Spero Consulting

‘Quotes’ Category

There is an excel­lent col­umn in today’s edi­tion of The Wall Street Jour­nal enti­tled, A Dark Mat­ter Breakthrough?

In it, the physi­cist Lawrence Krauss writes about dark mat­ter, which may or may not exist. It does exist in many the­o­ries that seem to require it to elim­i­nate oth­er­wise incon­gru­ent obser­va­tions, and there may be empir­i­cal evi­dence that sup­ports its exis­tence, or not.

If it does exist, it may have a mass that is ten times greater than vis­i­ble matter.

When we read arti­cles like his, a few things come to mind.

First, although Mr. Krauss makes no men­tion of God, it’s dif­fi­cult not to think of Him when some­one men­tions mas­sive, unseen forces that influ­ence every­thing in the Uni­verse. More­over, we sus­pect there are many (athe­ists) who believe in dark mat­ter because it is from “sci­ence,” but not God, because they can­not find evi­dence of Him. That reminds us of two things: (1) the absence of evi­dence is not evi­dence of absence, and (2) do they appre­ci­ate the irony?

Sec­ondly, Mr. Krauss writes:

For the the­o­rist work­ing at his desk alone at night, it seems almost unfath­omable that nature might actu­ally obey the del­i­cate the­o­ries you develop on pieces of paper. This is espe­cially true when the the­o­ries involve ideas from so many dif­fer­ent areas of sci­ence and require leaps of imagination.

We’re not really dis­agree­ing with Mr. Krauss, but it does depend upon ones perspective.

If one views sci­ence and sci­en­tific knowl­edge as a proper sub­set of rea­son – the empir­i­cal, ver­i­fi­able part of rea­son – and if via the first chap­ter of the Gospel of John, one equates God with rea­son (logos, the word, thought) then one shouldn’t be sur­prised that, regard­less of ones moti­va­tion, one can learn more about God’s cre­ation through thought alone.

We think that Saint Thomas Aquinas said it best:

“The final hap­pi­ness of man con­sists in the con­tem­pla­tion of truth…. This is sought for its own sake, and is directed to no other end beyond itself.”

That’s why it is the first quote on our Quotes page.

By the way, inter­ested par­ties can read the lit­tle that we know about epis­te­mol­ogy in Uncer­tainty Man­age­ment or scan our reli­gion archive. Unearthly Dis­ci­pline and Freewill is the most closely related post.

Merry Christ­mas.

Music for Our Times

The tur­bu­lence in the finan­cial mar­kets shows no sign of end­ing. Com­modi­ties buyers, including food com­pa­nies and air­lines, suf­fer large losses from “hedg­ing” pro­grams as prices plum­met. “Hedge” funds suf­fer losses that are exac­er­bated by the high lever­age applied dur­ing calmer days; redemp­tions are lim­ited. Indus­tries and unions beg for our tax dol­lars. State gov­ern­ments beg for our other tax dol­lars. All the while, heap­ing mounds of mort­gages moul­der unval­ued and unsold.¹ As $119 mil­lion man Robert Rubin laments: “Nobody was pre­pared for this…”

It reminds us of (1) the uncer­tainty quote that we often cite from St. James’ only Epis­tle, and (2) Van Morrison’s 1997 song Rough God Goes Rid­ing (from his 1997 CD The Heal­ing Game).

Here’s the quote:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomor­row we shall go into such and such a town, spend a year there doing busi­ness, and make a profit”—
you have no idea what your life will be like tomorrow.

You are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then dis­ap­pears.
Instead you should say, “If the Lord wills it, we shall live to do this or that.”
But now you are boast­ing in your arro­gance. All such boast­ing is evil.
So for one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, it is a sin.

