Get That Edge

One day, when I was twenty-seven, I looked at the bank statement of the private company I owned outright, saw the figure of two million dollars positive balance there, and began to be more careful about the physical risks I was taking – I began to slow down from my usual speed (was never that fast to begin with!) when I was driving, and I stopped thinking about all those extreme sports things like sky-diving and solo glider flying and deep sea diving and so on. That is I stopped entertaining any serious inclination to participate in those kinds of pursuits.

I suppose part of the story was that I was headed into the public listed companies arena and I guess I valued my own being around to complete any saga there that I had decided to commence.

Up until then I was always very athletic, well-coordinated, quite competitive, and liked taking educated risks that seemed like decent challenges to a lot of other people.

Zivko Edge Aerobatic Plane

Theoretically, as my own bank account grew, I could have indulged in a lot of things that had been too expensive previously. My sister flew, I kind of dabbled without putting enough time into getting licensed – but the intent and the interest to pursue such idiotic things like aerobatic flying was definitely there. As time passed I forgot all about this kind of stuff.

My nephew on the other hand, is undertaking most of the things I pulled myself back from in my late twenties. We both go to a few Red Bull air races every year and he has flown with aerobatic pilots as a passenger in two-seaters.

Funny thing is now, I yet might make calculated decisions to get back into certain 'out there' activities. The older I get, and the more I have seen what a waste good intentions are on most of society, and how little appreciated they are (not that I particularly have done anything much in the order of the completely altruistic myself), and certainly how very little use indeed someone with a brain like mine, is to the majority of people – the more I find that it feels possible for me to take huge risks with personal safety. When I say 'huge risks' though, I mean apparent huge risks, because I still believe calculation and judgement and correct assessments are totally paramount.

Professional risk-taking was what I embarked upon early on because I had great doubts and suspicion about what was being cast by society at large as authoritative – either of knowledge, morality, even of science. I had formed the view that I could and should back my own judgement. By about the Nineteen Eighties it was starting to be apparent to me that the world had moved away from broader social reasoning and had become completely drawn to material self-interest as the driving logic for anything that people undertook. I had this view though, that people were not generally that very good at attaining their selfish ends, frankly... There is this hard-nosed 'realism' that has become the sentiment of the modern world, but it is based around a self-important and exaggerated view of capabilities and intellect and talent.

Okay, I DID have an amazing early education and it simply is a fact that for a short while the then young David and Hillary Rothschild stayed in my family's home while my father supervised their University Matriculations.

I don't think I was being necessarily presumptuous or conceited in forming the views that I had about credentialism and trends in science and economics and politics – frankly I was too young and too borderline autistic to be anything other than just plain pragmatic.

However I wish I was as smart still, as I was back then when I could make those calculating and cynical decisions. Because in the back of my mind is another, and newer, suspicion, that society is ripe for something – I know not what...

Anyhow, last Sunday I had an amazing red wine with some older family and their friends: Chateau Tanunda Barossa Shiraz. I think this has been the very very best red I have had in about ten years. It is, in my estimation, at least as good as a thousand dollar bottle of Penfolds Grange.

There are still many amazing things in life in spite of the uselessness of much of what has come to be the establishment and the authoritative platforms for money, science, entertainment and law.

The beauty of the internet is not that it has opened up all of these great things to everyone. But that it has closed them all off and made them intensely private and only privately accessible to the sensible. Most people just don't have the patience to be sensible any more. It takes patience to make a great wine, breed a great horse, cook a great piece of beef.

Old money... is patient, but without losing any of its edge and sensibility and taste for the good things. People who lose their comprehension of what actually is good, waste money on the inferior.