$ Strategies: A Worst Case Scenario

Identity theft is ugly. When it strikes, recovery takes a lot of work; but the injury never heals. Using a false identity for gain is not limited to the riches of bank accounts or credit cards. Criminals use our very online presence to create havoc. We all live with data-risk. We cannot protect ourselves one-hundred percent. It helps to accept this. It also helps if we know how to protect ourselves from the greatest risks. Then we can relax, knowing our exposure is limited.

As Sun-Tzu might say, 'a man who knows himself and his enemy may not win but cannot lose.' There are many avenues into our accounts. They exist for the benefit of our access. Being mindful of that process is important. Passwords, PINs, login names, security questions, smart phones, codes, and biometrics are just the beginning. The ability to separate the authentic from the usurper seems never ending. 3-D printed plastic fingers become keys to locks that cannot be reset – nature provides only one set of fingerprints. Even the complexity of biometrics are now in question. Though it may never be perfect and constantly struggles to keep up, security always improves. As it does, we are wise to take advantage of the technology to monitor and limit our exposure.

So, in this worse case scenario, what is the one thing we can do? The single most important behavior is involvement. Review statements. Check credit ratings. Intentionally limit the number of credit lines. Research an institution before opening a financially-related account. Follow best practices.

There are many things we must be aware of when we share our data online. Never open links in unsolicited emails (better yet, don't open them but report them as spam). Never send account numbers, PINs, or passwords via email or enter personal data into an unsecured site. Use only secure or encrypted sites. You'll know because the address line begins with https:// Limit the number of credit cards used online to one (if possible). For the most part, don't save credit card numbers in any digital format; enter them manually every time. And remember, managing each password is important.

The truly damaging identity theft happens when someone breaches the walls of our credit and is allowed to operate as if from within. From the importance of simple passwords to the ultimate tactic of impenetrable security, my next few post explore strategies to plug these holes.

$ Strategies: Credit Card Hygiene

Recently, I had the rare experience of losing my credit card after a visit to a certain colored box for a movie. This is the second time I've ever lost a card. Unlike the first, its absence eluded me. The bank called after someone turned it in at the branch, only a few hundred yards from this colored box. To my relief, the last charge was the movie. They invited me to retrieve the card. I declined.

I told the banker to destroy it. I would order another. Why? My father taught me to avoid even minor threats. Sure it's unlikely that whomever found my card copied the sixteen-digit account number and three-digit card number. Doesn't matter; I'll never have to know because I ordered a new card with a new set of digits. What's the benefit of retrieving the card? Convenience. The cost? Theft. What's the cost of getting a new card? Inconvenience. The benefit? Security. I will say this just once because I could say it at every point: financial security is the ship that keeps us afloat in society; you cannot be too careful with the integrity of its hull.

A few ideas about plastic:

Don't sign. Instead of signing the back of your card, write the words 'see ID.' Once it's a habit, it doesn't take any more time to produce your ID with your card when making purchases but it makes it difficult for criminals to access your credit, should they find a card that has yet to be reported lost.

Pay down, not off. Instead of paying off the card with the smallest balance, pay the minimum on all your cards except the one with the highest interest rate. With that card, pay it off or as much as you can as soon as possible. Carry the largest balance on the card with the lowest interest rate. And it goes without saying, never miss a payment or pay late – it's too expensive.

Pair your cards. Pair your cards to your costs. For example, use one card for gas and groceries; one for online purchases and reservations; another for large acquisitions; etc. Resist the urge to have an 'emergency card' that lies dormant; credit agencies do not look favorably upon them. Personal fiances suffer when too many credit lines are open at any given time but it is good to have enough active lines to pair different cards with different expenses. This not only helps with budgeting and flexibility but fraud. Credit-card companies like to see predictable buying habits. When something unpredictable happens, they are easier to work with and often the first to spot the fraud.

Credit-cards are the common, daily oil of our financial machine – the engine of the ship. If we don't pay attention, the fluid becomes grimy, gritty, dirty, useless, and then potentially dangerous if the engine heats up and breaks down – bankruptcy. But if we take a few extra moments each day to be mindful of this important yet mundane aspect, we keep the oil clean and the engine running smooth, getting us where we want to go.

$ Strategies: A Conservative Foundation

My personal financial history isn't terribly interesting. Things are steady as she goes. So, what's the secret? How did I survive the Great Recession? To understand that, we must understand the other great financial crisis. The Great Depression began when my father was a boy. It shaped his manhood. His financial hygiene was as impeccable as his legal briefs. I cared for my father until he passed in his mid-eighties. Those hard decades for this country were carried into his last days. Example: when he couldn't finish dinner, he'd collect the leftovers into used napkins. He stuffed the bundle into his pockets. Later when I found the stash and asked about it, he couldn't remember doing it. He spent the innocence of his adolescence toiling in the dust of the Depression. Those wicked years manifested scares in old age – a powerful point of view he imprinted upon me. In his honor, I will share this hard-earned perspective, reshaped for today.

