Wake Turbulence and Integrity

Landing behind a Boeing 737 in a small plane teaches you a whole lot of things but especially that trailing behind those big aluminum transporters one has to be cognizant of their “wake-turbulence.” I was 5 miles behind one and had projected a landing area just beyond the 737 touch-down spot. Yet as I descended below 200 feet there was a sudden un-commanded roll and pitch, the likes that cause you to open all pores in your skin and sweat in places that you never thought about. Luckily the roll stayed within 60 degrees starboard and the pitch was down 10 degrees. I controlled the feverish display before it could do me harm. I landed the aircraft safely. As the wheels touched the asphalt, the Tower chief chimed in on roll-out, “You okay?” Oh yeah I thought, sure, piece of cake. But the trembling had not even stopped for me to consider uttering the word, “huh?”

“Wake-turbulence,” sounds reasonably innocuous and at the same time full of potential jeopardy. Where it can strike we can barely anticipate but when, is a whole other story. 

Anyway, the Airport Lounge chair was cushy with foam and I sat there for a while rethinking my strategies for the future when aligning myself behind the big boys, you know, them airliners.

My thoughts ventured from aluminum to flesh and blood; us, puny humans.  Do we carry the same wake-turbulence to cause harm to others? Something that needed to be considered with equal gravity. How many times one reads or hears about someone suffering at the hands of another? Yes! that is wake turbulence, the kind that people like Madoff create. There are many others, far more evil in their deeds that have led millions of people to an early grave. The likes of Eichmann and Mengele come to mind. Some do it surreptitiously slowly plotting and planning the windmills of their personal desire to wreak a breezy havoc upon the unsuspecting individual, while others have figured out an end game replete with rewriting history to save their own skins while playing to the tunes of selfish desires.

And then there are those in the once-revered medical field who implant, transplant and replant falsehoods to better their careers only to churn an entire industry into chaos, confusion and splash the color black on the nobility of the scientific profession. The Duke University’s Dr. Potti and his colleagues awash with hubris, in an effort to glean publicity and reap the rewards of an ill-begotten experiment created another blemish on the medical wall, potentially inviting others to say, “If you cannot manage yourself, we will do it for you?” But Dr. Potti had left a wake-turbulence behind him of lies and deceit before; a forged scholarship. For those looking, the signs of an impending calamity were there. They would have seen his kind from miles away. But alas, nature is a constant teacher and the frailty of humans fails to learn from history and therefore is condemned to repeat the same mistakes.

The essence of a person is not in his words but in his deeds. Lest you think this is a man-made event, you would be wrong. Both genders participate in it handsomely.

So what is it in such an individual that makes him tock to everyone else’s tick? Can anyone recede to the same level given the circumstance? Are we all so fallen in our prejudices to do the right thing, that wrong is the path easily traveled?

The despair that comes from such a question is easily answered with one word; character. Temptations are plentiful in daily living. It happens in the remotest villages in Africa and Asia, lest you think this is the disease of a wealthy society. No, children are stolen and placed into bondage, infants are molested for adult purity and women are brutally beaten on the basis of inhuman laws. Men usurp other men’s land and property, killing and plundering as they go, tribes kill one another over height just like the Hatfield 

and the McCoys 

who either due to stolen hogs or in relation to the timber market in 1889 couldn’t get along well together and in the name of righteousness, power, control or some such selfish human failing. To think of such as weakness thus, is to give up on humanity, especially since the majority of people live their lives in quiet desperation never given to such temptations. They toil to receive their rewards and achieve their just potential. But for them, the fabric of society would not hold. The rip sometimes created by those that walk to a purely selfish and socially ignorant beat yields the dark and decay of the human spirit behind the imagined and beautiful tapestry called life.

Character is the overarching benchmark of integrity. It is integrity that leads the engine of this world and life into newer vistas. It is integrity of the sense of self that wounds the greed and self-deception. It is integrity of the soul that keeps the social structure sound.

So then how does lack of integrity create such a powerful wake-turbulence? Actually, both integrity and its lack cause similar wakes. The former is enduring and the latter smacks us in the face to remind us of our failings to learn from. The confluence of deeds of the past is a reminder of the future. Dr. Potti of Duke University fame had forged his resume. That is probably not the only thing to sting him from his past. Future will elaborate more of his inconsistencies. Harvard an equally prestigious University lays claim to a similar debacle; Marc Hauser a primatologist author to several peer-reviewed articles and a best-selling book admitted to “making mistakes.” His students at the university three years ago were raising this specter of untruths and concoctions as he persisted in his dogged determination to publish falsified data.

