Get some, zombies!

Despite my Five Flags lifestyle, I pay close attention to financial markets and there are plenty of signs that do not bode well. The U.S. economy is experiencing record levels of bankruptcies, defaults and foreclosures. Chief among these is housing, which represents the biggest part of consumer spending. Despite historically cheap interest rates, the demand for loans to purchase U.S. homes has sunk to a 13-year low. With the expiration of the home buyer tax credit, home sales in May fell to the lowest level ever recorded. There is now over a year’s worth of unsold homes flooding the marketplace and of this March, U.S. banks had an inventory of 1.1 million foreclosed homes, which was a new all-time record, up 20% from one year ago. U.S. Banks repossessed 269,962 U.S. homes during the second quarter of 2010, also a new all-time record.

Then there’s the debt. The U.S. national debt currently exceeds $13 trillion dollars and according to Erskine Bowles of President Obama’s national debt commission, if we continue on our present course, the U.S. government will be spending $2 trillion just for interest on the national debt by 2020. We could buy our way out of this, but what we’re buying comes mostly from other countries, so our trade deficit is now around $50 billion a month, double what it was a year ago.

It seems that no matter what our federal government tries; increasing the amount of money spent, spending more money, expanding how much money is being spent, this pesky deficit just won’t go away.

So of course, people are starting to freak out to the point of stockpiling ring dings, frantically buying gold and attending Glenn Beck’s rally on the capitol mall. Laugh all you want, but like Steven Colbert, I too am ready to follow Beck in his silver freedom spaceship that runs on human tears.

I don’t consider myself an alarmist, and I also don’t want to be left with my cheese in the wind. So recently I came across a post from a permaculture list that I thought offered excellent advice on practical preparations for hard times. If you’re not hip to the whole permaculture thing, it’s a great body of knowledge around sustainability and self-sufficiency. You can find out more through the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia. I was so impressed with this philosophy that I have been collaborating on a permaculture project in China that would be the first agrotourism business of it’s kind in the country.

Now on to living well while preparing for life that more resembles Thunderdome.

1 – Get Out Of Debt: The old saying, “the borrower is the servant of the lender”, is so incredibly true. The key to insulating yourself from an economic meltdown is to become as independent as possible, and as long as you are in debt, you simply are not independent. You don’t want a horde of creditors (editor’s note: or zombies) chasing after you when things really start to get bad out there.

2 – Find New Sources Of Income: In 2010, there simply is not such a thing as job security. If you are dependent on a job for 100% of your income, you are in a vulnerable position. There are thousands of different ways to make extra money. What you don’t want to do is to have all of your eggs in one basket.

3 – Reduce Your Expenses: Many Americans have left the rat race and have found ways to live on half or even on a quarter of what they were making previously. It is possible – if you are willing to reduce your expenses. In the future times are going to be tougher, so learn to start living with less today.

4 – Learn To Grow Your Own Food: Today the vast majority of Americans are completely dependent on being able to run down to the supermarket or to the local Wal-Mart to buy food. But what happens when the U.S. dollar declines dramatically in value and it costs ten bucks to buy a loaf of bread? If you learn to grow your own food (even if is just a small garden) you will be insulating yourself against rising food prices.

5 – Make Sure You Have A Reliable Water Supply: Water shortages are popping up all over the globe. Water is quickly becoming one of the “hottest” commodities out there. Even in the United States, water shortages have been making headline news recently. As this becomes more critical, it will be imperative for you and your family to have a reliable source of water. Some Americans have learned to collect rainwater and many others are using advanced technology such as atmospheric water generators to provide water for their families. But whatever you do, make sure that you are not caught without a decent source of water in the years ahead.

6 – Buy Land: This is a tough one, because prices are still quite high. However, home prices are going to be declining over the coming months, and eventually there are going to be some really great deals out there. The truth is that you don’t want to wait too long either, because once the Fed’s inflationary policies totally tank the value of the U.S. dollar, the price of everything (including land) is going to go sky high. If you are able to buy land when prices are low, that is going to insulate you a great deal from the rising housing costs that will occur when the U.S dollar tanks.

