Dear DK, that is Supular!

Congratulations.

That news made my day.

Keep up the good work.

I saw hope today, she was in Costco, in the form of a watch, made by Citizen. The package stated “Light Powered” yet no solar cell was visible. I thought about the evolution of time pieces. Once large with weights and gears, then evolving to coiled springs, eventually a battery charged from the burning of fossil fuel, and now simply light. We simply need to enlarge that concept and apply it on a large scale.

It seems time pieces were one of the first things to evolve, and other things soon followed, we can only hope that, that which evolved the watch, will itself evolve to become powered by the light.

I found a description of the watch.

Citizen Eco-Drive watches use the simplest, yet most technically advanced power generating and storage system in the Watch Manufacturing Industry. A Solar conversion panel and energy cell are the power provider for these Quartz Watches. Eco-Drive's ability to use light from any source to generate electrical power means that the supply is limitless and free. The absence of any added complex power generating machinery that would require additional upkeep is another big advantage.

It just so happens we now have evolved a house to match the evolutionary gains of the watch.

This house isn't just powered by light, it is fireproof, wind proof, water proof, flood proof, hurricane proof, tornado proof (only some shapes), pest proof, radiation proof, mold and fungus proof, and with advanced ventilation system is Hazardous gas, Chemical or Biological Warfare, Dust Storms, and Allergen safe.

The surface converts sunlight, has a geothermal energy booster, has it's own battery storage and stores rain fall. Large groups of them connect with other in a smart grid with the excess power supplying community essentials like schools and hospitals. They also form a wireless mesh network to carry data and communications in the White Space.

It costs less and lasts longer, with a 1,000 year warranty.

Click my name to read more, what a fantastic opportunity for investors that want to invest in Holistic Joint Venture, first come first serve.

Hoping to achieve global economies of scale creating affordable sustainable housing for everyone.

Click my name and check it out.

URL: housing.units.me

Dear DK,

This is great for you! Congratulations. Hope this will bring forth lots of possibilities and new intentions for you and c.s.

Hi Richard,

I do not know if you have ever heard of the Findhorn Organization, if not, hereunder a link in which you can read what they do as regards to setting up eco villages and housing:

http://www.wiserearth.org/organization/view/5c0528797ce182744a78892cf7f1181d

Perhaps a good idea for you to join people with same intentions and solutions.

Lots of ideas and inspiration can emerge from that :)

I tell you this because me too am progressing with the labyrinth. My special interest :)

Within short am going to follow a lecture of a Dutch writer/professor in Women's ethics and political science. She has written a very interesting book about a new feminine science: sacred geography or the sacral science of the landscape.

She discovered a whole labyrinthian society in a part of Italy (Toscan): the Etruscan civilization.

Founder of this sacral science is the Swiss philologer Dr. Kurt Derungs. He is developing a new method to read a landscape back to its age old hidden layers from matriarchal times, the cultures of the Goddesses. He presumes that one of the eldest cultural layers can be found in old Europe (in east, middle and south-Europe). The labyrinth is one of the eldest symbols of those civilizations.

Well, each in their own field, these all are wonderful ways for humans to proceed and give meaning to their surrounding.

When one is open and willing to learn one always proceeds on ones path. It just happens by itself :)

Best of luck to both of you!

Mieke

Dear DK,

I came across this by accident when I looked up Alice Bailey. I thought it an interesting correlation is there some connection? :) Makes for a compelling story line.

From Wiki:

Djwal Khul [1] [1] (variously spelled 'Djwhal Khul', 'Djwal Kul', or simply 'DK'), is supposed by some Theosophists and others to be a Tibetan Master in the tradition of ancient esoteric spirituality. The texts describe him as a member of the 'Spiritual Hierarchy', or 'Brotherhood', of Mahatmas, defined as the spiritual guides of mankind and teachers ancient cosmological, metaphysical, and esoteric principles that form the origin of all the world's great philosophies, mythologies and spiritual traditions.[2] According to Theosophical writings, Djwal Khul is said to work on furthering the spiritual evolution of our planet, using highly developed powers of meditation known as siddhis.

Djwal Khul's name first appeared in the work of Madame Blavatsky, a co-founder of the Theosophical Society. Though he is falsely attributed to helping write the Secret Doctrine, published in 1888, which was primarily written by Koot Hoomi and Morya, according to Blavatsky, Koot Hoomi and Morya within the Mahatman letters.

