A R C H I V E

Let’s start with the premise that our universe is 13.7-billion years old; the earth is 4.5-billion years old; life on earth started 3.5- billion years ago, and our homo species has only been around for a remarkably short 200-thousand years.

We posit that the rapid expansion of our species is due to the compounding effects of four technological evolutions to date. Nearly 50,000 years ago we learned to control fire, enabling us to cook our food and digest enough extra protein to support a new brain that accommodated speech. Then, nearly 5,000 years ago saw the advent of writing. Only 500 years ago came the printing press, a tool that made possible the dissemination of information far and wide. Nearly 50 years ago the introduction of computers changed the way we work and live. Notice the ten-fold reduction in years per technological breakthrough.

Shirley Yu, a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, frames it in economic terms: Global gross domestic product in 1900 was $3.4 trillion (in international 2011 dollars). In 2020 the figure was $112.7 trillion. During the same 120-year period, the world population grew from 1.6 billion to 7.8 billion. Less than five times as many people produced more than 33 times as much output. Her conclusion: technology, not labor or capital, has been the main driving engine of economic growth since the Industrial Revolution.

Think of our launch of the Highland Institute for the Advancement of Humanity in that context – to study and understand how our species has evolved to date with the hope of predicting, perhaps even shaping, our future. Like Steve Jobs, our goal is “to make a small dent in the universe.”

Although history does not repeat, it is said to rhyme, and so it is that we endeavor to anticipate the ultimate effects of the current pandemic, inflation, and war in the larger context of yet another evolution over the next five years. Most probably, this phase, which some label web 3.0, will incorporate and integrate elements of quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and blockchain.

Curious to learn more? Study this week’s article, The Long Arc of Historical Progress.

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The loneliness pandemic in America is the main cause of all addictions, including food, alcohol, drugs, porn, and work. Over a hundred thousand Americans commit suicide each year, which is more than homicide, traffic accidents, and war combined.

For most of us, the freshman year of college is the height of our opportunity to make friends as we are then most open and vulnerable. After that our personality tends to congeal and, with that, we often start losing more friends than we make.

Most people strive to engage others with their self-importance – how smart, rich, connected, and sophisticated we are – hoping to seduce them into friendship. But a better strategy is one of genuine curiosity, and the simple desire to connect and understand at a deeper personal level. This idea is the focus of my initial interview with each and every potential City Club member while determining their suitability as a member of our community.

Such a dynamic was at play last November when Steve Sander expressed interest in joining our community. After conducting my initial interview with Steve, I found him to be smart, engaging, and quite successful in his Wall Street career. Though we had just increased our joining fee to five thousand dollars, to my great surprise, Steve expressed a desire to contribute more, suggesting it better reflects the true value of the club!

Cautious and conservative by nature, I wanted to learn more about this ostensible Mensch, wondering what his ex- might say about him! Then, last week at the community table, the lunch conversation turned to swapping stories about our respective life adventures, at which time Steve pulled out a picture of himself as a twenty-year-old student at the London School of Economics, visiting East Germany on a class trip – there he was in Lenin Square watching a communist guard doing their daily march, at which time Steve started walking towards them fast. Once he got close enough to see its leader reaching for a concealed gun, Steve turned on a dime and walked in front as if leading them.

The resulting iconic picture gives special meaning to Gandhi's concept of leadership by sensing where the crowd is going and getting out in front. It also reminded me of the value of asking the right questions in order to make new close friends, like Steve.

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If an economic recession or depression is akin to a stroke or a heart attack, then inflation can be described as cancer, which kills its host slowly and painfully.

Milton Friedman said, “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon,” and its real victims are the poor with few hard assets to protect them. While inflation increases workers’ wages, these increases are rarely enough to cover the increase in the cost of living.

Digging a level deeper, one realizes that inflation is a tax on the poor, with its social roots firmly planted in the liberal belief that we can tax and spend money we do not have by making the printing presses work overtime. With the national debt at ~$30 Trillion dollars, and inflation at 8.5% and rising, the tax-and-spend crowd is looking for someone to blame, and solutions to promote, even if the cure is worse than the disease.

