MOST INTERESTING ESSAYS 12/4/25: THEORY & TRUTH, MEMORY & INTELLIGENCE, PSYCHIATRY, WRITING, EGYPT IN 2019, LIVE OR DIE, GARDEN OF EDEN, SOCIAL DYSFUNCTION, DEATH ROW, RIGHT & WRONG, FRANTZ FANON, TRUTHINESS, CONSPIRACY, LIBERALITY, LIFE IS LIQUID, BECOMING god-LIKE, TIPPING POINT, VANISHING WORLD
The potential of AI is akin to the Industrial Revolution, yet it could surpass it significantly if managed correctly by humans.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
The AI-Savvy Leader (Nine Ways to Take Back Control and Make AI Work)
By: David De Cremer
Narrated By: David Marantz
David De Cremer (Author, Belgian born professor at Northeastern University in Boston, and behavioral scientist with academic studies in economics and psychology.)
“The AI-Savvy Leader” should be required reading for every organization investing in artificial intelligence for performance improvement. From government to business, to eleemosynary organizations, De Cremer offers a guide for organizational transition from physical labor to labor-saving benefits of AI.
AI offers the working world the opportunity to increase their productivity without the mind-numbing physical labor of assembly lines and administrative scut work.
Like assembly line production implemented by Ford and work report filing and writing during the industrial revolution, AI offers an opportunity to increase productivity without the mind-numbing physical labor of assembly line work and after-work’ analysis reports. With AI, more time is provided to workers to think and do what can be done to be more productive.
Arguably, AI is similar to the industrial revolutions transition to assembly line work. Assembly line work improved over time by changes that made it more productive. Why would one think that AI is any different? It is just another tool for improving productivity. The concern is that AI means less labor will be required and that workers will lose their jobs. De Cremer notes loss of employment is one of the greatest concerns of employees working for an organization transitioning to AI. Too many times organizations are looking at reducing costs with AI rather than increasing productivity.
The solution identified by De Cremer is to make AI transition human centered.
His point is that organizations need to understand the human impact of AI on employees’ work process. AI should not only be viewed as a cost-cutting process but as a process of reducing repetitive work for labor to make added contributions to an organization’s goals. AI does not guarantee continued employment, but reduced manual labor offers time and incentive to improve organization productivity through employee’ cooperation rather than opposition. AI is mistakenly viewed as an enemy of labor when, in fact, it is a liberator of labor that provides time to do more than tighten bolts on an auto body frame.
AI is not a panacea for labor and can be a threat just like industrialization was to many craftsmen.
But, like craftsman that went to work for industries, today’s labor will join organizations that have successfully transitioned to AI with a human-centered rather than cost-reduction mentality. Labor productivity is only a part of what any AI transition provides an organization. What is often discounted is customer service because labor is consumed by repetitive work. If AI improves labor productivity, more time can be provided to an organization’s customers.
When AI is properly human centered, the customer can be offered more personal attention by fellow human beings employed by an AI organization.
Too many organizations are using AI to respond to customer complaints. Human-centered AI becomes a win-win opportunity because labor is not consumed by production and has the time to understand customer unhappiness with service or product. AI does not think like a human. AI only responds based on the memory of what AI has been programmed to recall. With human handling of customer complaints, problems are more clearly understood. Opportunity for customer satisfaction is improved.
De Creamer acknowledges AI has introduced much closer monitoring of worker performance and carries some of the same mind-numbing work introduced in assembly line manufacturing.
De Creamer suggests negative consequences of AI should be dealt with directly with employees when AI becomes a problem. Part of a human-centered AI organization’s responsibility is allowing employees to take breaks during their workday without being penalized for slackening production. Repetitive tasks have always been a drain on productivity, but it has to be recognized and responded to in the light of overall productivity of an organization.
AI, like the industrial revolution, is shown as a great opportunity for human beings.
De Creamer suggests AI is not and will never be human. To De Creamer AI is a recallable knowledge accumulator and is only a programmed tool of human minds, not a replacement for human thought and understanding. The potential of AI is akin to the Industrial Revolution, yet it could surpass it significantly if managed correctly by humans.
Trust is the most important characteristic of a patient’s relationship with their physician.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“How Medicine Works and When It Doesn’t” Leaning Who to Trust to Get and Stay Healthy
By: F. Perry Wilson MD
Narrated By: Shawn K. Jain, F. Perry Wilson
F. Perry Wilson MD (Author, Harvard graduate with honors in biochemistry, attended medical school at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is a practicing nephrologist at Yale New Haven Hospital.)
Doctor F. Perry Wilson is a physician with a biochemistry degree from Harvard, and a medical degree from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. Wilson works at Yale New Haven Hospital where he specializes in kidney issues. Wilson’s book is a problematic view of doctor/patient relationship and what a patient can or should believe about a physicians’ medical diagnosis and treatment. A problematic view is not Dr. Wilson’s intent, but it is a conclusion a reader/listener may arrive at as he/she completes “How Medicine Works and When It Doesn’t”.
Dr. Wilson argues any advice from medical professionals may be listened to with skepticism but not disdain.
In general, that argument seems logical and fairly balanced. Wilson infers skepticism extends to trained medical professionals and the medical industry in general. The reason a lay person may accept that conclusion is based on personal experience and rationality.
As one who has been diagnosed with heart trouble from blocked arteries and medical treatment for an alleged heart attack, the last ten years have been an educational journey.
The first cardiologist who reviewed details of a physical weakness felt while working, suggested the weakness may have been caused by a mild heart attack. After a heart scan, the cardiologist found an artery serving the heart had a blockage. The doctor recommended a stent be inserted to clear the blockage. After surgery, the cardiologist noted the stent could not get through the blockage. Changing cardiologists seemed a prudent action considering the doctor’s failure.
A new cardiologist recommended regular check-ups, stress tests, and medicine to address the cause of the blockage.
Ten years have passed and there have been no further incidents, but relocation required finding a third cardiologist who reviewed medications, conducted further tests. The new cardiologist recommended continued medical treatment largely based on statin prescriptions and further tests. Here is where Dr. Wilson’s book becomes problematic to a patient seeking medical advice from trained medical specialists.
As noted by Thomas Hager in “Ten Drugs”, the relationship between statins and blocked arteries as a cause of heart attacks is somewhat unclear. The unclearness is not that taking stains reduce cholesterol but that statins have side effects. Science-based tests show statins do reduce cholesterol but inhibit memory, reduce cognition, and may cause liver and kidney damage. To add to negative side effects, there is medicine producing industry’ bias that promote statins because they are big revenue producers.
What Doctor Wilson’s book reminds one of is the mid twentieth century game show “Who Do You Trust”. Wilson infers truth is only science-based probability, not certainty.
What both doctor and patient know is based on experience and education, not certainty. For both doctor and patient, it comes down to “Who Do You Trust”.
Wilson’s book is an important example of why patients should use their intuition to trust or change doctors when their health is at risk.
Doctors have spent the greater part of their lives understanding human medical problems and the effect of drugs in treating patients. Patients are unlikely to have had the same level of training or understanding about their own health or the health of the general population. What a patient is left with is the principle of trust. If one trusts the doctor who is prescribing and/or treating one for their illness, the probability of good outcome is logically better.
Doctor Wilson acknowledges profit motive for pharmaceutical companies drives their relationship with the medical profession and the public.
He offers concrete examples of mistakes that have been made by the pharmaceutical companies like the Thalidomide prescriptions that harmed unborn children. Of course, mistakes get made in every discipline of life. The other side of mistakes are the incredible success of vaccines for polio, smallpox, and our world’s most recent crises, Covid 19.
The conclusion one draws from Wilson’s book is trust is the most important characteristic of a patient’s relationship with a physician.
This is not meant to suggest one should shop for a doctor that tells one what they want to hear but to depend on the education and experience of a person who knows more about medicine and its effects than you.
Hager’s history of the drug industry illustrates the strength and weakness of human nature whether one is a capitalist, socialist, or communist.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“Ten Drugs” How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine
By: Thomas Hager
Narrated By: Angelo Di Loreto
Thomas Hager (Author, science historian, editor, publisher, Oregon native, received master’s degree in medical microbiology and immunology from the Oregon Health Sciences University.)
“Ten Drugs” is a critical view of today’s drug industry, its drug discoverers, the medical profession, and its manufacturers. Hager explains opium is proven to have been used by Mesopotamian Sumerians in 3400 BCE but older than its known cultivation. The Sumerians called it “hul gil” which means “joy plant”.
Thomas Hager begins with opium and its discovery thousands of years ago when the bitter taste of a poppy seed capsule is tasted by a curious African’, Egyptian’, Greek’, or Roman’ Homo erectus.
Wide use grew to affect national relations between China and the western world in the opium wars of 1856-1860. China’s Qing dynasty lost territorial control of Hong Kong to Great Britain when opium became a cash cow for international trade.
Hager explains how opium offered both risk and reward to the world. It threatened society with addiction and overdose while offering surcease of pain for the wounded or health afflicted.
Addiction significantly increased among the Chinese during and after the opium wars. After many tries to prohibit opium, it was in the early 20th century that addiction was internationally condemned. It was the People’s Republic of China in 1949 that launched an aggressive anti-opium campaign that dramatically reduced opium purchase and use in China. Later, Hager infers China’s success in eliminating the trade is by murdering its dealers and penalizing its users. Ironically, Hager notes former President Trump called for the death penalty for drug dealers to combat America’s drug crises, a policy only likely to be implemented in an authoritarian country.
The first opium war in China, 1841.
Hager infers China’s success in eliminating the trade is by murdering its dealers and penalizing its users.
Hager explains the history of opium evolved into drug derivatives like morphine, laudanum, and codeine to offer pain relief from a variety of medical maladies. These derivatives were effective but still carried the risk of addiction. Hager explains later that addiction is related to nerve system receptors at a molecular level that create a craving for the effects of particular drugs. Opium and its derivatives eventually became regulated because of their addictive character. In America, the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 marked the beginning of strict control of opium’s derivative prescriptions in the U.S.
Edward Jenner (1749-1823, English physician and scientist who discovered the use of cowpox to inoculate against smallpox.)
Hager moves on to vaccination. Interestingly, Hager explains the discoverer of inoculation by transfer is not Edward Jenner (1749-1823), a British physician called the Father of Immunology. It was a wealthy English woman named Lady Mary Worley Montague who learned of the use, of what became known as vaccination, in Turkey. She had survived a smallpox infection. Ms. Montague accompanied her husband, who was the British ambassador to the Ottoman empire in 1716.
