Philosophy-- the business of eternity.

Businessphilosophy.com
For the Classical Entreprenuer

All cultural revolutions are preceded by literary revolutions.--Drake Raft

The Jolly Roger's Literary Summit
A Modern Day Executive's Meeting on Hatteras

The Crew of Classicals and jollyroger.com discuss their Business Philosophy.

Elliot approaches two figures silhouetted by the dancing flames of a campfire. The Hatteras sand's soft and dry, and it squeaks as it gives way to his hiking boots. As he nears the figures, the windblown murmur of their voices augments into discernible words. He recognizes the voices as belonging to the co-captains of The Jolly Roger.

Elliot: Ahoy there mates!

Drake: Ahoy Ahab!

Becket: Evenin' to ye and the rising wind!

Drake: What's up man? We were thinking you weren't going to show.

Elliot: I was dropping Christy off at the airport-- she's visiting some friends up in Boston. (Elliot pulls a log up beside the fire and has himself a seat).

Drake: Were ye followed?

Elliot: Nay. Some tried, but they could not decipher the whispering wind nor discern the definitive shapes of the dancing the shadows, and thus they could not take a bearing on the immutable direction of me soul. They had all been reading the monthlies, weeklies, and the dailies, while foregoing the eternities. They were busy checking their stock quotes, while neglecting Shakespeare's.

Becket: It's an awesome night, it is.

Drake: I was just telling Becket how these are the greatest moments, when I feel equal to the Indian Summer dusk's soft and subtle mystery. I think I felt it first when I was fourteen, camping on Nantucket, back when the island had campsites-- before Wallstreet covered them with condos and a Starbucks theme park-- the scent and sting of windwhipped woodsmoke always brings the feeling right on back. Romance was free as the wind back then.

Elliot: I know that feeling. It's something majestic which thunders to life when you're sixteen or seventeen, only to be lost in the blink of the eye that we call youth, and after that you have to keep on earning it back as you grow older. And now it's only on rare, blustery October evenings like tonight that one can savor it. It's the perfect freedom of the spirit.

Drake: Youth's fantastic freedom.

Becket: Free from knowledge of debt, free from knowledge of guilt, free from knowledge of guile, free from knowledge of fear, and thus free to dream.

Drake: A freedom that all are born equally with, but which requires eternal vigilance ever after.

Becket: Aye it does. And this is our watch.

Elliot: As it is our Ship, our Voyage, and our Crew.

Drake: And Great Literature, the seed of conscience, the fountain of reason, morality's treasure map, and freedom's silent sentinel, must be delivered tonight. She must cross the oceans between the poets and the people, between the parents and the children, between the past and the present, and between the present and eternity. And tonight she must navigate through the thickest of postmodern fogs.

Elliot: 'Tis an honor to have been chosen for this.

Drake: To lead a renaissance while so many in our generation have only ever been taught to focus upon leading companies.

Becket: To captain a Ship in the service of the nobler side of humanity-- there is no greater occupation. And what a sublime honor it has been these past three years, to have served beside the three loyal sonneteers, to have dreamt in parallel, to have grown a bit older in tandem aboard a fine frigate. Semper Fidelis, mates, and a happy birthday to the Marines too. We've given airy nothingness a local habitation and a name, and in turn, our noble WWW audience has presented us with a stolid crew. 'Tis an honor and a priviledge profound to serve such stalwart shipmates aboard the world's largest, most-feared literary frigate.

Drake: Ahoy to them all! We wouldn't be sitting here tonight were it not for the Roger's gentlemen statesmen and refined renegades. The wonderful thing about the web is that we've been able to sign aboard thousands of ruthless pirates of the profound but by the pristine power of the printed word alone. Sans advertising, marketing consultants, agents, editors, and other middlemen who have placed themselves between the poets and the people.

Becket: Only with the technology underlying the WWW did the Good Ship sail beyond the postmodern fog and come across the insular websites which form the world's classical community. The countless entreprenuers, innovators, and unheralded inventors who developed the WWW made this dream of a classical literary culture possible. I salute them all with every shot we fire from the Western Canon. From the graduate students and researchers who refined the quantum mechanics of the silicon lattice to the visionary entreprenuers-turned CEOs, I salute ye. From the webheads running our servers to the search engine staffs to Bill Gates and the countless authors of UNIX, I salute ye too, for these shores would not have been found without yer technological innovations.

Elliot: 'Tis a great day when Microsoft and Netscape both work for us, when Poets employ their products in publishing the words of a renaissance about this watery globe. And Andy Grove at Intel, he's one of our best employees, as his company's chips allow the writing, the delivery, and the reading of this text. And all the other wonderful people and companies who work for us, from the internet access providers to the hosting services, I must say it's been a supreme pleasure to manage and lead such diligent people as we transport the world beyond the postmodern fog.

Becket: Sign aboard The Jolly Roger and circumnavigate the Classicals websites, from killdevilhill.com to Hatteras, and ye'll find an enchanted paradise haunted by the spirit of philosophy and poetry, and fresh settlements made by a few thousand literary soldiers and statesmen, all buoyed by the thundering revolutions in information technology.

Drake: Just today I got an email from an "old guy." That's what he said, "I'm an old guy." And he was asking permission to use the poem In The Name of Freedom on his website, "Opinions of a Common Man." Those are the greatestnavy.compliments, when someone endowed with common sense and acquired wisdom appreciates your work enough to quote it. He's here with us now, sharing this blowing evening, witnessing the crackling wood, and tasting the smoked, salted wind. And so's creekwalker from tawnybark.com in California, and Dreadnought and Charlton and Scarshoulder and Josh, and the countless other silent crusaders who we've only ever met on the net.

Becket: Like Allison from the U.S. Navy. Here-- I printed out an email she sent just yesterday (Becket produces a piece of paper, angles it to catch the firelight while spilling the wind, and reads):

Tell me more.

Alison

That's where The Jolly Roger transports its crew-- to the center of their souls. And I know they've all climbed aboard to brave the postmodern fog and fight for a brave new literary cause; I know they're private people of honor, integrity, and prudence. They possess the passion of patriots, the subtleties of statesmen, and the humility of the honest reader, and I'd be as proud to reap fortune by their side as I would to perish penniless. They're here with us tonight-- past, present, and future literary shipmates-- when they read these words, they'll remember all that transpires beside this fire.

Elliot: All for one, and one for all, mates. Until this vision graces eternity.

 

IV. THE OPPORTUNITY:

Drake: It's a precipice and a pause, is what tonight is. That's the magic marking this soft October evening, when we momentarily forget we're living, and our spirits transcend time. Tonight I feel and think eternity. A few days ago I was ragged, winded, and tired, feeling like I'd justnavy.completed the most arduous voyage, with nowhere left to go, outnumbered at every turn by vast, burgeoning literary bureaucracies deconstructing tradition and standards to make way for the purely political and pornographic, all the while convincing the myopic multitudes that the destruction was for their liberation, betterment, and the well-being of the economy. But tonight I'm enervated. I feel as if we're about to embark on a far, far greater adventure, backed by a far, far greater fleet than I ever conceived could be. The world awaits a literary renaissance, where words shall once again be married to the nobler sentiments and more fundamental aspects, from reason to righteousness. Though the postmodern fog is thick as ever, the tide is turning in our favor, mates, and tomorrow the brave and bold shall gain a renaissance.

Elliot: There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat; And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures. That's how Shakespeare put it in Julius Caesar.

Drake: Autumn has always signified the start of the year for me. It ushers in the academic year and the harvest with the fireworks of flaming foliage. It has marked the Jewish New Year for the past five thousand years, and the falling of the leaves is the first prelude to spring. And so it is that the deconstruction of culture and the demolition of the Great Books has razed the world and left a fallow field from which our renaissance shall grow. Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, and Jesus all bore witness to evenings every bit as ineffable as tonight. It is wisdom's patience which celebrates life on the edge of winter.

Becket: And there, rising beside the moon, is Jupiter, Socrate's own Jove, prevailing over a dialogue as he did in Athens over two thousand years ago.

Drake: The Athens which put him to death for speaking the Truth.

Becket: Aye, democracies have oft been as cruel as dictators.

Elliot: Both entities are famous for having castigated the true poet and philosopher, while catering to the false ones-- to the sophists, pharisees, and teachers of the law. History shows that both the mob and the tyrant alike have oft violently opposed the noble individual and the innovator, and thus the visionary has oft been vastly outnumbered. Only recently was there born a Nation which promised to embrace the entrepreneur. 'Tis this promise to all true poets and philosophers that America owes her greatness to. For a promise made to all true poets and philosophers is a promise made to all hard-working, honest, loyal individuals.

VI. LEGAL ISSUES:

Becket: Patent Law, Copyright Law, and Trademark Law are all manifestations of the fundamental protection of the entrepreneur's private property which this nation affords. Is it no mystery that the same man who instituted the patent office, Thomas Jefferson, also penned the Declaration of Independence? For who better than the literary creator and inventor  comprehends the notion of private property and independence? And these simnple Laws were instituted to protect the creative individual, never for the sake of enriching legions of lawyers and contortionists at the individual's expense.

Drake: And as all promises and principles are founded upon words, this mighty republic was built upon the Words defining the concepts of Natural Law and Divine Equality. The wisened, well-read founding statesmen understood that sometimes the few would have to take a virtuous stand against the many, just as the many would sometimes have to take a virtuous stand against the few. And in all cases, the Words of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Bible, penned in parallel with the Will of God, would side with the hard-working, free-thinking, moral individual, thus ensuring the continuity of their divinely-granted freedom.

Elliot: So let it be the notion of time, tide, tyrants, democracy, dictators, Truth, and freedom which brings us around to the business of this campfire--businessphilosophy.com and the business of the world's largest literary frigate.

 

VII. COMPANY BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY

Becket: This was an awesome idea Drake had to come out here to Hatteras, build a fire, and record this for the businessphilosophy.com website, 'cause out here is where our home is. A campfire in the shadow of the Hatteras light is our basic business philosophy, and if ye can understand the significance of that, mate, then ye have fathomed our fundamental trade secrets. Ye could throw all the venture capital in the world at an evening such as this without enhancing it, and ye could tax it for every government program ever conceived of without being able to rob it of its splendor. 'Tis but a reflection of the infinite wealth of true friendship.

Drake: Friendship professed by poetry, consecrated by philosophy, and adorned and enhanced with wit. And are not the greatest business ventures marked more by these very same aesthetic commodities than they are by monetary concerns?

 

VIII. THE PRIOR ART:

Becket: Aye, they are. A couple nights ago I was contemplating the greatest business plans ever written, and I came to the most peculiar conclusion-- they had nothing to do with money.

Drake: I know what ye mean. Witness the words of Socrates and Jesus, which were only ever set down by others, which bought them little more than eternity, and yet today form the very foundation of our Laws, Institutions, and Independence. Witness the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution-- while they possess no harvest strategies nor proforma financial projections, while they were written by rebel philosophers and renegade moralists with not an MBA among them, they yet provide the fundamental context within which the vast majority of modern business transactions occur.

Becket: And even the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, with no numbers but for those marking the pages and chapters, form formidable business plans. For the masterpieces shall live on and on and on, producing jobs, wealth, and joy for countless professors, editors, publishers, and students.

Drake: As well as endowing society with that priceless moral, rational, and aesthetic context.

 

IX. THE PRODUCT:

Elliot: All the Great Books share this in common-- they are the eternal springs of cultural wealth from which all monetary and material wealth derive their worth.

Drake: For what would a dollar be without Law? What are a hundred without Love? What are a thousand without Justice? And what would a million dollars be without Freedom? These emtities would not exist were it not for the Words which define them.

Becket: Which is why it is so odd that they refrain from teaching the Great Books in Business Schools.

Drake: And which is why it is so strange that they refrain from teaching Dante, Milton, and Wordsworth in Law schools, for surely he who comprehends comedy and perdition must also possess a most fundamental grasp of Justice.

Elliot: And which is why we've come to Hatteras, to the leading edge of this mighty continent, to discuss our Business Philosophy.

Becket: I earned my MBA one afternoon while windsurfing just off the coast here before a hurricane hit, and then returning to shore, bruised, beaten and infinitely humbled, gracious for life itself, to read the Bible and the Wall Street Journal.

Elliot: I earned my degree in Natural Law by running through the woods and browsing through the used bookshops in Chapel Hill on Saturday afternoons.

Becket:  I mean if you can comprehend the deepest profundities expressed by the Plato, and if you can learn a few tricks about wielding the words that were used to express them, would you not be that much further ahead? How about looking to Macbeth, Caesar, Captain Ahab, and Jesus for the pinnacles and pitfalls of leadership? How about studying Hamlet's time management, or conducting a case study on King Lear's tragedy? What about taking Aristotle's advice on virtue, character, and ethics?  How about acquainting oneself with Coleridge's priceless advice concerning corporate communication, "What comes from the heart goes to the heart."

Drake: I wouldn't feel so awestruck nor humbled in a lecture hall nor bar nor coffee shop, and these words would not flow so freely. I wouldn't feel so high. It's this natural hard-earned high which resides at the base of all profound poetry, and I'll tell ye I'm addicted to it. I'm addicted to Truth, hard work, and the deeper mysteries found in all close cameraderie which is guided by the lone beacon of independence. For the safety of three ships can only be guarded by a single, carefully-placed, beacon. Shift the beacon, or build another, and chaos shall ensue. And the beacon which guides this literary enterprise is the immortal Literature of the Western Canon.

Becket: And the commodity that we offer is a guiding light in this postmodern fog, as well as transportation to the richest of treasures. While amazon.com does a wonderful job of providing over 2,000,000 books, we're going to strive to direct you to the hundred or so greatest. For life is short, and instead of spending it surfing the net and browsing aimlessly through megabookstores, one might as well spend a good bit of it cruising aboard the flagships of the greatest that has ever been spoken and penned, sailing in parallel with sailors harboring similar souls.

 

X. THE INDUSTRY:

Elliot: Literature's quite a unique business to be in these days.

Becket: As it has always been. But even moreso now is the marriage of art and commerce an interesting pursuit. For today the only common ground found between the business, entertainment, publishing, and academic worlds is the general dismissal of the Great Books, and along with them and their vital context, the subtler sentiments, the glory of righteousness, the wise humility of the ancients, and the vital nobility of the immortal soul. As we sailed through this era of vast economic abundance and superficial indulgences afforded by technological innovations which have their roots in the scientific, rational, moral culture, many of the literary leaders, pharisees, and sophists only paid attention to balancing the accounting books, while neglecting the Great ones. They threw overboard the wisdom of the ancients so as to get "there" faster, and now the ship of State has become unstable without the ballast.

Drake: 'Tis one of life's greater ironies that it's bad for business to care only about business. Would they teach this at Wharton.  For the difference between literature and widgets is not defined by numbers.

Becket: For there is not one concept of business management nor business leadership that cannot be found within William Shakespeare's works or the Bible. And I say that ye can find it expressed far more eloquently and accurately within the Greats, than anywhere else.

 

XI. CURRENT FINANCIAL STATUS AND PROJECTIONS:

Elliot: And how are the books of the Roger, quartermaster and treasure keepers?

Drake: The books are all Great, sir!

Elliot: Do they balance?

Drake: Aye sir, with Shakespeare on the port and Plato on the starboard, Aristotle and Melville both fore and aft, and the Bible up in the masthead.

Becket: And I say the fundamental ballast of the founding father's letters and literary works helps us keep a most even keel when passing through the foul weather and pernicious moral hazards created by bureaucrats throwing vast sums of money around sans a working knowledge of the humble prudence, scientific rationale, infinite exertion, and moral literature by which all true wealth is created.

Drake: Aye, the Good Ship's never lost a penny, nor has she ever cost the taxpayer a penny, and there is no leverage against her.

Becket: She's been bought and paid for with Franklin's and Edison's currency-- hard work, diligence, innovation, industry, and frugality, and today she's captained by a private, profound vision.

Drake: And I say she's created a fair amount of wealth which resides somewhere between priceless and infinite. She's given a few seafaring souls hope, she's picked up a few drifters who had been cast overboard by the fringe literary feminists and mendicant multiculturalists who're captaining the contemporary literary culture, she's given the rising romantics a solid deck to dream upon, and she's provided a few parents with a better night's sleep. For we have let them know that there are yet those in their sons' and daughters' generation who believe in honor, duty, courage, commitment, and the rich romance which is spawned by such ideals.

Becket: She's sold a bit of advertising upon the seven sister sites, and she's done better than the majority of mutual funds this year. For she is reaping a return with no initial monetary investment.

Drake: When it comes to long term investments, the Good Ship's proven far superior to the strange, confused, devastating notions of Nobel Prize winning economists, like those at Long Term Capital Management.

Becket: For the words our time has been invested in shall endure throughout eternity. I was passing on by the Harvard Business school this past June, and there, in the main entrance, I came across a prominent display case honoring the supreme wisdom of the "Rocket Scientists," from Captain John Merriweather to the Nobel Prize winning economists, whose names I have forgotten. It was the first I'd ever heard of them, and two months later I came across them again on the cover of Businessweek once again, as Long Term Capital Management crashed after having lost billions of other peoples' money. If they'll take $40,000 a year to teach ye what they know about business up at Harvard, then I say ye'd be better off investing the money in a solid Ship of yer own.

Drake: The Good Ship's never relied on temptation, exploitation, senseless gratification, deconstruction, exhibitionism, shallow sensationalism, crassificiation, nor the lower forms of art to build an audience.

Becket: Aye, and she's never gambled away millions of other peoples' dollars 'neath the facade of science, nor has she ever lost a penny of her own.

