Darkness and Light

I was doing some reading earlier, I had just opened a copy of Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett. On the first page of the Story and its rather long Footnote he talks about how the crown survived by clinging on in the 

"sprawling, brawling, squalling consciousness of the city itself."

and that

"There are all kinds of Darkness, and all things can be found in them, imprisoned, banished, lost or hidden. Sometimes they escape. Sometimes they simply fall out. Sometimes they simply can't take it any more."

This spoke to me as earlier today I had watched a program on he Victoria Climbie murder and how she had been failed by various organisations that were supposed to help, and the news had had a fair bit about the Treyvon Martin case in Florida. As I watched the Program on Victoria Climbie I heard my dad say some very sickening things about the girls family, one was:

" These African Family's trade kids like Pokemon cards." and "All African kids need to be DNA tested to show that the people claiming to be their parents are, because the blacks use the kids to get benefits off the government." Now I know that Victoria's family were duped by the woman who killed her but to paint the population of an entire continent with the same brush because of the actions of a select few? That just isn't right.

I know that times of economic depression hardens the heart but this display of rampant racism and Xenophobia is getting a bit beyond the pale and even what I'm willing to tolerate, and I can tolerate a hell of a lot even to the point of taking the blame for another person's actions (especially if I love them). I understand that this is in the darkness of Britain and America's collective psyche, especially in the old Confederate states of which Florida is one, but its not in mine I am a great believer in total equality irrespective of race, colour, or creed. 

But there is darkness in all of us, and what we hide in there can either give us strength to carry on or destroy us and those we claim to love. Take myself as an example I have a thankfully short lived dependency in Codeine this has taught me a lot one of which is that I'm not as emotionally strong as I thought I was as I used it to cover the emotional pain I was in the cause of which was the amount of time I spent with people who honestly cared more for themselves that others, my family in short. This pain led me to almost kill my Ex-girlfriend, talking of which she has a much deeper and often more destructive darkness. Hers hides a rage started by her Rapes. This rage has often clouded her judgement and led her to blame herself for the actions of others and to become overly aggressive towards men, this is not unheard of in cases of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I know of women who were Raped t a young age who became total Berzerkers in any argument with a man usually those they called loved ones, this has led to some being totally celibate even after their treatment. I hope this isn't the case with Wendy as she could be a great mother and lover to the right person. I was not the right person as I am naturally something of a lone wolf, ironic that my Native American zodiac animal is that of the Wolf, I have little need for a huge social circle while Wendy needs at least one person around in order to feel totally safe.

Though ultimately life is not about darkness it is about light and the light is in all of us, we just need to look for it inside of ourselves and use it to guide us to that happiness we all seek. Be it in the arms of another, in a fulfilling career or a life of quiet contemplation, but in order to find that light we have to walk the dark paths for that is where the light shines brightest.

I hope you all find that light you seek, Brightest Blessings.

Steven

Integrity.

I was meandering around the internet looking for both a home and a job as is my wont at the moment and in my need for a break I looked at my Facebook page and found a link to the New York Times opinions page by the Robin Hood Tax people. I will paste it here for you.

 

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

By GREG SMITH

Published: March 14, 2012

TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

Enlarge This Image

Victor Kerlow

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.

But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.

I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.

When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.

Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave.

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.

It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.

It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.

These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.

When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined success and what we could do to help them get there.

My proudest moments in life — getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.

I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer. 

I actually admire this man for his integrity in a business that has lost its own, of course being an investment Banker is not exactly the toast of the town but it has been an integral part of the worlds economy for a good century and has lost its way before. We all know about the wall street crash of 1929 this time though it was the investment banks that had failed us this time not the stock exchanges.

I am not the sort of person to judge if I can help it but this time I can't, over the past twenty to thirty years we have lost our way. The societies we all live in are ruled by greed and that is wrong we have no real moral compass in the west and the Abrahamic faiths have only been used to justify the greed of big business rather than be the champions of the poor and oppressed they have been in the past.

I am a pagan and I try my best to live by a simple creed, I don't always succeed but at least I endeavor to better myself. the creed I try to live by is not of viking origin but from the mid 20th Century, the Wiccan Reade. 

And it harm none, do what you will.

These eight words challenge you to do a number of things the most important of which is to define harm, I could go on for pages to explain this idea but I will let you do that for yourself. I would rather you look at your own neighborhood and see what you can do to help those who need it the most, that is what socialism is those who have helping those who don't have. I agree with Thomas Payne on that, our society has to bring the best out in all of us not the worst. We have failed both ourselves and our children if we don't change now and show the integrity we have inside us.

Brightest blessings

Steven

Why I'm a Pagan

I am a Pagan, I know I have said that before but bare with me. I decided it was time I explained why I chose Paganism over Christianity as a faith.

While I was growing up in Hastenbeck Germany and here in Redditch England I was raised as a nominal Christian, my Mother was a lapsed Roman Catholic but still had me baptized against the wishes of my Father, who understandably hit the roof. Not because he was on exercise with the British Army at the time but because he wanted me to chose my own faith when I was older rather than have one forced on me as a child and blindly follow the dictates of others.

