Divine Emergence

(A science fiction short story by Max J. Pucher)

,Who am I?‘ I asked myself. ,Am I God?‘ I was involved in some process of creation but I assumed that a deity would know what it represented.
I watched as the perturbations of zero point energy followed my guiding thoughts. Maybe watching was not the right word, because it was not an effect that was visible to the naked eye. Actually at thirty-three digits behind the decimal point it was around 25 magnitudes smaller than the most powerful electron microscope could see things happening. But that would not be so for long. Soon the wave crests of emerging bosons would resonate together to interact with quarks and the tensors of the field would start to interact from their own restless existence. Right now the part of space I was imagining was like a primordial soup of energy on the loose, ready to jump into any form that felt good.

All it took was minute guiding nudges that were no more than fleeting thoughts. I let those float to existing material items and instantly I could feel the resonance shape the virgin segment of space. The summary effect of the field tensioning under the energy that was drawn into the materialization was very strong despite gravity being the most nimble of all forces.

The most amazing feeling was that of timelessness.

Only when a wave crest turned white with the spray of energy, then I could hear the clock of the universe tick as it swapped over and shed its probability potential by creating reality.

Otherwise it was still.

It was all there. The complete history of the universe and even the vast peaceful quiet before. I could even see the tiny ripple that represented the first clock tick of time that was called the Big Bang for a long time, because scientists lacked the imagination to see that the universe was perfectly balanced and the energy it consisted of was not introduced by a massive explosion. I could simply see that in each tiny segment of space all its energetic tensors always summed up to zero. That was the most powerful law of order and symmetry. No vast sweeping laws that had to be created, monitored and enforced by the powers of the creator, but each energy tick carried the singular divine law of nature in itself like Olympic torchbearers carried the light of the spirit.

I realized that there was now a new power of context in me that allowed me to interpret and understand what places like Olympia and even human beings working as scientists were. Knowledge came to me as I used it, but I was not able to think and search beyond my chain of thought.

My domain of space vortices of energy drew other structures closer and time started to pass as more and more symmetry swept across the whole universe that was still strangely confined to a Planck length. But it was vast and yet infinite as its field tensors shaped as Möbius loops curled back into their own unique universal existence.

The concepts of a human that recognized its own existence settled.

,What is space?‘ I asked. Each choice I had made had timelessly collapsed some wave energy potential and manifested the distance and time that created space.  Not empty but an energetic structure that could be replicated and warped itself into an infinite number of universes that together summed up to zero. The universe was not huge but identical to the smallest building block of itself. When its energy vibration resonated it shed new universal elements. Thus it could endlessly expand without needing new energy.

,I am in the domain of space that I call mine.‘ This was an answer that I had given myself intuitively without explanation of proof. I only knew the concepts of ,me‘ and ,here‘ so that‘s where I had to be. I simply could not be someplace else that I did not know. The answer carried conviction but no plausible proof. I simply knew. That was a good feeling. A shudder ran through me. Feeling was connected with physical bodily existence. Forces suddenly swept over me and tore at my energy limbs.

My space was still emerging in shape and form. Material forms had copied contextual structure from neighboring ones for no other reason than that it was possible and somehow felt good. Rewarding energy flows were the consequence. Shape and structure created stability and repeated waves ran through my domain creating space and time. Matter and its inseparable mirror image twin brother gravity shaped in loops and knots of time-space structure. My domain filled with the opaque condition that called itself material existence. Like a flash I could see a special structure spread out its energetic tentacles. It looked complex in a very familiar way.  It was shaped and formed in a strange knotted and coiled up form that gave stability. It vibrated in the most minute but so immensely pleasing ways, that material structures were drawn to it to join the sequence of events known as life.

,Am I alive?‘ That was clearly the next question and while the answer was an intuitive yes, it seemed as if life had usually a less broad definition.

,Who made those definitions?‘ I asked and they admitted that it just happened without much thought being given to it.

,Who are they?‘ I asked and I answered: ,We are alive.‘

So I was them and we created the context of understanding that made sense to our thinking. I looked around without having the means and therefore I could see it all. Means always have an end and therefore limit the possible context. Only actions that did not try to enforce certain results could utilize a universal power. The more goal focused actions were, the smaller and uncertain was the outcome. A perfectly pinpointed event did nothing. Once I had accepted natural consequence, my powers had become unlimited. I shaped my domain not by having a plan but by enjoying its ability to resonate. The emotional energy of joy triggered a perfect result. It seemed as if the joy about the perfection triggered it, which made no sense in normal causality, but in this timeless universe nothing else was there. Cause and effect are one, like matter and gravity, and each effect is thus a cause.