Ms. Montague learned of a Turkish custom of transferring infected smallpox exudate to healthy children to give them a milder form of smallpox. That transferred exudate inoculated the young from getting a fatal dose of the disease in later life. Smallpox is estimated to have killed over 300,000,000 people (a statistic roughly equivalent to every person alive in the U.S. in the in the 1990s). The Turkish custom of inoculation was found highly effective.
Lady Mary Worley Montague who learned of the use of vaccination in Turkey. Earlier in her life, she had survived a smallpox infection.
In her return to England, Ms. Montague widely disseminated information about the success of the Turkish custom to prevent smallpox. Edward Jenner chose to use cowpox as a substitute tissue for smallpox vaccination of his patients. Jenner found cowpox infected tissue was equally effective in immunization and less dangerous than the using smallpox exudate. Jenner’s discovery of cowpox vaccination in 1796 became widely accepted but nearly 80 years after Ms. Montague’s worldwide promotion of Turkey’s vaccination procedure. Jenner’s vaccination success led to the World Health Organization’s claim that smallpox eradication could be achieved through an international inoculation program. Smallpox is alleged to have been eradicated as a disease in 1980.
The next drug identified as important by Hager is sulfa, a major cause of death from infected open wounds.
The common cause is a bacteria called Streptococcus. Bayer Corporation, a dye manufacturer in Germany, decides to enter the drug industry because their investment, facilities, and research scientists were ideal for entry into research and manufacture of drugs. They compound a drug called Prontosil that is discovered as a sulfa based chemical compound that successfully kills Streptococcal bacteria that cause fatal infections from open wounds. Bayer’s discovery saved many lives as WWII was gathering in the 1930s. Ironically, one of the saved lives is FDR’s son who had a severe streptococcal infection in 1936.
Hager notes personal mental illness and social dysfunction are perennial maladies that plague society through the 21st century.
Isolation and various therapies have been used to address mental illness. In early days, asylums were created to isolate patients who could not cope with daily life. Palliative treatment ranged from isolation to Freudian consultation, to electroshock, to newly discovered drug treatments. Though not mentioned by Hager, a little research shows the first significant breakthrough drug was lithium in 1949.
John Cade (1912-1980, An Australian psychiatrist discovered the effects of lithium carbonate as a mood stabilizer in 1948.)
Lithium was actually discovered in 1817 but did not get used for mental illness until 1948 when John Cade, an Australian psychiatrist, found that lithium carbonate stabilized mo0d and reduced the severity of manic episodes in patients.
Though Hager doesn’t mention lithium, he notes the French chemist Paul Charpentier identified antihistamine in 1950 as an antipsychotic to aid his patients’ erratic behavior. The use of Thorazine became a common drug synthesized by Rhone-Poulenc Laboratories in France. It was released in the 1950s and considered a major breakthrough in psychiatric treatment. It had a calming effect on severely schizophrenic patients by attacking excess dopamine production in the brain.
The major criticism Hager has of drug manufacturers and the medical industry is in the inherent influence of money, power, and prestige that distorts honest evaluation of drug effectiveness and side effects.
The drug industry depends on the success of their research for new drug discoveries to maintain the cost and improve the value of their businesses. However, human nature gets in the way of every human being. The lure of more money, power, and prestige enter into evaluative judgements and descriptions of tests for new drugs. The financial success of a drug that mitigates or cures particular societal ills make millions, if not billions, of dollars for drug manufacturers. Drug manufacturers are not eleemosynary institutions. They are in the business of making money and preserving their longevity while enriching themselves and their stockholders. Hager argues human nature distorts the truth of drug efficacy with tailored reports of a drug’s true benefit and potential for harm. He offers statins as an example of drug manufacturers’ misleading promotions.
Hager reviews the history of statins and correlations drawn by the medical industry about their efficacy in reducing heart ailments.
He suggests clinical studies by manufacturers often distort the entire effect of statins in preventing heart attacks. Statins are designed to reduce cholesterol in the blood stream. However, many studies that correlate cholesterol with heart disease are only partly related to heart attacks while having measurable side effects that diminish human cognition, memory, and potential organ damage, i.e, liver and kidney damage. Hager cautions those who take statins not to stop without discussing it with their physicians. However, Hager recounts an unsolicited personal contact that suggested he should be taking a statin because he is over 60 and had a brain vessel bleed in his earlier medical history. The contact recommended Hager take a statin based on that history. Hager notes that he felt his private medical history had been hacked, and that the contact is evidence of drug industry promotion of statins for profit more than public benefit.
In Hager’s last chapters, he explains how the drug industry is being attacked for influence peddling. In drug manufacturers drive for profits, they offer incentives to the medical profession (e.g. trips to conferences in exotic resorts, personal solicitations from sales reps, etc.) to use specific drugs in their practices.
In the end, Hager argues there are exceptions to the medical industries drive for profits by telling the story of British researchers Georges Kohler and Cesar Milstein who made a discovery in 1975 that changed the focus of drug manufacturer to what is called monoclonal antibody drug development. Kohler and Milstein found a process for creating drugs that have fewer side effects by creating antibody drugs that exclusively attack diseases at a molecular level. The irony of their discovery is Kohler and Milstein chose not to patent their discovery. If they had patented their discovery, they could have gained income for every company who chose to create monoclonal antibody drugs.
