An Heroic Story Obscuring a Deeper Truth

In her op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal Peggy Noonan laments the disreputable state in which Wall Street finds itself. She recounts 9-11 and the heroic effort that followed to get the market back on its feet. And it was an heroic story.

I admire of Peggy Noonan's talent. She's a really good writer and an excellent storyteller. Remember 'Morning in America?' That's the kind of stuff she used to write for her old boss Ronald Reagan. But while we were admiring that beautiful idea Reagan and his minions stripped away the regulations and the regulatory structure that allowed us to get where we are today.

So why draw on the heroic tale of eight years ago?

I loved the book War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges and its lessons are relevant here. To wit: it is ennobling when our desire for meaning, our desire for being part of something larger than just ourselves is invoked by an attack such as occurred on 9-11. But who we are at core does not necessarily change for the better after such an attack. Violence doesn’t just invoke the better angels of our nature. Violence begets violence, a desire for revenge, a fearfulness and paranoia that can infect what we do in subtle ways.

She seems to say that these guys are heroes so that which opposes them -- like those sissified regulators -- must be evil. (That's the Manchean world view that found full paranoid manifestation in President Bush's thinking.) I'm sorry, life isn't that simple.

In truth, I think Peggy is blind to her own illusion. Indeed, all of us can be blinded by the power of a beautiful idea, a powerful story. But what if that story, which contains some truth, serves to divert our attention from another more pervasive – and much less pleasant – story?

Self interest drives a market in predictable ways. The problem is that human nature is much more complex than that. We can be driven by higher things beyond self interest, among them a shared search for meaning, belonging and the selfless regard for others. But there are darker, more irrational impulses by which all humans can be driven and that's the reason we are where we are now. After all, the market is just a bunch of humans connected on a trading floor and by phones and computers and so on. Those humans all have greater and lesser angels of their natures that compel them to do what they do. No matter how well it's told, a story about a week’s heroism does not change that fact.

The Most Perfect Music Ever Written

My counterpoint teacher was a small, frail man who doted on his elderly mother and lived in the suburbs with a half dozen cats. He taught composition at Temple University in northern Philly. By the time I studied with him in the mid-‘70s he looked almost too much like what you would expect from a teacher of 17th century composition: a very gentle man, mostly bald and sporting overlarge glasses. But you could also see how much he loved the music he taught.

As a young man he had served in the Army during WWII. By the end of the war he was stationed in Berlin and on the day that fighting ended in Europe, he suddenly disappeared. He was AWOL for several days. After he re-emerged he explained that he had traveled behind what would be called the iron curtain to visit the grave of Johann Sebastian Bach in Leipzig. My professor had said that the choral refrain from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion ‘Wahrlich, dieser ist Gottes Sohn gewesen.’ or ‘Truly this was the son of God.’ was the most perfect music ever written.

And I think he was right.

That's Marketing!