It is always interesting when your past meets up with your present. Chris has just resurfaced after many long travels. This isn’t the Chris who is struggling with a sense of personal honor in relation to identity. This is the Chris who found it, probably by losing himself through the shedding of prior definitions, then reconstituted in his own truer terms.

Anyone who has traveled and had the courage to step out of their protective cultural bubble is forever transformed in inexplicable ways. It is the difference between a traveler and a tourist. A tourist merely looks, from an abstract distance, at the animals in the zoo, while keeping themselves safely separated behind the glass walls that define them. On the other hand, the traveler jumps right in. The traveler may not be fearless, but no one can say that the traveler is not courageous. It is not easy, letting many of our internal definitions slip away. But it is the only way to truly understand other people, as any modern anthropologist will tell you. And in return, it really is the only way we can better understand ourselves.

It is said that through formal education people are also transformed. This is true, to varying degrees. Mathematics and the various sciences, through their rigidly narrow focus, provide some hint of transformation. But they are better equipped to provide logical obsessions to the reasoning area of the mind. And these obsessions can easily distract us from our own humanity, and the humanity of others. But there also exists within academia the study of Humanities. Nearly all science and business students groan at the prospect of having to take even a few Humanities courses as general university requirements. Because, if it were not for those educational requirements, they would rather not learn any more about humanity. After all, they are human, yes? What else is there to know? Just a bunch of crazy gobbly-gook?

What does it say about us, when we are unwilling to explore the incredible diversity inherent in humanity? In a culture where we are increasingly encouraged to find our small niche, or our well-defined cubicle, what place is there for humanity? Everything becomes oriented and limited to our function, rather than our experience of what it is, to be alive. In fact, if we happen to have flashes of self-insight, or question the function we have adopted and defined for ourself, many people are left in a near state of anxiety or panic. The study of Humanities does not exclude function. It embraces function. But Humanities takes it even further. Humanities embraces everything we can possibly conceive or experience, whether it appears reasonable or not. Humanities says, we’re all just human, and we’re all fundamentally different, and we’re all so very similar. Humanities says, sunshine, don’t worry (or do) — it’s okay. Let’s just look at this. Maybe we’ll learn something. And be better off for it.

It should be no surprise that as students increasingly devote their lives to business, humanities dwindle. Business and money are what draws people’s attention, while their their own nature as a human, and their fellow human beings, are less a concern. Of course you can rationalize that students enter into studying disciplines mostly devoid of humanity, with only the best intentions toward some indefinable humanity, and the positive role they might play, in the long run. Just remember that education is, indeed, transformational. Even business education.

Last month Chris Hedges wrote an excellent article called Higher Education Gone Wrong: Universities Are Turning into Corporate Drone Factories. Don’t let the somewhat cynical title put you off. It is worth a read. He is completely correct. I’ll take his piece a little further:

Academia is, indeed, still teaching critical thinking. However, critical thinking is no longer as much about truth as it is about “winning”. Even in the sciences, where truth remains mostly necessary, the motivation is more about the ego of the individual “winning” that truth, than it is about truth in and of itself. Students, and by degrees our society, are loosing the ability to think critically except within the terms that can somehow benefit themselves in some self-interested way.

This also is not very surprising, considering the enormous increase in corporate sponsorship of university schools and research. Public funding of universities and research comes with few strings attached, and as such, truth can be the primary concern. However, public funding of education has been drastically reduced, and in these economic conditions where even states are desperate for money, universities and education will only increasingly rely on private parties for their funding.

As I mentioned a few months ago in another piece related to education, there is a very small, yet interesting, trend happening in the humanities. Even as the number of people who devote themselves to the humanities declines, the number of people devoting themselves to philosophical inquiry is slowly, yet steadily increasing, though nothing as fast as business. Nevertheless, this is a hopeful sign. It means that more people are questioning the very foundations of their lives and their culture. It also means that more people are interested in what truly is right and wrong, independent of what any arbitrary religion or culture might espouse.

In philosophy, the study of what is right and wrong is called “ethics”. It is also no surprise that most students view philosophy students as freaks who are best at chasing their own tails. There is some truth in that preconception. But leaving it at that is a grave mistake. The study of philosophy is no simple task. It is as much about disciplining the mind with the clarity of reason than it is about any historical study of human thought. It is about applying reason to all things, not just the measurable. And to those people unaccustomed to reason truly being applied to their lives, the philosopher might come off looking like a lunatic, or an ass. But trust me, and you will have to, if you have not immersed yourself within philosophical inquiry — the clarity of reason applied to us, in all our many facets, causes most people to run away screaming in fear. Philosophy is the the root and foundation of all science. It is the root and foundation of our ability to understand ourselves and our world, even beyond the merely empirical. And when you apply this rigorous discipline to notions of right and wrong, through the study of ethics, even religion is left far behind in the dust and our lives, through our decisions, and the subsequent manifestation of a greater culture and society, are revealed in vividly naked splendor, both in its magnificence and its hideousness.

It is no wonder that corporate and money interests, and in turn, most students, de-emphasize the importance of philosophical inquiry. It is dismissed as impractical, at least when they are feeling nice. And it is dismissed as subversive, when they are feeling threatened.

Philosophical inquiry is the process of bringing truth, which is often obscured or hidden, out into the light of day. But truth threatens many people. One of the most effective ways of achieving any selfish end is through hiding truth. And in a culture which idolizes the self and the self’s greatness above all else, much truth must be hidden. Then, when lies are revealed or deceptions are unmasked, the perpetrator usually will not confront the truth or even admit any wrongdoing. They just simply, and predictably, attempt to obscure and hide the truth further, a little like a bug trying to hide in plain sight by hoping the colors of its shell blends well enough with the background noise. And, if cornered, the bug attacks.

So, you might ask, why have we given all this money to the people who have just taken all our jobs and money and homes? And who, exactly, are these people? And why does our government have to funnel money through AIG before it reaches the banks, rather than giving the money directly to the banks? And why are these banks, who are receiving our money, not lending the money back to us, but are instead, buying up smaller banks? And why is Obama disregarding the law by not taking these banks from their owners and restructuring them? And why is our Treasury Secretary Geithner saying that banks will need several trillion dollars more before the “toxic” mortgage problem is fixed, when we could just as easily pay off the bad mortgages so that people can remain in a home, and hence eliminate the toxic items?

