A R C H I V E

I rarely re-publish my newsletter introductions but striving to come up with a relevant subject for this time of the year, I couldn’t help going back to the following piece I wrote two years ago based on Leonard Cohen’s song. Meanwhile, I am working on my year-end report our vision for next year.

— Sina.

You Want It Darker

Leonard Cohen

If you are a dealer, I’m out of the game

If you are the healer, it means I’m broken and lame

If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame

You want it darker

We kill the flame

Poet musicians like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen have a way of getting us in touch with subjects we rather avoid, like love, lust, betrayal, and death…

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Our vision for Highland, from its very inception, consisted of two mutually-reinforcing parts. The first was the Highland City Club, the premier social and business establishment you see today with great food, beautiful art, enchanting gardens, and enlightened members. The second was the Highland Institute, dedicated to furthering the Advancement of Humanity in ways yet to be defined.

Recent revelations have suddenly provided some clarity regarding the second part of this vision, highlighted in the above graph forwarded by member Stephan Van der Mersch for our review and discussion. Once I grasped the importance of the new and explosive field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), I realized its relevance as an element of the Highland Institute.

Coincidentally, AI happens to be the topic of Steve Smith’s upcoming Member Monday for 12/19/22, Chat GPT, specifically the way AI is rapidly finding its way into using deep learning to produce human-like text, voice, and creativity…

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Rituals are a feature of all known human societies, including prayer in organized religions and cults, celebratory rites of passage, and dedication ceremonies, to name a few. Rituals are the glue that bind societies.

Seasons, too, feature their own celebrations: Spring, a new life; Summer, new activity; Fall, abundance and harvest; Winter, the anticipation of light and renewal.

The approaching Winter, with its longer nights and darkness, urging us to hibernate, is a good time to remember that life is hard and in the end, we die. That said, we might look at common rituals as the way to celebrate our need for each other on our path to a meaningful and productive life…

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Those who have watched the movie Casablanca more than once undoubtedly know the main benefit of running a Club is the interesting people one gets to meet with and learn from. Whether it be our Congressman giving a talk on global warming, the Federal Reserve banker struggling to determine the real inflation rate, the ingenious professor or the creative entrepreneur wanting to apply technology for the betterment of the world, all sorts of interesting people make their way through Highland. Among the most interesting was past tenant Jim Collins who researched and wrote Good to Great, a practical guide on leadership, at Highland during my still formative business years.

Although Jim was both famous and hugely successful at the time, I still had the good fortune to hang out with him and learn many practical ideas such as The Flywheel Effect, and The Stockdale Paradox, to understand why it may take decades of hard work in order to to create an “overnight success.”

Jim posits that there are two ways to look at life when it comes to relationships i.e. would we rather be rich or be wealthy? Would we rather lead a successful life focused on doing transactions or lead a happy life marked by great relationships? Success requires focus; be an inch wide and a mile deep. Happiness, on the other hand, is necessarily expansive; be a mile wide and an inch deep.

A good life is one of balance between these extremes. Yin and Yang…

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It is said God created the universe in six days, resting on the seventh. Perhaps God avoided boredom on his day off by watching humans make plans and laugh.

The punchline: life never goes according to our plans and as a result, we invariably suffer, often severely. We may try to drown out our suffering with food, alcohol, drugs, porn, and work, but often to no avail.

The Greek Stoic philosophers of 2400 years ago who dealt with shipwrecks, imprisonments, and forced suicides certainly understood that life was suffering but nevertheless endeavored to lead a full and joyous life. We too might consider a similar approach as we encounter the sources of our own inevitable sufferings, whether they be illness, loneliness, injustice, grief, or failures, among the host of causes…

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This time of the year I love celebrating holidays like the Yom Kippur fast and the Thanksgiving feast because, on the one hand, they reinforce my Stoic belief that life is hard; on the other hand, these holidays are a reminder that with the adoption of an attitude of gratitude, I get to shift my focus from suffering with the belief that I do not have enough, to celebrating with the recognition I have all that I need.

Two weeks ago Constance and I finally caught the Covid virus. Though our physical symptoms were not too bad, I was shocked at the way the virus negatively affected my mental, emotional, and spiritual states. Perhaps this negativity was a reflection of the daunting efforts over the past three years to run a Club in the midst of the pandemic. Perhaps it stemmed from the Fed’s actions in raising interest rates to kill inflation by draining the extra liquidity from the system. Perhaps it’s simply a reflection of what older age looks and feels like. Whatever it is, I knew I needed help, so I decided to re-read Kurt Vonnegut’s Joe Heller poem and share it with our members as my Thanksgiving gift.

Personally, I am just so thankful to all of you for your continued emotional and financial support, without which there would be no City Club or Highland Institute…

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America just endured another “most expensive and divisive election in our history.” The next day no tanks appeared on the streets, the Red Wave did not manifest, the Trump-backed election-deniers did not win, and life went on as usual, realizing this election was not the prophesied “end of Democracy as we know it.” In light of this, maybe it is time to start thinking about the next election!