Drake: Nor has she destroyed the livliehoods and economies of Third World Nations. And she's never played "tugboat" to educational administrators.

Becket: Nor have Crony Capitalists, nor Crony Communists, nor Crony Socialists ever dined at the Captain's table.

Drake: Nor has she falsely flown the flag of academia while riding upon the backs of permanent graduate students and part-time professors, exhorting them to inflate grades on dumbed-down degrees. Nor has the Good Ship recruited legions of lawyers and administrators to raise funds, build multi-million dollar buildings, and claim the intellectual property rights of researchers, innovators, and entrepreneurs, paying off the vociferous postmodern press and literarti, while managing and profiting immensely from the multi-billion dollar endowment of the "non-profit" organization. I assure you that the Good Ship is not one of those sublime industries of deconstruction which exalts the present nihilist, while degrading the dead and unborn.

Becket: Aye-- she's steered clear of all idle figureheads in general, and aboard this Ship of the Line the Captains perform the work of three people. For we lead by doing first, and then delegating.

 

XII. THE SHAREHOLDERS:

Elliot: I'm sure our shareholders shall be content with this report. For it seems from this that the Good Ship's serving the People.

Becket: Which was once considered by most to be the essence and measure of work.

Drake: And I say that the shareholders are all those who read these words and find themselves exalted. Only in literature are the customers and the shareholders always one and the same. For the more people who read and appreciate the Greats, the richer the society and the individual philosopher is.

 

XIII. THE NATURE OF THE BUSINESS:

Becket: The business of books, mate! The value of words by which we define value itself, and the paradox that the greatest writers and thinkers often get paid the least and persecuted the most by those very same people they so infinitely serve! It would seem that the business of the Great Books often grates against the very idea of modern business itself. To place subtletie above stocks, beliefs above bonds, and meter over money. To boldly speak the Truth, and provide true Leadership when so many "Leaders" do little more than march in absurd, shameless, economically-influenced, silent lockstep behind liars. When the word "statesman" has come to mean state-subsidized, when the nation's "most powerful" men are those who seek to lower interest rates to spur the economy, rather than raise the moral and intellectual standards for the commander in Chief and the People. When the Word has been devalued and promises have been rendered worthless by their vast abundance and lack of action to back them when Time comes to collect. Do they not see that as night follows day, the fundamental promise at the root of all money follows the culture? If the words of the culture are cut from the anchors of action, shall not the currency also drift from meaning? Whose language shall the children use to pen their dreams, when the language spoken by their parents is not enough to support the sacred bonds of marriage? If the words which issue from leaders' mouths are ill-spent, invested in thoughts which are not true and ventures which are never to be, then who shall be motivated to honor the money that they print?

Drake: America shall only be Great as long as She honors and respects the hard-working, honest people who grant her Currency value. This requires the consistent, constant expelling and demotion of the rogues and rapscallions who are instituted by bands of rogue and rapscallion lawyers, pundits, politicians, and other variations on the Manipulator of Words, the Destroyer of Meaning, and the Bureaucrat. The eternal Contortionists who have ever opposed Freedom, and who have ever favored intellectual indifference, lies, subterfuge, trickery, and treachery.

 

XIV. THE COMPETITION:

Elliot: It's always puzzled me why the bureaucrats believe that people innovate, strive, invent, create, labor, and dream because government bureaucrats throw money at them. The bureaucrats have it backwards. The IMF only has money because they tax the people who innovate, strive, invent, create, labor, and dream. For money cannot create wealth. It can only ever reflect it. And the government cannot create the rugged individual. They can only destroy one.

Becket: Ahoy to that! Bureaucracy is the ubiquitous demon which haunts man's most noble institutions, which ceaselessly preys on the individual, harassing and intimidating, and then dissipating into thin air like a coward when the individual seeks Justice, as it has no tangible form. Bureaucracy is that entity which shamelessly takes credit for all successes that it once vehemently opposed, but could not kill.

Drake: Bureaucracy is the duplicitous conformer's safe haven, the dull-spiritied and uncreative soul's harbor, and the mechanism by which a minority of politicians, publicans, managers, and lawyers often attempt to live off the people that they profess to serve. It is the eternal club for all those who have ambitions which transcend their talents, for all those who have perceptions which fall short of Reality. Bureaucracy is the beast which the founding fathers scorned, which they pledged their Lives, their Fortunes, and their Sacred Honours against, and which they instituted a brave new government in opposition of.

Elliot: Bureaucracy is not to be confused with government itself, but rather it is the darker, corrupted form of government. It is the form of government which is embraced by those who have lost faith in Natural Law and their Natural Ability, and yet still lust after the ability to command, rule, lead, and indulge.

Becket: Perhaps the best definition of a bureaucrat is one who places themselves between God and the people without serving either. Those who secure leadership positions while never leading. Those who rise to administrative positions while lacking all vision. Those who claim the helm of a ship, only to sail in the wake of the peoples' hard work, innovations, and convictions, grappling themselves to the stern of humanity's dreams and labor, and considering themselves captains. Those who seek to lead not because they know where to go, but because they scorn work.

Drake: Bureaucracy is the device by which bodies of men strive to lay claim to and take credit for the riches and wealth created by the innovation, dedication, and labor of the individual.

Elliot: Which is why they so often spring up in the most sacred places. In all the mystical aesthetic realms, where the essence is as difficult to define as beauty and art themselves, where the essence is only ever properly defined by the essence itself, as poetry is defined by poetry alone-- that's the very same place where bureaucracy thrives. In realms as sacred as Education, Business, Philosophy, Science, Government, and Religion, where constant creativity and the ancient traditions form the vital lifeblood. For instance, one might teach a class on painting by stating that one must use brushes dipped in oils to create objects upon a canvas, reflecting objects in reality. Now these generalizations are all true, and cannot be countered, but yet, to say that the teacher has actually taught painting would be inaccurate. For the majestic individuality and individualistic genius which marks all true art has not been conferred, taught, nor communicated.

Becket: Ahoy to that! And postmodernism, the King of all Generalizations and the enemy of all Aesthetic Standards, has spawned a thousand bureaucracies within bureaucracies in academia. Even the generalizations have been generalized in the postmodern era. For teaching students that painting is performed by applying paint to a canvas with a brush is no longer too general, but it is now too specific. In the postmodern world, painting could consist of throwing the paints at the canvas, or just leaving it there, blank. Thus the actual art becomes irrelevant, and the artist's political views may reign supreme.

Elliot: Hence the modern creative writing class. Just as all the greats are being deconstructed, right as the words are being declared to be meaningless and curriculums are being diluted of all Classical Greatness, all of a sudden there's been this vast growth of the creative writing workshop. The educational bureaucracies proclaim that everyone's an artist. Everyone's a scholar. Everyone's a novelist. Everyone's a lawyer. You can be one too, just as long as you take out loans for three years to subsidize the contortionists of Postmodern Liberalism. The removal of higher truths and aesthetics has proven to be wonderful for the businesses of higher education and professional schools. For it transfers the natural power of objective reality and the power of God's Wisdom and Divine Judgement to the bureaucrat, many of them who mistakenly consider themselves to be business leaders and visionaries, whereas in reality they're little more than classical bureaucrats, sans original vision, sans creativity, sans wit.  Litigation replaces the Natural Law of Common Sense. From the short-term business standpoint, Postmodernism has been wonderful for Law Schools and the Academy.

Becket: And tragic for Law and Literature. Witness the simultaneous and vast decline of literature which has accompanied all these schools of creative writing. Witness the financial and literary decline of the New Yorker, echoed by the sorry state of the literary industry, which ceaselessly markets Toni Morrison's, Joyce Carol Oates', Thomas Pynchon's, and David Foster Wallace's, indecipherable, nihilistic tomes to an ever-dwindling audience of honest, profound readers, who're turing to Rush, the Free Press, and The Jolly Roger. Witness the plethora of lawyers and the coinciding decline in obedience to God's Laws. As if God will debate with ye as to the true meaning of the word "is." And can ye name any Entrepreneurs who have risen from all these rising schools on Entrepreneurship? I say these things are little more than the bureaucracy attempting to gain the coveted semblance of the Individual, while retaining the greater personality and perks of the State. And while profits and endowments soar, culture declines.

 

XV. THE COMPETITION'S MONOPOLY:

Drake: 'Tis something the postmodern liberals have become adept at-- putting the individual's face on the largest of bureaucracies. Everything that was once evil, corrupt, greedy, superficial, or bureaucratic, they merely market with a feminist's or postmodernist's face, and then it can never be criticized, no matter how far it might stray from God's law.  Material independence has been commodified, as a mother can better serve a corporation's bottom line by working than she can by raising her children. They declare the end of Big Government, and then merely change the name to, "The Center for Innovation," or the "Center for Individual Rights," or "The Ministry of Truth," or "The Center For Entreprenuerial Advancement," or something. And all of a sudden there's a form that you need to fill out before you become an entreprenuer. A form that you paid for with your tax dollars, which must be approved by somebody that your tax dollars employ. 'Tis a sign of things to come when they attempt to control the vast majority of contemporary poetry and philosophy by what has become the world's largest monopoly-- the United States government.

