Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 1

By Dee Hock

Volume 1

Autobiography of a Restless Mind is a fascinating, exceptionally diverse collection of observations and reflections written over the past twenty-five years by one of the most innovative thinkers, writers, and leaders of the past half century. Witty and wise, playful and profound, prophetic and immensely quotable, it is a companion no thinking, caring person should be without. Written in an unforgettable style reminiscent of Aurelius, Montaigne, Lao-Tse, and Bacon, it is a classic that will be read with pleasure and profit for generations to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475966565

Dee Hock

Dee Hock, often described as a visionary and iconoclast, is founder and CEO emeritus of Visa Inc., now an $8.5 trillion global enterprise. In 1991, he became one of thirty living laureates of the US Business Hall of Fame. In 1992 he was recognized as one of eight individuals who have most changed the way people live in the past half century. He is the author of numerous articles and a previous book, One from Many; Visa and the Rise of Chaordic Organization.

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Copyright © 2013 Dee Hock

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-6655-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-6654-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-6656-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012923358

iUniverse rev. date: 5/22/2013

Contents

Preface

Volume One

Introduction

For

Steven L. Hock,

who came as a gift

December 15, 1952.

Greatly gifted, he

gave too many, too

much, too soon.

October 16, 2012,

he gave his all.

Preface

As a young child born in a tiny cottage in a small farming village in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, I discovered three principal loves of my life: nature, reading, and unstructured learning. With school and church came increasing confinement, demands for conformity, and crushing boredom, along with sharp, rising awareness of the chasm between how organizations professed to function and how they actually did—between what they claim to do for people and what they actually do to them.

When I was fourteen, the fourth love of my life appeared—a beautiful, brown-eyed girl. We married at twenty. Sidetracked into business to support a growing family, I vowed to escape as soon as possible. It took thirty-five years. During the first fifteen years, I held management positions with large financial services companies. As partial recompense for dislike of business, I continued to read and study voraciously. It led to three questions that soon dominated my life. Time and time again I asked:

•   Why are individuals, everywhere, increasingly in conflict with and alienated from the organizations of which they are part?

•   Why are organizations, everywhere, increasingly unable to manage their affairs?

•   Why are society and the biosphere increasing in disarray?

Pursuit of the answers to these questions led me, at the age of thirty-nine, to an opportunity to create a new and innovative form of organization to rescue a collapsing infant bank credit card system; then lead it for fourteen years as it swiftly became the largest payment system in the world. Today, Visa consists of 19,000 financial institutions operating in 240 countries and territories, with 2.5 billion cardholders making 80 billion transactions totaling $8.5 trillion annually.

Those interested in the formation and growth of Visa and the iconoclastic concepts and beliefs on which it was based can find the story in my previous book, One from Many, published in 1999 by Berrett/Koehler.

During my business years, I developed the habit of formulating short, graphic assertions, often in the form of aphorisms, maxims, and metaphors to test and clarify my thinking.

In 1980, I took the first step to keep my vow to escape from business by purchasing two hundred acres of ravaged land in coastal hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean with intent to restore it to health and beauty through personal labor. A daily record of life on the land was begun to document the process.

Four years later, in 1984, I resigned as CEO of Visa, turned my back on the business world, and turned to my first loves—family, nature, books, contemplation, and the isolation of manual labor on the land. A house was eventually built there containing a poor boy’s dream realized, a library containing five thousand books accumulated over the years.

Rising at five thirty to write a thousand or more words before beginning the day’s labor became an entrenched habit, unbroken to this day. Each day’s writing ended with four or five short reflections on subjects then occupying my mind. By the late ’90s, my writing had grown to five thousand pages containing several thousand of the short reflections. It occurred to me that a selection of them in the order written would constitute a history of sorts—an autobiography of a mind at work.

Unexpected events intervened, including the opportunity to write and publish One from Many. By the end of 2007, my writing had grown to ten thousand pages, including eight thousand of the short reflections and assertions. I returned to the idea of publishing a selection of them.

