This week I would like to address a notion I think of as just another form of voodoo, and that’s the idea of blank-out. What do I mean by blank-out? No one tells this story better than Ayn Rand. Quoting Atlas Shrugged, “…they believe that reality can be altered by the power of the words they do not utter—and their magic tool is the blank-out, the pretense that nothing can come into existence past the voodoo of their refusal to identify it.” Refusal to Identify We live at a time ... Read More
This week I wish to address the benefits of giving. We have all just been through the Black Friday and Cyber Monday madness—sales everywhere promising price cuts like never before, shouting limited quantities, offering customer testimonials, and using every other motivational and compliance principle—urging us to buy now! Shop early and save; shop early while quantities last; prices slashed on best sellers; and more—those have been the headlines in every sort of media. And if you’re at all like most of us, you were not immune to the pitches. Our ... Read More
This week I wish to draw your attention to something I find very disturbing, and that is the loss of certain Constitutional rights. Now we’re all familiar with the idea that some of our rights were marginalized as a result of the Patriot Act, but I’m not so sure that everyone knows just how far some of this has gone. For example, there is a facility in Chicago known as Homan Square where more than 7,000 people are questionably detained. According to a transparency lawsuit filed by the Guardian, “Police ... Read More
Money is the subject of this week’s blog. All together too many people want it and yet push it away because they believe that money and profit are evil. Is profit evil in your mind? Should entrepreneurs and businesses in general seek to do business at a loss, or even at some break-even point, in the name of social good? Would creativity be kindled if we but shared and shared alike—I mean what if the Bill Gates and the Steve Jobs and the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world shared equally ... Read More
This week I wish to discuss something that will no doubt bring about considerable controversy, and that is the role religion and spirituality potentially play in orchestrating mass behavior. We are all familiar with the history of the crusades and today of the holy war being carried out by some against the designated infidel. To many in the world, we in the Western civilization are indeed the infidels! As such, it is easy to witness the horrors of hard brain washing—the kind that insists heaven is but a moment away ... Read More