Becket: And woe to the poets and philosophers who would practice true poetry and philosophy without official permission. For where bureaucracies prevail, the true poets and philosophers are as unwelcomed as they are profound.

Drake: And the further the culture continues in its decline, the more the bureaucracies will tell the people that they need the government to bail them out. Whereas financial turmoil is devastating to a private company, it is viewed as a positive opportunity by the government, as is everything that might potentially breed dependence upon bureaucracy.

Becket: Government can do little good in the mystical realms, from religion, to philsophy, to art, to science. At best they can merely fund the work, but they cannot fund innovation. It is fallacious to think that people follow leaders because leaders lend them money. People follow leaders because leaders present them with priceless Vision.

Elliot: And where bureaucracies prosper, infringing upon the most fundamental private property rights, morale declines. Why should a man work when he's taxed by liars and cheats to fund their pretentiousness, pomposity, and rhymeless, meaningless, postmodern poetry? Why should we labor to support crass, indulgent, base leaders? Truth alone can give man Reason to Rise. Truth alone can inspire men to read, and the Truth alone shall thus endure. All ye who are navigating the business of eternity would be wise to keep this in mind.

 

XVI. THE COMPETITION'S EFFECT ON THE MARKET:

Becket: Can the presidential bean counters and postmodern economists not see the vast cultural inflation which has taken place? Do words, plot, meaning, and structure lie outside their narrow field of view? I'm a physicist by training, and I've walked where the math reflects a far more precise reality than that which has ever been accounted for by econometrics, and yet I know well the limit of numbers in even the physical world. Reason, logic, and empiricism shall attest to the present scarcity of the once common commodity of children being raised by their mothers, and the vast cost of realizing this natural necessity. They've cut the natural mooring lines between mother and child, and grappled women to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The priceless goods of good-will, cheerfulness, faith in our country, our leaders, and our Lord have been dismissed by these dismal scientists, for they do not show up in their equations. Turn over the dollar, economists! And on it ye shall see printed, "In God We Trust." If ye forsake the Lord, surely ye shall have forsaken the currency. Indeed the dollar is half Washington's, and one should give to Washington that which is Washington's, and give to the Lord that which is the Lord's, but a dollar torn in half is worthless.

 

XVII. THE NATURE OF AMERICA'S CURRENCY

Drake: I was just thinking the other night how the founders inextricably linked our monetary system to God's Will. And Washington, who graces the fundamental unit of the world's economy, who graciously represents all of us in the freedom of our daily transactions, stated "Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." Lincoln, who graces the five dollar bill, said, "A country which forgets God shall be forgotten by God."

 

XVIII. COMPETITOR'S DISADVANTAGES:

Becket: I think that many have been misled by mere numbers, for the money made by gambling, temptation, treachery, deceit, deconstruction, exploitation, nepotism, cronyism, and decline is often indistinguishable from the money made off of hard work, loyalty, prudence, diligence, faith, and innovation, although the latter is far more valuable, as the souls which handle it are left pure. If society's leaders are only to be loyal to money, if they truly believe as they so often state that, "it's the economy stupid," then they will serve Satan as readily as they serve God. Now I sense the well-educated postmodernist chuckling at this point, but they would do well to read up on Socrate's contemplations on sophists, and Jesus's prophecies concerning the law makers, pharisees, and the wicked. For how many times, mate, have their simple Words been realized?

Elliot: And in saying, "it's the economy stupid," so often the economists are mistaking the economy for that which it is not. For the economy is not merely money, as the monetary bureaucrats and endowment eggheads agree to believe. Money is rooted in meaning, in the will to work. Money is but an agreed upon mechanism for exchanging these fundamental things. But take away peoples' fundamental meaning, take away their rights to own private property, including that most fundamental private property, the Words by which they mark the Truth, and their money will be worth nothing.

Becket: And though ye lower interest rates, how low must they go before the President will tell the Truth, before the mighty Congressmen and Justices fulfill their divine duty and enforce the Law, before the Teachers, Editors, Publishers, Journalists, and Ministers lead the People to a better land? Is there any wonder that there is no inflation, despite the monetary prosperity, as the culture is spiritually bankrupt?

 

XIX. ECONOMICS 101:

Drake: I was thinking the same thing. In eras of decline inflation can occur without material items actually costing more, while the spiritual entities, such as love, honor, justice, and Great Literature skyrocket in price, becoming unobtainable. It are things such as these that the present Pharisees and teachers of the law are blind to, that the hardest workers do not work for material goods alone, but they work for honor, glory, respect, a family, and God. And I say they've been working harder and harder, for less and less. For less decency, for less commitment, for less comradeship, for less nobility, for less security, for less freedom to have their God acknowledged, for less meaning.

Elliot: Ahoy there! Meaning! The ultimate treasure of all beings endowed with a soul! Why do the wealthiest collect the art of the formerly ignored and build magnificent buildings upon university campuses to honor the prophets which their ancestors forsook, and the likes of which they today forsake? For they yearn to own a piece of the artist's, philosopher's, and poet's soul. They wish to purchase replicas of that deeper meaning which cannot be bought by money.

 

XX. THE CUSTOMER:

Becket: Is it not true that the hard-working, honest man better executes the law than half the lawyers at any given time? Is it not true that the innovative, dutiful man does more for business than the sum total of all the business bureaucrats on any given day? The lone grad student, lover of knowledge and wisdom-- does he not create far more wealth than his contemporaries who merely move existing wealth around? So many say that it takes money to make money, but then what investor has created more wealth than Abraham, Solomon, Einstein, Moses, Donne, Shakespeare, and Jefferson? How many of the works in The Western Canon were preceded by a round of venture funding?

 

XXI. CURRENT MARKETPLACE:

Drake: Aye aye then! The silence of so many parishoners, Priests, publishers, philosophers, and professors. Do not these positions gain their glory by their loyalty to Truth? Should not leaders lead, philosophers ponder, and judges and juries deliver justice? Where hath gone not so much bravery and boldness, but common decency? Where hath gone not so much poetry and philosophy, but common sense? Where hath gone not so much reverence and piety, but common humility? Is this the cultural wreckage, the spiraling, drifting flotsam and jetsam that floats in the wake of sixties pillaging and plundering? Is this the graveyard of civilization, where the Lord's lighthouse has been deconstructed? Are these the sunken ships of once noble institutions which threaten The Jolly Roger's mighty keel?

Elliot: Ahoy there captain! I spy the same Truth!

Becket: And witness the countless sirens and soothsayers declaring it was ever thus, consecrating cynicism, exalting decrepidness, and castigating righteous hope!

Drake: Many of the mediocre talking heads, pundits, politicians and professors benefit for the moment by the people thinking it was ever thus. The professoional poseurs enjoy the absence of intellectual and aesthetic standards which pervades the status quo. For in a more profound, classical context, their nihlistic pretension would founder. Mediocre minds, with their talents shadowed by their vast ambitions, truly believe that the only way to achieve prosperity and fame is by treachery, deceit, and debauchery. They cannot conceive of gaining glory by creation, but only by manipulation and pernicious politics. So they create a history in their own image, and project their shortcomings and vices upon all noble leaders of the past, until the Founding Fathers, the Saints, the Prophets, and finally God Himself, are dragged down by their methodical, relentless deconstruction.

Becket: And that's why the Great Books, beginning with the Bible, were ever thus. For their immortality cannot be altered by the material wants of wicked generations.   It was the genius of America's founders to recognize the Glory of the Word when planted within the Individual's soul. They heard the "it was ever thus" premise from all the kings and cronies of their day, but guided by logic, wisdom, and the grace of God, they dreamt that it could be different. They drew upon the vast fountain of ancient scripture pertaining to the State, they stood upon the shoulders of giants, climbed to the very mastheads of Aristotle's political thought, and formulated the republican experiment which we're yet carrying out. It's their moral dream of a promised land from which America derives her higher purpose, her sublimity, and her sacred duty to perpetually expel mere politicians and peddlers of pedantry, perniciousness, treachery, and deceit. As it was written "Thou shall not tempt the Lord," so too was it written, "Thou shall not tempt the American People." And the First Amendment guarantees that these words are to be freely possessed and disseminated by all individuals who partake in this Mighty Nation.

 

XXII. COMPANY GOALS:

Elliot: Indeed, as Becket said, look on a dollar, the fundamental unit of the global economy, and ye shall read, "In God We Trust." All the founding fathers lived and breathed within this rich, presently dissipating context. John Adams stated, "Our Constitution was made for only a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." We're resurrecting the classical context in which tomorrow's leaders shall echo these same words. I say our generation's president shall be a renaissance man.

Drake: And there's the paradox of Greatness again. For Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and Hamilton were nothing but rebels and traitors when beheld by the British Empire. Is it no wonder that they're also rapscallions when beheld by the liberal cultural empire?