Selling homes that have been repossessed is a booming business right now, if you have the money to buy them. Banks are selling people’s houses left and right, and the bottom feeder realtors are in a frenzy. Just recently I was asked to do a programming job for a small realty company that sought a better way to make repossessed homes more easily searchable, while at the same time, making people think that those repossessed homes were available only through that realty company. Thankfully the computer store owner who brought me the job, lied about the terms the contract while trying to lock me into other terms, and I could gracefully back out. But I was going to do the work for these carrion eaters, because the owner of the computer store was giving me a gift, and I liked him. And as such, I could rationalize helping these bottom feeders. But my rationalizations were weak, and I knew it. Yet I was going to do it anyway. It is a strange thing being happy that someone you like has lied to you.

Just as I was willing to do, too much evil is assisted and committed by people who rationalize that they are “just doing their job”, or who say “it’s just business”. Neither one of those statements satisfies even the most basic ethical criteria. Such sayings really mean, I know what I am doing is wrong, but I am going to do it anyway, only with a candy coating. Mathematics doesn’t cover this. Business school doesn’t cover this, except as to further business. The humanities do. And philosophy, in particular, covers it completely. That entire enterprise, from the bottom feeders and those who assist them, up to the original instigators, is a giant wad of ethical evil, where a great number of people continue to suffer while a very few people reap the benefits from this suffering, and all the while, the carrion eaters circle to grab what pieces of flesh they can, falling from the carnage. I was so happy when Zane told me he purposefully stayed away from repossessed properties when he bought his house, so many months ago. When I asked him, I expected him to answer that he did buy a repo. He didn’t. Cheers for Zane!

The same weak rationalizations are also used by people to invade other countries. Here, the carrion feeders are the military service industry and the reconstruction industry, both of which, involve Cheney in a prominent position — just like Geithner held a prominent financial position in the banking industry, as did his predecessor, Paulson. We see this, and we are aware of this. Yet somehow, we lack any outrage. We expect that our government will give our money to the bankers. We carrier to noise ratioexpect that our government will claim that we have no money left to help normal people. The essence here is, there is a massive shift of wealth heading up, yet again, to even a smaller few people, and our government is doing all that it can to make certain those few people remain in tact, even though, economically, there is no reason to do so, and every reason to destroy this “too big to fail” mentality.

If we can employ critical thinking, we can see our situation more clearly. Unfortunately, critical thinking is no longer considered useful, or even desirable by many, including universities. For the most part, universities teach facts and methodologies oriented toward specific purposes that align with business. Even in science. Without an ability to critically think and form questions, people are vulnerable to spin and hyperbole. And that is precisely all we get from what few corporate news sources that are left to us. Journalism is dead in the corporate media. What remains is merely propaganda, in the service of the very people who continue to take all they can, in whatever way they can, without a concern for ethics, and often without even a concern for law. And after propaganda comes sensationalism. This is our current American society, even with the harbinger of change in place.

Without an ability to critically reason, our population is left with two choices. Believe what is said through the media outlets, or simply ignore any larger concerns. The majority seems to ignore larger concerns. But either way, those who lack the ability to critically reason will focus almost exclusively upon immediate tasks which are in their own self-interest. From the perspective of the “power elite”, who possess a sea of people lacking the capacity to critically think, and who are well-trained in narrow skills, this is a harvest boon. They can easily hide from anyone those things they do not wish known, while offering up rationales and distractions to keep their machinations hidden. As was mentioned in the previous business ethics pieces, this behavior is similarly and readily adopted by even small business owners. Our culture is no longer an ethical one. It is all about who can get what for themselves. In other words, we have a hard time blaming the bad guys, because more than likely we’re bad ourselves.

But change is here now, right? We should not be looking at what was done in the past, but should instead stay positive and look toward the future. These are even Obama’s words. They are also the words of any business person, or person in power, who wishes to get away with something, and carry on business as usual. Unfailingly. It is a simple, yet effective, semantic trick. After all, who doesn’t want to be positive? Only assholes and crazy people, of course. Well, there you have it. Don’t look. Just keep going. Don’t rock the boat, and don’t be an ass.

As we lose more and more of the incalculable benefits of the Humanities, we find ourselves growing into an increasingly mechanistic lifestyle. This is also excellent news for the corporate state, for we are a vast army of well-trained cogs, gearing up for the battlefield of the newest millennium: the global economy. The war is between the US, Southeast Asia and soon the European Union. We are becoming a world of multiple poles. The Middle East is a strategic resource. Wars of one type or another are always necessary to keep power in place. Of course, we must keep the military/industrial complex happy as well, so really, killing wars will not entirely end.

It is also no surprise that with the blurring between government and business, private military armies are on the rise. Even in the Obama administration. Corporate armies have no allegiance to countries. They have an allegiance to money. And they have the added benefit that they are not bound by a country’s military laws or treaties, which also means that private armies can be deployed on US soil.

It is perfectly clear to even the non-critical observer that our government no longer functions in the interests of its citizenry. Obama has made no real change. He has strengthened our occupation of Afghanistan, he is taking military action within the boarders of Pakistan, he completely supports the suspension of habeus corpus for anyone he deems a terrorists or “enemy combatant”, he continues the Bush Administration’s declaration of a national emergency which grants his office sweeping powers and clouds of secrecy (with Congress’ blessings), he refuses to investigate or prosecute our country’s torturers, nor will he investigate or prosecute the CIA people who illegally destroyed the torture videos in their possession, and he is doing absolutely nothing to prosecute, investigate, or even bring to light any of the wrongdoings committed by the previous administration.  He has, however, invited a boatload of celebrity performers to the White House, including a special performance by Stevie Wonder, who was the reason, he says, that he and his wife were married.

Meanwhile, because some cultures on the planet are not quite as brain and heart-dead as our own, rioting is on the rise. The few media outlets who cover this, label it “class wars”. But the class wars were already fought. The poor and middle-class lost. Now, with their bottomless hunger still unsatisfied, the dominant players in world finance continue to squeeze for more, as people from all classes, except the very few at the top, become even poorer. This is why you see such large police forces in every city, wearing riot gear, and an increase in training academies for them, and consistent technical advances in non-lethal weaponry for crowd control, and body protection for these forces. It is well known that rioting will continue to increase. It is planned for.

