Takes the prize

Being somewhat curmudgeonly, I don't usually blog on subjects suggested to me, as the suggestion of appropriateness makes me feel boxed in. As A Flock of Seagulls so famously brushed off the "New Wave" label when signing autographs at Northgate Mall in 1983 with the incisive comment, "We don't like labels." History, of course, has vindicated them entirely.

But yesterday Gene suggested that I blog about Templeton Prize, about $1.5 million dollars given by the Templeton of mutual fund fame for "progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities." The prize wants to catch spiritual progress up with progress made in other, practical realms such as "research and innovation in food products," where things have gotten better by at least "a hundredfold." So we should make things "a hundredfold better" in the realm of spirit. Gotcha.

There are some critics who think it absurd to try to attach a dollar figure to progress in matters spiritual, that the only appropriate prize would be to send a very nice note to the prizewinner so as not to sully their accomplishment with a quantitative and monetary appraisal.

The Grouse cannot sanction this viewpoint. No no, the offense is not in the monetary component of the award, but that it is a flat fee or lump sum. Anyone with the most rudimentary knowledge of compensation theory should see immediately that this is absurd. The only way to properly incent anything, spiritual discovery in particular, is with a scalable variable pay structure, say, 2% up front for progress as it occurs, accrued monthly and 50-75 basis point trailing fees. Since spiritual improvement is, apparently, eminently countable, passing twentyfold and twentyonefold all the way up to a hundredfold, the accounting on this should not be daunting.