"Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty. Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand. As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers, with approving smiles."
Simone Weil,
Gravity and Grace
"The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people."
Theodor Adorno, Education After Auschwitz
"Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God,
for your sins have brought you down.
Bring your confessions, and return to the Lord.
Say to him,
'Forgive all our sins, and graciously receive us,
so that we may offer you our praises.
Worldly power cannot save us,
nor can our warhorses.
Never again will we say to the idols we have made,
"You are our gods."
No, in you alone
do the fatherless find mercy.'"
Hosea: 14:1-3
"Banality is a symptom. Men hide behind their cliches."
Eugene Ionesco
"The truth is, there are not two kinds of people. There’s only one: the kind that loves to divide up into gangs who hate each other’s guts. Both conservatives and liberals agree among themselves, on their respective message boards, in uncannily identical language, that their opponents lack any self-awareness or empathy, the ability to see the other side of an argument or to laugh at themselves. Which would seem to suggest that they’re both correct. Let me propose that if your beliefs or convictions matter more to you than people—if they require you to act as though you were a worse person than you are—you may have lost perspective.”
Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing
Stocks ignored the higher than expected Non-Farm Payrolls Report jobs added, choosing instead to draw some bullish cheer from flat waged and higher than expected unemployment.
But alas, it was just another wash and rinse after all.
What a surprise.
Gold moved higher further into the record territory.
Silver not not so much.
VIX wallowed between its moving averages.
The Dollar was flat.
The markets seem to be winding up for a move.
I had thought it would be coming today.
But not quite yet.
The market moving exogenous events are simmering, and at some point will boil over.
We are breaking heaven's heart.
The madness serves none but itself. No one.
How are the mighty fallen.
We must stand to the end and bear witness to truth, in fear and trembling.
Have a pleasant weekend.