7 – Get Off The Grid: An increasing number of Americans are going “off the grid”. Essentially what that means is that they are attempting to operate independently of the utility companies. In particular, going “off the grid” will enable you to protect yourself from the rapidly rising energy prices that we are going to see in the future. If you are able to produce energy for your own home, you won’t be freaking out like your neighbors are when electricity prices triple.

8 – Store Non-Perishable Supplies: Non-perishable supplies are one investment that is sure to go up in value. Not that you would resell them. You store up non-perishable supplies because you are going to need them someday. So why not stock up on the things that you are going to need now before they double or triple in price in the future? Your money is not ever going to stretch any further than it does right now.

9 – Develop Stronger Relationships: Americans have become very insular creatures. We act like we don’t need anyone or anything. But the truth is that as the economy melts down we are going to need each other. It is those that are developing strong relationships with family and friends right now that will be able to depend on them when times get hard.

10 – Get Educated and Stay Flexible: When times are stable, it is not that important to be informed because things pretty much stay the same. However, when things are rapidly changing it is imperative to get educated and to stay informed so that you will know what to do. The times ahead are going to require us all to be very flexible, and it is those who are willing to adapt that will do the best when things get tough.

“The federal government is sending each of us a $600 rebate. If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, the money goes to China. If we spend it on gasoline it goes to the Arabs. If we buy a computer it will go to India. If we purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. If we purchase a good car it will go to Germany. If we purchase useless crap it will go to Taiwan and none of it will help the American economy. The only way to keep that money here at home is to spend it on prostitutes and beer, since these are the only products still produced in US. I’ve been doing my part.” – Marc Faber

More about Marc Faber, fellow Chiang Mai expat and fund manager.

Because if you could, you change who you are now and what’s possible for you in the future. This isn’t science fiction. Who we believe ourselves to be and what we’re capable of is not about events of our past, but how we respond to those events. Every moment of every day, our accumulation of judgment about what the world is and our relationship to it, is determining how we respond to circumstances now and into the future. Most people believe that by accumulating more knowledge and experience they can improve their judgment and avoid repeating the past, or at least improve upon it. But the powerful perspective that comes with wisdom isn’t accumulated, it is revealed.

Welcome to my jungle

While studying in Sri Lanka 25 years ago, I was privileged to learn an ancient form of meditation. The practice is called Vipassana, which means “To see things as they really are.” It’s as simple as focusing attention on the breath, so that all other thoughts fall away and insights arise. It sounds easy, but it’s not. As my teacher, Godwin Seneveratne said, “Each thought is like a monkey, swinging from tree to tree; one thought takes your attention some place, which leads to another place and we become lost in a story.” If you try not to think about something, the more you can’t ignore it. For example, throughout your day today, whatever you do, don’t think about the monkey. Just forget I even mentioned the monkey.

You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?

Even if the monkey doesn’t immediately occur to you, it will later. It will show up in your dreams. It is already swinging through the tangled jungle of your unconscious mind.

When most of us want to change, we think back to a failure or unpleasant situation from the past and promise ourselves, “I won’t do that again” or “I won’t let that happen again.” In doing so, we bring it to the forefront of our minds and dwell on it. We give it color and texture and amplify the emotions associated with it. We then try to turn away from it, forget it for a while and focus on something else. In trying to forget past failure by replaying it in our minds, we are committing mental energy to that failure and inviting it’s re-occurrence.

There is no failure, only feedback.

Through meditation, the nature of that feedback reveals itself. It is pure, untainted by judgment, fear or longing. It offers us a liberating new perspective on the past that empowers us to create positive change, instead of being held hostage by circumstances. This practice isn’t about reflection, it’s about clarity through emptying out. When we clear our minds, we invite the experience of insight.

When I am empty I am filled up; filled with renewed energy to engage in the creative process that resonates with people and the world around me. I have no way to know what form it should take, or exactly how it will reveal itself. I look at the future I am creating with purposeful uncertainty, knowing that like the past, I am free to define it for myself.

Untouched alike by pity, love or hate

All of us have faith in something; the economy, humanity, or redemption in the afterlife. It’s our absolute trust or confidence in these things that keeps us looking to the future and gives us hope for something better to come. But believing something without evidence is simply superstition; a celebration of ignorance we dress in the holy cloak of religion.

