“Acknowledge the complexity of the world and resist the impression that you easily understand it. People are too quick to accept conventional wisdom, because it sounds basically true and it tends to be reinforced by both their peers and opinion leaders, many of whom have never looked at whether the facts support the received wisdom. It's a basic fact of life that many things "everybody knows" turn out to be wrong.” ― Jim Rogers
Many have attempted to ask this question for many different reasons. However, the most common response to the above question is to build wealth. Well, this not the reason I invest or why I think everyone should be investing. My reason for investing is more valuable than building wealth, by the way, to build, is antithetical to wealth or money. Wealth is to be created or revealed. Money is a currency; it is similar to water, it must flow, money is not intended to be stored or hoarded. It is Newton's third law of motion, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite re-action." Water current occurs when opposites flow in different directions. Currents affect the Earth's climate by driving warm water from the Equator and cold water from the poles around the Earth. The warm Gulf Stream, for instance, brings milder winter weather to Bergen, Norway, than to New York, much further south. Wealth is realized when your outflows and inflows are in constant motion creating streams of income, to create inflows, something of value must be released (outflow). Your streams must stay open to allow inflows and outflows, otherwise, the process is interrupted. It must be in the constant state of flux.
The Philosopher Plato noted of another philosopher Heraclitus, “that all things go and nothing stays and comparing existents to the flow of a river, he says you could not step twice into the same river." Heraclitus believes these three things: (1) everything is constantly changing and (2) opposite things are identical, so that (3) everything is and is not at the same time. In other words, Universal Flux and the Identity of Opposites entail a denial of the Law of Non- Contradiction. Though the waters are always changing, the rivers remain the same. Heraclitus does believe in a kind of unity of opposites. He notes, “God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger . . ." “As the same thing in us is living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old. For these things have changed around are those, and conversely, those having changed around are these.”
Nature also further exemplifies this truth that Heraclitus has espoused. A seed is always in constant flux changing from one form to another yet constantly remaining the same. Of course, this seed process requires soil and water along with sunlight; each of these, soil, water, and sunlight, create opposing forces, that promotes constant change. Once the seed changes its form, it remakes and provides the seed from which it started. Think of an idea as a seed, business as the form that the idea will become, the environment where the idea is nurtured as its soil and capital as its water and proper guidance as it the sun. Whether we accept this or not, our life is in constant flux; we are continuously sending things and receiving things. I believe that everyone should understand this basic premise. What I do today will affect my tomorrow, no ifs or buts about it. All investors must first have an intimate relationship with the power of choice. Being an investor is a fact of life, now all that is left, is what kind of investor will you be. Why invest, because life itself is an investment?
AUTHOR: MARCUS A. TURNER, LIMITLESS CAPITAL MANAGEMENT INC.
