What Is Success Today

Effete is a word that should send shivers down the backs of everyone living and otherwise thriving in any dominant empire.

Human beings somehow seem to habitually squander favourable positions as much as they are famed for their ability to overcome adversity by struggling on.

Effete simply means exhausted through growing too much.

When you look at the current value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average index price, you see the point of the word 'effete.' On the one hand the price is high, on the other hand that price is not through any reason of corporate profitability. And it is especially not through any reason of circulation, or economic demand. The addiction the biggest banks have for Central Bank support is the mechanism for such boilerplate fictions about the performance of Wall Street, and the domination they wield over politicians who endlessly open the door to it.

But 'endlessly' simply means terminally. Not eternally. It means without restraint until the thing dies.

The thrill is gone

And so Wall Street today is an artefact.

The rain falls down. The skies become heavy and greyed-over seemingly permanently. Brows become knit and furrowed. People leave the streets. Everyone becomes 'serious.' Risk is always skewed in people's minds towards the adverse of outcomes. Reward is meagre. Effort is stinting.

'Leaders' are not only exhausted of any vision, but they are exhausting to watch and to listen to.

And so this is where we are...

There is a simply massive need for the thinking person to re-set the basis of capitalism into the context of the hyper-connected, device-oriented, modern world. There is no basis for it either in Wall Street or coming out of the heads of politicians or even out of any of the erstwhile business leaders.

A simple Crash – as in major stock market Crash – is almost too easy a thing to provide the phase of creative destruction that always occurs when societies reach the point of maximum exhaustion; if you assume an historically cyclical narrative.

There are yet many instances of greatness and great products still finding their way out into the world. Not everything is lost.

Arsene Wenger just won the FA Cup in London for an unprecedented fifth time – albeit nine years down the road from his last silverware at Wembley Stadium. He has interesting things to say about success: