The Ethical Billionaire

Hah! I thought maybe I could slip one by you, but probably not.  You realized that the phrase "the ethical billionaire" is an oxymoron.  Which is word I cannot write without the image of a large, dull, bovine flashing through my mind. But I'm talking about fat cats here, not fat cattle. So I'm talking about a term which is self-contradictory, or in other words, I am asserting that there ain't no such thing as an ethical billionaire.  It is a notion that is of increasing concern as it seems that every day we are informed of yet another of billionaire being named as a major player in the looming Trump administration. But first let me expand on my assertion that there is no such thing as an ethical billionaire.

You see, I do believe that there can be ethical millionaires of a variety of stripes. Not surprisingly many can be found in the world of the arts and entertainment. One can write a novel or a series of novels that sell millions of copies and morph into films, coffee cups, etc. Historically, Charles Dickens comes to mind.  Having worked in a bootblack factory to get his father out of debtor's prison, Dickens went on to become a internationally famous, and financially successful author who wrote, among other works, A Christmas Carol, the George C. Scott version of which I will watch at least once this season. Point is that the Dickens estate continued to generate millions of dollars from literary works long after the patriarch passed.

In a more contemporary example, Dickens's countrywoman, JK Rowling crafted the Harry Potter world which has also generated millions in hardback and digital versions, movies and other formats.  Peruse any sports or entertainment news sites and you will encounter millionaires who have profited from their talents packaged in a way that enriches them as they entertain us. And while some of those packages leave me more confused than entertained - I have no problem with the basic process. Different strokes and all that.  But the leap from millionaire to billionaire, as any episode of American Greed reveals, is fraught with ethical pitfalls.

It seems that once one has accumulated a million, or ten, or a hundred, from one's primary reason for remuneration - writing, singing, sports, whatever - the old Peggy Lee song, Is That All There Is?, begins to roll around in their head. If millions are cool, wouldn't billions be even more fun? But assuming they have maxed out their earning potential of their actual abilities, they become hungry for other opportunities - they begin to diversify. "If you liked me as a quarterback, you'll love my bitcoin options!" "Hmm. Maybe beef jerky is a good place to invest." How about diamonds in South Africa? No, I'm not sure where they come from . . . How about organic marijuana? Go ahead, make up your own. The point is that profit and the accumulation of enough millions to become a billionaire becomes the driving raison d'etre in their lives, and it really doesn't matter where or how they accomplish their ends.

I'm not sure why this seems to be a common track for previously rational folks, but I have an idea. Rembrant once said, "Chose only one mentor, nature." So let us look to nature for some mentoring here. Think grasshoppers, grasshopper. Normally, grasshoppers just hang out eating, well, grass, and leaping away from any predators who might stumble upon them. They just hang out in their own little grasshopper niche. But then something called density-dependent phenotypic plasticity rears its ugly head. What that means is that for reasons not very well understood, grasshoppers begin to gather into large groups - like millions - and they then morph in locusts - like billions - who then, like the biblical plague, swarm out and devour everything in their path. So I'm thinking that millionaires who hang out with lots and lots of other huge money types get this uncontrollable urge to become billionaires and they devour everything that stands in their way to that objective.

OK. It has been that way since the days of the great robber barons of the 1800s here in the States, longer than that across the pond in the Old World, the Hapsburgs, Rothschilds, and that crowd. But what I don't understand is - if the post election pundits are close to accurate - that lots of people voted for Trump because they believed his policies would have a positive impact on their paychecks, on their ability to meet expenses, pay the rent, groceries and all.  Maybe, were Trump a single grasshopper, that might make sense, but he seems to be gathering more and more and more similar critters around him. Grasshoppers who have fallen victim to "density-dependent phenotypic plasticity" and piled their millions into billions that they accumulated from, well, us. The bucks had to come from somewhere. So what do we call this cadre of monied folks who seem poised, locust-like, to further line their bulging pockets for the next four years? Cattle are a herd. Chickens are a flock. A school of fish, even a murder of crows. No, wait. I've got it:

A gluttony of billionaires.

Falling Leaves

 Here is the final version:

Falling Leaves

Version notes:

OK, I changed my mind about filling the moon spaces. A couple of dry runs on scrap paper convinced me I couldn't consistently produce the effect I wanted. So, one of the benefits of keeping my images close to me is I can wander among them looking for solutions to issues I find in new images.

I came across the "better idea" in this image from the past called "Muse."

Muse

You can see the pattern up there in her hair and below her chin.

In case you are curious, I realized that the corners of Falling Leaves use a pattern remarkably similar to the hair in this image I believe I called "Angry Dude."

Naming the images is sometimes easy, other time a challenge. Not nearly as hard as naming a child, but up there with naming a parakeet or goldfish.

Stuck Up a Tree

It is one of those experiences common to most childhoods. You see some "climbable" thing; wall, rocky cliff, sand dune - in my sister's case the tall windmill on our uncle's farm that ran the pump for the cattle watering trough - but that's a tale for another day. Anyhow, you climb it only to realize you can't get down. That is sort of where I am with this image.

It is obviously intended to be a sort of sister piece to Moontree that I posted not long ago. But there is a significant difference. As I explained when I posted Moontree, much of the work on that image was done in digital space. This image however is all hand-drawn. Paper and markers.

One of the main differences between digital and "by hand" is that in digital space you can, in most instances, simply "step back" or "undo" and make your previous line, color, whatever, go away. But in my "by hand" process once I put marker to paper that's it - finito! 

My problem with this - still nameless - image is the space that was occupied by the moon in Moontree. Here it is a circle that encloses blank spaces. I think I know how I want to fill those spaces - sort of free-form loops with some spaces filled with colors from the same palette as the rest of the image. [Brief note on that palette. I draw those colors from my "sunrise-sunset" notion. That notion asserts that we never critique a sunrise or a sunset as using the "wrong" colors. Hence whatever color feels right is the right color.] So they would look something like this:

Obviously small enough to fit in the blanks. Anyhow, I am not confident that the idea in my head will make it to my notoriously - and increasingly - shaky hands. 

A few more practice rounds. I'll keep you posted.

Oh, an additional issue. I have been wrestling with the issue of “marketing” my images. The problem is, as I have mentioned before, if I “sell” an image that presumes the image leaves my walls and goes away. I take great comfort in having them here in my company. But should you also wish to have them in your company, you may, with my blessing, copy them from the Wall/Canvas, pop them into a graphics program increase the resolution and size and print them out.

Distilled Harmony: A Reaffirmation

 I suppose I could react to the recent Presidential election by shuffling around in sackcloth humming "American Pie" aka "The Day the Music Died." But that would really be simply a meaningless waste of time and energy. Tried hard to get a gentle, compassionate and competent woman elected, but it seems that millions of my fellow Americans are living in a pretty dark place, and used the ballot box to express their anger, fears and anxiety. Rather than rail against that darkness, I instead choose to reaffirm and suggest my contrary view of everyday existence: Distilled Harmony.

The three primary tenets of Distilled Harmony have been scattered throughout these Wall posts from more than a dozen years, to more dozens of you distributed among 8 or 10 nations around the globe. But it seems a good time to clarify and reaffirm these positive existential guidelines which I espouse, but still struggle to manifest in my own life.

The tenets are hierarchical - tenet one, Foster Harmony, dominates, followed in importance by tenet two, Enable Beauty, then tenet three, Distill Complexity. Let me break them down for you again.

Foster Harmony . In its simplest form this tenet can be stated as "play nice with others," or the old stand-by "treat others as you would be treated by them." Golden rule stuff. It is deceptive in its simplicity. It stands in direct contradiction to the currently more popular "give 'em what they deserve!" It holds us to a more forgiving, more compassionate mandate. It is the first tenet because it is hardest. Fostering Harmony - opening your life to giving and receiving love, is one of the most challenging, yet most rewarding tasks of our lives.

Enable Beauty. We are, in large part, what we create - not what we consume. This one gets a little tricky because it is far easier to buy beauty than create it. Hence the palaces of the super rich in every era of human history from antiquity to today. This tenet asks that we become creators, not merely consumers. Complicating the tenet is the notion of talent, and of course genius.

I saw a little girl sing grand opera on TV the other night. Mozart composed symphonies before his age hit double digits. Genius is not our creative benchmark. "To perform to the best of our ability" is. We need to spend a healthy portion of our lives creating something that at least strives toward beauty. Sing, dance, act, draw, paint, sculpt, play an instrument, build edifices, design gardens, compose music, perform, cook, design interiors, plan events. Whatever! But do something, anything, that makes the world around you, and the space in which you live, a more beautiful place.

Then there is Distill Complexity.  Life often seems to have been constructed by Rube Goldberg. Every task - particularly those designed to be performed in a digital environment - seems to follow a path designed by a contortionist whose favorite saying is "You can't get there from here." Or, "Your call is very important to us, please press one for, press two for, press three for, all others please hang up and try next week."

Let me indulge in a brief, but related story. When arriving on NC State's campus back in 1980 one benefit I soon discovered was the guy who could fix everything technology-related on campus. Now remember this was 1981 - no internet, no world-wide-web, no computers on desks; rather big room sized things over in the "computer building" that were fed paper punch cards. After a few years I was able to secure a UNIX computer from the college of engineering, which ran an archaic version of Wordstar - a dinosaur word processing program. It stopped working. I called guru Everett san and explained my problem. 

He asked, "What floor is your office on?"

"The fourth," I replied.

"Does it have a window?"

"Yes."

"Can you open it?"

"Yes."

"Open the window. Unplug your computer. Carry it to the window. Make sure there is no one beneath you. Now throw the computer out. Something better will come along soon." And he hung up.

