What's the Value of Something You Love?

'We could buy you a new shark, tank, and some formaldehyde for a couple hundred thousand dollars -- so that's all we're going to insure it for.'

Attorney Ralph Lerner's palms began to sweat.

His client had just bought Damien Hirst's dead shark in a tank of formaldehyde -- titled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living --for more than twenty times that amount. By the time Mr. Lerner left his insurance company meeting the company's rep had agreed to insure the shark for more than twice the purchase price. He told the story as part of the Tigres Group's Art Revealed event at the Levin Institute last March.

How do you figure out how much something is worth? And if will it be worth more tomorrow than today? Many financial service companies try to answer such questions.

But Jacqui Maduneme's Tigres Group is different -- we don't get paid by recommending one investment over another. We empower you to manage and enjoy your wealth. That's why everything Tigres does seeks to engage and enlighten its members in a way that makes a deep impression.

Consider our next event: On Broadway: Investing for Love … and Money. Broadway gave birth to one of America's seminal art forms - music theater. But investing in Broadway has never been for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. Most businesses offer a product that at least somebody needs. But who knew that the public would flock to Avenue Q –- a musical about puppets! -- and that it would win the Tony for best musical, run for seven years and gross more than $112 million? Given that, should you ever invest in Broadway? Or is it something akin to buying a very expensive lottery ticket?

This event will provide insight from some of the most successful Broadway professionals working today. And their input could help potential investors lessen the uncertainties of such an investment. But investing in Broadway can offer some certainties that other investments lack – it will introduce a uniquely colorful world where dreams can come to life on the stage. And it will offer the opportunity to connect with other investors who share the passion and financial wherewithal to participate in this exciting world.

Join us for a fascinating evening as some of the industry's best take us on a journey to the exotic world of Broadway, and share how they’ve navigated these perilous waters and lived to tell the tale. For particulars: click here.

Through events -- like these on investing in art and Broadway -- the Tigres Group would like to help ensure that your money comes to life, that your means have meaning. Even if that means investing in a multi-million dollar shark in a box or a puppet on the Broadway stage.

The Wisdom of Crowds

It's 2009 and we've seen the economy come pretty darn close to total collapse due to, what seems to me, was a mass delusion: house prices would rise forever, we would never have to save a penny and yet we could keep borrowing ourselves into total bliss.

What a surprise to turn on my TV last night and find "The Business of Innovation," hosted by Maria Bartiromo on CNBC . What I heard was a youngish and smart seeming man describing that -- given the right conditions -- crowds can make better decisions than their smartest members. It was James Surowiecki the author of The Wisdom of Crowds - Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations (and a financial writer for the New Yorker). One might have expected a discussion with the author of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds but no because: 1) the author, Charles Mackay, is dead and 2) we all have the memory of a pea.

In truth it was an intriguing discussion. But, as with most things, the devil is in the details. Just as rational markets require all kinds of conditions that almost never coincide, the magic only happens when the crowd is a loose/tight network of diverse and independent thinkers. Seems to me the mob mind is the more likely outcome.

The Power of Storytelling

"Why does our brain seem to be wired to enjoy stories?" asks Jeremy Hsu, the author of The Power of Storytelling in this summer's Scientific American Mind magazine. "Storytelling is one of the few human traits that are truly universal across culture and through all of known history."

Why?

The science he reports is at a fairly early stage but anything truly universal must reflect something fundamental about mankind.

The article speculates that storytelling gave communities an evolutionary edge. Stories helped members of a community model effective communal behavior, reinforce social norms, and develop empathy. If members understand and have internalized a shared narrative they are more likely to make a community that works.

We know that the enemy lies beyond that wall and logic tells us that it is safer to stay put. But when we hear “Once more, dear friends, into the breach,” the “narrative transport” of the story, its flow of history and meaning makes us more likely to risk death for the defense of our family, our friends and our country.

Over thousands of years the very structure of our brains has formed to respond to storytelling. And, as such, no data, no statistic, no mere fact can match storytelling’s ability to call us to action.

Einstein's Brains

Niels Bohr, a Nobel Prize winning physicist in atomic structure and quantum mechanics, once said of Einstein's theories of relativity, "I don't see how he thought of it!'

Now most of us would say something like that because Relativity is a hard nut to crack. But Dr. Bohr was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. And he certainly understood the relevant science that proceeded Einstein's discoveries and yet he still couldn't get from A to B, Relativity-wise.

How did Einstein think of it?

When asked years later Einstein himself couldn't answer that question. Certainly he had mastered the science of his day but his insights required a leap of logic. As early as his teen years he could recall using thought experiments to work through difficult problems. But the 'aha!' moments seemed to come out of nowhere.

While few alive today have the genius of a man like Einstein, we all have an advantage that he didn't have. We live in an age of unprecedented discovery regarding the subtlest aspects of human creativity -- and communication. I mention the latter because creativity and communication are, in fact, each necessary for the other. As we will establish, true communication is an intrinsically creative act and creativity only arises from a web of communication with those who preceded us and, if we are to have an impact, those that follow.

In a way we are all like Einstein, we all have resources for insight and inspiration that arise from the subtlest aspects of our humanity. Einstein developed those capacities in a way that changed the whole world. But we also have the opportunity to develop our talents and make a difference. That is where Purdy Consulting can help.

The Limits of Knowledge

I loved Carl Sagan: his joyous curiosity, his expansive faith in the power of reason. But when he said, “We make our world significant with the courage of our questions and the depths of our answers,” he was wrong. “We” do not make our world anything. The transcendent mysteries of this world—a world of soaring beauty and grinding horror, of purposeful life lost in often meaningless death, of consciousness and abstraction arising incongruously from simple need—these are not of our making. Yes, there is an inevitable subjectivity in life. While grasping for reality reason is colored by the filter of our senses. Our prejudices and imperfect mechanisms of discernment and reflection make perfect understanding unattainable. The fact that the filter limits an individual’s ability to know universal truth, however, doesn’t mean that such truth doesn’t exist. Only a pathological cynic doubts that an unheard tree falling in the woods makes no sound. Further a universal truth underlies our intrinsically subjective human experience: all of us desire to know and to be known. So in manifold ways, the world’s meaning is intrinsic to itself; it does not need us to create its meaning.

However, I’m still drawn to Mr. Sagan’s quote, “We make our world significant with the courage of our questions and the depths of our answers.” To me its beauty lies in both the recognition of the courage necessary to question aspects of our lives and the power that robust answers can have to enrich them. Asking questions has two aspects: one direct and simple, the other subtle and metaphysical. Seeking answers in our lives—through science, for example—can fill life with meaning … but only up to a point. What science does well is to explain the mechanics of things and—having gleaned underlying principles—providing the basis for helpful technologies. We ask, we get. Science has yielded many wonders that have helped us master much in our world. For many since the Enlightenment, science has all but conquered religion—having climbed the highest hills we find no burning bushes there; when our telescopes can see all the way to the beginning of time there’s not an angel in sight. So where can heaven find a home? However, since the emergence of the industrial age technological utopianism has been replaced by an understandable dread recognizing that through science and technology we have created the ability to destroy ourselves. So how do we find solace? In what do we believe? The answer to this conundrum arises from the metaphysical nature of all questions themselves. Just posing a question—even an unanswerable one—can have a profound impact on the questioner: it turns us out into the world and, thereby, offers us a connection to something greater than ourselves. As such, a question can defeat the limitations of science and draw upon the mysteries of incipient faith to conquer the existential angst arising from pure rationalism.

If the above is true, it is not that we lack answers to our questions but fail to see that the questions are the answer.