There's an irritating ad on TV - I think it's Nedbank - that suggests that your investment is better off with them because they keep emotion and reason as far apart from each other as possible.
What unmitigated twaddle! I'd trust this bunch less than I'd trust a donkey, and I'll tell you why:
The greatest scientists, philosophers, and dare I say, investment brokers, will tell you that their work is not a science. It's a combination of having access to as many relevant facts as possible and acting logically in applying those facts, yes.
But it's ALSO, and often where the most noteworthy achievements happen, when you act on your gut. Einstein had a dream. Churchill got drunk. And Coleridge - well yes he was a poet, I grant you, but we would never have had "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree..." if he hadn't been a regular imbiber of some pretty hallucinatory substances.
Not that I'm advocating that accountants, portfolio managers and financial advisers go out and toke on some weed (although their spouses might find them suddenly a lot more interesting), and not that I advocate getting high at all. I don't do the stuff.
What I am trying to say is that life is not as black and white as the advert would have us think. It's grey. It's messy. Intuition is an emotion. And it functions in ways shrinks, brain surgeons and neurologists have been trying to understand for centuries - they still don't - and it still saves our butts in times of crisis in ways we will never consciously understand. The last-minute cold-feet that saved you from marrying what would have been a wife from hell. The hairs on the back of your neck that stopped you going in to business with someone who later turns out to be an unethical, dishonest cad. The feeling (yes, I used the word) that stopped you from buying some shares the day before they tanked.
Read a book called "Steering by Starlight" by Martha Beck, and see how dreams affect reality. All the time. There are island communities that "dream" the fish to them. And it works.
Wearing the blinkers of a logic-only world view will make you like a bipolar friend of a friend: he's impossibly rich, lonely, isolated, emotionless and unable to relate meaningfully to his spouse or children. One part of his life is working. The other parts that give meaning to that one part, are dysfunctional.
When we start to put our trust in purveyors of the "science" of life instead of in whole people who can flow between the science and the art of life, it's like asking Mr Bipolar to tell you how to repair your relationship with your family. Ain't gonna happen.
The title of this blog comes from Hamlet (Act I Sc v), where the ghost of his father appears and asks Hamlet to avenge his death. This is all too much for poor old Horatio. Er ist total ausgeflippt, as they say in Munich. He's been exposed to something outside his worldview and he's freaking out:
Horatio: "O day and night, this is wondrous strange!"
Hamlet? He's chilled. A ghost? Cool. Let's hear what it has to say:
Hamlet: "And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy..."
Hamlet is saying to Horatio that what you think you know is not what there is to know. If something comes out of left field, don't freak out. Suss it out. Understand it, even though you may not agree with it.
Actuaries are really bright kids who hit varsities with a string of distinctions and then become responsible for making decisions that will impact billions of dollars, euros, etc. So why are they so consistently wrong? What's with the geniuses that they could not predict 2008? That with the experience of 2008 they could not predict what's happening now, in 2011 - a recession, I believe, that will make 2008 look like a walk in the park and will probably be a lot closer to the 1931 Depression. Hey, I'm not the expert - but then the experts seem to be missing it by a mile quite consistently nowdays. I'm just acting on my gut.
God used a donkey (Numbers 22:28) when all else failed. He did so because there was a deadline. His message needed to be heard NOW, but everyone was too busy. So He used a donkey.
I fear that in the case of bean-counters, financial advisers and their ilk, they may prove more of a challenge to Him than an ass.
What unmitigated twaddle! I'd trust this bunch less than I'd trust a donkey, and I'll tell you why:
The greatest scientists, philosophers, and dare I say, investment brokers, will tell you that their work is not a science. It's a combination of having access to as many relevant facts as possible and acting logically in applying those facts, yes.
But it's ALSO, and often where the most noteworthy achievements happen, when you act on your gut. Einstein had a dream. Churchill got drunk. And Coleridge - well yes he was a poet, I grant you, but we would never have had "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree..." if he hadn't been a regular imbiber of some pretty hallucinatory substances.
Not that I'm advocating that accountants, portfolio managers and financial advisers go out and toke on some weed (although their spouses might find them suddenly a lot more interesting), and not that I advocate getting high at all. I don't do the stuff.
What I am trying to say is that life is not as black and white as the advert would have us think. It's grey. It's messy. Intuition is an emotion. And it functions in ways shrinks, brain surgeons and neurologists have been trying to understand for centuries - they still don't - and it still saves our butts in times of crisis in ways we will never consciously understand. The last-minute cold-feet that saved you from marrying what would have been a wife from hell. The hairs on the back of your neck that stopped you going in to business with someone who later turns out to be an unethical, dishonest cad. The feeling (yes, I used the word) that stopped you from buying some shares the day before they tanked.
Read a book called "Steering by Starlight" by Martha Beck, and see how dreams affect reality. All the time. There are island communities that "dream" the fish to them. And it works.
Wearing the blinkers of a logic-only world view will make you like a bipolar friend of a friend: he's impossibly rich, lonely, isolated, emotionless and unable to relate meaningfully to his spouse or children. One part of his life is working. The other parts that give meaning to that one part, are dysfunctional.
When we start to put our trust in purveyors of the "science" of life instead of in whole people who can flow between the science and the art of life, it's like asking Mr Bipolar to tell you how to repair your relationship with your family. Ain't gonna happen.
The title of this blog comes from Hamlet (Act I Sc v), where the ghost of his father appears and asks Hamlet to avenge his death. This is all too much for poor old Horatio. Er ist total ausgeflippt, as they say in Munich. He's been exposed to something outside his worldview and he's freaking out:
Horatio: "O day and night, this is wondrous strange!"
Hamlet? He's chilled. A ghost? Cool. Let's hear what it has to say:
Hamlet: "And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy..."
Hamlet is saying to Horatio that what you think you know is not what there is to know. If something comes out of left field, don't freak out. Suss it out. Understand it, even though you may not agree with it.
Actuaries are really bright kids who hit varsities with a string of distinctions and then become responsible for making decisions that will impact billions of dollars, euros, etc. So why are they so consistently wrong? What's with the geniuses that they could not predict 2008? That with the experience of 2008 they could not predict what's happening now, in 2011 - a recession, I believe, that will make 2008 look like a walk in the park and will probably be a lot closer to the 1931 Depression. Hey, I'm not the expert - but then the experts seem to be missing it by a mile quite consistently nowdays. I'm just acting on my gut.
God used a donkey (Numbers 22:28) when all else failed. He did so because there was a deadline. His message needed to be heard NOW, but everyone was too busy. So He used a donkey.
I fear that in the case of bean-counters, financial advisers and their ilk, they may prove more of a challenge to Him than an ass.
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