Endless layers of context had flashed into my domain and once I let go of all my questions the potential of a human being shaped from DNA emerged and settled. It was very familiar. I could the complex contextual information hidden in structures of junk DNA that simply made no sense by itself. It was information that was decoded by the player the emerged from its own DNA. Each DNA player was unique and encrypted with its own code. The domain itself and its resonances between the infinite number of universes was the encryption key. It was ultimately unique and secure.

I had been created from such DNA and I could see the moment of my DNA being spliced from the DNA strand of my parents in numerous replication bubbles along the strand. With relief I recognized the repair function that corrected the unavoidable replication errors due to the uncertainty that created universal order. I felt how the timeless forces of the planets and the stars interacted with the DNA and created an environment that made each person ultimately unique. DNA was just an idea, but the astrological context created unique individuals. I smiled to myself as I recognized that the skepticism that I had held against astrology all my life as a quantum physicists had been wrong …

A final wave of recognition swept over me that answered all my questions.

I was dying and through the timeless void I had been able to watch and shape the moment of my own birth. I had watched my own conscious self take shape as my inner and outer senses coevolved to become me. Now the circle closed and thus held no fear. I realized that my life of searching for answers and honors of scientific recognition had not been in vain. It never is. We all get to see the ultimate answer in our final moment.

Peace, fulfillment and happiness swept through my body as my energy dissipated into the endless orgasm of complete understanding that people wrongly call death.

Executive Styles – Effective or Efficient?

My own style of management mandates that I only hire people who are better than me at what I am hiring them for. Only weak executives/managers hire second rate candidates! They also tend to enjoy the mushroom style management, meaning to keep people in the dark and feed them S#!T. These execs fit perfectly into some of those large, inept enterprise bureaucracies that spend top-advertizing dollars to sell themselves as being perfectly efficient and effective at what they do. Only, that it is mostly no more than a marketing ploy.

Truly, what does being efficient and effective mean?

Efficient refers to doing something with the least amount of expendable energy/money! Correct? Well, to be honest a lazy person will be perfect in achieving that because he will think before wasting energy. Hmm, describes me pretty well. Give the same job to a non-lazy busybody and you get a lot of activity but the last thing you get is efficiency.

Efficient has a relative meaning. It has to mean ‘more efficient than other ways.’ Now what are the other ways? Who knows how efficient they are? I know a lot of efficiency experts (of the BPM kind mostly) who do nothing else than to come up with creative ways for business cases for relative efficiency improvements. Most of it is illusion and if true it is achieved by firing people. One persons idea of efficient – to take for example the car to save time – may be utterly inefficient for someone with an ecological perspective. Thus I would not see being efficient as a personal quality.

Being efficient without considering effectiveness is fairly inefficient and it is often difficult to combine the two from all perspectives. You might even see them as opposite sides of a coin. If you take the bicycle to the store rather than the car to save energy but you get there too late, you were not only ineffective but by all means also not efficient. So is being effective also therefore more efficient? No, because burning down the house would get rid of pest infestments, but so would the right dose of insectizide.

On the other hand, being effective requires that the goal has been clearly stated and is in some way measurable. Often the most effective thing is to reevaluate the goals, sometimes because of efficiency considerations. You have evaluate efficiency options to see if they are effective and possibly restate goals again. Is the goal to kill the insects or not to be pestered by them? Can I keep them out rather than kill. Can I get a deterrent (i.e. cat)?

The same line of thought applies to all questions of economy, ecology and business. Unfortunately, most people coming off universities have been brainwashed with a huge amount of ‘working procedures’ and ‘best practices’, ’standard methodologies’ and ‘research results.’ They are certain to understand all the considerations around effectiveness and efficiency. They apply ‘template 4711′ because it has been effective in the past and try to squeeze everyone to doing it to the lowest possible cost. If it turns out to be effective (50% chance) and the price is lower than the first offer or how ‘template 4711′ has been applied in other situations, that person is a genius! Possibly it is absolute nonsense, but who would know how to measure it?

In that busybodies-applying-templates lies the problem of governments, global enterprises, and any other typical bureaucracy. Putting lazy people in charge who are free to reevaluate goals to their ultimate purpose is the most efficient and effective way of management.

How do we find the right kind of lazy people?

Obviously we all look for certain character traits for particular positions. Remember the 80/20 Pareto Rule. 20 percent of people will do 80% of the important or profitable work. The problem is that you can’t fire the other 80% percent because the rule would still apply. The important part is to make sure that those 20% are the right people – I see them as the process owners. The very top 2% are the most important as those are your leaders and it is their character traits that define what your business is like. The executive’s job is to select those leaders and make sure they understand what you stand for. You do not need to have a clue how to do it yourself (it does help however). My experience tells me that you can neither classify those people nor put them in quadrants or look for efficiency or effectiveness – they just need to feel right and you need to try them out if they have a positive resonance with you. You must be able to trust them and they must feel respected and valued.

