surpassed by our forefathers. Nor are our achievements in the arts likely to stand out, as there have been golden ages in the past far more refined than our own period. It will not be our reason, intellectual insight, or mental agility, since these qualities have been in abundance well before the dawn of this century. No. Instead, I would suggest that it will be our niceness which really distinguishes us from those who inhabited other epochs.
This niceness should not be confused for genuine kindness or goodness. It is, at its root, an obsession with being thought well of, not merely by our peers, but by the entire TV audience. Niceness is a sham; sugar-coated narcissism. What lies behind kindness is genuine caring for the other. The energy behind niceness is somehow cloying, as if you were imploring someone to like you. The former is generous, the latter obsequious. The former comes from strength, the latter from weakness. Where one flourishes, the other cannot. Kindness and niceness are mutually exclusive.
Political correctness is niceness elevated to the level of philosophy. It is the new orthodoxy, literally defining North American society. It is reflected in the media, in our laws, in our politics. Being politically correct in your presentation is not a matter of choice; it is a social mandate. Taking any strong position on any topic is tantamount to social suicide. These days, someone being politically incorrect is the equivalent of having spoken out against the party in the Soviet Union or decrying Christian values in the Victorian era. For instance, even the vaguest suggestion that the game exists, is a complete faux pas in the politically correct world. If one is foolish enough to press the point, one risks become a social pariah.
What exactly is political correctness? It is easier to say what it is not. It is not racist, it is not sexist and it is not restrictive. It is not anything at all! It is intolerance of intolerance itself. Any ideology draws a boundary somewhere as to what is acceptable and what is not; what is tolerable and what is not. Propriety, in the past, was prescribed by dogma. Ironically, political correctness denounces dogma as being intolerant, yet manages to be no less judgmental. In the end all we are left with is blandness, tepidness, mediocrity; in other words, niceness!
It is the coup de grace on the part of the players who designed the game. Now they can do as they wish and cover their tracks with long speeches dripping with false sentiment. Anyone who speaks out against their schemes is marginalized for being too negative. As our rights are taken from us, and as we are herded about we are completely oblivious to the fact that we are in a gigantic prison, because it is so very, very nice!
John Berling Hardy is author of the e-book “Have We Been
Played?- The Hidden Game Revealed.” The insights contained in
this series give you the Edge. To find out more about the carefully
guarded secret shared by all those who enjoy power and prestige visit
Have We Been Played.com.
Are We Trapped In A Web of Myths
As you look around you, do you ever get the feeling that something is going on? Have you ever suspected that some gargantuan joke is being played, and that there are some people who are having a great laugh at our expense?
What if there was an artificial order imposed upon our random, chaotic existence? What if the architect of this order was not God, or Satan, for that matter? What if its creators were not Gods, or even Nietzschian supermen, but very ordinary human beings with a keen insight into the weaker side of human nature- people who were manipulators par excellence.
Our world is encapsulated in a matrix, an artificial structure, which has been imposed upon us all. However, if this is the case, how can it be so resilient? How can it survive all the tumultuous rises and falls of civilizations and empires throughout we have experienced over the last several millennia? The answer lies in its being firmly rooted in three basic aspects of human nature.
The first is a primal need for authority. Though every human being is born with an innate capacity to think, thinking for ourselves is something we only do as an absolute last resort. Most of the decisions that we make day to day are nothing more than automatic responses. This relates to our morning bathroom routine, our selection of routes to take to work, the choices we make during the workday. It even relates to the way we interact with those around us.
We live life exchanging one trance for another. Each activity, each environment, is associated with a different set of conditioned responses. The moment we encounter anything out of the ordinary, it forces us to wake up out of our trance and fully engage our minds. This requires effort, and we only do it when we have to. This innate tendency towards parking our minds in one trance or other is critically important in understanding how we are seduced by the players into buying into the grand illusion that conceals the game.
This disinclination to think creates a vacuum, which the players are very happy to fill. Of course, for this hypnosis to work it must be veiled, otherwise we would immediately rebel against someone trying to overtly take control of our minds. To get around this problem we are sold a meticulously crafted version of reality, which is framed by a collection of myths. These myths are bound together by one great meta-myth: the myth of linearity. This serves to seed the soil effectively in our minds for the other myths to be received. This societal trance is so expertly layered that it makes it extremely difficult to detect.
One great challenge in understanding this mountain of artifice is that it is so very, very dense. It is multi-layered and intricately interlaced. In this way it becomes exceedingly difficult for anyone to pull the strands apart and get at the truth hidden beneath.
On the individual level, there is the narcissistic trance. The underlying presumption of this trance is that we experience ourselves as being the nexus of the universe. Instead of seeing ourselves as part of a whole, we experience the whole as an extension of ourselves. Only pure narcissists, such as the players, experience the world literally in this way. For the rest of us, who are merely narcissistic, it represents a bias, which is in the background of our thoughts all the time. This bias is subtle, but nevertheless, extremely potent.
