Living a Lie

I’m sure you’re with me in the persistence of your rapt fascination with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) measurement of gravitational waves measured in Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington and the 1.5-billion-year-old black hole collision from which they originated.  Even more so, I’m sure you sleep better at night knowing that nature (yes, that same thing that allegedly created a cataclysmic shock wave 1.5 billion years ago) obeys the theory proposed by Einstein on general relativity.  Thank heavens.  After all, how disappointed would we all be if we found out that our myopic projection onto nature didn’t follow “our rules”?  Thankfully, the Nobel Committee awarded med/tals to three researchers – Barry Barish, Kip Thorne, and Rainier Weiss – which in the medal’s own atomic composition were the product of the theoretical genesis of the very gold from which their medal was struck!  Au79 – aka gold – is supposedly born of stellar events incapable of being replicated at scale on Earth.  I’m sure you chuckled with the irony that the medal was from metal derived of a cosmic event resulting in the precipitation of gold that was derived from an equally improbable theoretical framework of cosmic proportions to the discovery for which the medal was awarded.

In the months following the measurement of the first gravitational wave, there’s been a plethora of confirmatory measurements.  Imagine that!  We go 1.5 billion years without a ripple and then, boom, waves are popping out all over like acne on a 13-year-old version of my face!  And as we take this step closer to answering the existential question of why matter exists and how it came into being – something that I know keeps me up at night – we’re a few billion dollars and a few years away from confirming Fritz Zwicky’s 1933 postulation of “dark matter” that makes up most of… well, pretty much everything.  And if you’re like me, you can’t wait until 2022 when we finally power up the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in Chile when we get to learn when to set our Mayan calendars for the “Big Rip” which is when the universe is torn asunder by the accelerating pace of the expansion of the universe and all its “dark matter”.

I had the privilege of reading Julius Pretterebner’s The Unifed Theory – Electricity, Magnetism, Gravity, and Mechanics which seeks to unravel the hidden structure of Maxwell’s equations in pursuit of a rational Unified Theory.  I had an interest in this as I’m continuing to entertain myself with the “consciousness” and “discernment” evidenced in playing with magnets and iron filings.  Weaving a tapestry of Newton, Lorenz, Kepler, Faraday, Helmholz, and others, Julius takes us on the journey from geometry to kinetics in a flurry of formulae worthy of Jackson Pollack unleashed with a paint bucket and a blank canvas at the MoMA.  What I find fascinating in the blinding Greek characters is the persistence of separation – distance, time, vacuum, and direction all in the quest to find what makes it all stick together.

Over the years, I’ve encountered people seeking to end relationships, rationalize grief, or justify callous neglect who utter the fatalist epitaph, “I must have been living a lie.”  This refrain of the hard-done-by is the unconsidered product of an illusion projected onto reality lubricated generously by therapists who prey on the wallets of those who seek solace and justification to assuage pain receptors symptomatically triggered by an absence of personal culpability and accountability.  Understanding “WHY” is attempted to be resolved: by becoming remote from the supposed ‘cause’ (distance); after a situation has become irreconcilably destroyed (time); in complete absence of personal responsibility or self-awareness (vacuum); and, with a notion of finitude that must be reified to support a socially sympathetic narrative(direction).  Like colliding black holes, neutron stars, and dark matter, our capacity to apprehend in hindsight the copious and persistent neglect we had for the present addicts us to telling the “WHY” story using variables that science conveniently offers us as “laws” and “unified theories”.

A simple journey through Wikipedia will be helpful for those who don’t read the footnotes of chemistry, physics, and mathematics journals.  Matter, is made up of electromagnetically charged particles.  For convenience, we’ll stick to the generally accepted atomic model of protons, neutrons, and electrons.  The guts of matter (the nuclear core of atoms) is made up of things that don’t seem to totally compute.  Allegedly neutrons beget protons and around this nuclear core, negatively charged electrons orbit in various energy states.  Based on the number of spinning electrons, multiple atoms can bind to form molecules, molecules organize to beget stuff and, presto! We’ve got stuff!  Neutrons are born of stellar formation and destruction.  Our theoretical models have a ticklish problem in that neutrons are supposed to decay pretty quickly – in the matter of a few minutes.  Now hit pause on that thought for a quick reality check.

I’m writing this blog post from 38,000ft above the Pacific Ocean in an aircraft made of aluminum.  How is it, precisely, that neutrons from deep space keep ‘showing up’ in aluminum form to keep this plane in the air?  And how is it that the carbon, phosphate, sodium, potassium, and chlorine which currently allow my fingers to keep typing on my keyboard keep persisting in their form when the average neutron hangs around for less than 15 minutes?  Am I sitting less than 15 minutes away from a supernova, a black hole, or a neutron emitting energy source?  If I was, wouldn’t I be incinerated?