What about Adolf Eichmann who lived until 1962 when he was executed for crimes against humanity in Israel? He was a high school dropout, tried his stint as a mechanic and then a clerkship without leadership. He was a rudderless ship until he joined the Hitler’s SS and there obligated to the Reich and with sufficient leadership above him to turn him into a mass-murderer. A lesson for adults; always give children a sense of direction in morals and ethics and life.

On the other hand Josef Mengele was a smart quick wit with an intellectually curious mind that ventured often into the folds of eugenics and thus in creating the “ideal human,” allowed him to progress his ideas into committing mass murder under the blanket of his boss, Hitler of equal psychopathic ill repute. Mengele found the ideal setting under an ideal “boss” to experiment his "experiments".

Imagine a person, with a personality, “that would steal a dollar bill from the boss because the boss has all the riches and he (the boss) wont feel the loss of a dollar, mentality,” would do in a large corporation overseeing millions of dollars. Speaking of large amounts of cash brings us to Mr. Madoff. He of “bilking thousands of people off billions of dollars” fame, equally of hurtful and sociopath intent, used every human psychological trick in the book to endear himself to the trusting innocent. From rags to riches to rags is a flaw in the character that defines such people. For eventually the piper will play and one has to pay for such deeds of commission.

All deeds are not painted with the same brush strokes. Each poorly conceived deed devalues society with it’s own wrong. Yet all such actions have two things in common; human frailty of greed and self-service and the inflicted pain upon others.

Integrity is the cement that binds the empathic character. The wake from a person with good character lives on during and after him or her. This integrity of character is the enduring salvation of humanity, to succeed without reprisal. His or her deeds of a person of great integrity survive through time and color the present and the past with joyous memories for future generations.

The implications about any badness drawn concerning the Boeing 737 are false. 

This Boeing 737 aircraft has the safest of all records in flight second to the 747,

but it like other large aircraft has the mechanical trait due to its sheer size and pitch angle of attack on take-off and landing that creates a large vortex enhanced by the newly added winglets. As a matter of fact vortices are not restricted to large aircraft, a small general aviation airplane creates its own wake that would bring chaos to a butterfly. But these wake-turbulences are a necessary frailty of the physics of aerodynamics, no implied motivation.

Unlike aircraft where size matters, in humans however size does not play a part, in our species we watch for the wake-turbulence that follows an individual, revealing the poignancy of his or her character and the durability of their integrity.

A man named George many decades ago, crossed the Potomac and defeated the English colonists to establish the most enduring of concepts; a Republic.

He was offered the monarchy but true to his character and bound by his integrity he declined and stepped down after his term as the leader to live a commoner’s life. An enduring story of an enriched life, the wake from which will capture our imagination and lead us to that "shining city on a hill." so long as we remember history. 

The butterfly and Infinite Space

The concept of infinite space rattles the mind. Even in the ever-expanding universe where galaxies diverge and orbits around the center deviate outwards and the chatter of the Big Bang keeps its static hum ongoing. The space within which the universe is expanding in astronomical sense remains incomprehensible. 

Certainly analogies to an expanding air balloon do not pass mustard since the threshold once reached breaches the elastic into a burst of air and sound wave release. The infinite space surrounds the balloon and is not that confined within the balloon. 

So what is this infinite space? Can we understand it? Can we chip away at the layers of this mystery and come to a real understanding? Or does it defy cogent reasoning?

Lets begin by employing comprehension. A mind that fathoms the infinite yet cannot define the confines of this space is equally infinite in its understanding, even though it is contained in an eight pound universe. The mind of a man or woman grasps at straws and through these reaches it gains control of its surroundings. This then is the infinite space of a human that constantly enlarges, stretches, expands and violates the inviolable limits of understanding, to begin again. Do we then have an infinite space to expand our understanding to reel in this wild and unimagined void?

On a moonless night when all the stars glow in their glory and the Dippers parade the sky barely keeping pace with the Orion, the mind ventures into the star-struck universe of Why?

Some whys may never receive answers and yet we try to fathom the unfathomable. It is the age-old question of what makes the world go around. Yeah gravity and all, aside what set it spinning and do all objects born of collective gases find the spin around other objects and also within themselves as a result of gravity. Can some of these amalgamated rocks called planets, spin around stars without spinning themselves like the geocentric orbital satellites? Or does all coalesced matter end up like a spinning top? Can we finally lay claim to an understanding that will empty the libraries of books about strings and multi-verses somewhere in the future or will it take a monumental task of exploration with loss of human lives to gather the data that may never be of use to us? Exploring the hinterlands we may never be able to return to profess the knowledge. Suddenly the concept becomes muddier. Even the cells in the living body have an orientation and each atom within the cell is in a state of spin, its alignment based on its density. We mock their orientation under heavy magnetic fields as in with MRI machines to determine the resonance and try to make diagnoses of clinical illnesses. So at least we know that there is a natural order to all things. We have crossed some threshold, maybe in our minds.

