MEMBER MONDAY

Highland does aesthetics. Its members embody the arts e.g. music, dance, painting, sculpture, architecture, calligraphy. The grounds and premises themselves are a tribute to beauty, evoking a sublime quality of life itself. Being sensitive to what is beautiful is the way to discover the ultimate value of the world, the subject of our discussion piece (Attuned to the Aesthetic).

Previous MM sessions have been likewise inspired e.g. MM 6/3/19 Birthing Beauty (architecture, Dominique), MM 4/4/22 Are You Not Moved? (visual Arts, Van Gogh’s ’Night Cafe’), MM 8/12/19 Wabi-Sabi (Japanese aesthetic featuring beauty in imperfection), MM 8/29/22 Calligraphy (lettering as visual art, Amanda), MM 10/30/17 Music's Evocative Magic.

May we embrace this philosophy of life called “aestheticism” i.e. a life lived in pursuit and reflection of aesthetic principles (whether created, shared, or appreciated) which, in and of themselves, make the world worthwhile. It suggests a certain absoluteness, a kind of ultimate, universal, or final value. It needs no justification in terms of some other good. In fact, it may be harmful, like a storm or volcano. In trying to parse the phrase, the closest term that came to mind was “awesome,” the subject of MM 1/22/18 Awesomeness…

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One ambition of this experiment called Member Monday was (is) to distill complicated truths from false simplicities, the subject of our discussion article (In Praise of Bewilderment). 

Bewilderment, we are told, may sometimes seem a threat as it means surrendering a part of oneself as our various "certainties" function as nodes in our "web of beliefs," all interconnected to give us our worldview. We become vulnerable, especially in times of crisis, when that "tyranny of certainty" is challenged such that our amygdales flood the system and we are reduced to little more than braying pack animals seeking an echo chamber over meaningful interaction. That is why our MM protocol calls for active listening and a respectful pause such that the forum offers thoughtful exchange over mere reflex.

We might first ease into the necessary humility by recalling our previous session MM 11/14/22 Things (We Know For Sure) That Just Ain't So and then move on to our experiences with real-life paradoxes e.g. perhaps you discovered the counterproductivity in those vain attempts to exert control, or how you landed that important job only after you stopped trying so hard (in golf parlace, loosening the grip on the club), or how you've experienced or witnessed  that "never-enough" phenomenon where one's "wants" seem, on an accelerated basis, to perpetually outstrip one's "haves". Our MM 6/10/19 Good/Bad . . . . We'll See was all about the cause-and-effect mysteries in one's life trajectory. 

The point is one need not enter the Zen Buddhist world of koans to appreciate the limitations of locked-in certainty. Only with an open mindset are we ready for F. Scott Fitzgerald's dictum, "the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind and still retain the ability to function" as we contemplate such possible topics as abortion, our increasingly porous national borders or, a personal favorite, the certainty of Free Will (given Man simply has no choice)…

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A very early MM discussion featured a conversation with Nick Bostrom, Oxford philosopher, on the subject of artificial intelligence (AI) as he maintained, “Artificial Intelligence can and very possibly will take over the universe, pushing humans into second place, if they still have any place at all” (The Guardian 6/12/16).

Don’t look now but the advent of Chat GPT (an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text) is now knocking on the door as it presumes its way into the world of poetry. Does it have our attention now?

The path to this point is well known and the subject of some previous MM sessions. There was, of course, the so-called Turing Test -- challenging a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior to be equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human.

Philosophers of artificial intelligence over the succeeding generations got caught up in their own underwear trying to frame such questions as what is even meant by human intelligence i.e. what is the difference between consciousness and the simulation of consciousness…

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Now he tells me: perhaps my younger Self, had he chosen to listen, would benefit greatly from some of the thoughts and perspectives rendered by his then-future Self. Our session will be centered around the sharing of certain such imaginary retrospections which, given the passage of life experience, might even rise to the level of pseudo-wisdom. They needn't be fancy, only heartfelt. At the very least, the older participants may be surprised, comforted, and even entertained by the commonality of respective life challenges, triumphs, and missed opportunities.

But that's not the real value of the exercise. What’s impossible for the individual’s imagined time-travel retrospection becomes feasible when it comes to generational groupings i.e. my earlier incarnation might have benefited greatly from the chance to sit in the presence of trusted elders, not as one to be lectured at, but as an equal. As such, may our session particularly embrace our younger members.