Not all the words that Mr. Mor­ri­son wrote fit so per­fectly, but the ones that do com­bined with the melan­choly har­mon­ica and sax, the slow tempo, and Mr. Morrison’s (ever-​present) anguish, make Rough God Goes Rid­ing the per­fect song for late 2008. Here are selected lyrics:

Oh, the mud splat­tered victims

Have to pay all along the ancient highway, 

Torn between half-​truth and victimization…

…Gap­ing wounds that will never heal

Now they’re moan­ing like a dog in a manger…

…There’ll be no more heroes

They’ll be reduced to zero…

When that rough God goes riding…

Rid­ing on in, rid­ing on in

Rid­ing on in, rid­ing on in

Reminds us of that old curse: “May you live in inter­est­ing times.”

*We must admit that while we did not and do not agree with them, we com­pletely empathized with the CEOs of Chrysler, Ford, and GM when they flew into Wash­ing­ton DC in Novem­ber. (Not when they drove in Decem­ber.) It’s clear that they had absolutely no coher­ent plan (other than beg­ging), but wanted our money. Their think­ing must have been: hey, when did a plan become a prerequisite. Henry Paul­son didn’t need one, why should we? Of course, that’s the prob­lem with arbi­trari­ness, capri­cious­ness, and expe­di­ency; you never know when the rules are going to change – rough God or not.

Or – to seri­ously mix our metaphors – falling head-​over-​heels for the wolves’ claims that the “sky is falling.”

Our favorite line from the play and movie, A Man for All Sea­sons, is Saint Thomas More’s state­ment at his trial in which he gen­tly belit­tles one of his per­jur­ing accusers, Richie Rich:

“Why Richard, it prof­its a man noth­ing to give his soul for the whole world…Ahh, but for Wales?”

Mr. Rich received an appoint­ment from Henry VIII in Wales for his efforts.

After per­form­ing a short and cur­sory search of the web, we’re not sure – and it seems that no one else is, either – as to whether the mar­tyred Saint actu­ally made that statement, or whether it is an apoc­ryphally placed by the play­wright, Robert Bolt.

Nonethe­less, it so beau­ti­fully expresses the wry, amused, and con­sid­ered insight of a thought­ful, yet con­demned, man, who by quot­ing scrip­ture (Mark, 8:36), makes clears Rich’s Faus­t­ian bar­gain, and for what?

The Scared: We have been reminded of that 16^th cen­tury, court­room scene sev­eral times dur­ing the past sev­eral weeks, includ­ing today when we read Kim Strassel’s poorly-​reasoned, col­umn on in today’s WSJ, What Lead­er­ship Looks Like, and yes­ter­day, when we read The Wall Street Jour­nal’s edi­to­r­ial, enti­tled, “Free AIG.”

Yes­ter­day, the Journal’s the edi­to­r­ial staff seemed to regain – at least tem­porar­ily – their free-​market prin­ci­ples long enough to crit­i­cize the Fed­eral Reserve’s seizure of AIG in mid-​September. Unfor­tu­nately, the edi­tors have failed to take that same logic and apply it to the larger finan­cial cri­sis, as does Ms. Strassel and her subject, Congressman Paul Ryan.

Indeed, while claim­ing to be for “free mar­kets and free peo­ple,” they seemed awfully will­ing to for­sake it for a smidgen of a promise security.

Reg­u­lar read­ers know that we’re morally opposed to the plan for sev­eral rea­sons, includ­ing that trade-​off of free­dom for secu­rity and our doubts that it is nec­es­sary despite the many, many pleas of exi­gent cir­cum­stances, falling skies, and wolves.

Furthermore, as we have writ­ten exten­sively dur­ing the past two weeks, we believe that there are harm­ful imme­di­ate and long-​term impli­ca­tions of the bailout and that it will fail. 

