A R C H I V E

We are all heroes with a thousand different faces, and our true leaders are more often called on than elected.

From Moses to Jesus; from Washington to Lincoln, leaders emerge, often reluctantly, because they see injustice they can’t ignore. Gandhi’s Salt March, and Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech are but a few examples of how a single individual can defeat an evil and corrupt adversary.

This week the world watched a real live version of the hero’s journey with Russian President Putin playing the role of Darth Vader defending the Dark Force, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky playing the role of Luke Skywalker, defending the light.

Until 2019, Zelensky was a Jewish stand-up comic and actor in a sitcom in which he played the role of a schoolteacher turned president (think Jerry Seinfeld with a law degree). He did such a good job acting the role, he won the election for President in a major landslide on a peace ticket, leading by example, not by poll numbers.

Today Zelensky is a war president on Moscow’s “Kill-or-Capture” list.

The tension between light and dark, good and evil, power and force, Yin and Yang is what empowers a hero on his journey. I could go on and on regarding the significance of this war and its potential to upset the 75-years of relative global peace and prosperity we have enjoyed since the end of WWII. Instead, I direct your attention to an excellent article by Thomas Friedman titled “We Have Never Been Here Before,” so you can get a feel for the significance of the war in Ukraine, focusing the world’s attention on another Biblical David and Goliath story.

May The Force be with Zelensky.

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The downside to seventy-five years of relative peace and prosperity is the temptation to take such peace for granted. That sense of entitlement tends to undercut its permanence or, as Nietzsche puts it, ”Under peaceful conditions, a warlike man sets upon himself.”

America is at war with itself, as evidenced by such cultural battles lines as who gets to use which bathroom. Overseas, the British are struggling with the fallouts of Brexit and Covid, while the Germans have painted themselves into a corner by their dependence on America for defense, Russia for energy, and China for trade.

We could talk ad nauseam about the merits of diplomacy, but with Russia on Ukraine’s border, China island-hopping from Hong Kong to Taiwan, Iran aiming nukes at Israel, and North Korea pointing nukes at us, the stark truth is that we are at war, whatever we may call it and whether or not we like it.

The underlying premise of “The Fourth Turning” is that human evolution has proceeded in 80-year cycles, each cycle characterized by an upward spiral that requires the death and destruction of the previous cycle, whether it be by war, famine, or a pandemic, as it clears the path to the inevitable re-birth.

In light of the above, rather than characterize what we are experiencing as a Cold War, we can see it as a competition for global leadership i.e. a “human race.” Such a connotation not only takes away the lose-lose proposition of a hot war, but it also acts as a good reminder of America’s forty-year winning track record when it came to its previous cold war with the USSR.

I remain confident America will win this global competition too, not just because we happen to have more advanced technology or because the Dollar is currently the global reserve currency, but because of her compelling freedoms and soft power. These qualities are evident by the fact that our border issues revolve around the pressures of people literally dying to get in, rather than dying to get out. To that point, one may note China’s government fears its own people to such an extent that Beijing’s internal security budget is growing faster than its huge national defense budget.

This week I noted two subtle but significant events that rekindled my faith in America: the unprecedented landslide vote to oust three far-left nonsensical San Francisco school board members; and NY Mayor’s common-sense determination that the subway system is meant for safe transportation, not a homeless shelter.

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In college, I took a couple of courses in economics, and was often frustrated with the same response as I pursued straight-forward answers, “Well, you know, Economics is an inexact science.” What kind of answer is that, I wondered?!

President Ronald Reagan probably felt the same way when he chaired a heated economic policy meeting only to turn to his chief of staff and ask “Can’t you get me a one-handed economist? I am tired of hearing, on one hand this, and on the other hand that.”

This leads me to question how on earth did Paul Krugman manage to receive a Nobel Prize in economics? For that matter, why aren’t they giving such a prize to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos? Those two clearly understand the functioning of the real-world market more than Paul Krugman, or the 400 Ph.D. macro-economists employed by the Federal Reserve who collectively estimated the inflation rate at 2.4%, and anything above that to be “transitory.” Are these people so isolated in their ivory towers that they do not shop for food or buy gas?!

