One of the readers on this site just sent me a link for a new Pastor Mike screed about "Hell". Seems the goodly pastor is fully exercised (exorcised?) that not enough people are taking that infernal abode seriously. Those who can stomach it, can read more here:
http://www.pastormstahlschurch.com/index.php?p=1_82_WHO-THE-HELL-CARES-
One thing that comes across from this dreck, as my notifier observed, is that (according to the Pastor) MOST humans are DAMNED! Evidently only about a handful of our species will walk through those pearly gates, and enjoy ....what? I guess sitting on a cloud, playing a harp whilst occasionally glancing over to see 100 billion fellow beings burning - while basking in an unseemly air of self-righteousness. (No wonder when faced with this option, people prefer Hell by 5 to 1)
Again, this is absolute nonsense. The Roman Catholic Church wisely moved away from Hell-bending and obsession with good reason. It was undermining their rational stance, and making them appear like the medieval demagogoues so many critics claimed. It didn't help that creepy exorcisms were also sometimes televised, such as a memorable one about fifteen years ago on a Larry King show about the Devil and Hell.
On that show, skeptic author Paul Kurtz totally pulverized his RC padre opponent and made him look like someone who just came through a time machine from the middle ages.
Here is what we do know: Hell isn't even an original concept. Christians hijacked it from early pagan mystery cults-religions sometime around the Second Council of Constantinople. Up until then, the early Christian Fathers (e.g. Origin of Adamantius, Clement of Alexandria) had taught the more subtle and sane doctrine of metempsychosis. Which when you delve into it, makes vastly more sense than the juvenile "heaven and hell".
In metempsychosis, the soul is held in abeyance for some interval - which could be from 1 day to 100,000 years - before being allowed to "emigrate" into a new body via conception. As we see from this, the soul does not originate at conception, but rather is pre-existing and externally transferred to the new zygote. Is it possible to have a soulless human? Yes, according to metempsychosis it is! There may in fact be humans who have not been subsequently habitated by a soul, for whatever reason.
One can think here of total monsters like Adolf Hitler, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer. In each of these cases, the degree of monstrosity in their assorted acts is concomitant with nary an ounce of regret, and discloses the existence of a soulless monster. Or does it?
To the atheist-Materialist such as I am, this is all specious nonsense, since we don't accept "souls" or afterlives or transferral of the intangible energies of souls via metempsychosis or reincarnation for that matter (which differs from metempsychosis in that the SAME soul is given to return time and again to different bodies.). However, we do recognize the relativity of nonsense. Not all nonsense is create equally, in other words.
For example, metempsychosis may be nonsense, but on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the most egregious nonsense) it is maybe a '2' while "Heaven-Hell" occupy a 10.
Similarly, Bigfoot may be nonsense, but it is at maybe a '4' or '5' while fairies are a '10'. Alien abductions of suburban white matrons to harvest their eggs may be nonsense, but it is at a 1 or 2, compared with werewolves wreaking havoc.
It's all relative.
Unfortunately, the other main problem with Hell belief as espoused and laid out by the goodly Pastor, is that it is a sure symptom of psychosis. I went into this briefly in an early blog spot concerning a teen girl in Barbados who "lost it" because she believed demons were pursuing her.
I later had occasion to speak with her then pscyhiatrist - not about the girl personally- but rather the whole meme of Hell belief and promotion.
The psychiatrist, a Dr. Pat Bannister, informed me that while not all Hell believers she had met were psychotics, nearly all psychotics were strong Hell believers. And not just any old "hell" but the old fire and brimstone variety.
In fact, John Wayne Gacy - when he confessed to the 29 or so murders he committed, was heard to say: "Now, I am gonna burn forever in Hell!"
A key component of a Hell-psychotic, as Dr. Bannister put it to me in 1972, was that they not only believed in this abode themselves, but believed it applied to all who didn't fit into their behavioral mode. That usually meant, in the case of hyper-religious folk (who could also be classified as partial psychotics): Unbelievers, or....good faithful Christians who merely believed Jesus was a great man and not a God.
The other key attibute of the Hell psychotic is manifested when they are hypnotized, and convinced during the hypnosis that there is NO Hell.
On coming out of the trance, they typically go bonkers - shouting, pulling their hair out, cutting themselves with razors. According to one therp - one such person even tried to jump through a window. The only solution was to put them back into the trance and re-introduce the Hell belief for their survival.
Why? Why did the presence of the Hell belief matter to their sanity? One would have thought the opposite.
As Dr. Bannister put it, the reason is that Hell is the ultimate sanction and backstop for their morality. If there is no ultimate sanction, their morality is meaningless. In other words, screwy as it sounds to a rational mind, the morality these pathetic dregs follow is contingent on an ultimate place of punishment for all those who DON'T follow it! Their mental peace resides on knowing that all others face eternal destruction if they don't follow the same rules.
In addition, no rational appeals based on a loving God are any use. The crazed, psychotic Hell believer will simply rationalize away all challenges and find a reason that even a loving God HAD to invent Hell.
Is it possible to rescue these pathological people from themselves? In an unpublished manuscript entitled The Hell Delusion, written ca. 1979, I actually included a chapter wherein I dealt with this issue. I suggested that all of these extreme Hellists be rounded up and implanted with electrodes in their limbic systems.
While in 1979 this perhaps sounded preposterous, it no longer is with the advent of quantum dot electrodes - which can easily be inserted into a brain synapse or neural junction. Although you don't hear very much about it (we can understand why!) it is now possible that negative emotions emanating from the brain's amygdala or hippocampus can be suitably regulated or modulated by properly installed quantum electrodes or even micro-chips.
Within such devices also resides the possible end to all prisons. Instead of squandering so much in the way of money and resources to keep the anti-social locked up, electrodes-chips are simply implanted in their brains to regulate behavior. Ordinary people may also wish to seek the benefit of these devices, which once wedded to the neural chassis, are bound to make for a more productive and efficient being.
In the meantime, the most important use for these chips, electrodes and quantum dots is surely to control and manage the Hellish ideations of those like Pastor Mike. At the very least, so they don't spread their mental contamination and craziness to more vulnerable and impressionable minds. We don't need any more psychos in this country!
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
"Evil" - the natural outcome of innate brain defects
While assorted religious crazies and insane people foment their fake umbrage at "evil" (some so insane that they go so far as to invent a personality to embody it, e.g. "Satan") more level -headed and rational beings have always been aware it's a con. "Evil" exists, but not as an infinite negative absolute, or personified in an entity, but rather as a dynamic of our own brain.
What people refer to as “evil” is easily explainable in terms of brain evolution. Thus, Homo Sapiens is fundamentally an animal species with a host of animal/primitive instincts residing in its ancient brain or paleocortex.
Meanwhile, the paleocortex sits evolutionarily beneath the more evolved mesocortex and neocortex, the latter of which crafts concepts and language. One clever person has compared this tri-partite brain structure to a car design welding a Lamborghini to a Model T Ford chassis, with a 1957 Chevy engine to power the Lamborghini. If an automotive engineer can conceive of such a hybrid beast, I'd be interested to know exactly how he thinks it would run.
Given the preceding brain structural defect, there is much evidence that the aggregate of human behavior will get progressively worse as the complexity inherent in technological and globalized societies increases, but brain evolution is unable to keep pace with it. Basically, we are a species with the capability of making nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles – but with Cro-Magnon brains – and a swatch of reptilian tendencies.
Indeed, the mixed brain design, in terms of adaptability to technological society, is already theorized as one major cause of depression and mental illness in such societies (e.g. The Noonday Demon, Chapter 11, ‘Evolution’, p 401)
The behavior resulting from this hybrid brain is bound to be morally mixed, reflecting the fact that we literally have three “brains” contending for emergence in one cranium. Behavior will therefore range from the most selfless acts (not to mention creative masterpieces) to savagery, carnal lust run amuck and addictions that paralyze purpose.
The mistake of the religionist is to associate the first mode of behavior with being “human” and not the latter. In effect, disowning most of the possible behaviors of which humans are capable.- and hence nine tenths of what makes us what we are. Worse, not only disowning these behaviors – but ascribing them to some antagonistic dark or negative force (“Satan”) thereby making them into a religious abstraction.
The neocortex then goes into over-drive, propelled by its ability to craft words for which no correspondents may exist in reality. Suddenly, our “souls” are at risk of being “lost” to “Satan” who will then fry us in “Hell”. In effect, the religionist’s higher brain centers divide reality into forces of darkness and light, just like the ancient Manicheans.
As the divide grows and persists, certain behaviorally idealistic expectations come to the fore, and a mass of negative or primitive actions is relegated to “evil”. Humans tuned in to this Zeitgeist, which is soon circulated everywhere, being to suppress all behaviors that they regard as defective or “sinful”. They don’t realize or appreciate that humans are risen apes, and not “fallen angels”.
Are we all “sinners” as assorted fundamentalist crazies and zealots claim? No, we’re an animal species saddled with a tri-partite brain whose higher centers often become self aware of the gulf between the base, atavistic and primitive behaviors (emanating from the reptilian brain) and the ideal, non-atavistic behavior conceived by the neocortex. The neocortical language centers then craft the term “sin” to depict the gulf between one and the other.
In this context, the concept of “sin” makes eminent sense. Sin emerges as the label placed on specific brands and forms of “evil”. In reality, “Sin” itself is predicated on an exaggerated importance of humans in the universe. Thus, it elevates (albeit in a perverse way) the importance of humans in an otherwise meaningless cosmos. With “sin” the overly self-important and morally smug, self-righteous human has at least the potential of offending his deity – thereby getting its attention – as opposed to being relegated to the status of a cosmic “roach” (which any advanced alien sentience would regard us). "Sin" is thus an attention getter to a Big Cosmic Daddy.
“Sin” then is localized and reactive behavior at the personal, individual level. “Sin” impinges on and affects the deity that so many believe in. Take away the deity, and sin loses its allure and quickly becomes redundant. How can there be “sin” if there is no deity to offend or to notice “sin”? To tote up all the little “black marks” in its “book of future judgment”.
“The Devil” or “Satan” is simply the projection of the most primitive brain imperatives onto the external world. And yes, this imperative (which I will soon get to in more detail) is capable of mass murder as well as genocides. A supernatural Satan need not be invoked here, only the ancient brain residue of reptiles – acting collectively – aided and abetted by a newly perverted neocortex, which now does the reptile brain’s bidding, as opposed to attempting to halt it.
In fundies' parlance, this projected entity is indeed “like a lion seeking someone to devour”. Think of the T-Rex and its insatiable appetite for flesh. Think of components and aspects of the T-Rex brain in each of us. Lying in wait for the right trigger to set it off – like in the Virginia Tech massacre. Now, project that horror and its instincts to tear, rip and kill anything different or vulnerable outside yourself. Voila! We have "the Devil” incarnate. Only really a psychological embolism adorned in reptile tendencies we have within us. So alien and terrifying we have to project it outside to a nameless “Devil”. Too horrific to take ownership of!
Interestingly, some authors turn these concepts back on themselves and arrive at mind-boggling conclusions. The authors of the book ‘Mean Genes” for example, make the case that genetic imperatives often drive the most fundamental (epigenetic) morality. The hybrid brain in this sense is merely the facilitator of the genes’ imperatives. Perhaps there is a method behind the “madness” of the brain’s disjunctive function: To aid and abet a primal, epigenetic morality.
On the local level, the genetic imperative means I protect my family first in the event of disaster. The welfare of others is secondary, given limitations of time and resources. It is my family’s genes that must prevail. To the extent they do, epigenetic morality is satisfied. A certain pool of genes has increased its survival value.
In the larger societal sense and deformed to an extreme, the epigenetic imperative leads to horrors such as the Holocaust, where Jews were depicted as inimical genetic “aliens” to “true Germans” and the German Fatherland. (In a trip to Germany in 1985, I still found a number of WWII era Germans who accepted this.) And hence could be dispensed with as serious threats, once their own humanity was removed. Likewise, the genetic imperative running amuck explains the Rwandan genocide, where Tutsis could be dispensed with as the “genetic aliens” to the REAL Rwandans, the Hutus. (In this case, Hutu talk radio played a key role in spreading the memes for the epigenetic morality- another reason why we may be well advised to bring back the "Fairness Doctrine" in this country - to allow opposing viewpoints to be aired in the same time spots as the most off the wall talk radio screeds.)