But only as a last resort. Until people start rioting, we can expect things like the re-branding of issues that make us furious. After all, for people who don’t think critically, a re-branding will just slide right in unnoticed into happy land. For example, the private military contractor Blackwater has changed their name to Xe. Obama has renamed the war on terror to “overseas contingency operations”. He’s also changed the economic crisis into the bank stabilization plan, while making toxic assets into “legacy” assets — in word, at least, a thing of the past. Let’s just keep positive and look to the future, instead of the past. Never mind who’s getting the money for those “legacy” assets, or why those assets even exist. Never mind that the banks get payments for those mortgages from we people, and they get the properties from us when we can’t pay, and they get the money from selling those properties again with even more mortgages, and they get the bailout money from us, because they over-valued all those houses and assets to begin with, and are now insolvent as a result. Oh, and never mind that the Obama administration is breaking the law by not forcibly restructuring these banks. And yes, those banks are using the money to buy up all the smaller banks that might one day compete with them, and who would benefit from their demise. Change we can believe in. Riots in London at the G20 economic conference. 30,000 protesters in Europe near the German-French border at the recent NATO meeting, with three burning buildings left behind and almost 400 people jailed. Nearly all of Greece in turmoil, near the breaking point. And don’t forget the pirates! Mmm. Pirates.

But is re-branding bad? Looking at re-branding from an ethical standpoint requires that we look at more that just the act of re-branding, which is ethically neutral. We must ask, why is he re-branding? If it is an attempt to clarify issues, then it is ethically good. If it is an attempt to obfuscate issues, then it is ethically bad. If it is an attempt to disassociate himself from the previous administration’s policies, while still adhering to their core, that is simply a re-wrapping; an obfuscation, and that is bad. From an ethical perspective, this re-branding is a very bad thing, indeed.

All this amounts to one inevitable conclusion. Humanity is not as important as business. Is it surprising that students enroll far more in business than in the humanities?

Within the US right now, 1 out of 10 people are on food stamps. They need help from the government just to eat. More than double this number of people have no health insurance. This means that if you get sick, and could be treated, you will be left instead to die because you cannot pay (unless the illness is immediately life threatening). Even if you have money to pay a health insurance premium, but have even some small condition, it is very likely you will not be able to find a policy, unless you are working for a corporation that has an arrangement with a health care provider where they are required to accept you. And right now, we are also approaching 1 out of 10 people being unemployed. However, this is a little deceptive. The figure relies upon people who have been actively seeking employment. The real figure is between 30-40%. Yes, the math in these figures do not really make all that much sense. It’s best that way.

Perhaps our evolution into a corporate government is inevitable. After all, we provide details on all our friends and acquaintances on Facebook, and we even sign over the rights to everything we write, post or send through Facebook, to Facebook. Our personal statistics are analyzed, stored and marketed. We entrust all our personal and business email, and all our curiosities to Google, who similarly analyzes, stores and markets our identity. We allow our government to listen to all our telephone and email communications. And I assure you this is no joke, we even carry around our own government listening “bugs” with us at all times — our cell phone, which the government can turn on to listen at any time, as well as track our whereabouts. The FBI, even under FOIA will provide no details.

Technological developments such as cloud computing further centralize our information and dependence upon singular, larger corporations. Small agricultural farms are practically non-existent, while large, corporate farms grow our crops and livestock with close contractual ties to chemical and genetic companies like Monsanto who also control nearly all seeds. Public utilities such as power and water are being sold to private investment companies. So are our roads.

Many years ago, perhaps more than ten now, Battelle Memorial Institute did their best to convince me to join their ranks as an employee, rather than as contractor. I loved working with Battelle. Their slogan was, “Science in the service of humanity”, and for all that I saw, they meant it. For years they attempted to shed the label of being a “think tank”. They are a non-profit organization that offered a sort of refuge to some of the greatest minds in science, to come together, in a multi-disciplinary setting. However, they also we responsible for running a handful of our national laboratories, and relied heavily upon government funding. As such, before they would hire me, they wanted to sample my urine.

I had no real reason to keep my urine to myself, other than an ethical one. Should a company be able to sample our body’s makeup, or our genetic information, before hiring us? The question is not an easy one to answer. I leaned toward “no”. They ought not to be able to require me to pee for them. But I decided to leave it somewhat up to them. I told the director who wanted to hire me, and the director and staff of human resources that I would give them my pee, but only if they agreed to come out in the courtyard to watch me pee for them. If they could bring themselves to actually face what they were asking another to do, and the humiliation, then I would consider their job offer worthy enough to compromise myself. Needless to say, they would not agree, and I even received a couple unofficial apologies for the requirement. It is certain my life would be very different now, had I compromised my ethics at the time. I do not know how different it would be.

Ethics guides my life, in most respects. It is why I will not help some companies, or people, and it is why I will help others. It is why I try to be honest, even when honesty is not the easiest course. Adhering to ethics sometimes makes me seem like an ass. And sometimes it makes me seem like someone who just can’t leave well enough alone. And sometimes I fail. Other times, I manage to set an example. Almost always, I seem the lunatic.

Most people never bother to ask the foundational questions that arise from what they are confronted with. They simply do what will be best for them at the moment, in those given circumstances. Scientists like to believe they can think critically, but usually their perspective and the scope of their vision is severely curtailed by the edicts of natural law, which are wholly inadequate to critically engage the human and cultural condition. This is why I am encouraged by the slight rise in students pursuing the philosophical disciplines. These students will learn to think. They will learn to see. They will learn how and why and where they should question, and that is everywhere. And most of all, they will learn that few things are just givens, and rarely are things as they appear on the surface.

Ah, the games we play. The beliefs from which we cannot see beyond. And the mazes that contain us. Our hearts, that seek, feel and experience. This is the purview of the Humanities. This is what we must not forget. Because in the end, we always come back to it, if only in our quietest of times, when we are alone. But how much more majestic when we are together? How different would it be, exploring our humanity together, rather than just seeing who can manage to get what from whom? Humanity. Or who can get what from whom?

At the end of the day, our education is unavoidable, one way or another.

Previously I wrote a little on business ethics. Not all of you are business people, and I apologize for boring you with more. Some of it might be interesting, though.

The previous piece dealt more with the ethical considerations of small businesses who were just starting out, or trying to get their feet under them. Although most behave like newborn horses trying to deal with the notion of having legs, it is in this formative period that ethical foundations are most firmly established. It is very difficult changing ethical foundations down the road, and the difficulty is not just a matter of old habits dying hard. The difficulty is, unethical behaviour becomes ingrained within the culture of business. And if the head of the business is unethical, in all likelihood the business will be, too, and so too the employees. In fact, if employees are not willing to compromise their ethics they will be labeled a non-team player and removed. Of course, not all non-team players are necessarily ethical.

Eventually a business owner is forced to bring in other forces besides himself to offer wider perspectives and a more diversified skill set. As businesses grow or decide to expand, the landscape of the directorship changes as the playing fields widen. Many owners experience great difficulty releasing their grip. Even owners who believe they do not have a firm grip, letting the company operate at a distance, find that the importance of maintaining tight control in the directorship is a difficult thing to relinquish to what they feel is pure speculation, through trust in other visions.

