Monday 24 June 2013

Michael Burry is making a comeback with some Scion nonsense ...

And I've never even heard of him! / If he's such a legend in the hedge fund business you would have thought I'd have heard of him. Oh dear. Maybe he's not as famous as everyone is making out. / Anyway, he used to have a hedge fund called Scion Capital. Now he's got this Scion Asset Management thing. And I wish him all the best, I really do. / He claims to be an outsider. Ha! I think we'll have to take that with a pinch of salt, don't you? 'Yes.' I'm an outsider. The hero of Hesse's Steppenwolf is an outsider. Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov is an outsider, man. Mr Burry works in finance, for Christ's sake!

...

This is Mike on being an outsider: "No matter what group I'm in or where I am, I've always felt like I'm outside the group, and I've always been analysing the group."

Well, fair enough.

However, this is Colin Wilson on what it really means to be an outsider: 'When the Outsider is in his earliest stages - when he does not know himself or understand why he is "out of harmony" with the rest of humankind - his hatred for men and the world makes him an unbalanced misfit, a man full of spite and envy, neurotic, cowardly, shrinking and wincing. His salvation depends upon the achievement of self-understanding, self-knowledge. It is only when he begins to find himself that he realizes that his hatred is perfectly justified: a healthy reaction to a world of sick half-men.'

Wow, eh?! And that's just in the early stages!!! / And that was me about twenty years ago. I've grown since then. 'How?' Mysticism, and Art. / Mysticism is the way forward, obviously, for all men who find themselves outside normal society and reality. And Art? (With a capital A, of course, because this is serious, man.) Art is a record of the progress you've made. Think of Beethoven. / 'What about the women, Mikey?' I don't know of any female outsiders, Voice. Maybe Joan of Arc. 'I like her!' Oh, there could be a few.