Greed

What is greed exactly. One of my hobbies for the past several years has been speculation in stocks and more recently foreign exchange markets. I've made relatively decent profits, but have also had some truly painful losses. They say fear and greed are the two strongest human emotions driving market movements. I would add to that hope.

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A. - Gordon Gekko from Wall Street

Gekko's quote inverts the traditional view that greed is evil, but does little to explain what greed is.

a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as money) than is needed. - Merriam-Webster.com

The dictionary definition introduces the concept of excess and desire. But what exactly is excessive? Is this limit self imposed or imposed by society. And who defines what is needed? For example, is it excessive for a billionaire to want a new yatcht? Is it excessive for someone from the working class to want a new yatcht? Who really needs a new yatcht anyways? I mean, don't we all just need basic food and shelter? In that case, are we all guilty of excessive desire?

Or is the concept of greed just another tool of social control to justify limiting a person's potential for growth? That is, if greed is bad, then wanting to improve your station in life is bad and we should maintain the status quo. This definition seems to be created for the benefit of those who have everything that one would desire to have and to the detriment of those who seek what those who have have.

It also mythologizes a hierarchy of value between the haves and the have nots. That is, by creating a prohibition against the desire for accumulation, it implies that desire is a one way street to more but why isn't there a analogous prohibition against sacrifice? Or a warning against the desire for less than what is needed? It seems like sacrifice is a virtue while greed is a vice. Now who would want people to give up what they had and not want more than what they have? Perhaps, those who have it all and want to keep it. Those who write the dictionaries, run the churches and those in "power"?

Greed is an excessive desire to possess wealth or goods with the intention to keep it for yourself; Greed (Latin, avaritia), also known as avarice or covetousness, is, like lust and gluttony, a sin of excess. Greed is inappropriate expectation. However, greed is applied to a very excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of wealth, status, and power. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that greed was "a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things." In Dante's Purgatory, the penitents were bound and laid face down on the ground for having concentrated too much on earthly thoughts. "Avarice" is more of a blanket term that can describe many other examples of greedy behavior. These include disloyalty, deliberate betrayal, or treason, especially for personal gain, for example through bribery. Scavenging and hoarding of materials or objects, theft and robbery, especially by means of violence, trickery, or manipulation of authority are all actions that may be inspired by greed. Such misdeeds can include simony, where one profits from soliciting goods within the actual confines of a church. As a secular psychological concept, greed is an inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth. - Wikipedia

The wikipedia definition goes a little deeper into the dictionary definition, but essentially is saying the same things.

Greed is a concept for social control, but I think it has the potential to be of true value if defined properly. And the basis of this will be my experiences in the financial markets. The term excessive needs some unpacking here. Excessive in relation to the benefits of greed should be defined in terms of your capacity to manage your desires in relation to your capacity to possess your desires. That is, it is healthy to have desire for more but it becomes a problem when that desire for more interferes with your ability to acquire more.

For example, if you want to make a millions dollars and you are so sharply focused on making a million dollars that you make overly risky bets with your one hundred dollars, I would consider that an unhealthy greed. The healthy thing would be to maintain that desire to make a million, but to also realize that a gain of ten here or twenty there is an incremental and reasonable gain given the amount of capital one has. It's a bit of an exaggerated example, but illustrates the differences between when greed is healthy and when it becomes unhealthy.

In terms of my experience, I sometimes made the error of setting a definite short term profit goal that overrode my sense of the reality of the markets at a given moment in time. That is, I was set on making a certain profit and I would fail to take a smaller profit because that was not what my goal was. Often times, this would lead me to hold on to a position that I eventually took a loss on. I may have made an accurate speculation in terms of market direction but my sense of magnitude was distorted by unhealthy greed.

I'm not sure if this applies to professional portfolio management because they work on a completely different level of complexity. I'm a hobbyist in terms of financial markets, but I find that it is a great place to test hypotheses like my above concept of greed, because the feedback is immediate and quantifiable. Though, perhaps I'm creating a moral myth where none exists and success in financial markets depends largely on access to information, experience and training. And my desire to draw ideas about concepts of virtue and vice is delusional...

Alive and well

I've been catching up on all my friends' blogs and reading about their lives and what they've been up to. It's like, all heartwarming and shit.

It's weird though with my own blog, I don't really talk about what I'm doing. Though, I guess I do spend a lot of time thinking, which I blog about, and thinking is doing.

I do a lot of other stuff too, like going out and going to events and what not. I tend to get so caught up in what I'm doing that I don't have time to blog about it as I'm on to the next thing. Is that a bad thing? Am I just being too busy to savor and reflect on life? Should I try to share my life with others? I guess perhaps I feel like no one really cares what I do. I chalk that up to shitty parents who never really showed any interest in my life, except to give me a hard time about petty shit.

On the bright side, perhaps blogging is a waste of time. Maybe not a total waste of time, but what is the opportunity cost of blogging? And with my negligent parents, perhaps that developed in me a certain amount of freedom and independence. I think it instilled a healthy skepticism and (unhealthy?) distrust of authority figures, but that's another issue.

