Category Archives: Life & Death

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE – IQ vs EQ

A2There’s a world of difference between book smarts and street smarts – between braininess and savvy. The first has its place, but the second is much more useful. Being smart is the ability to logically think things out. Being sharp is the ability to tune into the world, to read situations, and positively connect with others while taking charge of your own life.

What is intelligence?

A4Intelligence has been defined in many different ways such as your capacity for logic, abstract thought, understanding, self-awareness, communication, learning, emotional knowledge, memory, planning, creativity and problem solving.

Where it comes from is anybody’s guess. It’s something that’s designed into us, possibly imbedded in our brain through DNA. I’m a believer in the concept of Infinite Intelligence which is the basis of Napoleon Hill’s masterpiece on human achievement in Think And Grow Rich. If you haven’t read it, here’s the link. If you have read it, go read it again.

Intelligence has long been measured in a quotient called IQ. It’s different from a measure of your ability to control your emotions which is called EQ – a much more difficult thing to measure.

A5Most average adults have an IQ around 100 on the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scale. The MENSA club requires members to be in the top 98 percentile which sets the bar at 132. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the ‘smartest’ person in the world was Marilyn vos Savant, who scored 185. Probably the most intelligent person who ever existed was Leonardo da Vinci who’s been estimated at around 220.

Conversely, mental retardation used to be divided into sub-classifications, but these labels are officially obsolete due to political correctness: Borderline Deficiency (IQ 70-80), Moron (IQ 50-69), Imbecile (IQ 20-49) and Idiot (below 20). I’ve dealt with a few in my policing career who rated around 15 and I have my own term for that classification.

So what about emotional smarts?

I have a great book called The EQ Edge by Steven J. Stein, Ph.D. and Howard E. Book, M.D. I’ll steal their definition of EQ.

A6Emotional Quotient is the set of skills that enable us to make our way in a complex world – the personal, social and survival aspects of overall intelligence, the elusive common sense and sensitivity that are essential to effective daily functioning. It has to do with the ability to read the political and social environment, and landscape them; to intuitively grasp what others want and need, what strengths and weaknesses are; to remain unruffled by stress; and to be engaging. The kind of person others want to be around and will follow.

Sophisticated mapping techniques in brain research have recently confirmed that many thought processes pass through our emotional centers as they take the psychological journey that converts outside information from infinite intelligence into individual response and action.

God only knows where infinite intelligence comes from.

 

GOING BEHIND THE OUTLAW MOTORCYCLE GANG SCENE WITH KERRIE DROBAN

AA6Kerrie Droban is an award-winning author and criminal defense attorney in Arizona. Kerrie has written many books like Running With The Devil – the true story of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms takedown of the Arizona Hells Angels – and Vagos, Mongols, and Outlaws – the true story of Charles Falco’s infiltration of three deadly biker clubs. Here, Kerrie shares her fascinating expertise into understanding the mindset of organized criminal bikers in the outlaw motorcycle gang (OMG) scene.

Kerrie, what’s the most surprising thing you learned about OMGs?

AA7The allure of biker gangs is not the so-called “freedom” the lifestyle promises, not the illusion of disorder and reckless abandon it glamorizes, but an outlet for the bloodshed it offers. And it doesn’t matter to OMGs who they kill, only that they leave behind plenty dead.

They meet, habitually, in public to discuss battle plans, share intelligence on rival members, regroup, report, and plan surveillance. Their sole reason for belonging, prospecting, and earning their coveted “Patch” is so that they can kill with purpose.

Many members are largely comprised of active and ex-military personnel and work a “day job” among us as pilots, stock brokers, car salesman etc…

Charles Falco? He lived a double life. What compels a guy like him to infiltrate three gangs and abandon the safety of the witness protection program?

It is a strange truism that it’s difficult to live “invisible.”

AA8After infiltrating the Vagos, Charles Falco was placed in the Witness Protection Program but, without an identity and stripped of even a driver’s license and social security number, he could not stand the isolation. He had purpose and direction and a sense of doing good in the world when he infiltrated the Vagos; ‘protected” he became a “persona non grata” and essentially ceased to exist. That was his “reward” for his sacrifice and bravery.