Examining these genocides at the detached, objective level one cannot but help notice the analogies with ant (or bee) species that invade the habitats (e.g. hives) of others, kill them, make off with their queens and seize their resources.
In this sense, the epigenetic morality and imperative emerges as the real “god” articulated in the Bible, while the perfecto, “goody two shoes” posturer (invented later by the clever, angelic leaning neocortex) is the fake. This was the contention of author Lloyd Graham in the last chapter of his book, ‘Deceptions and Myths of the Bible’, 1979.
For example, as Graham observes (p. 315):
“Satan is matter and its energies and the (Temptation of Jesus in the desert) story is but a mythologist’s way of telling us…that in the inanimate world matter and energy dominate….The only consciousness here is the epigenetic and this is – as yet- wholly incapable of controlling violent forces. This explains why our imaginary God of love and mercy allows these forces to destroy us”.
Graham’s depiction of the material and epigenetic god is one embedded in carnal lusts, revenge and avarice – so how can humanity be any different?
As Graham earlier notes (p. 272):
“Man owes God nothing, not even thanks. Whatever is, exists because of necessity and not divine sufferance. And whatever exists suffers because of nondivine Causation. Our world is full of suffering, tragedy, disease, disaster, pain; we demand a better reason than religion has to offer.”
Perhaps for this reason, Graham insists that it is the de facto “creations” – humankind- who are the genuine authors of workable morality (“dynamic justness” not moral justice) not the claimed “Maker”.
Religious scholar Elaine Pagels makes much the same point in her book, ‘The Gnostic Gospels’ pointing out that the Gnostics regarded the biblical deity as a degenerate sub- being which they called “demiurgos”.
Of course, the Christian reading this will no doubt chime in: “What about free will? Can we not resist the epigenetic imperative?”
Maybe, but it’s by no means clear that any such entity as “free will” exists other than in limited domains. (E.g. I have the “free will” to choose a vegetarian diet over an all mear diet)
Even Einstein, writing in his marvelous book ‘Ideas and Opinions’ was suspicious that humans were genuinely free agents. As he noted:
“The man who is thoroughly convinced of universal causation …..has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man’s actions are determined by necessity – internal and external- so that he cannot be responsible….any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motion it undergoes"
The beauty of atheism is that it dispenses with both demiurgos (the petulant genetic “evil god”) and “Satan”, and atheists emerge as grown up enough to assume responsibility for their own actions, rather than whining that “the devil made me do it” or worse, projecting Satanic motives and attributes onto fellow beings. (We know where that sort of demonization leads!) We know the real “devil” inheres in those untamed genetic imperatives, and we also know that to the extent we are self-aware – we can often defeat the more parochial and self-serving tendencies and sometimes aspire to greatness. Leap-frogging and circumventing our human limits.
Thereby we can avoid blaming every major human tragedy and back step on some imagined supernatural “dark force” permeating existence and just waiting to catch us unawares.
There is a dark “force” in the cosmos and we call it “dark energy”. But it is something that can be discerned by physics and has no supernatural attributes. Intelligent humans would do best to invest their time investigating the nature and mystery of dark energy, rather than squandering time on silly phantasmagorias and fabrications of the mind like “Satan” and “evil”.
What people refer to as “evil” is easily explainable in terms of brain evolution. Thus, Homo Sapiens is fundamentally an animal species with a host of animal/primitive instincts residing in its ancient brain or paleocortex.
Meanwhile, the paleocortex sits evolutionarily beneath the more evolved mesocortex and neocortex, the latter of which crafts concepts and language. One clever person has compared this tri-partite brain structure to a car design welding a Lamborghini to a Model T Ford chassis, with a 1957 Chevy engine to power the Lamborghini. If an automotive engineer can conceive of such a hybrid beast, I'd be interested to know exactly how he thinks it would run.
Given the preceding brain structural defect, there is much evidence that the aggregate of human behavior will get progressively worse as the complexity inherent in technological and globalized societies increases, but brain evolution is unable to keep pace with it. Basically, we are a species with the capability of making nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles – but with Cro-Magnon brains – and a swatch of reptilian tendencies.
Indeed, the mixed brain design, in terms of adaptability to technological society, is already theorized as one major cause of depression and mental illness in such societies (e.g. The Noonday Demon, Chapter 11, ‘Evolution’, p 401)
The behavior resulting from this hybrid brain is bound to be morally mixed, reflecting the fact that we literally have three “brains” contending for emergence in one cranium. Behavior will therefore range from the most selfless acts (not to mention creative masterpieces) to savagery, carnal lust run amuck and addictions that paralyze purpose.
The mistake of the religionist is to associate the first mode of behavior with being “human” and not the latter. In effect, disowning most of the possible behaviors of which humans are capable.- and hence nine tenths of what makes us what we are. Worse, not only disowning these behaviors – but ascribing them to some antagonistic dark or negative force (“Satan”) thereby making them into a religious abstraction.
The neocortex then goes into over-drive, propelled by its ability to craft words for which no correspondents may exist in reality. Suddenly, our “souls” are at risk of being “lost” to “Satan” who will then fry us in “Hell”. In effect, the religionist’s higher brain centers divide reality into forces of darkness and light, just like the ancient Manicheans.
As the divide grows and persists, certain behaviorally idealistic expectations come to the fore, and a mass of negative or primitive actions is relegated to “evil”. Humans tuned in to this Zeitgeist, which is soon circulated everywhere, being to suppress all behaviors that they regard as defective or “sinful”. They don’t realize or appreciate that humans are risen apes, and not “fallen angels”.
Are we all “sinners” as assorted fundamentalist crazies and zealots claim? No, we’re an animal species saddled with a tri-partite brain whose higher centers often become self aware of the gulf between the base, atavistic and primitive behaviors (emanating from the reptilian brain) and the ideal, non-atavistic behavior conceived by the neocortex. The neocortical language centers then craft the term “sin” to depict the gulf between one and the other.
In this context, the concept of “sin” makes eminent sense. Sin emerges as the label placed on specific brands and forms of “evil”. In reality, “Sin” itself is predicated on an exaggerated importance of humans in the universe. Thus, it elevates (albeit in a perverse way) the importance of humans in an otherwise meaningless cosmos. With “sin” the overly self-important and morally smug, self-righteous human has at least the potential of offending his deity – thereby getting its attention – as opposed to being relegated to the status of a cosmic “roach” (which any advanced alien sentience would regard us). "Sin" is thus an attention getter to a Big Cosmic Daddy.
“Sin” then is localized and reactive behavior at the personal, individual level. “Sin” impinges on and affects the deity that so many believe in. Take away the deity, and sin loses its allure and quickly becomes redundant. How can there be “sin” if there is no deity to offend or to notice “sin”? To tote up all the little “black marks” in its “book of future judgment”.
“The Devil” or “Satan” is simply the projection of the most primitive brain imperatives onto the external world. And yes, this imperative (which I will soon get to in more detail) is capable of mass murder as well as genocides. A supernatural Satan need not be invoked here, only the ancient brain residue of reptiles – acting collectively – aided and abetted by a newly perverted neocortex, which now does the reptile brain’s bidding, as opposed to attempting to halt it.
In fundies' parlance, this projected entity is indeed “like a lion seeking someone to devour”. Think of the T-Rex and its insatiable appetite for flesh. Think of components and aspects of the T-Rex brain in each of us. Lying in wait for the right trigger to set it off – like in the Virginia Tech massacre. Now, project that horror and its instincts to tear, rip and kill anything different or vulnerable outside yourself. Voila! We have "the Devil” incarnate. Only really a psychological embolism adorned in reptile tendencies we have within us. So alien and terrifying we have to project it outside to a nameless “Devil”. Too horrific to take ownership of!
Interestingly, some authors turn these concepts back on themselves and arrive at mind-boggling conclusions. The authors of the book ‘Mean Genes” for example, make the case that genetic imperatives often drive the most fundamental (epigenetic) morality. The hybrid brain in this sense is merely the facilitator of the genes’ imperatives. Perhaps there is a method behind the “madness” of the brain’s disjunctive function: To aid and abet a primal, epigenetic morality.
On the local level, the genetic imperative means I protect my family first in the event of disaster. The welfare of others is secondary, given limitations of time and resources. It is my family’s genes that must prevail. To the extent they do, epigenetic morality is satisfied. A certain pool of genes has increased its survival value.
In the larger societal sense and deformed to an extreme, the epigenetic imperative leads to horrors such as the Holocaust, where Jews were depicted as inimical genetic “aliens” to “true Germans” and the German Fatherland. (In a trip to Germany in 1985, I still found a number of WWII era Germans who accepted this.) And hence could be dispensed with as serious threats, once their own humanity was removed. Likewise, the genetic imperative running amuck explains the Rwandan genocide, where Tutsis could be dispensed with as the “genetic aliens” to the REAL Rwandans, the Hutus. (In this case, Hutu talk radio played a key role in spreading the memes for the epigenetic morality- another reason why we may be well advised to bring back the "Fairness Doctrine" in this country - to allow opposing viewpoints to be aired in the same time spots as the most off the wall talk radio screeds.)
Examining these genocides at the detached, objective level one cannot but help notice the analogies with ant (or bee) species that invade the habitats (e.g. hives) of others, kill them, make off with their queens and seize their resources.
In this sense, the epigenetic morality and imperative emerges as the real “god” articulated in the Bible, while the perfecto, “goody two shoes” posturer (invented later by the clever, angelic leaning neocortex) is the fake. This was the contention of author Lloyd Graham in the last chapter of his book, ‘Deceptions and Myths of the Bible’, 1979.
For example, as Graham observes (p. 315):
“Satan is matter and its energies and the (Temptation of Jesus in the desert) story is but a mythologist’s way of telling us…that in the inanimate world matter and energy dominate….The only consciousness here is the epigenetic and this is – as yet- wholly incapable of controlling violent forces. This explains why our imaginary God of love and mercy allows these forces to destroy us”.
Graham’s depiction of the material and epigenetic god is one embedded in carnal lusts, revenge and avarice – so how can humanity be any different?
As Graham earlier notes (p. 272):
“Man owes God nothing, not even thanks. Whatever is, exists because of necessity and not divine sufferance. And whatever exists suffers because of nondivine Causation. Our world is full of suffering, tragedy, disease, disaster, pain; we demand a better reason than religion has to offer.”
Perhaps for this reason, Graham insists that it is the de facto “creations” – humankind- who are the genuine authors of workable morality (“dynamic justness” not moral justice) not the claimed “Maker”.
Religious scholar Elaine Pagels makes much the same point in her book, ‘The Gnostic Gospels’ pointing out that the Gnostics regarded the biblical deity as a degenerate sub- being which they called “demiurgos”.
Of course, the Christian reading this will no doubt chime in: “What about free will? Can we not resist the epigenetic imperative?”
Maybe, but it’s by no means clear that any such entity as “free will” exists other than in limited domains. (E.g. I have the “free will” to choose a vegetarian diet over an all mear diet)
Even Einstein, writing in his marvelous book ‘Ideas and Opinions’ was suspicious that humans were genuinely free agents. As he noted:
“The man who is thoroughly convinced of universal causation …..has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man’s actions are determined by necessity – internal and external- so that he cannot be responsible….any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motion it undergoes"
The beauty of atheism is that it dispenses with both demiurgos (the petulant genetic “evil god”) and “Satan”, and atheists emerge as grown up enough to assume responsibility for their own actions, rather than whining that “the devil made me do it” or worse, projecting Satanic motives and attributes onto fellow beings. (We know where that sort of demonization leads!) We know the real “devil” inheres in those untamed genetic imperatives, and we also know that to the extent we are self-aware – we can often defeat the more parochial and self-serving tendencies and sometimes aspire to greatness. Leap-frogging and circumventing our human limits.
Thereby we can avoid blaming every major human tragedy and back step on some imagined supernatural “dark force” permeating existence and just waiting to catch us unawares.
There is a dark “force” in the cosmos and we call it “dark energy”. But it is something that can be discerned by physics and has no supernatural attributes. Intelligent humans would do best to invest their time investigating the nature and mystery of dark energy, rather than squandering time on silly phantasmagorias and fabrications of the mind like “Satan” and “evil”.
Responding to Libertarian Dreck
In 'Port-of-Call' - a subsidiary Newsletter (March issue) of Intertel, the top 1% IQ society, I had published an article entitled 'The Tattered Illusions of Knowledge', examining in depth the basis for what are called "toxic assets". I was specifically addressing one Libertarian's claim that there was no such thing and that the term "toxic assets" amounted to a travesty of language.
