David Brooks is one of my favorite Op-Ed writers for the New York Times. True, he can be a little hyper-conservative, but at least he’s hyper-conservative in the New York Times, which polls recently proved was not read by real Americans, just US citizens living in non-American places, like New York. So, it all balances out.

On Tuesday he wrote a column about the markets and behavior. As I read it, I kept thinking about the fall. I mean THE FALL. The red fruit on the tree fall, not the golden leaves on the ground fall. The event which disconnected us from God and, at the same time, from Reality. We moved into dark caves of self-centeredness, more connected to our own demanding selves than the hopes and needs of others. Our personal perspectives permanently skewed by a need to be in control.

Brooks notes that no one seemed to see the crash of the financial world coming. Even Allan Greenspan, testifying before congress last week, remarked that “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, especially banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and equity in the firms.”  If you can’t trust self-interest, just what can you trust!?

But what Adam Smith, Ronald Reagan, George W Bush and Allan Greenspan all assumed was that self-interest creates self-governance. Get rid of rules/laws that hold back the markets. Deregulate! People are not going to take on so much risk that they could lose everything. They won’t buy stocks that are over-priced, or homes they can’t really afford, or . . . . But, if you take a look around, you might notice that they will drive too fast. They often drink too much. They talk when they should not and they have a strange tendency to see things in their own way, not in the way that could be called “reality.” Our view is skewed. The fall is real.

Brooks notes the work of economist Nassim Taleb, who wrote two books, “Fooled by Randomness” (2004) and “The Black Swan” (2007). Both look carefully at the role of the human in the life of the markets. Taleb is a man who recognizes that humans don’t self-regulate well.  On page 232 in “Fooled by Randomness,” he notes that in stock trading, “most of us know pretty well how we should behave. It is the execution that is the problem, not the absence of knowledge.” When you really look at it, self-regulation, a basic tenet in market deregulation, goes against our very nature. So when faced with “open markets” and “deregulation,” humans act the same way they drive. Too fast, but with a strong self-belief that they are in control.

I don’t know about you, but it sounds like a fallen world. Just last night, late for a gathering at a friend’s home, I pushed my little Subaru Outback to the limit. Careening around corners and opening up on wet-leafed straight-aways, I was consumed by the need to be on time. Why? Well . . . not really a good reason, to be honest. In a sense, the same kind of thing happens when we take out that loan on our equity for a new kitchen, or when Washington Mutual’s CEO produced the analyst’s demands by jumping head first into the mortgage market. “Everyone is doing this. I can handle it. I need to do this. I’ll know when I should slow down.” The human condition.

So when you see those guys running AIG on the news this week, or the dude who ran the hedge fund into the ground and lost a Union’s Retirement Fund, you may have a good reason to be angry. But don’t forget that they suffer from the same condition that impacts all of us. It just so happens that their excesses have a much greater impact than our own. At least this time. Those that broke the law can and should be punished, AND they really aren’t that different from you and I. Human condition trumps self-regulation every time.