From President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard Nixon, the government’s urge to centrally plan and control prices has no limit. But now that spending trillions of dollars on such things as building bridges to nowhere has caused the biggest inflation in 40 years, we can start hearing the dog whistles for price controls, such as in President Biden’s declaration that “Oil and gas companies shouldn’t pad their profits at the expense of hard-working Americans,” or “Cut the cost of prescription drugs,” or else?!

Most economists realize prices set by producers are signals to consumers who respond billions of times in an infinite closed feedback loop. Trying to centrally plan and control prices is akin to cutting this crucial feedback loop.

From rent control in New York to striving for passage of the “Ending Corporate Greed Act,” with a 95% windfall-profit tax on “pandemic profiteers,” central planning via price controls has never worked, and never will.

Watch out for the pending economic pain and human suffering ahead. The midterm elections can not come soon enough.

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We bought Highland in July 1978 and took a year to renovate the dilapidated historic landmark, so our first real opportunity to start the gardens was Spring of 1980.

The way the new outdoor sidewalks and stairs got laid out created a great opportunity to plant a tree in a prominent central location in the new garden. Since I had promised Constance to build her a “Gramercy Park,” even though I had never seen it, I told her she could pick this important tree.

After visiting multiple nurseries, one day Constance showed up with a skinny 5’ evergreen that she had paid $60 for, a huge sum back then considering how broke we were. More importantly, this tree was a midget requiring decades of growth to be worth its august position in our budding garden.

Fast forward 42 years and our tree had grown so much taller than Highland, the building was no longer able to protect it from the recent 100-mile-an-hour winds we experienced in early January, and again last week.

The bad news is that after 42 years of playing a prominent role in our award-winning gardens, our beloved tree fell. The good news is that no one was hurt, the tree did not fall against the building, and caused minimum damage to the adjacent trees, furnishings, and lights.

After a few hectic days of feeling the loss, assessing the damage, getting bids to remove the tree, and pruning the nearby oak, I finally had time to reconcile with the sadness of losing this tree and balancing that feeling with the excitement of the potential for what’s possible in this prominent location.

As a Stoic who has faced death multiple times, I am comfortable with life’s cycles and realize that death and rebirth are the two sides of the same coin. But more importantly, the falling of this tree was a reminder that the Sina/Constance era is nearing its end, so Dustin gets to be involved in the design of this area of the garden.

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“‘How did you go bankrupt?’ Bill asked.

‘Two ways,’ Mike said. ‘Gradually, then suddenly.’”

These lines from Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises, reveal a lot about the human experience when it comes to success and failure.

A puff here, a puff there, and all of a sudden we have lung cancer! A heavy meal here, a rich dessert there, and we suddenly find ourselves obese and prone to heart attack. Heated arguments with our spouse over that which is essentially nothing leads to one day coming back to an empty house greeted by a note that says “it's over.”

Decades before the Surfside Condominium Tower in Florida “suddenly” collapsed, killing 98 of its residences, foundation cracks had been gradually and silently developing alongside the rusting structural steel.

We readily see it, especially in others, at the personal level. Will Smith’s three decades of gradual commercial success were lost in an instant. The Devil, indeed, seems to get us at our heights, when we crave yet more.

Now comes Vladimir Putin strutting on the world stage trying to unravel President Woodrow Wilson’s 75-year “rules-based world order” by invading Ukraine. A cunning 5’ 7” tall KGB agent with a Napoleonic complex who acts like he is 5’ 8”, Putin, as Russia’s new dictator – err, President-for-life, knows that to survive, he must not only be seen as the most powerful but also be the strongest, richest, the most famous, and constantly on the march.

The upside of Ukraine’s downside is that the Western world finally seems to have been awakened from its slumber, with Europe acting united, Germany and Japan substantially increasing their military budget, and causing President Biden to finally morph from a diplomat into a leader, stiffening his backbone, and declaring “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

The outcome of the Ukraine war will determine China’s approach to Taiwan, and the new world order for the next 75 years. We must continue to arm Ukraine to defend itself, defeat Russia, and depose Putin. If Japan could do it in 1895 against long odds, causing the Russian Revolution of 1917, Ukraine can do it in 2022.

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With reference to the proverb that “the longest journey begins with but a single step,” previous member Marian Head forwarded the above diagram of Highland Institute as a reminder of how far we have come. That single first step, with the original name of Highland Institute for Conscious Evolution, was indeed the beginning of a ten-year journey, underscoring the critical role of perseverance.

By now we have spent ten years trying to capture the proper name and the purpose of the Institute in a 400-word Manifesto which, in essence, is modeled after Benjamin Franklin’s American Philosophical Society, still going strong since its founding in 1743.

Safety and diversity represent the fundamental pillars of Highland Institute. These two features work in concert to attract members of all age, gender, social and economic background, which we consider the best antidote to creating an echo chamber.

Highland Institute grants Honorary Memberships in furtherance of its ideal to create a safe and diverse community, recruiting both Artists in Residence and Wisdom Chair holders, who make huge contributions to our community. We feel honored, for instance, to have had Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (blessed be his soul) as the occupant of our first Wisdom Chair. Reb Zalman’s smile was infectious, and his final book, From Age-ing to Sage-ing was a great influence in my life.

Today’s Wisdom Chair is occupied by our 93-year-young member Oak Thorne, whose joy for life and his “yes you can” optimistic attitude have been a great source of comfort to me and many other members. Then we have long-time member Kevin Townley who is an author and teacher, a student of the Western Mysteries and Ageless Wisdom, and The Grand Lecturer of the Colorado Masonic Lodges.

Adding to this august list is artist Frank Sampson, whose whimsical paintings adorn our walls, along with Artist-in-Residence Giuseppe Palumbo, whose sculptures populate our gardens.

Take a look around Highland; notice each detail and piece of art; notice each member and how they are connected to other members, forming the warp and weft of the fabric of our community, making us feel connected, like we belong.

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The foundation of Stoicism is the belief that The Obstacle is the Way. Marcus Aurelius said “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” Otherwise, if you think you are on the path and that path is easy, it’s probably the wrong path.

Life itself begins with a painful journey through the birth canal. We are then introduced to the world with a slap on the bottom. Then comes, for many, the brutal circumcision ritual without painkillers. Children may then experience a host of difficulties, including hunger and abuse. As adulthood looms, our bodies are flooded with testosterone or estrogen, powerful chemicals that often wreak havoc with our physical and emotional bodies.

Then comes a series of life challenges, from the fulfillment of educational and vocational expectations to facing other unexpected setbacks in marriage, career, finance and health. We then witness the same cycle in our children’s lives as they face the same questions we have asked ourselves like, “what’s the meaning of life, and what’s the best way to live it?”

One common strategy is to avoid pain by simply seeking a life of comfort and running out the clock. Or, we may choose to numb ourselves through our addictions to food, alcohol, sex, drugs, gambling, work, or other ways of avoiding life’s cruelties, and the reality of our mortality.

Alternatively, we may embrace the philosophy of The Obstacle Is the Way as our guiding principle, and be as the buffalo facing the storm, charging into it, integrating its lessons, and steeling ourselves to do it again and again.

I would like to illustrate all this with a few personal examples of how I turned downsides into upsides. I lost my birth family, language, culture, and country when I emigrated from Iran to America, but created my own family, and adopted my own language and country. My heart attack, which almost killed me and left me with five stents in my heart, was also the catalyst for me to be “born again.” Above all, though, my “failed divorce” represented the best example of a setback leading to growth, resulting in a 45-years-and-counting difficult and loving relationship.

Be the Buffalo!

