A R C H I V E

Elon Musk’s recent quip that we are potentially living in a sophisticated matrix brings to mind Shams informing Rumi he is sleepwalking through life. Talking about speaking truth to power!

The Matrix, loosely based on social-philosopher Jean Baudillard’s book Simulacra and Simulation, describes a future in which humans are on the verge of enslavement by intelligent machines. And, so, the humans adopt a scorched earth policy of burning down the planet to shut off the source of the master machines’ solar energy; think of our own global warming and the destruction by fire of the Amazon forest. The machines, in turn, start industrial farming humans in order to sustain their existence by harvesting human energy; think of the way we raise animals on industrial farms for meat consumption.

In the movie, the industrially-farmed humans are permanently plugged into a sophisticated matrix such that each human is outfitted with a unique customized software, creating the illusion they have free will when it comes to what they eat, their profession, whom they marry, and the number of children they get to have.

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A Jubilee means a re-start, a new beginning, as in Webster’s definition: a year of emancipation and restoration provided by ancient Hebrew law to be kept every 50 years by the emancipation of Hebrew slaves, restoration of alienated lands to their former owners, and omission of all cultivation of the land.

Nature provides many examples of finite existence, such as the disappearing dinosaur species. Great empires rise and fall with uncanny regularity. Even the whole world was not big enough for Alexander The Great, who died like every other mortal and ended up in a small coffin.

Once again, our world is in a precarious position, and the post-WWII era of American dominance is being challenged. The Dollar is but the latest in a long line of international fiat currencies, each of which was thought by the host countries to be everlasting. Climate change and global warming represent existential threats that demand collective action, and we have yet to truly understand the effects of new technological innovations like CRISPR and artificial intelligence.

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Since time immemorial, every philosopher worth his salt has tried to define freedom, yet we struggle to understand it, let alone live it.

While the precise definition of freedom may prove elusive, perhaps the concept is best understood in terms of duality, the interaction between opposites, in the sense of the Yin and Yang symbol, the Star of David, or a coin featuring two sides. Freedom may thus be regarded in terms of freedom from, and freedom to, the latter somewhat dependent on the achievement of the former.

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Get close enough to the trees, and we miss the forest. It is hard to recognize history in the making, to separate the signal from the noise, or watch the hinge in history turn on its axis.

Imagine you were born in the year 1900 and had no idea how the 20th century would unfold: WWI starts on your 14th birthday and ends on your 18th while 22 million perish. Spanish Flu hits the planet, runs through your 20th, leaving 50 million dead. You experience the Great Depression on your 29th, with a 25% rate of unemployment and a 27% drop in GDP. WWII starts on your 41st, and 75 million perish before it ends on your 45th. At 50, you experience the Korean War with 5 million dead. The Vietnam War begins at 55 and ends at age 75 with 4 million dead. The Cuban Missile Crisis hits on your 62nd ……..

So what signals should we look for now to see what’s ahead? As a student of history and philosophy, and having lived through a revolution and multiple recessions, I look for a combination of the following four factors:

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Facts are facts and the sad fact is that obesity has replaced malnutrition as our number one food and health challenge.

The French adage “We dig our graves with our forks” best captures the essence of the problem, not only with respect to the sheer overindulgence of our caloric intake, but the quality of the food we eat. The fish in our oceans are full of mercury; the industrial farmed-meat we eat is corn-fed and loaded with antibiotics; our fruits and vegetables are sprayed with cancer-causing chemicals to increase yield. Practically every food we eat, from milk to bread, contains added sugar. The upshot: a general public afflicted by an overweight and pre-diabetic condition regardless of age.

Please keep this in mind to better appreciate City Club’s priorities when it comes to our food offerings. We firmly believe in food as medicine in that a healthy mind and spirit begins with good food served in appropriate portions. As such, we strive to use locally sourced organic and natural ingredients, augmented by the highest quality oil, salt and spices, which serve not only to make our food most flavorful, but most healthful as well.

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A diamond, however large and flawless, is just a chunk of carbon until it is cut and polished by a master craftsman into a jewel with many facets, allowing light to shine, reflect and amplify from many angles.

And so it is as we endeavor to shape the club into the diamond with many facets: delicious and healthy food program; award-winning gardens; eclectic art collection; historic charm; intellectual heft; exciting wine & spirits program; exquisite service, and a consummate safe and productive work environment.

One facet of our community we have tried to develop for many decades is the ability to attract bright entrepreneurs who make the best candidates to work, grow, and otherwise thrive in our safe, affordable, and creative environment. We also strive to provide mentoring, advice, connections, and, when feasible, capital to advance their unique needs.

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Throughout history, humans have used seashells, salt, cows, cigarettes and printed paper as a medium of exchange, what we call money. Amongst these mediums, gold has been the most enduring as it meets all five of the qualities for an ideal exchange mechanism as outlined by Aristotle, the fourth century B.C. Greek philosopher:

1) Durability -- will not rot, spoil, disintegrate or rust.