Julius points out the uncomfortable math problem that Kepler eluded to and Newton calculated when they described the Earth’s elliptical orbit of the Sun.  ‘Separate points in space’ don’t exist as physically isolated actors.  While we want to make everything fit into lines-between-points models, that very model is broken in its opening assumption.  Everything is in motion and unlike our mathematical simplistic assumptions is not seeking ‘normal distributions’ or ‘homeostatic balance’.  When one passes a magnet over iron filings, some of the iron filings respond and some don’t.  Pass the same or a different magnet over the ‘unresponsive’ filings and their response changes.  How is it that when presented with a field, some particles respond and some don’t?  How is it that the exact same experimental conditions applied exactly the same way a second time leads to a different response?  Is the iron filing that doesn’t jump in the first instance “living a lie” as some alternative nonferrous substance or is it the case that the field in which its experience the present moment simply not eliciting a response as presented?

One of the most romanticized separation illusions is the inadequately characterized notion relationship loss.  In a recent conversation I had about the concept of grief I suggested that the emotional notion of grief could benefit from re-examination.  In the conversation, I recounted the over 30 years I’ve lived with excruciating pain in my legs following a tremendous accident and multiple ensuing reconstructive surgeries.  Reflexively, I have been bombarded with three decades of the question, Why?  Why do you have to suffer pain every day?  And I join the millions who are sympathetically patronized with Why.  Why did he get cancer?  Why did my child die?  Why did my marriage end?  Why was I abused?  Why, why, why?  And what I’ve come to recognize is that WHY is merely the pretext for symptomatic relief – not for fruitful living!  Oh, you poor dear, you’re in pain… I’ve got an opioid for that.  Oh, you poor dear, you neglected your relationship… I’ve got a therapist who can help you blame someone.  Oh, you poor dear, your loved one died… you can disengage living your life in homage to…WHAT!!!???  Like our billion dollar quest to find out the WHY of the Universe, we play out in miniature the same madness in our own social orbits.  Substance abuse, surrogacy and dependency on prostituted empathy, escape and isolation, reclusiveness all mark the profitable trail of a Unified Theory of disunity.

“What would happen,” I inquired, “if we reconstituted GRIEF into a Gratitude Reminder In Emotional Form?”  Rather than seeing the distance, time, vacuum, and directional illusions that we project, what if we used the dark energy of emotion to animate in impulse of gratitude?

Life spoiler alert!  Around 2033 when we read the news out of Chile that at long last we’ve seen and measured ‘dark energy’ and we confirm that in a few more billion years it’s going to complete the Big Bang cycle by rending our universe asunder, we will have learned nothing.  As long as we chase a non-present projection of an illusory construct on each of our todays so as to render them somehow defective in favor of an ideal condition which we couldn’t imagine given our space-time limited fantasies, we’ll continue in missing what’s in front of us in the moment.

Which brings me to the point.  WHAT’S THE POINT OF LIFE?

Well, thanks for asking.  I’m pretty sure the answer is, there is none.  If by life you mean judging the present as inadequate; obsessing about a linear future as something to which one aspires; a rejection of present relationships for your enculturated definition of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’; and, a determination that through passive aggressive isolation or outright cruelty a judgement will be rendered on the wrongdoer, well then, it’s pointless.

But if we golf clap for the Nobel Prize committee and then go about emancipating ourselves from the illusion of separation, we can:

Realize that one person’s pain is a sensation to heighten our own experience of and gratitude for what is whole and properly functioning;

Realize that one person’s ‘loss’ is an invitation for deepening cherished connections and reinvigorating the social, material, and energetic networks that sustain us;

Recognize that in our unfiltered expression of insights and wisdom, we’re merely resolving for ourselves and others resonant chords which can remind and stimulate wisdom in others; and,

Celebrate that each moment is entangled with all other moments in all other dimensions and thoughtfully engage our field effect in our awareness so as to bend and accommodate the field effects in the experience of others in positive manners.

In short, while my life and your life may have no purpose in isolation, our purposeful living appears to  shape the field of reality and, in so doing makes an indelible mark in the ever present NOW.  No stories; no justifications; no excuses – No Lies.

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Who Do You Say That I Am?

Take a moment and try to remember your first conversation using words.  No, really pause and see if you can recall your very first conversation.  And by that, I mean when you knew that you were using language, logic, and your capacity to formulate organized thought with another person.  How long ago was that conversation?  Where did it happen?  Who was around when it happened? 