The writings state that he also lives an outwardly normal life among ordinary human beings.[3] Theosophical texts state that the Mahatmas, members of the esoteric Brotherhood, were considered to have provided "hidden" guidance for the founding of the Theosophical Society in 1875. The texts state that Djwal Kul was also known by the name Gai Ben-Jamin in his youth, before he became a "Master", as he was later called. In some writings, his name was omitted and he was referred to by the abbreviation "Master D. K." or the appellation "The Tibetan". [4][5][2][3]

In 1919, the cook at the American Theosophical headquarters café, Alice A. Bailey (1880-1949), began writing books she described as being telepathically dictated to her by a "Master of the Wisdom" she referred to as "The Tibetan."[6] (later associated with the initials D.K., and eventually the name "Djwal Khul", also spelled by her as 'Djwhal Khul'). Bailey stated that after initial resistance, she was eventually persuaded to write down the communications from this source. She wrote for 30 years, from 1919 to 1949.[7]

Bailey wrote that Djwal Khul's intention was the revelation of esoteric truth in our time. She believed her work was done on behalf of the "Hierarchy" of advanced beings, that she stated included Djwal Khul, would help prepare the way for the "Reappearance of the Christ", and would be the second in a series of three revelations meant to usher in the New Age, she referred to as the "Age of Aquarius".

In a preface included in many of Bailey's books, Djwal Khul, in the dictations described by Bailey, refers to himself as an abbot of a Tibetan monastery and the spiritual preceptor of a large group of Lamas. She wrote that he lived in Northern India, near the borders of Tibet. Other than that the books do not include personal details about Djwal Khul, and the dictated content focuses on his esoteric teachings. Of the minimal personal details, Bailey writes that Djwhal Khul considers himself a "Master" and an advanced disciple in the spiritual, non-physical, Ashram of the Master Koot Hoomi, who is considered by Theosophists and other followers of Alice Bailey's teachings to be another member of the same "Hierarchy" of advanced beings.

C.W. Leadbeater claimed that he saw Djwal Khul teleport into a room in which he and Madame Blavatsky were sitting. [8]

Speaking of advanced beings, there is an advanced beings web site. Click my name.

Congratulations, Dr. Matai, on this very informative interview by the Editor-in-Chief of the Wall Street Journal's Wealth Bulletin. Nice photo, too! I was extracting the text for those of us with slow-loading computers, but it seems that in the process, some extra and nervy (but maybe amusing) commentary flew in from out of the blue. Even the utterings of Taleb and Malleret were not safe. ……. Well…..I hope you get a laugh from it and that your very competent and clear interviewer will chuckle, too. And again, Congratulations!

PS I am thinking that in the use it now seems to be taking on, the term "black swan" is perhaps an overly evocative phrase, too polarized and polarizing, too sensationalist and facile, too open to negative misinterpretation, too fear laden, especially considering that there can certainly occur good black swans--very very good black swans indeed, like Lincoln, like the light bulb, like the Beatles, like Mary Lou Retton, Olympic gymnast from another galaxy. The term "black swan," as we are beginning to use it, seems an unnecessary distraction away from the real sense of "unanticipatable synergistic confluence and/or result, more than the sum of its parts"--also bearing in mind, while we're at it, that one person's good can be seen as another person's undesired event and that one person's result can also be another person's cause, in dovetail fashion. Maybe it is simply that we have reached a new evolutionary doorway and we can now glimpse that Mother Earth, GAIA, is stretching, twitching, and coming alive, her electronic-communications nervous system extending its tendrils--jagged, astonishing lightnings are flashing, as on a webpage overburdened with links, pop-ups, and animations and tables of all kinds. Something has gotta GIVE! This is a good time for prayer for strength and goodness from all the Loving Powers of the Universe and beyond. Let's hope the happy will consistently outweigh the sad. People are capable of astonishing goodness and kindness. As they tell us in AA, every human being IS a miracle and is Capable of miracles. We are luminous beings of light. Can we please love each other? Our very existence on this planet is, of course, nothing else but a "black swan." Will we be Good or Bad for ourselves and to each other? The planet will survive regardless.