Becket: They were men of letters, men of profound passion and melancholy character. They were visionaries, and thus they were the enemy of bureaucracy and superficial distinctions of kings and lords. As is every author of Great Literature. Ye won't find a bureaucrat amongst them.

Elliot: Nor an uncreative soul, nor an administrator, nor that pretentiousness which marks the professional publican. And men of such Noble Natures created the two greatest business plans ever written-- the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. For these documents, written in the sublime context of the Great Books and the Bible, define and defend the Natural Rights, the Equality, and the Private Property of all men. Ye'll notice that there were no numbers nor balance sheets nor stock options nor plans to be acquired at the end of five years in these sacred documents, for all Americans were to share equally in the spiritual splendor. For these men, like all literary entreprenuers, were motivated not by Money, but by the Philosophy which underlies all stable currencies. And it is that same Philosophy we have sworn upon the Altar of God to uphold, protect, and defend.

 

XXIII. MARKET TRENDS:

Drake: And who is the greater literary entreprenuer? Melville or the CEO of Penguin-Dutton-Scribners-Putnam-Random House-Knopf? Nathaniel Hawthorne or the entire fleet of modern editors, agents, and executives who've authored culture's contemporary decline? Who would you say has created more wealth, Einstein or the Justice Department's lawyers? Aristotle and his true teachers or the the MBA's at Harvard, who barricade themselvs in the business building, counting beans, while the true cultural wealth crashes all about them?  Who would you say knows more about the business of life, Shakespeare or Toni Morrison and the rest of the postmodern, instaclassic Nobel Prize winners? Jane Austen or Tina Brown? Now I would argue that all these CEOs are valuable to the society and the economy, but that the net worth of Man can never be measured in dollars alone. If it were, then the CEO of Barnes and Noble would be worth more than the grand totality of all the works of Plato, Shakespeare, Austen, Dickinson, Frost, and every other eternal poet who has ever graced this globe.

Becket: Companies like Amazon.com and Microsoft owe their success to their Humility as well as their Vison. For they realize that they owe the vast majority of their wealth to the Creators of science and language, to the original entreprenuers, to the moral visionaries. Were it not for those who fastidiously held the truth above all material entities, what classics would there be to read, what institutions would there be to honor, and what books would there be to sell? Of what use could a word-processing program be if Words meant nothing?

Elliot: Any businessman who truly cares about long-term investments must remember Washington's words, "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports."

 

XXIV. THE COMPETITION'S LEADERSHIP:

Drake: So many modern "leaders", with their deanships and chairs, with their presidencies and provostships, with infinite wealth and the ears of the globe listening and the eyes of the nations watching-- why do they offer only silence when it comes to passing Jefferson's judgement upon the decay? Do they not shudder when they think that God is Just, and must someday pass judgement upon the rampant and widely-supported killing of the unborn? And all for the sake of the temporal economy. Other than Rush and Ross, who else is exercising profound, bold, moral leadership? Are they blind or do they just pretend not to see? Either way, the darkness by decree or by decision renders them incapable of righteous leadership.

Becket: This lack of leadership resounds throughout modern culture and academia, where bean counters in the back office and pseudo-business professors are paid more than those who are in charge of passing along our more permanent heritage. I totally believe that the CEOs of Microsoft and Amazon.com deserve their hard-earned billions, as well as all the countless other entrepreneurs and visionaries. But I can't comprehend why it is that those who pretend to see the things the CEO Entrepreneurs see are paid more than those who know Shakespeare or Plato. And all the while University Presidents are raising funds for football stadiums and temples of science that are far more costly than the labs where Einstein formulated relativity and the Wright brothers discovered flight, while tenured sixties academics are razing literature, or standing idly by as it is razed, growing fat on government grants, football revenue, superficial temptations, and the infinite labor of graduate students at the bottom of the pyramid scheme.

Drake: And again-- money is a measure of money, but not of erudition, nor aesthetics, nor morality, nor wisdom, nor virtue. Sure, all the search engines are great, but are they culture? The Yellow Pages might be far more read than the Book, but would ye say that they are worth more?

 

XXV. THE COMPETITION'S STRATEGY:

Becket: Modern liberalism has consecrated the marriage between postmodernism and economics, between deconstruction and dollars, between democracy and debauchery, between liberty and licentiousness. Witness the "counterculture" at every turn, in every postmodern "break the rules" advertisement.  One of the greatest ironies of teh age is that the locksteping postmodernists and conforming nihilists yet maintain a façade of "rebelling." For religion and tradition form the true "counterculture" today.  But there were elements of religion, such as filial duty and family, which the postmodernists found to oppose their economic ambitions.

Elliot: When all of entirety is anchored to the rise and fall of the postmodern stock exchange, will we be freer? When every entity, aspect, and transaction of life grants a penny to a CEO and his friend, will we be wealthier? When the megabusinesses have driven every competitor out of business by funding their vast losses with IPO's, will we then sit down to enjoy a good read?  When all filial duty and family loyalty and community fidelity is replaced by economic opportunism, shall we have triumphed?

Drake:  But the megabusinesses cannot drive us out of business.  For as original literary entrepreneurs, we compete with no one.  'Tis a fundamental advantage of Great Literature, Philosophy, and Wit that it cannot be successfully mimmicked nor immitated.  It can only be copied, and any copies of The Good Ship's words only further our cause. 

Becket: The classics tell us that it is easy to unite superficial men around pomp and circumstance, and that it are the deeper characters which can only find meaning elsewhere. For verily I say unto you-- which men have always ended up leading the day? Which men are remembered by eternity? Who can remember the lords and barons of Shakespeare's day, and what is left of their accounts, their assets, their mansions, and their books? Surely those in philosophy, or the business of Eternity, cannot voyage to those islands where all philosophers must travel if they anchor their souls to the rise and fall of the stock market, which is subject to a thousand thousand temptations and titillations.

Drake: Postmodernism hath bred bands of mediocre, dishonest men who establish a false context in which they can believe themselves to be wise. The irony of this system is that the shallower the soul, the easier it is to believe that one is profoundly deep. I say that the provosts and corporate publishers of our era are shortsighted men and women, and thus short-term investors, for while salesmen of temptation and tarnished titillation can personally prosper in periods of decline, the overall wealth of the culture is dissipated. For those who sell merchandise in the temple without even acknowledging the Lord are forsaking their duty. Until just yesterday it has forever been the duty of those standing at the cultural helms to respect the God and Wisdom by which those helms came to be. If the Captain disregards the science of navigation, the politician disregards the Constitution, and the pastor disregards the Word of God, shall not the ship of state founder? Should not the poet navigate by the permanent beacons, rather than the monetary, material, arbitrary ones erected in this postmodern fog?

 

XXVI. COMPANY ROLE MODELS:

Elliot: Look at the greatest leaders and innovators throughout history, and you'll find that they have always been marked with humility equal to their generosity. One of Benjamin Franklin's written goals was to imitate the humility of Socrates and Jesus. Did not Plato say that those who are best fit to rule would be those who would approach leader's the task with the most reluctance, apprehension, and humility? For where was Einstein's mansion, or Melville's, or Twain's, or Dickinson's? Though they never went "public" on Wallstreet, did they not go far more public than any corporation ever has, to be known throughout all of time and by all humanity? Do not more people own a piece of Plato, or Twain, or Austen, than the vast majority of corporations? Do not more people own a share in America's founding documents, built upon the Bible and our classical heritage, than they do of the entirety of all publicly traded companies? Then why are those who teach business classes valued more than those who teach the Bill of Rights? Why are those who raise capital given the permanent administrative positions while those who raise questions are treated as commodities? Even Jefferson-- is not the wealth of his words worth far more than Monticello? Read the accomplishments enumerated on Jefferson's tombstone, and you'll find not the Presidency of the United States engraved there, but rather you'll find the Statute for Religious Freedom in Virginia, The University of Virginia, and The Declaration of Independence. In the end, he chose the eternity of Words to be remembered by.

 

XXVII. CAUSE OF COMPETITOR'S DECLINE:

Becket: Along with this valuing of prosperity over prudence and the bottom line over the higher ideals comes the lowering of literature. For to exalt something at the very bottom, the bottom line, to the very stars, and then navigate by it-- surely it is not prudent for man to create his own beacons to replace those more permanent ones made by God.

Elliot: And in the thick of the postmodern fog, where the rising generation has all but been cut off from the ancients' wisdom, it is all the more easy for shallow bureaucrats to get away with erecting false beacons, and pretending to lead when all they do is blindly follow economic indicators. By attaching the bottom line to the loftier ideals, ye can only ever drag them down.

 

XXVIII. ENTRY AND GROWTH STRATEGY

Drake: O, but can ye feel it all rising again? I've all but forgotten those darkened worlds of contemporary culture while sailing the seven sites of The Jolly Roger, where we have struck a balance between the Greats, a small business, and academia.