British researchers Georges Kohler and Cesar Milstein
Research is growing to create drugs that more precisely address the known molecular cause of disease without affecting the general health of patients. Not surprisingly, today’s manufacturers of monoclonal drugs use Kohler’s and Milstein’s process while requiring patents for their drugs.
Hager’s history of the drug industry illustrates the strength and weakness of human nature whether one is a capitalist, socialist, or communist.
Eugenics and the fickle political nature of human beings outweighs the benefits of Harden’s idea of choosing what is best for society.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“The Genetic Lottery” Why DNA Matters for Social Equality
By: Kathryn Paige Harden
Narrated By: Katherine Fenton
Kathryn Paige Harden (Author, American psychologist and behavioral geneticist, Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.)
“The Genetic Lottery” is an important book that may be easily misinterpreted. Hopefully, this review fairly summarizes its meaning. Fundamentally, Kathryn Paige Harden concludes all human beings are subject to a genetic lottery and the culture in which they mature. It is not suggesting all human beings are equal but that all can develop to their potential as long as he/she has an equal opportunity to become what their genetic inheritance, education, and life’s luck allow.
Harden explains racial identity is a false flag signifying little about human capability.
Every human being is born within a culture and from a mother and father who have contributed genetic DNA they inherited from previous generations. DNA carries genetic instructions for development, growth, and reproduction of living organisms. Those instructions are a blueprint for an organism’s growth. However, the genetic information passed on to future generations varies with each birth and is subject to a lottery of DNA instructions.
The lottery of genetics extends a multitude of characteristics ranging from intelligence to height to the color of one’s skin.
One may become an Einstein, or a slow-witted dolt. One may be born healthy or destined to die from an incurable disease. The growing understanding of genetics suggests the potential for human intervention to prevent disease, but also the possibility of creating a master race of human beings. That second possibility is a Hitlerian idea that lurks in the background of science and political power. It revolves around the theory of eugenics.
Harden suggests an ameliorating power of eugenics is its potential for offering equal opportunity for all to be the best version of themselves within whatever culture they live.
Putting aside the potential of human genetic theory’s risk, Harden explains every human is born within a culture that reflects the genetic inheritance of the continent on which they are born. The combination of the human genetic lottery and the culture in which humans live create ethnic identity and difference. Differences are the strengths and weaknesses of society. Strengths are in the diversity of culture that adds interest and dimension to life. The weakness of society is its tendency to look at someone who is different as a threat or obstacle to a native’s ambition or cultural identity.
Harden suggests every human being’s genetic code should be identified to aid human development by creating an environmental support system that capitalizes on genetic strengths and minimizes weaknesses.
This idealistic view of genetics is fraught with a risk to human freedom of thought and action. Science is generations away from understanding genetics and its relationship to the weaknesses and strengths of human thought and action. Understanding what gave Einstein a genetic inheritance that could see and understand E=MC squared is not known and may never be known. The luck of genetic inheritance and the lottery of life experiences are unlikely to ever be predictable. One interesting note in the forensic examination of Einsteins brain (recorded in another book) is that he had a higher-than-normal gilia cell ratio, non-normal folding patterns in his parietal lobe, and a missing furrow in the parietal lobe that may have allowed better connectivity between brain regions.
The threat of eugenic determinism and the fickle political nature of human beings outweighs the benefits of Harden’s idea of choosing what is best for society.
Orange’s book shows how culture can kill. What citizens of the world need to do is understand how a broader culture can be built.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“There There: A Novel”
By: Tommy Orange
Narrated By: Darrell Dennis, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Alma Ceurvo, Kyla Garcia
Tommy Orange (Author, received a Master of Fine Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts, winner of the 2019 American Book Award for “There There…”)
Tommy Orange illustrates how culture is the god of creation and destruction. “There There…” offers a glimpse of what it is like to be poor and indigenous in Oakland, California. The name “Indians” for the indigenous of America is said to have been created by Christopher Columbus in the 1400s. Orange has the idea at a gathering of native Americans to have each write their stories, i.e., their memories of what life has been for them in Oakland, California in the 20th and 21st centuries. Their stories are the substance of Orange’s book. They reveal the crushing reality of being descendants of the indigenous in Oakland, and believably all of America. A grant from Oakland becomes the funding source for Orange’s idea. Fighting to making a living as an author is at the core of “There There…” Orange undoubtedly calls “There There…” a novel to protect the story tellers.
Orange shows recycling-poverty, addiction, and misogynistic abuse are big problems for “Indians” in Oakland. The stories reveal an underlying frustration, if not anger, of indigenous Americans who are being molded by government programs that ignore native traditions and emphasize integration into whatever American society has become. There is justification for anger among American minorities. However, there is a fundamental misunderstanding when suggesting government programs are meant to mold Americans. The goal of government is not to mold its citizens but to create cultural norms for a diverse culture. Government fails because ethnic norms of minorities protect American citizens who are treated unequally.
Names like “Two Shoes”, “Red Feather” and the “Indian symbol” that once tested color on televisions are interesting examples of the significance of native influence in American culture.