So, the promised secu­rity and sta­bil­ity will be illu­sory – a mirage, per­haps – as all such promises have been since at least the takeover of Bear Stearns in the early Spring. See any of these recent posts: The Finan­cial Bailout, Reverse Auc­tions and Mark­ing to “Mar­ket”; Moral Haz­ard and Another Prob­lem with Illiq­uid Assets; If ‘If’s and ‘But’s Were Candy and Nuts…(#2); Big­ger Is Not Nec­es­sar­ily Bet­ter; OMG! OMG! OMG! Largest US Bank Fail­ure Ever!; The Cri­sis and Free Mar­ket Crit­ics; The Uncer­tain Value of Mort­gage Secu­ri­ties; Sorry Mr. Bush, We Respect­fully Dis­agree; Could a “Bailout” Pro­long the Finan­cial Cri­sis?; Idio­syn­cratic and Con­cen­tra­tion Risk, Again.; and Pub­lic Bailout? Why Rush or Do It at All?. (Actu­ally most every­thing we’ve writ­ten dur­ing the past two weeks.)

In that regard, we have pro­posed our own privately-​oriented, market-​based plan, A Bet­ter Solu­tion (than a gov­ern­ment takeover), that requires only a few small changes in the tax laws to imple­ment. It is sim­i­lar to allow­ing accel­er­ated – well, imme­di­ate – depre­ci­a­tion of the cost or an invest­ment tax credit to the prospec­tive pur­chasers of cer­tain mort­gages and MBS and CDS issues. (Note: the cur­rent bill pro­vides invest­ment tax cred­its for risky R&D but not risky mort­gages. Does that make any sense?)

The Scary: In addi­tion, we ask the dear reader to con­sider this: if the cur­rent plan fails to alle­vi­ate the pan­ics, can he or she imag­ine how far the gov­ern­ment will fur­ther over­step its author­ity to solve what will then be a pro­longed cri­sis REQUIRING addi­tional gov­ern­men­tal inter­ven­tion, or have sup­port­ers not con­sid­ered that prospect?

The Sorry: Think­ing of the illu­sory nature of many such bar­gains and trade-​offs made us won­der about the indi­vid­u­als – exec­u­tives, reg­u­la­tors, and employ­ees – who “cut cor­ners,” turned a “blind eye,” or just went along with some­thing in which they didn’t believe…in hopes of gain­ing the world or per­haps just a small bit, say, a lit­tle cor­ner of Wales or Long Island.

In the process, not only did they bear high per­sonal costs, but in many cases, the gains, e.g., the value of their stock grants or their new titles, turned out to be illu­sory. (Cromwell was guil­lotined a few years later, too.)

We sym­pa­thize with them – not the amoral ones; they don’t care and would only mock our sym­pa­thy. No, we mean the folks with con­sciences, who knew right from wrong, but couldn’t resist and traded their decency (and in many cases their self-​worth) for the lure of a few dol­lars more or a lit­tle less aggra­va­tion. That near-​universal weak­ness is the rea­son that we and many oth­ers admire Sir Thomas, even if we can’t always emu­late him.

The Final Irony: All such sac­ri­fices (and gov­ern­ment direc­tives) are designed to lead one or one’s peo­ple to Utopia. By the way, who wrote that book?

Yes­ter­day, we read the quote below while donat­ing blood. (We can’t think too much about the actual process.) We liked the quote so much, we decided to post it on our Quotes page at the first oppor­tu­nity. Sev­eral of our essays, like
and Com­mon Man­age­r­ial Mis­takes in Decen­tral­ized Orga­ni­za­tions, deal with sim­i­lar types of folks — at least partially.

Dur­ing a few unpleas­ant times in our young life, we’ve had the unfor­tu­nate expe­ri­ence of deal­ing with indi­vid­u­als like those described below. They remind us of noth­ing more than the orcs and gob­lins in The Lord of the Rings when they try to make every­one as mis­er­able as they, themselves, are. The quote below is used to describe St. Paul before his moment on the road to Dam­as­cus. Against present-​day Sauls, we advise prayer (for them) and stal­wart­ness (against them), but most impor­tantly, we advise a joy­ful out­look on life. It dri­ves them absolutely crazy.

“When a man feels the bur­den of guilt on his soul, he tries hard to jus­tify him­self before his own con­science and before oth­ers by increas­ing his false zeal, and thus he sinks yet deeper into evil.”

 — Father Joseph Holzner, author of Paul of Tar­sus, 1945, via Mag​ni​fi​cat​.com.