I also chose Paganism after many years of study and comparison ending in my early twenties, this was a more complex process than I first anticipated as I even looked at the politics of the different religions and being a socialist by nature I had serious qualms about the main "World" religions as they, by their very nature, tend to be very conservative and in some cases downright Fascist. then there was the Social history of the different religions, all but a very small handful of mesopagan religions have been and still are in the case of Christianity used to keep the masses distracted with saving their souls while the rich and those in power rip them off financially and deny the masses their human rights. A cursory glance at America will show that, for example; the United States has a national debt of roughly 15.5 Billion Dollars and rising at an almost exponential rate. Leaving an ever increasing gap between rich and poor that if left unchecked will lead to a second civil war, as you cannot have the extremely rich and extremely poor living in the same house it leads to resentment and bloodshed. Britain had the same problem and still does now but the Government has much more trouble keeping the people distracted as the United Kingdom is only Nominally Christian as the power of the Anglican church faded somewhat after the second world war.

This is not to say that there is nothing good within Christianity as a whole, on the contrary I know there is a great deal of wisdom in that book you just have to find it and then work it into your life. An example of this is Mathew 7:1-5 on the judgement of others I know that is probably the best part of the Bible for me at least and it is repeated in many other religions one of my favorites is in Buddhism and goes:

"Before you pull the weeds in another mans Garden, pull them in your own first."

 

I don't remember where I read that quote or where it comes from exactly but I usually find myself chuckling at it and those who presume to pidgeon hole me for their own game.

I do not practice all of the varied types of Pagan out there today as I live in the UK and I frankly like to keep certain body parts none frozen, I am still studying the different paths within Paganism I'll post that later once I have gathered all of the info I need.

I'll catch you all later so Brightest Blessings to you all and god luck.
Steven

Not the end of the world!

As the new year opened I got to thinking, all these prophecies about the end of the world we have been told about over the past decade or so. Are they even the slightest bit true?

We must first look at the source or inspiration of these prophecies, the Mayan long count, this calendar stops on or around the winter solstice this year. Depending on your religion, if you have one, you would have heard one of hundreds of calamities that are going to happen over the coming year; or if you were looking you would have found them already and you would have prepared long ago. But these prophecies are based on a linear calendar the source of which is quite probably Roman, and the Mayan Civilization was a pagan civilization and their calendar is not linear its cyclical. Their calendar can be best seen as a set of three concentric wheels the largest being the long count on the outside with the other two set concentrically inside the large one so they interlock.

As a pagan myself I had to chuckle when I saw the calendar shown in this way on a program on one of the documentary channels I currently have access to, this view of the universe seems to be fairly universal to any faith that has more than a passing link to nature. This includes the Maya who saw that the whole universe is governed by cycles be it the season or the cycle of night and day, their religion only served as a way to explain why it happened, of course it was a rather bloody affair at times but I cannot really judge as all pre-Christian religions had some sort of blood sacrifice in there somewhere. Now as it happens the Maya calendar also links up to the dawning of the age of Aquarius (though why its after the age of Pisces is a mystery to me) this new age is supposed to be an age of enlightenment, spirituality  and great possibilities. This is something I honestly cannot say for sure will happen but something will have to give first for anything to come to fruition, The Long Count tells only of a great change that will come as the time of kings and centralized power comes to an end. Whether this change will be peaceful or not I again cannot say, Clairvoyance is not my strong suit but I do feel that in the coming years things will happen things are going to change and this excites me, I cannot wait to see what will happen I hope you feel the same.

What ever happens trust me we will survive and we will thrive and the world we all are a part of will do the same, though if some of the less crazed prophecies are to be believes there may be fewer of us as a species to go on to prosper.

I wish you all Brightest Blessings and best of luck in all you chose to do.
Steven

What to write.

This is a new idea for me here instead of writing about an ex-girlfriend and other depressing shite I am probably going to ramble about life the universe and everything that pops into my mind over the course of my life; an example of which is the economy and polotics.

We all know that the world wide economic situation is bad but most media outlets I have access to keep referring to it as a depression when in reality it is closer to a depression on the same lines as the great depression of 1929, there are differences however between this one and the crash of '29 the cause being one. In '29 it was the unregulated stock market speculation and cheap credit while this one was an unregulated housing market exacerbated by the sub prime market in the USA, giving mortgages to people who had no hope in hell of paying those mortgages off in either their lifetimes or those of their children. The ball for the current situation was started by the rise of the New Right in the 1970s and '80s and the subsequent deregulation of the economies of the west, Now any half wit with the most basic understanding of economics could tell you that basing an economy on consumerism is a bad idea, and basing the same economy on one item alone is downright fool hardy but the right wing lessee fair attitude to the free market allowed this to happen. The willful disregard for the tragedy and subsequent world war that followed the crash of '29 was at best an act of stupidity at worst an act of criminality on a scale not seen since 1945.

This being said the current situation can be fixed, but only by Keynesian economics for the time being and a thorough enactment of the 1941 Beveridge report. The welfare state as envisaged by Sir William Beveridge can only work with a 100% employment rate and with a true living wage so the state has enough money to pay for itself and prosper.

Its strange to think that I think this way but I do, everybody needs a hobby I suppose mine just happens to be Social Sciences along with religion and politics. I'll explain more about myself as time goes on.