My original article and the Editor's response can be found here:
http://www.hevanet.com/kort/2009/stahl4.html
The Editor, Kort Patterson, also a hardcore Libertarian, totally missed the boat in his remarks - but never published my reply to his off-base criticisms. I presume because he didn't wish to carry on the debate further. Not wishing to let a good response go to waste, I therefore provide it below in its entirety:
As usual, Editor Kort amuses me with his rejoinder to my recent article (‘The Tattered Illusions of Knowledge’, March) and his claims that I have evinced little demonstration that I know what Libertarianism is about. Well, Kort, I do – but to have put all that into perspective would have required about doubling the article.
But let me stick to the basics here: I regard Libertarianism (after its main progenitor, Ayn Rand) as little more than an economic creed. Roughly the political-economic equivalent to creationism.
Before I go on to Libertarianism proper I want to demolish a few of the Editor’s early claims made to do with regulation, deregulation and “free markets”.
Kort avers (page 7): “there hasn’t been any meaningful deregulation of the American economy in the last half century”
Evidently he conveniently forgets (or perhaps doesn’t know – since we are on the topic of illusions of knowledge) that massive deregulation was ushered in under the Reagan administration, from the Bank Holding Act(1984) to rescinding “Regulation Q” – for which, as G.P. Brockway notes (‘The End of Economic Man’, pp. 156-57) state usury laws were suspended and banks were allowed to sell money market funds. There was also massive relaxation of restrictions on branch banks and – by 1984, “the New Deal reforms were in a shambles”. (Brockway, ibid.)
Brockway further points out (p. 157):
“Competition is by no means a universal good and in the case of banking it is almost a universal disaster. Ordinary businesses compete with each other more at the selling end than at the supply end. The competition at the selling end forces them to exert downward pressure on the prices they pay for supplies. In the case of banking, the shape of competition is significantly different – because its supply (money) is different.”
As Brockway goes on to note, the core competition in banking is for deposits, and this means banks try to out-do each other in interest rates offered. The dealie here is you don’t want the interest rate offered to Joe or Jane Public to be anywhere near the “spread” or interbank rate.
As he observes (ibid.)
“Competition forces banks to pay higher and higher interest rates and to offer more and more expensive services. As their costs of funds increases, so also rates charged borrowers must increase.”
Of course, Kort ignores or forgets the most egregious deregulation of them all, which paved the way for CDS (credit default swaps) to multiply in the first place: the repeal of the Glass –Steagall depression era law that prohibited mixing investment banking with commercial banking.
This leads into Kort’s next charge that the selling and dispensing of these (CDS) derivatives was simple “fraud”. No, it wasn’t – once the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed (unless one interjects the assignment of ‘AAA’ bond ratings as I noted in my article) all such inventions were allowed. The cruel fact and irony of the matter was that Glass-Steagall's revocation ok’d all activities that would be common to an investment bank and that included the creation of novel instruments to enhance yields or returns.
The tragedy is that Glass-Steagall’s repeal enabled the contamination to spread to commercial banking as well. And, as I noted, they are now holding $55 trillion of these toxic assets.
Kort may be further amazed to know that in a number of financial quarters (e.g. The Financial Times, The Economist) clarion calls have been made NOT to outlaw CDS!! If the calls have been made not to outlaw them then clearly they are still valid and legal instruments. You do not demand entities not be outlawed if in fact they are ALREADY outlawed. Hence, their creation cannot be “fraud” and in particular cannot be “willful and intentional fraud”. (Though I do agree that the bond rating of the SIVs or structured investment vehicles – by insurance companies like AIG, most likely was!)
To reinforce this, I refer the Editor to John Dizard’s column on ‘Wealth’ in The Financial Times of Dec. 30 (page 6). Dizard observes:
“Just because we have had a global financial crash caused by a credit meltdown, accelerated by the workings of credit default swaps and their unholy offspring, doesn’t make it quite fair to condemn a whole risk management program”
Dizard instead argues for more transparent information on bond issuers, and rating agencies. As he puts it, if this is done, along with small “lot trading size” then the demand for CDS as a hedging tool will diminish. Again, the point is the existing CDS are not “fraudulent” as Kort makes them out to be, but their hidden use in SIVs and instruments is, if bond ratings do not reflect the risk.
Let’s try to understand what is happening here: the dismantling of a Depression-era law (based on the then experience of investment banks – especially in offering certain vehicles then, known as "investment trusts”) prohibited mixing investment banking and commercial banking. This is deregulation no matter how one (even a Libertarian believer) chooses to parse it.
With the Glass-Steagall regulation gone the way of the dodo, there was nothing to hold back the flood, a point reaffirmed in the FORTUNE article I cited (‘The $55 TRILLION Question', October).
Kort in another paragraph displays a gross misunderstanding of the issue and perhaps this is my fault for not making myself clearer, or expatiating at more length, in my article. He asserts the victims “did not know what they were buying”. But my point was they didn’t know what they were buying because the derivatives were buried (concealed) in the legal instruments or CDOs. (collateralized debt obligations) comprising the quite legit bond funds purchased.(For the gory details on this I recommend Kort and others interested get hold of The Financial Times from Monday, December 17, 2008, wherein they will find – on page 8- the Analysis, ‘Out of the Shadows: How Banking’s Hidden System Broke Down’)
In the same way, I am 100% certain that neither Kort nor any of his Libertarian friends know the extent to which they own untold $$$$ of derivatives (all unregulated by the SEC) in the mutual funds they currently have! These derivatives are so obscure that not even the highest ranking financial advisors are able to fully explain where and how they are integrated into a typical fund or its components. Does this lack of knowledge make Kort cease to purchase mutual funds? I doubt it. Does their lack of SEC regulation and transparency make him scream “Fraud!”? I doubt that too. Since like most other Americans’ he has been conditioned to believe that only by owning equities (usually via mutuals) will he be able to afford retirement. Never mind how the equities as mutual funds are constructed. We don’t wanna know ‘bout that!
As Kort so aptly puts it:
“Hardly a free market of VOLUNTARY transactions based on real value and accountability”
INDEED!
And, of course, inhering in this insight is the core defect of all Libertarianism: that in order to really work to any effect it requires 100% transparency in all transactions and markets. Something that is totally and ultimately a fantasy. It can never happen, nor would ever happen – even if the country were now being run by Ron Paul as President and Jacob Sullum as Veep instead of Obama-Biden whom Kort casts as “authoritarians” – one of the most astounding pieces of hyperbolic aspersion ever rendered. (He also lamely tries to disparage FDR as being the culprit who “prolonged” the Great Depression, totally oblivious to the fact that the Fed’s then deflationary interest rate policy was at the crux. I refer him to Chris Farrell’s excellent monograph: ‘Deflation’, page 103, the Chapter, ‘The Great Depression’)
Another beef I have is this notion, permeating Kort’s remarks, that a “free market” exists. It does not. More Libertarian delusions. What we have is a coercive market. In this sort of perverse artifact, corporations create demand via the gimmick of mass market advertising. They can also create artificial shortages and hence, spike higher costs (say for oil) whenever they want. Having worked in an oil company once, in the late 60s, I can first hand vouch for that. I used to hear the laughter of the honchos echoing from their 7th floor offices as I made my rounds as a geologist’s assistant.
William Wolman and Anne Colamosca in their book: The Judas Economy: The Triumph of Capital and the Betrayal of Work, Addison-Wesley, 1997, detail the coercive market in labor and the horrific costs it has imposed. Chief culprit is the usurpation of the productive economy’ by the speculative one on Wall Street. From the era of “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap companies have had to tow the Street’s line and that usually means cutting workforce to the bone to increase share value. Never mind the poor slobs laid off, in the Libertarians’ dream world they can land on their feet if resourceful enough.
Exhibit A: the de-regulation of the energy industry ca. 1997 and later. Hyped as the greatest benefit of the “free market” ever for the small, residential consumers, since now - for once - the great market would determine cost, and not "greedy local utility companies." But no one could have foreseen or predicted how the likes of Enron would manipulate the energy markets - by shutting down access, energy in one state - and re-selling it in other states at robbery rates. This energy manipulation cost the state of CA more than $4 billion over 2000-001 alone. Not to mention untold customer misery, even as Enron shylocks were caught on tape laughing about how many 'grannies' they managed to get thrown out of their homes'.So much for your great “free” markets.
Kort’s most glaring and egregious misstep is saved for later when he insists:
“the citizens of the Weimar Republic failed to understand that their crisis was the result of government inflicted corruption of the free market”.
He compounds that with an earlier canard that “the Weimar Republic suffered from aggressive interference in its economy by a socialist popular government”
The truer story, as noted by Ian Kershaw in his magnificent account of Hitler’s rise to power (‘Hitler Nemesis’) is that Weimar constituted a weak democracy which had little or no control over the most radical Rightists, especially Hitler’s NSDAP party. They would regularly beat Marxists, socialist, any leftists on the streets while holding up signs that read: “Tot dem Marxem” (Death to Marxists)
With no strong government (a kind of Libertarian ideal, no?) Weimar was hit from pillar to post by the polarizing forces unleashed between Left and Right, after World War I. As Kershaw puts it, a “political culture of violence” had taken root. A political law of the jungle dominated, since inevitably the biggest, baddest and strongest were the ones who wielded power. Who were these bullies? Not any “Socialists” (more often then not the victims along with Jews) but the NDSAP party of Hitler and crew. [1]
Kershaw (p. 328, ‘Hitler Hubris’ – the first volume of his Hitler history) notes that the Nazi leaders didn’t immediately recognize the significance of the stock market crash in the U.S. in 1929. The newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, did not even mention Black Friday, according to Kershaw. (ibid.)
This didn’t halt the financial carnage, since before long the reverberations struck - given Germany’s dependence on American short term loans. Within weeks, as Kershaw points out, “industrial output, prices and wages began the steep drop that would reach its calamitous low point in 1932.” Coincidentally, it was on July 31, 1932 Hitler and the Nazis achieved their highest ever vote totals in the Reichstag, 13,745,800 votes or 37.4 percent.
A result of Socialist “meddling” in free markets? Hardly. Rather an inevitable result based on a canny understanding of Weimar’s inherent political instability and the exploitation of brute force and propaganda to gain total power and intimidate the actual government. (Another reason why as an unabashed “statist” I advocate powerful central power- with the instant ability to take down bullies in whatever form they may appear) Hitler nonetheless kowtowed to the capitalists and industrialists to finally gain the measure of support he needed to finally attain the Chancellorship (with the unwitting help of Paul von Hindenburg)
How happy were the capitalists and German industrialists? Kershaw again (‘Hitler Nemesis’, p. xxxiii):
“Leaders of big business, though often harboring private concerns about current difficulties and looming future problems for the economy, for their part were grateful to Hitler for the destruction of the left-wing parties and trade unions. They were again ‘masters in the house’ in their dealings with their work force”
Well, looks like a Libertarian capitalist’s wet dream to me! And how exactly did the assorted industries of high capital fare under der Fuhrer? Well, boffo times were afoot except for one little segment. Now, let us hear from Clive Ponting (‘Armageddon: The Reality Behind the Distortions, Myths, Lies and Illusions of World War II', p. 333):
“The only major purge was in the newspaper industry “
Of course, this is the industry charged with reporting the truth to the people. I don’t think it needs to be added that the journalists were also among the first to be dispatched to the concentration camps!
Let’s now move on to Libertarianism itself. Truth is there are so many assorted Libertarian voices of the past and present, one never knows who speaks for most current day followers. One can perhaps look at Ayn Rand, in her treatise ‘The Virtue of Selfishness’, but I’ve had freethinkers Libertarians at cocktail parties tell me in no certain terms I should not use her as the standard for their credos. Rand herself once insisted she was “not a Libertarian”. So who else?
Well, how about Charles Murray writes in What it means to be a Libertarian (p. 6):
“It is wrong for me to use force against you, because it violates your right to control of your person....I may have the purest motive in the world. I may even have the best idea in the world. But even these give me no right to make you do something just because I think it's a good idea. This truth translates into the first libertarian principle of governance: In a free society individuals may not initiate the use of force against any other individual or group”
Of course, this is also undoubtedly where the pet Libertarian canard that “taxes = theft’ comes from. But look at it objectively (not to be confused with ‘Objectivism’) this is arrant twaddle and illogical to boot.