The attack on Pearl Harbor that finally forced America to enter WWII forced us to spend a fortune in blood and treasure to create a new world order, and ultimately secure nearly eighty years of relative global peace and prosperity.

I am a big fan of the theory outlined in The Fourth Turning, the subject of our Member Monday discussions on March 20, 2017 and again on July 6, 2020, which advanced the 500-year cyclical nature of Anglo-American history marked by sequential 80-year secula each containing four parallel twenty-year biblical (four score) cycles…

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The Stoics believe life is good but hard. Or, as Gilda Radner of Saturday Night Live fame used to say, “If it’s not one thing; it’s another.”

This year alone we experienced a 100-mile-per-hour wind that took down a massive tree we had planted 44 years ago, along with a fire that resulted in six-figure damages. During the 2008/9 recession, our budding club lost some key employees and nearly half our membership. The recent pandemic then resulted in the loss of more key employees and nearly half our revenue.

I could go on and on about how hard life is but the reality is, throughout this arduous process, we have been building, growing in size, and attracting outstanding new members. In short, we are both surviving and thriving. Two recent examples highlighted this notion for me:…

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Our upcoming November elections will probably be a cliffhanger, with election deniers possibly delaying the final results through year-end. But if you think America is in bad shape, you should see what’s happening across the pond in England, or what just happened in China where President-for-life Xi Jinping, better known as the “Chairman of Everything,” got re-elected to a third five-year term by a vote of 2,296 to 0. Then, for good measure, just to make sure nobody missed who was in charge, he watched former President Hu Jintao forcefully removed and publicly humiliated to make it clear who was the Alpha.

Using anti-corruption as a blunt instrument similar to the way Joseph McCarthy accused his opponents of being communists, Xi has moved the Chinese Communist Party and its 96 million members “to the Leninist left, the economy to the Marxist left, and China’s foreign and security policy to the nationalist right.”

This witch’s brew will not make China the great nation Xi envisions. Add to this mix China’s disastrous zero-covid policy resulting in 19% urban youth unemployment, its disintegrating real estate sector, and a desperate attempt to project the power of the State over the private sector, and one can see why real trouble is brewing ahead…

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From Napoleon Bonaparte to George Washington, every general knows “an army marches on its stomach.” At the most basic level, this means soldiers, workers, employees, or anyone else we expect to perform a task can't function properly unless they are well-fed.

For the past 43 years, food has been an integral part of our Community. From our initial tiny residential kitchen functioning on a sump pump, to the licensed luxury commercial kitchen we have today, our primary focus has been to efficiently serve our members the highest quality food at the lowest possible price.

To achieve the above objective, we previously focused on efficiency and cost, by limiting to one hour the duration of our popular self-service buffet lunches. However, the pandemic forced us to rethink our process, concluding that we must change our focus from cost-saving to providing the most accommodating food program for you, our members…

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The Department of Health & Human Services recently recommended that children ages 8 to 18 get screened for anxiety. Another Government medical advisory group recommended that American adults ages 19 to 64 get screened for anxiety. Each year over 1.2 million Americans attempt suicide.

Before our government starts adding Prozac, like Fluoride, to our drinking water, let’s ask ourselves whether modern life, with all its technology and time-saving devices, has become that much harder than yesteryear, or have we simply become softer? We might further probe whether our “it’s-a-jungle-out-there” mentality reflects healthy survival anxiety or is a sign of new existential angst.

The primary cause of our anxiety is our mortality and the fear of death, followed by big questions like who am I and why am I here?! Closely related is anxiety arising from the uncertainty of not knowing where and how we fit into our society. Do we want equal opportunity or equal results? Should we reward the winner, or give everyone a participation award? Should our military recruiters focus on “inclusion” or identify and attract “warriors?” Do we prefer capitalism’s unequal distribution of wealth or socialism's equal distribution of suffering?…

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Di·a·logue; a written or spoken exchange between two or more people, associated with the Socratic dialogue developed by Plato.

I like to think of City Club as a multi-faceted jewel. We have great food but are not a restaurant; we have beautiful art but are not a museum; we have delicious drinks but are not a bar; we have magical gardens but are not a park; we have quiet spaces in which to work but are not an office.

Instead, what we are, or aspire to be, is a safe space for our members to engage with others in the most authentic, open, and free manner, including openness to accept constructive criticism. Why? Because “a recent poll found that more than half of Americans have become afraid to voice their opinions freely for fear of retaliation or severe criticism.”…

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As a kid, when asked “what do you want to be when you grow up,” my answer was, “A Winner.” I didn’t want to be rich, powerful, or smart, but I was addicted to learning, growing, and striving to win the game of life.

It took a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering to learn that there are no winners in life. Instead, there are only winning teams, hence my desire to build a community, which is why I am so proud of Team City Club, without whose help we could not have survived the parade of horribles such as pandemics, recessions, labor shortages, flood, and now fire.

Last Tuesday at 2.25 a.m. the club’s Trash/Recycle/Compost structure spontaneously combusted from some of the oil-soaked papers disposed of by the painters, causing a raging Fire. (link to the video).

