The End of Faith

"The End of Faith" by Sam Harris is a polemic against Faith defined as blind belief in ideas without good reasons. Given this definition, traditional religion falls squarely in the site of his aim, although his arguments apply to any set of beliefs that are blindly accepted without debate.

Harris proposes that as we enter the 21st century, the danger of non-rational thinking is higher than ever, especially as it manifests in religions (Islam in particular), because of the sheer amount of destruction that can be accomplished by modern weapons technology. While the fundamentalist mentality is most attacked by Harris, the moderates of religions come under fire as well because their politically correct tolerance supports a "don't ask, don't tell" kind of context that gives bad ideas a free ride in our society.

His writing style is clever, direct, incisive and aggressive as he describes the lunacy of many traditional religious ideas.

Atheists do not escape criticism because of the fundamentalist tendencies of some individuals or groups. Also, for hostilities to forward thinking ideas that leave open the possibility of mystery or other ways of knowing. Harris supports meditation and mindfulness as practices that can lead to a higher quality of life by improving the focus of the mind on the current moment rather than always living in the past or future.

Ultimately, "The End of Faith" is a call to embrace a rational, reasoned, scientific approach to ethics. It is also an encouragement to explore and discover other ways of knowing beyond the strictly rational with the requirement that any claims be subjected to the arena of discussion and debate that all scientific ideas must pass. Finally, we are pushed to drop the baggage of thousands of years of bad ideas and focus on the important questions with a sober approach that will help us steer clear of mass delusion and destruction and perhaps find a way to move forward and save the planet as well as humanity.

Tim Sanders and Abundant Living

I attended the Dallas Social Media Network monthly meeting this past Thursday. The featured speaker was Tim Sanders who was on a book tour to promote his latest book, Today we are Rich.

The content of the presentation was that of positive thinking and energy applied to career, business and personal contexts. The material is well-traveled and available in numerous delivery mechanisms ranging from books, workshops, seminars and other contexts. A particularly spiritual expression of this idea realm can be found in most New Thought spiritual organizations that had relatively recent roots in 19th century Transcendentalist thinkers such as Ralph Emerson and Ernest Holmes.

All this said, Sanders possesses high caliber speaking skills with an energetic delivery style that gains momentum throughout the presentation. He packs a lot of ideas and personal experiences into a 45 minute talk.

Topics discussed included:

• Build confidence, diminish fear
• Your passion is what you love to do, your purpose is what you do for others
  
• Find your passion, then find your purpose
• Find a way to incorporate your passion into your purpose
  
• Avoiding negative thinking
• Don't allow negative people to sap your positive energy
• Read lots of books, do not count scanning the internet as true reading
• Reading non-fiction is a great way to gain lots of powerful knowledge
  
• You control technology, don't allow technology to control you
• You control your mind, don't let your mind control you
• You control your life, don't let your life control you
  
• Move forward, not sideways, with your life and career
• Rich involves richness of life, not necessarily a financial interpretation, although getting your act together regarding confidence, personal growth and positive practices should improve all life categories
  

The Last Financial Crisis

Seems that the last financial crisis characterized by the crash of the housing market had several causes. At the bottom of the food chain were the retail mortgage lenders that increased subprime lending to the point of offering no docs required, interest-only loans with ARMs. In the most extreme cases the borrower could choose to pay nothing for the length of the ARM and have the accrued interest added to the principal during the no-payment period. This kind of lending would allow a $14,000 per year subprime borrower to borrow the entire amount for the house with no down payment and no payments for the first 3 years. After 3 years the interest rate jumped significantly.

Mortgages were not kept by the loan originators. Instead they were sold to other financial entities who typically packaged groups of mortgage loans into bonds called mortgage-backed bonds. The bonds were rated based on the risk of the loans contained within the bond from AAA for no-risk non-subprime to BBB for very risky sub-prime loans. Another level of indirection was added when groups of mortgage-backed bonds were combined into instruments called CDOs (Collaterized Debt Obligation). This extra level of indirection made it difficult for ratings agencies to correctly rate the CDOs. In many cases, BBB or below loans were wrapped into CDOs that were given a AAA rating.

Next up were the big banks that greatly increased their exposure to mortgage-backed bonds throughout the early 2000s. In order to offset the riskier bets, they diversified by buying AAA-rated mortgage bonds or CDOs. But the ratings agencies inaccurate ratings on the CDOs created a situation where the banks could not accurately judge the level of risk contained in the CDOs being bought.

In all of this mayhem, a few astute individuals detected the patterns of destruction and placed short bets against the bubble. Some of these actors in the play are profiled and followed in the book The Big Short. It is an easy read for getting an overview of the sequence of events that lead to the crash of 2007-2008.