Since the mind never works linearly by subject matter but flutters from thought to thought and idea to idea with the agility of a butterfly sipping nectar in a field of wildflowers, I selected one in five, in the order written, then indexed them by subject matter for the convenience of readers with specialized interests.

By pure coincidence, the contents of these two volumes of the Autobiography of a Restless Mind were written in the decades spanning the turn of the millennium. Volume one contains selections from those written in the last decade of the last century of the last millennium, when I was in my sixties. Volume two contains selections from the first decade of the first century of the new millennium, when I was in my seventies.

I make no claim to have fully believed them when written, to believe them today, or to have fully lived those I do believe. Neither do I pretend that others have not thought or written about many of the same subjects over the centuries, for most reflect common concerns of mankind. The only claims asserted are that they then occupied my mind, seemed worth serious thought, contained some truth, or indulged my lifelong love affair with the music of words.

Neither do I apologize for the use of hyperbole, satire, metaphor, irony, or any other literary device when it serves to make a point; nor for expressing the same thought from a different perspective or in other words. And please, kind reader, do not be angry when I use one gender or the other as metaphor for the whole of the human race.

So herewith, the Autobiography of a Restless Mind.

Dee W. Hock

March 1, 2013

Volume One

1991 through 2001

Introduction

The decade during which the observations in this volume were written was turbulent to say the least. A quick perusal of headlines tells the story:

Hubble telescope launched—Nelson Mandela freed—Soviet Union collapses—War with Iraq begins—Race riots in Los Angeles—South African apartheid laws repealed—World Trade Center bombed—Nelson Mandela president of South Africa—Internet grows exponentially—O. J. Simpson arrested for double murder—Rwandan genocide rampant—Yitzhak Rabin assassinated—Sarin gas attack in Tokyo—Mad cow disease in Britain—Hong Kong returned to China—India and Pakistan test nuclear weapons—President Clinton impeached—Viagra hits market—Euro currency established—Panama Canal returned to Panama—JFK Jr. dies in plane crash—Y2K computer failures could bring nation to its knees—Turn of millennium celebrated worldwide—Predicted Y2K failures fizzle.

My life was no less turbulent. Early in the decade, the years of isolation and privacy while creating a private rural paradise were invaded. The soaring success of Visa captured the imagination of the media and, in swift succession, I was the subject of cover stories in several major publications, was made a laureate of the Business Hall of Fame, and was selected by Money Magazine as one who had most changed the way people lived in the preceding half century.

I was inundated with requests to speak to commercial, governmental, educational, and scientific conferences about my experiences and beliefs, and consult with a variety of organizations on new concepts of organization and leadership. Several foundations soon approached me offering to provide grants for expenses if I would undertake to explore whether the Visa experience could be replicated and new forms of organization created in other industries and fields of endeavor, including government.

So I set out on a decade-long odyssey far more improbable and vastly more important than Visa. It led to substantial work with groups throughout the world interested in institutional change in such diverse fields as ocean fisheries, education, health care, religion, law, Geo-data, energy, agriculture, and even the military.

I still found time to continue to develop my rural paradise, read and study eclectically, pursue a lifelong interest in philosophy, and write and publish One from Many. In 1999, at the age of seventy, it all became too much for me. The desire for privacy, anonymity, and seclusion returned in full force. I began to withdraw from fruitless efforts to catalyze institutional change, convinced that the new concepts in which I so strongly believed were ahead of their time. Our private Shangri-la, the ranch, was sold and we moved to the state of Washington to be near our daughter and three youngest grandchildren.

So if at times you find these observations bewilderingly diverse, be not surprised, for so life then was, and so they were when written.

D. W. H.

1

Even if you could corner the market on truth, you’d make a scant living selling it.

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2

Happiness may be difficult, but it is not complicated. Dismiss desire, discard opinion, honor the past, trust the future, and treasure the moment.

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3

Like fishermen, we constantly cast the lure of expectation ahead of us, hoping to hook a desired piece of the future. Something unimaginable always takes the bait.

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4

Flattery may be despicable, but it will never fetch you a punch on the nose.

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5

You can give no greater gift than to speak and write that which is useful to your own heart.

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