“We Need Affirmation From Other Humans That We Are Good People Doing Useful Work. But the Amount of Affirmation That I Get From Other Humans Comes Perilously Close to Zero.”

Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

Rob,

Do you have a group of people around you that give you constant feedback and wise council or do you just wing it?

That’s a good question.

I do not have a group of people around me that give me constant feedback and wise counsel. I wish I did. I need that. We all need affirmation from others to maintain the strength required to fight life’s battles. I have a small number of people that I can turn to for occasional feedback and counsel. But the number of those people is small and the number of times that they step in and offer feedback and counsel is small.

You are pointing to something that is a big problem for me. I would describe it as my BIGGEST problem. Affirmation from other humans is like emotional oxygen. None of us could survive very long without oxygen. It wouldn’t matter how physically smart we were or how wealthy we were or anything else. We need oxygen and there’s just no getting around it. Well, in the emotional realm, we need affirmation from other humans that we are good people doing useful work. I see something more than zero of that. But the amount of affirmation that I get from other humans comes perilously close to zero. It is not a healthy situation. It is not a good situation.

I wouldn’t say that I wing it. What I do for affirmation is to read old posts or old articles or old research or whatever. That stuff is amazingly affirmative. It’s not as powerful as hearing a fellow human that I respect say the words “good job!” But according to every rule for how we live life in the United States, the work that I have done has tremendous value. The very fact that it has been suppressed for so long shows that. You Goons wouldn’t bother to suppress my work if you didn’t appreciate its great power. Every abusive word that you put forward affirms me in an important sense. I certainly don’t enjoy being called lots of names. But I know with 100 percent certainty that generating so much flak shows that I have positioned myself directly over the target. Greaney’s retirement study truly does not contain an adjustment for the valuation level that applies on the day the retirement begins. Each new abusive post reassures me that I have been right re that one going back to the morning of May 13, 2002.

I obviously do not enjoy feeling the emotional pain that I have experienced, Anonymous. I hurt. But someone had to do what I have done if as a nation we were ever to go beyond Buy-and-Hold and travel to the far better world that we all will live in once we work up the courage to permit ourselves to discuss the many far-reaching implications of the last 38 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. If others had done it before me, then none of you Goons could ever have laid a glove on me. Say that Shiller had included a sentence in his book stating that: “Since my research shows that valuations affect long-term returns, the numbers in the Buy-and-Hold retirement studies are in error and should be corrected the close of business today.” That would have made my job a lot easier. If I am going to ask Shiller and others to show the courage to say things like that, then I had better work up the courage to say things like that myself, no? So I make a sincere effort to do that, even though it is hard at times.

The rules that apply in the investment advice realm are the opposite of the rules that apply in every other field of human endeavor. In every other field a person who discovered an error that was likely to cause millions of people to suffer horrible life setbacks would be celebrated. I have been intensely celebrated by SOME. But certainly not by most. And, yes, that hurts. A lot. But I wouldn’t say that I wing it. I would say that I push on confident in the basic goodness of the people of the United States. We will figure this one out and we will set things straight. I don’t think it is going to happen until millions of people have suffered failed retirements and hundreds of thousands of businesses have gone under and millions of workers have lost their jobs and our economic system has been shaken and our political system has been shaken. I hate it that it is being done that way. Hate it, hate it, hate it. But I get one vote, like everybody else. So I just have to accept the reality, whether I hate it or not.

I believe that we will make it successfully to the other side. I have faith in our basic goodness as a people. I believe that we are going to have to pick up the pieces in the days following the next price crash and I hope that I will be able to play a big role helping us do that. I don’t hear much ongoing affirmation and I don’t wing it. I take what personal affirmation I can from focusing in on what we are as a people and on how we handle transitions like this in every other field of human endeavor. I try to the best of my ability to understand why we have played it so differently re this particular matter. And I review the comments of the thousands of my fellow community members who have stuck their necks out and expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted and take what comfort I can from that.

I hope that helps a small bit.

My best wishes.

Rarely Affirmed Rob