I thoroughly enjoyed the converstaion Good1, talk to you later, good luck with your robots, oh man, another topic for next weekend "luck"
But Faith in God is not arrived through logic...Where trading may be... Psychology just presents more unanswered questions , in which God answers. ES
the first thing you might want to work out is answering this question: why would this supposedly good god care about your trading sucess when he doesnt care about the 25,000 people who die of starvation every day?
Faith is actually a departure from Reality. Initially, it leads into insanity. Psychologically, faith leads to a state of mind where the mind is no longer able to tell the difference between what is Real and what is imaginary. Faith is driven by wishful thinking. When the wish becomes strong enough, it transforms into a kind of demand. The mind loses track of what it is wishing for and what is actually True. When what is wished for is no longer different from what is "true" then the mind is LOST. A lost state of mind precedes the genesis of man and results in the genesis of man. Man is made in the imagination of a lost state of mind. As such, man is evidence of a psychological problem. Man lives of imagination, by imagination, and for imagination. An "image" is what is made of imagination. Man's gods - like man - are also of imagination, whether many, or just one. What i mean is, to the extent that a man values his environment (imagination) he values an imaginary god. When man talks about god, he is usually referring to the ruler of his environment. Imagination rules man's days and nights. Man can never really be sure what is the extent of his environment so he'll often imagine there is a god that is "the most high"...over and above his environment. Beyond that god, man can't possibly imagine anything else. That would be beyond imagination. Reality is beyond imagination, untouched by it. Bridging the gap is what psychological healing is all about. Man imagines himself a small aspect of a larger environment that stretches the imagination. As far as man can imagine, that is what man considers "reality". A god is placed over and above man's reality, either separate from it, or one with it, depending on which man you ask. Because of the nature of faith, man will believe in whichever god he wishes to. If the wish is strong enough, it will become somewhat of a demand. Then man will start behaving accordingly. If, for example, a man want's a god that is always watching everything he does, and observing every thought he makes, he will start behaving accordingly. This week, on the cover of LIFE magazine is a picture of Jerusalem. The headline says: "One place, three faiths". As you can imagine, faith is not conducive to compatibility. It's inherently demanding, pushy, forceful. When a mind is utterly captivated by faith, it is unable to tell the difference between what is Real, and what is not. Each faith dictates what is Real, and what is not. Ultimately, faith is not compatible with Reality. Faith is only meritorious when a believer finally decides he wants Reality more than what he has been able to imagine. Until a mind wants Reality more than what it can possibly imagine, it's faith will continue to lead it further into a confused state of mind. All men are confused. Some are more obviously confused than others. So all men are in need of mental health. Ultimately, all healing is of a psychological nature because physical phenomenon is a manifestation of psychological illness. "Who am I?" is a question that initially leads away from Reality. Faith answers that question with another self. This damages a mind by splitting it in two. Schizophrenia is an obvious example of multiple personality disorder. But every man has this problem because the answer to the question, "Who am I?" is being answer by his faith, and not by what he knows about Reality. If the question was allowed to be answered by Reality, the answer would be Reality. I mean that Reality is a Being. A "human being" is not real, but rather, an effect of faith. So, faith is initially damaging. It is only meritorious when it is subjected to self-honesty and reason. These traits will lead a mind back to Reality where it will finally abandon faith for any reason whatsoever. There is simply no room for faith in Reality anymore than there is room for dreams in an awake state of mind. They are not compatible. This has been a demonstration of logical consistency, or what might be called reason. This is needed for mental health. It's important to be aware of cognitive dissonance if you would wish to be free of mental sickness issues. Cognitive dissonance is man's middle name. Man is the fruit of an effort to combine opposites into one thing. Mental health actually goes against man's nature.
well, the way they explained it me was, when a car goes around a corner we have faith friction will hold the tires on the pavement. So without faith we'd all be terrified all the time.
Yes, pretty much everything man experiences is relative to faith. We use it all the time. Lately, Israeli leaders have faith that Iran has a bomb. They have faith in one bomb, so-to-speak. That may lead to some more experiences. On one side of a battlefield we hear "Allah Akbar"(a faith based statement), and on the other side we here "Sempre Fi" (keep the faith). When it comes to trading, we have faith in things like fundamental information, or the probabilities of our statistics. We may have faith that our data-stream is clean, only to find out it's not. We have faith in our brokers that they are on our side. We negotiate this labyrinth of unknowns by what we call logic, reason, or a scientific method...if we want to make money and not punish ourselves. Money in our account is an indicator that we have discovered the reality of the market, or that we were right, despite so much confusing chaos. When it comes to a search for Reality, i would say that requires analysis equally as "right" as our analysis of the market. It calls for a high(er) degree of honesty (self-honesty). We must negotiate a marketplace of ideas and concepts in order to get at the truth. This is not a time to abandon logic as ElectricSavant has suggested. Consistency is needed in order to avoid cognitive dissonance. Man's mind is inherently infected with cognitive dissonance, that is, the ability to hold conflicting concepts in mind, without noticing (or caring about) the obviousness of them. The holder (of conflicting concepts) has a built-in blind spot and can't see the discrepancy. This is because his wishes (what he wants to believe is true) over-rule (overpower) clear thinking. I start with a basic concept: Man is an effect of a mind that has departed from Reality into the realms of the unknown (imagination) riding on the back of a beast (faith). Who/what is in control at this point? Man or beast? I stay consistence with this basic analysis of the situation. The point is that faith is absolutely not anything to boast about, or think it is some sort of currency that passes for money in Reality. Ultimately, it's not acceptable. It's something we are stuck with until we figure out how to abandon it in favor of true knowing (not false knowing).
Good1, Very interesting and thought provoking posts . Kind of reminds me of Robert Krausz market wizards interview. Anyway, thanks for your insight.
right, that's how we all do it. I want to start from a different reality, one in which the only known fact is that God exists and He is good.
Sometimes one can get blind to the reality around him. The more soul searching one does actually brings him closer to the reality of the truth. Nature itself brings us closer to God. but BEFORE a person can see he must strive for answers given by man. AFTER one see's the truth then in hindsite he understands the blind around him and only wishes for them to see as he does. When speaking of salvation, Faith in what can't be seen is what is needed. No need to abandon reality...your thoughts...the truth...logic...also no need to win the arguement...it is what it is...God is Good. ES
That's a pretty good premise. The premise i started with, in 1996 was, i don't know if there is a god, but if there is, god MUST be GOOD! However, if you asked 12 people what is good, you'd probably get 12 different answers. But by 1996, i had raised my standards quite high. I'd say it helps to have a high esteem of what GOOD is. Anymore, the traditional descriptions sound to me like low esteem, yes, a major put down...downright nasty. Can't people imagine a better god than that described in traditional notions? If you asked them to, you'd be surprised just how far their imagination won't go!