While science cannot explain everything, religion lets us off the hook for any serious inquiry. The mantra of faith is, “Things will eventually go my way.” This is an intellectual cop out, because when things don’t go our way, there is the ‘eventually’ to comfort us. We also don’t really define what “my way” is, so it is situational rather than absolute. I’ve held such faith for a long time, but am now at an impasse where instead of seeking answers when things don’t go my way, I am asking different questions.

Faith has a lot to do with being rewarded for something; hard work, piousness, good deeds, honesty. Despite our experience that exposes the fallacies of these beliefs, most of us can’t imagine ourselves in a world without some kind of karmic laws. What has changed for me recently isn’t about the existence of such laws, but how I perceive the idea of reward itself.

A reward is something that we earn, so we tend to think of it as proportional to the effort we have expended in its pursuit. No pain, no gain or you don’t get something for nothing are the prevailing beliefs around this. When we are rewarded, things get better for us, so there’s also the notion of progression toward greater and greater compensation for our faith as we stumble toward redemption.

Rewards, whether spiritual or material don’t come from without, yet that’s where we expect to find them; through work, the church, family or community. When we live for the journey, we no longer rely on faith or its compensation. I used to believe that rewards were intrinsic to the experience itself, but now I have given up the notion that there is any such thing as a reward.

Happiness and satisfaction aren’t rewards because they’re not given or received. They don’t come from an experience, they come from the way in which we choose to perceive the experience. A state of mind or a feeling is not a reward, it’s the result of the interpretations we make. When we’re happy, it’s because we perceive what we’re doing as being in harmony with what matters to us; we’re creatively engaged in meaningful activities that are an authentic expression of our values. I like to talk about success in these terms, but unlike conventional definitions, there is no goal to reach, or competency to achieve. Success is to be found in the congruency between being and doing, not having.

Most people believe that rewards are in the having, as compensation for their faith and effort. The truth is that the things we value most – love, joy, freedom – we create ourselves and they can’t be given or taken away. Anything else is a consolation prize.

When you believe in things
That you don’t understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition aint the way
— Stevie Wonder

Lord of multi-tasking

I frequently hear people talk dismissively about their jobs, especially the higher up they are in the corporate pyramid. One of my workshop participants was a senior VP for Proctor & Gamble. When I asked him what he did, he began with, “I’m the Regional Director of Sales…”, then he paused, chuckled to himself and said, “I sell toothpaste.” What came next was how much he loved horses but had no opportunity to ride, how much he missed Virgina and how we all make sacrifices. It made me want to cry.

In my corporate work-life balance courses, I use a nice analogy from my friend Dana Breitenstein to introduce the western view on time. We conceive life as something divided up like the segments of an orange. We have our work life, spiritual life, family life, private life, physical life, educational life and so on. All of these are separate and compartmentalized as we don’t want one to interfere with the other. This creates internal disagreement; a disharmony that amounts to a kind of schitzophrenia. It fills us with contradictions.

It’s the competitive ambitious persona at work, who struggles to reconcile with the easy-going and compromising care giver. The personal self who can’t live up to the promises or expectations of the spiritual self. The private part of us who despises the superficial, inauthentic social self. When we talk about self loathing, we should be specific about which self is loathing which.

Another way in which we pit ourselves against ourselves is to try and assign time to everything and therefore “balance” our life. Work-life balance is a contradiction. It is a kind of perverse corporate-speak, and because I have learned this language, I use it to sell my own ideas, which I believe better resolve this incongruity. To presume that there is a separateness between life and work is like saying “I love my family but I hate my kids.”

So consider that the majority of stress in our life comes not from work, but from trying to balance “work” with “life”. Because we treat work as an obligation and something that robs us of our free time, we resist its demands. Our work is not only part of our life it is our life. It’s where we learn to get much of our status and validation and forms the hierarchy of how we relate to people. When we just tolerate work and seek to live a wonderful life, we’re creating a contradiction that we cannot ever hope to reconcile. If we want to remove the stress between work and life, we must learn to become comfortable with ambiguity, and integrate rather than try to maintain separateness of selves.

