What do you believe?

First of all, thank you all for your kind and inspiring words regarding my mother-in-law’s sudden passing and my mother’s plight as an Alzheimer’s victim.  Your insights and personal emails really matter.  It is so heartening to participate in a community of thoughtful, compassionate people who are striving to make their difference and to live lives of genuine inspiration.

Today I thought I’d just plunge in and take a big chance.  I am talking about belief in the Divine.  I know, I know.  Why do I have to bring it up at all?  Nothing is more controversial.  And it is because it matters so much.  So here’s what I propose.  I’ll tell you how I think about belief and non-belief and you tell me what you think.  No matter what, let’s agree afterwards to still be friends.

As I see it, there are two general possibilities, two scenarios. Both scenarios have their supporters.  Both sides use science to back them up.

Scenario #1 is that we are “accidental humans;” the result of a cosmic chemical spill.  A random mass of colliding electrons guided by unseen forces that proceed without any cause or meaning. Under Scenario #1, consciousness is just a by-product of biochemistry––an epiphenomenon, as the scientists say. If we accept this possibility, then all meaning is self-invented, a comforting illusion to save us from despair. With Scenario #1 values are simply the preferences we invent to help us get along. When humans decide they are the pinnacle of all intelligent life, it opens the door to genocide and child abuse being just as legitimate as charity work because if there are no universal values, life is simply about survival of the fittest. If you think this is far out, consider the long list of early 20th century leaders that believed in selectively breeding out what “science” said were low IQ races: Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, William Keith Kellogg, Margaret Sanger, and Winston Churchill to name a few.  Eugenics was a very popular fake science.

This view of accidental humanity is quite popular among the highly educated. In fact, it has become de facto religion in most of our colleges and universities. Several well-known twentieth century tyrants used their own version of Scenario #1 to justify their actions.  We all know what happened.  It led to the slaughter of over 150 million of us. If Darwinism is the soulless mechanism of creation, what we end up with is a life based on competing for power instead of one of meaning.

I know there are people who claim religion has done more to harm humanity than non-belief ever has.  But all the wars, intolerance, and torture didn’t happen because of a belief in a divine unseen world.  It happened because humans are corrupt.  The fact that religion doesn’t tame man’s evil doesn’t mean that life is meaningless.  To the contrary.  It makes life’s intrinsic meaning even more important.

All attempts of the “accidental humans” camp to create secular meaning are in the end meaningless. After all, if meaning is made-up, then it really isn’t meaningful. And living without real meaning is not fulfilling—never has been.  It also makes science, art, spirituality, and love meaningless. Just diversions on the road to nowhere.

Scenario #2 says that there is something more to us.  It says that we are significant humans. We are part of something that goes deeper than the electrical wiring of our brain. We are connected to a greater intelligence, a transcendent spiritual energy that is at the core of everything.

Scenario #2 isn’t made-up woo-woo. It, too, has science behind it. Its reality begins with understanding E=MC2––Einstein’s discovery that matter and energy are one and the same and that energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed.  Every physical thing, according to Einstein, is really just energy in a particular form that our particular senses interpret as matter. And energy cannot be destroyed, only changed in form. We don’t actually live in a material world.  Matter is just energy.  It is technically non-material. And the name we commonly use for things non-material is spiritual.  Spiritual energy, imagine that.

What’s wild is that the laws that govern how energy changes form seem to depend on consciousness.  Decades of repeated experiments performed by scores of mainstream renown physicists have categorically shown that human intention powerfully affects the behavior of matter/energy.  Period.  It’s no longer up for debate.  In fact it’s this property of physics that makes electrons behave in ways that make electronic circuit boards possible.  It’s ironic that every computer chip is a reminder of an invisible unexplainable reality.

Our awareness is not an after-effect but a prerequisite. It comes first, not second.  Thanks to new super-sophisticated brain surgery we now have clinical evidence the individual human consciousness does not depend on our brain being alive.  That’s right.  We now know that we can have zero brain wave activity for prolonged periods and still have conscious awareness of what is happening while our brain is switched off.  Now that’s amazing. (If you want to read about a clinical account of independent human consciousness, read The Scalpel and the Soul  by Allen S. Hamilton M.D.