I think my first memory of a conversation was on March 7, 1970.  I was standing in the Mexican desert in the State of Oaxaca near the town of Mitla.  It was sometime between 11:38am CST and 11:41am CST.  I know that I was proudly proclaiming to anyone who was within earshot something to the effect of “my daddy has a telescope”.  I was about 4 years old.  The day before, I had a staring contest with a cactus that was about my size.  During that week, I had climbed the 75 meters up the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan.  It was during totality of a solar eclipse.  And some mix of all these exceptional experiences fuses in my mind the capacity to recall the artifact of a conversation with remarkable precision.  I remember that there were around 5 people to whom I addressed my comments.  I remember that one of them was a little Mexican girl about my age who was wearing a yellow and orange dress.  I remember a man who was crouched down looking at the pin hole shadow of the eclipse on a board laid out on the ground.  This memory is 48 years old.

Most scholars would suggest that the first record of the recollected (not witnessed) words of Jesus were written somewhere around 57AD.  The appearance of the story of Jesus’ conversation with his disciples recounted in Matthew 16:13-20 was probably originally written around 80-90AD.  Suggesting that anyone could “quote” a recollected conversation received through hearsay across 5 decades is beyond implausible.  Consider your own fallibility in the exercise above.  If you haven’t considered it, redo the exercise and see how memorable YOUR OWN MEMORIES are.  But let’s set that aside for a moment.  That’s not the point.  In Matthew, after a host of acts regarded as unexplained phenomenon by their witnesses, Jesus asks his disciples, “But who do you say that I am?”  In the story, this question arises in exasperation from his observation that people were trying to figure out who he was after he had fed 5,000 with 5 loaves of bread and 4,000 with 7 loaves of bread.  I’ve yet to hear anyone talk about the appetite of the 4,000 which required so much more bread!  And worse than that, his own disciples were thinking that they were in trouble for not packing a lunch on their boat trip.  For those of you who didn’t grow up with the eschatological obsessions that characterized my childhood, I’ll connect some dots.

According to the Gospels, Jesus spent his life living and explaining values that were an “ideal”.  He didn’t apply titles to his person or his actions.  He simply lived and tried to explain the philosophy behind the “how”.  It was his observers who insisted on titles.  “Messiah”, “Prophet”, “Healer”: all attributes suitable in a moment in the context of what had just transpired but none of them descriptors of his full essence.  And this irritated everybody – especially those in his closest circles.  “It’s hard to explain what you do,” one can imagine them protesting after their last conversation about the guy they were hanging out with.  Was he a carpenter?  Fisherman?  Seafarer?  Water-walker?  Vintner?  Sommelier?  Physician?  Prophet?  Friend?  Revolutionary?  Iconoclast?

The Second Commandment in the 10 Commandments is the prohibition of idols or graven images.  Language generally – and our obsession with classifier nouns specifically – represents the most insidious idolatry of our time.  A label on a person, a group, a movement, an institution and suddenly nuance is replaced with reflexive duality.  Our capacity to see metaphoric coherence in pluralistic expression diminishes with each passing “cause” or “outrage”.  With definition comes dissonance.  Few comedies have matched the comedy of idolatry itself.  Around 726, Emperor Leo III decreed that all images and icons should be removed from churches with all veneration of the same outlawed 4 years later.  Fifty years later (and with the lobbying of those who found veneration quite a profitable venture), the Second Council of Nicaea (or the Seventh Ecumenical Council) reinstated icons and veneration.  Somewhat ironically, Constantine V – who had outlawed veneration of images – had a carve out sanctioning the preservation of images of the emperor!  Funny how that pissed off the folks the Byzantine and Roman churches who saw themselves demoted in favor of the emperor who monopolized the iconography of the day.  On October 13, 787, the council specifically authorized the, “manufacture of sacred vessels, tapestries, vestments to be exhibited on the walls of churches, in homes, and in all conspicuous places, by the roadside and everywhere, to be revered by all who might see them.”  The business of propaganda justified the rejection of Second Commandment.  Oh, and in 1536, John Calvin found himself siding with Leo III and re-banned images in favor of, you guessed it, words.  And this father of the Protestant movement had the decency of burning at the stake those who would challenge his words.

What is it about nouns that leads to murderous obsession, flagrant inhumanity, ostracization, and all manner of destruction of the human family?  I find it amusing that the text in Matthew shares an eerie resemblance to another biblical text – Genesis 2:19.  “Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.  And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.”  In our common myth, the FIRST thing we do on earth is name stuff!  Seriously?  To be human is to exert dominion by classification?  And when an ideal human is doing some amazing things showing humanity what is possible (against the carnage of the Roman occupation of Palestine), his followers insist on “naming” him at least as the story is told?  Seriously?  Isn’t it funny that the only term Jesus reportedly used to describe himself is “I am”?  That’s right, whether you think of him as divine, deific, inspirational or delusional, the only title embraced by him is the evidence of his being and doing.  Is a giraffe more “giraffe” or “tall spotted, furry, gangly quadruped leaf eater that looks pretty damn funny bending over to take a drink”?

