"Do Ideas Have Sex?"

According to author and social observer Matt Ridley, “…at some point in human history, ideas began to meet and mate, to have sex with each other.” 

This is a great…concept (as in conception)?  Warning: if you let your mind go, the erotic content of our ideas and imagining becomes quite apparent—erotic in the sense that we find the language of conjugal love totally adaptable for describing the activities of our left-brain syntactical mind:  even our verbs are conjugal “they even conjugate!”

Mixing and re-mixing ideas—this may be the “marketplace” of our adaptations and our progress as people: ideas, today, more than genes.  If ever we were simple animals--a cell, an ocean dwelling mammal, a primate—it has been some time since our physicality has made any comparable quantum adjustments implied by such lineage.  Growing taller, living longer—may reflect the power of ideas more than anything we might argue as a triumph of biology.

Even ideas, however, like the physically aroused, without some training can lose their way.  The importance of mutuality—to be aware of and open to others (ideas)—is where all the love resides. 

We once met a retired policeman who had a very blunt communication style.  One day, he was asked what he thought of foreplay?  He replied: “Phil, I don’t even kiss them.”  [This horrible is included to make the following point].

So, when you read the title of today’s posting “Do ideas have sex?” it is interesting how most of us presumed the answer to be: “yes, and the sex must be mutual—because it is ideal”.  

Even tough skeptical thinkers are guilty of this naïve assumption. Skeptics “know” people are intrinsically selfish and hedonistic.  Skeptics may not hold “ideas” to a similar standard!  If ideas are capable of sex, ideas may actually be mortal (transitory)!

Meanwhile, let’s run with it—let’s give some room to Ridley’s notion that “ideas [do] meet and mate”. 

Prospective offspring, thus, gestate. And some gestation periods are long.  (This concept of long gestation as it bears upon ideas is one of the reasons why the Phase I agenda of the Share-Capital Foundation is framed as a 200 year phase, FYI.)

We will close today with a few more words about sex and life. 

In the mammalian kingdom of this planet, a mysterious arithmetic is at work:  it takes two to make one. 

In the plant kingdom, same planet, it takes one plant to make 10,000 seeds.  This is a generalization about the propensity for flora to produce many multiples of their kind in order to assure that a few may thrive.

Fish and amphibians and insects, considered this way, may be more like plants than mammals. 

In human terms, one may wonder if anything is more synergetic than the epiphenomenon of producing a child: understood as two people, meeting and mating? 

In human terms it appears it takes two to make one. Synergy, therefore, may actually imply 1 + 1 = 1.   Mysterious: as life and markets are. 

The Share-Capital Foundation believes capital markets understand the metaphysical power of this view of synergy.  Because it takes two to make one—synergy becomes “who knows what will happen?”-- when ideas and people come together.  The unpredictive outcome where 1 + 1 = 1, when it is synergetic, compels all the meeting and mating. 


To consider how 1 + 1 = 3 may be to think more like a fish.

The world is looking for more “sexually aware” people because ideas leading to synergy really matter.

The op-ed material for the Avarice Fellowship blog is provided by the Share-Capital Foundation.  www.share-capital.com

We bid you peace.

Was Charles Keeling a Watermelon?

Green on the outside, red, in--one way to describe a watermelon.  In the context of climate change--the "green" reference is self-explanatory, but the "red"?  Red as in communist?  Yup.  Good to know.  


So, to consider climate change as possibility is to inveigh God, democracy, open society, freedom of travel, assembly and print. Excellent. Global warming as code for latter day Bolshevism--frivolous and off-point--but effectively confusing. Nice.


The honorable senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, needed no facts nor measurements to support his invective in the 1950s---he allowed the overhang of doubt to perform his work.  And, like the madness that follows a host once invaded by a pernicious parasite--purging doubt once it takes hold is messy business. (It is also important to remember that McCarthy was no pioneer of fear mongering; his art is an old art, and the preferred motif of the unimaginative and the cheapskate.  It is, moreover, very effective and very low cost).    


The subject of climate change, nevertheless, is interesting to consider:  Google the anecdote of Greenland's massive glacial thawing and you may need to go no further.  If sea levels rise, we will adapt.  It would be remarkably difficult to pro act against such possibility, anyhow. Just because Greenland glacial retreat is remark-able, doesn't mean it is "anthropogenic", to use the vernacular.  If it is man-made, it was not intentional.  This may be the more interesting point.  Unintended consequence is the true stuff of doubt---and the nagging sense that "we missed it" creates a temporary vacuum easily filled by fear mongers in the tradition of McCarthy.  It may be easier to acknowledge global warming as a fact than to agree to its cause.   


If you find the subject of climate change interesting but wonder how to cull through all the input without catching a label--you have company.  Lots of company.   Why is this topic a Share-Capital topic?  Education, for one. Share-Capital tries to identify discrete notional information items that people can add to their tool kit as they develop a point of view on the large topics of our day.  Global warming qualifies.  Considered as a capital event, climate change is a poster child.  It would require heaps of capital that would dwarf as bus fare even the BP escrow of $20 billions. This is another reason why this topic is so daunting to consider--because it exceeds even the imagination of capital markets.  Bingo.


If we could assign a number to capitalize a credible remedy for global warming---we would run out of zeroes quickly.  Capital markets love big opportunity--unless the opportunity is incalculable.  Global warming has to become a  problem comprised of "bite size" ideas before it becomes the stuff of opportunity.   Share-Capital has tried to make clear--looking to public policy makers (politicians) for leadership-- can only be done in arrears.  We will have to spill more oil, devastate more credit systems--before we can fix "yesterday's" problems through regulation and law.  Global warming is all ahead of us--it thereby disqualifies government for any leadership role.  Capital markets will lead once the "opportunity" is perceived to be far less ephemeral.  


Who is Charles Keeling?  He was a prominent scientist (he died in 2005).  In 1957 he started to measure systematically the carbon dioxide content of the Earth's atmosphere.  The baseline measurement in 1958 was recorded at 315 ppm (parts per million).  Today the carbon dioxide concentrations measure at 380ppm.   It is clear that 380 is more than 315.  It may not be clear if this is good?


The "Keeling Curve", named for his work, measures the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  The work he started at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii is ongoing.


The op-ed inputs for this blog entry, are compliments of the Share-Capital Foundation.


We bid you peace.

"How to Capitalize good work..."

The United Way is reported to raise nearly $4.0 billion each year.  


If the United Way were a “company” it would be a large one---with sales of nearly $4.0 billion.   But, the United Way is not a company.  It is an agency that collects and redistributes contributions from millions of generous persons.  Most of the donations to the United Way are made directly through payroll deduction services organized by the United Way in cooperation with employers—with the full permission of participating employees.

How big is $4.0 billion?  If the United Way were a foundation—and it was distributing $4.0 billion each year, it would represent a foundation with assets in excess of $80 billion (this presumes the $4.0 billion represented 5% of invested assets annually). 

This means that the “people” who supply the United Way with “gifts” literally comprise the largest foundation in the world.  Yup.  Average people at work.  


The Share-Capital Foundation is trying to make this compelling fact more apparent to “average people”.  Average folks are a profound economic force for good.

The Foundation Center (www.foundationcenter.org) collects and publishes information about foundations.   The center reports that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation lead the top 100 largest foundations in the U.S. with $29.9 billions in assets, followed by the J. Paul Getty Trust at $10.9 billions.  The famous Ford Family Foundation completes the top 100 foundations with assets of $564 millions.

The United Way, by collecting $4.0 billions each year from individuals—represents the capital muscle of a foundation more than twice the size of the Gates model.  Average folks.

Here are three ideas to consider:  The assets of foundations, big and small, are comprised of investments in companies—stock held in companies with employees.  These very employees, through their generosity and sense of community, represent the largesse of a foundation more than twice as significant as the largest foundation in the U.S.  The foundations of wealthy families--"own" the largest foundation!  It may be time for the largest foundation to "spin off" on its own!

Point two:  if these same employees, instead of making cash gifts, made gifts of shares in companies (Share-Capital would suggest companies involved in energy, pharma and food) the "gifts" of shares, like a foundation, would be ongoing.  Over time these gifts of stock would capitalize a big engine capable of giving over a long period of time--long after the "work" performed by the employee to earn the gift is long past.

Point three:  if the generosity of average employees were expressed as shares of stock and aggregated over time, not only would the gift become sustainable—the relationship with the companies whose shares were held would be transformed.   


Under such a scenario a day would come when whole companies in the pharmaceutical sector, for example, would be “owned” by a foundation built by “average folks”—whose intent is not to mess with management—but whose goal is to begin to participate in the power and trajectory of capital.   And, meanwhile, the "givers" would receive a big gift in return--by owning a company--they would be able to "learn" how pharma really works.  

Last thought: does it deserve mention that churches in the U. S. receive voluntary gifts each year in excess of $125 billions?  It makes the United Way illustration look incidental.  It is.  Average people vote with their dollars—not as consumers—but as metaphysical beings who know at a deep level that community—and what is ultimately transpersonal (not post modern) really matters.

The Share-Capital Foundation provided this op-ed.   www.share-capital.com