I mean “libertarian principle of governance”! This is an oxymoron! Governance presumes and demands the non-passive act of governing, which means someone is actively setting standards of expected action, and also providing the means to uphold them. Else, what’s the point? It’s all an exercise in mental masturbation. In other words, unless someone (coercively) enforces governance, it will be meaningless. Now, maybe there IS a docile libertarian principle of “governing suggestion”- but this in no way is the same as “governance”!
Anti-statism is a central tenet of libertarianism, but it rests on no foundations, other than the so-called libertarian principles babbled by Murray and others. For example, Frank Chodorov, quoted by David Boaz of CATO Inst. in ‘Libertarianism: A Primer’, goes so far as to write:
“Society is a collective concept and nothing else; it is a convenience for designating a number of people... The concept of Society as a metaphysical concept falls flat when we observe that Society disappears when the component parts disperse”
Boaz himself joins in on what the “individual” means:
“For libertarians, the basic unit of social analysis is the individual.... Individuals are, in all cases, the source and foundation of creativity, activity, and society. Only individuals can think, love, pursue projects, act. Groups don’t have plans or intentions”
But, as Prof. Ernest Partridge puts it in his blog piece on ‘Liberals and Libertarians’ cited in my earlier article:
“Now consider the implications of this denial of the "independent existence" of "the public" and "society." If there is no "public," then there are no "public goods" and there is no "public interest." If there is no "society," then there is no "social harm," or "social injustice" or "social (and public) responsibility." It then follows that government has no role in mitigating "social injustice" or promoting "the public interest," since these terms are fundamentally meaningless. Poverty and racial discrimination, for example, are individual problems requiring individual solutions”.
I can assure Kort and his brethren that if Boaz’ concept held sway and government force was not used in Alabama in Sept. 1963 (JFK nationalizing the Alabama National Guard to enforce school integration) we would still be a segregated nation, with blacks sitting in the back of the bus, ‘colored’ water coolers and restrooms, and the rest. Only someone totally divorced from reality would claim individual African-Americans could have obtained their civil rights with mere individual effort and no government input.
Meanwhile, The Libertarian Party Principles state:
“We hold that all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose.”
Again, more inherently contradictory twaddle and piffle. Interference with the lives of others is permitted, so long as it’s not “forcible interference”. Anti-coercion libertarians do not simply oppose coercion they also claim to legitimately define it. Their definition excludes much that others would see as coercion. To me, the TABOR law in Colorado, because it continuously and aggressively scales back tax support for the public domain (based on the past year’s population and growth) is coercion and very vicious besides. Right now, thousands of disabled people across the state stand to lose their services thanks to TABOR and controls like it. All with the best intentions of course, that we not “take by force” those hard-earned gains of the filthy rich bastards ensconced in one of several of their 45.000 square foot mansions in Aspen!
As one critic has put it (to do with Libertarians’ convoluted principles):
“Libertarians make exceptions for defense of property and prosecution of fraud, and call them ‘retaliatory force’ But retaliation can be the initiation of force: I don't need force to commit theft or fraud. This is a bit of rhetorical sleight of hand that libbies like to play so that they can pretend they are different from government”.
Libertarianism clearly posits initiation of force for what it identifies as its minions interests and calls it righteous retaliation, and uses the big lie technique to define everything else as “evil initiation of force". (As they would certainly call JFK’s nationalization of the AL guard in ’63 to force school integration) They support the initial force that has already taken place in the formation of the system of property (e.g. the seizure of Native American lands and violation of umpteen treaties), and wish to continue to use force to perpetuate it and make it more rigid. It is this inchoate ethics that translates into the system’s weakness and exposes Libertarians as true hypocrites – just maybe a slight cut under the fundagelicals.
The long and short of it is every belief system has its evangelistic “scriptures”, designed to help proselytize the unwashed masses to their cause. The Campus Crusade for Christ uses Josh McDowell’s ‘Evidence That Demands A Verdict’, Scientology uses Ron Hubbard’s ‘Dianetics’, and Libertarians use ‘Libertarianism in One Lesson"’ (I am also cracking up just writing the words)
In the absence of counterargument all these tracts are semi-convincing. However, they can all be easily rebutted because of their weak, exposed flanks: the many exceptions that must be omitted in order for their so-called principles and dogmas to be convincing.
I warrant Libertarianism and its fanciful world of minimal force might work, in a fantasy world-universe where all citizens are equally educated and have equal access to facts and information, and equal opportunities to advance their social-economic station. But that is emphatically not the world we inhabit, whether Kort concedes it or not. This is why Libertarianism will remain the province of the very few, though it is disturbing to behold all the inroads it’s made into the high IQ societies like Mensa and Intertel lately. To read some of the letters or articles is almost like witnessing a collective mind-virus unleashed, and by people whose “bible” is ‘Atlas Shrugged’.
Thankfully there are still many of us who don’t buy this bunkum, no matter who tries to peddle it. Call us proud “statists” if you will, but we will continue to advocate expanding government so that it serves all citizens – not merely the corporations, the rich, and not so rich, or any who can afford the luxury of Libertarian codswallop.
Finally, to anyone out there whose mind hasn’t been infected by the Libertarian mind virus, I commend Paul Kurtz’s excellent Editorial (‘Overcoming the Global Economic Tsunami’) in the February-March issue of ‘Free Inquiry’ magazine, page 4. Kurtz has it exactly right in his proposals, especially when he avers:
“Effective regulation must be reintroduced to protect the public interest”.
[1] It is a somewhat tragic fact that too many Americans, full of naivete and very little historical or political comprehension, mistakenly believe the “National Socialist Party” (NSDAP) of Hitler were valid Socialists. Nothing could be further from the truth! They were out and out FASCISTS who detested Socialists, as well as their kin, the Marxists. Amazing how language misuse can pervert the careless brain!
My original article and the Editor's response can be found here:
http://www.hevanet.com/kort/2009/stahl4.html
The Editor, Kort Patterson, also a hardcore Libertarian, totally missed the boat in his remarks - but never published my reply to his off-base criticisms. I presume because he didn't wish to carry on the debate further. Not wishing to let a good response go to waste, I therefore provide it below in its entirety:
As usual, Editor Kort amuses me with his rejoinder to my recent article (‘The Tattered Illusions of Knowledge’, March) and his claims that I have evinced little demonstration that I know what Libertarianism is about. Well, Kort, I do – but to have put all that into perspective would have required about doubling the article.
But let me stick to the basics here: I regard Libertarianism (after its main progenitor, Ayn Rand) as little more than an economic creed. Roughly the political-economic equivalent to creationism.
Before I go on to Libertarianism proper I want to demolish a few of the Editor’s early claims made to do with regulation, deregulation and “free markets”.
Kort avers (page 7): “there hasn’t been any meaningful deregulation of the American economy in the last half century”
Evidently he conveniently forgets (or perhaps doesn’t know – since we are on the topic of illusions of knowledge) that massive deregulation was ushered in under the Reagan administration, from the Bank Holding Act(1984) to rescinding “Regulation Q” – for which, as G.P. Brockway notes (‘The End of Economic Man’, pp. 156-57) state usury laws were suspended and banks were allowed to sell money market funds. There was also massive relaxation of restrictions on branch banks and – by 1984, “the New Deal reforms were in a shambles”. (Brockway, ibid.)
Brockway further points out (p. 157):
“Competition is by no means a universal good and in the case of banking it is almost a universal disaster. Ordinary businesses compete with each other more at the selling end than at the supply end. The competition at the selling end forces them to exert downward pressure on the prices they pay for supplies. In the case of banking, the shape of competition is significantly different – because its supply (money) is different.”
As Brockway goes on to note, the core competition in banking is for deposits, and this means banks try to out-do each other in interest rates offered. The dealie here is you don’t want the interest rate offered to Joe or Jane Public to be anywhere near the “spread” or interbank rate.
As he observes (ibid.)
“Competition forces banks to pay higher and higher interest rates and to offer more and more expensive services. As their costs of funds increases, so also rates charged borrowers must increase.”
Of course, Kort ignores or forgets the most egregious deregulation of them all, which paved the way for CDS (credit default swaps) to multiply in the first place: the repeal of the Glass –Steagall depression era law that prohibited mixing investment banking with commercial banking.
This leads into Kort’s next charge that the selling and dispensing of these (CDS) derivatives was simple “fraud”. No, it wasn’t – once the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed (unless one interjects the assignment of ‘AAA’ bond ratings as I noted in my article) all such inventions were allowed. The cruel fact and irony of the matter was that Glass-Steagall's revocation ok’d all activities that would be common to an investment bank and that included the creation of novel instruments to enhance yields or returns.
The tragedy is that Glass-Steagall’s repeal enabled the contamination to spread to commercial banking as well. And, as I noted, they are now holding $55 trillion of these toxic assets.
Kort may be further amazed to know that in a number of financial quarters (e.g. The Financial Times, The Economist) clarion calls have been made NOT to outlaw CDS!! If the calls have been made not to outlaw them then clearly they are still valid and legal instruments. You do not demand entities not be outlawed if in fact they are ALREADY outlawed. Hence, their creation cannot be “fraud” and in particular cannot be “willful and intentional fraud”. (Though I do agree that the bond rating of the SIVs or structured investment vehicles – by insurance companies like AIG, most likely was!)
To reinforce this, I refer the Editor to John Dizard’s column on ‘Wealth’ in The Financial Times of Dec. 30 (page 6). Dizard observes:
“Just because we have had a global financial crash caused by a credit meltdown, accelerated by the workings of credit default swaps and their unholy offspring, doesn’t make it quite fair to condemn a whole risk management program”
Dizard instead argues for more transparent information on bond issuers, and rating agencies. As he puts it, if this is done, along with small “lot trading size” then the demand for CDS as a hedging tool will diminish. Again, the point is the existing CDS are not “fraudulent” as Kort makes them out to be, but their hidden use in SIVs and instruments is, if bond ratings do not reflect the risk.
Let’s try to understand what is happening here: the dismantling of a Depression-era law (based on the then experience of investment banks – especially in offering certain vehicles then, known as "investment trusts”) prohibited mixing investment banking and commercial banking. This is deregulation no matter how one (even a Libertarian believer) chooses to parse it.
With the Glass-Steagall regulation gone the way of the dodo, there was nothing to hold back the flood, a point reaffirmed in the FORTUNE article I cited (‘The $55 TRILLION Question', October).
Kort in another paragraph displays a gross misunderstanding of the issue and perhaps this is my fault for not making myself clearer, or expatiating at more length, in my article. He asserts the victims “did not know what they were buying”. But my point was they didn’t know what they were buying because the derivatives were buried (concealed) in the legal instruments or CDOs. (collateralized debt obligations) comprising the quite legit bond funds purchased.(For the gory details on this I recommend Kort and others interested get hold of The Financial Times from Monday, December 17, 2008, wherein they will find – on page 8- the Analysis, ‘Out of the Shadows: How Banking’s Hidden System Broke Down’)
In the same way, I am 100% certain that neither Kort nor any of his Libertarian friends know the extent to which they own untold $$$$ of derivatives (all unregulated by the SEC) in the mutual funds they currently have! These derivatives are so obscure that not even the highest ranking financial advisors are able to fully explain where and how they are integrated into a typical fund or its components. Does this lack of knowledge make Kort cease to purchase mutual funds? I doubt it. Does their lack of SEC regulation and transparency make him scream “Fraud!”? I doubt that too. Since like most other Americans’ he has been conditioned to believe that only by owning equities (usually via mutuals) will he be able to afford retirement. Never mind how the equities as mutual funds are constructed. We don’t wanna know ‘bout that!
As Kort so aptly puts it:
“Hardly a free market of VOLUNTARY transactions based on real value and accountability”
INDEED!
And, of course, inhering in this insight is the core defect of all Libertarianism: that in order to really work to any effect it requires 100% transparency in all transactions and markets. Something that is totally and ultimately a fantasy. It can never happen, nor would ever happen – even if the country were now being run by Ron Paul as President and Jacob Sullum as Veep instead of Obama-Biden whom Kort casts as “authoritarians” – one of the most astounding pieces of hyperbolic aspersion ever rendered. (He also lamely tries to disparage FDR as being the culprit who “prolonged” the Great Depression, totally oblivious to the fact that the Fed’s then deflationary interest rate policy was at the crux. I refer him to Chris Farrell’s excellent monograph: ‘Deflation’, page 103, the Chapter, ‘The Great Depression’)
Another beef I have is this notion, permeating Kort’s remarks, that a “free market” exists. It does not. More Libertarian delusions. What we have is a coercive market. In this sort of perverse artifact, corporations create demand via the gimmick of mass market advertising. They can also create artificial shortages and hence, spike higher costs (say for oil) whenever they want. Having worked in an oil company once, in the late 60s, I can first hand vouch for that. I used to hear the laughter of the honchos echoing from their 7th floor offices as I made my rounds as a geologist’s assistant.
