Blog Archives

Desires can affirm

3/23/2015

297. Past

Principles

Age

Desires can affirm

I was surprised to observe that as one ages the sensual needs are still present. Normally one would associate aging men with diminishing libido and testosterone. This is so, but what is also so is that heartache and pain weighs one down more than ever and one needs an escape. These desires may not be prominent, but they are still there. They affirm one’s existence.

1 Comment

Keeping it going

3/23/2015

9 Comments

296. Past

Principles

Life and living

Keeping it going

Keeping it going

9 Comments

Keeping it going

3/23/2015

0 Comments

295. Past

Principles

Life and living

Keeping it going

Behind me,
on the side of me,
in front of me,
above me and below me,
the pull is down
and gravity is against me.

Still, I'm a life
and life must live,
and keep it going,
and going,
and going,
and going.

0 Comments

All we are left with

3/23/2015

0 Comments

294. Past

Observations

All we are left with

In a silly movie, the character who represents death questions a dying lady to find out about life, and she answers that all we are left with are memories. Perhaps this is true. The striving, the need for control and understanding, the creation of our own mythologies, answering the “whys” of life, questioning the relationship of cause and effect, become less important and we are left with snapshots of various places and experiences, each having their own flavor, smell, mood, temperament, and imprint on our beings that goes beyond description.

0 Comments

Others' perspective

3/23/2015

2 Comments

293. Past

Theology

Others' perspective

In the Jewish Torah many ways to live are written about. It contains wisdom, truth, and realization. Learning and understanding are delved into.

The important lesson is that one has to find one’s own path, your own self, and your own journey. However, peeking at others’ journeys is not discouraged. Doing so can be expanding, often times putting your own experiences into perspective. It gives you a yardstick by which you can compare yourself. When going through an ordeal the words of some ancient writer pop into your mind and you think “oh, that’s what was meant.”

2 Comments

Little truths

3/11/2015

0 Comments

292.

Principles

Truth

Little truths

Small little truths that we run across confirm in us something bigger. If, say, I honestly share a mini-realization I had and it rings true for you too something inside is confirmed that was already inside you. You suspected that it might be true but weren't sure. Here someone else is bringing it to the light and you are not alone in what you see. You are not isolated. Your secret truth is shared by another. Whether through difficulties or even some joys, or just by observing we have both been there and touched something similar. Such little truths build and accumulate to bigger truths. In a sense they build a structure of truth. In another sense by just seeing little truths we earn our way to trust what is big and true. We experience a brief sense of peace and can rest in what lies beneath everything. In this way life connects us, even if just for a moment, to the biggest truths; that there is a reason for it all, that beyond all our doubts there really even might be a God.

0 Comments

Responding

3/11/2015

0 Comments

291. Past

Principles

Living and life

Responding

More and more
what I have to say
is inadequate.
Based on right and wrong
or on some principles
that no longer apply
but perhaps maybe should.

People don't change
behavior doesn't modify
so why bother?

Unable to absorb
any of my words
all I can offer
is an intelligent silence.

0 Comments

Leverage and intrinsic value

3/11/2015

0 Comments

290. Past

Principles

Economics
(Growing up I wasn't sure what money was. It seemed like you always owed and would work forever to pay off something. Borrowing and debt seemed to enslave so better get a profession. Then if you eventually had some money it was a hot potato to leverage out somewhere. You seemed never free of the cycle. A simple understanding of money came to me much later in adulthood. A dollar earned from exchange or labor that stayed consistent as possible. This appealed to the purist in me. Later I realized it is good to know the base, the premise, the core of a concept, but one also has to make peace with what is, ie; the present money system. And then, does one accept this and play debt as if it is actual money? Practical but so cynical.

Following is a look at the two ways of viewing money.)

Leverage and intrinsic value

There is an honest relationship with money that one shouldn't be too removed from. Time, work, energy are exchanged for a good or service using a symbol called money. This money should be as consistent as possible over time, almost as unchangeable as the effort to accumulate it. Symbols for this money should be durable, of limited supply and intrinsic value. Gold is an example. A paper note could be used to represent the gold value, but it should remain consistent. So far money, as in gold, and its relationship with a note representing it, is honest and trustworthy.

When the relation between the paper note and the symbol it represents, say gold, is distorted, no longer reflecting accurately time, work, and energy, that is when we begin to have “funny” money. In one sense this distortion becomes a form of chance taking and gambling.