Over the past 45 years, I’ve been plagued by well-meaning people who want to know “what” I am.  Countless branding experts have been brought in or offered their services to package me so that others can “get it”.  “When I look at your company’s website, I don’t “get it”,” I hear with monotonous regularity.  “Do you run and non-profit?”, I’m asked by those who see the work I’ve done in conflict-torn and marginalized communities.  “So you’re an investor,” conclude those who see the work I do in the capital markets.  “Are you a quant?” inquire people mystified by the fact that I developed the world’s leading large cap equity index.  “So you are a doctor?” concluded a group of people who recently saw me attend to the injured and one fatality that died in my hands at a car accident.  “So you’re a futurist,” concluded a friend who saw a video from 2006 in which I detailed the precise cause and consequence of the 2008 global financial crisis.  Speaker, futurist, doctor, polymath, healer, joker, idiot.  One recent commentator on my criticism of the hype around Tesla raged, “Who does this guy think he is?” before suggesting that I should be silenced with a gun.

What’s wrong with, “I am”?

I had an interesting experience in Indiana in the late 80s.  There was a high school athlete who was an exceptional quarterback setting records for yardage and touchdowns with nearly 4,000 yards and 30 touchdowns in his senior year.  His success attracted the attention of a prominent university where he received a football scholarship.  As the football season was coming to a close, his success as a point guard in basketball pulled him between the snowy fields and the steamy gyms.  And with the playoffs in basketball bleeding into the baseball season, his role as star pitcher called his attention again.  Oh, and he was homecoming king, popular… and resented.  He was too good at too many things.  “You have to focus,” the university coached yelled at him after telling him not to play baseball for a State Championship team.  I watched as this great kid “focused”.  At university, he set records for career touchdowns, all-time total offense and slipped away from basketball and baseball.  In 1993 he was drafted to the NFL where he set the rookie record for attempts, completions and yards.  In each subsequent year, his performance diminished.  Seven years and 4 teams later, this all-around athlete retired.

Did he “need” to focus?  Did he have to “choose”?  Or was it us who couldn’t wrap our head around someone that was just skilled at everything he touched?  Was Rick a great quarterback?  Sure.  But wasn’t there something more?  Wasn’t it the case that he was a master of greatness?  He knew the value of persistence, valued excellence over mediocrity, embraced discipline and effort over entitlement.  And did we all lose the real impact of his genius by a world that made him conform to what we could productize?

History tells us that Joseph was a spoiled brat.  He was a favorite son and rocked some cool threads.  This pissed off his brothers who beat him, stripped him of his coat and sold him as a slave to Potiphar – a jailor in Egypt.  He worked hard, looked amazing and gained the favor and attention of his master (and unfortunately, his master’s wife).  After refusing her advances, she unleashed the venom of sexual harassment and Joseph wound up in prison on death row.  His ability to interpret dreams put him on pharaoh’s radar and he became the originator of history’s first recorded commodity exchange and reserve bank and in so doing, saved the Egyptian population – and his duplicitous family – from 7 years of famine.  What was he?  A brat?  A fashion icon?  A slave?  A general manager?  A fortune teller?  A politician?  A commodities trader?  A Central Banker?  A Governor?  No.  He was.  That’s it.  He just brought his excellent stewardship to each situation and, combined with his integrity and power of analytic discipline, put in motion the culture that once received a young woman on a donkey, a Palestinian carpenter, and their son when they were refugees from a Roman occupation near Bethlehem.  There’s no Jesus without Joseph.  And there’s no Joseph without all the “I ams” that came before them!

In the Ramayana, after proving his devotion to Rama in the epic battles and against the humiliation of the military generals, Hanuman is asked by Lord Rama, “How do you look upon me?”  Hanuman’s triangulated answer is instructive.

“From the perspective of my physical body, I am your faithful servant.

From the perspective of the soul, I am a spark within your eternal Light.

From the perspective of pure truth, you and I, my Lord, are one in the same.”

For those of you who are familiar with the ordinates of Integral Accounting, you will undoubtedly see in this answer the polarities of Alchemy, Eidos, and Gnosis.  From the perspective of matter and energy (commodity), my value is service.  From the standpoint of perception (custom & culture) my shared experience is propagation of light (technology).  And from the knowledge of truth, I have identity with everything in the universe (well-being).

So, who am I?  Well, here’s the paradox:  from which perspective are you asking the question?  Because the answer is that I understand matter and energy and align it to productive service.  I see things in the multi-dimensional contexts and create reproducible ways for others to engage and benefit from these perspectives.  And, thanks to the countless wisdoms to which I’ve been exposed, I finally know that I am.

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