I have devoted a significant part of my life to deliberately blurring the lines between conventional definitions of work, play, family, hobby, learning, worship and rest. I do this because there is a huge amount of psychic energy that can be liberated from holding up all the partitions between states. I found that when I began to treat work as a learning game, I could create endless variations of this game that other people would pay to play. Mowing the grass? This is a kind of meditation for me, and there’s no way I would pay someone to do this when I’m home, because it fills me with a sense of pride and serenity. I come from the midwest, where I was raised in the religion of lawn care. It’s not a task to be outsourced, it’s a ritual wherein I commune with nature. Household chores? Beautifying my living space, actually.

What some may call “positive thinking”, I consider to be an entirely different paradigm of what constitutes obligation. I believe we turn choices into obligations in order to reduce the anxiety that comes from making choices. This anxiety is our paradoxical relationship to freedom, where we justify the necessity of doing something we don’t want to do by defining it as obligation. Paying taxes, standing in line at the DMV, sitting through a fun-sucking meeting, are somehow more tolerable when we tell ourselves, “This is how it is.” What we choose to ignore is the payoff we get from them.

When I treat all my time as free time, I notice how enjoyable they can be. Everyday errands become an adventure. I strike up a conversation with a 5-year old while in line at the bakery and am schooled in the merits of the Crayola glow station. While at the garage to pick up a replacement cup holder, I learn from my mechanic, Michael, how changing my fuel filter will significantly improve gas mileage on the Rover and I learn how to repair a broken bicycle chain while at the shop to change a punctured tire. What began as a list of “have to’s” unfolded as an enjoyable learning experience.

I remember 10 years ago, when my friend Andy Henderson, a U.S. Navy JAG was visiting Hong Kong with his ship’s battle group, I came down from Guangzhou, China, where I was living, to meet him. While enjoying a tour of the aircraft carrier John Stennis, Andy said how great it was that we, college classmates were meeting in Hong Kong. I said that I had to come down to Hong Kong at least once a month to meet clients and do my banking. “That’s so cool,” said Andy, “That you get to visit Hong Kong so often.” At which point it dawned on me that yes, “I get to come to Hong Kong”, not “I have to come to Hong Kong.” Previously, I had seen this 5-hour round-trip journey as a huge hassle; taxis, trains, border crossings, crowded subways, and a long line at HSBC. In that moment, it changed from an obligation to a privilege, and I began to enjoy it. More amazingly, people now went out of their way to be kind to me. Girls smiled at me, food tasted better and service in general seemed to magically improve. What was an errand that I dreaded, became something to look forward to.

The things we have to do are joyless. The things we get to do are awesome. These are often the same things.

Like the Hindu god Shiva, who dances the world in and out of existence, we are a continuous convergence of opposing forces that we should embrace, not partition or resist. When we celebrate our paradoxical natures, forgiving the differences between doctrine and practice, between intention and action, we are free to relate to relate to our world as we choose, instead of how we have to. What we will find is passion; a fire that consumes and renews with a creative power that once we may have feared but learn to welcome.

Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose

There was a tradition among the Samurai of envisioning their own deaths in battle so as to make them fearless of dying when their time came. Ideally, they sought to die by the hand of another Samurai, or a respected adversary. Dying with honor was as important to them as living with honor. The samurai are no longer, but their code has left a deep imprint on the Japanese psyche and has powerful implications for helping the rest of us understand how to live without fear of dying.

The first line of Hagakure tells us what we already know: we all want to live. With elegant simplicity, it underscores the essence of why we act the way we do. Instinctively, we act out of fear. We cling to life. Survival is the very basis of our programming and much of what we make out of life is in response to fear of losing; losing control, losing out, losing face, losing life. So what we manifest is our way of coping with these perceived threats on one level or another. But it’s not just survival that drives us, it’s everything in life we do to avoid facing the inevitable.

I recently made a silent offer that helped me to understand the thinking of the Samurai. As I was being wheeled into surgery one morning 5 months ago, I offered that in the scenario where only my daughter or I would survive, I asked that it would be my daughter. It gave me peace of mind and eased all concerns I had about the operation. I believed that I would be giving up what had been a very fulfilling life up to that point, so that my daughter and wife would continue to enjoy their lives together. I didn’t necessarily believe in such an inevitable trade-off, but was ready to cash in my cosmic insurance policy.

