I came close to dying when I was 12, 25 and 31; near asphyxiation each time from three completely different causes. I can't remember ever fearing death but I do wish to avoid it for as long as possible.
My career was in business. I was a controller, CFO, Executive VP and a part or full owner of three businesses. The last business I had ownership in gave me the complete roller coaster experience, from being a minor millionaire with a McMansion to losing my home and my last penny.
I was a blithely shallow person until a year long depression opened up new dimensions of the world around me.
I was an agnostic Jew who spent two decades in a fundamentalist Christian church.
I was an analytical machine until a brain injury left me unable to do even simple math;
my rational conscious mind which ruled my life abdicated to my subconscious..
I was a man who swore he would never retire, who retired at fifty.
I retain an insatiable curiosity and believe this is a community that will allow me to extend my knowledge and understanding through writing, conversation and earnest debate.
I believe my intimate inside knowledge of fundamentalist Christianity may be useful.
I believe the world would be better off if it understood the work of William James and I intend to evangelize pragmatism, radical empiricism and pluralism.
We live in a time when close to half of the US seeks to reject the enlightenment and bring back the Middle Ages. I think it is vital that those of us on the side of progress and science subject our own thinking and speaking to scientific rigor and not answer hate with hate, spin with spin and ideological blindness with a different ideological blindness.