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Monday, March 21, 2022, which is Spring Equinox, Persian New Year, and Highland City Club’s 17th anniversary, is a good time of the year to pause and reflect, as we celebrate having survived and hopefully thrived during yet another difficult year. I hope many of you can join us for our costumed “The Roaring Twenty Twenties” party, and see the movie, Finding Joe.

Spring’s arrival allows me to shed a few extra Winter pounds, and affords me the time to assess City Club's past progress and future potential.

I believe City Club is greater than the sum of its parts, which includes a beautiful place to socialize and work, eat good food and drink fine wine, surrounded by beautiful gardens, art, antiques, and companionship of friends and colleagues – in short, a community.

The secret sauce that binds all communities is trust, hence our crest, A Securus Locus. After all, a sense of safety is a prerequisite for interactions in a world full of contradictions and duality such as Yin and Yang, Male and Female, Light and Dark, Conservative and Liberal, Rich and Poor.

As I reflect on this decades-long journey to build an ideal community, I realize the most difficult part for me is not so much the continuing financial loss, as it is the pain of growing a thick skin. No matter how much I console myself that criticism or labels leveled at me and the Club should be “water off a duck’s back,” labels such as racist, sexist, elitist, dictatorial, narcissistic, self-serving, and pedantic can hurt, no matter how enlightened I regard myself, or how much I value the first amendment.

For some perspective on all this, I rely on the following paragraph in Benjamin Franklin’s letter to his sister, Jane Mecom, addressing her concerns about the harsh criticism he was subjected to in the American Newspapers:

“As to the Abuses I meet with, you must know I number them among my Honors. One can not behave so as to obtain the Esteem of the Wise and Good, without drawing on one’s self at the same time the Envy and Malice of the Foolish and Wicked, and the latter is Testimony of the former. The best Men have always had their Share of this Treatment, and the more of it in proportion to their different and greater degree of Merit. A Man has therefore some Reason to be asham’d of himself when he meets with none of it.”

Apply this advice to our situation, I believe despite the barrage of criticisms we are subjected to, we remain on the right track to building an ideal community based on trust, which includes being open to our critics, opponents, and the anarchists who vandalize our property and bash us online, whatever pain that may entail in the short term.

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The power of traditions and rituals like holidays or church attendance lies less with the substance than in the practice itself. Repetition, whether it be exercise or meditation, is the key to strengthening character. March 21 is Spring Equinox, Persian New Year, City Club’s 17th anniversary, and a great occasion to celebrate life.

Adopting an attitude of gratitude for having survived another cold winter, market upheavals, a major pandemic, and the threat of a global war, once again it is time to remember Joseph Campbell’s lesson that each of us is a hero in our respective life journeys.

As such, to celebrate the arrival of Spring, and renew our commitment to living life as a hero, on Friday, March 18th, City Club is hosting a social party for our members, and one guest. Please plan to join us for this festive event with the theme of ‘The Roaring Twenty Twenties.’

Then, on Monday and Tuesday, March 21 & 22, we plan to show one of my all-time favorite art movies about the life and teachings of Joseph Campbell called Finding Joe. Made on a shoestring budget, communally watching this inspiring movie on a large screen is akin to a spiritual cleanse in anticipation of the start of Spring, and a new chapter in life.

The existential angst of being mortal can crush one’s spirit. Mr. Campbell’s advice is to “live life like an Irishman,” and then proceeds to tell a story of an Irishman walking out of a bar to see an ensuing fight, asking “gents, is this a private fight or can anyone engage?!”

Life is a struggle, but instead of avoiding it, we must engage in it. Or, as Theodore Roosevelt said, let us not live like the critic on the sidelines of life, because, in life “credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again.”

Join us for this upcoming party, and plan to watch Finding Joe to get in touch with your inner hero. I recommend that you keep your afternoon schedule light in case you want to think and reflect after watching the movie. Both events are Free (except for lunch during the movie), so if you'd like to attend please RSVP for either the Party or the Movie, or both.

Please participate and help prepare our community to launch its post-pandemic chapter.

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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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