Riffing on Genesis (the first book of the Bible, not the British rock band from the 70s which became popular with Phil Collins behind the microphone but which actually had Peter Gabriel as its original front-man) English author Sir Terry Pratchett OBE once said, “In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”

Just FYI, if you didn’t read my previous post on thinking you may want to check that out first. This is the second in what will probably be a fairly long series.

Before we trip and fall into the well, should probably get a few medical details out of the way.

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Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
– – Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime (1984)

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Actually, there is one thing on the medical front that has existed for months that I have never mentioned. When I was last in the hospital, which I believe was April, a CT showed a stone lodged in my right kidney. After talking with the urologist about some of the available options, I decided to do nothing. Maybe it will pass on its own. Maybe it will require medical intervention at some point in the future. We simply don’t know. What we do know is that it’s there, and it’s currently not bothering anybody.

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Don’t trouble trouble until trouble troubles you.
– – Frank Bosco

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Seriously though, the urologist said that it would not be a big deal to let the stone be for 6-8 months and then do another CT to see if it has moved, gotten bigger, or doing something else (perhaps the Macarena?) that we should be aware of of which we should be aware.

If you’re only here for the medical update you can stop reading now and go back to playing Candy Crush (no one will know.)

Now, with the trivialities behind us, we can begin exploring more important things.

This is actually my third attempt at writing something which would follow the previous post. It’s not that I wrote myself into a corner. I didn’t. It’s just that I still – as I mentioned before – have a lot on my mind. Everything is so confusing.

I keep notes to myself. I use an application that syncs them between my laptop and my phone so I can freely use either. Which is good, so when I have one of my brilliant ideas at 3:00 in the morning I don’t need to wake up Suzie to fire up the laptop.

Some are things to do. Some are things I want to write about. Some are just random thoughts that I want to hold onto because they’re only half-baked (and maybe they have potential down the road.) My brain is working. It’s just a real mess up there.

Here’s some of the notes (I removed the to-dos):

• Citizen Kane newspaper Ownership
• stages of knowledge | the more you know, the more you don’t know
• know thyself
• people want to be lied to – Plato’s allegory of the cave
• The Magna Carta The origins of law
• Politicians should be paid 80% of their private sector wage
• No consequences for bad behavior
• Never take advice from someone who doesn’t have children
• Everything is evolutionary (at some point this will become a whole series of essays in itself. I just haven’t got it all figured out yet.)
• Everything is energy (I actually have the first few thousand words of this essay written. It’s the opening chapter for a book I owe my friend Dr Funda Kahn.)
• Stages of breakdown Denial Create the experts Trust the experts Suggestion Mandatory
• It is in everyone’s best interest That everyone makes good decisions
• Always Sunny in Philadelphia – the greatest 4 1/2 minutes in television
• history is written by the victors
• The ends justify the means
• Every person Similarly situated Should be treated the same
• distinctions with the difference – distinctions without a difference
• All information is curated Aggregated
• The state of education & prison reform
• Bob and Brian talking about how to prepare steaks
• History blinks the world changes
• metrics for government, teachers, police etc.
• People like dogs they need attention and will take negative attention
• The butterfly effect: how Barack Obama really became president (this is a completely true story about how a guy I know inadvertently made Barack Obama president)
• if there’s any issue where you refused to change your mind when presented with new information you’re a zealot, or if you can’t think of any information that would cause you to change your mind
• What’s the everyone wants to be in control but no one wants to be responsible
• the exception proves the rule
• Decision box – four squares

And some of you wonder what I do all day…

Every item on the list could be its own post. But without context, any such post wouldn’t make any more sense than the list itself. Ideas require organization.

In addition to that list, I’m dealing with all of “life’s” little issues like bills, doctors appointments, physical therapy, shopping, kid in college, car needs an oil change, etc. There’s just so much to be said. But it has to make sense. There has to be a nexus and a story.

In the first draft of this post (which is nearly complete by the way) I walked through events chronologically from where we left off before. However when it was complete I realized it lacked critical foundational elements. There were several paragraphs that would’ve been confusing to you. Hell, they were confusing to me and I wrote ’em.

In my second attempt I wandered into the metaphysical abyss of control and complexity. That was a complete and total disaster.

But if you will bear with me, I’m confident I have discovered a path where we will all enjoy the journey together.

Let’s start with a quick explanation of how I got here. In the previous post I provided a short list of a few of the books I had read prior to the accident which got me thinking about thinking. Two books didn’t make that list because they didn’t really fit.