Though America has and continues to try to Americanize natives, cultural influence is a two-way street. The stories in “There There…” illustrate how everything from influence of addiction to spousal abuse to abortion to overeating to violence are revealed as problems in native American’ lives. This is a hard novel to listen to because it denigrates Indian heritage and justifiably blames American culture.
One is drawn to wonder what can be done to correct the truth of American culture’s blame. The answer is in the Constitution of the United States.
All men are created equal, and the job of government is to provide for the health, education, and welfare of its citizens. American government is struggling to find a way of doing what it is meant to do because of the nature of human beings. Neither capitalism, utopianism, socialism, or communism change human nature. Ironically, only culture has the potential for achieving the goal of equality and fraternity.
Orange’s stories illustrate how Indian poverty is destructive and ethnic cultural inheritance is destroying native Americans.
One presumes Orange would object to the category of American when referring to indigenous peoples. However, it is only with change in culture that all citizens become more socially cohesive than one ethnic identity. If America can institute policies that genuinely provide equality for health, education, and welfare of all, culture will heal itself. When that is achieved, one can be Black, white, Latino, indigenous, or whatever ethnic group one wishes–but within broader American culture.
Orange’s book shows how culture can kill. What citizens of the world need to do is understand how a broader culture can be built.
Tisdale’s book is hard to listen to but worth one’s time and effort for understanding.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“Advice for Future Corpses” And Those Who Love Them, A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying
By: Sallie Tisdale
Narrated By: Gabra Zackman
Sallie Tisdale (Author, essayist, who earned a nursing degree in 1983, born in 1957.)
The title of Sallie Tisdale’s book is off-putting but an apt description of her advice about “…Death and Dying”. Tisdale is a registered nurse who has written several books. Her experience makes her advice about death relevant and important. Those of a certain age or physical condition are shown how to prepare themselves for the inevitability of death.
The Japanese writer Haruki Murakami wrote “Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.”
Tisdale explains how a person can manage the inevitability of their death. To some, this seems a macabre thought, but nothing can be depended upon in life except its end. Why not manage that end with at least as much skill as one chooses to live? The reason people choose not to think about planning for death is because they are dealing with the everyday issues of living.
The irony is that Tisdale argues “planning for death” is an everyday issue.
Even if one knows they will eventually die, why care about it? Most lives are unplanned and seem out of our control anyway. How many plans for living are turned upside down by unforeseen events? Unforeseen events like Covid19, the rise of Hitler, WWII, the atomic bomb, and so on and so on. Yes, the occurrences of history change human plans. However, the difference is that death of the individual is a known inevitability. When one knows, their death is going to happen, why not have a plan?
Tisdale gives listeners the details of a plan for death.
Prepare Healthcare Directives
Decide to provide or not provide organ donation.
Explain burial or cremation wishes.
Maintain a financial inventory of accounts and assets.
Create a Will covering heirs and their inheritance. Review the plan based on life changes.
Having a will takes asset distribution out of the hands of a state court system. Health directives show your medical wishes and notes who has the right to make decisions for you in the event of incapacitation. A Health Care Directive stipulates whether extraordinary measures or comfort until death is to be administered. Written directives can explain how the body, after death, is to be cared for, i.e., is the body to be used for medical research, organ transplant, cremation, or burial. Time is of the essence when a person dies because living tissues and organs die soon after death of the person.
Beyond paperwork, Tisdale explains what is important to the dying when diagnosed as terminal.
To a family or caregiver, the hardest part is helping the dying cope with growing incapacity. When one is terminal, providing as much comfort as possible until death is of primary importance. The hardest part to the dying person is loss of control over one’s body. Listening to Tisdale’s real-life experience illustrate how American hospice and hospital care fails the terminally ill.
On the one hand, it is the fault of the dying for not having a clear plan for what is to be done in the event of a terminal diagnosis or illness, but Tisdale’s point is that neither hospice nor hospital’s services offer consistency in their care for the dying. Tisdale believes that once a person is diagnosed as terminal, the obligation of hospice’ and hospital’ care is to give comfort until death. However, institutions and doctors do not have the time nor inclination and American families do not have the money. Tisdale mentions Japanese elder care by noting the majority of those who are dying, die at home. The inference is that institutions are unlikely to provide the same care as the family of one who is dying.
Tisdale believes “Death with Dignity” laws passed in Oregon, Washinton, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, Vermont, and Washinton, D.C. are on the right side of history.
They emphasize the importance of comfort for the terminally ill. A “Death with Dignity” law allows doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to end a terminally ill person’s life as long as the injected drug is not administered by the doctor or institution for which he/she works.
Tisdale’s book is hard to listen to but worth one’s time and effort for understanding.
Human population growth is slowing, and awareness of biodiversity is improving but is the trajectory of global warming outpacing human action?
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“Biology: The Science of Life“
Author: Great Book Series
Narrated By: Professor Stephen Nowicki
Stephen Nowicki, Ph.D. (Bass Fellow and Professor of Biology @ Duke University, Associate Chair of the Dept. of Biology and Neuroscience.)
This is a dauting series of lectures with a theory of the beginning of life. It addresses living things in general but more specifically what is known about human life. Not surprisingly, it is immensely complicated.
There may have been an Adam and Eve in history, but Science infers any garden of Eden had to have been long after the beginning of life on earth.