I knew how grateful Nam would be to keep Natalie, and I felt this was most important thing I could make possible. It satisfied me to know that I had nothing to fear because what I was willing to give away would allow something greater to continue. This was a liberating feeling. I didn’t think of my offer as cavalier or heroic, because in that moment, dying didn’t seem like anything to be afraid of; it was just the best way for me to serve those I loved. Such an honor resonated with me and made perfect sense.

In the wake of these events, I feel that as I’ve already been willing to give away my life for someone else, that to die now is no longer something to be feared. Though my offer was denied, I see that a way of living is also a way of dying. When we live as if we’re already dead, the things we fear most become irrelevant and we can focus on living with purpose rather than just avoiding the inevitable.

I’m fully committed to dying in style, a little every day.

The only way out of a crisis is through it

Make a beautiful effort.

I’ve come to see that while we live in a world of measurement, where results are what matter, we must not forget the value of making a beautiful effort. This is about transforming ourselves in the process of failing at something. It is risking everything in a game we are bound to lose, doubling down when the odds are completely against us.

We tend to take on those challenges where we have a known likelihood of success. We consider what is prudent and practical, which give us the illusion of safety as we roll toward the inevitable. If safety is an illusion then so is risk. It is the frog in the well — the little voice in our head that warns, “This is not who you are.” Sometimes it reminds us, “You failed at this before, you’ll likely fail again, so stay where you are, nobody gets hurt.”

It is knowing who we are by what we have done that gives us a tolerance of ‘reasonable’ risk. But what we have done is not who we are, it is who we were. Whether we failed before is irrelevant in estimating the odds of future success. Success is how we define it, and as the NLP presupposition goes, “There is no failure, only feedback.”

One of the greatest causes of stress and unhappiness is our fixation on a narrow, random definition of success. We become trapped in the duality of winning and losing. We come to judge ourselves as winners or losers in the games we play, often forgetting that the game is playing us. At the end of the day, it’s we ourselves who make these rules, stacking the odds against ourselves in a game that we make nearly impossible to win.

It is those who, in the words of Teddy Roosevelt, “Fail while daring greatly,” create a place in our collective consciousness by leaving an inspiring legacy. While our world of measurement rewards success, our capacity for greatness is as much about failure as it is about achievement. When we bring our best selves to the game in the pursuit of something truly noble, winning or losing matters less than how the process shapes our character. Perhaps the consolation prize is that our efforts may inspire others to take on similarly great challenges. For me, winning or losing is irrelevant; it’s all about who I’m becoming in the game.

The person perhaps most famous for his achievements, without ever reaching his goal was Sir Ernest Shackelton, the celebratred British explorer. He led three failed attempts to reach the south pole, first as an officer with Robert Falcon Scott’s expedition, where Shackleton fell ill and had to be sent home early. He then led the Nimrod expedition which due to the bad weather, was cut short. Most spectacularly, was Shackleton’s trans-antarctic attempt on the Endurance, in which the ship became trapped in the ice pack and crushed, forcing the men onto the drifting floes and ending in a legendary crossing of the treacherous Weddell Sea in whaling boats 18 months later. His crew of 27 miraculously survived the journey, and Shackleton was lionized by his men and knighted by the Queen.

Better a live donkey than a dead lion, Shackleton famously said, but he also understood the value of making a beautiful effort. Recklessness and carelessness are not the same as putting it all on the line in the defining moments of our lives. Those moments are opportunities to transcend ourselves, to capture the imagination and move the world forward.

This is not to say we should enter into a challenge with the sole intention of making a beautiful effort. Rather it is our sense of mission and purposeful belief in the significance of our quest that inspires, regardless of success or failure. Trying has no place here. Trying is rooted in the expectation of failure, as a way to comfort ourselves when things don’t work out. Trying dilutes intention. It may be sincere, but it always falls short. Giving up trying is creating a space for empassioned commitment. Once the fear of failure is removed, new opportunities for success present themselves.

So I’ve stopped trying to be successful. I’ve given up on avoiding failure. I’m focused on being; being the guy who makes things happen, who inspires, who takes on meaningful challenges with passion, regardless of outcome. Where this leads I do not know, but I know I’ll be ready for it.

“For scientific leadership, give me Scott, for swift and efficient travel give me Amundsen. But when you are in a hopeless situation, when you are seeing no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.” – Sir Raymond Priestley, from the Nimrod Expedition

5 Flags: the truly unbounded life

In a post from last August, Metaphysical Gravity I defined mobility as “the freedom to purposefully choose to direct one’s self”. This idea isn’t necessarily about going somewhere as it is about being someone. When we are being the person we envision ourselves to be, we are in flow. We are unconstrained by the need to measure up, to come across, to hunker down. These are the limits given by our past; obsolete beliefs about what we can be, do and have.

I say obsolete because beliefs tend to have a shelf life. I can believe in something and even in the face of overwhelming evidence against it, I will continue to believe it, because I have allowed this belief to define me. Without it, I am faced with the terrifying prospect of becoming someone else. So we tend to resolve this cognitive dissonance by refusing to see what is, and instead see it only as it relates to what has been. The known almost always wins out over the unknown, and though we may put on new shoes, we walk down the old road, as the Chinese saying goes.

Mobility is about where we choose to direct ourselves. It begins with a state of mind and results in our experiencing the things that we enjoy the most. We enjoy them because we choose them, they are not chosen for us. Living a life of mobility is visioneering these experiences; strategically creating them as concepts, defining them, building behaviors around them and turning them into results.

So here are some obsolete beliefs I have identified through adopting a lifestyle inspired by a concept called 5 Flags:

1. Work
2. Patriotism
3. Borders

Let’s start with work. Work is evil. Nothing good comes from work, only more work. What about the pyramids or the Great Wall? It’s no different than the slave labor that built our modern corporations, except now there is a dental plan. Maybe. For those who say work is noble or there is dignity in work, I say bollocks. Work is what we convince ourselves we must do because we see no other choice. We continually fail to notice how we choke off possibilities in order to maintain our belief that we must work hard to provide for our families or achieve our potential. We dismiss the truly enjoyable ways of accomplishing these ends as unrealistic, and martyr ourselves in the name of obligation. What we believe we must do blinds us to all the wonderful things we could do, and traps us in the monotony of making a living instead of making a life.

I have stricken the word “work” along with the word “try” from my vocabulary. The words we use create images, emotions and behaviors that subconsciously drive our results. So when I am creatively engaged or playing, I am not working, and I am happy. I am being of service. I am creating for a purpose greater than myself. Not all of this activity makes money, but that’s not my primary goal. Money is just one benefit of a vision achieved.

Next is patriotism, the last refuge of the scoundrel. Patriotism is big these days, as we justify our military involvement in various lands. You can’t really call these places countries, because in the words of Frank Zappa, you can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer. Afghanistan? Not a country. Iraq? Well, they do have a football team.

The Bush administration was notorious for using patriotism, indeed the Patriot Act, to curb Americans’ freedoms in the name of protecting our freedom. It was patriotic to support our troops who were fighting for the freedom that was attacked on 9-11. But let’s face it, if terrorists were attacking freedom, Holland would be a smoldering ruin. In Brunei there’s no income tax. Australians don’t have to register for the draft (there isn’t one). All Swiss men keep a fully automatic weapon at home and gun deaths are extremely rare. In Thailand prostitution isn’t prosecuted. There are no open container laws in the UK and politicians regularly heckle the Prime Minister during sessions of Parliment. How did it come to be that Americans see ourselves as having a monopoly on freedom, and supporting foreign aggression our patriotic duty?

In terms of economic freedom, the US isn’t at the top and is falling fast, according to the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal index. We’re just above Denmark at #8. The Kiwis, meanwhile, got game.