Just by way of an example is a personalized sample entry (below), inspired by our MM 10/7/19 Second Mountain session:..

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A recent article from the Atlantic (Let's Declare A Pandemic Amnesty) centers around an apology of sorts i.e. the author -- a COVID co-professor at Brown and one-time champion of those draconian measures to which we were subjected -- now sees those measures to have been "misguided." But we didn’t know, she suggests, so let’s move on, sorry about that, water under the bridge.

The second article frames the matter in starkly unapologetic terms (No, Let's Not: Perpetrators of Pandemic Authoritarianism Cannot Be Forgiven). Nice try, it asserts, but some did know. This was not a case of a pandemic overreaction but rather one of active suppression of readily available information.

Point/Counterpoint: two vastly different takes on the appropriateness of those state actions. Now that things have settled down a bit, how one responds to those two pieces may reveal lots about how one sees the rights and responsibilities of an individual within a democratic Republic…

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(Any discussion about a great unwind must start with first pondering what it is exactly that’s being unwound. Consider this introduction to be simply the perspective of someone with a pocket calculator trying to make sense of where we are, how we got here, and where we might be going. Other perspectives are more than welcome to our discussion with the goal remaining enlightenment over argument.)

How we got here was the topic two years ago of MM 6/8/20 WTF: What The Fed i.e. how the Fed (the central bank originally established to act as the ultimate backstop lender to in times of a severe liquidity crisis) became empowered to create money. Despite the misleading name, the Fed was and is a private, not a federal government, institution. It (digitally and physically) "prints" money (called Federal Reserve Notes, just look at the back of your dollar bill) which shows up as a liability on its balance sheet.

This money is then applied to purchase various instruments which are reflected as assets on that same balance sheet. The lion's share of those assets are Treasuries (i.e. loans to the U.S. government) plus mortgage backed securities (which underpin traditional mortgages). For our purposes, the Fed has been the open market "whale" purchaser of both over the last dozen years.

That's really all you need to know when it comes to understanding the extraordinarily low interest rates that have prevailed until recently. Those massive purchases of Treasuries by the Fed had been the unnatural act driving the price of those instruments to lofty heights which, as we know (bond price is inverse to interest rate), translated to extraordinarily low interest rates (effectively zero). And it's these longer-term rates (rather than the frequently-published short term Fed Funds Rate) that count when it comes to corporate, government, and mortgage borrowings. That phenomenon was labeled “Quantitative Easing (QE).” So, what's the cost?…

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It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so — Mark Twain (maybe).

The Chinese word for crisis is composed of the symbols for "danger" and "opportunity." False. The historical Buddha was fat. False. It is illegal to shout the word “fire” in a crowded theater. False. The Great Pyramids of Egypt were constructed by slave labor. False. Listening to Mozart enhances intelligence. False. Sugar causes hyperactivity in children. False. The common cold is caused by cold. False. Isaac Newton was inspired to study gravity by an apple falling on his head. False. Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake." False. The United States Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776. False. Albert Einstein failed grade school mathematics. False. Mussolini made the trains run on time. False. People use ten percent of their brain. False. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, Thomas Crapper invented the flush toilet, James Watt invented the steam engine, Henry Ford invented the automobile and the assembly line, and Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet. All False. The Rolling Stones were performing “Sympathy For the Devil '' during the stabbing incident at 1969 Altamont Free Concert. False. Skinheads are all white supremacists. False. Cinco de Mayo is Mexico’s Independence Day. False. George Washington had wooden teeth. False. The Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in America. False. Greek philosopher Pythagoras discovered the Pythagorean theorem. False. Medieval Europeans believed the earth was flat. False.The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was caused by Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicking over a lantern. False. Prohibition made the drinking of alcohol illegal. False. Orson Welles’s 1938 radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds caused widespread panic. False. The dark side of the moon means it doesn't receive light. False. Half of body heat is lost through the head. False. A meteor’s heat upon entering the earth’s atmosphere is primarily caused by friction. False. Tang, velcro, and teflon were off-shoots of technology developed by NASA. False. The sun is yellow. False. Bulls are enraged by the color red. False. A wolf pack has an "alpha" male. False. The Quran promises martyrs 72 virgins in heaven. False. Saint Augustine said, “God created Hell for inquisitive people.” False. Jesus was born on December 25. Doubtful.