Nowicki explains how Stanley Miller conducted an experiment in 1952 that simulated conditions of the early days of earth’s formation. Methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water were present in those early days. These ingredients were used in a controlled environment, with the help of energy (primordial lightening), to combine into amino acid compounds that are essential to life. These basic chemicals were present in the early days of earth. These amino acid compounds are the building blocks of life.
With amino acids, it became possible for DNA and RNA formation. DNA and RNA are shown to synthesize proteins leading to cellular process and organic development.
From these early beginnings, a natural selection process is initialized, i.e. evolution began which led to complex organisms like viruses, bacteria, animals, and eventually humans. Nowicki goes on to explain the complex biology of science. This is a point at which understanding by a lay reader/listener becomes difficult and only partially comprehensible. He begins with a detailed discussion of genetics, the study of genes, their discovery and function.
With the help of Rosalind Franklin (lower right), Watson (lower left) and Crick came up with the double helix model made of deoxyribose sugar that alternates with phosphate group strands.
The most famous pioneers of genetics are James Watson and Francis Crick. The genetic model they created reveals the backbone (organizational structure) of genes. With addition of nucleotides (adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine) to the gene backbone, genetic instructions are encoded by single strands of RNA into double strands of DNA. RNA’s single strands direct ribosomes that prevent mutation and maintain genetic integrity.
CHARLES DARWIN (1809-1882) FOUNDER OF THE THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.GREGOR MENDEL, (1822-1884) AUSTRIAN-CZECH BIOLOGIST, METEOROLOGIST, MATHEMATICIAN, AUGUSTINIAN FRIAR.
Nowicki jumps back in history to explain Darwin’s theory and proof of evolution. In addition, he recounts Gregory Mendel’s discovery of genetic inheritance. (Though Darwin and Mendel were contemporaries, it is not believed they ever met.) Mendel found, in breeding pea plants, that pea plants inherited certain traits of their parent plants with first generation plants having one color flower while second generation had 1/3rd to 2/3rd color differences that experimentally suggest inheritability of appearance. Mendel had no knowledge of genetics but was aware of Darwin’s writing. Ironically, Mendel discovered that inheritance had distinct genetic units of dominant and recessive characteristics explained how second-generation pea plants had mixed colors. This inheritable element of a gene became known as an “allele”, a word coined by British geneticist William Bateson in the early 1900s.
A listener/reader is only 1/4 of the way through Nowicki’s lectures at this point. Many of the remaining lectures delve into the details of gene function that will be interesting to biology students but only confuse and tire a dilettante.
To this reviewer, the two most enlightening features of Nowicki’s lectures are his views on the origin of human life and the ecological loss of biodiversity that threatens human existence. Nowicki challenges religious belief in the origin of life with a convincing argument for nature’s creation of human existence. His last lecture addresses global warming, reduced biodiversity, and the consequences of a loss of earth’s laboratory of medicinal cures for human ailments.
Nowicki leaves listener/readers with belief in humanity’s and earth’s environmental correction but with reservation. Human population growth is slowing, and awareness of biodiversity is improving but is the trajectory of global warming outpacing human action?
There is much to be learned about human behavior and relationship from Leary’s lectures.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior”
By: Mark Leary
Great Books Lecture: Professor Mark Leary
Mark Richard Leary (Professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University.)
Professor Leary offers an introduction to the psychology of who we are and why we act the way we do. Leary takes a Darwinian, as well as clinical, view of human nature. He attempts to unravel the mystery of personality, why humans are different, what self-esteem is and why it is important, and how understanding psychological process may help us become more self-aware, and emotionally healthy.
Homo sapiens have only been on earth an estimated 300,000 years on a planet estimated to be 4.6 billion years old.
Leary suggests the psychology of homo sapiens is probably not much different today than when they first became sentient. The inference made is that our emotional and intellectual framework evolved from ontological experience and genetic inheritance. The history of human nature is written in our genes and the memes created by the nurturing of human life. Our nervous system evolved through Darwinian natural selection intent on preserving itself. Along with genetic evolution of the human neurological system, social and emotional responses to the environment were formed by inherited memes. (Richard Dawkins, an evolution biologist, defined “meme” as an inheritable behavior.)
Leary explains fear, fight, or flight responses are heritable behaviors.
Dawkins suggests they are inherited memes and Leary suggests they are why most humans fear snakes, the dark, approaching strangers, and the unknown. Leary goes on to explain emotional responses like embarrassment, stress, and hurt feelings are inheritable physiological responses to inter and intra social relationships. He also explains more people, more noise, more urbanization subliminally affects human behavior.
Interestingly, Leary notes hurt feelings are shown to stimulate portions of the human nervous system that literally register physical pain.
That pain can make mountains out of mole hills and cause disproportionate physical response and verbal abuse. He notes human’ self-control is often difficult to exercise when feelings are hurt.
Somewhat bizarrely, Leary notes California tried to legislate self-esteem in school curriculum.
California reasoned feeling good about oneself would instill confidence and self-worth. The mistake is that self-esteem does not mean the same thing to everyone. It is not like gas that powers an automobile. Self-esteem comes from the many experiences children have with parents, teachers, other people, and personal accomplishment. Government cannot legislate all of the interactions in one’s life. It is not that self-esteem is unimportant, but it comes from broad societal experience and personal accomplishment. A classroom education is only a small part of life’s experience, let alone accomplishment.