• Edward Bernays’ Propaganda (1928) should be required reading for every voter in the country. For those of you in Rio Linda, Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. He is also considered the father of advertising or public relations. No one on earth, that you’ve never heard of, has had a greater impact on your life than Bernays. He got the U.S. into WWI. He’s the reason you think “breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” We’ll talk more about Bernays later. But for now, here’s all you need to know:

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The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.
– – Edward Bernays

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• At the time of the accident I was reading The True Believer by Eric Hoffer (1951). Hoffer’s book deals directly with political organizations and mass movements. Who joins them and why. It’s been praised by dozens of politicians including Eisenhower and Hillary Clinton. If you want to survive in politics this is required reading. Here’s the last picture I took before the accident.

Heavy stuff.

So that’s where we are, in 2021. Maybe eight hours after that photo was taken I would be in a flight-for-life helicopter with a broken neck, seaweed in my lungs, and a machine breathing for me on my way to Milwaukee. Never got to finish my book.

I hear you. I hear you. You’re thinking, “Hey! 2021? WTF happened to 2017 and the failed businesses and the panic attacks?! This ain’t no book of the month club you know!”

I know. I know. Calm yourselves. It’s almost over. Jeesh.

After the accident I was sick. Really sick. I was actually just scrolling through my Audible account the other day and I noticed a whole bunch of books which I had listened to and remember absolutely nothing from. I couldn’t even tell you what they were about. At the time I didn’t realize how sick I was. But I was pretty sick.

So it was only more recently that I downloaded The True Believer as an e-book and started to make my way through it again.

As I’m reading it, I find an interesting passage referring to Bernays’ earlier work Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923). So I decide to stop reading The True Believer and start on Crystallizing Public Opinion. Not too far into that book, Bernays references Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War by Wilfred Trotter (1916). So I, again, decide to stop reading one book and pick up another. Instincts of the Herd led to Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, which in turn led to the Upanishads.

And that’s when I realized the only place to start was “in the beginning.”

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In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
– – Genesis 1:1

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Several thousand miles away and perhaps 300 years earlier, a different people had surprisingly similar thought.

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That (the Invisible-Absolute) is whole;
whole is this (the visible phenomena);
from the Invisible Whole comes forth the visible whole.
Though the visible whole has come out from that Invisible Whole, yet the Whole remains unaltered.
– – Ishavasya Upanishad, Peace Chant (opening prayer)

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I find that absolutely remarkable.

Consider, the earth is over 4 billion years old. People, humans, have only been walking around for about 250,000 years. So if we were to say the life of the earth is the 2,600 mile trip from San Francisco to New York, people have only been here for the last 858 feet. That is, if the earth were that long cross-country trip, you could watch the earth’s entire history during the flight over the country and you wouldn’t see a human being until after the plane had landed, cleared the runway, and was almost at the gate.

We – people – are actually kinda new here.

Similarly, if we take a look at human history, so much of it is unrecorded. For so long we lacked the means to adequately memorialize what we knew. But that – of course – does not mean we weren’t learning. To the contrary, we learned a great deal. For 250,000 years we lived here, discovered our world and our place in it. And then just recently, about 3,000 years ago, we figured out how to write things down. And once we did that, people living two lifetimes of travel apart from one another decide that one of the very first things they want to memorialize is the same story.

You might think that’s a coincidence… And you would be wrong.

Consider:

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In the Lord is to be veiled all this—whatsoever moves on earth.
Through such renunciation do thou save (thyself); be not greedy, for whose is wealth?

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What’s that? You don’t recognize it?

Here’s a slightly different translation:

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All this, whatsoever exists in the universe, should be covered by the Lord.
Having renounced (the unreal), enjoy (the Real).
Do not covet the wealth of any man.
– – Ishavasya Upanishad, Verse I

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Now that should certainly sound familiar. It’s essentially the 10th Commandment. Only it wasn’t written down in the Middle East, but rather in the Himalayan forests of northeastern India. And probably 150-200 years before the book of Exodus.

We should all acknowledge that there are things that are innately true. Truisms. Things that have been time-tested over thousands of generations. The words expressing these things are certainly imperfect. So people often get tripped up in semantics. But that doesn’t make these truisms less true.

Over the next couple of months I want to explore some of these truisms with you. But before we go, I want to leave you with the greatest 4 1/2 minutes in television history.

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Standing chitchat, Sundays at 3:30 Central.
No login or special software required.
Here’s the link: https://jb.jb03.com/call/e35vvpp9.

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