This has been an interesting cycle to watch. Certainly, the lives lost and tragic situation playing out in Japan is due our most solemn thought and prayers. One of the things that I have learned is that we are only truly at war with ourselves and when we can make peace with ourselves as individuals unto ourselves many impossible things are possible. In that the markets are a reflection of that singular relationship. Our biggest enemy is indeed ourselves. But if we extrapolate that further we find that this condition occurs for many, many, many market participants, and they in turn reflect and impart collective values, collective wisdom, collective beliefs into the visible manifestation of prices. I believe that prices represent much more than just a simple price. They represent the values of an entire society or the entire globe as the case may be. I stated in the video interview that I did with Douglass Lodmell that "money is a symbol and a representation of the society it serves". If that society is dysfunctional, its money is likely to be as well. If that society is basing actions on core values and productive pursuits, its money will be required to represent them. As a society we participate in group think and its almost impossible to extract ourselves from it. That is why trading is such a battle with oneself to avoid group think. Its also why it represents the state of the collective consciousness.
Lets look at this a little bit further. Many things that occur in nature (of which we are a part) are painful but rejuvenating. A wildfire may create challenges or great struggle, but it will inevitably leave a foundation for more than it destroyed - further evolution. However, the human animal is a different thing altogether, our fears and greed, our predisposition for fight or flight and our need for dominance - though attributes in many species - are tools we use for self-deception, self-destrcution and self-aggrandizement. Call them behavioral and motivational weaknesses. These are not things that occur in nature on their own in other species.
When we focus on limited pursuits and essential values, we generally produce overwhelmingly healthy potential and opportunity. When we focus on superficial, trivial and deceptive pursuits we use our predispositions and behavioral and motivational weaknesses to qualify why what we are doing is of higher order, better than the simple and limited pursuits. We qualify why we think we have more sophisticated values than the simpleton people and societies whose focus was more basic, limited and essential. I have to stress that one of the things that I have learned is that I always produce more with less and almost always produce less with more. The more opportunity I have the less I do with it, however, the less I have the better I develop what little I do have. As a society we have created abstract realities and consciousness's whereby people feel entitled, they feel like struggle is a thing from the past that we should not need to do - yet they wonder why they feel like they are struggling. As a society, we need money that can also act in this way - eliminating the need to struggle for it - so we create debt. This is a reflection of the social consciousness and leads to bad psychology and unhealthy and unproductive decision making. Debt is inherently narcissistic and usually part of a short cut we think can reduce our need for struggle - the result is that our money systems reflect these traits. What is ironic, is that when ever one amuses themselves with new paradigms qualified by our behavioral and motivational weaknesses the shortcut becomes the long cut and the basic becomes the complex.
Moreover, what we can see that when a group of people start embodying these characteristics, group think takes over and spreads to others who then become similarly challenged. For these reasons there are times that a tragedy is a catastrophe and other times when it is an opportunity and a rebirth for us. When we value idle gods and celebrate our shortcuts and especially when we exemplify that behavior through our mediums of exchange - money. We get Bernanke. We get Barrack Obama's change we can't believe in that is something worse than and less than change. We get Tim Geithner and Lloyd Blankfein doing "God's work". We get bad decision making at nuclear power plants in Japan. We literally get bankrupt values and souls that are no longer able to facilitate the creation of opportunity out of adversity as we are seeing in the middle east and in Japan. The reserve of inner metal, quiet confidence and determination have been beaten into submission by our fears and greed, our predisposition for fight or flight and our need for dominance or to be dominated...there is nothing left to struggle with. There is no fuel. As a society unless we recognise that our core values and our lives have a real value we will continue to allow those values to be corrupted and distorted into sick, unhealthy and contagious mange that spreads without resistance. If we were to look at a strong Japan with healthy values and healthy methods for representing those values, a tsunami would certainly be a terrible terrible thing, but it would be a limitation and challenge provided by nature that would steel the drive to overcome and become. Japan would grow. But that is not the case, as a foundation, Japan does not have money that represents value, it has money that represents destruction of value. It is very difficult indeed to compete with destruction when it comes from within and more importantly when we allow and abet it. The result is that this effects the strength and capability of everyone in a society from the president to the constituents he serves, to the guy monitoring and designing the Nuclear power plant. This is the struggle of the ages - coming to grips with true values and then finding a way to transmit value in a productive and powerful way...
I can assure you that the Fed, Central Banking debt money system has contributed to the chaos in the US and Japan much more that the earthquake or the tsunami. It has changed motivations and our inner happiness. It has changed our connection to and understanding of the truth. A society that transmits its value and productivity with debt and deception is a sick one without a relationship to truth and one that will ultimately resort to debasement of its values and its capability.