Leary touches on memory and why we forget. Humans see an event but only recall events by reconstructing their occurrence. In that reconstruction, details are often manufactured rather than accurately recalled. Reconstruction rather than precise memory is the reason for mistakes made by eyewitnesses to events, and more particularly, crime.
There are many more insights to human behavior in Leary’s lectures.
He suggests dreams are not a source of discovery but a way of clearing one’s brain of errant, inconsequential fragments of synaptic events. A surprising lecture suggests there is experimentally proven existence of humans having psychic abilities. There is much to be learned about human behavior and relationship from Leary’s lectures.
“The Beauty in Breaking” is about life as an eternal recurrence that offers some peace of mind in a world troubled by its inhumanity.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“The Beauty in Breaking” (A Memoir)
By: Michele Harper
Narrated by: Nicole Lewis
Michele Harper (Physician, Author, Public Speaker.)
Leaves fall from the tree to expose the bark and bite of life. Michele Harper’s memoir shakes the tree of American life. Relying on the veracity of Harper’s story, she is raised in a family with a physically abusive father who divorces her mother, an art dealer.
Harper notes her paternal father was physically abusive.
After Harper’s paternal father leaves Harper’s mother, Harper notes he offers some financial assistance to Harper in college. Harper explains she passes some of that assistance on to her mother while attending Harvard. Harper earns a BA in psychology. She goes on to acquire a medical degree from a New York university to become an emergency room physician.
Harper’s story touches on the complexity of life as a Black American. She marries a white man while at Harvard, but they divorce at his choice. The failure of their marriage is shown to be hard for Harper, but she is driven to succeed and moves on to educate herself in her chosen field of work.
Harper’s experience of childhood abuse, her personal marriage break-up, and work as a physician in three different emergency room positions, are lessons for life and living.
Her focus is on overcoming her trials to be good at her job even though much is beyond her control. The notion of not knowing what crises you will face in a medical emergency room, let alone a doctor’s experience as a Black American, offers a unique perspective to Harper’s memoir.
Abuse comes in many forms.
There is child abuse that occurs in many homes throughout the world. There is being a minority in a culture controlled by a majority that discriminates against those who are different. There is inequality of opportunity that creates an underclass that is trapped in an eternal cycle of poverty. Harper is denied promotion to Administrator in her first hospital job because she is a woman. Her supervisor notes a woman, let alone a Black woman, has never had the Administrator’ job in that hospital. Misogyny triumphs once again.
Harper chooses to leave the hospital that denied her the promotion.
As an administrator in another hospital Harper sees the consequence of poverty. Poverty seeps into nearly every culture in the world with its accompanying violence, compounded by weak to non-existent gun control laws in the United States. Harper writes about her encounter with a young boy who has his sneakers stolen by a bully at school.
Harper interviews the young Black grade school child who is thinking about getting his shoes back with a gun.
Harper calls a child services employee to explain her concern about the child’s access to a gun at his home. The child service’s person explains she sees this in many children’s homes where poverty is one lost job away from a family being on the street. This young boy’s parents both work to keep the family housed and fed. The social services person explains gun accessibility and violence are common in poor black neighborhoods. Where poverty is a fact of life, child services can only go so far to change what is toxic in a child’s environment. Gun availability is beyond the control of Harper or child service’s employees. The extent of Harper’s intervention is limited to raising the issue with the young boy’s parents–with the hope that they will act to be sure no gun becomes available.
Harper finds a third job as a VA hospital administrator. She interviews a female patient seeking psychological help. In the interview, Harper is told by the patient she had been raped by her supervising sergeant and another soldier in Afghanistan.
She became pregnant and decided to have an abortion. That experience continues to traumatize her life. She seeks help to overcome its affects. Harper becomes the patient’s lifeline for the counseling she needs to overcome her abuse.
There seems no “…Beauty in Breaking” as one nears the end of Harper’s memoir but one begins to realize the “Beauty…” is “…in Breaking” the cycle of abuse.
The cycle can be broken with exposure, rehabilitation, caring, and acting to remove the causes of abuse. Harper’s memoir shows how it is done. Breaking the cycle of abuse is a long, laborious process that begins with people focusing on incidents of abuse and acting to mitigate its causes and consequences. “The Beauty in Breaking” is Harper’s way of exposing abuse and illustrating what can be done about it.
Harper’s ultimate theory for the resolution of human abuse is belief in Lifes’ recurrence. Her theory is that every life is eternal. When one dies, they will be reborn into another life. Harper comes to grips with her life as it is and makes it better through meditation. Her belief about life as an eternal recurrence offers her peace of mind about the people she saves or loses in a hospital emergency room.
Every human being has a life story. A few human beings like those in Verghese’s book show that respect for every life carries the hope of civilization.
Blog: awalkingdelight
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“The Covenant of Water”
By:Abraham Verghese
Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
Abraham Verghese (Author, American physician, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine @ Stanford University Medical School.)
As an immigrant, Abraham Verghese began working in America as a hospital orderly. His hospital experience led him to pursue a medical degree. His experience as a world traveler and physician gives weight to his writing about medical diagnosis, brutal loss of life, societal norms, the importance of belief, and human vulnerability. Verghese tells a story from the beginning of the twentieth century through two world wars. Its story is of two physicians (one from Sweden another from Scotland), and a resolute lower caste family in India.