Money is the power that drives modern man. Without it, one does not last long. Nature did not equipped our species with the intrinsic tools to live more than a few nights alone in the wilderness. We require supplies, shelter, and tools. Only the most accommodating environments provide any chance. Of course, those places are filled with much more capable predators than a soft human. Even pray pose a threat; if the lion doesn't get you, the stampeding herd of water-buffalo will.

Humans are born to live together. We need each other. We don't need money to survive but we have collectively accepted it as the medium of our lives. Therefore, money matters and makes us happy – to a point, about seventy-thousand dollars a year for the average household. After that, the reasons for making more money become increasingly narcissistic. Example: the CEO of a Seattle company recently took a huge pay-cut and raised the minimum wage to this magic number. It is a bold move to maximize productivity, retention, and innovation. Only time will tell if it works.

Personally, I see money as a rudimentary system of enslavement that rapes the Earth and turns a cold shoulder to the ninety-nine percent. It corrupts and retards progress. It shapes our preferences and loyalties. It treats the average human as a selfish child and punishes us as if necessity equals petty greed. It places blinders on our future and distracts our ability to be present in the moment. But it is a fact of life that must be faced. Hating the system does little to change it or survive it.

Most do not make seventy-thousand a year. Many in this world make less than two dollars a day. This means most of us will be happier, healthier people if we learn to maximize the value of our resources. Outside of making more money, there are ways to make more out of the money we do have. This series of posts discusses my father's insights; make use of those that apply.

God's Tiny Reflection: Neural-GPS

Let us return to the concept of God. It is my theory that the microtubule-structure is a map of the brain (the whole) in relation to the individual (the neuron). Imagine the brain from the point of view of the cell. This view would not be a detailed topography-map like the old folded road-maps of yesteryear. It would look more like the contemporary word-maps where those with the most weight appear larger and more prominent, while others with little significance are small and off to the side.

In effect, the structure of the microtubules comprises the cell's personal Bible. It's their frame of reference, their point of view, their manual of operation. The unique pattern of the microtubules are the cell's perception of reality, a kind of brain within the brain. Consider neural-plasticity. After injury, the brain has the ability to rewire itself. Uninjured parts take over for the injured. The dynamic nature of the microtubules account for this capacity to draw a new map, a new reality, and to begin to function in a new way.

Like the neurons of the brain, we are the individual parts of a larger organism called humanity. We must all choose our perception the way neurons construct their microtubules. Do we choose the rhetoric and ideas of others or do we choose the authentic reality of our individual lives? When we pollute our minds with lofty platitudes and fortified positions, we are like the diseased cell, harden with plaque, stricken with dementia, and unsure of its pattern. But the more clearly we see our position and function in the larger body of human potential the more we are like that nimble neuron, capable of filling in for a fallen soldier.

Whether God exists or not, meaning does. How we relate to the world is our personal orthodoxy, our individualized religion. When we confidently fire our sound into the complex web of history, we shift reality towards the wisdom of integrity. It may not seem like it but the future is counting on you, being you, just as you count on each neuron being its wonderful, unique, individual self. And like that healthy neuron, we must all be ready to redraw our map and redefine our reality as we sense the changing social-weather and readjust our position in this human network. After all, humanity is the living brain of this planet.  

God's Tiny Reflection: Quantum Bias

Computer scientists use the model of unidirectional brain activity to create computational strategies based on the simple interpretation of how a cell decides whether or not to fire its axon. The algorithm uses multiple, analog, biased inputs to determine a single, digital, monotone output. Each input is assigned a bias or importance that changes throughout time as experience refines its overall impact. This happens through the recursive pruning and expansion of a dynamic decision-tree's limbs. It is a fractal growth that bends towards the increasing value of its output. A few important or highly biased dendrites can fire the axon while it takes many more with a lower bias to coax emission -- the quantum event.

How the biological cell determines the bias and firing patterns associated with its individual network is a mystery. There are about a hundred-billion neurons and a hundred-trillion connections (more than the stars in our galaxy). With this much complexity, how is a brain anything but a big box of noise? Why would a single neuron decide to fire? How does a sole voice count in a cacophony of others? It seems so random but functions much like a democratic poll; the brain signals the body to act when relative networks exhibit the required activity, in other words, reach the tipping-point; the little guys dance with enough enthusiasm to raise the roof. Unlike a democracy, not every vote is counted the same. Like a kleptocracy, an important few can make all the difference. Stars often steal the show, blowing that roof right off the walls.

