Glossary

Mainstream Mindset

Many years ago, a brilliant, eccentric customer of mine, widely known as the father of momentum investing, introduced me to this idea.

There is no single global Mainstream Mindset. Yours is the collection of rules for life you absorbed from your family, community, culture, religion, and the world around you. Go to school. Get a good job. Get married. Have children. Buy a house. Be respectable.

The rules will vary depending on where and how you were raised. What makes it the Mainstream Mindset is that you learned to experience these rules as the way life works rather than as choices.

But are they Laws of Nature? Or are they social CONstructs?

Do you really have to live by them?

Only you can answer that for yourself.

Stewardship: power redefined for this new millennium

Too many leaders seem to think the rest of us are here to serve them, to line their pockets.

Umm, no. I flatly reject this.

Leadership done correctly is stewardship. Power is held in trust, not owned. If you have authority over people, institutions, resources, land, money, or anything else that affects the lives of others, your job is to nurture what has been entrusted to you.

The goal of a leader should be to leave the people and places within their sphere of influence better off than they found them. Remember the Boy Scout's rule.

Really, no one should want to be a leader–not for long anyway. Sure, rising to a position of leadership is an honor. But done well, done properly, it's a major pain in the ass.

Positive-Sum Game

I only recently learned this term. Maybe you're just hearing it for the first time too. I've known the zero-sum game for years: I win, you lose.

Why the hell is zero-sum game part of ordinary educated vocabulary while its hopeful counterpart is not?

A positive-sum game creates more value than it destroys. Instead of fighting over who gets the biggest piece of the pie, we look for ways to make the pie bigger. "Win-win" is commonly used as shorthand, but in game theory, the concepts aren't perfectly identical.

In my glossary, a positive-sum game is any negotiation that begins with the goal of both parties walking away better off.

Luxury Bunker Class

The people making the world unlivable while also making plans to escape the consequences.

Think mega-yachts cruising (and destroying!) the oceans. Gratuitous private flights. Businesses that degrade our soil, our climate, our communities, and our mental health while those profiting most accumulate enough wealth to hide in fortified compounds–literal luxury bunkers.

The LBC lives in fear of social unrest, nuclear catastrophe, and climate collapse. They live in fear of the shit hitting the fan. They should. They're the ones throwing it.

The Epstein Class is a subset of the Luxury Bunker Class: extreme wealth providing a world where the usual rules of decency do not apply.

The Luxury Bunker Class has no interest in fixing the world. They think their money will allow them to escape it—and the other 8 billion of us.

Scrollignment

The alignment between your digital feed and who you really are. A feed in scrollignment reflects your values, interests, and aspirations rather than the priorities of advertisers and algorithms. It inspires rather than distracts, uplifts rather than maligns. Children and teenagers aren't expected to be in scrollignment yet. Adults shouldn't be too hard on themselves either. We're all learning to navigate a new world.

Example: I've spent the last year bringing my feed into scrollignment.

Spiritual Singularity

A tipping point where compassion grows faster than technology, so technology is used to help, not harm. Progress becomes something we can trust. The real upgrade isn't in the cloud—it's in us.