The business of science is discovering rules and regularities about the subject under study; the more broadly the rule applies, the better the rule. The more exceptions to the rule, the less useful. The work of a scientist is to invent rules that might be useful and then to explore for the exceptions, if any. Often the successor rule is found through a careful study of the exceptions.

I left San Francisco, May 2000, in a wild rush. It was exactly one year since I had joined PeoplePC as its first employee. From Operations Manager to a self-declared Operations Development Director, I was in London and Paris with our new Marketing Director and the CEO (a brother of one of my best friends from high school). We were setting the groundwork for the European expansion. Not that we were in any position to – marketing being the main thrust of the company, the operations lacked the attention from leadership that it deserved, and the product itself lacked sustainability, clarity and an adequate product return policy. Not to mention the stumbling block associated with establishing fair financing for the target group; those who could only pay $19.99 per month for a computer with Internet service included were most often the same people who did not have good credit. Thus, the target market would have to be adjusted to business-to-business customers, much less sexy or famous than marketing to the masses.

Another way of saying this that theories are never proven, only disproven, and the work of the scientist is to stretch the theory to its breaking points. It is simply challenging authority and asserting alternatives. It is skeptical inquiry.

On one of the last days of this week-long trip in April 2000, I was standing in the London tube. An advertisement before me of Scottish beaches and smiling people asked me why wasn’t I there? I couldn’t really summon a legitimate reason. I had no idea why I was working for this start-up – I was opposed to the current strategy while digging for my authentic self under layers of doubt. I returned home, and within a week had quit my job – using my pursuit of a literary life as an excuse – and let my roommate know he could replace me as of the first of May. While my roommate agreed to hold onto my furniture and trivial belongings indefinitely, I packed up the rest of my gear (including a box full of books - my most prized possessions) in my Subaru and drove Southeast to Joshua Tree, California, to stay in a friend’s empty home.

This scientific process is like a ratchet and pawl; it only goes one way, towards more useful rules and more understanding of the exceptions. There are those that grasp on the idea that science is unwilling to announce “truths,” that science only says “this much we know and with this much precision.” There are those who want truths, absolute truths, and turn to other authorities who are willing to enter the world of absolute truths. We skeptical enquirers may not doubt certain wisdoms of these authorities, but doubt that it is absolute.

Off the side of Interstate 5 on my drive South, I wrote in a fresh journal, and later emailed the first entry to a list of friends:

May 15, 2000

I am headed for the high desert and can’t erase the image of the story of Passover, of freedom. Recently I became slave to another’s ego and a world of superficiality and greed. I became victim of my environment and forgot what it truly meant to love oneself as much as you love others. Moses went into the desert to lead his people out of Egypt = their pain and suffering was so visual, the cruelty so tangible that following a soul chosen by God was not very difficult. Now our Egypts & Pharoahs are less obvious – they are worlds we have created for ourselves. They are constructs that we have built and elected to build – now it is our time to raze our prisons and begin again. Do we really need to project all our innermost desires & feelings onto a martyr in order to be awakened? Wasn’t Jesus enough? It’s irrelevant whether or not the miracles he performed were myths or truth – what is relevant is that even after 2000 years we are more obsessed with him than ever. TV series about him. Books upon books about him. Movies. And then some more books. People, we are looking for meaning in our lives more than ever, because we have very little of it. Most of us are chasing after a Trojan horse. When will we ever stop running? What separates us from other animals is our consciousness – that we are conscious of being happy, sad, angry, lustful, blissful, hateful. We are able to recognize these emotions and can then, in affect, control them. We don’t have to kill just because we are angry. We don’t have to rape just because we have desire. But we can love because we want to love. Once we recognize what brings joy into our lives, we should always be there. Is that a good, long book on a cool summer day by the beach? Is it a picnic amongst children? Is it an exhilarating hike up a mountain? Is it a scuba dive to the depths of the ocean? Or is it buying a $1,000 suit at the best boutique in New York? A giant diamond on your left hand? A cigarette after a quick fuck? A meeting with a ruthless board of directors who could fire you at any moment? Where is your happiness? Identify it and be there – physically and mentally. And if those dreams change, change along with them. Do I think that another (or the original) Messiah will come soon? Isn’t the goal to find the Messiah in all of us? Why do we need to project our sadness onto a pure heart so that he has to fight all the ills alone, knowing that he will surely die for the fight? Is this what any mother or father would want for his child? (Talk about a favorite son complex!) It’s our own responsibilities to fight the fight in our own worlds – to be enlightened enough to make his/her village a beautiful place. Imagine if we all decided to live in such harmony? We couldn’t need to constantly be at war. We wouldn’t need food stamps, crack, heroine, ecstasy raves, drive by shootings, pornography…Ha! The crazy dreamer, you say…but just imagine, like John Lennon said, if we all did our small part. No need to conquer the universe (How many planets do we have to reach before it’s enough? Mars? Jupiter?) just be loving to those around you and have the courage to identify the emotions you have and act on the ones that reflect love. Make sure to express the emotions that don’t reflect love in some form however. They are real feelings that need their space too – go for a run instead of screaming; then sit alone instead of running too far away. Jump into water that seems too cold. Go handgliding. Write a poem. Jump rope. Dance. Do all these things – but be aware, mindful of why you are doing them and then you will become free.