So in Scenario #2, we are not, at our essence, physical, biological hunks of matter that have learned to think. Rather our biological bodies are only the temporary manifestation of some essential, eternal energy––what spiritual teachers have for millennia called our souls. In that case, the source of our true desires and noblest intentions is much deeper than our individual story, our personality, or our brain chemistry. It is an abiding, universal consciousness temporarily housing itself in our body.

What’s the importance of all this? Well, if Scenario #2 is true, then most everything we tell ourselves is important isn’t. At least not in the way we think it is. With Scenario #2, our soul belongs to a deeper spiritual reality. And in that reality love does matter.  In fact, it matters most of all.  I don’t know about you, but I’m putting my chips on Scenario #2.

What do you think?

This Election is Only the Beginning

This weekend I flew up to Las Vegas to meet my wife and her father and mother.  Debbie’s mom and dad were making their annual trek south to Arizona to get relief from arthritis.  Her dad is 80 now and his willingness to drive 12 hours a day is a little scary.  And speaking of scary, Las Vegas on Halloween night is downright frightening.  What people seem willing to do when they are anonymous is a little out there.

We were up early on Saturday morning and made the drive to Phoenix.  What I found was a state buzzing about the Presidential election.  It seems even here in John McCain’s home state the Obama-mania has hit hard.  Not so much that he’s likely to win the state but more from a everyone’s-talking politics: the economy, energy independence, foreign policy topics.  I mean everyone.  I cannot remember a time when so many people have opinions, hopes, dreams, and fears about an election and we’re open and willing to discuss them.  What’s great about it is the civic energy it’s produced.  No not everyone is well informed.  And yes many people seem to make decisions based solely on emotion, but at least we’re awake.  At least we’re engaged in a civic discussion.

The important thing is that the candidates have spent the past year or two traveling the country and listening to us.  When you want to be elected you really listen.  But then what?  As soon as whomever is chosen they become insulated from real people and are shielded by handlers, sucked up to by sycophants, and hounded by lobbyists.

If we are going to move in the right direction the election must be our starting place.  What’s important is what we do to make our voices heard during the next four years and beyond.  Otherwise we can just go back to shaking our fists instead of advocating for real solutions.  The only thing that will make our government honest is our voices.  The best thing we can do is to get to know our congressmen and senators’ email address.  Let them know what you think and that you’re watching.  Make some noise America!

Everything Matters

The past three days of surfing have been amazing.  San Diego in October is often mind-blowing.  All week temperatures have been in the low 80’s.  The ocean has been completely glassy, water transparent.  On days like this I surf until my arms turn to noodles because I am not sure when another day like it will come along.  The ocean is my gym.  Surfing and walking with Debbie are all I do for exercise.  Obviously I can’t surf everyday, but I try to everyday I am home because I find the rhythm of it keeps vibrating in my being and that rhythm seems to have nature’s wisdom in it.

Last night at 1:30 am one of my sons and his wife and my three grandchildren arrived for a week that will include Disneyland on Halloween.  Whenever I see my grandchildren my resolve to do what I can to create a sustainable future deepens.  In many ways my nine grandchildren are the music of the vibrating wisdom I feel from surfing.  I often feel there is a silent harmony underneath the chaos of our apparent life that is “real reality.”  Today was one of those days.  Everything matters, just not in the way we think it does.  It’s much more important.

World Peace Through Surfing

I just got back from surfing.  Recently I started riding a Rusty Quad.  I can’t get over how responsive it is.  The board seems to go wherever I “think it to.”  So at nearly 59 I’m doing things on a surfboard I’ve never done before.  And that’s what brings me back to wave after wave for 45 years.

I was 12 when I first saw some college kids surfing long boards in 1963.  I felt hypnotized.  I constantly imagined myself gliding effortlessly on a wall of moving water.  I couldn’t get it out of my mind.  So I worked and worked and talked my parents into a matching grant, and for 80 bucks I bought my first surfboard.  It was a 9’2” green dream.  I remember vividly my first day surfing.  My first wave and my first wipeout.  I was hooked.  I’m a life long addict.  Why?  Why not tennis or golf or the many other sports I’ve played?  Well surfing is not a sport exactly.  It’s more like aerobics for the soul.

