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IIHA:
The Future
(Hypothetical) Newsweek Interview with Richard Unger, March 21,
2001
This Thursday,
I finally caught up with Richard Unger at his Sausalito home.
I had been eager to meet him ever since my teenage daughter announced
she wanted to start going to school an hour earlier than usual
each morning. What mischief is this, I wondered? But that was
not the half of it. Not only has my daughter turned into an inspirational
model of self-motivation, she has transformed our entire family
into a live-life-to-the-fullest miracle. At dinner we even discuss
what we have accomplished today and how it moved our Life Purposes
forward.
The big day
was September 21st, 2000, the first autumn day of the
new millennium. That's the day my daughter analyzed her fingerprints
(using the LifePrints Teen Mastery Program) and decoded her Life
Purpose. From that day forward nothing has been the same. She
says she is on a mission, that she can see her own role in the
unfolding of her life story. Whatever. All I know is she
is excited to go to school each morning and she has a whole new
bunch of friends all excited as well.
Sitting on
his porch, watching a hundred sail boats circle the San Francisco
Bay, I drank Kukicha tea with LifePrint's inventor, Richard Unger.
LifePrints is a computer program that analyzes your fingerprints
to reveal your Life Purpose, a core element of your character
that remains unalterable throughout your life. According to Unger,
your fingerprints have an encoded picture of the person you intend
to be, a portrait of the highest self-actualized you. "It
is like examining an acorn to see the oak tree possibilities.
You never see an acorn trying to become a rose bush, nor would
it stand a chance of becoming one. That's the difference between
acorns and humans," Unger points out.
Richard Unger
began his hand reading career in 1969 and since that time he has
examined over 50,000 pairs of hands. He made his fingerprint discoveries
in the Jessie Jones Medical Library in Houston, Texas a decade
later. Since then, he moved to California to found the International
Institute of Hand Analysis, teaching his Life Purpose decoding
system and attempting to bring his Life Purpose message to the
mainstream of Western culture. I don't know about the mainstream,
but he reached my daughter and my family. That's no mean feat.
Unger says,
"Your Life Purpose is your reason for being, that which brings
a sense of meaning and fulfillment at the deepest level. More
than a goal or set of goals, your Life Purpose is your Right Life.
When someone tells you they always wanted to be a writer, let's
say, or a scientist, or a teacher, and they are so glad to be
living out their dream, did you ever wonder where that dream came
from? If you had a similar dream in you, would you be willing
to dream it? To live it? Your Life Purpose dream is frozen in
your fingerprints from five months prior to birth and sits there
awaiting your discovery. LifePrints unlocks the code."
Medical researchers
have been studying hands and fingerprints for the better part
of the twentieth century under the title dermatoglyphics (dermato=skin,
glyph=carvings). Apparently, different diseases tend to have dermatoglyphic
markers, specific fingerprint and palmar line and shape abnormalities
unique to themselves. [See Newsweek: Aug. 96 for an article on
fingerprints and Alzheimer's disease]. Some psychological disturbances
have been studied as well with promising results. "Having
read all that both disciplines had to offer on the subject, [palmistry
and dermatoglyphics] I was able to forge a marriage between the
two," Unger says. "High tech plus ancient wisdom yields
useful info."
The Teen Mastery
Program is the brainchild of Zen Player, Unger's partner in LifePrints.
Using an interactive game-styled computer program, teens analyze
their fingerprints and, step by step, decode their life mission.
Once decoded, the possibilities are endless. For example, scroll
up the list of famous people with similar life missions. Pick
from a menu of famous Wisdom Teachers, for instance, and hear
their life stories in their own words. What changed their lives,
what motivated them; their troubles, their victories. Select the
TimeLine option and see what was happening in the lives of a hundred
Wisdom Teachers during their teens: how many went to college,
how many dropped out of high school, etc. Select the Projects
option and see what other local teen Wisdom Teachers in the making
are doing. My daughter's best friend Kimberly, along with other
teens, has linked up with George Lucas (they share Inspirational
Creativity as a Life Purpose). Together, they are working on a
film project on the history of the Miwok Indians and what they
can teach us about the environment.
What made
the biggest impact in my daughter's life was joining the Woman
of Influence Teen Circle. Each morning high school students get
on-line to discuss world leaders in the news: how they agree and
disagree with their decisions, their styles, etc. "Leader
with Integrity and Heart. It's my Life Purpose," my daughter
informed me. That seems to be the key. The students are curious,
excited, and self-motivated because they are doing something that
directly affects them. My daughter's current project for her Teen
Circle is interviewing her parents and her friend's parents about
the bosses they have had. The Circle put together a questionnaire
and they are going to review the answers they received at the
end of the month.
Recently,
our nine-year old son got interested in Albert Einstein's life.
"He was an Impactful Innovator doing Service, " he declared.
"Just like me." What next?