These represent but a tiny sampling of well-documented "misconceptions" (and their underlying sources) that make up so-called conventional wisdom, bringing to mind the Simon and Garfunkel lyrics, "When I think of all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all," which continued with the detritus of old wive's tales, superstitions, implanted cultural myths -- die, Disney, die! -- from the popularization of pseudoscience, urban legends, and agenda-pushing factoids…

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Reports such as this one from the U.N. last week ( U.N. Emissions Gap Report 2022 ) that the progress towards meeting carbon emission pledges has been "woefully inadequate" seem to elicit one of two responses:

The first is an eye-rolling here-we-go-again skepticism on the part of those who view the world through the cynical lens of would-be statism populated by alarmist scientists with their new-age religion. Proponents of that view might cite none other than David Wallace-Wells, author of the NYT opinion piece that was the focus of our MM 7/17/17 The Uninhabitable Earth discussion some five years ago, as that article’s author now notes that events in the last few years "provide arguments for both buoyant optimism . . . . " while they overlook the ". . . and abject despair" part that completes the author's sentence. One need not look far to see the wolf frisking the door even now.

Then there's the "we're doomed" contingent opting out altogether from any meaningful engagement as they calculate the day of possible reckoning to be beyond their normal lifespan and, in an ultimate expression of egocentricity, see the whole matter as a problem for posterity even as they rhetorically ask what has posterity done for them.

Enter, then, the Planet Project as its founding member (and club affiliate) Roger Briggs helps us work through a true evolution of consciousness that would underlie a culture of environmental stewardship. Given that the mind can be a wonderful servant but a terrible master, may we be open to a relearning exercise in order to allow certain fundamentals to reemerge from an acculturation having perhaps gone somewhat sideways…

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First, a pair of observations are offered to set up our discussion:

Observation One (Thought Experiment, previously shared in MM 12/6/21 Ego Is The Enemy):

It's a pre-dawn morning and you're lying quietly in bed. There's virtually no sensory input, no sound. The mind is clearer in that darkness than it ever is during the day as your thoughts survey your universe in the manner and scope of your choosing.

Then the perspective changes. You are now on the outside looking in and realize that this survey of infinite vastness is nothing more than an illusion produced by three pounds of wetware. Is there any doubt you are, at that point, lord of your skull-sized kingdom? Upon awakening, your kingdom reconnects with the "real" world.

Observation Two:

A recent visit to the homestead of (honorary club member) Bob Davis gave rise to an epiphany of sorts. Behind his farmhouse is an encampment. The encampment consists of a heavy canvas tent, a cot, a complement of cooking elements, an extensive vegetable garden with drying boxes and other intimate connections to the natural world . . . and . . . . and the total absence of ties to so-called modernity (other than, perhaps, the sound of a distant airplane). Many nights, most any season, Bob elects to forgo the traditional comforts of his farmhouse to call this his home -- home, both literally and figuratively…

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Reports of near-death experiences -- the white light, the tunnel, the disembodied observer floating above the crash scene -- serve, to some, the glimpse of life after life. Given the existential implications at stake, the big question becomes what happens to consciousness after "death." One researcher has suggested that "the evidence so far is that it (i.e. consciousness) doesn't die when you and I cross over (to death)." Perhaps the question of an eternal afterlife is at least worthy of a one-hour Member Monday discussion.

That researcher's reference to the word "evidence" opens the subject matter from the exclusive province of metaphysics onto the provisional world of science and medicine, more in our collective grasp.

Enter our focus article The Afterlife Is In Our Heads. We might start with a simple key definition i.e. that of death. Death defined, say, as the point of cardiac arrest where the brain no longer receives blood and oxygen might take us down one path i.e. the near-death experience of a brain in extremis as explained in physiological terms. A different definition of death, say the total cessation of brain activity, would have absolutely nothing to say about any such near-death experience presaging eternity and would place the entire matter squarely into the world of pure faith, the supernatural and the mystics. A free dessert to anyone with a confirmed case…

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I literally lost my identity a few evenings ago on the half-hour bus ride from Denver to Boulder. It went unnoticed until a phone call came the following morning inquiring whether I recognized a certain credit card charge. No, of course not, the card has been with me in my wallet, right here . . . oh, wait. Thus began an odyssey flickering between mild panic and existential pondering.