Surfing takes me away from every distraction.  It offers an immersion in nature’s huge mineral bath.  It allows me to sit in tranquility waiting for the next wave.  Then it jacks me up in anticipation as I paddle for a wave that is always unpredictable in its flow seemingly creating itself drop by drop underneath me as I pump across its face.  It jacks me up because when I push myself over the ledge of an overhead wave I don’t know what the outcome will be.  Surfing ceaselessly demands vision, faith and when it’s fierce, guts.  Yet even when I wipe out the landings are nearly always soft.  Surfing also takes me to a world away from the ever-noisy grid.  The emails, texts, phones, media, all disappear confined to shore as I escape to the deep blue.

Sometimes I can sit on my board and gaze at the glorious mess called Southern California.  As I look toward shore I can see traffic snaking down the freeway full of people rushing to what is important that day.  Meanwhile I can turn my board seaward and frequently see dolphins playing within 30 yards of me.  Of course there are many times that I join my fellow commuters jamming to the airport to keep my promises.  But I carry with me the rhythmic memory of my last wave.

The ocean is my monastery.  It’s my place of active meditation where I connect to a divine force that keeps reminding me to do what I came to do, but to do it with wisdom.  It keeps me anchored in the knowledge that what I do is not as important as what I am becoming.  Some days as I walk down the sand stepping over shells and polished sea pebbles that litter this little used beach my unconscious pops a new idea on the movie screen of my mind.  Often it’s the opposite of what I was previously thinking.  My mind feels blown open with new possibilities.

The surf was amazing today.  Head-high sets, clear green water and only four people out.  The October sun shone bright and there was not a breath of wind.  Why do I surf?  Because it renews me.  The real me.  Sometimes I wonder if world leaders all surfed maybe there would be no war…World Peace through surfing.

A World of Opportunity

Imagine my surprise when I rolled up to an AIG Insurance building a couple of days ago. It was 7 am and I was scheduled to make a 90-minute presentation on how to grow in difficult times by focusing on the triple bottom line. The stock market had just cratered and Iceland went bankrupt. A country! Most of the group was H.R. leaders and executives of leading companies. The mood was somber. So I started with the idea that it is the responsibility of leadership to come up with new ways to create value so good, hard working people can keep working. That takes a good dose of both courage and creativity.

So I challenged the group with the idea that companies who are market leaders nearly always do the opposite of their competitors. In a time of hunkering down, they look for ways to expand. How? By looking for ways to benefit humanity and heal the environment. Wait a minute, isn’t that what we don’t have money to do? Aren’t we going to have to wait until good times roll to spend our extra money on doing good? Not at all. I simply asked the group what is the one car that isn’t being discounted today. That’s right. The Prius, the car Detroit sneered at as Toyota’s folly. Or what bank has made mountains of money loaning money to sub, sub, sub, prime borrowers? Grameen Bank. The bank that invented micro credit for the world’s poorest people. They have 50 million customers and a 96% repayment record.

I was excited to show the group a new model I am using to help leaders see where problems that people care about and their own strategic excellence intersect. I also showed them how individuals can plot their own passions and talent to understand how they can make their difference. What I was trying to do is to show them that if we are just willing to lift our heads above the herd there is a path to sustainable abundance.

After an hour and a half of making my case, they seemed to thaw. Several came up to me and thanked me for a warm bath of realistic hope. You’ll never guess who was in the audience. Peg Ross of the Grameen Foundation was there. She encouraged me that the whole world needs to hear a message like this. This is what I sincerely believe. When the whole world is thinking small it’s time to think big. Our path to re-prosperity is through saving the world. So it was a great morning even if I was in an AIG office tower.

Corporate Sustainability and HPI

Last week I was at one of San Diego’s largest employers, a huge global high tech company.  I was watching a training program called the Corporate Athlete that pioneered 30 years ago by a renowned sports psychologist, Dr. Jim Loehr.  Recently Jim’s business The Human Performance Institute has exploded with demand from the world’s biggest companies like Proctor and Gamble and Dell.  Why?  Because Jim teaches everything we forget and most of what we need to know to live our best life.  When I say everything I mean stuff you’d not expect to hear in the work place.  His staff of exercise psychologists and nutritionist tell corporate work warriors how they can get more restful sleep, achieve fitness without dieting, and to keep moving to increase blood flow to the brain.  Companies are anxious to pay for this because companies need creative, collaborative people creating new value in a world full of me-too products and me-too people.