Patriotism is the flair on our politicians’ lapels. It’s the mullet-wearing, NASCAR watching, tea party protest sign misspelling, chest-beating idiocy that we wear as our national pride. Not to paint it with too broad a brush. In the Colbert Report’s Olympic coverage, Steven Colbert had team-USA posters in his studio that read across the bottom: “Defeat the World!”. That pretty much sums it up. I stopped caring about the Olympics when China began fielding girls for their gymnastic team who still had all their baby teeth, but mostly because the Olympics whip Americans into a patriotic frenzy that obscures the beauty of athletic performance itself.

Last is borders. The unbounded life doesn’t recognize them, which blurs the distinction between travel, living, business and pleasure. It’s a nice segue into 5 Flags, which is also about looking at countries more as if they are hotels, and choosing to spend time in a variety of places where we receive the best service. There’s no place for patriotism in this lifestyle, or work, for that matter. Just enjoying the best the world has to offer while creating value for ourselves and others.

What are the 5 Flags? There’s a nice definition from escapeartist.com that goes like this:

Flag #1: Citizenship
You carry a passport from your native land. This is where you are typically taxed.

Flag #2: Domicile
Where you have official residence in a second country, regardless of how much time you live there.

Flag #3: Business Base
A separate place from your country of citizenship or domicile and where you earn your money.

Flag #4: Banking & Asset Havens
This is where your assets are held and managed by proxy and safely away from where your money is earned.

Flag #5: Playground
The place where you like to spend a lot of your time as a frequent tourist and unofficial resident.

I don’t carry multiple passports or stash my money in a Swiss bank, but I have also legally avoided paying US taxes for 15 years while maintaining citizenship and property there, despite an increasingly intrusive IRS. My wife and I have our favorite playgrounds, Winter residence and businesses in a third country. I’m not a millionaire (yet), but live like one without excessive debt. This lifestyle doesn’t require renouncing love of country or a regular paycheck, but encourages us to discard obsolete ideas to enjoy all the benefits of living a truly mobile and unbounded life.

Post Script
I am happy to learn that the business insider website thinks highly of my choice for domicile.

It lingers dormant
in the dark recesses
of memory.

Tears are the vector
that spread its contagion
among us.

It seems I’ve beat it
then there’s a welling up
in my throat.

I feel the tremor
and then a convulsion
that chokes me.

There is something sharp
tugging like a barbed hook
of regret.

I can’t escape when
every cell remembers
how things were.

At some point I will let go

It's time to sign off

I’m feeling the zeitgeist here, because no sooner had I put this plan in motion as one of my New Year’s promises, when political blogger Ariana Huffington wrote an editorial the same day entitled, “Move Your Money“.

This led me to the volunteer Move Your Money website, with a succinct and powerful message about why we should all be making this conscientious change right now.

I’ve been dealing with one of these too-big-to-fail institutions for over 15 years now, because they have kept acquiring my other banks, including my mortgage company. I know that such banks employ tens of thousands of people and are responsible for a big chunk our our economy’s financial services, so for sake of anonymity, let’s just call this institution “Skank of America”.

Just so you know, I really like the people who work at my local branch. They are lovely and helpful, until I have a real problem. Then I am sent to a special circle of hell, where I have a mind-numbing series of telephone conversations with people who seem to have all been trained by Deputy Dawg. In the end, no one is able to help me, because no one has the authority to solve, only to escalate, and eventually the issue goes up to someone who is sufficiently empowered not to care.

So I began looking at Viking Bank, literally across the street in West Seattle from Skank of America. It’s kind of frumpy looking, with no landscaping and an uber-gay three pink triangles logo. I noticed it every time I went to my auto parts guys next door and thought, “Hmm. This gay viking bank doesn’t get much business. Maybe it’s because they’re going after a very narrow customer demographic. Maybe if they included straight people and non-vikings, they might do better.” Then I realized, that this was just a local community bank that cared more about customers than branding and marketing.

Viking bank is small, with a capitalization of just over half a billion dollars. The bank was started in 1992 by a local obstetrician who found it difficult to get a loan for his successful practice, and now Viking has seven branches throughout Puget Sound. It’s board is made of original founders and experienced local banking professionals. Each community bank branch’s advisory group consists of local business leaders. They’ve been big supporters of local fishing industry and small private enterprise in the region.

