The Same Goes For Money

If you think I seem to be avoiding a lot of the 'hot' discussions or hot topics surrounding today's financial markets - well I am.

At the same time though, I have an underlying purpose to talk about the things I am talking about. Those things tend to be about traditions and 'display of manners' and even recent cultural icon-ism, if there is such a word.

Royal Flush, really, isn't it.

'Modernity' is something that cannot be part of fashion, really. It is ahead of that curve. Modern architecture - well, in fact there is no such thing. Hundertwasser, I suppose, is a kind of genuine modern architect, because he was and still is, ahead of the 'straight line' fundamental presumption of current architectural training.

In somewhat the same way, there are presumptions about money, and about financial markets but the point that Hundertwasser made, and which was perfectly valid too - was that architecture has to be what people are comfortable to live in. It's sort of a Jesus Christ-type comment: 'The Sabbath was made for Man, not Man for the Sabbath.'

And so part of my purpose in looking at recent cultural development, rather than what appears to be en vogue cultural habit, is to get some of the younger-minded people who might be reading this (and there are a few of these) to become used to an harmonic code; a harmonic about food, clothes, manners, life - and of course, inevitably, of thinking too.

If you followed my direction, you would end up more than likely not seeing much of 'modern' or 'current' Paris, and only what still remains of the old style, the old Paris. Some people will say, 'oh but that never really was and is just nostalgia.'  But it's actually not.

Now I'll you a funny thing - and go off a recent post in the Wall Street Bearchat Forum: in this, they talked about the opening ceremony of the Swiss Tunnel project, and pointed to the weird, arguably 'Satanic' motifs used and strange, dances and miming. But this stuff is not new, and I will indeed link it to 'Illuminism.' I well recall when Malaysia achieved independence, and the Rotary Club was a major force in public affairs there. They conducted numerous 'State Functions' that included the same kinds of pageantry that we saw this week in Switzerland. Same imagery, same ideas, same, same... Literally it was the same.

This stuff is not new.

Baked Alaska - is not new...

But neither is it really part of the cultural or intellectual elite. It is part of a dislocated and grasping, albeit still very powerful Middle Class ideology that has academic ties.

If you can penetrate the folklore about Griswold Lorillard, and his putative invention of the tuxedo dress code, and see through to the idea of interchangeability of the person inside the tux, you will perhaps also be able to see similarities to the Venetian mask system of society...

And so, when you go to Paris, do stay with the ordinary haute cuisine... It is quite extraordinary.

And after you imbibe the real thing, all the most 'amazing' modern fashions, will seem very ordinary to you. Culture hides things, it is not there to reveal anything to outsiders.

The same goes for money and wealth.