It is wise to be cautious, particularly where trust in another is concerned. It is an unfortunate truth that very few people, even those of us who consider ourselves absolutely trustworthy, actually are trustworthy. Nobody can claim they are trustworthy until they have been tested, and tested by fire. The wise business owners know this, even if they have not, themselves, been so tested.

Any person hired at a directorship level faces challenges. They may not know the business, yet they must claim to be completely at one with the company’s best interests. How they approach this conundrum is a telling thing about their character. Is it more truly that their own ego and best interests are dominant, or do they have the capacity to put their ego aside? If they do put their ego aside, are they willing to compromise their own ethical principles if they run against the company’s? Is the company better off, or worse off, if they do so?

Different owners will tell you different things. I believe that any company’s strength arises from the character of the people who comprise it. The unethical owner will be willing to remove any director that is not willing to compromise their principles for the good of the company, which really means, only the owner can say what is good for the company, and anyone unwilling to do as they are told, despite any ethical conflicts, is bad for the health of the company. And that translates once again into, you will do bad things if I tell you to.

On this level, however, business owners have become more saavy. Such things are never put in such gross terminology. Instead they will say, this is policy. Or, more subtly, this is fiduciary responsibility. And those things are like law. Interestingly, unethical business owners will use this pseudo-law in both ways, to keep things they do not want from happening, and also to justify something they want. However, the directorship level will not be able to make those determinations. Only the owner can interpret a given thing to be fiducially responsible, or the true meaning of a policy. And it is here that we see how whatever ethics the company began with begins to move out from the individual and into the very fabric of the organization, with the final level of interpretive power, at the top.

Directors, and through them, the employees, can either accept this, or reject this. More often than not, they will “work” it, much like an unethical owner themselves, to their own benefit rather than the company’s. And here we experience the next internal crisis stage of a growing business, the qualities of loyalty, not necesssarily to a person, but to an abstraction, pitted against a sense of personal honor and sometimes ego.

Owner might believe that once their business reaches this stage, very little can bring it down. But the ethics of the business, which is directly tied to employee happiness and loyalty, can very easily cause things to fly apart. In larger businesses such ethical considerations are mitigated by the sheer size of the workforce and departmental separation. But the medium-sized business has no such buffer.

It is also during this phase that businesses begin to develop real internal politics. Business owners, from the beginning, question why employees are being nice to them, or doing certain things. But as the business grows, political maneuvering for position, power and influence become real factors. It is a sad reality, and I have always worked against it, because people appear pathetic like this, and I cannot imagine their true strengths can shine in such an environment. But almost all businesses develop this. It stems from a lack of creativity and imagination.

This politics can become even more pronounced if influences outside the business proper are brought in. Consultants, normally imbued with great influence by owners, can cause havoc in political structures. So can new investors. But businesses who adopt a board of directors, which is a wonderful way to expand the scope and reach of any business, may find that it has a tranquilizing effect upon internal company politics, when the organizational size is small to medium. The employees will feel squelched down, not even considering the possibility of influence for themselves at a board level, and becoming more content within the sphere they inhabit. Larger businesses, however, have plenty of room for politics and the machinations that arise, beneath the board.

But I am more concerned with the ethical considerations that are an influence on the world external from the organzation, and not the internal. The board of directors is rife with such considerations, but we’ll hold off on that level of business for a while.

When there is not board of directors, the ethical heart of the business is a manifestation of the company’s owners own ethical hearts. Even when a business reach a size large enough to warrant subordinate directorships, it is a rare thing indeed that ethics originate from these directorships. But the heart of a business’s ethics will normally be occluded, even at medium size, by policy and procedure, and a formative notion of fiduciary responsibility. Unethical business owners will work to hide their true nature with a smiling veil of customer service, and claiming to orient all actions to the “good” of the customers, while at the same time doing things behind the scenes like using shoddy or misrepresented parts, taking shortcuts on offerings, or luring and trapping, all the while with a beneficent smile.

However, at the medium size, the business owner has be removed far enough away that only the employees are in contact with the customers. Their old tricks of feigning shock at a revalation the customer makes is no longer possible. Their hard line approach of blaming the customer with the customer’s own ignorance or lack of foresight is no longer possible. Instead, company policy, or law, takes it place. This has the effect of maintaining the viability of an unethical business while at the same time giving the front line employees an “out”. After all, they are just people, like the customer, donig their job by following the policies and procedures. This makes it much harder to question the ethics of a company. After all, policies posess an air of legitimacy.

How do you question the ethics of a law? Without breaking it? Barring an angry mob with pitchforks and torches, there are few ways. And here we see how business begin to rise up, away from the normal folk. For they are the game, and we are the willing participants.

Boards and strategic partnerships will be next. It’s where all the good meat is. For better, or worse.

This is The Fool. He lives within us all. He is card zero, the first card in the Major Arcana. The Minor Arcana are various smaller cards, in four suits, from Ace to King. This is the origin of our playing cards.

Generally, people consider Tarot cards to be steeped in the occult. I consider them to be like poetry. Each speaks a world of a story in very little space. These stories line up, they juxtapose, and their meanings take on dimensionality.

Here is The Fool, the first card after the minor leagues. He is leaving home with his traveling bag over his shoulder, having passed through the minor leagues and eager to discover what awaits him in the world. He is the first card in the Major Arcana, the first step into the wider world — the step that only a fool would dare make.

Everybody loves The Fool, even the little dog. They are in many ways kindred spirits. He is brightly dressed, enjoying the beauty of a flower in his hand, walking away from familiar places under the sun, completely unperturbed by the cliff he is about to willingly step off. Like I said, he is the first card in the majors, after the minor leagues. Doesn’t it take a fool to trust in fate enough to step off that cliff?

There are a couple stores nearby I frequent. One is the Jack In the Box, with my love of spicy chicken sandwiches and breakfast jacks. The other is the gas station with cigarettes. It began with the gas station, and the young, burly, tattooed, no-nonsense man who works behind the counter. He always calls me “sir”, and that irritates me. A few months ago I told him, “you will address me as Your Majesty.” I had never seen his eyes go wide before, from his dull, habitual movements. He looked at me and laughed. But I didn’t waiver. “I am not sir,” I said. “It is Your Majesty.” He gave me a mischievous grin and said, “well, thank you Your Majesty.” And I graciously answered, “you’re welcome,” and left.