To prove that the ability to be really wrong is not age-related, Mr. Krugman did it again with his recent opinion piece in NYTimes called How Crypto Became The New Subprime, in which he states he is “seeing uncomfortable parallels with the subprime crisis of the 2000s,” as he then proceeds to wonder “maybe those of us who still can’t see what cryptocurrencies are good for other than money laundering and tax evasion are just missing the picture.” How “inexact” can one man possibly be?

I do not intend to come across as mean spirited when I pose this question: in a fast-moving world where the majority of Freshmen Engineering students are more tech-savvy at the practical level than their professors, how can it be that we elect people in their 70s to manage our economy or, for that matter, lead our country.

So the real question is, who is the next generation’s John Kennedy to lead us? Who is the new Paul Volker to fight inflation? Why are our best and brightest minds going into banking and technology, instead of public service?

Who is John Galt?

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Life is hard, and then we die. The Stoics knew that being a human in this world is hard work. It’s a dog eat dog world in which Americans alone consume 14 billion chickens a year, millions of pigs, cows, and whatever else we can industrially raise, kill, process, and eat; and for good measure, we foul our nest and pollute our planet to do so. Whether it be Turks slaughtering over a million of their Armenian neighbors with machetes, or Germans gassing and burning six million people in industrial ovens, these are but footnotes in history. As Joseph Stalin said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”

Most people can not wrap their minds around the enormity, and the brutality, of the life and death cycle. Mother Teresa dedicated her life to helping the poor in the shantytowns and gutters of Kolkata, but her diaries show she was struggling with the idea of serving an omniscient and omnipotent God that would create a world like this.

But life is also good. In fact, life can be great if we know how to live it and can look at it from the right perspective. To guide us, we have had master teachers like Moses who gave us ten commandments and 613 laws to distinguish ourselves from animals. Jesus taught us to open our hearts and turn the other cheek. Buddha taught us to be an observer of our minds and thoughts.

But the Persian poet Rumi says it best: You are not a drop in the ocean, but an ocean in a drop.

Life is not a tragedy because we die, but it can be a tragedy if we don’t live it in full. Let’s begin by loving ourselves as well as our neighbors. Let’s believe not only that we are all one, but that we are The One. Everything is interconnected. There is neither birth nor death. We are each a part of a continuum and it is part of us. We are both the drop and the ocean.

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Among my many ambitions as a 17-year old immigrant to America was the pursuit of higher education, and the life of an intellectual, whatever that might mean. And, so, I was advised by an English teacher, “to become an intellectual, you need to read at least 2000 books.”

Being a young engineering student, my focus was then on the selection of which 2,000 books to read, and how big of a library I would need to house them. In fact, one of the reasons I bought Highland was that its 12’ ceilings could accommodate the construction of the largest library possible.

The selection of which books to read proved to be more complicated, so I asked every wise and educated person I met to share their favorite books and, over time, noticed that the Bhagavad Gita was included among almost every intellectual’s Top-10 list.

After many false starts, I finally found a translation by Gandhi, written while he was in the British jail from 1930 to 1932, that made sense. It has been on my bed stand ever since.

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There is great wisdom in the saying, “All Jewish holidays are the same: They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.”

The Pandemic has been hard on all aspects of City Club’s operation, especially our beloved food program. We are also dealing with acts of God like hurricane winds, devastating fires, heavy snow, black ice, freezing cold, and a dreary February ahead. In fact, we are keeping an eye on Boulder Creek just in case its water turns red!

At City Club, we consider food to be the glue that keeps our community together. None of us would think of buying a new computer with a slow chip, or putting cheap gas in our fast cars, yet we often skimp on eating the best food because we are too busy and/or feel undeserving.

Thinking about all this doom and gloom, we figured we can act as a Stoic and suffer through it all, trusting that “the obstacle is the way,” or better yet, learn from our Jewish brethren with a 3500-year history of how to survive bad times, as we eat our way through!