The desert is a place to be free because there is infinite space and a scarcity of water. Each creature must be mindful of what it needs to survive so there is respect and discipline here. And intelligence. And a fair amount of Matzoh.

Oy iz vey. What a preacher! Who could stand such a person? Whomever received this email must have been glad I was far away and on the road.

Someplace we need to explore the boundary between outlaw and pushing rules to the limit. I think that I will argue that the successful outlaw, the kind that we sometimes celebrate in Westerns - the Robin Hoods and others - have pushed the rules to the limit and shown the limit to be irrelevant.

After spending a night or two in the abandoned house perched above the town of Joshua Tree, I decided to call a college friend who had never escaped my thoughts. We had not really spoken as close friends since our sophomore year, but had found ways to be in touch intermittently since. Freshman year our dorm rooms were separated by only one other room (and who lived in that dividing room I have no memory). Since the first day I met him – which was probably the very first day I arrived at school – I felt connected to him. I interpreted it as a romantic longing, he – I’m still not sure as what, but certainly not romantic. It was this ultimate rejection that had me dissolve the friendship.

Something burned in me to call him during this fateful transition in my life, so I did. The phone rang a few times, and when he answered the conversation went along these lines after introducing myself:

“Beinstein!” he yelled. “Why’re you calling me?

“I don’t know, because…”

“Why are you pulling this black magic on me?”

“What?” I stammered.

“Listen, I’m off to surgery [he was in medical school at the time], but can you call me back tomorrow?”

“OK”

“Definitely call me,” he insisted and hung up the phone.

I of course called the next day when he was in a better position to speak.

“I can’t believe you called me yesterday,” he said more calmly this time. “The night before I had a dream that you were forcing me to marry you, and I woke my girlfriend up who was sleeping next to me [she is now his wife and mother of his two young children], and told her, ‘I just had this dream where my friend Nikki Beinstein was forcing me to marry her.’”

“And, so, were you mad at me for trying to force you?” I asked in my signature insecurity.

“No,” he said, as if such an idea hadn’t even occurred to him. “And then you called.”

We continued conversing until it turned into arguing about philosophical beliefs. He assured me that we are all cosmic dust, nothing more and nothing less, and that everything in life is random. I told him that I believed the opposite – that there is a meaning and order to life, and that we do not disappear once we die. He was extremely confident in his ideas as I had always known him to be. And then we said our goodbyes. I left the dialogue disturbed, but satisfied in my answer to why we were never together. Our core beliefs would leave us constantly at odds with one another.