The next time I came in, he called me “sir” again, and I just stood there unmoving, staring at him until he looked up at me in the eye. “Peasant!” I said. He stomped his feet while taking a couple steps back, laughing and bowed with his arms outstretched. “Forgive me… Your Majesty.” I nodded my head slightly to him, smiling, saying “that’s better. Thank you.”

Now, whenever I enter the store, before I even get to the counter, no matter what customers might be present, I am greeted with a loud “hello Your Majesty!” and a grin. Sometimes when the customers stare at me afterward I tell them, “yes, it’s true.”

The same is true now at Jack in the Box, where big woman and a scrawny man both greet me with my more appropriate title. Once I was even bowed to and addressed properly at Fred Meyer by someone who must have been a customer of the gas station and had learned their lessons well. Perhaps it is only a matter of time until I ascend to my rightful throne atop Covington City Hall from which my beneficence might reign upon all. Or maybe a few people will have some grins over their dinner. I hope it is the latter.

This is The Tower. It sits atop a mountain and reaches up into the clouds. The tower is strong, with foundations rooted and strong as the rock upon which it rises. It is crowned in gold, the symbols of wealth and power.

The Tower is unreachable by most. The Tower exists at our very foundations. It is the place that nobody else knows about. It is the place so deep within us that we often don’t know about it. And from that foundation, we build up all things about ourselves. We create our own regalia; our own nobility.

The Tower is the 16th card of the Major Arcana, long down the journey which began with The Fool. And here, the very foundations we have built, are struck from out of the sky, crumbling in ruin.

All that we have laid down for ourselves and all the definitions we have adopted are laid waste by a bolt from above. It does not matter who you are, or what you believe. It does not matter how powerful or weak you are, how high, or how low. The very foundations have been destroyed.

I think words are different from our bodies, but I don’t want them to be. I wish I could write a love poem but half of me fell out somewhere. I think it might have evaporated and went up into rainclouds that make people stay home or bites their face with cold drops that make your eyes feel more awake.

I think you are just curious and will let me dig my own grave so you can leave flowers on it and then I can pull them down one at a time when I need to eat. I was hoping if you do that you would come back every few months to jab me with a shovel but I think I would have fell to the center of the earth by then and got crushed and burnt and came back as a blade of grass every mile or so. And you could blame yourself but I would be happier and try to tell you even though grass can’t talk. But you would suspect.

Or I could just pound you until you felt like everything that wasn’t there was, because every time you looked I’d be there pounding on you again and again until you knew you were just me pounding on you like you need. And then we could get pizza. And you could cry I would tell you that you are safe and loved and you could hate me so I can pound you some more until the night is done and in the morning we can go to the store and buy Captain Crunch with the people in line.

I am feeling like there is nothing left inside me. I wish I could give it to you. I want you to tell me how stupid I am because I might believe you and then I would feel free. I am full of myself for no good reason.

If you were a stranger on the street who told me you could make me feel better I would know who you are and I would not run away but I would feel bad for you because I would love your socks more than you do and it would eventually kill you. but really I don’t know.

I would cry if you punched me a few times in the face and not because it hurt. Then maybe you could put me on a couch somewhere and let me sleep even through a fire. I would want you to rub my ashes on your body like talcum powder and maybe when you closed your eyes you would find yourself everywhere.

Most people think that death is bad. But it isn’t always. Some people suffer a lot and death might be good. Other people may cause a lot of suffering to other people and death would be a welcome ally.

Death does not care who we are. It doesn’t matter if you are a king, a pope, a virgin or a child. It doesn’t matter if you are just you. Death does not discriminate. Death cannot be bargained with. Death comes when he comes, and he make everyone and everything equal.

Sometimes Death does not kill us, though. Sometimes Death just kills some part of us. Maybe it is a lie we made up for ourselves. Maybe it is something we hold dear. Death will take what it will, when it wants it.

But if we manage to live on, what has died has left a large, empty space. It is an emptiness within us that has made room for something else. Perhaps it will be something more, or something better. Perhaps it will just remain empty. That is more up to us, once Death has come. Death is the end. And sometimes, Death is the beginning. Of just a part of ourselves, or sometimes, even, the beginning of an entirely new life.

I never was able to tell you, because we had both been driven mad by tiny sounds, just how much your scribbles, left for me on the kitchen counter each morning, shaped what thoughtfulness meant. The little crumbs you left, and your subsequent returns, expecting everything.

I had not realized that love, devoted to some, merely draws out nutriment, to feed what can never be sated. A drain, that pulls forth in the most beautiful ways, exactly what is expected, until all that is left is expectation. And then, no longer even knowing.

You would be happy knowing I still have your scribbles. I still have all the promises and dreams, tucked in a footlocker, under the stairs. They are a reminder, not of you, but of the real and the unreal. Like your paintings in the strange blue hues that remind me how wide imagination can penetrate.

This is the Four of Cups. It is part of the Minor Arcana. The four suits are cups, swords, pentacles and wands. Pentacles represent earthly things, like money, endeavors, family and stability. Wands represent power or energy, direction and purpose. Swords represent intellect, reason clarity, and things of the mind. Cups represent the heart, or emotion and fulfillment.

Three is a very stable number and contented almost to boredom. Four is much the same, but the extra one brings something almost hidden or unforeseen.

Here, from out of the blue, is not a lightning bolt, but rather a cup, being handed to the dreamer. You have to wonder, will he see it, on such a lazy day. Will it be something he takes, for his own?

Perhaps it might make us wonder, out there in the world, what cups might be there, just floating in the air. Or what cups we might conjure, in all such sleepiness. He hasn’t gone along far enough yet to be The Fool. Or maybe he has. And this is exactly what he needed.

I’ll leave it to you, to decide. Along with The Magician. And The Sun.

It’s never easy penetrating a person’s thick head. Especially when they have their jaw muscles gripped tightly down on something they refuse to let go. Because at that point, nothing matters. They’re just going to keep that ball firmly in their teeth no matter what. Science is thrown out the window. Reason is trampled down and warped. And our old more pagan, animal nature, rooted in aggression and superstition, rises up to dominate.

This is exactly how a scientist can believe that something which exists within the universe is unnatural. And it is how any of us can continue holding on to beliefs or feelings despite the evidence of our senses that point undeniably to the contrary. It is how we people, who otherwise hold truth in high regard, can be led into deception, both of others and, by the very fact that we purposefully ignore our own true sensibilities, deception of ourselves.

There are many reasons for doing such things to ourselves and to others, but most of them are weak, and most of those, downright pathetic. But that’s alright. Everyone has weaknesses, and everyone has screw-ups. It is what we choose to do after knowing about them that shapes and defines us. It is our ticket out, or our ticket home. And the cost can be steep, or completely free. But the trip is always worth it. These are usually our most important life lessons to be learned. And they’re a bitch. And a blessing.