The zeitgeist of this century is narcissism. The world as it is today is not merely narcissistic; narcissism has become its defining feature. It captures the very essence of twentieth century man; the way we think, the way we relate to each other, the way we see the world. Ubiquitous, it has been integrated into our reality to such an extent that most of us are completely blind to the degree to which it permeates our lives. It has become the background to our existence.
To take it a step further, I would argue that what in the past was referred to pejoratively as narcissism, has been elevated to the status of a religious faith. The enlightened selfishness prescribed by the eighteenth century philosopher and economist Adam Smith has been distorted into a moral justification for wanton greed and personal indulgence.
The next layer is the group, or tribal, level of trance. Human beings, being social animals, have a natural need to organize into groups. Even the most individualistic among us begins to suffer withdrawal symptoms if we are separated from human contact for too long. Each group exerts influence on its members. Even in the absence of a defined set of rules the members of the group must abide by, over time the group will exert a homogenizing influence on those within it. This will impact how those within the group will see the world, and their place in it.
The next level is the societal trance. This is a collection of related myths, which frame the worldview of society. Examples of this are the myth of scarcity, law and order, the sanctity of science, etc. Individually, these myths can be challenged, but taken together they are daunting.
The myth of linearity is the meta-myth, which supports all the others. It is the belief that sequential logic rules the world. That everything is related by interminable chains of cause and effect. Linearity is the wellspring from which all the other myths emanate and this myth is the glue that binds all others together.
It is time that we as a civilization woke up from this trance we have been in, and reclaimed our lives. What the world we awaken to will look like is impossible to predict. But would it not be wonderful to find out?
John Berling Hardy is author of the e-book “Have We Been
Played?- The Hidden Game Revealed.” The insights contained in
this series give you the Edge. To find out more about the carefully
guarded secret shared by all those who enjoy power and prestige visit
Have We Been Played.com.
Be Careful What You Wish For!
Is it not wonderful to have all the choices in the world? For many of us this is literally the definition of success, having the ability to choose. We all strive to steer our own boat, be master of our own destiny. But is this really true? Does having unlimited choices actually make anyone happy?
Having an infinite array of choices, not knowing which to choose, creates a great deal of pressure. However, the pleasure of having choices is quickly outweighed by the fact that which ever we choose, we are forgoing on so much of what could have been. I think this is why so many people who we would ordinarily think of as being extraordinarily lucky, are quite miserable. An example from my own personal experience, Nadia, the wife of a hedge fund manager, for whom I was commissioned to build a home, illustrates this beautifully.
Nadia was obsessed with design of the front door. The main entry, though representing only a fraction of a percent of the total cost of the home, is the focal point of the facade of the house. On the one hand it needs to blend in with the rest of the facade, but at the same time it must stand out enough to draw your eye.
The door can stand on its own, or it might have sidelights on each side as well as a window, or transom, above. The door can be painted, the same color as the rest of the trend, or in a different color. If this color in turn can be another shade of the trim color or an altogether different color. Alternatively, it can be stained, which implies a whole other list of possibilities relating to grain pattern, stain and level of sheen.
The appropriate choice of entry will not radically change our impression of the home, it will merely complete it. On the other hand, the wrong choice will be like a pimple on the nose of a beautiful woman, try as we may, we cannot take our eyes off it.
With this in mind, let us return to the heroine of our story, Nadia. Nadia, by nature hated to be held accountable for anything. Her two steady refrains were that she needed more hand holding and that she wanted to know who dropped the ball. In reality it was she who dropped the ball, but pointing this small fact out Nadia would only have provoked hysterics on her part.
On the matter of the door she sought whatever help she could, from whomever she could trouble to get it. She asked the builder(myself), she asked the architect, she asked the designer, she asked her friends, she even asked people she really could not stand; she even asked the postman. For months, each day Nadia drove around various neighbourhoods of the city looking at doorways. When she went on vacation with her husband, she looked at still more doorways.
The problem was that the more doorways Nadia saw, the more confused she became. Her friends were starting to find to her a bore, as she could talk of nothing else. She was completely obsessed. Nadia was slowly, but surely, going out of her mind, and all over this damned door!
Months went by, the seasons passed. Slowly, painfully slowly, the house progressed. Yet still a gaping hole remained in the front where the door was to be. A year later, after which I had long left the project, I happen to pass that way. The home was complete; a front door was in place. It was a mahogany door with a double panel design indistinguishable from any number of doorways of homes built in that area around that time.
The moral of the story is that the next time you encounter a beautifully dressed, perfectly coifed, woman riding in a sleek black SUV with her cell phone tight to one ear, wearing sunglasses and a stony expression, think hard about what victory in the great game looks like.
John Berling Hardy is author of the e-book “Have We Been
Played?- The Hidden Game Revealed.” The insights contained in
this series give you the Edge. To find out more about the carefully
guarded secret shared by all those who enjoy power and prestige visit
Have We Been Played.com.