A R C H I V E

Metamorphosis

Met·a·mor·pho·sis: the process of transformation from an immature form to an adult form in two or more distinct stages.

On the 130th anniversary of Highland, and the 43rd anniversary of my acquisition of the facility, I would like to share some thoughts about our community, and where we are headed.

First, though, for some context, let us review Highland’s long and colorful history including survival of the 1894 flood that destroyed our downtown, two World Wars that changed our country, the Great Depression, along with multiple technological innovations, all the while serving as an elementary school for kids, a Free School for adults, home to luxury offices, leading to the private social and business club we have today.

Simply stated, Highland has been able to dodge the sad fate of many similar buildings by adopting the Darwinianian survival strategy of adapting, staying technologically current, and rapidly changing with the times. This goal has required effort, determination, long-term vision, and an unwavering commitment.

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"What is thy bidding, my master?"

"There is a great disturbance in the Force."

"I have felt it."

"We have a new enemy, the young rebel who destroyed the Death Star. I have no doubt this boy is the offspring of Anakin Skywalker."

―Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine discuss Luke Skywalker[src]

One need not be a trained Jedi to detect a great disturbance in the force.

Start with a potentially man-made global pandemic that has resulted in millions of deaths so far. Flood trillions of dollars into a global economy that was already overburdened from 2008’s recession, hoping to prevent the collapse of the economy. Add major inflationary forces eroding the purchasing power of the average worker. Factor in major Labor Force disruptions evidenced by the onset of “The Great Resignation,” wherein 70% of respondents to a survey said they are looking to leave their current job. Recognize major supply chain disruptions evidenced by the double-digit increase in the cost of raw materials and shipping. Factor in the fact that a third of Americans are suffering from anxiety and depression, resulting in the highest number of drug-related overdose deaths in American history.

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This 17th Century Persian carpet sold for a record price of $33M at a Sotheby's auction. While an art lover can look at, admire, and pay a fortune to own this piece of art, an economist will look at it as “Proof of Work,” verifying that in fact some 300 years ago an entrepreneur bought the finest wool, secured the best vegetable dyes, hired a talented designer, and employed a master craftsman to weave this masterpiece.

Money is nothing more than the means by which society measures proof of work. But when a currency gets debased from reality, inflation sets in, slowly and legally robbing people of the value of their hard-earned work.

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Life has a way of living us unless we live it.

So how do we go about living life?! Whom should we consult? What roadmap should we adopt?!

Enter the philosophers.

And, who, you may ask, is a philosopher?

Most people sleepwalk through life, not fully living, but merely existing, their reptilian brain constantly striving to secure food, shelter, security, and sex. In order to live life well, one needs to know how to live like a philosopher. In fact, the Stoics believe it is a grave mistake to give philosophy our life scraps, something to be addressed only after the workday is through.

A philosopher is not someone simply focused on static truths buried in ancient books. Instead, a true philosopher constantly strives to create, not just discover, the wisest and most workable path forward -- imagine the honeybee moving from flower to flower in order to sample the nectar on the way to creating its own unique honey.

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Happy 4th of July.

This National Holiday affords us the opportunity to celebrate the birth of our great nation, and take inventory of how true we have stayed to the founding principles of our Republic.

America is akin to a great tent capable of holding a diverse crowd. On the Left we have critics like Howard Zinn, along with publications like New York Times, always quick to point out America’s past crimes, and re-write history by declaring 1619 as the founding of our nation.

On the Right, we have the 1776 Hamilton Boys, and publications like Wall Street Journal, with their greed-is-good orientation, and worship of the Dollar to such an extent, we are left with the burden of a $30 Trillion National Debt.

Instead, on this 4th of July, I would like to invite all of us to move beyond these factions and experience the 245th anniversary of the birth of our nation through the eyes of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a great American patriot, in his poem titled "The Building of the Ship."

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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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