                   Universe through Inferometry (Butterfly effect)

Mindful of such complexities, I wandered in the garden the other day and saw this beautiful creature of evolutionary triumph. A butterfly, it was a Monarch but oh so beautiful. The micro-RNA circulating around and modulating its genes had created the most perfect and harmonious mosaic of colors. Dab of black here and there a few small gobs of white scattered in perfect symmetry over the unmistakable orange. 

Catching it and holding this live being between the thumb and the forefinger while it pulsated for its freedom made me think of the world it calls its own and the forces it has to align itself with, that make it fly. The finite space it lives must seem infinite to it if it wonders and the finite time it survives, no better than a human life really, just dimensionally different. So the butterfly and a human being are the same in their relative existence.

                                                The Monarch

With the fluttering of the wings in quick succession and the appearance of the drunken path of flight before alighting atop another juicy lavender flower, it gave the world meaning. Nature has contrived the aerodynamics of this wonderful creature. The relatively large surface area of its wings compared to the body and the wing force downwards creates lift to defy gravity and with the same motion a thrust is created for movement of flight perpendicular to the wing motion at 1 meter/second.

 It is akin to an ice skater as he applies the force perpendicular to the direction of the motion of the skates to move forwards. Unlike the first three generations, the fourth generation of Monarchs even with their constant exertion, travel longer distances with their inherent GPS antennas than most butterflies. 

                           The perpendicular motion of the Butterfly Wing

They are limited to relatively still air of one on the Beaufort scale, anything more than a gentle breeze will overcome their intent, and stronger breezes seem like hurricanes to these little colorful creatures, throwing them into chaos. After all, these gorgeous little flies flit about the world involved in their own majestic ecosystem, content with gathering specks of food and flying from flower to flower visiting upon them more color, beauty and a chance to deliver the pollen from other plants.

I could hold the Monarch forever, and gaze at its warm and striking beauty, but it appeared to be tiring of the struggle so I gently placed it on the flower from whence, I had plucked it away from its daily constitutional. The Monarch true to its name, sat there for a moment on the flower as it caught its bearing, contemplating its next move. Whether to fly off immediately and be at risk of captivity again or to sit and fake it, finally after a few seconds it took off. The flight was disturbed. The wings did not seem to propel it with the same vigor and intensity. Both wings flapped at the same time and with equal proportion yet the right wing did not seem to catch the air as much. There was, what seemed to be a problem with lift generation from the right wing.  The butterfly could not maintain its flight path or its altitude. Its pitch and bank motions were off-track.

Had I injured it in captivity? Had I damaged its internal structure? Although the integrity of the wings seemed intact and functional, something was awry in its flight. I followed it to the next flower of it choice and gently scooped it up in the palm of my hands. It made no attempt to evade which it would have normally done. It was the month of June therefore this one was a second generation with 2-6 weeks of life. Unfortunately the cycle for the fourth generation of Monarch from this one might have been interrupted and not take wings at all, I feared.

I brought it back into the house and under the microscope, looked for any tell tale signs of damage that I might have caused. Everything seemed in order. Nothing was broken. Both wings looked perfectly symmetrical. And yet something was amiss. I used a higher magnification and there lo and behold was possibly the answer. The left wing surface had a fine powdery filament that seemed to have rubbed off and was absent from the right wing.  The right wing had a glossy sheen on it.

And there lay the mystery of flight dynamics. Each little particulate matter somehow resulted in a larger surface area of the wing and equally the micro-cells in the wing geometry also helped generate the lift. 

                               Micro-Cells of the Butterfly Wing

                             

The right wing had less of both due possibly to the capture and in pinching the wings together for observation; I had inadvertently changed the generational course of history for this beautiful creature.

There in front of me under the microscope, the Quantum Physics of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle 

                                             Gamma Rays to detect the electron(blue)

damaged the Newtonian physics of aerodynamic flight; the mere act of observation had changed the observed. Disassembling the truth sometimes yields a false result.

We, humans are reductionists in our vain attempts at understanding. Take down something to its finer smallest elements and then see how it ticks. Yes that is true but then how do you measure observation of this infinity of space. Well, I thought maybe some things do not lend to observation and observing changes them and thus the act alone will yield a result that may or may not be true. The mystery lives on and will so until the end of time. Whether that time ends in a red dwarf or a white giant for us, it will end. Whether humanity remains in its current form is in doubt, if it changes and evolves with nature and human intellect of “incorporation of ceramic, silicon and other elements” remains to be seen. 