And my computer problems had vanished, to be solved, later, bit by bite, by PCs and then Macs.

When we allow ourselves to get caught up in, enmeshed by, angered and frustrated by, the swirling, often negative complexities of modern life it is easy to lose sight of what is truly important: Our lives, and the lives of those we care about, and what we can do to enrich those lives that truly touch us.

So distill. Put the chaos that is confronting you on the front burner of your mind, turn up the heat, and let it simmer. Whenever anything that you truly cannot fix, or smells off, bubbles up, grab a slotted spoon and skim it off, toss it in the trash - down the disposal! Repeat until only those items that you can whip up with love and caring remain to clarify into a pleasing sauce of Harmony and Beauty remain. Remove from heat and allow to cool before serving.

Not exactly sure where that came from, but I think I'll keep it in, and get back to trying to Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, and Distill Complexity in my own life. Still much work to be done there. Working on a sister piece to Moontree and am having trouble with leaves.

Little Tiny Wormholes

 I'm not talking about those little holes that appear in your yard after a summer rain, the ones made by actual worms. No, I'm talking about the wormholes that hook various points in spacetime together. Or as Wikipedia puts it:

"A wormhole is a hypothetical structure connecting disparate points in spacetime, and is based on a special solution of the Einstein field equations.^[1] A wormhole can be visualized as a tunnel with two ends at separate points in spacetime (i.e., different locations, different points in time, or both)."

OK, now that that is clear, a wormhole can zip things around the universe willy-nilly. One moment a thingy is here, the next it is somewhere and sometime else. So what does that have to do with you and me? Glad you asked. I have a theory. No, I have no training in theoretical physics, but if the richest man in the world, with no training in political science, can shrug off the bothersome chains of sanity to shill for another purported billionaire, I figure that opens the door for all sorts of idle speculation.

So here is my theory. Most speculation regarding wormholes is cosmic in nature - black holes at the center of galaxies, galaxies crashing into one another creating universe-wide gravity waves, mysterious entities light years away. Really huge Star Wars kinds of stuff. 

My theory brings the idea of wormholes into a much smaller conceptual space, like your house, garage, kitchen, etc. Let me cite an example.

Yesterday I was organizing stuff in the garage. Yeah, I know we moved months and months ago. Another year and we might get "moved in." Anyhow, I was moving a couple of items from one corner of the garage to another. I carried them in a plastic container, removed the items from the container and placed them on the shelf. Then I turned around and the plastic container had vanished. 

Now I am aware that another phenomenon could be in play here, the "where did I put my keys" issue. This occurs when we misplace an item that reappears minutes, hours or days later. "Ah ha! There you are!" This "missing keys" phenomenon occurs with increasing regularity as we move through our maturity. The "Tiny Little Wormhole" phenomenon, or TLW for short, is a completely different animal. Items that get sucked into a TLW are gone for good, never to be seen again. 

Think about it. You have your own examples, but were perhaps unaware of what was going on. That favorite sweater you looked for last week as the weather began to change. The flat head screwdriver you put on the bench. The Winnie the Pooh PJs with the footies. You name it - gone and never ever to be seen again.

There are some ramifications to TLWs that we may not have considered. When these things disappear from our place in spacetime they reappear somewhere else. There is a common trope in sci-fi literature that earth is in a sort of probationary period that will determine whether we are invited to join a highly sophisticated inter-galactic community. Most of these narratives do not end well for us, usually because of our tribe-like arrogance which culminates in violent genocide of some type or another.That may just be a cheap-shot plot device. 

There could be a more subtle reason for our exclusion: bad TLW management. That more advanced community has long learned to manage the TLWs. Things that disappear in the Greater Galactic Community (GGC) are actually funneled to specific regions of the universe in need of specific items: think recycling. We, however, just let things zip away. Think letting your dog off-leash to do its business wherever and making no effort to clean it up. By failing to understand and control our TLWs, we are trashing random parts of the universe.

That gets entered into the debit side of our galactic ledger, along with global warming, genocide, and the ever-increasing web of satellites we toss up blocking the communication paths of the galactic observers. Whew.

So what do we do to reverse this seemingly negative spiral? I think there is great potential benefit to addressing the issue at the TLW level. It seems logical (well, as logical as anything in this admittedly fanciful ramble) that TLWs are encouraged by our neglect. They snarf up random things to which we are not paying attention. So we need to keep our stuff better organized. Clean out the junk drawer. Put your tools, spices, clothes in planned spaces. This, I believe will thwart the TLWs and increase our chances of being accepted into the Greater Galactic Federation.

I must, however, admit to doing none of those things I advise above. I lean sharply toward the slovenly. Which is, no doubt, why TLWs swarm around me like mosquitoes on a summer evening. I suppose that, in order to increase earth's chances of GGF membership, I should clean up my act.

OK, I will. Starting tomorrow.