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Our recent Highland Institute announcement seeking twelve “Advisory Board members” drew a number of comments and questions, essentially asking what sort of advice, and who exactly is this group advising?

The short answer is, the leadership group we are striving to assemble is tasked to lead Highland Institute towards achieving the goals outlined in its Manifesto. However, what distinguishes this group from a traditional Board of Directors, or Board of Advisors, is that this group has no formal head, meaning each of its twelve members carries equal status, and has an equal say, which is the figurative and literal meaning of the historical Round Table through the ages.

The desired dynamic reflects the highest ideals of Highland as a Securus Locus (a Safe Place), an environment in which to exercise Socratic dialogue to better understand the nature of a problem on the way to finding a solution. The ideal candidates would be distinguished more by their genuine curiosity and a desire to help uncover the blind spots in other members’ positions, than for their philosophical and intellectual credentials.

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America was founded as a Constitutional Republic rather than a democracy. The distinction is extremely important, since a pure democracy, as the saying goes, is two wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for dinner.

The Republic bestows vital rights, otherwise we would likely lapse into tyranny, whether it be that of a heavy-handed government or an emotional mob. Basic safeguards are rendered in the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment in the Bill of Rights which guarantees, among other things, certain rights to the accused, including the right to a speedy public trial, the right to a lawyer, the right to know one’s accusers, and the right to an impartial jury.

The Bill of Rights should never be taken for granted since it’s the only thing that stands between freedom and the sheer terror of “the knock on the door in the middle of the night.” To understand fear in the absence of a functioning judicial system, think of the Jew facing the Nazi guard, the young Black man in the racist South, or the multitudes living in so many dictatorial regimes today.

The Bill of Rights is not perfect and is incapable of addressing every injustice – take, for example, the permanent stain of slavery on our history. However, America’s judicial system is the closest thing we have to meting out even-handed justice. Take, again, the right to a jury trial for alleged serious crimes, placing adjudication in the hands of a peer group. Yes, there are many instances of seeming miscarriages of justice, particularly where differences in financial means allow the rich to afford robust defense counsel while the poor more often are forced to take a plea deal.

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The American embassy in Tehran was a massive, walled, impenetrable compound symbolizing America’s power in the Middle East. More secure than Fort Knox, it was completely inaccessible except for those granted entry by means of personal connection, bribery, or important official business.

Nonetheless, at the age of sixteen, with nothing to lose in the hellish environment in which I found myself, I walked alone into the American embassy and asked to see a counselor, with whom I spoke in Persian (since I spoke no English) and – alas! – walked out with a visa to America.

Ten years later, the Shah fell from power and the Ayatollah’s henchmen took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Meanwhile, having shown up to America with nary a friend, family, or command of the English language, I spent the loneliest and most difficult ten years of my life trying to become acclimated to the language and culture of my new country.

The hard lesson learned back then, to be repeated again and again throughout my life, is that once we commit, doors open, dormant forces awaken, connections are made, and an alchemical synchronicity blossoms, lighting up new and unforeseen pathways.

So it has been with both the launch of City Club in 2005 and Highland Institute less than two years ago i.e. two more examples of commitments marked by giant leaps, without clear plans or adequate resources, but with an underlying trust in and dedication to the vision. Think of it as Cortez “burning the boats.”

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After four decades of designing, building, and renovating Highland, our community consists of hundreds of Members. Although our current Membership represents half of what we ultimately envision for our Club, it is nonetheless a large enough base on which to build an ideal self-sustaining community of passionate and caring members.

They say “it takes decades of hard work to have overnight success.” It took Moses forty years of wandering in the desert before he found the promised land. Similarly, we have been striving to create our “ideal community” for forty years, and are still excited about the idea every day.

With our culture well established, Highland Institute successfully launched, and Dustin fully in charge of the Club’s operations, we are now focused on growing our membership without compromising our quality, aesthetics, or culture. Therefore, I am soliciting your help to reach out to potential new member candidates in your network, and invite them for a tour and lunch as a guest of the Club.

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De·tente /dāˈtänt/ noun.

the easing of hostility or strained relations, especially between countries.