                                            Self Replicator

Whether migration into space and finding another habitable planet is possible and doable is questionable, or whether employing the Von Neumann self-replicating robots 

                              Darwin Prototype Self Replicator

with incorporated human DNA is the answer, I don’t know. Until then sometimes we are better off in allowing the breeze to sweep through our hair, the aroma of a freshly cut grass fill us with desire and the freshly wetted dry earth subsume the daylight in its musty wonder.

The adventure will go on so long as life exists. Blessed with a 3-pound universe that does not quit in its acts of trying to understand, a human being is an ingenious experiment. To peek in the infinitesimally small with Electron Microscopes, small and large atom colliders and then to look out at night in wonder of the dark sky tantalizing the intellect to come and have a closer look is the essence of the inquiring mind. If it is there it must yield to us its secrets. But some things lend themselves to axiomatic inquiry and theorized understanding only.

Science is both intuitive and cognitive, it uses metaphors to advance a concept and through rigorous methodology and visual referents it builds the temple of knowledge. Sometimes the scaffolding has to undergo changes as new creative thoughts emerge from distilled old paradigms yet the momentum and flux of continuous change assimilates and adjusts the current thinking. True understanding is not a quick reflexive thought. It is accommodative of all transformative knowledge. There are places we cannot see, nor ever visualize but we can imagine and reason, conjecture and assume, mathematically or with the help of physics and in doing so without removing the quintessence of that fine dust that makes us live, we can emerge victorious in our efforts. .

The butterfly however fell victim to an inadvertent act of observation. It could not keep to its task of gathering and disseminating, consuming and replenishing. The next day the two beautiful wings folded and flattened on the surface of freshly watered earth bore testimony to an innocent act of observation.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. William Shakespeare, "Hamlet", 1,V.

Ghost of the Christmas Past

He sat there seething in his infirmity. His words were both hearty and calamitous: hearty; because they were full of thought, fight and angered brilliance and calamitous; due to the ensuing storm of survival.

I had BACOD (chemotherapy regimen) him to a baldness that would not allow the hair follicles ever to show the tendrils of growth on his head, leaving the scalp bland and slightly wrinkled. Then, as if that was not enough, I had to CHOP (chemotherapy regimen) and ICE (chemotherapy regimen) him till his eyelashes had dissolved into the lids and the lenses behind the corneas had shopped their acuity for the opacity of a thin veil of cataract. The ghostly remainder of his being was the full juice and vigor of his beautiful mind.

“Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, man what a misnomer for this disease.” He said all entangled in his thought of self and non-self. Fear of death and passion for living, side by side in a play for life and death both focused on his visage contorting it to their own intensity. “What do we do now that all of this chemotherapy has failed?” He asked.

‘You might qualify for a Bone Marrow Transplant. That would be an option.” I replied thinly, knowing the cubicles of bureaucracy and insurance advisors would no way allow him to traverse the grid of the tightly knit culture of, “preserve the share-value,” and have a chance at life.

The concept interested him. “So how do we go about it?” He asked. And the process deemed as doomed for failure in my fears slowly rolled the circumference of its wheel. After an arduous twenty-two days, while he lay in the hospital bed hiding, dodging or fighting one co-morbidity after another, the cost of his medical care continued to climb and the tally on the bill kept turning a new page ultimately to an astronomical six-figure value. Those days of indecision, denial and incoherence cost three times as much as the chance that he had hoped for.

Time just wasn’t on his side and neither were the bean-counters. And it dawned upon me the concept of rationed care. Was that the right move? Had I planted the seed of discontent when the potential for response much less cure was so remotely miniscule?. But then, there was a chance ever so slight, even after all that contemplation. Had I not taken the oath to protect, preserve and foster life? Does life have a monetary cost?

These are some of the questions that marshal us into a new era of sobriety. Economies of scale are hampered in their asset values and the ultimate victims to this monocular vision are the bodies and souls of tortured humans.

But, then there is this issue of cost and productivity and the fact that 50% of medical costs are spent on the last six months of life gives one pause. And yet with all this hoopla about costs and age, as one reflects, these “last six months of life” must be dissected and evaluated on different scales; age, chronic disease, chronic dependency on equipment, projected benefit and survival and future pressures on society.

Unfortunately we as humans have choices to make between pragmatism and emotions. Whatever the ultimate decision is at the individual level, we as a society should learn to happily abide by it after all the rancor and pain has subsided.  Discussions of these issues must be done at an honest intellectual level, not for political, personal or self-gratifying gain and not especially by the fleeting, surreptitious guardians of finance. It must not be a 5-4 Court decision nor should it be a mandate on the society. This crucible must contain the individual wisdom of all participants- the people. So, in the end we shall finally arrive at, “Readiness is all.”

