Life has a way of humbling people

We are going to swerve away from investment-type topics a bit for today’s post. I wanted to excerpt a story from “The Week” magazine. Specifically page 10 of the January 23, 2009 issue.

Here is the excerpt:

Pastor Ted Haggard, who was exiled from his Colorado church in 2006 in a gay sex scandal, said this week that the incident has altered his views on religion and the culture wars. “The church told me to go to hell,” he said. “I now know more about hatred and judgment than ever before, and I know it doesn’t help.” In his first interviews since the scandal, Haggard, who now sells life insurance, said his marriage is stronger than ever, but that “sexuality is complex and confusing” and “I still have temptations from time to time.” He also said he no longer opposed gay marriage, and that he’d learned that praying did not make his attraction to men disappear.

My first comment about this confessional from Haggard is, “Duh!” I really view publishing this sort of a paragraph as a public service. In particular, I wanted to highlight the danger of extreme viewpoints that lead to moral and ethical distortions. Or is it the other way around? Do moral and ethical distortions lead to extreme viewpoints? My point is that there is a corrective mechanism built into our world that ultimately collapses the foundations of extreme structures, whether they be bizarre churches, moralists, or hedge funds. Call this poetic justice, karma, or whatever, but: Life has a way of humbling people. And in that humbling process rationality and groundedness returns.

If you have to tie today’s post to investing then simply remember that outsized valuations of businesses, brokers who promise you heaven (spiritual or financial), and culture warriors ultimately always fall back to reality.

Jason