Becket: Indeed we have sailed on to nobler things, and I know we're all perpetual optimists at heart, as are all who are humble before the Lord. But we were born within the other world, where so many were opposed to or indifferent towards the Greats. Like that business class Drake and I took, where we drew up a business plan for Classicals Cafe. When we got it back, the professor said it was very well written, but we hadn't done enough market research, and it was "too academic." So there we were, two physics grad students with our tax dollars, teaching, and research bolstering a brand new business building where their idea of high tech was making words fly in PowerPoint, and we were being told by the business professor that our idea was "too academic." Only at the postmodern university.

Elliot: But those visions and dreams which are opposed by the expert bureaucrats are often those very same entities which are favored by Providence, the Free Market, and Time. So I say our best entry and growth strategy is to Let the Dream Be. For God's time favors the Truth.

 

XXXX. THE NATURE OF ENTREPRENUERSHIP

Becket: This brings to mind a story-- I was auditing a course on entreprenuerism once, and this CEO came in to talk to us about an optical drive company he and some friends spun off of 3M, just before the CD ROM caught fire. Anyway, he was a millionaire now, and after he left, the professor said something like, "Now there's an anomaly. Generally you think of a Ph.D. researcher as not having a global picture." A global picture? What Ph.D. researcher worth his keep doesn't possess a global picture? The physics and engineering departments are far more internationally globalized than the business schools. The business schools are seeking to become international because of the global economy borne by the quantum mechanics, silicon, and software created by researchers, engineers, and Ph.D.'s, and yet somehow they're teaching that the passion, drive, and creativity harbored by so many Ph.D.'s is useless.

Elliot: I think that the better business professors aren't so naive. Yahoo and Intel are both run by engineering Ph.D.'s, and they probably know a bit more about founding and running companies than most professors of entrepreneurship.

Drake: Entrepreneurship, like leadership, cannot be taught. It can only be risen to.

Elliot: I definitely have empathy for these statements, though, as I feel that somehow the vast success and worship of the economy is breeding a brand new form of bureaucracy. I know that the universities are adding more and more instacrats, intellectual property experts, information technology deans, and provosts on entreprenuership every year-- are these people research scientsists or teachers? No. They're lawyers and accountants for the most part. And the thing is, you get the feeling that they're permanent, while the researchers and teachers are replaceable. The researcher's always taking huge risks, as somebody somewhere else could be patenting the last four years of your work right at this moment. Someone could be publishing similar results in a journal next month. The researcher always runs the risk that that which they invested years of their time into will be invented by someone else just a few minutes before they realize it. The researcher's the true entrepeneur, and yet they're often the second-class citizen in modern academia, where the bean counter is beheld as the visionary.  But the patent lawyers always win, as they benefit by every patent ever made, regardless of the risk of taking it to market.

Becket: And it's not so much that the risk as a researcher is terrible, or that the competition is too fierce-- that's part of the territory. But what it is is that working for a bureaucracy is demoralizing. In successful corporations the greatest innovators are the best paid. If universities adopt the intellectual property departments and claims on the innovator's research which the corporate world possesses, they would be wise to compensate it accordingly, and offer permanent positions to the graduate students and postdocs, rather than to the "intellectual property" administrators.

XXIX. MARKET RESEARCH

Drake: And what Market research did Melville ever perform? What opinion polls did Jefferson consult before penning the Declaration of Independence? Which statistics did Shakespeare study? And what consulting firm or policy wonks did Lincoln hire when he wrote the Gettysburg Address? For the final bearing of their work, they looked not to the people, but they gazed into the profound depths of their private souls, and there they perceived a direction that the people did not yet know existed, a brave, new direction in which the noble would choose to go. Here lies the true source of leadership-- vision born in one's private imagination, communicated by the words, phrases, and sentiments expressed by natural wit and tempered by the wisdom of the Classics. And 'tis the exact sort of leadership that's shunned in the postmodern academic world, where private property rights are assaulted at every juncture, and opinion polls and collective perversions dominate the day.

Becket: The postmodern cynicism works both ways. Academics tend to express cynicism towards the profit-oriented goals of the postmodern publishing world, while the corporate world tends to express cynicism towards the government-funded, inefficient, seemingly useless, and often indecipherable aspects of the postmodern academic world. And the thing is, they're both right. All contemporary winds are blowing in opposition to Great Literature, but for the one rising tonight.

 

XXX. THE COMPETITOR'S LEADERSHIP

Becket: And all the while postmodern leaders in both the corporate and academic realms are guilty for failing to trumpet the cause of Great Literature, to fight for righteousness and character, to ceaselessly work for substance over semblance, and sincerity over seeming sophistication. With the lack of original literary leadership, with the vehement expulsion of original literary visionaries, both past and present, the academic and publishing worlds have shared in decline. And culture has followed these flagships.

Elliot: At least grades are going up.

Becket: Exactly the illusionary power of postmodern liberalism. The symbolic is raised by lowering the standards.

Drake: O' the vast powers of liberalism's illusions! To seemingly oppose big business bureaucracy while being the first in line to let big business and government bureaucracies dominate entities as sacred as Literature, Poetry, and Art. To appear as a unifier of the people while relentlessly dividing them along lines of ethnicity and gender, anointing every aspect of our lives with sexual and racial politics and lugbrurious litigation. To pit man against wife, mothers against fathers, parents against their children, and children against their parents, plugging all of entirety into the DOW, subjecting children in all stages of daycare to MTV marketing campaigns, making money and postmodern politics the supreme master of all households, homesteads, and harbors.

Becket: And then proclaiming to the people that it was ever thus, except now they are better off, as the evil righteous and religious men are being thwarted. When standards are destroyed it's easier to get people to work for mere money, and to coerce them with mere politics.  For by enforced nihilism the postmodern politicians might be able to convince many that there can be no Higher Calling. Thus ye see their motive.

Drake: Cultural inflation is a wonderful way to subject people to arbitrary rule.

Elliot: And it's having the same effect on the soul of the institutions that printing money has on the soul of an economy.

Becket: When cultural inflation occurs, meaning is harder to come by, and true scholarship, rugged creativity, and brilliant innovation mean less and less in the literary world. And as words are wedded to all deeper aspects of existence, meaning is harder to come by. And bureaucracy momentarily thrives.

 

XXXI. THE NEW LEADERSHIP

Drake: In times of decline bold men are called upon to lay down the letter of the literary law. To forsake the fortune and fame which might be gained by joining in the twisting and contorting words and making the worse argument seem the better. To boldly follow an abstract vision, fearing not the obstacles posed by institutionalized postmodernists and the thickening fogs of popular opinion.

Becket: Jesus and Socrates could have become most formidable publicans, politicians, and lawyers.

Elliot: As could have Shakespeare, Melville, and Aristotle, with their supreme eloquence by which they could communicate their profound perceptions.

Becket: But they heard a higher calling. And it is most fortunate, for litigation has produced little in the way of memorable literature nor quotable philosophy. Litigation has inspired more sleepless nights than dreams.

Drake: And as Jesus, Socrates, and Jefferson were vehemently opposed by Kings and democracies alike, so too shall those who venture forth in service of the Lord be met with indifference and then vehement opposition, when the initial indifference is not enough to quell the changing tides which the people see to be lifting them. Do the people think that it's any coincidence that a country founded upon the Word, a country which placed private honor and duty before material gain and the King's inherited wealth, grew to be the richest nation? And what do the people suppose might happen as these supreme origins are forgotten?

Becket: For as the Word is the fundamental foundation of all honor, trust, commitment, character, and culture, so too is the Word the foundation of the economy. Money is nothing more than a promise, and today that promise is under assault. For leaders supporting abortion and burgeoning bureaucracies are allowed to lie by the posturing experts of the law. And the postmodern cultural crew denigrates the traditional literature and culture which once served to remind us of entities greater than posturing. For again and again, what is the only verb found upon the dollar? 'Tis the word "Trust."

Drake: And again and again we've heard, "It's the economy stupid," which has flowed like water from the elites' lips, and flooded the institutions of higher learning. But I contend that to place money above meaning, to value the worth of our dollars more than the worth of our eternal souls, is the surest path towards bankruptcy. Both moral and monetary, for one cannot serve two masters. And there is but one Master that the prudent man should ever seek to serve.

Becket: And there is but one master, that we, the new literary leaders, shall ever serve. And what we cannot gain by our lack of deception, dishonesty, and decrepitness, we shall have to earn by loyalty, labor, and hard work. Which is a good thing, as no enduring literature has ever sprung from dishonesty, the lack of character, nor the mere pursuit of dollars.

 

XXXII. PRODUCTION STRATEGY:

Elliot: So then we can conclude that the best literary businesses have ever been those which have valued money the least.

Becket: And too we can conclude that the most fundamental and enduring literature is not built by networking, nor knowing the right people, nor by those who view degrees as tickets into the corporate world nor MBA's as mere passes into jobs with higher salaries in the corporate publishing world. For I say no executive has ever added one iota of true wealth to the publishing world during the tenure of their administrative duties.