Ignorance is Amusing

There is no darkness but ignorance! - Shakespeare

“Ignorance is amusing!” a very interesting comment from a very interesting man. It appears that life that lived in the middle ground is cognizant of the many nuances that exist in society. Here is where the amalgam of varied thoughts comes to roost. These thoughts from the periphery are assimilated and a finality of consequences is expressed. These expressers are by no means sages. They are not even intellectuals, especially not intellectuals. They are normal everyday human beings that get up in the morning and go to work. Have family to feed and live their lives in contented harmony of their souls. There are no blaring horns, no screeching brakes, and no rubber on the roads of expression, only simplicity of action.

The periphery in its fringes yelps and ponders, considers and interprets, shouts and debates, articulates and compromises, cajoles and threatens, sweetens and poisons, demands and strikes all in the name of reality. Something strange is going on here. Something that is quite contrary to the larger truth. Something equally as stubborn that defies in the face of reason.

The amusement of this weathered gentleman seemed infectious. He was not belligerent nor was he apologetic, just calmly considerate of reality. “Whenever there is anger, belying emotion there is always a considered threat. This threat can take any form. It can be a fear of loss, a loss of finances, anger related to belief, a loss of position, a loss of entitlement, a loss of power or even an expressed contrary opinion. This anger carries with it venom of such virulence that a perfectly calm persona can be reduced to an emotive wreck.” He shuddered, almost as if to rid of the feeling, of this decay of the human mind, of this laziness of thought and of mediocrity.

“But that is every person. We are all suited in opinions based on our own reality. Isn’t it?”

“Yes and that is the problem. Sometimes it is indoctrination, sometimes it is peer-pressure, sometimes it is plain ideology for power and other times it is plain laziness. But in all, there is an element of ignorance.”

“But the mind will confirm its prejudices?”

“Yes and that happens continuously in daily life. We see what we want to see. We hear what we want to hear and then join the chorus when such thoughts rhyme with ours and the symphony continues to draw us into its magical spell.” He reasoned quietly, “But it is up to us to be critical, to question, to understand the reality and the motive. It is for us…” He stopped talking and for a lengthy moment bent his head in deeper thought, as if anymore could not be expressed in words.

“So how does one purge such predetermined thoughts?”

“Easy.” He said, rising to the moment again, and his hand that had been stroking his chin and curling the gravity pulled skin into folds, let go momentarily and fell by his side, “Get rid of ignorance!”

Interesting how he sees the world. It is not all black and white. There is a lot of grey, as it exists in reality. But in that grey are the components of black and white. “There is no Shangri-La. There is no Utopian existence. Life is all blood, sweat and tears and if it is not then ignorance prevails. Ignoring reality can only last so long. It is a self-defeating code of existence. It is failure!” His voice a decibel higher but in control, his continence a shade rubious. He fell quiet for a moment, contemplating his next words with conserved measure.

“But knowledge is both true and contrived?”

“Reality is real intelligence. True one cannot know all the facts because some are hidden but an average mind with average mental assets can determine right from wrong as it can differentiate between good and evil. The measure of life is in that and that alone,” he paused, “The difference is truth remains constant while contrived facts are constantly modified.”

Walking away from his humble abode, an inexpensive cottage perched atop a small hill, enclosed by the forest of nature; one got the feeling that this was no ordinary person. His wealth was in his mind. His riches in the banks were tools for advancement of science and life. He used those resources for a cause greater then himself. He used them for enhancing life.

It wasn’t like this forever. He grew up as a quiet meek kid in center city. He was one of eight and food was distributed in quantities that just barely satiated desire. Summers were always hot and the single fan blew a hot breeze on all of them lined up barrack style in their four-room home. But they were happy. He had a family that loved him and encouraged education. He would spend many hours a week under the trees and street lamps to read. He went to a public school and there he garnered a scholarship for his math capability. He went to a state college and paid his way doing odd jobs including pizza delivery every night after college. He married but never fathered a child, which tormented him all his life.

Life took its twisted turns and eventually landed him as a Chief Operating Officer of a Fortune 500 company. Money poured in and life became more comfortable for him then he desired. He convinced his wife to leave the expensive digs and move into his current modest cottage. There, retired from all obligations he learned to cook, bake, garden and think. He taught at a local community college and tutored kids who asked questions and several hovered around him as much as they could and would try every opportunity to gain access to him. If they could get an evening of his undivided attention at his cottage, which he granted once a month, they considered it a great gift. His tutoring started with one student and at last count there were fourteen, the maximum his cottage living room could afford to house in comfort. Even though what he said was simplistic but how he said it and worded it made them hungry for more. He never raised his voice just their consciousness. There was much to learn and much the students did learn. When asked he would say this was the best time of his life because he was helping shape the future.

