Titian, 16th Century
Woman burning money in Weimar Germany. In post War War I Germany, Rudolf von Havenstein presided over the single biggest currency debasement in history, but refused to accept responsibility for the debacle.There was something terribly tragic about this deeply well-intentioned man. Not simply a dutiful bureaucrat, he was by all accounts a wonderful human being, to Max Warburg "an extraordinary sympathetic personality, with an unbending sense of duty and honorable character." He was universally admired, kind, principled, and considerate, always living up to the highest virtues of his class. During the war, while most households supplemented their rations by buying under the counter, Von Havenstein not only refused to use the black market, but even donated some of his own paltry bread and meat ration stamps to the poor. In the last year, however, he seemed to have lost his grip on reality—some said that the pressure he was under had made him prematurely senile—and a few mourned his passing.
"They have a primitive, undeveloped sense of self." To compensate, they create a grandiose image to distract from an inner state that Payson says is one of "almost malignant anxiety and emptiness."As well,
Psychologist Allan N. Schore, an associate clinical professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA says NPD can be summed up as, "Contempt of other people and their emotions." People with NPD are convinced there is nothing wrong with them; it's everyone around them who is impossible or crazy.
[In 1922] It was remarkable how enormous was the change that had come over Norman since August 1914. Then he had been a pathetic figure, unsure of himself and uncertain about his future, wracked by neuroses, his less than illustrious career cut short by mental illness. Now he was generally recognized as the most prominent and powerful banker in all of Europe, if not the world.
- Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke The World, 2009, pp. 136-7The aristocracy that had ruled Britain for much of the previous century had been badly damaged—as one contemporary author wrote, albeit with some exaggeration, "In the useless slaughter of the Guards on the Somme, or of the Rifle Brigade in Hooge Wood, half the great families, heirs of large estates and wealth, perished without a cry." After enduring savage losses in the fighting—the casualty rate had been three times heavier among junior officers, many of them aristocrats, than among enlisted men—the old elite had also been hurt by wartime inflation and was now being decimated by postwar economic dislocations. Land prices had collapsed and many large estates been put up for auction. In place of the old and confident ruling class, a whole new breed—"hard-faced men who had looked as if they had done well out of the war," as one eminent politician described his new colleagues in the House of Commons—had come to power.
Do you still love us daddy?Peter Sellers
Of course I do, sweetheart. Just not as much as I love Sophia Loren.From The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, 2004.
Imagine that we find the Holy Grail of neurobiology, the patterns of neural activation that correlate perfectly with different events in our mental lives. We would still never understand or make sense of why those correlations exist. There is no intrinsic relationship between the experience and the neural substrates of the experience. We always need to look at what factors bring the two together. The environment, other people, our needs and desires -- all these things exist outside the brain and have to be seen as essential parts of our selves and consciousness. So we aren't just our brains, we're not locked inside our craniums; we extend beyond our skulls, beyond our skin, into the world we occupy.
[Dr. Bradley Peterson of Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute] said having a thinner right cortex may increase the risk of depression by disrupting a person's ability to decode and remember social and emotional cues from other people.
They did memory and attention tests on the study subjects and found the less brain material a person had in the right cortex, the worse they performed on attention and memory tests.
"Our findings suggest rather strongly that if you have thinning in the right hemisphere of the brain, you may be predisposed to depression and may also have some cognitive and inattention issues," he said.
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They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.His Rolling Stone article is here.
Top: The She-Wolf, 1943. Bottom: Jackson Pollock walking in field with wife Lee Krasner, Springs, New York, 1949.
David Hockney [born 1937] by Lucian Freud [born 1922], who has favored longer sessions of several months to capture his subjects. "He's looking, looking. Peering, peering. Coming closer."
[Communism was] compelled to educate and train people up to a certain level. But beyond that level, it forbade them to think, or to inquire, or to use their initiative. Thus, while it created a vast amount of “surplus consciousness,” it could find no way of employing this energy except by squandering and dissipating and ultimately repressing it.
Rafael Trujillo [R]
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[Dr.] Sternberg explained to me that there are four fallacious assumptions that impede wisdom and lead smart people into self-destructive mistakes -- the kind that will get you kicked out of school, fired, sued, attacked in the press, and even impeached. These are the fallacies of egocentrism ("When we start to think the world revolves around us"), omniscience ("We know more than everyone else -- the others are just big idiots"), omnipotence ("We, unlike others, can do what we want and get away with it"), and invulnerability ("We are so smart that we can cover our tracks").
Sternberg's theory of foolishness emphasizes the tendency of these fallacies to befall the traditionally stupid and the traditionally very smart. He explained that while the smart act stupidly because they think they can get away with it, the stupid simply "lack the cognitive capacity to realize how foolish these fallacies are."
When asked for the examples foolishness he sees most in Yale students, Sternberg was quick to cite three examples: cheating, shoplifting and heavy drinking. In all three cases, there is some perceived short-term gain to be had, with a heavy possible long-term loss if the perpetrator is caught off guard.
"Smart people turn into self-saboteurs when they do stupid things," he said. "Yale students are more likely than others to think things like 'I can get drunk and take a test tomorrow' or 'Other people have to study, but I don't.' They may be setting themselves up for a really big fall."
My son bought me the car. It's a present.Jack Klompas
(disbelief) You bought it?Jerry Seinfeld
That's right. I bought it.Morty Seinfeld
You ever see one so nice?Jack Klompas
Some car.Morty Seinfeld
You wanna take a ride?Jack Klompas
No, thank you.Morty Seinfeld
C'mon, take a ride.Jack Klompas
I don't wanna take a ride.Morty Seinfeld
Why not?
I don't feel like taking a ride. Do I have to take a ride?!Jerry Seinfeld
He doesn't wanna take a ride.Morty Seinfeld
Uh huh.Jack Klompas
What d'you think? I've never ridden in a Cadillac before? Believe me, I've ridden in a Cadillac hundreds of times. Thousands!Morty Seinfeld
Thousands?!
Image source here.
YESTERDAY This Day's Madness did prepare;
TO-MORROW's Silence, Triumph, or Despair:
Drink! for you not know whence you came, nor why:
Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.