Does any of it matter anyways? I just want my friends to know that I'm alive and well.

NYC Tuesday Primary Elections

Links to two debates of candidates for today's primary:

NY1 Online: Democratic AG Hopefuls Debate On NY1

Maloney, Saujani Spar in Radio Debate

Klimt and the artistic cul-de-sac

According to the writer Frank Whitford : " Klimt of course, is an important artist - he's a very popular artist - but in terms of the history of art, he's a very unimportant artist. Although he sums up so much in his work, about the society in which he found himself - in art historical terms his effect was negligible. So he's an artist really in a cul-de-sac."

A great quote I found about Klimt, while reading through wikipedia. It'd be an interesting point to argue against, but for the most part I agree and have found to be an intriguing idea that I've been thinking about recently. Because while Picasso was revolutionizing art with Cubism, Klimt (and Schiele) were just continuing to do their thing. It really makes me wonder what Klimt thought of what was going on in Paris at the time.

Though, I find it analogous that while Picasso was incorporating African influences, Klimt incorporated Egyptian influences into his art. The two influences are complementary in a way since African art had a connotation of the "primative" while I would imagine Egyptian art to have been considered an example of high civilization.

Neo neo expressionist?

In the search for my own intrinsic artistic voice, I've noticed some consistent themes throughout my life. 

In particular, the figure and drawing the figure has been primary for me since I first began drawing. Since college, the work of Egon Schiele has been something I have constantly referred to and been drawn back to. I've studied and been enamored of many other artists, but I always goes back to Schiele.

I'd never really thought of his work in context though. It was always timeless to me and always seemed contemporary, even though most of it's a hundred years old. Though, I've taken an interest in digging deeper and it seems to be the consensus that Schiele was considered an Expressionist. Which somehow seems to be in tune with my own sensibilities.

But can I be relevant as an expressionist? A movement long since considered avante garde? Well, perhaps so given the revival during the '80s with Neo Expressionism (New Painting). This revival would seem to indicate that it is a strain of art that may continue to live. So, does that make me a neo neo expressionist? I don't think I have enough clout or a significant enough body of work for anyone to start a movement, but it seems like an interesting direction to go in. 

intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for the artist

It's been a little bit since graduation and I've been able to distance myself from what I was doing then and trying to find my own artistic direction.


With a big influence from Csikszentmihalyi, I have been trying to determine those elements of my art which are intrinsic and those that are extrinsic. I really don't think being one way or the other makes an artist successful or results in better art on it's own. Though, I believe that the approach aught to be integrated with the personality of the artist. 


On second thought, I think better art tends to come from artists who are intrinsically motivated. Monet comes to mind, in that I believe a lot of his production was motivated by the art market. He did after all, need to maintain the trappings of a bourgeois lifestyle. Though his best art in my opinion was intrinsically motivated. Like his series of late pond paintings and his light studies.


Perhaps this is because when extrinsically motivated, an artist tries to appeal to an audience who tend to not have the same taste level as the artist. Though, when intrinsically motivated, the artist must meet his / her own standards, which tend to be more refined than the general art buying public.

Jesuit Examen of Conscience

The Secrets of Jesuit Leadership

Jesuit Examen of Conscience

Examination of conscience

Examen of Conscience blog post

Of the Examen of Conscience by Alphonsus Rodriguez

http://myhabits.net/examen

http://norprov.org/spirituality/ignatianprayer.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Jesus

The test of conscience is mentioned in Flow. It's sort of like something I started doing on my own not too long ago in order to keep myself focused on my goals and make daily progress towards realizing them. So I was intrigued when I read that the Jesuits had a similar ritual. The "Jesuit Examen of Conscience" is well developed and quite poetic and I plan to incorporate some of the ideas into my own practice.

I don't know much about the Jesuits, but I've often heard them mentioned and well respected especially as educators. For example, the great Vince Lombardi was Jesuit educated. I remember watching the McLaughlin Group one time and Eleanor Clift payed Patrick Buchanan a complement and referred to his Jesuit education.

Flow and making order from chaos

I've been reading Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and am finding it frankly, quite life changing.

I'm just about done, I skipped a couple chapters that I plan on going back to finish, and I've read through the end of it. As a sort of note to myself and to anyone else who has read the book, it seems like a big point of the book is that life is largely about making order out of chaos.

That the work of humankind is to create order out of chaos. Making order from the chaos of the physical / natural world say, in the form of cities. Making order from the chaos of life's meaningless in the form of philosophy, literature. This applies to music, painting, dance, etc.

That many psychological disorders perhaps stem from this inability to make order from chaos. That by making order from the chaos, one can achieve psychological balance.

Now, I write all this with Csikszantmihalyi's praise of and warnings for the amateur. I am not a trained or professional philosopher or psychologist. At best, I am a dilettante.

Bloomberg's State of the City

on NY1 State of the State adress 1/16/10

NY1 VIDEO: Governor David Paterson gives his second State of the State Address before a joint legislative session in Albany on Wednesday, January 6, 2010.