He left a legacy for all students; a scholarship fund for any student with certain achievements that he defined. There were to be no committees. The student could apply and if he fulfilled certain criteria he could walk away with a scholarship. The only review was by a non-partisan out of state three-member body that confirmed the criteria. There was no politics involved and no enticement or inducement. It was simplicity at its best.

It was the summer of the following year when the ingenious clock of his thoughtful time came to a peaceful end. The known lion of ridding ignorance had passed and as his life had maintained, his death followed suit; he donated his life’s savings to improving literacy. He died to live through others. He gave others a chance to live in the real world. He was a lion in his beliefs and a martyr to his cause. He was the original banner against ignorance.

The world inexorably glides through space, turning and turning leaving its orbit ever so slowly by fractions as the universe expands. Time allots its vengeance on those that live in ignorance as well as those in the know, yet it is only the knowledgeable that are remembered by those that follow. It is only the truth seekers that live and make a difference. The rest, merely exist.

The cottage still stands, overgrown with weeds. The flowers that grow are all wild now. Life here has come and gone and maybe will come again in the form of another stranger. Where he will take it no one knows. But for now and until then this remains his domain, where once the cacophony of simple and complex questions from young students agitated the quiet and the quiet hush of students amidst the low baritone voice of the aged, wise teacher once filled the arrow of time.

It was in one of those last times when I saw him. His eyes had reduced to slits with overhung thick grey brows curling about in chaos, a crop of white unruly hair crowned his head and his sun drenched wrinkled skin like a freshly plowed field gave him even more majestic a presence. His frame was supported by a walking stick as he leaned over and in his usual quiet reserved manner said, “Remember, Knowledge is Strength!”

To be or not to be...

This is a story about humanity and is encompassed in the soliloquy by Shakespeare in the play Hamlet. Words so true and powerful that they defy age and time.  These words in essence speak of life. The truth in them is timeless.

HAMLET: To be, or not to be--that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--

No more--and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--

To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprise of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action

One often finds that a story can be told in reverse and have the same meaning. But then to see the ending and from whence it came to be , a surprising but true tale appears.

(And enterprise of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action)

In the end, it is interesting that Hamlet finds that Enterprises with vast resources and global dimension with many accrued successes to plead about their greatness can lose themselves and end up mediocre, or even in complete destitution. The fate of such institutions have been chronicled in our lifetimes take for example Pan Am Airways, Enron, Lehman Brothers and a litany of such modern debacles where excesses of the mind have driven the fortunes of countless into the abyss. Is it as Hamlet considers, related to Death or maybe fear of death as in loss or fear of loss that drives them to the brink and then they themselves tip over the precipice and all action is adrift like a rudderless boat?

Or is it conscience?

(Thus conscience does make cowards of us all)

No maybe not conscience in these days as the Bernie Maddoff case explains in vivid detail his lost moral compass. This life ebbs and flows to the carnal desire and hedonistic demands. So Hamlet may have hit upon the conscience of cowardice that makes such arteries of vigor and flow come to a complete stop with sludge, dread and self-immolation. It maybe that the hidden cowardice in some that commands them into such sociopathic behavior leading to loss of trust that puzzles the mind.

Humans no matter what station they reside at, what comforts they cushion their lives with or what power they ascribe to are frequently puzzled similarly by death, especially death!

(The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,)

It is that undiscovered country that makes them most fearful. This realization that eventually they (all of humanity) have to go to this unknown land and that they will never again return to the riches they have eschewed all their lives. This is the consciousness that makes them tremble and those that do spend the time to evaluate their own lives, live in the fear of doing others wrong. These are the few that live in the comfort of their conscience and fear of death retreats from their soul. These are the few if they make it up the ladder of success, stay grounded in the contentment of their souls rather than to the delight of their avarice. While others never having such introspection continue to advance their profligate wants.

Man and his insolence projected upon another man is the current day life where to get to the top one has to step on another persons dreams desires and literally face.

(Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns)

Whether it be some one in high office and use that threshold to obligate, suppress, oppress, condemn, judge harshly, demonize or harm another for self aggrandizement is doomed to the channels of tidal waves that will rise against him in the end and subdue, submerge and even drown all his ambitions, wealth, arrogance and desire.  Or it might be someone with limited power who seeks to wield it for self-promotion.  The culture of duplicity and selfishness is ingrained in such people.

Equally the law in its infinite wisdom concerns itself of procedures and demands rather than the merits. It hangs on the confluence of verbiage and a cataract of impressions rather than the virtues, rights and truths. Yet those that suffer the indignities of others with scorned looks, spurned hellos, denied presence and mere existence are the wronged feel left out. Sometimes in the future the prick of the oppressor’s conscience preys on their own cowardice when the specter of death is at hand and there is nowhere under the largest of gold mines nor the softest of comfortable blankets to hide and these proud men then turn to a new found faith, to find relief. It is this fear of the unknown, this vacuum of information, this lack of knowledge that turns the mighty into whimpering souls.