2) Divisibility -- can be spent in fractions.

3) Convenience --can be carried and easily exchanged.

4) Consistency -- uniform weight, look and feel.

5) Alternate uses -- seen in jewelry, industry, medicine and art

In 1971, President Richard Nixon cut the tie between the Dollar and Gold, resulting in Dollar to float from its then-price of roughly $35/oz, to today’s $1834/oz, reflecting a nearly 50X gold appreciation in Dollar terms in 50 years, or, stated differently, paper dollar has decreased in real value by almost an astounding 98%.

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A spectacle of sorts unfolded Monday night at Highland City Club. The occasion was the long-planned live presentation by Boulder’s esteemed council member Bob Yates on the subject of homelessness, a matter of great interest at both the local and national levels given the importance and inherent complexity of the matter -- precisely the type of subject Highland Institute was launched to address in the first place.

Bob was invited to provide his thoughts and outline City of Boulder’s position on an intransigent problem, to be further flushed out through questions, observations, and feedback by five invited “Keynote Listeners” from all levels of the community.

But Bob’s live interaction was severely compromised. A contingent of “protestors” saw fit to disrupt his presentation through what might be deemed free-range disorderly conduct -- physical trespass with the intent to stifle meaningful communication with competing noise, from sirens to pot-banging to the shouting of obscenities. A true Stoic, Bob exhibited grace under pressure by continuing to deliver amidst this orchestrated disruption.

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Printed on the back of every twenty-dollar bill are the words “In God We Trust.” A close second to God, and among the august founding fathers including Washington and Jefferson, was Alexander Hamilton,

Hamilton, America’s first Secretary of Treasury, not only interpreted the true intent of our Constitution by drafting the majority of the Federalist Papers, but literally created our currency, the Dollar, backed by all the faith and credit our fledgling Republic could muster.

Fast forward to today when, after nearly 75 years of America’s dominance and the ensuing relative global peace and prosperity, we encounter some major challenges to such dominance, including the threat of our weakened currency.

Weakness, compared to what, one might ask. After all, the dollar is holding up reasonably well versus the fiat currencies of many other nations.

Enter a new game in town, cryptocurrency.

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Humanity is undergoing major change, we hope for the better. Change is the product of cycles, as natural as day and night, birth and death, creation and destruction.

Nature, while efficient, is not necessarily tidy — witness the caterpillar molting into a chrysalis on the way to a butterfly. There is then the element of trust, that the phoenix will indeed rise from its ashes, that the net will appear as we take the leap of faith.

One lesson of the Fourth Turning is that hinges in history may indeed be messy, often ugly — witness the effects of the current pandemic and its fallout. We see a culture in transition, from the recent spate of mass shootings, substantial police reforms, domestic abuse, mental illness, drug addiction, aggressive panhandling and homelessness, often taking refuge in our parks and under bridges.

The rebuilding of London, Munich, and Hiroshima took decades after the end of WWII. People emerged, tentatively at first, from their basements and bunkers to lick their wounds, count their dead, and access the damage before contemplating a new reality to rebuild their lives physically, emotionally, politically, and economically.

Whether it be a shooting war, cold war, cyberwar, or a war against a virus, the first step in creating the new reality entails taking stock of what hit us, and assessing the appropriate response.

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Most of us begin life in a check-the-box world. We work hard to define ourselves in terms of external expectations. We are good kids; we listen to our parents; we respect our teachers; we make good friends, form loving families, believe in the accepted notion of God, advance in our careers, and strive for financial security. But after we check off all the boxes, we question our own creation, the very person we have become. David Brooks refers to this phase as having reached the peak of the first mountain.

Standing water, no matter how clear, eventually stagnates. The same thing occurs when we are defined by our career, our attachments, and our political beliefs. We thereby become little more than a reflection of that which society expects. The result is stagnation, no matter how successful we may appear to the outside world.

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Try to reconcile the fact humanity has never been more free and prosperous, with the sad reality that today we experience more loneliness and anxiety than ever. In fact, loneliness and feeling disconnected is considered to be the main cause of physical illness and addictions, evidenced by the unprecedented prescription of anti-anxiety drugs.

Erich Fromm of the Frankfurt School of Philosophy posits that "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom." We pay a big price for having too many choices.

Until recently we lived in small communities, like an extended family or a small religious town. Even though such a life restricted many of our freedoms, it also provided us with a solid support system, like guardrails which limit our movement on the road, but provide a measure of security, and a clear path.

But our egos have a way of convincing us that we are somehow self-contained, whole by ourselves, with little need for a community, or for those who might hold opposing views. To some degree, we are all “recovering ego-holics.”

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The most recent senseless mass shooting, especially in our own backyard, poses a lot of questions, most fundamentally, how do we live a productive and joyful life in the midst of so much fear, violence, sadness and uncertainty?