I spend a lot of time talking about science and how it can produce a somewhat dehumanizing effect upon us by narrowing our field of vision to only the empirical. But here is an example where science can accomplish the opposite effect, by cutting through the obfuscating clouds we create for ourselves, for whatever individually mad reasons, and instead bringing light to an exceedingly messy human thing.

We care about other people. We care about other people to different degrees and for various reasons, and sometimes, perhaps, for no reasons at all. What an astonishing reality it is, when we can step back and look at it, that other human life; that their very existence matters to us. Sometimes that other being matters simply because it is another being, as alive in this strange reality we inhabit, as we are ourselves. But sometimes another being matters much more to us than any other. Sometimes that being matters as much to us as ourselves. Or even more. This is insanity. It is also, perhaps, our greatest and most profound strength as a species.

We like to enjoy ourselves and to feel good. After all, we enjoy ourselves when we enjoy ourselves, and it feels good to feel good. And how good do we feel when someone we care about is near to us, and a part of our lives? What profound interactions of growth and mutual support are possible? And not only that, it also feels very nice just knowing that someone else cares about you. Someone that you can count on, despite anything.

Now don’t let any irrational notions of propriety throw off your thinking here. We’re scientists right now. Humans have bodies with nerves and muscles, and we’re just all fleshy and gooey. We enjoy feeling pleasure. We like sexual stimulation, with other beings, or even just by ourselves, however we might. This isn’t caring. This is an enjoyment of our physicality. It’s good fun.

Sex is not a mystical and special thing. It is our love and trust in another person that is a mystical and special thing. When that love and trust is broken by the one we care about, that is what hurts. That is what matters. It could be them having sex with another person. It could be them kissing another. It could be them spending too much time with another. It could be simply that they told us a lie. Certainly sex can help people become more intimate with each other, but it is that intimacy and trust that is the big thing, not the sex.

Sex is not spiritual. It is biological. Pleasuring yourself is great. So is pleasuring another, and it can also lead to greater intimacy between you. That intimacy and trust, whether it comes through sex or not, is the more spiritual thing. It is the truly important bit.

Unfortunately, many people consider sex itself to be something spiritual, except, of course, when “cheating” is involved, in which case, they consider the sex, or whatever betrayal, to be nothing meaningful all of a sudden, instead. It meant nothing, right? Well, to the one feeling the pain of betrayal, it meant something significant. But it’s not the physical act that causes the pain. It’s the betrayal of the spiritual “contract” between you. This contract can also be broken without any sex being involved.

This contract, however, means different things to different people. I suppose that is why communication is important. For example, some few people like any contract to mean complete and utter ownership over another, or their own feeling of being completely owned. Others may have more lax contracts, where each can spend time doing whatever they like, within reason. The contracts vary wildly from person to person, and usually they are never communicated. Some people will even feel betrayed by their object of love spending time at work, or having a very close friend. And this is a betrayal to them as certainly as any other, even sexual.

It is also possible, when people are willing to discuss exactly what the spiritual contract between them represents, to reach other more broadly defined constraints, which work in the interests of everyone to keep any betrayal from happening. Perhaps it’s okay to spend two nights a week out with your best friend, and the person who loves you will not feel like you are being taken from them. Or, perhaps it’s okay for you to kiss someone else from time to time, since you are particularly physical and affectionate. Or maybe you can have sex with someone else, as long as your partner meets them first and knows about everything, and you will always come home at night to sleep. These are the details people can work out together, if they are willing to communicate and be honest and accommodating.

Personally, I adhere to one person when I care. I think it because I very much enjoy exploring the intimacy and trust possible between people. I look at all this other wandering around that some people do as distractions – an attempt to make up for something that they do not find with each other. Perhaps they will find it. Perhaps they will find a way to live happily enough with each other, never having found it. I don’t know. I may be prejudiced.

But the interesting thing is that these qualities exist between people regardless of their race, their gender or their purported sexual identity. These same things are true whether you are straight, gay or bisexual. The sexual act does not matter. It is the human intimacy and trust that is the more important and spiritual aspect. It is that closeness, that kinship, and that knowing that someone is there for you, that can be felt between beings, that matters. It is probably the most beautiful and powerful thing we all have. It can make our lives worth living. It helps us create a better world for all.

Sadly, there are still people, even in our younger generations, who still believe sex is what is important and defines us, and not our capacity to love. There are still people who believe that physical pleasure can be wrong and represent a diseased mind or body, even when nobody else is hurt, and even when other people are helped or made to feel happier. There are still scientists who believe that something can exist which is not natural.

Invariably, these beliefs which fly in the face of reason, are usually founded in uninformed religious teaching, and certainly not science. It can take a very long time for people to become more fully aware of the reality they inhabit, particularly when that reality is not the reality portrayed to them by their parents, friends and their society at large. It can take a very long time for people to accept truth, despite science. Even though we live in what we consider a more “modern” and “enlightened” world.

Science tells us that homosexuality and bisexuality are not, in any way, disorders. Nor are they, in any way, aberrant. Nor are they even “unhealthy”. No mainstream scientific organization or studies support this thinking. In fact, they support the contrary. The American Psychological Association has this to say:

“Both heterosexual behavior and homosexual behavior are normal aspects of human sexuality. Both have been documented in many different cultures and historical eras. Despite the persistence of stereotypes that portray lesbian, gay, and bisexual people as disturbed, several decades of research and clinical experience have led all mainstream medical and mental health organizations in this country to conclude that these orientations represent normal forms of human experience. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual relationships are normal forms of human bonding. Therefore, these mainstream organizations long ago abandoned classifications of homosexuality as a mental disorder.”

Considering the incredible mysteries of human bonding, the persistence of such unfounded stereotypes is strange, indeed. It points to something deeper. Let’s see if we might shed some light upon what might be behind this inexplicable persistence.

First, we must accept that our sexuality is more fluid than we might be comfortable admitting. This discomfort itself is something telling. However, as Lisa Diamond discovered in her 10-year longitudinal study, “some people believe that sexual orientation is innate and fixed; however, sexual orientation develops across a person’s lifetime. Individuals may become aware at different points in their lives that they are heterosexual, gay, lesbian, or bisexual.” Again, it is the personally intimate nature we can experience with another being that is the truly important thing, and this experience between beings is not limited by gender or race. Our ability to know each other, feel kinship for each other, and to love each other, is far greater. Our feelings of sexual attraction that often accompany this must be accepted, or harm will most certainly result, both to the person that matters, and to ourselves. And any tragic circumstance of non-acceptance will only help those stereotypes persist.