AA9Many who work undercover experience the same kind of loneliness. They find it difficult to obtain meaningful employment, sustain relationships (because the spouse or significant other necessarily has to live in isolation with them) and often cannot discuss their past achievements. They return to the life they know – a life that has substance.

Charles volunteered to infiltrate two additional biker gangs – the Mongols and the Outlaws and, by so doing, became the single most successful private contractor in the world and the only one to have his investigations result in RICO convictions.

What about Vagos, Mongols, and Outlaws? You said you enjoyed writing this book the most?

AA5Charles Falco has a wonderful sense of humor and I thoroughly enjoyed working with him. Surprisingly, some of the funniest scenes to write involved his stint in San Bernardino’s Murder Unit.

The jail had its own ridiculous hierarchy. Inmates were separated by race and had specific roles and rules and in many ways was more restrictive than the outside world. Charles deftly navigated this internal place even rising to the rank of “Key Holder” (King of the Killers). He had a “want to be” serial killer for a cellie who, though completely crazy and brutal, offered some of the most engaging and humorous dialogue of the book.

You’re a woman investigating and writing about a fringe male culture – outlaw gangs who despise women as part of their criminal culture. What’s that like?

AA10It isn’t really about being male or female. It’s about being a good listener. I was once asked an interesting question at a seminar, “How do you, as a woman, get inside the head of a biker? How do you feel what they feel and describe it in such vivid detail that it’s as if you are that person and have witnessed their lives?” I have a unique ability to get inside people’s heads and feel what they feel and in so doing, bring the reader into their experience. If you tell a good story, people – even bikers – want to talk to you. They want you to be their voice.

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AA3Kerrie M. Droban is an award winning author and criminal defense attorney in Phoenix, Arizona. A graduate of The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and the University of Arizona, Kerrie studied playwriting with Edward Albee and poetry with Peter Sacks, Carolyn Kizer, and Joy Harjo.

Her collection of poems entitled, The Language of Butchers, earned numerous awards including the Academy of American Poets Award, the New Letters International Poetry Award, the Poet Lore Award and the Amelia Encore Award.

AA4Additionally, Droban’s true crime Running with Devil: The True Story of the ATF’s Infiltration of the Hells Angels and Prodigal Father Pagan Son: Growing Up Inside the Dangerous World of the Pagans Motorcycle Gang has received critical acclaim and earned the 2008 and 2011 USA News National Book Award for Best True Crime and Best Autobiography.

Kerrie has appeared on national television in A & E’s Gangland: Behind Enemy Lines and numerous local television and radio shows as an emerging expert on motorcycle gangs and the pathology of the criminal mind.

Visit Kerrie Droban’s website : http://kerriedroban.com/

Follow Kerrie on Twitter : https://twitter.com/kerriedroban  @KerrieDroban

AYAHUASCA – WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS ECO-TOURISM SCAM

AJ2Ayahuasca (I-ya-wask-ah) psychedelic tours are a popular rage among worldly young people seeking enlightenment in the jungles of the Amazon rainforest. Why anyone would pay thousands of dollars to blow-up their mind by ingesting a brew containing the most potent hallucinogenic on the planet puzzles me.

AJ6This morning I was on Facebook and saw a feed from Michael Sanders, an author who was crowdfunding money to publish his book Ayahuasca – An Exectuive’s Enlightenment. I opened his link which opened me into a thriving world of scammers and con-artists who prey on the gullible that’ll risk their brain cells to find the next trendy mystic among the world of plastic shamans.

So what is ayahuasca? My friend Wikipedia says this.

Ayahuasca (usually pronounced /ˌaɪjəˈwæskə/ or /ˌaɪjəˈwaːskə/), also commonly called yagé (/jaːˈheɪ/), is a entheogenic brew made out of Banisteriopsis caapi vine, often in combination with various other plants. It can be mixed with the leaves of Chacruna or Chacropanga, which are dimethyltryptamine (DMT) containing plant species. The brew was first described academically in the early 1950s by Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes, who found it employed for divinatory and healing purposes by the native peoples of Amazonian Peru.

Hmmm… Dimethyltryptamine. DMT.

AJ8Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device”
And in the master’s chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can’t kill the beast. The last thing you remember, you were running for the door, trying to find the passage back to the place you were before.