The Black Swan Survival Guide

An Interview with D. K. Matai

November 24, 2008

For a man who spends his waking hours pondering the inherent insecurity of 21st century living, D. K. Matai seems remarkably relaxed. Small, meticulously dressed, and impeccably mannered, he perches on a sofa surveying the skyline of London's Canary Wharf, the former home of collapsed U.S. investment banks Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, and explains in measured, precisely pronounced sentences that the financial crisis is only the beginning of our problems. "The stock market downturn is an indication of instability from a geopolitical standpoint and from a financial-asset standpoint," Matai says. "We are encountering the instability inherent in not being able to plan for the future." As founder of the Asymmetric-Threats Contingency Alliance, a philanthropic network of five thousand politicians, academics, and business leaders, Matai spends his time thinking about the risks and opportunities the rest of us seldom contemplate: how the rise of nanotechnology might affect the environment, what mankind might derive from genetic experiments, how humanity might exist in a future dominated by mass robotics. It may sound like science fiction, but in fact, technology has rapidly changed the planet and our lives in the past two decades. "We are converging on a bio-, info-, nanorevolution," says Matai matter of factly. "This creates unknown unknowns. These are the black swans."

Good black swans are every bit as possible as bad black swans, of course, and maybe even more so--moments of grace in human history, special people, special occurrences, that moved humanity forward in an unexpectedly and synergistically wonderful way. But for better or for worse, the term "black swan" has become an emblem for the unpredictable calamities erupting in these uncertain times. The phrase has entered common use via the best-selling book of the same name published last year by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a statistician, philosopher, and former options trader. In Taleb's words, a black swan refers to an event "outside the realm of our expectations, in the sense that nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility." Until a black swan was discovered, people had always assumed that all swans were white, because only white ones had ever before been seen. Matai uses the term "asymmetric risk" to convey the same idea as a negative black swan--asymmetric because such risks fall outside the realms of "normal" assessments, the bell-shaped distribution curve of probable events that is the foundation of modern risk management.

Thierry Malleret, managing partner of Geneva-based Rainbow Insight, an advisory boutique for private clients, says: "As human beings, we love stability and hate uncertainty. We like bell curve distributions, which assume independence among components of a system, because events in bell curve distributions are relatively predictable. The possibility of black swans, almost by definition, is not captured by traditional bell curve distributions. Black swans, at this stage of human understanding, can be schematized probabilistically only in retrospect, and in the form of power law distributions, which are as yet essentially unpredictable (relationships between two variables such that one is mathematically proportional to an exponential power of the other). People naturally do not take readily to the unpredictability of power law distributions, but in an increasingly energized and interconnected world, people really have no choice. The power law distribution is not a new phenomenon. Definitionally, power law distributions are found in most human, nonlinear systems, where tens of millions of occurrences have no appreciable impact beyond their immediate sphere of influence while a small number of others, usually in unpredictable conjunctions, change almost everything." Malleret is a member of Matai's Asymmetric-Threats Contingency Alliance and has published a book on how businesses might meet the challenge of black swans. The Asymmetric-Threats Contingency Alliance has a list of the major areas of concern and challenge the planet faces as it transverses the 21st century, including some of the following: pandemics, demographic skews, radical poverty, climate chaos, energy calamities, resource shortages, large-scale financial turmoil, international ethical crises of all sorts, organized crime, terrorism, geopolitical upheavals marked by growing nationalism, global predicaments solvable only by increased transhumanism, and complexities associated with rapid technological growth.

Black-swan events--unanticipatable events with huge negative effects--should be so rare by definition that they seem hardly worth considering, let alone worrying about. Yet they are happening with increasing and alarming frequency. We face a 21st century in which black swans are likely to arrive in flocks. Globalization is partially to blame. "The global economy is like a spider's web, with everything interwoven," says Matai. During periods of calm, this interconnectedness gives an appearance of greater stability, which can sometimes lull us into a false sense of security, increasing the potential for devastating black-swan events--exemplified by the speed with which the U.S. subprime lending crunch has become a global financial crisis. "Global swans will happen more and more because we live in a world where 1) risks, like goods and ideas, travel very fast and are highly contagious, where 2) small causes have big effects, and where 3) changes happen dramatically, not gradually," says Malleret. The current global financial crisis exhibits these three features. It is a black-swan event both in its inception and possible consequences, and we are just at the beginning of our surprises.