I had always enjoyed guns and fireworks, and when I became a cattleman it seemed natural to seek some working explosives. Certainly, my neighbors found occasional uses for the stuff in our rocky ground. Not knowing local ranch customs I went to the sheriff’s office and asked how to get licensed to buy and use explosives. The receptionist said she had never had such a request before and they certainly had no forms. So I asked my neighbor Wayne how he did it. He told me the address of a certain Texaco station in Grand Junction, Colo. I went there and asked for a case of iramite. The man behind the counter didn’t ask for any license. Then I asked for a box of blasting caps and a roll of fuse. He said he couldn’t load those things into the same vehicle that had the iramite in it. I drove around the block, returned and we loaded the caps and fuse.

All these years later my nemesis and I are slowly conversing again, online directly and indirectly and mostly through a “social utility” site. I am not sure why exactly, why I keep replying or why he does. We are both married with kids. We are pursuing different careers and live in different places. He still likes to push buttons, and he is still smarter than Hell even if his conclusions are too cynical for my liking. But he is still asking the tough questions, and I suppose that is why.

Suppose then that bad outlaws are not the result of the devil’s temptations and that good outlaws are not trying to get into heaven but instead trying to make progress against sloth and ignorance, what makes one and not the other? Indeed, without religion, how is the difference between good and bad to be decided?

This friend has just become an Assistance Professor of Medicine, and so has become as much a scientist as he is a doctor. He is, as George described, loath to take a leap of faith into the unknown. The unknown doesn’t bother me as much as the existence of the devil does:  a cosmic battle of good vs. evil that the atheist scientist chalks up to sociological constructs, and I view as a necessary obstacle.

An atheist scientist, looking for cause or explanation of ethics, could argue that what a society finds acceptable and what it finds unacceptable is the entire content of ethics; and further, that society makes these distinctions solely on the basis of what makes for evolutionary success, propagation of the species.

George certainly clings to this idea of an outlaw. He often says things to put you on another track in your understanding of the world, yourself and him. Many times, however, it feels as though George is clinging to that little, rejected boy he once was – and really still is, the boy rejected from tender parental love, rejected from a critical intimacy. Everyday and to this day he still does not want to be caught, which implies that there is something to catch. But is there? In any of us? Are any of us so unique that we cannot be understood? Or do we hold fast to the idea that we are individualists so that we feel special, so that whether we declare atheism or not, we want our specialness to denote meaning?

In observing and interacting with George, I could conclude that imposing definitions upon ourselves can limit us, that by clutching onto a flag of individualism we actually lose some freedom.

Simply put, evolutionary psychology states that we are what we are, physically and psychologically, because that is what has caused our success; where success is narrowly defined as propagation of the human species in competition with other species. We humans are abundant and everywhere. Other species now exist not in competition with humans but with our permission. We won.

There are those that say winning a world of Walmarts is a hollow victory, which I cannot deny. But the capacity to build Walmarts is also the capacity to be warm and dry, to extend life, to create art poetry and music, to generalize ideas, and to understand our origin as a species. And it is also the capacity to commit violence and atrocity against those not of our ilk. There is savagery in our psyche too.

Darwin himself suggested that our psychological makeup, the way our emotions guide us, drive us is more accurate, efficiently, even instinctively.  Just as humans evolved the opposing thumb, bipedalism, a larger brain with the capacity for language, all of which were successful adaptations, that same brain evolved a rich set of emotional responses that enhanced other mental processes and made the species successful.

I can imagine the beginnings of the universe with its burst of emotional energy, and that energy being, and acting, like love and the phases and manifestations that love goes through, even during one human lifetime.  And, yes, I will anthropomorphize if it makes you more comfortable to name it thus – Love, which we may also rename God, yearns to be known and will not be forgotten. Love, the unifying energy, tempts Its creations to know Itself, so that It can live fully within Itself. Consciousness carries us deeper and further into this truth, because consciousness is the way into understanding Love, and keeping it company.

Here then George, what if the Universe operates exactly as you do, as we all do: longing for love, acting the role of the outlaw in order to draw attention into becoming fully known? “I Am What I Am,” It says. Come find me.

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