Plenty. Unger
wants to see the equivalent of the Teen Mastery Program brought
into several other arenas. After all, learning about your Life
Purpose is not just for the young. Many of Unger's clients are
self-employed people with career questions, but not everyone can
come to Sausalito to learn their Life Purpose. A Career Path Mastery
Program would allow people to use the same technology to better
align their career to their Life Purpose. Although the examples
are few, some businesses already use LifePrints decoding programs
to help employees make the best use of their talents, to promote
team building, etc. Another pilot program is the group of therapists
and counselors using LifePrints to help their clients deal with
their Life Lessons (one's shadow aspect, also encoded in the fingerprints).
This is not
old-fashioned fortune-telling, Unger is quick to point out. If
it weren't for the unfortunate association with carnivals, hand
analysis might have already received the exposure commensurate
with its power to help people understand themselves. The fingerprints
are so accurate, so specific, he believes it is only a matter
of time before the world embraces them.
Terry Reed,
M.D. is not so sure. He teaches a Graduate Class at the University
of Indiana Medical School on dermatoglyphics. He grants the efficacy
of fingerprint examination as a diagnostic tool, but is skeptical
of its use as a psychological indicator. "The research just
hasn't been done," he says. "More detailed studies need
to be completed before I would make the leap that Unger has apparently
made. But I must admit, the early results are interesting."
Others are
less sanguine. Syndicated columnist Debra Saunders says "This
gypsy side show mumbo jumbo is just one more example of what's
wrong in our schools. How about sticking to the three RRR's? It
worked for my parents and it worked for me." Pat Buchanan
wants to make it illegal for school kids to use the LifePrints
Program to find their Life Purpose.
But for each
detractor, there are equivalent proponents. Guidren Hoy, principal
of the Corte Madera Elementary School says she regularly meets
with parents to discuss school programs based upon their child's
Life Purpose. Several other schools are also reporting positive
results.
The fog began
to roll in and we moved off the porch into Unger's living room.
There, we continued our discussion about the future of hand analysis.
Unger's current project is the LifePrints Relationship Profiler,
a prototype my wife and I have been playing around with for the
last week or so. Even in its early form, it nailed several key
aspects of our relationship all too accurately. (At least my wife
thinks so, we're still discussing it.) Here's how it works. We
scanned in our hands and fingerprints and created a diskette with
all our hand's information. We plugged the diskette into our computer
and went to a web site with a menu of questions and options. Single?
Married? Divorced? Do you have questions about a love relationship,
parent - child relationship, etc.? We chose love relationships
and selected a series of questions from the menu and the Relationship
Profiler revealed strengths and weaknesses, relationship tendencies
and how all this fit in with our Life Purposes.
Unger wants
to take it to the next level, from relationship diagnoser to relationship
trainer. "Imagine this piece of software," he twinkles.
"Your challenge in relationship is Issues of Trust, let's
say. You knew this already before consulting the Relationships
Profiler, but you did not connect this to your Life Purpose as
an Artist. The Profiler offers you a series of interactive exercises
specific to you. For instance, a movie sequence appears on the
computer prompting you to stop the action whenever you feel uncomfortable.
Your character is being asked to the Prom by a cool looking guy.
On a motorcycle. Do you say yes? If you do, he suggests you meet
up with his friends Fred and Clara who are visiting from out of
town. You can all go out together after the Prom. They know a
rock band that is performing downtown. You show up and everyone
is drinking heavily. The scenario goes on waiting to find your
breaking point. There are no right or wrong responses. Sooner
or later you stop the action and the screen asks you to look at
certain key factors affecting your choices. The computer knows
your personal profile, memorizes your answers, rates your progress
over time and selects from its huge store of exercises the ones
best suited to your current level of progress. It's like having
a personal trainer for your relationships."
Unger is also
working on a medical application of dermatoglyphics. "We
are almost finished putting together a software program for use
in the doctor's office or at a hospital or clinic. For instance,
the dermatoglyphic profile for breast cancer is well enough established
to be as good a diagnostic marker as a mammogram. Shouldn't your
doctor know this? Imagine a scanner / computer profile as a routine
part of any examination. It's cheap and non-invasive. The information
is already out there. It's just not in your doctor's office. And
we've only tapped the barest tip of this iceberg. As dermatoglyphics
come into common practice, the data collected can reap rewards
we can't even imagine at this time."
I asked Unger
about privacy rights, Big Brother problems, etc. He agreed that
this is an area of concern. "We have to be careful here.
All our data is strictly confidential, but we can't become complacent.
Our tech team works on security a lot. We haven't had a problem
yet." As I made my good byes, an interesting mixture of tech-types,
marketing pros and mystics were filing in for Unger's next meeting.
"We're working on an interesting project I can't talk to
you about just now. Call me in a couple of months. I think you'll
be interested in this one."
I am sure
I will be.
See
a 1992 article about the future of hand analysis.
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