However a cell determines whether it will fire or not happens inside the cell where a dense mesh of microtubules holds the architecture of the cell together. For some time, this was the sole function assigned to the stuff. Now we know it plays a role in the firing of the axon. This substance is like the bones of a body except there are many more microtubules in a cell than bones in a body. This essential component of the system is linked with neurodegenerative diseases. How these fibers are aligned and what parts are stable and dynamic are the subject of intense study. But what do they mean?

God's Tiny Reflection: Brain Bits

Let's take the old Taoist idea, 'the one and the many,' to a new level. The brain is a fascinating place. Moods, thoughts, reactions, perspectives, flavor … the neural-weather of synaptic-energy swirls in great gusts of chemistry. There are thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, and even desert-like calm. But how do these electrical clouds of mind race about, where are they going, and why?

The brain is a complex network, comprised of individual units with two fundamental parts: nodes and connections. A node is a neuron, a special cell with the digital purpose to fire or not to fire. Connections occur between axon and dendrite. The brain is like a city of microscopic people, each with a job and a social group. The metaphor deepens. Imagine the dendrites as a tangled mess of arms, the node as the body, and the axon, the leg. We use our hands to touch the world, sense our surroundings, and interact with materials. Dendrites are a dense system of thin branches, connecting with the axons, the outstretched legs and toes, of other cells. The cell gets a feel for their neighborhood's motion by receiving input via the dendrites. Each time an axon fires, an array of dendrites are stimulated.

When the cell decides to move or metaphorically step to the beat, it fires the axon. What is known about brain function is largely derived from devices such as the MRI. These things observe how geographic bundles of floating neural-people dance the rhythm of our consciousness. They're all just wiggling their legs while feeling the wiggle of so many other legs. It's like a game. How many wiggling friends does it take to get me to wiggle and how will I wiggle in response? As the arms with tiny hands, holding the many legs and toes of others, sense their community's neural-weather, iron-rich blood flows, changing EM fields, and lighting the devices. At first, science could only imagine electricity flowing in one direction and in one way: cell A fired its axon with a single signal until it reached its terminal. Cell B's dendrites sensed cell A's signal through the neural-chemistry of the synaptic clef. Cell B calculated the bias and decided to fire its axon.

That was then. This is now. Today, we know signals come in all kinds of patterns and sometimes signals originate from cell B's dendrites and move into cell A's axon – backwards. But even with this newly discovered complexity, it still seems pretty random and meaningless until you remember that our very consciousness is derived from their little game of wiggle-wiggle. Though they may seem to dance as a flock in the air or a school in the sea, they are just like us, individuals that make complex choices science has yet to fathom.

God's Tiny Reflection: Defining God

The term 'God' is controversial for some, comforting for others. God is derived from the word 'good.' 'Good-bye' comes from the expression, 'God be with you.' If a practical interpretation of a deity exists, what would that be? I like the Taoist expression, 'the one and the many.' God is the mixing of you, the individual, with the whole, the universe. God is the paradox that bridges you and not you. God is the meaning we ascribe to our relationship with reality. Whether that meaning is finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or simply uncovering the novel cracks in the universe, the meaning and purpose of our lives derive from our interactions, whether they are with nature, humanity, or even our own bodies.

Atheist assert the idea of an afterlife and a puppet-master pulling the strings is nonsense. The universe is what it is; there is no God. In this case, God or the 'good' exists strictly as a human construct, an outgrowth of the human collective. On the other hand, believers assert the 'good' or God is an individual with a plan and the means to pull it off. In that case, jump on the bandwagon or be tossed aside. God's Will generates the motion of the universe and to defy it is to destroy one's self. Both perspectives pour concrete words into foundations of quasi logic and postulated facts. One can no more prove a negative than the existence of anything outside of existence – a fact of logic.

The truth? The truth is, the horizon of a human life is limited by the organic material we inhabit; in other words, without the right perspective, some things can simply not be seen. But what we can see is a universe with structure and function, operating within an ordered set of probabilities. At the personal level, finding God means finding your place in the universe, your fit, your spot, your point of view. Whether or not God exists looses focus; discovering the significance of our relationship to the whole increases meaning throughout time.

Whether religious, agnostic, or atheist, comprehending, evaluating, and navigating our personal reality is about all we do. Therefore, the religious word for the secular concept of supreme personal meaning is God. Further definitions lie beyond human experience. But once we shed this mortal coil, we will either cease to exist, find God, or discover a reality incomprehensible to the human mind, something beyond vocabulary and narrative. If I were a betting man, I'd put the farm on the latter.