Love to be there? Then DMT’s your ride. DMT is the most intense psychedelic toxin, as well as the most illegal substance, in the world. Paradoxically it’s the most rare drug to acquire and the most common to possess… because every time you go to sleep… a part of your brain produces this chemical and the product you endure is your dreams.

DMT is the drug which causes your pleasant dreams at night.

And your nightmares.

AJ5Ayahuasca amplifies the DMT response in your neurotransmitters a million fold and you can have this by paying any one of at least 94 service providers that I found on the internet site AyaAdvisor.com. It’s a TripAdvisor for people who really want to trip.

Leading the pack is an outfit called Pulse Tours. For $1995 they’ll pick you up at the airport in Iquitos, Peru, (you have to get there yourself) and host you for seven days & nights so you can fuck your mind on the Amazon Ayahuasa Adventure. Give ‘em $2995 and you can stay three weeks for a Total Human Transformation. But look what you get.

AJ1“Our 21 day program includes spiritual/energetic cleansing via our powerful and super concentrated jungle medicines and native Shamans; physical fitness/martial arts/yoga within our 88 sq. meter “Jungle Gym”, elite nutrition/super foods proprietary to the Amazon rainforest; topped off with our famous jungle adventures in the Amazon paradise where the Ayahuasca Adventure Center is located. Included are:

  • 12 Ayahuasca Ceremonies with authentic Shipibo Shamans
  • 3 Kambo (Frog Venom) ceremonies with a local Matses Shaman
  • 9 Floral baths
  • 20 nights/21 days accommodation at Ayahuasca Adventure Center in primary Amazon rainforest paradise
  • Pickup/drop off in Iquitos, Peru (International flights NOT included)
  • Daily jungle excursions with professional local jungle guides
  • Unlimited access to 88 sq. meter fitness facility including yoga mats, Onnit kettle bells, battle ropes, steel maces, Moving Zen suspension straps, punching bag, gloves, pads, jump ropes, spinning bike and free weights
  • Cell phone and wi-fi reception
  • 20 hammocks on site
  • 20 breakfasts, 20 lunches, 8 dinners, plus unlimited fruit, drinking water, and tea
  • Lifetime 20% discount on return visits to Ayahuasca Adventure Center and membership to exclusive Facebook group

There’s a caveat attached to the funding. Read carefully. 

AJ4“50% non-refundable deposit due upon booking. The rest of the balance is due in cash form upon arrival to Peru in bills of CRISP quality (unless mentioned otherwise). Your deposit is valid for a life time, should the need to cancel your retreat occur. Alternatively, you could transfer the deposit to someone else, at no additional cost.”

Sounds like a pretty intense and interesting deal for three grand. I’d look forward to the frog venom sessions. And the floral baths seem a nice touch, drinking water is considerate, and twenty nights in a hammock saves phosphates from washing the sheets. I did the math and see that I’d be getting 12 ayahuasca sessions over 20 days and 8 dinners which adds up to make sense. 

Yep, great service… for the service provider.

So the entrepreneur in me got thinking and I’d like to offer you a unique trip to an exotic location. 

AJ11For $995 I’ll pick you up at the Vancouver airport and deliver you for six nights and seven days to the Downtown Eastside where you can mingle with junkies and meth-freaks and hookers and hawkers in a feat of survival more violently thrilling than the Hunger Games. You’ll get to crank heroin and smoke crack-cocaine. Do mushrooms and MDMA. Weed? No big deal – everyone smokes weed in BC.

AJ9You’ll sleep in an alley and shit in the street and lay claim to a dumpster and panhandle and pimp. You can get beaten and burned. Rolled, robbed, and raped. And have a chance for some gunshots or being knifed while you sleep. You can pontiff with head cases and seek relief shelter. Or OD on horse tranquillizer and do NarCan and paddles. And experience Code-3 CPR, a white body-bag, or quietly shoplift your ride into the back of a VPD squad car and be booked into cells.

Blow your mind and your wallet on the the experience of a lifetime – an intoxicating trip into a concrete jungle with authentic shopping-cart shamans in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. A most exotic trip, TripAdvisor says.

So send me your deposit. Now while it lasts.

And make sure you arrive with bills of CRISP quality (unless mentioned otherwise).