(To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,)

It is death that drives us from the injustice, the pain, the torture to forgo the wishes of too long a survival. It is the daily grit and grind that tires the souls of tested men. It is this conscience that gives us pause. “Hold it! Do I really want that?” the brain cries out.

Those harmed and those that will be then wish for a rest, for sleep, for reflection, for dreams to carry them away from the vicissitudes of real life. Yet the unknown haunts the mind.

(No more--and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--)

It is the daily heartache that consumes us and makes us wish for that comfort and relief that can only come from an end to the bitter struggle of daily living. This is where Hamlet finds himself a servant to his own fears consumed of the anger, consumed of the frustration, consumed of the injustice that he wishes for a deep and permanent sleep. Suffering the thousand natural shocks of daily living is something to be freed from.

But he has come to this as do those tortured souls not from the premise of weakness but from a life filled with struggle to win, to proclaim justice, to stand up and claim his righteous place in the world.

(Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them.)

To stand and fight, it is in the constancy of this battle within him and that outside of him fought against him that he finds solace in a quiet sleep, yet his conscience and the fear and dread prevent him from such an action and he wishes to fight against the slings and arrows and by opposing them end the war.

To be, or not to be--that is the question

And so we come to, “To be or not to be.” And therein lies the essence of truth in all of humanity. To live under the misery of another’s oppression or to take arms against these trouble and oppose them and in so doing the battle would either end their lives or end the oppression. The latter seems infinitely a better solution. Hamlet poses a question, is it better to suffer in silence or have the courage to fight the oppressor and in so doing, undo the oppression? If the oppressor wins then death ends the villainy if the oppressor loses, life starts once again anew -free. "To be," offers hope. "To be," thus compels us to fight, and "to be," also builds a conscience, for death is the final arbiter of all that is to be.

Hamlet is in all of us. We become him sometimes early and sometime late in life, but we do become him. It is an eventuality that must come “If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.” - Hamlet by William Shakespeare

The Wealth of the Human Spirit

We live in a society filled with ‘loss-averse,” fearful and pessimistic points of view. It is a mind-set consummated in absence of reality – life. To live is to improve, to better, to create, to enhance, to challenge, to achieve; a prime directive of human existence that is being relinquished. No longer do we as a people feel the urge to optimize our inner resources but desire to be entitled, to subjugate ourselves in the warm fuzzy blanket of desire without the prickly thorns of effort. Whatever we seek must come quickly to us. For it is in our inheritance. It must lay itself at our doorstep for we have justified it in our minds. It must be. Our fears are so many, our vision so limited, our action so confined that scarcely do we consider that we have self-shuttered our inner being.

Never have a people so endowed in the wealth of ideas and a profundity of motivation driven itself into such a self-imposed limit of action. It is the tragic trappings of an imagined dread that leads to the wanton decay of an enlightened society.

Personal responsibility be damned for if their ever was a sense of self that loathed the soft flabby core of the being, it is gone, evaporated, distilled out of the essence of our being. We compare and find that wanting and then we cry for an empathic eye to sympathize with us, others to take our cause, to desire our desires for us and not for themselves. We run to a listener’s ear and bend it to the waves of our needs and not finding any at each turn of the screw we mope and cast aspersions of hedonism to others.

The insolence of thought resident in our minds firms, coagulates and becomes opaque to all other understanding. It becomes hard as stone, impervious to reality. Again we cry, for it is our given right! Isn’t it? Or is it our right to earn that right. And by earn we mean to spend countless hours of tedium, drenched in the sweat of the mind and body. Showing up for work and doing it half-heartedly, timing the hours, watching the west for the setting sun or the east for the first rays over the horizon to stamp the time-clock and thus gaming the system is different then immersing in one’s work with the desire to enhance, to better to achieve.

The inheritors of this earth are the “creators”, “the innovators”, “the enhancers”, “the challengers” and “the achievers”.

The creators are not employed in the irrational despondence of pessimism. They are gainfully employed in the prelude to their desire. Their energies are focused on the motion and toil of each second. Not a single moment is cast away at frivolity, nor is time spent at what would be if this does not succeed. Their minds do not give rise to the temptation of “what-ifs” they march along to the drumbeat of their destiny. Failure is a learning process that catapults them to new highs. These minds focus on the event itself and not on the culmination of that event. They are forever filling their bag of ticks with the newness of thought to jump each hurdle and to use the finish line as a starting point for a new adventure.