En·tente /änˈtänt/ noun.

a friendly understanding or informal alliance between states or factions.

During the post-WWII Cold War between America and the Soviet Union, the two sides played a game of chicken by targeting thousands of nuclear bombs at one another, thereby ensuring mutual destruction in case of war. During the ensuing detente, America helped defeat the Soviet Union, characterized by President Ronald Reagan as “An Evil Empire,” by outspending, outsmarting, and outlasting this adversary.

Adopting the old adage that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” the current entente between Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China is alarming in the short term and dangerous in the long term. Add Iran to the equation and the dynamics might finally compel us to abandon our internal bickering and reunite as a nation to confront this external threat.

While a lone wolf is unable to take down a bear, a pack of three wolves can. Given that the Russian army is amassed on the Ukraine border, that China continues to violate Taiwan’s airspace, and that Iran has repeatedly made clear its nuclear threat towards America's ally Israel, our country’s military attention is now split three-ways, representing a potential stretch that poses a growing threat to America’s 75-year hegemony as leader of the international order.

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As with most worthwhile endeavors, the May 2020 launch of the Highland Institute for the Advancement of Humanity, at the outset of a global pandemic, came about after significant effort and by overcoming many obstacles.

Just as proud parents behold a newborn baby with both hope and looming responsibility, we see Highland Institute’s future as bright, even though the manner and speed of its growth are naturally uncertain. However, we do believe we have a good start in the Institute’s descriptive name, its powerful Manifesto, and its beautiful home here at Highland. A major goal for next year is to establish and nurture an Advisory Board for Highland Institute.

While we hope and strive to position Highland Institute to make a small dent in the universe, we are also aware of countervailing forces, just as in our beloved Star Wars movie giving rise to an appreciation of the power of the Dark Force.

Since its inception, Highland Institute’s short but colorful history has attracted a certain amount of negative attention by being labeled as Racist, Sexist, and Elitist. In fact, as many of you know, Highland has been the target of vandals e.g. building egged, wires cut, and graffiti sprayed with “Racist,” “Eat the Rich,” and “Kill the Cops,” among other messages. Add to this a few personal anti-semitic and xenophobic labels, and all of a sudden, labels lose their force, leaving us with the overall message that Highland Institute is finally on the map!

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Members too young to have watched “The Network” can get the gist of the movie by watching this two minute clip as we ask ourselves whether it’s finally time to get mad as hell and agree “we are not going to take it anymore.”

“The only constant is change.” Change is cyclical. Clocks move. The pendulum swings, constantly oscillating between potential and kinetic energy. Our Founding fathers knew about cyclical rhythms, thus designing our political system to accommodate ongoing changes from liberal to conservative, from left to right.

The Great Depression, sandwiched between two bloody world wars, demonstrated how grueling life can be. But the past 75 years of relative global peace and prosperity have softened us, and distorted our perspective on the noble path.

When a nation spends more time arguing whether the cornerstone of our nation was laid in 1776 or 1619, as a tribute to liberty or slavery; when children are taught Critical Race Theory rather than lessons about our country’s Constitution; when our government engages in irresponsible spending even as it interferes with every aspect of our lives, we become inured to certain social pathologies e.g. each year more Americans die from drug overdose than the combination of suicide, homicide, and auto accidents.

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My dad was fortunate to get a high school education, and to build a small fortune with an abacus as his primary tool. In 1970 I enrolled in CU’s Engineering School, armed with the very slide rule technology that was used by NASA to calculate the trajectory of the rocket that landed a man on the moon.

Shortly thereafter, during my sophomore year, Intel launched the 4004 microprocessor, which was literally a computer carved onto silicon, with a processing speed of 92,000 calculations per second. I remember buying my HP35 calculator for $395, staying up all night to learn how to use it, and feeling empowered to be on the cutting edge of technology.

Fast forward 50 years, and my new Apple computer with the M1 Max processor has 57 billion transistors, and is capable of doing 10.4 trillion floating-point operations a second -- a billion-fold increase in computing power!