Drake: Without the notion of infinity nor rhyming beauty, the stock exchange is incapable of measuring the type of wealth a renaissance would create.

 

XXXIII. THE PUBLIC OFFERING

Becket: And thus it would be in our best interest to never go public until our vision is fully formed and set down in ink.

Drake: And to serve the public until it is.

Elliot: For the words we pen can be loyal to neither shareholders nor swings in the stock market, but only to our souls.

Becket: Any writer of consequence must write that which must be written, or not write at all.

Drake: When you go public all of a sudden you must answer to the shareholders and the board.

Elliot: Most of whom will be far more concerned with the bottom line than the higher truths. And as the Great Books sometimes take generations to reap returns, the accountant's petty impatience would not be conducive to the authoring of eternal poetry.

Becket: Which is why in today's bottom-line literary market all the temporal, superficial entities are published, while the eternal ones are allowed to perish.

Elliot: And yet these eternal words would reap vast fortunes, due to their complete and utter scarcity, and their infinite value as vessels of the contemporary Truth. Were the corporations to publish these Truths, I say they would rage like wildfires about this globe, as they are already doing upon the WWW.

Becket: The new corporations are publishing this truth. Classicals & jollyroger.com.

Drake: By wedding yerself to the material, ye foresake eternity. And remember in Moby Dick when Captain Ahab was reminded by Starbuck that he had not been given the ship to hunt down the White Whale, but rather he'd been given the Ship to fill the barrels with oil and the pockets of the shareholders. As Melville penned, Had any one of his old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in him then, how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have wrenched the ship from such a fiendish man! They were bent on profitable cruises, the profit to be counted down in dollars from the mint. He was intent on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural revenge.

Becket: And is that not true leadership, true vision, and true character? And was not Melville able to express it so well because he himself possessed it? In a letter written to Nathaniel Hawthorne, Melville wrote, "Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. . . What I feel most moved to write, that is banned-- it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches."

 

XXXIV. THE NEW LITERARY LEADERSHIP: PART II:

Drake: That's the kind of leadership we shall honor, revere, and aspire to as captains of The Jolly Roger. None of this state-subsidized-bandwagon-powerpoint-widget-scholars-of entrepreneurship stuff-- for I say they have no shame, and as is often the case, their lack of shame is their greatest asset. So often shamelessness is confused with boldness, as a lack of independence is confused with leadership, a lack of creativity with reverence, and acceptance by the madding crowd with eternity's approval. But in the business of eternity one cannot afford to confuse the lee shore with the open sea, for out here, there exists no government to bail ye out.

Becket: For we are tomorrow's academic and publishing world.

Drake: We're today's.

Elliot: And only because we so reverently honor yesterday's.

Becket: Ahoy to that. And I say it shall be prudent to remain forever wary of the nature of that blind beast that our small ship must forever outrun. And do not get our words wrong, ye who hear this, for never have we been opposed to academia, nor business, nor politics, but rather we have only ever been opposed to the bureaucracies which often blossom within aged, noble institutions, as barnacles do upon the mightiest of hulls.

 

XXXV. THE NATURE OF BUREAUCRACY

Elliot: And why is it that bureaucracy so often springs up around the noble and the sacred? Within the governmental institutions of our republic, within educational institutions, even within our houses of worship?

Becket: 'Tis a simple answer, mate. Because all these entities are centered upon the wealth that all men covet the most.

Drake: The Truth.

Becket: All our most sacred institutions are founded upon the inherited wealth and vision of individuals who overcame bureaucracies. Socrates was condemned by a democracy, and ye'll find him enshrined in the Princeton Chapel, where Madison once sat, contemplating the aspects of the eternal which would inform the composition of The Federalist Papers. And witness how today the campus is lead by rudderless economists, whipped into shape by the lingering fancies of postmodern feminists who maintain the façade of the Greats and the Gothic architecture while replacing the soul with vapid, boring politics. Jefferson had been touched by Galileo's and Copernicus's divine faith in their empirical equations, as well as the supreme beauty of Jesus's moral insights, and while all of these visionaries had been persecuted by kings, the vast technology and jurisprudence of our global economy sprang from their visions.

Drake: All cultural revolutions are preceded by literary revolutions.

Elliot: For all revolutions are preceded by a bold individual rendering the blueprint of a brave, new reality in words.

 

XXXVI. THE RENAISSANCE:

Becket: This is our generation's unsung battle, our silent rebellion, our rising renaissance, neither acknowledged nor appreciated by the legions of aging postmodernists, and proud, dwindling boomers whose only enduring trophies shall be fading echoes of sixties indulgences. Of course those in power are either antagonistic or indifferent towards the Good Ship. Some of the administrators are pretty cool people, but they lack the courage and the vision to counter the postmodern ethos, to favor an eternal vision over temporal vanity. But we know that they're fundamentally on our side.

Drake: The tenured literati and the postmodern publishing CEOs all sold their souls long ago when they embraced the sheer politics and postmodern mindset which dominates the contemporary publishing world, and which garnered them temporal profits and the deep admiration of their shallow peers, as they all celebrated decline, confusing licentiousness with freedom.

Becket: The lack of true leadership qualities is a prerequisite for today's leaders, from Harold Shapiro of Princeton to Bill Clinton. For these men have no cores, but only appetites, nor characters but only charisma. But when the blind lead the blind, many believe that they do indeed see. . .

Drake: Superficial soundbites and crass marketing strategies walk hand-in-hand with the nihilistic, revisionist, disrespectful, and vengeful nature of their temporal books. Not only is it easy for rhyming poetry and reasoned prose to get lost amongst the heaps of government-funded literature, but because of their sublime rarity, and because of the Truth's tendency to counter mere politics, the true living literature is actually singled out for destruction. Nobody has ever deconstructed nihilism, and nihilism has never favored truth nor countered falsehood. By publishing most everything that harbored no Truth and handing out Ph.D.'s to most anyone capable of taking out loans, the administrators were very wise. They flooded the market.

Elliot: Academia's become quite a formidable pyramid scheme, where the best, brightest, and hardest-working academics and researchers are often given the temporary positions, while the administrators, liberal politicians, lawyers, educational bureaucrats, and nihilist generalists lead the day. For the latter, harboring no core values owned by the truth-seeker, have nothing to lose in the relativistic, postmodern reality. 'Tis why the free market business world born upon the interent has been so great for us.

Drake: What it is is that the vast majority of modern academics aren't poets, and the majority of publishing moguls don't care all that much for the profundities of the Great Books. Now I'm not saying that they're bad people, or anything, but just that the postmodern philosophy is tempting to the mediocre mind, as it makes poets and priests out of all who adhere to it, sans the intellectual labor and creativity that has usually preceded the positions. Those seeking poetry seek poetry, and those seeking honor and recognition seek honor and recognition. So the poets end up with the poetry, and the bureaucrats end up with the honor and recognition.

Becket: And as the bureaucrats often outnumber the creators, it is easy for them to band together, camouflage vast bureaucracies 'neath the sacred roof of education, push paper around all day with little else better to do, and then hand out tax-subsidized awards and honors to one-another at graduations.

Elliot: And meanwhile, in the shadow of this postmodern fog, which has for so long concealed the bright shining sun of the immortal Truths, I believe I perceive the three tall masts of an unstoppable, immortal Ship.

 

XXXVII. THE NEW RULES-- THE ANCIENT'S WISDOM:

Elliot: So often we hear terms like, "The New Rules," "The New Economy," and "The New Business Cycle." But I say that really business hasn't changed-- those who can provide a unique, quality product better than anyone else for less, shall prosper. Whether they be an academic or an executive.

Becket: I think that it's safest to say that both the corporate worlds and the academic worlds have their fair share of innovators and creators, and bureaucrats and administrators. And the innovators in both academia and the business world have more in common with one another than they do with the bureaucrats in their own organizations, who in turn share the same basic pretentiousness and snobbery.

Drake: When the Greats are dismissed, so too are the living authors who now following their traditions, adorning the Truth with rhyme and meter, with passion and plot, with honesty and integrity, with the Apollonian ideals.

Becket: Was it not true that the ancient prophets said that one cannot serve both masters-- one cannot serve both God and mammon? So perhaps the greatest of literature shall not make money. Plato, Melville, Dickinson, and Austen all sell more books each semester now than they did in their entire lifetimes.

Drake: I contend that the most essential quality to leadership is vision. If one does not possess vision, one cannot lead. One can motivate, or administrate, or criticize, but one cannot create. Melville probably has had and will have a greater impact on the economy than entire business schools. Plato certainly has. And was it not Melville who wrote, "'Tis the way of the world, that one man builds the building, perishes, and leaves it for another man to place the capstone upon it."

Becket: That brings to mind what we said earlier about the business world and the academic world, finding common ground in the dismissal of the Greats. Thoreau said that institutions spring up where the winds of Truth have siezed to blow.