Those that desire to better life follow a similar path. It is not that dinner is entirely composed of potato soup alone. They work to grow the plants and one day to raise animal livestock so they may better the lives of their families. It is in the roughness of the product that they wish to refine. It is in the simplicity of a few lines of software code they wish to make the application run with smoothness and bug-free. The cling of the clothes from the static or the partially removed stain from a wash fills them with desires to better the product. From bulky 3-pound wireless phones to wafer-thin Internet capable photo and video-shoot ready, music enabled pieces of engineering marvels. These are the ones that will inherit the world.

                               The Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World

The enhancers are the ones that live quietly always seeking potentials to grow. They view the experience and see what the human spirit needs to tickle its imagination. They are the Walts of the Disney Worlds. Imagination is a large warehouse of ideas where science, art and life are filled with creative words and thoughts to tweak the fertile soil of a growing mind. Where children of all ages gather early in their lives to see and learn and from there as they depart to their futures are inspired to become the enhancers for all.

                                         Walt Disney

The challengers inspire confidence. Status quo is stagnation and death for their spirit. They are constantly thinking and taking on difficulties when others have given up or walked away. These few, strong minded full witted back-boned strengthened elite live to find that which cannot be conquered and then set out to face it. These are the Tensings,

                                     Tensing Norgay on Mt. Everest


the Yeagers,

                                Chuck Yeager and the Sound Barrier


and the Armstrongs of the world.

     "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" - Neil Armstrong


Nothing is too big or too difficult. Nothing is too steep or too deep. Nothing is not within reach. These few reside in the sublimity of rarefied existence. They excel not for the glory but for the conquest. They succeed not for the fame but for the will of the human mind. They challenge not for the sake of it but for the desire to show that human intellect and strength of character can overcome that which is not only difficult but considered impossible. So the records of the longest, highest, deepest, steepest and the most daunting of tasks are constantly being broken.

The achievers are a breed imbued with the nascent spirit of want and desire. They are constantly working to achieve the next highest goal. It is the achievers that make the world an inspired realm. A showcase for what can be accomplished through dedication and hard work. They achieve the pinnacle and then create another imaginary peak to climb. They are within themselves in a constant state of war with the now. The future brightens with their inspiration and dedicated hard work. The achiever is distinct from the charlatan. Where as the former longs for success at personal cost carefully treading a path to avoid reaching his goal through usurpation, the latter desires it at any cost but to the self, stepping on others’ toes, commandeering other’s ideas and castigating anyone that stands in the way,. These achievers include the Robert Kearns and the Steve Jobs of the world. To them, success is not in the wealth but the ambition towards that success. Constantly illuminating new ideas in their minds and frequently merging thoughts to innovate. “Ts a consummation devoutly to be wished.”

                Robert Kearns inventor of intermittent wiper

The world is awash with the “intellectuals” who sit and think and consume the hours of the days and nights conjecturing, articulating human and societal behavior. They pontificate from a prejudice of thought and “feel” for the disenfranchised, while they squander their time at luncheons and dinners with others like themselves pondering on the fate of the human condition. These intellectuals write treatises and books to convince and corrupt the minds of the many that would be the vanguards of society. These misled and misleading bunch of cowardly few, through the ink they spill on the canvas of life misdirect those that would be great and turn them into mediocre. An “intellectual” is one who forever contemplates -without risk of action and failure, and spends his life like a leach that sucks away the strength and vigor of the rest. Were it not for Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, 

Michelangelo, 

Euclid,

 Newton, 

Descartes, 

                               3D Cartesian Geometry

Charles Babbage of the world, 

            Charles Babbages and the Difference Machine

the human race could not and would not exist only with the likes of Socrates, Aristotle, Bertrand Russell and Sigmund Freud . Where the intellect of Leonardo was experimented and the telescope of Galileo negated the geocentric vision of the world, Michelangelo created art to lift the human spirit and still does as you gaze at the Sistine chapel ceiling. Where as Newton discovered gravity for Einstein to play with his thought experiments leading to the General and Special Relativity Theories and Rene Descartes created the Cartesian model of geometry to further measurement. As equally as Charles Babbage had the vision for a “computer.” Standing on the shoulders of that giant gave us the visionary entrepreneurs like Steven Jobs and Bill Gates. These intellectuals were risk takers, learners, advancers of thought through self-sacrifice and action.

It is not only to think and speak but also to do that, from which one finds success or failure. From the latter is borne a wilder momentum of action for even greater success.

The ashes that fall from a fall are as many as the phoenix that rises from them. It is in the failure where success breeds and blossoms. The perpetual, innovator, creator, achiever, challenger and enhancer picks up the fragments of a perished idea and transforms these pieces into another unique and modern concept. It is in the heart of these individuals that the wealth of the human spirit resides and it is in their minds that the tiny speck of desire to better is born.