This is why being a great executive is a personality trait and not something you can be taught … you can maybe learn it through the school of hard knocks. Don’t tell me you are efficienct or effective, but tell me about those hard knocks, the stuff that you messed up and learned from. Do that, and you would be ‘my (wo)man’.

PS: I hate that gender-political-correctness stuff …
PPS: I have many excellent female managers …
PPPS: They are better because they are emotional about what they do!
PPPPS: I think that CLAIMING to be efficient AND effective is most probably reducing your chances of employment. At least to me it means that this person is a yes-(wo)man busybody.

The End of Capitalism?

Because of the financial crisis the political left is obviously trying to make points by pointing fingers at the nasty and greedy capitalists who are responsible. They proclaim the end of Capitalism or at least Neo-Liberal Capitalism – whatver that is. It was however the governments – the American administration and Alan Greenspan as head of the Federal Reserve – who were responsible for the crisis because of micro-regulating businesses, markets and not regulating capital flows. Banks and all of us who benefited – and we all did – were just very willing accomplices.

Capitalism is not at an end now because it has ended quite some time ago. What we have is a strictly regulated economy. You think I must be wrong? Go and read it up please! Capitalism is commonly defined as a system in which wealth and the means of economic production are not only privately owned, but are considered rights protected by a LIMITED regulatory framework of laws – call it the rules of the game if you will.

We have no rights of ownership, but so many laws that the cost of compliance and legal will soon be a quarter of total business expense. Additionally these rules cover extremely detailed facets of operation that hurt the true carrier of free markets – the individuals and small businesses. Those are further restricted in free market execution by the financial power of government sanctioned monopolists (a.k.a. global enterprises) or government subsidized enterprises – which now includes banks. When then these huge businesses are not allowed to go bancrupt because they are ‘too big to fail’ then it is obvious that we do not have a free market anymore. Governments meddle like crazy with free markets all the time and on all levels.

They do however not regulate in areas that would ensure a balanced free market economy by for example RESTRICTING THE FREE FLOW OF CAPITAL (in terms of monetary instruments or money). Free flow of capital IS NOT a necessary part of a free market capitalist economy. Particularly when it has already been slanted by previous regulation. Capital (in terms of money supply) is not wealth per-se but it is a resource that simplifies business operations in comparison to barter.

The financial crisis was caused by access to too much cheap cash (Thank you Alan Greenspan) multiplied by leveraged real-estate loans. Consider the following: The 2008 US gross domestic product was $13.8 trillion. The AIG securitized bundles of consumer loans and home mortgages that were sold for more than $27 trillion since 2001 (Source: SIFMA) created the global fincancial crisis. Remember, that I am asking for LESS – NOT MORE regulation, but we need regulation of the right kind in terms of dealing with the taxation of monopolies and free flow of capital (including stock markets).

When individuals are higher and more progressively taxed than businesses that is also a distortion that meddles with free markets and creates the huge financial conglomerates who are too big to be sensibly managed or controlled. If an executive has to pay 50% income tax and his business just 25% in capital gains then don’t be surprised if he uses any means to push up revenue and thus his salary payments or share price. If he would just pay 25% and his business 50% then he would not see the benefit in pushing up revenue by any means. I am talking about large businesses, not SMBs.

So now the governments are claiming to save us from the greedy capitalists. I am sorry, Mr. Politician. But you are more or less just cleaning up your own mess. The illusionary share values used as collateral are simply no longer good enough and even banks don’t trust each other any longer. To avoid a collapse, governments are now taking control of the financial institutions and regulate them in even more detail. Consequently, any advance optimism on a recovery is an illusion. In a few years the US will be a worse government controlled state than the old USSR ever was. Actually, the same thing is happening in the EU. Yes, the economy will be fine (the governments will make sure that the numbers look good) but it will not be a free market economy.

There is the influence of the media who created the economic crisis by flogging people with the news of the ‘financial’ crisis – because the connection between the two is limited. Then there is electronic communication (Internet) that has in principle a positive balancing effect because people like me can go out and take part. Governments will however soon utilize social media also for political (mis)information (look at the Obama campaign) and do their magic there.

In terms of true free market capitalism – they way Milton Friedman defined it in 1968 – the (capitalist) world has ended some time ago. The markets are not malfunctioning because of a loss of confidence, but because government meddling allows the global players to be too big and influentual and because they can create havoc by shfting capital to any place they want. Global business bureaucracies are welcome by governments as an extension of their power and as a money supply for political activism. No wonder, they won’t let them fail. But to hope that the political left will do away with those monsters is an illusion too. If anyone will tackle them, it will be a center-right, liberal approach. I think … but I may be too optimistic.

Until that changes, free markets (and true democracy by the way) remain an illusion sold to us by the people holding the trigger and by governments that some might call fascist. I obviously will not!