Most companies are lumbering bureaucracies full of fear clinging to the status quo.  Their way of growing is to work people to death.  What Jim Loehr points out is that fatigued, stressed-out, over weight employees are irritable, risk prone and problem-focused.  All the things we don’t want.  Companies full of employees that are well rested, fit, and feel their job aligns with their values are hives of innovation.  These are companies that will grow in this economic downturn.  They will grow because their employees will re-invent the value they offer customers.

So there I sat with 40 engineers.  These very smart people are lapping up the kool-aid.  They are shocked their employer is paying for a program that partially takes place in a gym.  It turns out when senior leaders become advocates for the personal health and satisfaction of their employees, their employees recommit to their employer.  It’s pretty simple.  How do you create a sustainable workplace?  Advocate that people live and work at a sustainable pace.

Tim Snodgrass Writes Congress…America is Suffering

This email was sent to Congressmen Bilbray, Hunter, Issa, and Rodger Hedgecock—-

Gentlemen,

I am writing you because America is suffering from a crisis of historic proportions. We must be willing to take action that is equally as monumental, visionary in it’s scope, and taps in to the full power of the American People. Gentlemen, in order to achieve that, each of you must be willing to take a historic step forward, and doan the mantle of responsibility and leadership much as our founding fathers must have at the inception of this country.

You represent a cross section of visionaries and leaders from the San Diego area, each working to make this country a better place in your own way.

Congressmen Hunter, Bilbray, and Issa, you had the courage to vote no on the economic bail out. That one act gives me hope that each of you are men of integrity, who honestly represent your constituents, and have the ability to see past the lies to what America really needs. Unfortunately you are clearly outnumbered, and lack the support you need to effect real and meaningful change.

Will, your posts on Thought Rocket www.thoughtrocket.com and the American Dream Project  www.americandreamproject.org cut to the truth of the crisis which now confronts us, as no one else has been able to do. You have put together the seeds of a grass roots organization that given time could transform this country. Unfortunately we are quickly running out of time.

Rodger, you have demonstrated the ability to mobilize the citizens of San Diego like no one else.  The solution to this crisis however, will require San Diegans, and all Americans, to be mobilized as never before.

What I propose gentlemen is an alliance between visionaries, national leaders, and community leaders. Not just any alliance, but one that is energized and focused on the real solutions that are necessary to fix this country. I’m sure that we do not agree on everything, but I am writing to you because I believe that you like myself, and many others, understand the gravity of the crisis we are in, what needs to be done to begin the slow process of repairing it. Lets be honest, it took years to get here, and were not getting out of this tomorrow. We need long term solutions, and at the core, I think it is pretty obvious what they are.

Many Americans are waking up, and understand, but there are many who have been deceived by dishonest CEO’s, corrupt politicians that do not represent America as well as you, and who have been led like sheep by the deceptive allure of fear. The American people need to take control of their destiny, and to do that they must speak with a united voice. Through an alliance of Men like yourselves, and Women, I believe we can make that happen. I believe you share my vision, and would like to make that happen.

If we can win the hearts of San Diegans, we can spread the movement throughout the United States, and take back America. It begins with a dialogue between us, representatives become leaders, and then we mobilize San Diegans to rally, and speak out. And certainly there are others who should be a part of that (representing multiple political views). This has to be a bi-partisan effort to put Americans in charge of their own destiny.

I have no experience, no qualifications, and no explicit right to suggest such a thing from distinguished and accomplished gentlemen such as your selves. I come to you with nothing more than the imperative pressed upon me by love of country.

Thank You,
Tim Snodgrass

About Tim:  Tim is a reader, commenter, and advocate of the American Dream Project and Will Marre.  He shares in the vision, and has a deep desire to effect positive change.  In the near future, Tim will be a featured blogger on the ThoughtRocket blog site.

Recycling Never Caused a Good Business to Fail

Debbie and I were going for a walk this morning on the 101 overlooking Swami’s, the famous surf break.  (Only surfers could call a surf spot Swami’s after a Hindu retreat that sits on the bluff.  Politically correct surfers don’t exist.)