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During the decades-long history of owning Highland, we have strived to develop many aspects of this historic landmark, including our beautiful interiors, award winning gardens, nourishing food, eclectic art, and friendly service.

In addition to the above, in the past two decades we have tried to develop what we call an Idea Lab to house, grow and invest in entrepreneurs and the companies they launch. Although we have had our fair share of small success, none has been interesting and unique enough to share with our members, until now. So going forward, we plan to feature some of the companies housed at Highland, starting with Rasa this week.

Lopa van der Merch launched Rasa at Highland, and we have had the privilege of watching it take off like a rocketship. As you can see in her Member Bio elsewhere in this newsletter, Lopa is a Superwoman. In fact, other than Israeli actress Gal Gadot, Lopa would be my favorite candidate to play Wonder Woman.

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Even as our politicians strive to figure out creative and equitable ways to tax the rich, ensuring the wealthy pay their “fair share” of taxes, they have actually mastered the art of taxing the poor.

Inflation is a tax on the poor. The rich are often protected from inflation as they own so-called “hard assets'' like real estate and stocks, the price of which naturally increases to reflect the inflationary effect. But not so the poor who must constantly play catch-up just to ensure their wage increases keep up with inflation in order to even maintain their modest standard of living.

Every four decades or so the pendulum of power swings, often painfully, between Capital and Labor. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ended the era of the Robber Barons and thereby empowered Labor through strengthening the Unions. Nearly 40 years later President Ronald Reagan strengthened the role of Capital by lowering taxes, while weakening the role of Labor by firing the unionized air traffic controllers. With the top 1% now owning more than 50% of the wealth in this country, the balance of power is likely shifting again to Labor, a transition that could once again be painful.

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Constitution of United States of America 1789 (rev. 1992)

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It took over ten years of research, debate and discussion amongst multiple groups of City Club members before we finally decided to launch Highland Institute for the Advancement of Humanity.

Although at the outset we had no clue what an institute is, let alone how to launch a successful one, we were in fact certain that the task at hand would be arduous, and the road ahead long and difficult.

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Psalm 137:5. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

Considered holy by the three major Abrahamic religions, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. From Egyptians to Persians, from Romans to the British, it seems every empire has tried to conquer and rule Jerusalem, in vain.

As he sat in his box at Ford’s Theater waiting for the play to start, Abraham Lincoln reportedly said to his wife,”How I should like to visit Jerusalem sometime.”

So where is Jerusalim or, should we ask, what is Jerusalim and why is it that, thousands of years later, so many people are still not only drawn to it, but are willing to sacrifice their lives for it?

Two major factors are responsible for transition of power between empires: a major event like war, pandemic, economic collapse, and/or a natural disaster; and a major technological innovation. Major wars are fought over time and often include a defining battle that turns the tide.

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Humans strive for unity in a universe that is built on dualities.

We are divided as men and women, rich and poor, liberal and conservative. Some date America’s founding to 1776, others to 1619; a few are woke, many are not.

Division has been built into America’s fabric since the time of Jefferson and Hamilton, though its intensity varies over time, from truly divided during the Civil War, to generally united after Pearl Harbor. At times, certain events like foreign geopolitical wars and domestic political assassinations, or topics like abortion and race relations, further widen the divide.

What’s great about America is its ability to produce leaders who can define, articulate, educate and guide us through these transitions. Think Abraham Lincoln. Think Bob Dylan. Are we pro- or anti-slavery, for or against abortion? In short, our right to express is more important than the specifics of what we are expressing -- so let the sunshine through the cracks that divide us.

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One of the most widely known and quoted lines in modern English, "To be, or not to be" is the opening phrase of William Shakespeare's play, Hamlet. In the speech, Hamlet contemplates death and suicide, bemoaning the pain and unfairness of life, but acknowledging that the alternative might be worse.

Almost every conscious human being may have at least thought about the subject of suicide. In fact, every year, nearly 45,000 Americans commit suicide; by comparison, the number of violent homicides is under 20,000 per year!

This brings up the existential question: what is the meaning of life?

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