Elliot: Realizing this is the source of reverent humilty. Realizing our vast debt to the prophets and poets and philosophers, to those who were blessed with God's reason and became mouthpieces for the deeper moral truths.

Drake: And our humility before the "Old Guy," and the "Common Man," and Allison in the navy. Those who seek to serve God are so often the same who seek to serve the people, and vice versa. I always get along with people like that.

Elliot: Humilty before God, Nature, Tradition, and The Common Man, is what so many live without these days, and it's why the modern instaclassics are so insipid. It's why marriages don't last, it's why people are so abrasive, it's why the popular culture is so raw and reviling, it's why legal and literary bureaucrats are so content.

Becket: Today there's a greater emphasis on venture capital than there is upon the traditional sources for funding literature, such as Character, Integrity, and Faith.   And in literature, the new rules are the latter qualities, and the ancients' wisdom.

 

XXXVIII. THE FINANCIAL PLAN & VENTURE CAPITAL

Drake: VC's just not all that useful in the publishing world. Quite frankly I wouldn't know what to do with ten million dollars, and I'd have to give up a 25% percent equity in my poetry. Look at The New Yorker. It's lost tens of millions of dollars over last few years, all the while publishing increasingly pointless poetry, and the tedious prose of the spineless, valueless, postmodern literati. It was doing OK before it got bought out by Conde Nast. They threw a bunch of money at it, hired some postmodern elite literary experts, and probably a few communications consultants from McKinsey and Anderson, and it sunk 'neath the very weight of the pretension. Salinger was smart. He wouldn't let editors change one iota of his work.  And he won't let any of them even see it today.

Becket: Once upon a time The New Yorker would've been on our side-- they would've worked with us, wished us well, and watched us grow. And we would've made them profitable. We would've had the editor out here with us, to share this fading fire. But we found out pretty quickly that we were on our own.

Elliot: Which was the perfect place to be at the dawn of the internet.

Becket: The ethereal, mystical beauty of literature is that doubloons can only weigh it down. All Great Literature is penned to be blown upon the wind, to be publicized by word of mouth, to be published in the peoples' hearts. Did Salinger pursue several rounds of financing for The Catcher in The Rye? No, and it's done a lot better than 90% of all startups. Along with the works penned by Melville, Hemingway, Austen, Shakespeare, Plato, Aristotle, Madison, Hamilton, Jay, and Jefferson.

Drake: Amen to that. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution form the greatest business plan ever written, for they lay down the sentiments and the Laws which protects private property, which encourages entreprenuership, and which salutes the sacredness of the individual. And yet to call them "business plans" is somewhat demeaning. For they are works of Classical Literature.

Elliot: We already said that, dude.

Drake: I must've been sleeping.

Elliot: I think you said it.

Becket: It's interesting to ponder how much VC financing the Declaration of Independence asked for. Nothing less than the founders' Lives, Fortunes, and Sacred Honours. And that's the way I feel about this venture with you guys. There isn't any exit strategy, and we've got no plans to sell out, for we couldn't sell it any more than we could figure out a P/E ratio for our Sacred Honours.

Elliot: The need for Venture Capital is inversely proportional to the uniqueness, inimitability, and beauty of the Vision. Which is why the greatest of writers, poets, composers, and artists shall always prosper without any financing but for that Original Endowment of Natural Ability Granted by God. As did Melville and T.S. Eliot.

Becket: And there're fantastic advantages gained by working not for money, nor for the material. For the words shall come with or without any VC, and they shall grace the markets of eternity.

 

XXXIX. HARVEST STRATEGY

Drake: And the notion of prosperity brings us to the eventual returns of our business philosophy. I contend that classical literature and the Truth are the highest possible business pursuits, and also that they are the best paid.

Becket: Which is exactly why it's so puzzling to me that business schools don't require everyone to take a couple of courses on the Great Books.

Drake: Tell me about it. It's so ironic, and yet so typical in these postmodern times, where ironies are institutionalized. As a physics Ph.D. graduate student, I bore witness to a few entertaining stereotypes in the business school. I took that course on the business plan last year, as the business school is right next to the physics department, and I thought I'd drop on by. You know how I put together and presented the business plan for the Classicals Cafes, and while the overall reactions were pretty cool and helpful, the professor said that although the business plan was very well written, it was "too academic." That's like criticizing the Starbucks business plan because it talked too much about coffee, and it's like criticizing it in a coffee shop.

 

THE HARVEST:

Elliot: I believe we're out of wood, mates. That was the last log, and it was my seat. Talk about bootstrapping.

Becket: So where do we go now? Where do we go now, where do we go? It's getting cold out here.

Drake: I say we maintain our course through this fog, and follow the direction shown by our moral compasses, and I say we continue to ship under full sail and fly by both day and night.

Elliot: And as we're building a renaissance rather than a company, the harvest shall be much like the original investment-- intangible, ethereal, and infinite.

Becket: I'm turning in. (Becket begins unrolling his sleeping bag)

Drake: Me too, dude. If I continue to be read and appreciated, I say I shall be a content captain. And I don't see that changing, with over 10,000 people sailing by our sites each day.

Elliot: Check it out-- Becket's snoring. I'm glad we came out here tonight. That was an awesome idea. So often we lose the forest for the trees, with all the bills and appointments and day-to-day traffic jams out on I-40 and hassles. And the sweeping light of the Hatteras light in all its infinite glory and silent splendor-- well that just says it all. For that light is the eternal truth, and the opposing currents which formed the diamond shoals upon which we sit, they're the battling multitudes partaking in the political and material struggles of the day. No side ever truly wins in politics, for the indiviual is always far outnumbered by the multitudes on either side, and sometimes sand is added to the shoals, whereas sometimes it is taken away, imperiling man's most permanent and sturdiest construction ever seen from the sea, this magnificent lighthouse, which at best is only ever built on sand. . . Drake? Becket?

Elliot laughs, realizing that he's the last one yet awake. And if ye were standing by the Hatteras light and gazing out at the ocean on that windy, October evening which can now only be found here, ye would perhaps perceive a profile of a lone figure barely illuminated by the dying coals of a campfire, their gaze solemnly fixed upon the dying embers. And just as the firelight gives a final flicker and dies, and a long finger of fog consumes the figure's silhouette, ye notice a glimmer of light on the hozion. 'Tis the rising sun, mate, and we've taken the the eternal conversation through the night.

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THE CREW SOUNDS OFF

Subject: nantucket musings...

drake--

i am overwhelmed by your writing!!! i have just discovered Nantuckets.com, and just finished reading (for the tenth time) your "Two Nantuckets". you express my feelings exactly--even though my summer visits to the island have been few and far between the past ten years. I, too, have been having an intense love affair with the Lady--she has woven a spell around me that nothing can penetrate. i have known Herfor all of my 36 years, but have never had the opportunity to spend more than summers, and an occasional few weeks in the winter (my favorite time). i echo yr. sentiments and feel fortunate to have happened upon a "kindred spirit". the visceral feelings i have for Her, transcend the superficial layers that clog Her surface. The germ of wheat lies buried deeply and safely protected. i long to dig deep into Her body and become one with that feeling again. i am planning a winter visit--i must leave this hell hole called nyc. perhaps, then, i will be able to walk with Her, shrouded in fog that holds the key to all of our musings.....blessed be

kezia

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Subject: The Two Nantuckets

Ahoy!

I've just finished reading The Two Nantuckets and I'm now falling on my knees in hearty repentence. Thanks for giving me old nogger a good shaking for too often have I shamelessly followed the path more commonly traveled by, refusing to acknowledge responsability for my actions. 'Tis easy to blindly follow the flock rather than fret over life's more difficult decisions. Today I accept that I am the captain of me own vessel and I vow to seek out those treasures which lie deep within humanity's soul. Thanks for the compass. Best of luck on your future adventures, mate.

Sarah

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Subject: jollyroger.com

Dear Becket,

I've had a chance to explore more of your fantastic websites and every day I am more impressed with what I find. The three of you are very skilled at expressing yourselves. For the longest time I felt that the people of my generation were a lost cause... that the great writers were all forgotten, the definition of a "family" unrecognizable, another generation destined to fall by the wayside and let the world pass them by. But jollyroger.com and killdevilhill.com have restored my faith in Generation-X and the generation to follow them. (According to the definitions I've found, I'm caught right between the two, having been born in 1981.) Thank you for providing us with a place to turn where we can feel free to express ourselves and learn from the great writers of both the past and present, where God is still alive and well.

One last thing I wanted to comment on. You are one of the most magnificent modern poets I've read in a long time. I've printed up all of your poems that I've found on the websites, as well as those of Drake. Does Eliot have any poetry on the sites? If so, I'd love to read it. Have any of the three of you published any books of your poetry, and if so, where can I get a copy?

Well, that's all for now. Thanks for the renewed faith in society. God bless the three of you and your Good Ship.

-Angie