You might not be aware of the many logistical steps to be undertaken with a missing wallet/purse: lock down/replace any credit/debit cards; implement a credit freeze; obtain a new driver's license; etc. That might sound fairly routine, except for one thing -- your life becomes provisional if you can no longer prove who you are. But for locating my passport, my life would have become a hell on many fronts.

That experience, however, led to an odd sort of reckoning -- I felt strangely free for the moment, untethered by who/what the contents of the wallet represented me to be, a kind of invisibility. There was a palpable lightness as the past had simply become an imagined construct (even the threats that my grade school infractions would go on my "permanent record" now rang hollow). Driving (w/o license) to the DMV was now riding in the desert on a horse with no name 'cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain…

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Putin to western Europe: Who's my Bitch.

By most accounts, Putin's war is not going to his liking. Yet, per our focus article (Fintan O’Toole: Vladimir Putin is losing his insane war on Ukraine, (thanks Mike Maloy)), his Ukrainian gamble is based on a perception of western weakness, that if push came to shove the rest of Europe could not endure an energy shutdown. Is he right? The answer may well test the limits of liberal democracy.

No one needs reminding that Ukraine's survival rests largely on the financial and military support of democratic governments, that Russia by and large controls Europe's energy supply, and that a liberal democracy rests on the support, or at least the tolerance, of its electorate . . . and that winter is looming…

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This will be a follow-on to our earlier MM (9/19/22)/Network State session for a deeper dive into the potential, challenges, and opportunities represented by the so-called Network State, together with how it might fit within the unfolding world order. First priority for the session will be extended to accommodate those unable to attend the earlier session due to our limited capacity.

No special expertise is required for this stand-alone session as it may feature two lead participants who can address some of the more technological elements. Such elements may also be intertwined with the world of blockchain/cryptocurrency, a fascinating subject in its own right.

You may thus find of interest two articles framing the Bitcoin debate, the first making the "pro" case Bitcoin Is Civilization, written by the author of the earlier featured Network State (Balaji Srinivasan) and the "against" case The Case Against Bitcoin, written by Michael Green…

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A man named Balaji Srinivasan has served up an extraordinary vision. He addresses the ways in which technology will further upend a world in which the very meaning of community has been primarily defined in terms of physical proximity. Even now, perhaps a cloud buddy eight thousand miles away is closer to you than your next door neighbor.

Now extend and extrapolate. The implications are enormous, including the potential reordering of the familiar nation state into overlapping or even autonomous network states -- highly aligned online communities with a capacity for collective action, even political power.

The challenge comes in breaking down this ambitious macro-topic into bite-sized iterative segments. Mr. Srinivasan has done so. His vision is both compelling and free (google Network State for his entire book). The only investment by you is a bit of your time, attention, and some imagination.

The focus interview (02-33-34.webloc) truly sparkles but is long. Be sure to at least watch/read the thirty-minute essence (starting at minute 114:45 of the video and/or page 39 of the transcript linked therein, though the rest of the material provides context and is quite interesting in its own right). The session will consist of our shared epiphanies…

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The irony is exquisite -- tech billionaires buying up luxurious bunkers and hiring military security to survive some societal collapse that they themselves helped to cause (Super-Rich Preppers). If this serves as a glimpse of some Spenglerian end-game, perhaps it's time once again to discuss governance.

The Onion some years back featured a delicious satirical piece citing the engagement by the American people of a high-powered lobbyist to further the peoples' interests. After all, if the likes of Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, and Monsanto can purchase an inside voice in the Beltway, perhaps it's high time for the people to have their own seat at the table (The People Hire A High-Powered Lobbyist). Or, as they say, if you're not at the table you're on the menu.

Too cynical? Per Oscar Wilde's definition of a cynic as someone who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing, to whom do we look these days to be singularly focused on those values, like community, we profess to hold dear as a nation? As such, the defining issue of this peoples' lobby would be "Virtue Politics" i.e. the key to a healthy regime lies in bringing to power those who are good and wise…

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Member Monday is all about opening new vistas. And so it is here with the subject of calligraphy, especially as it’s applied to those like this cursive-challenged student whose third grade handwriting sample smacked of a squashed spider and whose later on-line graphology test pegged him as uneven, stingy, inner-contradicted, wrapped in distrust with flourishes of mythomania -- with probably a bad haircut, to boot.