Viking is barely on the bank ratings radar. People’s Bank, a lender that I’m assuming is run by communists in downtown Seattle, rates much higher. But even if your community bank is unrated or only gets one star, it may not be a big deal. Rating bank strength is really complicated and every rating agency has it’s own secret sauce. Things to look at include, management & board quality, assets, liquidity, core earnings, capital level, composition of deposits and regulatory compliance. All of this stuff is can be found in the bank’s annual report, usually through their website.

A nice tip from Move Your Money to help evaluate the financial strength of a bank is this rating tool from the Independent Community Bankers Association website, which you can then compare with Bankrate.com.

Most importantly, in terms of you not losing your money in case of default, is FDIC membership. This insurance program covers you for up to $100k per account per bank. Until 2013, the insured limit has been raised to $250k. Since the start of the FDIC in 1934, no depositor has ever lost a penny of insured deposits. Every year some banks fail, but 99% of them do not. So how do you know if your bank is in trouble? Look for these warning signs:

1. A long line of anxious people outside the door (natch)
2. An amorphous chalk outline of the bank’s CEO on the sidewalk
3. The bank has been renamed “Jamba Juice”

If you’re thinking, “Hey, Barclay, what about those of us with more than $250k in the bank? And aren’t gay vikings a threat to the institutions of traditional vikings?” My answer is that you are a silly person, because you should never have this kind of cash in the bank anyway, and the FDIC separately insures you for self-directed retirement accounts such as IRA’s and SEPs. Your joint checking is considered one account, while your spouse or children can have insured CD or savings accounts. Got more than half a million? You should know about 5 flags (not the theme park), which is the subject of my next post.

Going with a smaller community bank, even though it may lack the pizazz, big capitalization and ATM locations, will often give you higher yields, not charge you for basic services and have the same technology (online banking, bill payer, coffee pot in the lobby) as your gorilla banks. Best of all, these banks are far more likely to treat you like a human being and invest your money in other local institutions. Go in and have a talk with the bank manager to get a feel for the service and ask about their major investment holdings. Local industries: good. Collateralized Debt Obligations: bad.

I’ve initiated the balance transfer of credit cards, checking, money market, mortgage and other holdings all to Viking. Our money should stay with those local institutions that best serve the community. Too-big-to-fail will cease to be relevant when such banks no longer have our deposits. I hope all of you reading this, if you haven’t done so already, make this move now and help rectify the abuses of a system that our government seems unwilling to change.

Forever part of the same whole

Quantum entanglement is the fundamental concept of quantum physics, and one that defies both classical and relativistic concepts of space and time. We know it exists, but we cannot explain why. It is what Einstein described as “Spooky action at a distance”.

In The God Effect, author Brian Clegg explains the effect in this way:

“It’s possible to link together two quantum particles — photons of light or atoms, for example — in a special way that makes them effectively two parts of the same entity. You can then separate them as far as you like, and a change in one is instantly reflected in the other.”

In order to make sense of this, physicists have proposed theories involving “hidden variables” to account for the spin of each particle that is determined when the entangled pair is created. It’s as if there is encoded information, like DNA, that connects objects, though we have no way to know what information is communicated between them. If we measure the spin of an entangled electron, it communicates the value somehow to its twin — but we have no idea what the spin was going to be.

It appears that the hidden variable describing one particle must be able to change instantly when the other is measured. This is the “God Effect”, because there is an instantaneous communication between separated particles no matter how far apart the particles are. Once the quantum states of constituting objects are linked, one object can no longer be adequately described without full mention of its counterpart. They forever remain parts of the same whole.

This instantaneous non-locality of entanglement must apply to everything in the universe, as we are made of the same cosmic stuff. Throughout our lives, we form bonds that create an emotional/psychic imprint and these become embedded in the states in which we operate. Even as our states change, we can never escape the fundamental forces of entanglement. We forever maintain linkage to our counterparts, whose “spin”, or state continues to be reflected in us, though we may not be aware of it or how it works.

Entanglement is not the same as family ties, nor is it determined by how long we remain in a particular state. It is our innate sense of common humanity, the mysterious way in which we create links to one another that transcends time and space and reminds us that we are never alone.

You take two bodies and you twirl them into one
Their hearts and their bones
And they won’t come undone
– Paul Simon