The Truest Story

In the silence of this morning’s Quaker meeting, it occurred to me that I wouldn’t be sitting in this spartan sanctuary if it weren’t for the literal version of the New Testament story.

I’ve always tried to see through that over-the-top story to the historical Jesus. The Jesus who didn’t walk on water and feed the multitude. The Jesus who wasn’t resurrected. (Thomas Jefferson set out to tell the unadorned story in his “Jefferson’s Bible,” which I highly recommend.)

But the historical Jesus, the mere human being, wouldn’t have had anywhere near the same impact as the mythological Christ. He would have been, well, just another historical figure, or, worse, he might have been utterly forgotten.

In short, the story as it has come to be told (for whatever reasons) — not the historical events — had delivered me to a Quaker Meeting House, just as it has shaped the actions of millions of others, Christian and non-Christian alike. One of those Christians was George Fox, the most influential and fervent of the early Quakers. Without his responding to the story, there would be no Quakers, no meeting house in Portland Oregon.

And without those, I would be home nursing my third cup of coffee and reading the Sunday New York Times.

Such is the power of one story among billions of stories.

All events become some kind of story, be it gossip or gospel. Because of the distortions of perspective, time and memory, those narratives become half truths and — should they survive — myth.

We are guided by distorted narratives of events — large and small.

That may sound like a bad thing. In many cases it is. But in many instances, the truth may simply be too hard to take. Think of the Jesus on the cross who is not resurrected. The tragedy cries out for Christ's resurrection. The story tellers provided it as a triumph and a powerful story that survived.

Limited human perception and self-serving selection are filters for a reason. Without our ability to exclude we would suffer overload and even tragedy. Today we might call it post-traumatic stress.

So our stories are heavily edited. And, like the Biblical story, they are blatantly embellished.

For that reason, our "back story" should be one of caution, even scepticism.

Still, stories, for all their fabrication, undeniably motivate us, set our course and deliver us to our destinations.

Today, as I thought of the compelling Biblical story, I was reminded of dozens of other stories (about confusion, war, excess, greed, isolation, love, charity, joy and fulfillment) that had lead me to the silence at our meeting house.

Silence, I decided, tells the truest story.

A different kind of bad news

Has this ever been a bad news day!

No, I’m not talking about just Iranian election results or more car bombs in Pakistan.

The bad news started with an Oregonian’s front-page story telling me that “more than 2 million households are in danger of seeing their major broadcast TV channels disappear into a fuzz of static when analog service ends Friday.”

Danger? Did I read “danger”?

What’s the danger? Suddenly 2 million people have to eat dinner together and converse. The real danger is that a reporter could write such non-sense. Try replacing “in danger of” with “will be inconvenienced by” or possibly “will be irked by.” I personally like "will be potentially enriched by."

Next it is on to my daily feed of Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. There I’m told that it is the birthday of Anne Frank and that her Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl has sold more than 25 million copies, and it is “the second-best-selling nonfiction book in history, after the Bible.”

The Bible non-fiction? It certainly has its much-heralded truths, but really, non-fiction?

Parting the Red Sea, the virgin birth, feeding the multitudes, walking on water? Suddenly overheated, mythological metaphor becomes "non-fiction," and no one blinks.

Not even Garrison Keillor.

So it’s now the end of the day and I finally get to New York Times columnist David Brooks. His subject is our stampeding American debt. He writes: “The ratio of debt-to-personal-disposable income was 55 percent in 1960.” He goes on to tell us that “it” (presumably this “ratio”) grew to 133 percent in 2007.

What ratio?

Here’s one of our brainiest columnists writing in one of the world’s most respected newspapers,and he doesn’t know the difference between ratio and percentage.

Worse, neither do his New York Times editors.

All three stories had news, all right. None of it reassuring.

Maybe the food additives and pollution are finally getting to us.

Top Hedge Hogs of 2008

Holy Madoff with it! Today's New York Times “Business Day” section showed the mug shots of the eight "top" hedge fund managers ranked by what they “made” in 2008.

For an accounting of their nine- and ten-digit "takes," go here. For an account of what they don't pay in taxes, go here.

The numbers, of course, boggle the mind. James Simons leads the list with $2.8 billion. That’s with a “b,” and if you write it out, it looks like this:

$2,800,000,000.

To put Mr. Simons' annual compensation in perspective, $2.8 billion is 56,000 times a salary of $50,000.

Think of it — one person whose compensation is that of 56,000 fellow human beings earning $50,000 each.

The $11.6 billion earned in 2008 by the top 25 hedgers is substantially more than the State of Oregon’s annual $7 billion general fund. What this coterie of cash churners paid themselves last year is nearly quadruple Oregon's annual contribution to all its K-12 schools.

Then there is the question of whether any of the top 25 actually did anything to “earn” their largess besides gamble with other people’s money.

Compare their real contribution and productivity to that of the worker who patches pavement, picks lettuce, teaches school, waits on tables, checks out groceries, manages a store, shingles roofs, nurses the ailing, polices the streets and repairs the plumbing.

I have a friend and former student who actually writes for a hedge fund newsletter. I invite him to enlighten me by responding to the following observation: By comparison to most American workers, hedge fund managers contribute zilch and should be paid accordingly.

UPDATE: Chris Clair, who is referred to in the above paragraph, works for the industry newsletter Hedge World. Chris has passed on a three-part response to this post. The first, with links to the second, starts HERE. The third part will be posted later Friday, April 3.