The profoundly unreasonable belief permeating our culture would have us feel that homosexuality and bisexuality is wrong. Thankfully it is on the decline. It would have us feel wrong, even when we might be reasonable enough to think that homosexuality is, perhaps, okay for other people. It would have us feel wrong in that any feelings for someone of our same gender is certainly not okay for us. This creates a great deal of inner conflict within most of us when we must confront our larger nature, for our larger nature encompasses many things. Those whose sexuality leans more toward homosexuality can often overcome these unfounded biases. However, those whose sexuality leans more toward bisexuality, which is the vast majority, usually never overcome these unfounded biases. For them, it is a relatively simple matter just to choose to label themselves completely heterosexual.

This does not fix their perceived problems, however. Inevitably, we are confronted with issues of our sexuality throughout our lives. What is unresolved or repressed is destined to surface again, and often in increasingly bizarre and destructive ways.

It is no accident that the people who most adamantly consider homosexuality an aberration, abomination or a disease are the same people who struggle with those same issues within themselves. The psychological term is disassociation, and these people go to great lengths to disassociate themselves with homosexuality both internally to themselves and externally, as proof to others of their disease-free state.

Sullivan’s 1956 theories on disassociation demonstrate how our sexuality can be made completely separate and other from our own sense of our personality. For example, as Jack Drescher says:

“[...] selective inattention is a common, non-pathological process, akin to tuning out the background noise on a busy street. In more intense dissociative mechanisms, double lives are lived yet not acknowledged. One sees clinical presentations of closeted gay people lying somewhere between selective inattention, most commonly seen in the case of homosexually self-aware patients thinking about “the possibility” that they might be gay, to more severe dissociation – in which any hit of same-sex feelings resides out of conscious awareness.”

This disassociation, where the feelings are actually moved outside of conscious awareness, is recognized to be very similar to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And this, actually, is the real disease, not any homosexual feelings.

Vivienne Cass’s famous 1979 Homosexuality Identity Formation Model also recognizes these characteristics within the first stage of people coming to terms with the fact that they may have some homosexual feelings. This stage is called identity confusion, and it is often quite volatile. As paraphrased by Joe Kort:

“Those who begin to acknowledge their attraction to other members of the same sex may not see themselves as even remotely gay. This isn’t pretending; they still honestly identify themselves as heterosexual. At this stage, their homosexual feelings are completely unacceptable to them. They are looking for anyone who might tell them they are not gay.

Once individuals recognize that a homosexual nature does exist within them, they often become very sensitive, highly anxious, and self-conscious. This is the beginning of re-experiencing their PTSD symptoms. Pushing them too far in this stage can cause too much psychological discomfort and potentially keep them from moving on to the next stage.

They are also vulnerable to getting married heterosexually, genuinely hoping for the best.”

The disassociation exhibited by people who unreasonably rail against the homosexual nature that nearly all of us embody is glaringly obvious to those people who have come to terms with the more fluid nature of their own sexuality. Look at our Senators and religious leaders who rabidly fight for legislation that condemns homosexuality, while at the same time have clandestine homosexual rendezvous. They condemn homosexual feelings to others in a cowardly attempt to disassociate themselves from their own homosexual feelings. It is the same with straight boys in a crowd.

This also is confirmed by science, through many studies. There is even a 1996 empirical study by Henry Adams where he measured the arousal level of straight men being shown images of men and women, where one group of men were homophobic and the other group of men was not. The study demonstrated that the homophobic men were almost always sexually aroused by images of men, while the non-homophobic men were not. Both were equally aroused by women and lesbian images, which supports the case for bisexual identity repression. But the homophobic men got excited.

Drescher, amongst a great preponderance of psychologists and psychiatrists, also confirms this. “Interpersonally, strong anti-homosexual feelings may represent an effort to control perceptions of a [man's] own sexual identity. If they attack gay people, others will not think of them as gay.” Even those psychiatrists following a psychoanalytic approach agree. “Various psychoanalytic theories explain homophobia as a threat to an individual’s own same-sex impulses, whether those impulses are imminent or merely hypothetical. This threat causes repression, denial or reaction formation.” (DJ West, 1977).

Want some Wikipedia? How about “by distancing themselves from gay people, they are reaffirming their role as a heterosexual in a heteronormative culture, thereby attempting to prevent themselves from being labeled and treated as a gay person.”

Hopefully, this will help clear the air a little on our sexuality, and people’s reactions to the subject matter of sexuality. But clearing the air only allows us to see more clearly. It does not help us to live our lives any better.

Even when we can accept a certain degree of homosexuality within ourselves, that does not mean everything is great. However, it is far better than before! Oftentimes people who manage to get past complete disassociation settle upon compartmentalization instead. As Kort and Cass say:

“Some clients may accept their behavior as gay or bisexual while still rejecting homosexuality as their core identity. Or they might accept a homosexual identity but, paradoxically, inhibit their gay behavior by, for example, deciding to heterosexually marry and have anonymous “no strings” sexual hookups. Of course, this kind of compartmentalization – a fracturing of behavior and identity – leads to problems later on.

Some lesbian and gay clients may attempt to embrace a heterosexual identity out of internalized shame and guilt. These clients are particularly vulnerable to the promises of reparative therapy. Because of their self-hate and hope for a “cure,” they are eager to be rid of these unwelcome thoughts and feelings.”

But honestly, there is nothing to repair. We’re crazy creatures, remember? We’re wide and wonderful. There is no mainstream discipline or organization that supports any “repair” of our sexuality. In fact, they all condemn such things as harmful. Even the US Surgeon General David Satcher, a military man, officially stated “there is no valid scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed” in a letter to the US Department of Health and Human Services in 2001. My God! We’re stuck with each other! In all our wild diversity, our beautiful human surprises, and the all wonders of impossible places…

If you fight against these scientific truths, invariably you will harm other people, and you will harm yourself. You will also be a force within the world that strengthens the very stereotypes that we cannot believe still exist. If you fight against these truths, it can cause all manner of harm, in all manner of seemingly unrelated directions. This is true for kids, adults both young and old, parents, teachers, clergy, lawmakers, and you. We really need to find some bravery and stand up, and get past this nonsense. We have to make it so that young men struggling with these issues are not 13 times more likely to kill themselves. We have to do this by making the issue become a non-issue, for all of us.