We ran into our friend, Doc, who we often meet for coffee on Saturday mornings.  His daughter is in the Peace Corp. in a remote, no running water or bathrooms part of Africa.  As our conversation continued, Doc told us he was a leader of the Environmental Services Department for the city of San Diego.  This was amazing because ten minutes earlier Debbie was saying she wanted to do more to promote recycling in our little city.  She especially wants to encourage restaurants to separate organic waste (food) from paper waste and plastics.  The organic waste can be mulched at a processing center nearby.  Some of the paper and plastic can be recycled.  Then Doc dropped a bomb.  He said our city was ready to pass an ordinance requiring recycling but that the American Chemistry Council lobbyists and P.R. team had showed up to sweet talk our city council and kill the idea because economic costs would be too high.  They assert that the cost would put the restaurants out of business and the staff would lose their jobs.  So it’s absolutely necessary to poison our land with plastic trash.

I am sick of this.  The economic theory that we are not responsible to clean up our messes is a crazy idea.  Cleaning up after ourselves is part of the real cost of doing business.  Stuffing our 1000-year lasting garbage in a closet called a landfill is not cleaning up.  It’s jut transferring the problem to our kids.  Intelligent, thoughtful regulation creates a level playing field.  If all restaurants in our beautiful city had to do it, they would.  And recycling never caused a good business to fail.  No it’s the meltdown of our unregulated economy that’s likely to close restaurants.  So here’s what I want to know.  Who are these people who get up every morning and go to work using their brains and energy to destroy the planet?  For that matter, how can the tobacco industry get anyone to work for them?  Are we so scared that we’ll do anything for money?

So Doc gave us the names of three city council candidates running in the November 4 election who support recycling.  Debbie’s calling them to see how we can help.  I think that’s the greatest thing we can do.

Debating the CEO of BB&T Bank

As I was sitting on the stage in an overstuffed chair next to John Allison, the CEO of BB & T, the Southeast’s powerhouse, multi-billion dollar bank, I wondered, what am I doing here?  Three hundred people filled the hotel room in the Greenville Westin wanting to hear what we had to say about morality and capitalism.  The place was jammed because of the bailout-credit-crisis-rip-off that was going down in Washington D. C.

Bruce, a former chairman of The Federal Trade Commission, was the moderator.  He was an old friend of John’s.  I was the surfer dude from California.  The supposed tension between John and I was that he believed capitalism is inherently moral while I believe capitalism is like a shovel.  You can use it to dig an irrigation ditch to grow organic food or swing like a baseball bat and kill someone.  The morality of it is in the leader—not the system.  As it turned out, John thinks the stinkers on Wall Street are a bunch of short-sited greed hogs that are destroying capitalism.  So he spent most of the discussion laying out why the bailout plan is a wasteful diversion and how to really solve our foreclosure problem.  Meanwhile, I rolled out my artillery of the past 30 years of leaders who have dumbed down business to a mad pursuit of materialism rather than value creation.  Once I got rolling, naming names and telling boardroom stories, the audience was engaged.  Toward the end I started challenging the crowd to change their world right where they stand, right now.  The vibe was electric.

Many young people came up afterward and asked how to start a social enterprise.  So I did a 10-minute seminar as best I could.

Meanwhile, John announced a $3.5 million donation to the Clemson Capitalism Institute.   John is a very smart banker.  (Read his amazing idea about how to work out the current housing crisis on my recent Housing Crisis blog.) We’d be much better off with him as Secretary of the Treasury rather than the bald bomber we have now.  The Clemson experience was extraordinary.  We are talking about me going back to teach and lecture on social enterprise and possibly deeper collaboration.  I’m a “dyed-in-the-wool” USC Trojan fan, but right now…it’s go Tigers!

Clemson University Debate

I have spent the week at Clemson University in South Carolina.  The Entrepreneur Institute has named me “Entrepreneur-in-Residence” and invited me to lecture to students in the business school.  I must say it’s been an opportune week to contrast socially-strategic capitalism with the old fashion greed-is-good version that is sending serious shivers through the world’s financial structure.

These students are the salt-of-earth.  Sincere, open-minded, and determined.  They are also nuts for Clemson football.  All they wear is orange and there are tiger footprints all over the streets and sidewalks.  It’s nuts!

But, my sunny stay is about to change radically.  Tonight, I am “debating” John Allison the CEO of BB&T Bank about the merits of my version of social capitalism against his Ayn Rand, social darwinism version of it.  I am told he is thoughtful, nice man with strong convictions that the free market is a moral market.  Of course, I disagree.  I’ve never seen a truly free market because all markets are gamed by those who have any advantage.  And capitalism isn’t moral or immoral, it’s leaders who choose to serve a human purpose or their own.

My stomach is churning!

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