William Wolman and Anne Colamosca in their book: The Judas Economy: The Triumph of Capital and the Betrayal of Work, Addison-Wesley, 1997, detail the coercive market in labor and the horrific costs it has imposed. Chief culprit is the usurpation of the productive economy’ by the speculative one on Wall Street. From the era of “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap companies have had to tow the Street’s line and that usually means cutting workforce to the bone to increase share value. Never mind the poor slobs laid off, in the Libertarians’ dream world they can land on their feet if resourceful enough.
Exhibit A: the de-regulation of the energy industry ca. 1997 and later. Hyped as the greatest benefit of the “free market” ever for the small, residential consumers, since now - for once - the great market would determine cost, and not "greedy local utility companies." But no one could have foreseen or predicted how the likes of Enron would manipulate the energy markets - by shutting down access, energy in one state - and re-selling it in other states at robbery rates. This energy manipulation cost the state of CA more than $4 billion over 2000-001 alone. Not to mention untold customer misery, even as Enron shylocks were caught on tape laughing about how many 'grannies' they managed to get thrown out of their homes'.So much for your great “free” markets.
Kort’s most glaring and egregious misstep is saved for later when he insists:
“the citizens of the Weimar Republic failed to understand that their crisis was the result of government inflicted corruption of the free market”.
He compounds that with an earlier canard that “the Weimar Republic suffered from aggressive interference in its economy by a socialist popular government”
The truer story, as noted by Ian Kershaw in his magnificent account of Hitler’s rise to power (‘Hitler Nemesis’) is that Weimar constituted a weak democracy which had little or no control over the most radical Rightists, especially Hitler’s NSDAP party. They would regularly beat Marxists, socialist, any leftists on the streets while holding up signs that read: “Tot dem Marxem” (Death to Marxists)
With no strong government (a kind of Libertarian ideal, no?) Weimar was hit from pillar to post by the polarizing forces unleashed between Left and Right, after World War I. As Kershaw puts it, a “political culture of violence” had taken root. A political law of the jungle dominated, since inevitably the biggest, baddest and strongest were the ones who wielded power. Who were these bullies? Not any “Socialists” (more often then not the victims along with Jews) but the NDSAP party of Hitler and crew. [1]
Kershaw (p. 328, ‘Hitler Hubris’ – the first volume of his Hitler history) notes that the Nazi leaders didn’t immediately recognize the significance of the stock market crash in the U.S. in 1929. The newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, did not even mention Black Friday, according to Kershaw. (ibid.)
This didn’t halt the financial carnage, since before long the reverberations struck - given Germany’s dependence on American short term loans. Within weeks, as Kershaw points out, “industrial output, prices and wages began the steep drop that would reach its calamitous low point in 1932.” Coincidentally, it was on July 31, 1932 Hitler and the Nazis achieved their highest ever vote totals in the Reichstag, 13,745,800 votes or 37.4 percent.
A result of Socialist “meddling” in free markets? Hardly. Rather an inevitable result based on a canny understanding of Weimar’s inherent political instability and the exploitation of brute force and propaganda to gain total power and intimidate the actual government. (Another reason why as an unabashed “statist” I advocate powerful central power- with the instant ability to take down bullies in whatever form they may appear) Hitler nonetheless kowtowed to the capitalists and industrialists to finally gain the measure of support he needed to finally attain the Chancellorship (with the unwitting help of Paul von Hindenburg)
How happy were the capitalists and German industrialists? Kershaw again (‘Hitler Nemesis’, p. xxxiii):
“Leaders of big business, though often harboring private concerns about current difficulties and looming future problems for the economy, for their part were grateful to Hitler for the destruction of the left-wing parties and trade unions. They were again ‘masters in the house’ in their dealings with their work force”
Well, looks like a Libertarian capitalist’s wet dream to me! And how exactly did the assorted industries of high capital fare under der Fuhrer? Well, boffo times were afoot except for one little segment. Now, let us hear from Clive Ponting (‘Armageddon: The Reality Behind the Distortions, Myths, Lies and Illusions of World War II', p. 333):
“The only major purge was in the newspaper industry “
Of course, this is the industry charged with reporting the truth to the people. I don’t think it needs to be added that the journalists were also among the first to be dispatched to the concentration camps!
Let’s now move on to Libertarianism itself. Truth is there are so many assorted Libertarian voices of the past and present, one never knows who speaks for most current day followers. One can perhaps look at Ayn Rand, in her treatise ‘The Virtue of Selfishness’, but I’ve had freethinkers Libertarians at cocktail parties tell me in no certain terms I should not use her as the standard for their credos. Rand herself once insisted she was “not a Libertarian”. So who else?
Well, how about Charles Murray writes in What it means to be a Libertarian (p. 6):
“It is wrong for me to use force against you, because it violates your right to control of your person....I may have the purest motive in the world. I may even have the best idea in the world. But even these give me no right to make you do something just because I think it's a good idea. This truth translates into the first libertarian principle of governance: In a free society individuals may not initiate the use of force against any other individual or group”
Of course, this is also undoubtedly where the pet Libertarian canard that “taxes = theft’ comes from. But look at it objectively (not to be confused with ‘Objectivism’) this is arrant twaddle and illogical to boot.
I mean “libertarian principle of governance”! This is an oxymoron! Governance presumes and demands the non-passive act of governing, which means someone is actively setting standards of expected action, and also providing the means to uphold them. Else, what’s the point? It’s all an exercise in mental masturbation. In other words, unless someone (coercively) enforces governance, it will be meaningless. Now, maybe there IS a docile libertarian principle of “governing suggestion”- but this in no way is the same as “governance”!
Anti-statism is a central tenet of libertarianism, but it rests on no foundations, other than the so-called libertarian principles babbled by Murray and others. For example, Frank Chodorov, quoted by David Boaz of CATO Inst. in ‘Libertarianism: A Primer’, goes so far as to write:
“Society is a collective concept and nothing else; it is a convenience for designating a number of people... The concept of Society as a metaphysical concept falls flat when we observe that Society disappears when the component parts disperse”
Boaz himself joins in on what the “individual” means:
“For libertarians, the basic unit of social analysis is the individual.... Individuals are, in all cases, the source and foundation of creativity, activity, and society. Only individuals can think, love, pursue projects, act. Groups don’t have plans or intentions”
But, as Prof. Ernest Partridge puts it in his blog piece on ‘Liberals and Libertarians’ cited in my earlier article:
“Now consider the implications of this denial of the "independent existence" of "the public" and "society." If there is no "public," then there are no "public goods" and there is no "public interest." If there is no "society," then there is no "social harm," or "social injustice" or "social (and public) responsibility." It then follows that government has no role in mitigating "social injustice" or promoting "the public interest," since these terms are fundamentally meaningless. Poverty and racial discrimination, for example, are individual problems requiring individual solutions”.
I can assure Kort and his brethren that if Boaz’ concept held sway and government force was not used in Alabama in Sept. 1963 (JFK nationalizing the Alabama National Guard to enforce school integration) we would still be a segregated nation, with blacks sitting in the back of the bus, ‘colored’ water coolers and restrooms, and the rest. Only someone totally divorced from reality would claim individual African-Americans could have obtained their civil rights with mere individual effort and no government input.
Meanwhile, The Libertarian Party Principles state:
“We hold that all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose.”
Again, more inherently contradictory twaddle and piffle. Interference with the lives of others is permitted, so long as it’s not “forcible interference”. Anti-coercion libertarians do not simply oppose coercion they also claim to legitimately define it. Their definition excludes much that others would see as coercion. To me, the TABOR law in Colorado, because it continuously and aggressively scales back tax support for the public domain (based on the past year’s population and growth) is coercion and very vicious besides. Right now, thousands of disabled people across the state stand to lose their services thanks to TABOR and controls like it. All with the best intentions of course, that we not “take by force” those hard-earned gains of the filthy rich bastards ensconced in one of several of their 45.000 square foot mansions in Aspen!
As one critic has put it (to do with Libertarians’ convoluted principles):
“Libertarians make exceptions for defense of property and prosecution of fraud, and call them ‘retaliatory force’ But retaliation can be the initiation of force: I don't need force to commit theft or fraud. This is a bit of rhetorical sleight of hand that libbies like to play so that they can pretend they are different from government”.
Libertarianism clearly posits initiation of force for what it identifies as its minions interests and calls it righteous retaliation, and uses the big lie technique to define everything else as “evil initiation of force". (As they would certainly call JFK’s nationalization of the AL guard in ’63 to force school integration) They support the initial force that has already taken place in the formation of the system of property (e.g. the seizure of Native American lands and violation of umpteen treaties), and wish to continue to use force to perpetuate it and make it more rigid. It is this inchoate ethics that translates into the system’s weakness and exposes Libertarians as true hypocrites – just maybe a slight cut under the fundagelicals.
The long and short of it is every belief system has its evangelistic “scriptures”, designed to help proselytize the unwashed masses to their cause. The Campus Crusade for Christ uses Josh McDowell’s ‘Evidence That Demands A Verdict’, Scientology uses Ron Hubbard’s ‘Dianetics’, and Libertarians use ‘Libertarianism in One Lesson"’ (I am also cracking up just writing the words)
In the absence of counterargument all these tracts are semi-convincing. However, they can all be easily rebutted because of their weak, exposed flanks: the many exceptions that must be omitted in order for their so-called principles and dogmas to be convincing.
I warrant Libertarianism and its fanciful world of minimal force might work, in a fantasy world-universe where all citizens are equally educated and have equal access to facts and information, and equal opportunities to advance their social-economic station. But that is emphatically not the world we inhabit, whether Kort concedes it or not. This is why Libertarianism will remain the province of the very few, though it is disturbing to behold all the inroads it’s made into the high IQ societies like Mensa and Intertel lately. To read some of the letters or articles is almost like witnessing a collective mind-virus unleashed, and by people whose “bible” is ‘Atlas Shrugged’.
Thankfully there are still many of us who don’t buy this bunkum, no matter who tries to peddle it. Call us proud “statists” if you will, but we will continue to advocate expanding government so that it serves all citizens – not merely the corporations, the rich, and not so rich, or any who can afford the luxury of Libertarian codswallop.
Finally, to anyone out there whose mind hasn’t been infected by the Libertarian mind virus, I commend Paul Kurtz’s excellent Editorial (‘Overcoming the Global Economic Tsunami’) in the February-March issue of ‘Free Inquiry’ magazine, page 4. Kurtz has it exactly right in his proposals, especially when he avers:
“Effective regulation must be reintroduced to protect the public interest”.
[1] It is a somewhat tragic fact that too many Americans, full of naivete and very little historical or political comprehension, mistakenly believe the “National Socialist Party” (NSDAP) of Hitler were valid Socialists. Nothing could be further from the truth! They were out and out FASCISTS who detested Socialists, as well as their kin, the Marxists. Amazing how language misuse can pervert the careless brain!
Friday, April 10, 2009
More on Stock shams: The Short Sellers
In two previous entries, I discussed the lure of stocks and why people were unjustifably invested in what can only be called "phantom money". The example was given of Joe Schmoe who seemingly lost over $174,000 but the bulk of that ($139,000) didn't even exist as hands-on cash, but as inflated share value. When the "money" was lost, Schmoe didn't actually "lose" anythng real - only the hard money he actually used to purchase shares.
The winners of the stock game, then, are precisely those able to "time the market" and cash out while most are still in. In this way they can reap real rewards, meaning converting the phantom money on paper into real money in the bank, given there are many more "buy and hold" investors to support the cashout.
Thus, like many recent scams in the news (Bernie Madoff, Shawn Merriman etc.), the stock market is also a giant Ponzi scheme, in which the lucky few who time out on the high share end benefit from those buying in (violating the buy low - sell high mandate) and other who simply have surrendered to the "buy and hold" mantra - hoping for some magical stock redemption windfall just before retirement.