Is this violence the cause or the effect of the current political divide in our country, the pandemic that has caused over half-million deaths, huge wealth disparity, or the many homeless that force us to avert our eyes from the panhandlers on every corner, and homeless camps under every bridge?

I am not here to offer easy solutions to this complicated problem, but I do know this: fear is baked deep into our reptilian brain, and the fear of death tends to paralyze us in the face of what seems to be life’s randomness, whether it be in the form of a neighbor killed in an inexplicable act of violence, or the loss of a loved one from a virus.

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Victor Frankel survived three years in multiple hellish concentration camps. Nelson Mandela endured 27 years of imprisonment, much of it in solitary confinement. Moses wandered the Sinai desert for 40 years looking for the Promised Land.

Grit is passion and perseverance for long-term and meaningful goals. Without Grit, talent is nothing more than unmet potential.

I often think about these and my other heroes: Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius and how he dealt with the combination of war, famine, and the Antonine Plague; Lincoln and the Civil War he fought to free slaves and keep our country together; and Gandhi’s battle against the English to free his country.

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Sixteen Spring’s ago we launched Highland City Club with a Utopian vision to create “A Safe Space for Passionate and Caring People to explore our differences, find our common ground, and make the world a better place while having fun.”

We have come a long way since then, having expanded from a dark section of Highland’s basement to the entire building. In the process, we have launched Highland Institute for the Advancement of Humanity, with the long-term goal of growing it into an international entity modeled after the Soho House in London, Aspen Institute, and the Bohemian Club in San Francisco.

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With the worst of the pandemic behind us and the best of the Spring season ahead, we need to be conscious of the physical and emotional toll our body has endured during the past difficult year, as we fully embrace the possibilities of the days ahead.

Buddhists believe the cause of all suffering is attachment, and our greatest attachment is to life itself. When a virus we can not even see threatens our life, our reptilian brain goes into the fear mode, disrupting our physical and mental equilibrium state.

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In a world dominated by science and technology, where people can access all the knowledge in the world from a device in the palm of their hand, the hardest thing to find is wisdom.

Humanity is still in the early stages of its evolution, and although we have it better than ever before, we still have a long way to go, and many problems to solve, like income inequality, global warming, hunger, and disease.

Albert Einstein said “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” In that case, where do we tap into the wisdom required to help solve today’s problems?

As old fashion as this may sound, the study of history, philosophy, poetry and religion provides the wisdom of the ages we need to solve our current problems. So, what can ancient kings and Greek gods teach us today?

Sisyphus was doomed to push a heavy rock up a steep mountain, watch it roll down, then try another big rock, again and again. How does that ancient myth relate to our modern life, and what are our own Sisyphean rocks?

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It has been a cold and hard Winter, but Spring is around the corner, and as we get ready to celebrate City Club’s 16th anniversary on March 21st, I have been reflecting on our progress during the pandemic, including the numerous physical and technological upgrades to Highland, and the launch of Highland Institute. At the same time, I have been asking myself whether any of this work is making a difference, or whether I am a lone wolf in the wilderness, barking at the moon?

During the past difficult year, our Weekly Newsletter has continued to serve as the intellectual glue that keeps our community together. Many of us work hard to bring you the best of what’s going on at Highland and around the world. So thank you for your continued moral and financial support of our community, and for reading and participating in our Newsletter.

We are pleased to share that starting next Monday March 1st, we are reopening our kitchen with a new menu, pricing, and direct order via your City Club Mobile App.

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​John Stuart Mill was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament, and civil servant. In 1859 he published his influential book, On Liberty, as a philosophical essay on the relationship between authority and liberty, asserting that democratic ideals may result in the tyranny of the majority.

​Last week I found myself in a lovely conversation with Member Gordon Gould on the topic of The Tragedy of Commons as it relates to the homelessness problem in Boulder. Waxing philosophic on Mill's position, we agreed that while citizens are free to enjoy public spaces as long as they do not break the law, there is potential for tyranny if our compassion overrules our logic, preventing us from enforcing the laws that govern a healthy society.​

​As usual, Gordon listened patiently, and elegantly summed up Mill’s position by stating, unchecked, "democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner."

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In 1968, Garrett Hardin presented a compelling formulation of the population problem, concluding that "a finite world can support only a finite population, hence, the optimum population is, less than the maximum.”

When a resource is held "in common," with many people having "ownership" and access to it, Hardin reasoned, a self-interested "rational" actor will decide to increase his or her exploitation of the resource since he or she receives the full benefit of the increase, but the costs are spread among all users. The devastating and tragic collective result of each person thinking this way, however, is destruction of the commons, to everyone’s ultimate detriment.

To ensure that our civil society functions properly, we must enact and enforce just laws, while changing laws deemed unjust. Failure to enforce just laws, as determined by society, leads to lawlessness and breakdown of that society.

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