I recently wrote about my late-life pivot from an emphasis on planning to preparation, and this fire experience confirmed it. Within minutes of the fire’s outbreak, our neighbors called the fire department, followed a few minutes later by half a dozen police cars and two fire trucks to extinguish it…

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The once-in-a-generation tectonic shift in the dollar’s value, the global reserve currency, is bound to have unanticipated political and financial consequences we may be powerless to address.

In the name of fighting inflation in America, the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates, thereby creating global inflation by attracting foreign capital to the US seeking higher returns, resulting in the recent Euro/Dollar parity, a ~30% drop in the value of the British Pound, and a ~20% drop in the value of the Japanese Yen, not to mention the negative effects of our balance of trade with China as a result of the dollar trading at over seven Yuan.

Talking tough and acting like the second coming of Paul Volcker, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has suggested his impetus for raising rates is rooted in the need to tame the recent alarming inflation rate. This attempt is both disingenuous and dangerous because it ignores the fact that it was the Fed itself that created incipient inflation through its loose monetary policy over the past twelve years. The idea that inflation can be tamed in a meaningful way through tiny incremental interest rate rises is misguided as long as nominal rates are lower than the inflation rate…

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America’s Founding Fathers, themselves flawed men, were nevertheless geniuses who recognized all men are flawed, and so they designed a system of government that featured legal checks on political power to minimize the potential damage wrought by bad leaders and fake Messiahs.

Our forefathers emigrated from Europe because their Churches and Kings denied them land and individual freedom, while in America one could claim all the land one could fence or cultivate while enjoying fundamental rights of protection from the State.

But now, after nearly 250 years, we are witnessing a troubled America with crowded cities, proliferating bureaucracies, high inflation, urban crime, and chaos at our Southern border, stained by the disgrace of Vietnam and Afghanistan losses. A closer look reveals a homeless problem that reminds us of Bombay, an expensive welfare system that does not work, public schools that can not teach, a biased news media that pawns editorials as news, and universities that suppress freedom of speech in the name of Wokeness…

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Highland, a 132-year-old historic landmark, has survived and thrived this long, not by resisting change, but by embracing it. Unlike the frog in the slowly boiling pot, we know when to jump.

As we now find ourselves in the midst of the Great Resignation, labor shortages, and what looks like pending Stagflation, once again we are forced to embrace change by making various adjustments to our operations, including the redesign of the club’s menu, pricing, and hours of service, to reflect the needs of our members better.

The marketplace has a way of clearly signaling perceived value and priorities by what it is willing to support. For the past six months, we have experienced sparse lunch attendance, especially by our younger members who have expressed their desire for expanded service hours so they can eat when they are hungry, and have options for simpler, quicker, and less expensive meals like sandwiches instead of gourmet entries, vegetarian over meat dishes, with emphasis on the social and communal aspect of lunch over the meal itself…

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We received a lot of feedback regarding last week’s introduction on the role of fate, and the importance of preparation over planning. To prove that fate is not always an obstacle, here are a few examples of how at times fate plays with loaded dice in favor of the underdog.

Most people know the story of Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx, gambling his last $30K in Vegas to meet payroll, or how Elon Musk got a $1.5 billion commitment from Nasa on Christmas eve, preventing SpaceX from declaring bankruptcy. So here is one of my favorite stories on the role fate plays unless you want to call it a miracle.

In the spring of 1967, Israel found itself surrounded by enemies bent on its imminent destruction. On May 14, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered a full mobilization of Egypt’s armed forces, declaring “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel.”…

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“If fate doesn't make you laugh then you don’t get the joke.” Shantaram

The Bible says God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day. I assume God was bored on his day off so he entertained himself by watching humans make plans.

The Stoics believe control is an illusion fueled by the ego. “Nobody’s in control of nothin’.” Instead, chaos is the rule, and order is the exception…

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One need not be a Wizard to realize the recent miracle in Kansas, a red conservative state in the middle of the country, recently setting the national tone on the abortion issue by voting 59 to 41 against a measure that would have made abortion illegal in the state.

That state action underscores the intent of the Supreme Court’s recent Dobbs v. Jackson ruling. In overturning Roe v. Wade, the Court held that the U.S. Constitution does not confer any right to an abortion and, by overruling Roe, it was returning the regulation of abortion to the people and their elected representatives, adding Roe had been egregiously wrong and amounted to ”an abuse of legal authority.”

As such, the court took no position one way or another on the legalities of abortion and simply left such determination to the individual states…

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No matter how smart or hardworking one is, it still takes time to grow wise. It takes years of hard work to have overnight success. It takes nine months for a baby to gestate. It takes time for the fruit to ripen on the tree.

The Bible says that Moses, on his way to the Promised Land, got lost in the desert and wandered in the wilderness for forty years! How could that be?! The Sinai desert is so tiny that nobody could get lost there for that long!

The answer might lie in seeing this 40-year journey in metaphorical terms where the wilderness is internal, and the Promised Land is the acquisition of wisdom to address fundamental questions such as what is the meaning and purpose of my life? Perhaps the journey comes down to becoming the very sage we had been seeking…

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