But wait, apart from phantom money another financial shark lurks in the backwaters of Wall Street! It is none other than the "naked short seller"! These denizens have the ability to purchase shares they don't really own, then drive stock prices down by betting on their demise.
These "traders" - if they can be called that - typically bet against certain stocks by borrowing money from a brokerage then using it to bet against the stock's shares, forcing the selling of millions of shares they themselves don't own (And you thought phantom money was bad!) This selling of shares not truly owned is known in the Wall Street parlance as "naked short selling").
As a result of it done en masse (to targeted stocks) stock share value plummets, and the long term investors lose even more money (Okay, at least their paper money!). Look at what has transpired with the big banks such as Citibank the past few months.
The short seller game is simple: Borrow money to buy shares of what is perceived as a weak stock, then sell the borrowed money shares betting they can be replaced with shares bought at a lower price.
Thus, Company XYZ sells shares at say, $10 each, and a short seller borrows 100,000 shares, thus $1 million worth on paper. He then unloads all those shares on the market, bringing down the share price precipitously, since obviously that much selling will have a negative, or downside effect. All the other investors who are legit then lose.
As the share price plummets, to let's say $5 a share- when he clocks out, the short seller has effectively made $500,000 [($10 - $5) x 100,000 shares).] Since the share price of XYZ has collapsed, in effect, then the actual money owed for the borrowed shares is now only $500,000. The short seller pays back the borrowee the half mil, then keeps the half mil from his trickery. Meanwhile, millions of proper investors hoping to pay for Janie's college or Pop's retirement get shorted.
The effect is even more pernicious with naked short sellers who bet against stocks to depress prices by selling millions of shares they have not even borrowed. Thus can they wreak unmitigated havoc on stock share prices while the legitimate holders remain blissfully unaware. Critics have rightfully pointed out that - via the assistance of brokerages - these short sellers incept delivery failures by shorting stocks without first borrowing shares, thereby flouting securities law.
Thankfully, the future of this aspect of the stock shllling game may at least be soon over. The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) has begun at last to stymie the ability of short sellers to depress stock share prices by using money to sell millions of shares they don't actually own. Part of this stymie ability will likely include reinstatement of the "uptick rule". Until 2007 that rule had required short sellers to wait for a rise or "uptick" in a stock's share price before betting on its decline.
Finally, some sanity is evidently going to return but not in time for the many millions who have lost half or more of their money (okay, phantom money) in the Maul Street Casino.
The winners of the stock game, then, are precisely those able to "time the market" and cash out while most are still in. In this way they can reap real rewards, meaning converting the phantom money on paper into real money in the bank, given there are many more "buy and hold" investors to support the cashout.
Thus, like many recent scams in the news (Bernie Madoff, Shawn Merriman etc.), the stock market is also a giant Ponzi scheme, in which the lucky few who time out on the high share end benefit from those buying in (violating the buy low - sell high mandate) and other who simply have surrendered to the "buy and hold" mantra - hoping for some magical stock redemption windfall just before retirement.
But wait, apart from phantom money another financial shark lurks in the backwaters of Wall Street! It is none other than the "naked short seller"! These denizens have the ability to purchase shares they don't really own, then drive stock prices down by betting on their demise.
These "traders" - if they can be called that - typically bet against certain stocks by borrowing money from a brokerage then using it to bet against the stock's shares, forcing the selling of millions of shares they themselves don't own (And you thought phantom money was bad!) This selling of shares not truly owned is known in the Wall Street parlance as "naked short selling").
As a result of it done en masse (to targeted stocks) stock share value plummets, and the long term investors lose even more money (Okay, at least their paper money!). Look at what has transpired with the big banks such as Citibank the past few months.
The short seller game is simple: Borrow money to buy shares of what is perceived as a weak stock, then sell the borrowed money shares betting they can be replaced with shares bought at a lower price.
Thus, Company XYZ sells shares at say, $10 each, and a short seller borrows 100,000 shares, thus $1 million worth on paper. He then unloads all those shares on the market, bringing down the share price precipitously, since obviously that much selling will have a negative, or downside effect. All the other investors who are legit then lose.
As the share price plummets, to let's say $5 a share- when he clocks out, the short seller has effectively made $500,000 [($10 - $5) x 100,000 shares).] Since the share price of XYZ has collapsed, in effect, then the actual money owed for the borrowed shares is now only $500,000. The short seller pays back the borrowee the half mil, then keeps the half mil from his trickery. Meanwhile, millions of proper investors hoping to pay for Janie's college or Pop's retirement get shorted.
The effect is even more pernicious with naked short sellers who bet against stocks to depress prices by selling millions of shares they have not even borrowed. Thus can they wreak unmitigated havoc on stock share prices while the legitimate holders remain blissfully unaware. Critics have rightfully pointed out that - via the assistance of brokerages - these short sellers incept delivery failures by shorting stocks without first borrowing shares, thereby flouting securities law.
Thankfully, the future of this aspect of the stock shllling game may at least be soon over. The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) has begun at last to stymie the ability of short sellers to depress stock share prices by using money to sell millions of shares they don't actually own. Part of this stymie ability will likely include reinstatement of the "uptick rule". Until 2007 that rule had required short sellers to wait for a rise or "uptick" in a stock's share price before betting on its decline.
Finally, some sanity is evidently going to return but not in time for the many millions who have lost half or more of their money (okay, phantom money) in the Maul Street Casino.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Why Few Will Make Money with stocks
In my February blog article on 'The Real Ponzi Scheme', I noted a number of unsavory and disturbing points to do with purchasing stocks and stock ownership, and especially reaping the rewards of such. The example given was for Company "XYZ" which goes public and issues 10 million shares of stock to 2 million people, for $50 a share. The market capitalization here is therefore $500 million.
What I went on to note is that this total capitalization is what determines payouts in the end. If all the people want out with their redemptions at once, then the payout for each is the minimal value per share. A simple principle is at work, the more redemptions (sales, sellers) the less the payout per share. If all wanted out at once, though the stock price might originally be $50 per share, the payout for 2 million people would amount to no more than $1,243 each on average.
The entire assumption of stock ownership is predicated on the gamble that not all will cash out at once, and in fact, there will be many more "buy and hold" investors than stock share redeemers. As long as say, ten times as many buy and hold, others can use the inevitable stock gyrations and a knack for timing, to get the most bang for the buck on a cashout. On the average, only about 0.01% of the total number of investors can do this without penalty.
Say, for example, the original stock share plummets after ten years to 50 cents a share. The market capitalization has now decreased a factor of 100 ($50/ $0.5 = 100) to $5 million. If there are no 10 million investors, the share price can be no more than 50 cents a share and that is the maximal cashout (redemption) amount. Thus if all ten million stock holders cash out at once they will (theoretically) get 50 cents a share. However, since stock managers do demand to take profits, commissions, and don't intend to part with all the money, they use a formula pegged to the volume of selling such that the share value is inversely proportional to the volume.
Thus, what theoretically might look like 50 cents per share on paper, for a mass redemption, will really end up as probably only ten cents per share.
If all the buyers (of company XYZ stock) initially bought stock at $50 per share, then watched it collapse to $1 a share, where did the money go? (A clue can be found by reading the 'Real Ponzi Scheme' piece! )
The (Duh!) answer (see also the recent 'Ask Marilyn' column in PARADE, April 5) is that the sellers (redeemers) got it. Well, who else would? The other aspect is that this scenario only accounts for a tiny fraction of the total money "lost".
Remember, as per my example in the earlier blog article, that when all the 2 million purchasers of XYZ stock bought it (at $50 per share) they actually artificially inflated the worth of all the shareholders. Obviously, they also inflated the worth-value for all those who bought it at $48, $24, $15 and $1! The reason? Everyone's stock is valued at the last share price times the number of shared owned. Thus, at any time in that transition interim, IF one of those lower purchase owners had the prescience or good fortune to cash out in time, they would have reaped a relative reward. This, despite not having bought the stock at a lower value.
In like manner, Janus World Wide Fund sold shares at one time for as high as $75. When I bought in (in 1997) they were still high but not as high as the inital offering rate. As they began a down swing I cashed out (in 1998) at least 100 shares for $70 a share- enough to finance a holiday to Yellowstone National park. Eventually the shares crashed to below $30 a share, by which time almost all share holders were selling (which was why the share price was being driven lower).
Back now to what I noted in the previous piece: Joe Schmoe similarly, may be elated at beholding a $174,000 balance after his 10th year of holding XYZ stock, but he needs to understand that the bulk of this:
$174,000 - $35,000 = $139, 000
is phantom money.
By the same token, if the following month the share prices collapses back to $5, Joe has not lost $174, 000 but only the money he actually put in up to THAT point, or $35,250.
It is this larger value, based on a "misleading multiple" of inflated share value x shares, that leads many to believe they have lost money they never owned in the first place. It only appears they did. Such is the stuff of stock hocus pocus which has nearly every modern day "investor" bamboozled and starry -eyed.
What if all sellers sold at once, does that make their losses real? Never in a million years! As I noted earlier, if all sold at once they'd all be victimized since as sellers outnumber buyers the share price drops according to inbuilt formulas used by the companies to correct for diminishing share volume. Diminishing (held) share volume = diminishing returns. Zero sum game anyone? The true and hard fact, again, is that only the prescient or early sellers, are able to obtain the top share price. This is possible because there are many times more "buy and hold" investors to support those sales.
Bottom line: If you own stocks you either better: a) be sure you receive regular dividends so you can collect at least something over time, or b) develop mind-reading powers tuned into the optimum time to cashout, so you are among the few who do when the share price is highest!
What I went on to note is that this total capitalization is what determines payouts in the end. If all the people want out with their redemptions at once, then the payout for each is the minimal value per share. A simple principle is at work, the more redemptions (sales, sellers) the less the payout per share. If all wanted out at once, though the stock price might originally be $50 per share, the payout for 2 million people would amount to no more than $1,243 each on average.
The entire assumption of stock ownership is predicated on the gamble that not all will cash out at once, and in fact, there will be many more "buy and hold" investors than stock share redeemers. As long as say, ten times as many buy and hold, others can use the inevitable stock gyrations and a knack for timing, to get the most bang for the buck on a cashout. On the average, only about 0.01% of the total number of investors can do this without penalty.
Say, for example, the original stock share plummets after ten years to 50 cents a share. The market capitalization has now decreased a factor of 100 ($50/ $0.5 = 100) to $5 million. If there are no 10 million investors, the share price can be no more than 50 cents a share and that is the maximal cashout (redemption) amount. Thus if all ten million stock holders cash out at once they will (theoretically) get 50 cents a share. However, since stock managers do demand to take profits, commissions, and don't intend to part with all the money, they use a formula pegged to the volume of selling such that the share value is inversely proportional to the volume.
Thus, what theoretically might look like 50 cents per share on paper, for a mass redemption, will really end up as probably only ten cents per share.
If all the buyers (of company XYZ stock) initially bought stock at $50 per share, then watched it collapse to $1 a share, where did the money go? (A clue can be found by reading the 'Real Ponzi Scheme' piece! )
The (Duh!) answer (see also the recent 'Ask Marilyn' column in PARADE, April 5) is that the sellers (redeemers) got it. Well, who else would? The other aspect is that this scenario only accounts for a tiny fraction of the total money "lost".
Remember, as per my example in the earlier blog article, that when all the 2 million purchasers of XYZ stock bought it (at $50 per share) they actually artificially inflated the worth of all the shareholders. Obviously, they also inflated the worth-value for all those who bought it at $48, $24, $15 and $1! The reason? Everyone's stock is valued at the last share price times the number of shared owned. Thus, at any time in that transition interim, IF one of those lower purchase owners had the prescience or good fortune to cash out in time, they would have reaped a relative reward. This, despite not having bought the stock at a lower value.
In like manner, Janus World Wide Fund sold shares at one time for as high as $75. When I bought in (in 1997) they were still high but not as high as the inital offering rate. As they began a down swing I cashed out (in 1998) at least 100 shares for $70 a share- enough to finance a holiday to Yellowstone National park. Eventually the shares crashed to below $30 a share, by which time almost all share holders were selling (which was why the share price was being driven lower).
Back now to what I noted in the previous piece: Joe Schmoe similarly, may be elated at beholding a $174,000 balance after his 10th year of holding XYZ stock, but he needs to understand that the bulk of this:
$174,000 - $35,000 = $139, 000
is phantom money.
By the same token, if the following month the share prices collapses back to $5, Joe has not lost $174, 000 but only the money he actually put in up to THAT point, or $35,250.
It is this larger value, based on a "misleading multiple" of inflated share value x shares, that leads many to believe they have lost money they never owned in the first place. It only appears they did. Such is the stuff of stock hocus pocus which has nearly every modern day "investor" bamboozled and starry -eyed.
What if all sellers sold at once, does that make their losses real? Never in a million years! As I noted earlier, if all sold at once they'd all be victimized since as sellers outnumber buyers the share price drops according to inbuilt formulas used by the companies to correct for diminishing share volume. Diminishing (held) share volume = diminishing returns. Zero sum game anyone? The true and hard fact, again, is that only the prescient or early sellers, are able to obtain the top share price. This is possible because there are many times more "buy and hold" investors to support those sales.
Bottom line: If you own stocks you either better: a) be sure you receive regular dividends so you can collect at least something over time, or b) develop mind-reading powers tuned into the optimum time to cashout, so you are among the few who do when the share price is highest!
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Mental Health for Extreme Fundies
"The God Experience is an artifact of transient changes in the temporal lobe”
M. Persinger, in 'The Neuro-pscyhological Bases of God -Belief', p. 136
With that single declarative sentence by Michael Persinger in his grand book, the origin and source of all God-talk and ideation was at once set forth: it resides in the brain's temporal lobes and is generated there, via temporal lobe transients, a kind of mini-seizure. For the first time, the source of all religious insanity and wars, extremist acts was traced to its source: the BRAIN!
Persinger himself places TLT experiences along a hypothetical continuum. Extreme symptoms would include circumstantiality, a sense of the personal (e.g. egocentric references, divine guidance), perseveration, hypergraphia, altered affect, and most importantly an overwhelming sense of religiosity. Carried to extremes, this sense translates into a meme (mind virus) that effectively asserts: "I am RIGHT! YOU are wrong, and since you are wrong- and we cannot both be right- you are gonna burn forever!"
And so the insidious nature of religious insanity sows its first seeds in a fertile brain which already is hamstrung by dysfunctions it cannot even see (just look at some of the comments on this blog from the irrepressible Preacher Man and his sidekick, Rene)
In a way this is very analogous to the approach (in physical models) to solar flare triggers. They are placed in a continuum that ranges from “mild” disturbance effects like a low grade coronal mass ejection (CME) or erupting prominence, to a full blown type X-9 solar flare with all the collateral damage that entails. But whatever the place on the spectrum, the trigger ultimately gives rise to all of the above. And so it may well be with brain TLTs as well, and to suppose or hypothesize such is, imho, not to abuse Persinger’s work.
In a 'WIRED' interview with Persinger, Jack Hitt notes:
“Persinger is not the first to theorize that the Creator exists only in the complex landscape of the human noggin. In his controversial 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, a Princeton psychologist, argued that the brain activity of ancient people - those living roughly 3,500 years ago, prior to early evidence of consciousness such as logic, reason, and ethics - would have resembled that of modern schizophrenics"
Schizophrenia, as we know, is among the most pernicious of mental diseases. Generally, it strikes in the early to mid-teens and gets progressively worse over time. Why it strikes is a mystery but there could be genetic factors, and it could be the brain is most ripe for any mental illness immediately after the so-called "brain pruning" in which billions of neurons are shucked off so new ones, of a more mature being, can take their place.
We simply don't know the final answer.
In the same (1987) work 'The Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs', Persinger noted that the God Experience "promotes passivity, and because of the random emotional associations will lead to unreasoned decisions". He gives an example of a horrible scenario in which a pivotal world leader undergoing one of these religious, brain micro-seizure states irrationally decides to trigger a nuclear disaster. Why wait for Armageddon, when you have the little red buttons to induce it yourself? (If you can also coerce your higher staff to comply with your insanity, as depicted in the movie, 'The Dead Zone')
Right now, with the polity so contaminated by extremist religious drivel and refuse, we are not far from such a drastic phase. Just add:
(religiously besotted populace infecting political stage) + (presumed 'god-man' in the WH who believes he has a personal line to his real 'Father')
Anyone who disputes such a creature could exist ought to visit Pastor Mike's ("All Souls I-Net Church") site and read some of his aberrant screeds. It is clear from those that my bro suffers from a form of self-righteous neurosis and megalomania that beggars the human imagination. His castigation of all manner of faiths from Catholicism to Mormonism to Islam, reads like a hate tract scribbled by Josef Goebbels of Nazi fame. The difference is that while Goebbels' screeds were designed to send Jews into the gas chambers and ovens at Auschwitz, Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen etc., Pastor Mike's are designed to justify dispatching Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Hindus, Atheists, Muslims etc. to the perpetual ovens of "Hell".
Never mind now that no such place as Hell could ever exist, other than in a disturbed mind. It is the thought that counts. The intent to have masses of billions dispatched there!
What one has here is not an abiding reality but rather a viral, infectious, malignant meme. A mind virus masquerading as a valid thought or concept. The point is that such malignant memes are based on BELIEF systems - NOT on knowledge!
Memes in the more general sense are basically beliefs transmitted from the recipients to others (not yet affected). Religions can do this via conversions, foisting their bibles down various populations' throats and threatening them with hellfire(in the case of promoting or embedding malignant memes).
Knowledge doesn't fall under this rubric nor is it 'self refuting'. The litmus test of that, as I've uttered til blue in the face - is that actual scientific devices, technological systems and devices (like MRI machines, telephones, planes, linear accelerators etc.) WORK! And they do so in the real world! These are all based on scientific knowledge and principles that have been transmuted into practical applications. If the knowledge underlying these were simply 'self refuting' none of these devices or sophisticated machines,instruments would be worth a damn. Their results would be spurious. But - as we know from their use - they are not.
Moon rockets really do reach the Moon and return. Satellites really do transmit pictures - other information from one place to another. Computers really do store information and allow its retrieval as well as speeding calculations. MRI machines really do provide medical diagnostics that otherwise wouldn't be available. In other words, the very existence of these devices, systems shows that the knowledge on which they're based CANNOT be self refuting. These are the realized PRODUCTS of science and scientific KNOWLEDGE!
OTOH, the 'products' of (malignant) religious memes and their belief systems include: the hair shirt, the rack, the "Virgin" (a hollow box in the shape of a woman with 8" spikes fitted to its interior so when it is closed they impale the poor wretch inside....usually an atheist or heretic) chastity belts, rosaries, mosques, cathedrals- not to mention plenty of statues that are venerated by the 'faithful'. Oh, and the loopy, mistranslated King James Bible. None of these have any efficacy - other than to reinforce and feed the already existing memes.
But let us return to the matter of religious insanity. How do we treat it? How do we rescue the hijacked brains of those like my brother and Rene? History does not provide a very optimistic giude.
For example, in the 70s thousands of kids had to be rescued from cults such as the "Moonies" and deprogrammed. Deprogramming usually lasted a month to a year and entailed the most traumatic methods to drive to regain autonomy for a brain that had lost it. As one can ascertain by reading the vile and vicious crap posted on Pastor Mike's blog - compliments of himself and Rene, the same malignant mind virus is at work there.
In my own experience, a young student I knew while in the Peace Corps, serving in Barbados, suddenly went over the edge with Hell and demon obsession. What began as simple occasional bible reading transmuted into a pathology of the first order. Whereas she originally read much of the bible in context, this soon changed to merely ferreting out all demonic and Hell references.
By the time she was found one evening, she was drooling at a church door, pounding on it and begging someone to rescue her from demons. In her mind, she literally saw and perceived demons coming after her, in much the same way my brother ("pastor Mike") insinuated I was an "agent of Satan" because I had posted a full bodied defense of atheism on his site.
The girl required being taken to the island's lone institution for housing the psychotic and mentally unbalanced, being put on a strict diet high in B-vitamins, with combined electro-convulsive therapy, and being given an anti-psychotic drug known as "largatyl".
Sadly, I am not even the least bit sure that any of the above could salvage the brains of either Pastor Mike or Rene.
But, one can always hope!
M. Persinger, in 'The Neuro-pscyhological Bases of God -Belief', p. 136
With that single declarative sentence by Michael Persinger in his grand book, the origin and source of all God-talk and ideation was at once set forth: it resides in the brain's temporal lobes and is generated there, via temporal lobe transients, a kind of mini-seizure. For the first time, the source of all religious insanity and wars, extremist acts was traced to its source: the BRAIN!
Persinger himself places TLT experiences along a hypothetical continuum. Extreme symptoms would include circumstantiality, a sense of the personal (e.g. egocentric references, divine guidance), perseveration, hypergraphia, altered affect, and most importantly an overwhelming sense of religiosity. Carried to extremes, this sense translates into a meme (mind virus) that effectively asserts: "I am RIGHT! YOU are wrong, and since you are wrong- and we cannot both be right- you are gonna burn forever!"
And so the insidious nature of religious insanity sows its first seeds in a fertile brain which already is hamstrung by dysfunctions it cannot even see (just look at some of the comments on this blog from the irrepressible Preacher Man and his sidekick, Rene)
In a way this is very analogous to the approach (in physical models) to solar flare triggers. They are placed in a continuum that ranges from “mild” disturbance effects like a low grade coronal mass ejection (CME) or erupting prominence, to a full blown type X-9 solar flare with all the collateral damage that entails. But whatever the place on the spectrum, the trigger ultimately gives rise to all of the above. And so it may well be with brain TLTs as well, and to suppose or hypothesize such is, imho, not to abuse Persinger’s work.
In a 'WIRED' interview with Persinger, Jack Hitt notes:
“Persinger is not the first to theorize that the Creator exists only in the complex landscape of the human noggin. In his controversial 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, a Princeton psychologist, argued that the brain activity of ancient people - those living roughly 3,500 years ago, prior to early evidence of consciousness such as logic, reason, and ethics - would have resembled that of modern schizophrenics"
Schizophrenia, as we know, is among the most pernicious of mental diseases. Generally, it strikes in the early to mid-teens and gets progressively worse over time. Why it strikes is a mystery but there could be genetic factors, and it could be the brain is most ripe for any mental illness immediately after the so-called "brain pruning" in which billions of neurons are shucked off so new ones, of a more mature being, can take their place.
We simply don't know the final answer.
In the same (1987) work 'The Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs', Persinger noted that the God Experience "promotes passivity, and because of the random emotional associations will lead to unreasoned decisions". He gives an example of a horrible scenario in which a pivotal world leader undergoing one of these religious, brain micro-seizure states irrationally decides to trigger a nuclear disaster. Why wait for Armageddon, when you have the little red buttons to induce it yourself? (If you can also coerce your higher staff to comply with your insanity, as depicted in the movie, 'The Dead Zone')
Right now, with the polity so contaminated by extremist religious drivel and refuse, we are not far from such a drastic phase. Just add:
(religiously besotted populace infecting political stage) + (presumed 'god-man' in the WH who believes he has a personal line to his real 'Father')
Anyone who disputes such a creature could exist ought to visit Pastor Mike's ("All Souls I-Net Church") site and read some of his aberrant screeds. It is clear from those that my bro suffers from a form of self-righteous neurosis and megalomania that beggars the human imagination. His castigation of all manner of faiths from Catholicism to Mormonism to Islam, reads like a hate tract scribbled by Josef Goebbels of Nazi fame. The difference is that while Goebbels' screeds were designed to send Jews into the gas chambers and ovens at Auschwitz, Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen etc., Pastor Mike's are designed to justify dispatching Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Hindus, Atheists, Muslims etc. to the perpetual ovens of "Hell".
Never mind now that no such place as Hell could ever exist, other than in a disturbed mind. It is the thought that counts. The intent to have masses of billions dispatched there!
What one has here is not an abiding reality but rather a viral, infectious, malignant meme. A mind virus masquerading as a valid thought or concept. The point is that such malignant memes are based on BELIEF systems - NOT on knowledge!
Memes in the more general sense are basically beliefs transmitted from the recipients to others (not yet affected). Religions can do this via conversions, foisting their bibles down various populations' throats and threatening them with hellfire(in the case of promoting or embedding malignant memes).
Knowledge doesn't fall under this rubric nor is it 'self refuting'. The litmus test of that, as I've uttered til blue in the face - is that actual scientific devices, technological systems and devices (like MRI machines, telephones, planes, linear accelerators etc.) WORK! And they do so in the real world! These are all based on scientific knowledge and principles that have been transmuted into practical applications. If the knowledge underlying these were simply 'self refuting' none of these devices or sophisticated machines,instruments would be worth a damn. Their results would be spurious. But - as we know from their use - they are not.
Moon rockets really do reach the Moon and return. Satellites really do transmit pictures - other information from one place to another. Computers really do store information and allow its retrieval as well as speeding calculations. MRI machines really do provide medical diagnostics that otherwise wouldn't be available. In other words, the very existence of these devices, systems shows that the knowledge on which they're based CANNOT be self refuting. These are the realized PRODUCTS of science and scientific KNOWLEDGE!
OTOH, the 'products' of (malignant) religious memes and their belief systems include: the hair shirt, the rack, the "Virgin" (a hollow box in the shape of a woman with 8" spikes fitted to its interior so when it is closed they impale the poor wretch inside....usually an atheist or heretic) chastity belts, rosaries, mosques, cathedrals- not to mention plenty of statues that are venerated by the 'faithful'. Oh, and the loopy, mistranslated King James Bible. None of these have any efficacy - other than to reinforce and feed the already existing memes.
But let us return to the matter of religious insanity. How do we treat it? How do we rescue the hijacked brains of those like my brother and Rene? History does not provide a very optimistic giude.
For example, in the 70s thousands of kids had to be rescued from cults such as the "Moonies" and deprogrammed. Deprogramming usually lasted a month to a year and entailed the most traumatic methods to drive to regain autonomy for a brain that had lost it. As one can ascertain by reading the vile and vicious crap posted on Pastor Mike's blog - compliments of himself and Rene, the same malignant mind virus is at work there.
In my own experience, a young student I knew while in the Peace Corps, serving in Barbados, suddenly went over the edge with Hell and demon obsession. What began as simple occasional bible reading transmuted into a pathology of the first order. Whereas she originally read much of the bible in context, this soon changed to merely ferreting out all demonic and Hell references.
By the time she was found one evening, she was drooling at a church door, pounding on it and begging someone to rescue her from demons. In her mind, she literally saw and perceived demons coming after her, in much the same way my brother ("pastor Mike") insinuated I was an "agent of Satan" because I had posted a full bodied defense of atheism on his site.
The girl required being taken to the island's lone institution for housing the psychotic and mentally unbalanced, being put on a strict diet high in B-vitamins, with combined electro-convulsive therapy, and being given an anti-psychotic drug known as "largatyl".
Sadly, I am not even the least bit sure that any of the above could salvage the brains of either Pastor Mike or Rene.
But, one can always hope!
Separating Sheep from Goats
Here's the real question to ask an unctuous pud who insists he or she is 'above it all' and merely looking out for the "advancement" of humanity (by which they really mean being "personally saved"):
Do you have a "hard on" for afterlife exclusion, segregation? Dividing humanity's dead into the permanently "saved" and "unsaved"? The former sitting at the "right hand" and watching on as we ("unsaved") unbelievers, along with Buddhists, Hindus, Jews get cremated for eternity? Is this important for your own spiritual satisfaction? Or, can it be dispensed with?
In other words, if you believe in "Heaven" and "Hell" your words are already hollow and show that - whatever your "hard-on" requires- it inevitably means more than five billion frying in a nuclear holocaust initiated in the Valley of Megiddo. It means > 100 billion crisping in fires for eternity as some snotty little "elect" self-righteous goombas enjoy sitting at the "right hand" of their little lord and master watching the infidels writhe and burn over and over. And then these miscreants will have the nerve to say: "Oh, but we hate the sin and love the sinner!"
Yeah ,right. Whether many want to admit it, or realize it or not, many Christians' entire life is bound into and promotes and defines their ultimate salvation. I have no problem with that, until they also posit I need their salvation lest I attain "damnation", based on my unbelief. (Never mind the exclusion may be from an unreal existence from my Atheist POV, the point is not the existence per se but the person's absolute mental exclusion in the first place!)
In other words, fine, if you want to believe you're "saved", but don't pillory or condemn me as "unsaved". Don't grab your "heaven" ticket, by handing me my "hell" ticket. (E.g. you're attaining the heavenly clouds, means I must descend to the hellish pits). I also totally question the premise that anyone can "behave with decency" in this world, if they also believe in their heart of hearts that a good portion of humanity will be condemned at the end of time - for either never having heard of Jesus, or not believing in him. (And lest Pastor Mike or his croney, Rene, read this and think 'Why worry if they don't exist to you?' - I don't. However, the mere fact that one could conceive even an imaginary torment for a fellow being makes one no better than the most visceral and depraved racist)
That makes a mockery of any decent acts they might do, and makes them hollow at core, since their governing belief is whatever people they help (or cooperate with in helping others) will ultimately be destroyed in some eternal holocaust. How does that reconcile? It doesn't - unless one is a madman. Are Christiano-Nazis madmen? There is good evidence they are.
There is enough evidence in now to show that the vast bulk of those who practice extreme religiosity and its expressions have brain dysfunctions centered in the temporal lobes as epiphenomena. Experiments by J.M. Persinger at Laurentian University have exposed these, by stimulating the temporal lobes of numerous subjects with specially designed helmets. In each case, religious visions or "insights" emerged, as well as beliefs. Eventually, Persinger had to call it quits after receiving death threats (according to a 1989 OMNI piece, 'Transcending Science'). For more of Persinger's complete work, get hold of his: 'The Neuro-psychology of God Belief'.
One would think people wouldn't get so lathered up at this. Beholding the sheer wonder of the brain as a 3 lb. mass of gray matter. Packed with over ten billion cells - able to deliver everything from the most advanced tensor equations of general relativity, to building space rockets...to majestic works of art.... to well, providing the most exquisite visions and beliefs on demand. (Read some of Telhard's writings, like The Divine Milieu, to see how his own temporal lobes excited his neocortex and conjured up his marvelous visions of the Alpha and Omega).
But people (devout religious believers) almost uniformly 'lose it', perhaps because - as Daniel Dennett once noted - they want to build their world and universe on "skyhooks" not cranes. Cranes, after all, have to hoist from the ground up. They're prosaic, dirty material-mechanical flotsam and jetsam like cells, electric signals and chemicals. But oh those skyhooks! To toss them upwards and hook on to the ethereal, immaterial realm in the hyper yonder beyond the clouds and matter!
"BWAAAAAA....We don't want that! We wanna be GRANDIOSE beings! Made of sky and spirit not filthy matter! "
They fail to comprehend that for humanity to be one in harmony - no single subset can elevate itself as "more special" or More worthy" or more "grandiose" than any other. Irrespective of who or what they believe. And while it might be nice or appealing to believe ALL humanity is skyhook-engendered, in practice it never works! Because once the skyhook meme is admitted, one segment yearns to claim its supreme grandiosity and specialness for itself, and exclude the others! Much better to look at basic evolution out of the mire by natural selection, and how we all came to have the same basic DNA in our cells. "Brothers in DNA".
How we all came to share the same basic chemical arrangement. Indeed, this sharing can be extended to all living things on the planet- removing the specialness of humans as a species.
Meanwhile, we must allow openness to criticism and exposure of religion - any religion - if for no other reason than what Persinger's experiments suggested: that most of it arises from micro-seizures in the temporal lobes, and those aberrant manifestations are therefore akin to those of a mental disease, including hallucinations.
And just as we look rational askance at the babblings and mouthings of a drunk in the throes of delirium tremens so we must do the same for anyone who talks or writes on religious behavior - in the effort to validate some aspect of it in a way that necessitates the material or other destruction and demolition of all other humans.
Do you have a "hard on" for afterlife exclusion, segregation? Dividing humanity's dead into the permanently "saved" and "unsaved"? The former sitting at the "right hand" and watching on as we ("unsaved") unbelievers, along with Buddhists, Hindus, Jews get cremated for eternity? Is this important for your own spiritual satisfaction? Or, can it be dispensed with?
In other words, if you believe in "Heaven" and "Hell" your words are already hollow and show that - whatever your "hard-on" requires- it inevitably means more than five billion frying in a nuclear holocaust initiated in the Valley of Megiddo. It means > 100 billion crisping in fires for eternity as some snotty little "elect" self-righteous goombas enjoy sitting at the "right hand" of their little lord and master watching the infidels writhe and burn over and over. And then these miscreants will have the nerve to say: "Oh, but we hate the sin and love the sinner!"
Yeah ,right. Whether many want to admit it, or realize it or not, many Christians' entire life is bound into and promotes and defines their ultimate salvation. I have no problem with that, until they also posit I need their salvation lest I attain "damnation", based on my unbelief. (Never mind the exclusion may be from an unreal existence from my Atheist POV, the point is not the existence per se but the person's absolute mental exclusion in the first place!)
In other words, fine, if you want to believe you're "saved", but don't pillory or condemn me as "unsaved". Don't grab your "heaven" ticket, by handing me my "hell" ticket. (E.g. you're attaining the heavenly clouds, means I must descend to the hellish pits). I also totally question the premise that anyone can "behave with decency" in this world, if they also believe in their heart of hearts that a good portion of humanity will be condemned at the end of time - for either never having heard of Jesus, or not believing in him. (And lest Pastor Mike or his croney, Rene, read this and think 'Why worry if they don't exist to you?' - I don't. However, the mere fact that one could conceive even an imaginary torment for a fellow being makes one no better than the most visceral and depraved racist)
That makes a mockery of any decent acts they might do, and makes them hollow at core, since their governing belief is whatever people they help (or cooperate with in helping others) will ultimately be destroyed in some eternal holocaust. How does that reconcile? It doesn't - unless one is a madman. Are Christiano-Nazis madmen? There is good evidence they are.
There is enough evidence in now to show that the vast bulk of those who practice extreme religiosity and its expressions have brain dysfunctions centered in the temporal lobes as epiphenomena. Experiments by J.M. Persinger at Laurentian University have exposed these, by stimulating the temporal lobes of numerous subjects with specially designed helmets. In each case, religious visions or "insights" emerged, as well as beliefs. Eventually, Persinger had to call it quits after receiving death threats (according to a 1989 OMNI piece, 'Transcending Science'). For more of Persinger's complete work, get hold of his: 'The Neuro-psychology of God Belief'.
One would think people wouldn't get so lathered up at this. Beholding the sheer wonder of the brain as a 3 lb. mass of gray matter. Packed with over ten billion cells - able to deliver everything from the most advanced tensor equations of general relativity, to building space rockets...to majestic works of art.... to well, providing the most exquisite visions and beliefs on demand. (Read some of Telhard's writings, like The Divine Milieu, to see how his own temporal lobes excited his neocortex and conjured up his marvelous visions of the Alpha and Omega).
But people (devout religious believers) almost uniformly 'lose it', perhaps because - as Daniel Dennett once noted - they want to build their world and universe on "skyhooks" not cranes. Cranes, after all, have to hoist from the ground up. They're prosaic, dirty material-mechanical flotsam and jetsam like cells, electric signals and chemicals. But oh those skyhooks! To toss them upwards and hook on to the ethereal, immaterial realm in the hyper yonder beyond the clouds and matter!
"BWAAAAAA....We don't want that! We wanna be GRANDIOSE beings! Made of sky and spirit not filthy matter! "
They fail to comprehend that for humanity to be one in harmony - no single subset can elevate itself as "more special" or More worthy" or more "grandiose" than any other. Irrespective of who or what they believe. And while it might be nice or appealing to believe ALL humanity is skyhook-engendered, in practice it never works! Because once the skyhook meme is admitted, one segment yearns to claim its supreme grandiosity and specialness for itself, and exclude the others! Much better to look at basic evolution out of the mire by natural selection, and how we all came to have the same basic DNA in our cells. "Brothers in DNA".
How we all came to share the same basic chemical arrangement. Indeed, this sharing can be extended to all living things on the planet- removing the specialness of humans as a species.
Meanwhile, we must allow openness to criticism and exposure of religion - any religion - if for no other reason than what Persinger's experiments suggested: that most of it arises from micro-seizures in the temporal lobes, and those aberrant manifestations are therefore akin to those of a mental disease, including hallucinations.
And just as we look rational askance at the babblings and mouthings of a drunk in the throes of delirium tremens so we must do the same for anyone who talks or writes on religious behavior - in the effort to validate some aspect of it in a way that necessitates the material or other destruction and demolition of all other humans.
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