We welcome new club member Amanda Nicole (Borne), calligrapher and hand lettering artist, to be our lead participant as we discuss the healing power offered by modern calligraphy (Healing Power Of Modern Calligraphy). Be not afraid. The goal of the session is simple awareness, rather than a lesson on penmanship from Professor Eat-Your-Peas. “It’s not about the bike”; it’s not about the calligraphy.

It’s really all about broadening a mindset that embraces a certain kind of deepened intimacy, to others, to oneself. Maybe start by comparing the impact of a handwritten thank-you note to a flat, perfunctory email. It’s night and day. Yes, one might say, but the email is more efficient, bringing to mind a previously-discussed sentiment i.e. in a perfectly efficient society, man is redundant…

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The discussion topic is a postcard from the edge. Tell me more. The subject is psychotherapy. Tell me more. The featured article is about lessons learned by a late-term resident in a psychiatric hospital (Adventures Of Psychotherapy Resident), such as:

"Nobody likes an awkward silence. If a patient tells you something, and you are silent, then the patient will rush to fill the silence, probably with whatever they were holding back the first time they started talking. You won’t believe how well this works until you try it. Just stay silent long enough, and the other person will tell you everything."

Our session will be about how you – maybe therapist, patient, friend of patient, couple's counselor, student, or simply a curious participant -- react to the priceless revelations in this piece. If you don't laugh out loud, your dessert is on-the-house…

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Animals are usually perfectly themselves, not the elaborately perverse psychological mysteries that people sometimes become. The genuineness ascribed to animals may apply equally to those who would protect them.

Enter the Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education (GRACE) Center and its general mission to promote the conservation of wild gorillas and their Congolese habitat. Our very own Tommi Wolfe, the director of GRACE, will be our lead participant as she outlines and we discuss what’s involved in the care and rehabilitation of the wild Grauer gorillas having been rescued from wildlife trafficking and poaching (GRACE).

As you are introduced to the rescue of Lulingu (Saving Lulingu), for example, keep in mind this species shares some 98% of its genetic code with humans. Anyone not moved by this clip must have a heart of stone that no facts and figures can penetrate…

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Think of your life in terms of performance art, the stage set from your earliest days. You don't see it as a game but it is. The rules of the game are defined from beyond -- your schooling, your religion, your profession. You fixate on the future. Oh, what a good boy am I, or will be.

And then, perhaps, comes the day when you realize no one is really watching your performance, judging you. This notion, far from dispiriting (nothing personal, those audience members are simply preoccupied with their own worlds), is actually liberating. It's the day you can finally, perhaps, claim your own agency, the day you can become more present, the day you can stop performing.

This proposition plays out in our discussion pieces, starting with a six-minute segment by the late English, self-styled “philosophical entertainer” Alan Watts (Alan Watts/Playing The Game of Life), and as further rounded out by David Brooks in a recent Opinion Piece (NYT: Is Life a Story or a Game?). Life is a series of games, you see, all played in the pursuit of what is truly sought -- the insatiable quest for status.

In so doing, Brooks builds on his previous thesis that one’s life can be thought of in terms of two mountains: the first, an ego-based pursuit of worldly success reflected one’s resume; the second, an ego-lessened focus better captured in one’s eulogy (as we discussed in our MM10/7/19) Second Mountain session)….

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We could barely wrap our heads around the pandemic two years ago. The virus, fresh out of the bottle, simply didn't belong to these post-industrial times, not here, not now. There was a kind of stunned incomprehension as if a cannibal had joined the family picnic and calmly started eating the children.

We engaged with this uninvited guest through a series of MM sessions centered around imagining what a post-pandemic world might look like. The overarching question was how the world might be shaped, not only by the pandemic itself but, more so, by the manner in which we chose to respond.

The answer back then was inconclusive, too many unknowns. A somewhat clearer picture may now be emerging with more data points and a somewhat greater familiarity. A hint of this comes from a keyword in the title to this week’s discussion piece (NYT: Endemic Covid-19 Looks Pretty Brutal). That key word would be "endemic," connoting some sort of an established baseline, even if it be of an unknown duration.

Of course, the word "brutal," also in the title, gets our attention. Yes, this bug still has ambitions: the domestic infection rate year-to-date already represents half of all infections since inception. Another estimate calls for five percent of the country to become infected each month…

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