What these studies do not go into is the acts of deception, both outwardly and inwardly, that people struggling with sexuality exhibit. In order to disassociate, deception is the key. And this begins to permeate deeper within them, even to unrelated areas, and it begins to permeate outwardly into the world. Sexuality is a fundamental force within us all – it is very powerful and it drives us almost always, even subtly. When we mix in deception at this core level, it is a mixture that can lead to truly terrible things in time. We can become adept at deception of all type because, with our practice over time, every day, we become masterful, and deception becomes second-nature to us.

But it’s a whole different view from above it all. From above, you will notice the guys who you see getting excited around you, then have to run off to call their girlfriends or wives, or if they have none, go watch some lesbian pornography or guy/girl porn, but no looking at penises. It is the poor man’s version of reparative therapy. Also, you can watch them turn their sexuality instead into aggression so they might feel reassured by some masculine identity that somehow arises from fear. You can watch them, when you push them to the limit, if you’re lucky, break down and tell you it’s something they’ve always hated about themselves, then deny they ever said it. Yes, you can watch all manner of people struggle with themselves, from on high. For years and years, until you wonder how it is that people can be so deceptive and destructive over such simple, unimportant things. These facts exist, whether or not you have ever met a gay or bisexual person before (which you most certainly have). They also exist despite any beliefs you might hold. It is a great truth that we are just starting to come to terms with.

But what we do physically with our bodies is not important. It is how we honor that incredibly beautiful accident that is another human being. It is how we offer ourselves truly to another, in trust, in admiration, in honesty, and in our commitment to their, and our, mutual well-being. And in this, the religious people have much to learn. They should stop harming people. Especially their children, if nobody else.

“Sexual orientation is not synonymous with sexual activity.

The idea that homosexuality is a mental disorder or that the emergence of same-sex attraction and orientation is in any way abnormal or mentally unhealthy has no support among any mainstream health and mental health professional organizations.” (APA)

Now, go suck on that!

My piece To Potential Business Clients elicited some nice responses, and even got me a new client from out of the blue. Isn’t it odd how so many businesses try to play up the image game, with all their sayings and promises that everyone else already knows are largely vacuous? The even stranger thing is, when businesses decide they don’t want to play this game, and instead be completely honest, they have no clue how to go about being honest and straight-forward.

Businesses reflect the people who shape and direct them, and to a lesser degree, the employees and contractors who represent them. If a person is more conscience of their image than their substance, this is what the business will be. If the person is accustomed to maneuvering and making excuses for bad things, this is what the business will be. If the person is honest with all their strengths and their shortcomings, this is what the business will be. Judging by the responses I received, the latter is what people prefer.

When you misrepresent yourself, you participate in willful manipulation. As a rule, people do not appreciate being manipulated. People do not appreciate it when someone seeks to control their perception. In fact, it is an act of evil. It is an act of evil because the person with the access to truth seeks to hide and alter that truth into something else that plays toward their own benefit. And doing this removes any potential for choice that another person might have, replacing that choice with the will of the deceiver. People rarely think this through, but it is why people do not like misrepresentation. We posses an innate instinct about being wronged in this way. Yet most of us are perfectly comfortable taking choices away from others like this. We want to look good, even when we know that we are not.

This presents a large problem for businesses, since the majority of people themselves never truly are who they seem to be. With this, how can any business be considered trust worthy? How can you know for certain if they truly care about anything other than what they want? Of course, they will tell you that you, the customer, are their top priority, and that they are trustworthy. But when your access to knowledge and truth is also controlled by them, what is the reality of who they are? And how will this effect you?

Businesses will rationalize as well, just like people, any of their wrongdoings. For example, it’s okay to manipulate these people with the truth hidden, because really, we are good, and they will be better off with us, even though we are not who we appear to be. In this, they absolve themselves by changing their act of evil into an act of good, performed upon those people within their control. In other words, by removing another’s awareness and choice, and causing them to do what you want, you have done them a favor.

If a business realizes they are committing this evil, the next level of rationalization is to reassure themselves that it is not, actually, an act of evil because everyone else is doing the same thing to others. In other words, an act of evil is not evil if a lot of people are doing it.

And finally, if the person or business is discovered in their deception, the retreat is most often to hostility and anger that is projected instead upon the client, rather than themselves. That is, the last refuge of the liar is hostility toward those to whom he lies. It is either this, or a sudden and utter disregard for their victims, so that they might carry on their own business as usual.

It’s a fascinating exploration between business and human personality. So often we hear that business must be kept separate from the personal, but as we see, they are already intimately intertwined at the most fundamental level. And this is the challenge businesses face as they present themselves to the world: how can they appear trustworthy, dependable, and even at all good, when the people shaping the business bring so much of their own personalities along them?

The answer is simple. Appearance does not matter. The people themselves who shape the business must confront the very issues of their own character for the sake of their business. These factors are also mutually reinforcing. Those who, in their personal life, subscribe to deception, will find it increasingly easy to justify further deception in their lives, and out into the realm of their customers. The converse is also true, those who are willing and curageous enough to represent themselves truly, standing upright beside their purported ideals, will find their personal life far more attuned to the more honorable and noble. And this will improve not only their own life, but also set a potent example of what is possible to others.

Sales is the slippery slope. These are the purported masters of representation and human influence. Few professions have so many people who are utter shams or despots, yet walk and talk the good line. Guns for hire, with all the throw-away benefits, and all the dangers of backstabbing in the night. Their purpose is the influence of people and businesses send them out in droves, with only the thinnest ropes. If they perform well at what they do, their influence grows within the business, until such time that appearances are the driving force instead, at the very least on par with real products or services. This point is the second ethical milestone a business reaches, and it is very much like the first.

I love watching businesses come together, take off and grow. It truly is people flying only by the seats of their pants, and it’s a joy. You see so many different struggles met and matched, along with a share of bloody noses and defeats. But it is the good fight I like. The just and honorable cause. And best of all, the vision of something truly greater for us all. These are beyond the ken of most business people. This is because they become trapped, struggling more against themselves and their self-made failings than building something truly wonderful. When you are out for the true betterment of others, any deception is anathema. They will forever fall short, even if they happen to become monetarily successful. And that is a sad story.

So to you business people who believe you are true, look deeply and honestly at yourself. If you can still say that you are, look at the other people and forces in your life, and what they cause you to do. Do they cause you to lie or waste resources? Do they encourage you compromise unwisely? Do they challenge you to become more, or cause you to sink into being less? Do you feel good and fulfilled by your endeavor? Or do you find reasons and make excuses? Can you lie with dignity, honor and conviction? Or do you face your challenges head-on, whole, and become more?

Each step reinforces us, one way or another. Yet still, it is never too late. And if I ever meet you out there in the wild, I would be honored to be at your side, fighting the good fight.