A simple example is a bank with $1000 to lend and charge interest upon. If ten people are lent 10% on $1000, all is okay. If 15 people are lent $100 on the initial $1000, that is a gamble. If by chance 12 or 13 of these borrowers couldn't pay back their money, the bank would lose its capital and be out of business. If this doesn't happen the bank stands to make unseemly profits based upon risk taking.

Recall the play “The Producers.” The accountant and hustler producer sold to elderly ladies thousands of percent for a play they carefully picked to fail called “Springtime for Hitler in Germany.” Everything seemed a go and the play at best should have been a one night stand. However, the audience after hesitation loved it as one loves kitsch or a grade B movie. The producers were in trouble.

Leveraging and derivatives are more sophisticated ways of manipulation. Often you are betting on the probability of an event happening, whether a crop failure or of a stadium being built near some land. Options and futures are other plays in the market that can multiply earnings.

In addition to this, there has been an effort to eliminate the downside of risk. One foreign individual from an African country said he planned to borrow all he could and invest it and if these investments failed, the International Monetary Fund would bail him out.

A teacher I knew said he worked with another teacher who drove a Lexus on a teacher’s salary. He would run up credit card debt and then declare bankruptcy as a matter of course. Corporations do this on a larger scale as do small businesses. When I was a small contractor I would see one decorating shop close, declare bankruptcy only to reopen across the street under a different name. All the debt goes unpaid with the net result money is cheapened. Of course this doesn't even touch the subject of recent bailouts for major corporations under the “too big to fail” concept.

In the stock market you have vehicles to sell off a stock if it goes below a certain level. Shrewd yes. One limits the downside. But it's too related to gambling. Instead of investing it becomes trading, where there is no belief or loyalty to a company. Technical analysis is even more detached in its methodology. The fundamental make up of a company is ignored and all that's important are the patterns of ebb and flow of capital. It becomes depersonalized, soulless trading.

Finally there is the printing of money which cheapens a currency. If a piece of gold is worth $100 and we print 100 dollars, every dollar to represent 1/100 of its worth, each dollar would be worth less if we printed 500 individual dollars or 1/500 of the piece of gold. In this way our savings are cheapened, our work, our time, our energy are degraded and worth less and less.

Inflation too becomes a form of leverage. Higher wages, higher prices, more printing of money continues to devalue the dollar. There should be some leeway but it should not be commonplace. Otherwise our simple honest relationship with money becomes compromised and society turns into a gambling casino and Ponzi scheme.

0 Comments

Wisdom acknowledges

3/11/2015

0 Comments

289. Past

Principles

Wisdom

Wisdom acknowledges

At first life seems to be a cause and effect relationship. You're hungry, you eat. You jump, you fall. You push something, it moves. There is action, then reaction. In nature the rules are severe. If you get caught, you get eaten. Miss the prey and you weaken. People follow these rules. Work, get paid. Play ball, try to win. Compete at a career, go to the top. The action and the person are one, and the effort and person are one. As long as this relationship maintains itself, there is no need for deviation. The stronger or smarter or just more fortunate you are, the longer this can persist.

The problem arises when something goes wrong with cause and effect. Small discrepancies start to creep in, disrupting the 1 to 1 relationship of this paradigm. Larger errors enter and the relationship begins to be questioned. Illness, corruption, the environment and chance whither it away. The 2nd law of thermodynamics causes erosion. At 50, one is left at some point questioning what went wrong. This question leads to introspection, awareness, looking into how everything works, or doesn't, the why, even the reason. As time goes on, sometimes things work and sometimes they don't. One has to live with failure, partial or full. And sometimes there is just plain defeat with no answers. The cause and effect relationship, the action reaction relationship, makes no sense and one is bewildered. One wonders, theorizes, proposes reasons why, with some truer than others. And sometimes one is forced to just be patient and wait. All this is leading to wisdom, an awareness of what is; observations of what occurs and their interrelationships. All this is shared with others at different stages. Again, this is wisdom.

Wisdom will not replace the force and control one had when the cause and effect relationship was intact. That was when a person was more powerful although less aware. Wisdom is a defense, an effort to explain why something doesn't work. At first everything was in control. Wisdom wasn’t needed. Then everything wasn't. The latter is closer to the reality of existence and wisdom acknowledges this.

0 Comments

Steven B. Nussdorf records his lifelong search to find meaning outside of the normal channels. He uses writing, poetry, and drawing to document this effort.

Archives