What does this mean for wealth management? In the age of insecurity, dive bombed by black swans, people--at least in the developed world--will invariably feel less wealthy regardless of whether they are actually poorer.

Matai states, "All these developments impact on our peace of mind. And what is wealth if not peace of mind?" In fact, Matai once spent an afternoon trying to determine with a group of Swiss private bankers what it was that attracted very wealthy individuals to their institutions. The "wish to achieve peace of mind" was the bankers' simple conclusion. In recent years, on the back of economic stability and remarkable asset returns, the focus of wealth management shifted to taking risks and making money. Where previously people made a fortune and then looked to preserve it, instead they wanted to make more money from their money. Recognition of black swans may prompt a reversal in this trend, suggests Matai. "I expect a philosophical change in wealth management. The desire to grow wealth will be much less pronounced. Instead, wealth management will be more about the desire to safeguard that wealth." But in a world bombarded by asymmetric risks, preserving capital is no longer straightforward, and accepted models--spreading bets, building efficient portfolios--cease to work. "If an individual is able to walk away from this debacle three years from now and say he didn't lose anything, that will be a great outcome," says Matai.

Taleb's suggestion is to put 90 percent of your assets into the most secure government bonds (perhaps inflation-protected bonds might be sensible) and invest the remainder in a wide array of high-risk ventures that provide exposure to the sorts of positive black swans that can generate extreme returns. There are, of course, numerous obstacles to applying this tactic in reality, the biggest of which is the psychological hurdle of throwing out whatever you have learned about portfolio diversification and about the tradeoff s between risk and reward.

Philip Watson, for instance, head of investment analysis and advice at Citi Private Bank, is not convinced by Taleb's suggested portfolio. "It is very risk averse and will severely limit potential upside," he says. "The idea of not putting your eggs in one basket still makes sense, and certainly, in an age of insecurity, diversifying your counterparty and market risk is advisable." Agreeing that Watson's advice is perfectly sensible within a conventional investment framework established over many years, Matai suggests that accepting black swans will begin to move investors beyond the confines of the conventional to an uncomfortable hinterland in which they will start to doubt hitherto basic beliefs.

Malleret says a growing number of wealthy families are already moving to portfolios not dissimilar to Taleb's (90 percent of one's assets go into the most secure government bonds and 10 percent go into a wide array of high-risk ventures that provide exposure to the sorts of positive black swans that can generate extreme returns). "These families are starting to question all the hypotheses that underpin conventional asset allocation"--hypotheses presumably based on probabilistic risk assessments that do not work in a black-swan world.

Taleb loves to illustrate a basic black-swan event as what happens to a turkey that is fed every day for over a thousand days. Everything in the turkey's experience points to the certainty it will be fed again on day one thousand and one. Instead, its neck is wrung. This basic assertion is that humans in general are like the turkey. We extrapolate from the past to the future without a second thought. When it comes to investment, we are even more gullible. How many fund managers actually can point to even one thousand straight days of positive returns? And the emergence of more black swans means a less predictable future.

Mallaret states that on a day-to-day basis, the investment world of tomorrow will be less risky but that underneath it all, it will be on a much more uncertain general footing. This disconnect between traditional probabilistic risk and the growing non-probabilistic field of uncertainty (bell curve versus power law) makes investors very uncomfortable. More uncertainty means we should expect the unexpected, build resilience, and be prepared. The exceptional wealth managers will be the ones good at joining the dots and making improbable connections. Unfortunately, most people's wealth managers are likely to be managing risk but ignoring uncertainty, and that should be worrying to those who care about wealth preservation. The realm of the black swan holds no easy answers and plenty of uncomfortable questions that it may be time to start asking ourselves.

Mieke, thank you for that link I checked it out. I guess we will see what transpires, so many forces at work.

So many individuals and groups with the same shared intentions yet they are all dispersed and divided and so are their energies.

Something needs to bring all of them together so that the energies may be focused. Of course the culprit preventing this is the ego. While the benefits of ego and independent agency are known the drawbacks are not easily overcome.

Hi Richard,

I do believe that all those shared, dispersed and divided intentions deep down work with the same heart energy and perform the task of clothing our earth not only with a brain but with a loving energy.

Evolution takes time, we cannot force it, only through our intent direct it into a certain direction.

Every one, each at one's own level plays a part in this.

We have already come a long way :)