Water surrounds the world like an agreement that ties all people together, for better or worse.
The author of “The Covenant of Water” emigrated to America when Haile Selassie was replaced by a Marxist military government in Ethiopia. One wonders if cultural conflict of interest may be more pernicious when land masses are separated by bodies of water. “The Covenant of Water” implies otherwise. Like any lasting covenant between parties, respective self-interests must be addressed and respected. When they are not, all parties suffer. At one point, Verghese suggests “The Covenant of Water” washes away life’s troubles. The tragedies he recounts suggest the real truth is that life’s troubles never wash away. Troubles remain within us in memory and only truly disappear in death.
India’s Saint Thomas Christians date back to the 3rd century. An estimated 4,000,000 St. Thomas Christians live in 21st century India.
Verghese’s story holds together through the generations of an Indian Christian family from the early 1900s through two world wars and the beginning of the 70s. Part of the story’s interest is in Great Britain’s colonization of India and its historical perspective. At the forefront of the story, there is the inevitable cultural conflict in any countries’ colonialization of another. Verghese shows no clear line can be drawn between exploitation and improvement of a colonized society whether its native American in North America, Aboriginal in Australia or of a lower caste family of a minority religion in India. Verghese interweaves an insightful story that magnifies reasons why cultural difference is only overcome on a person-to-person basis. India will always be India to its native citizens. Today, a similar truth is being played out in Gaza and Israel. Palestine will always be Palestinian just as Israel will always be Israeli.
Verghese’s story begins with an India wedding betrothal of a 12-year-old girl to a 40 something widow who has lost his wife to illness.
The betrothal is made at the recommendation of the husband’s relative who as a matchmaker researches the background of the betrothed’s family. The chosen bride is naturally afraid to leave her family and the groom is unsure of what he wishes to do. The matchmaker assures the groom the betrothal is a good one for him, and the marriage is consummated. The young girl travels from her home to her new husband’s property many miles away. Her greatest unhappiness is in leaving her mother but she is greeted by her new household by a helpful older woman. The young girl is comforted by her Christian beliefs and receives an omen of welcome by a massive bull elephant that had been saved by her new husband.
The incongruity of ages in this marriage is disconcerting to many listener/readers. Verghese non-judgmentally explains the culture of India in the early 1900s.
(World travelers will recognize remnants of that betrothal culture exist in India today.) The husband has a two-year-old son from his former marriage. He is a landowner as a result of personal ambition and hard work. He is not rich but is well respected by the people that know him. The husband treats his new bride with respect, and she begins to care for the household and her new stepson. They first have intimate relations when she turns 17. Their first child is a daughter who has a developmental problem that limits her intellectual growth. After two miscarriages, she has a boy who is a binding connection for the story. She grows to love her husband who dies when his child wife reaches her thirties. She becomes the matriarch of the clan.
This sets the tenor of Verghese’s story. It is a long, long, some might say too long story that repeatedly reminds one of how important it is to respect other people’s cultural beliefs while all life is filled with hardship and change.
Listener/readers will get a glimpse of India’s, as well as Great Britain’s, and Sweden’s cultures with the introduction of a Scottish and Swedish surgeon. What the main characters hold in common is that they have underlying respect for the life of others in any culture, whether rich, poor, educated, or unschooled. The two doctors, the child bride and her son are heroes and victims of their times.
Each of the main characters in Verghese’s book have unique life stories but a common thread of belief is respect for the life of all, cultural acceptance and understanding, and life-long pursuit of education.
The Swedish doctor travels the world to settle in a remote part of India to recreate a refuge for victims of leprosy. The Scottish doctor, after a life-threatening injury, becomes a patient of the Swedish doctor to be figuratively reborn by his experience after the Swede’s death. As true of the India family, the Scottish doctor’s life is dramatically changed by tragedy. The Swede dies at the refuge after having rehabilitated the Scottish physician’s burned hands. The Scott has been introduced to supporters of the Swede’s practice at the Leper colony and he evolves into a business owner/manager that makes him wealthy.
The son of the India child-bride saves a young child from drowning in a flood that whisks him and a nearly dead victim to the Swedish doctor’s clinic where the physically unable Scottish surgeon directs the boy in how to incise the babies throat to save the baby from asphyxiation. The young boy saved the babies life and overcame a hearing deficiency to become a social leader of his village in India during and after WWII.
The young boy, now a man, falls in love with a woman of his age that he had met when he saved the nearly drowned baby. They marry and have a child of their own. The child dies in a tragic accident. The loss of the child is felt to be the fault of each parent which tears their relationship apart. It never mends as the tragedy of their relationship continues to unfold. Their marriage falls apart. At this point the Scottish doctor re-enters the story with an unexpected revelation about the wife who leaves and returns because of the loss of their child. What is meant by “…loss of their child” is an added chapter to this tragedy that extends the story beyond one’s imagination.
Verghese shows himself to be an excellent writer but to some listener/readers the denouement of his story is a step too far for one’s imagination.
Every human being has a life story. A few human beings in Verghese’s book show that respect for every life carries the hope of civilization. Without respect between those who are different, Verghese shows why human dysfunction and tragedy will remain a condition of human society.
REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE 