HUMANITY – REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE

AMERICA

Bret Baier highlights civic ideals, recalls history that reveals American continuity, and encourages listener/readers to be grateful for what they have, or achieved in American life. There remain many structural injustices that have not been overcome by past or current American Presidents.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Case for America (An Argument on Behalf of our Nation)

Author: Bret Baier

Narration by: Bret Baier

Bret Baier (Author, American journalist, political anchor for Fox News.)

Patriotism is devotion to one’s country with a willingness to uphold its principles. Bret Baier’s “The Case for America” is a teacher and conservative newscaster’s expression of his personal American patriotism. As a white American male, he recalls the national ideals created by the founding fathers of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. He clearly identifies the national ideals of America’s founders and their historical sacrifice. To some who listen to his book, one feels he glosses over many of the historical truths of discrimination, slavery, and unequal treatment in America.

Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in America.

American unity is not a moral imperative. American unity is a political project in the process of perfecting human equality and economic opportunity. It is far from achieving that goal, but America’s leadership and philosophy is as Martin Luther King advised, an “…arc bending toward justice.” Americans, like all human beings, are flawed but the founding fathers created a basis upon which equality of all citizens may be achieved.

Either centralized authority or freedom are compromised by human nature.

Most Americans, regardless of their circumstance in life, support the ideals of freedom, respect for all human beings, and are willing to defend an American way of life. Americans vote for what they believe in, many are willing to take responsibility for civic involvement, and a free press informs the public of the state of American affairs. Baier’s history is measured to reinforce the positives of American history. However, his historical framing is selective in ways that underrepresent American inequality and the failure of institutions to protect all citizens equally.

American protest.

Baier argues unity is a moral duty rather than a political challenge. Divisions in America are unclearly defined. There are real conflicts of interest, immense power differences, and historical traumas that make unity less appealing. Those truths are minimalized or unspoken by Baier. They create today’s unresolvable divisions. Baier’s expression of patriotism is not enough to assuage many Americans’ discontent. The role of dissent in America has changed the course of its history. Baier fails to identify many of those dissents by emphasizing unity, stability, and institutional continuity. He seems to ignore the value of protest movements, whistleblowers, and radical reformers when they have been essential to American progress.

American Presidents.

Baier focuses on Presidential leadership, their decision-making process, and character rather than the complexity of American political life. To identify President Reagan in the league of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, or Truman is a betrayal of Baier’s political objectivity. Reagan like Biden are patriots of America but they aged to a level of incompetence in their terms of office. There are differences of opinion about American history. Not all believe, understand, or agree on what America stands for. Ideological, racial, economic, and informational differences are glossed over by Baier.

Nevertheless, Baier highlights civic ideals, recalls history that reveals American continuity, and encourages listener/readers to be grateful for what they have, or achieved in American life. Despite the errors of being human and growing old, all Presidents of America have contributed to the progress of Democracy’s ideals. There remain many structural injustices that have not been overcome by past or current American Presidents.

URBANIZATION

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Devil in the White City (Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America)

Author: Eric Larson

Narration by: Scott Brick

Eric Larson (Author, American journalist, graduate of University of Pennsylvania summa cum laude in 1976.)

Eric Larson’s “Devil in the White City” is a well written history of the famous Chicago World’s fair in 1893. Chicago became an international big city competitor with the creation of the World Columbian Exposition. At the same time, he writes of an evil human being born in America. Larson contrasts good and evil in middle America that reflects on the extremes of human nature that exist not only in America but everywhere in the world.

John Wellborn Root (1850-1891, Concept designer of “The White City”.)

Daniel H. Burnham is a famous Chicago architect who is asked to be Director of Works for the World Columbian Exposition. His partner, John Wellborn Root, is the visionary who designs an original conceptual and aesthetic model of a neighborhood in a prosperous city. However, Root dies in 1891, two years before the beginning of construction. As the design concept takes form, Frederick Law Olmsted, the famous designer of Central Park in New York City, is recruited by Burnham to become a part of the development. These three designers create what Larson identifies as the “White City”, a tribute to the architectural appearance and fame of the eleventh World’s Fair, 7 miles from the second largest city in America, Chicago, Illinois.

Larson juxtaposes this remarkable Chicago accomplishment with the fraud, deception, and predation of H. H. Holmes (aka Herman Mudgett), a handsome, charismatic murderer who moves to Chicago to begin a career in the medical profession. The idealism and success of Chicago’s world fair is a prime example of American urbanization with people who move to the city from small town America.

H. H. Holmes aka Herman Webster Mudgett (1861-1896, is the “Devil in the White City”.)

Holmes is a poster child for the dark side of urbanism. Urbanism is the congregation of people in self-perpetuating communities that grow with rising populations. Holmes move to the Chicago area leads to the murders of Benjamin Pitezel and his three children. Holmes urbane good looks and powers of persuasion set the table for a scheme to commit insurance fraud. Before their murder, Holmes conducts real estate boondoggles, pharmacy scams, forgery, bigamy, theft, and embezzlement. Though not legally proven, it is strongly suspected he killed five or more women for reasons ranging from theft to pure venality. Though living in an urban environment is not a cause of evil, it is a petri dish for human behavior that can be good or evil.

Education, like money, is only a tool of human beings, not a measure of human value.

Holmes early education is in Gilmanton, New Hampshire where he gains early interest in medicine and human anatomy. He enrolls at the University of Vermont in 1879 but leaves to enroll in the University of Michigan Medical School. He graduates from U of M with a medical degree in 1884. It is interesting to note that Holmes is formally educated just as the architects who gathered for the building designs of the 1893 Chicago world’s fair. Larson shows Holmes is motivated to exploit society in any way that only serves his self-interests. The world’s fair’ architects equally wish to serve their self-interest but within the boundaries of societal norms, i.e., not by bilking the public or murdering citizens.

Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903, American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator.)

The three main characters in this story of American urbanization are Daniel Burnham, Frederick Olmstead, and H. H. Holmes. Burnham and Olmstead are exemplars of success that make a contribution to America while Holmes is a villain of self-interest and evil. All three symbols of the power, value, and risk of urbanization. Burnham and the older Olmstead represent the best in American life with their skills and ability as visionaries and managers who get things done through others that benefit society. Holmes represents the worst of human nature as a singularly self-interested fraudster and murderer who cares nothing about others.

Six hundred acres of swampy, undeveloped land is turned into the Chicago World’s Fair in the 19th century. Fourteen major buildings, canals, and lagoons are built into a neoclassical “city”. The Chicago World’s Fair is 7 miles south of the downtown Chicago Loop. The site is called Jackson Park, bordered by Hyde Park and Woodlawn neighborhoods. Despite labor strikes, Chicago weather, political infighting, and the death of its visionary (John Root), Burnham manages the development of 200 low-rise (1 to 3 stories) buildings designed by famous east coast architects and the largest operating Ferris wheel in the world to complete the “…White City” in 26 months.

The City of Chicago today.

The point of Larson’s history of the Chicago World Fair is that urbanization is two edged. One edge improves societies’ economic, cultural, and technological values. The other amplifies inequality based on citizen’ power, wealth, race, gender, and ethnicity rather than innate human value. Contrasting the great accomplishments of Burnham, Root, and Olmstead with the evil of Holmes is an exemplar of human nature that can either benefit or destroy societies.

Holmes is convicted and sentenced to death. He is hung on May 7, 1896, at the age of 34. Burnham goes on to build his reputation with Union Station in Washington D.C., the Flatiron Building in New York, and what became the Museum of Science and Industry in “The White City” of Chicago. Burnham dies in 1912 at age 65. Olmsted dies in 1903 at age 81.

HISTORY LESSON

There is an irony in Higginbotham’s “Midnight in Chernobyl”. It is ironic to see what is happening in the 21st century with the revisionism of Presidents Trump and Putin. Their ideas of openness (glasnost) and system reform (perestroika) are a return to the past rather than the future.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Midnight in Chernobyl (The Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster)

Author: Adam Higginbotham

Narration by: Jacques Roy

Adam Higginbotham (Author, British journalist, contributing writer for The New Yorker, Wired, and The New York Times.)

Adam Higginbotham reminds reader/listeners of the terrifying consequences of nuclear power mistakes in “Midnight in Chernobyl”. Over 400,000 people are evacuated from the area of Pripyat, a carefully planned Soviet city of 50,000 people, near four nuclear reactors. One of four reactors explodes on April 26, 1986, at 1.23 A.M. There were actually two explosions. The first was a massive steam explosion while a second explosion blew a 1,000-ton concrete lid into the air. The core of the reactor is destroyed. The building surrounding the reactor blew apart and radioactive fuel and graphite filled the early morning night sky. Fires were ignited on the roof and surrounding structures.

Higginbotham explains the explosion occurs because of a safety test that is botched by the operators of the plant. The nuclear reactor is set into a low-power state that disables an automatic shutdown system. By setting the reactor into a low-power state, control rods lowered into the reactor cause cooling water displacement and a spike in radioactive activity. This is noted as a design flaw that Higgenbotham argues is known by Soviet leaders before the disaster. In less than a second, the reactor surges to more than 100 times its normal power level. This massive energy surge generates runaway fission that destroys the reactor in two explosions. Chernobyl becomes a highly radioactive death trap for workers and residents of the surrounding area.

The total number of people affected by the Chernobyl accident may never be known because of Soviet obfuscation and historical indeterminacies, but Higgenbotham suggests it reaches 5 to 8.4 million people living in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. According to archival records, all residents of Pripyat are evacuated and an additional 300,000 are resettled. Twenty-eight people die within three months of the accident, 134 develop acute radiation syndrome. The estimate of cleanup workers is 600,000 made up of firefighters, soldiers, engineers, and volunteers.

As Higgenbotham ends his history, he notes a Russian worker’s death in the 21st century from leukemia. Was his death a consequence of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986? Who knows? The point is representative of the consequence of uncountable deaths that may be related to erasure of truth in any country.

The Chernobyl accident reaches 5 to 8.4 million people living in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia.

Higginbotham argues Chernobyl is a proximate cause of the unraveling of the Soviet Union. He suggests it accelerates the collapse of Soviet authority. This is an interesting supposition. He argues that Soviet leadership believes their system of government had a level of technological and administrative capability that illustrates a level of competence and achievement that is superior to all other forms of governance. The Chernobyl disaster challenges that self-perception. Hierarchal state control fails to train and manage the complicated nuclear industry. A rigid managerial hierarchy hides incompetence. It also breeds corruption and bureaucratic paralysis with top-down management because of information obfuscation and concealment at lower management levels. Fear of criticism by leadership leads to distortion of the truth at lower levels of government. Higgenbotham’s interviews of Russian investigators of the disaster reveals the incompetent training of lower-level employees who operated the facility. Their inclination is to cover-up mistakes rather than reveal them to their direct reports.

The economic cost of the Chernobyl disaster exposes the USSR’s Communist Party’s failure as a system of government.

Presidents Gorbachev and Reagan signing the nuclear non-proliferation agreement.

Higgenbotham notes environmental movements, and Russian anti-nuclear activists grew to express anger with Moscow and its leaders. The disaster undermined Soviet scientific and technological belief in Russia’s superiority. In 1986 and 1987 speeches Gorbachev notes in a Politburo address that the Chernobyl meltdown is a harbinger of the Soviet Union’s need to change. In a 2006 speech Gorbachev speaks of the need for apparatchiks to tell truth to power, to reduce soviet secrecy, and accept glasnost and perestroika as solutions for improvement of Russian leadership.

DIVORCE

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Strangers (A Memoir of Marriage)

Author: Belle Burden

Narration by: Belle Burden

Belle Burden (Author, former attorney, urban planner, socilite, and descendant of the Vanderbilts.)

In some respects, “Strangers” is an unrelatable example of the trauma of divorce. In other ways, it is a testament to divorces’ hardship for women and societies’ inequality. The unrelatable parts are in the difference between divorce for those who are wealthy and those who are not. What is brilliantly revealed is the trauma of divorce and its disproportionate effect on wives and mothers.

Having been married for 20 years and facing divorce is a traumatic experience whether one is rich or poor.

However, women who are not rich face a different experience when their husbands leave a marriage. In most cases, the burden of coping with divorce is more impactful for children and a wife than a husband. Often, as in the case of Belle Burden, a mother faces having to return to a work environment that discriminates against women in ways that diminish their value in society. Women often retire from the workforce when they become pregnant because of the consuming responsibility of raising a child.

As a woman, regardless of wealth, job prospects are challenged by sexual discrimination.

It is worse for women who are poor and less educated than Ms. Burden. The point that Burden makes clear (regardless of her wealth and education) is women sacrifice much of their lives raising their children while husbands are freer to explore economic success. The wealth of Ms. Burden and her education exempt her from the trials of most women in the world. Burden clearly explains the emotional impact of divorce whether one is wealthy or not. Her wealth does little to reduce feelings of betrayal and failure.

Belle Burden exemplifies the emotional toll of divorce.

Twenty years of marriage creates a bond never completely broken. For husbands the reliance they have on a wife’s care of children makes it difficult to offer the care and understanding that children need from both parents. Husbands are often inadequately prepared for relationship building that a mother has with their children. The consequence is a father’s failure to understand how to help their children deal with their parent’s separation. Those who share raising their children are less likely to have that problem, but social convention leaves most American men in the dark about how to take parental responsibility.

Divorce rates in America may be in decline but the emotional impact on parents and their children is the same.

Burden clearly explains the emotional impact of divorce in America, but her wealth diminishes the scope and reality of divorce to the majority of women who have children and are left by their partners. That is not a criticism of Burden’s book but of sexual inequality that exists in most countries of the world.

WHO’S CHOKING

Economic chokepoints illustrated by Fishman are real, but their effectiveness is problematic.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Chokepoints (American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare)

Author: Edward Fishman

Narration by: Robert Petkoff

Edward Fishman (American author, international relations scholar, former diplomat at the Council on Foreign Relations, professor of Public Affairs at Columbia, University.)

Edward Fishman offers a detailed history of economic “Chokepoints” that have become a tool of war between nation-states. He reminds readers of Trump’s first term as President of the United States. Trump did not change from policies he believed in his first term. He only became more effective in carrying out his beliefs in his second term.

Trump’s beliefs.

Fishman shows how Trump combines the tactics of warfare with economic chokepoints to decimate Iranian cities while starving its citizens of their right to believe and live. Trump is convinced of the potential of Iran’s current leadership to use weapons of nuclear war to destroy civilization because of religious belief. Trump chooses to bomb Iran while expanding economic policies instituted by both Democratic and Republican administrations to choke petroleum revenues from a country that provides 20% of the world’s oil needs.

Like the bombing of Dresden in WWII, today’s America is senselessly bombing Iran.

Trump is waging a war on the singular belief that he can force Iran to abandon research for a nuclear bomb. The consequence is to embroil America in a war of attrition and destruction based on Trump’s belief that Iran’s leadership is willing to use nuclear war to end life on earth for a place in heaven. Trump’s actions are deluded idea of a “bully in a school yard”. Denying nuclear bomb development by force is a fool’s errand. North Korea, Russia, China, and America are as likely to instigate a nuclear war as Iran. Religious belief is Trump’s excuse; not a cause for war.

Iranian citizen protest.

It is the citizens of Iran that bare the consequence of America’s chokepoint decisions.

Fishman explains how economic chokepoints have becomes as devastating as war. The Iranian people have been impoverished by American allies’ cooperation in restricting their economy. It may be, like the physical war against Germany and Japan in WWII, economic chokepoints will make Iran bend its knee. On the other hand, it may continue a “forever war” that only diminishes humanity. Chokepoints are a war by other means that offer compromise, or dictatorship. Chokepoint effects are poverty, death, or compromise. Religion, like political belief, is a personal choice that cannot be eradicated by force.

Effects of human descent.

Economic chokepoints illustrated by Fishman are real, but their effectiveness is problematic. First, one must identify the economic target that is affective. Second, there must be unity and credibility among nations that can enforce a chokepoint. Even with a chosen chokepoint, the target may make citizens willing to sacrifice everything for belief in sovereignty.

MOUNTAIN CLIMBING

This is a well written and fascinating story. On the one hand, it shows the adventurous nature of human beings. On the other hand, it shows the absurdity of a human goal that can kill you with no value beyond personal achievement.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Into Thin Air (A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster)

Author: Jon Krakauer

Narration by: Philip Franklin

Jon Krakauer (Author, American writer, journalist, and mountaineer. Raised in Corvallis, Or., lives in Boulder Co.)

Human beings test themselves in many ways, some of which make little sense. Jon Krakauer is a mountain climber. Why does one choose to climb a mountain? Well, he is a writer and a magazine offers to pay the $65,000 fee required by an expedition leader to climb Mt. Everest in Tibet. At least, Krakauer has a purpose which undoubtedly is to have an adventure to write about that might offer monetary reward. It appears others have other motives but at least Krakauer took the trip for a reason that makes some logical sense. Considering the reward, one comes away from his book with the feeling that no amount of money is worth the trial he experienced and the lives lost in a climb to the pinnacle of Mt. Everest.

Mt. Everest is 29,032 feet high, located in the Himalayas of Nepal and Tibet.

Krakauer writes that he idolizes mountain climbers. He believes the opportunity of climbing the tallest mountain in the world seems worth the risk. Mount Everest is 29,032 feet high, located in the Himalayas of Nepal and Tibet. Krakauer introduces reader/listeners to Rob Hall, the expedition leader and guide who heads the adventure. Hall, a New Zealander, had created a company that offers mountain climbing expeditions. Andy Harris, who also comes from New Zealand, is Hall’s employee and an additional guide.

Rob Hall (1961-1996, New Zealand mountaineer, led the Mt. Everest climb in 1996 where he and two clients died.)

Scott Fischer, an entrepreneur and guide with his own company has another Everest climbing group. Fischer dies on a descent during the same time as Krakauer’s group climbs Everest. This is a brutal reminder of the great risk being taken by Krakauer.

Yasuko Namba (1949-1996, the second Japanese woman to climb the Seven Summits, the tallest mountains in the world.)

Yasuko Namba, a Japanese climber joins the Krakauer group. Namba is motivated to join the group because of her interest in completing the climbs of the seven tallest mountains in the world. She is 47 years old. Though not as strong as some of the younger climbers, Mt. Everest is the last of the Seven Summits she is determined to conquer. Hall, Harris, Namba, and Fischer die from the climb, either from the exertion, a storm, or their descent from Everest.

Campsites on Mt. Everest.

It is interesting to find there are many Mt. Everest expeditions that occur at the same with different companies. They camp in the same areas as they attempt their ascent. Krakauer writes of Scott Fischer’s Mountain Madness group, a Taiwanese National Expedition, an IMAX Filming Expedition, a South African Expedition, and their Sherpa support teams who aid all of the climbing groups. Krakauer notes how coveted the Sherpa are by companies that are dependent on their skills.

Doug Hansen, an American postal worker who joins the Hall expedition

Doug Hansen, an American postal worker joins the Hall expedition. Hansen dies in a storm before reaching the summit and had to be carried by the group to the summit at the insistence of Hall. Hansen had attempted to climb the peak the year before with a Hall group. Surprisingly, the group leader Hall dies on this 1996 climb from altitude sickness which confuses his sense of direction. He loses his way as they descend from the South Summit. In the descent from Everest, Harris and Fischer die during another mountain storm. The only woman on the trip, Yasuko Namba dies on the descent because of exhaustion and exposure that had killed Hall. Beck Weathers, an American climber survives after appearing to die twice. Weather’s experience leaves him with severe frostbite and requires major surgery after the climb.

Sandra Pittman

The oddest adventurer that Krakauer writes about is Sandy Pittman who is in the Mountain Madness group. Pittman is a New York socialite who is known in the fashion world. In Krakauer’s telling, Ms. Pittman seems representative of the commercialization of mountain climbing. Pittman manages to make the mountain top and survives the storm that kills some of Krakauer’s group. However, Pittman became exhausted during the descent. She requires rescue. She survives but became a symbol of privilege and wealth to some who are offended by those who can afford the extravagance she represents in climbing famous mountains. Krakhauer does not criticize her despite her wealth and privilege because he sees her as no better or worse than every person looking for adventure.

AMERICAN AMBITION

Keefe shows Arthur Sackler raised himself in America through grit and determination, i.e., little seems handed to him on a silver plate. This is not to suggest the drug industry or the Sackler’s of the world carry no responsibility for addiction but opportunity and a way to succeed in an American life is a choice.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Empire of Pain (The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty)

Author: Patrick Radden Keefe

Narration by: Patrick Radden Keefe

Patrick Radden Keefe (Author, investigative journalist, staff writer for The New Yorker.)

Patrick Radden Keefe’s book is a detailed examination of the Sackler family, and more specifically, the dynasty that grew after the life and death of Arthur Mitchell Sackler who died in 1987. Arthur Sackler was a trained physician who specialized in biological psychiatry. Through hard work, he built a family fortune with a company specializing in medical advertising and pharmaceutical marketing. With wealth created by advertising, the Sackler patriarch acquired interests in specific drugs that added to the wealth of the Sackler empire. One of those investments is made by the sons of Arthur Sackler. It became known as OxyContin which became a huge revenue producer controlled by Arthur’s heirs. Dr. Paul Goldenheim and Dr. Robert Kaico were the scientists who invented OxyContin while working for Purdue Pharma, a company owned by Arthur’s brothers. Arthur Sackler is characterized by Keefe as secretive about his ownership interests while becoming a very rich man. The structure of his business interests and its conflicts of interest are passed on to his heirs.

Arthur M. Sackler (American psychiatrist and marketer of pharmaceuticals.)

Arthur dies nine years before OxyContin exists. Despite the difficult life Arthur Sadler had with the bankruptcy of his father, he works his way through school, becomes a licensed physician and starts a pharmaceutical advertising company. He worked as a physician, a medical researcher, and owner of a company that advertised his and other medically researched and discovered drugs. This opened the door to profiteering from drug promotions and conflicts of interest in groundbreaking and potentially harmful drugs. As a physician, it put Arthur and other research physicians in position to market drugs and influence prescriptions for drugs that may or may not be safe or effective. As an advertiser of a physician/scientists’ own drugs, they could skirt independent judgement of their effectiveness or possible side effects. The FDA is created to avoid that possibility, but Keefe illustrates how that roadblock is compromised. Keefe recounts how a leader of the FDA is compromised by his relationship with the drug industry.

The Family That Built an Empire of Pain - Strength and Hope

Arthur’s wealth and investment interests are inherited by his divorced wife, his new wife, and his brothers, i.e., Ramond, Mortimer, and Richard who led the company after Arthur’s death. The brothers sell their patent on OxyContin to Purdue Pharma. The brothers start two branches of their business, one of which retains control of OxyContin’s manufacture, marketing, sale, and profit. Patent law is a legal ownership “smoke” screen that protects company owners from liability for harm from patents a company holds. A company may own a patent independently, without recourse to its company’s owners. Purdue Pharma grows and uses its wealth to influence politicians, government officials and doctors to endorse drugs like OxyContin.

OxyContin dosages.

As is known by many Americans, OxyContin has had a catastrophic impact on America. It its launch in 1996, OxyContin is considered by some to be a gateway to addictive drugs like heroin and fentanyl. In 2026, it is estimated that 200 deaths per day were happening from fentanyl overdoses. What Keefe argues is that when the structural conflicts of interest were introduced by the Sackler family (especially with the creation of Purdue Pharma) the lines between drug efficacy and profits were breached by the medical profession.

What Keefe reveals in his research is that pharmaceutical-physician relationships cross the line of conflicts of interest.

Doctors receiving “speaker fees”, continuing-education events, consulting positions, and industry-funded clinical guidelines are being lured into prescribing drugs that may or may not be safe or effective. Funding for medical research frequently comes from companies more interested in profit then drug efficacy. Government regulators are influence by lobbyist for a drug industry that is mired in potential conflicts of interest. Keefe notes there is a revolving door between the FDA and pharma employment. Keefe notes marketing has become a part of medical education. He infers philanthropy by the drug industry may be a bribe to influence public acceptance of drug treatments that are not effective.

Coming away from Keefe’s analysis of the drug industry, one is troubled by its corruption vulnerabilities in a society that prides itself on freedom and rule-of-law.

In one sense, Arthur Sackler is a tribute to how America became one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world. One doubts that the Sackler family planned to create a drug that would addict and kill so many Americans. The Sackler family played a role but how many Americans have made mistakes in their drive for success. Keefe shows Arthur Sackler raised himself in America through grit and determination, i.e., little seems handed to him on a silver plate. This is not to suggest the drug industry or the Sackler’s of the world carry no responsibility for addiction but opportunity and a way to succeed in an American life is a choice.

AMERICA’S JOURNEY

Today, it seems America has taken a step backward from human equality, but every 4 years gives America another opportunity to step forward. That step forward welcomes equality of opportunity for all who choose to become American.

America has come a long way since 1776, but it is far from the goals that it set for itself in the Constitution.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

American Grammer (Race, Education, and the Building of a Nation)

Author: Jarvis R. Givens

Narration by: Bill Andrew Quinn

Jarvis Givens (Professor and scholar of Education at Harvard)

“American Grammar” is a reminder of America’s past which shows the hard truths of what really made America great. In the 19th and 20th centuries, American government attempts to erase the cultural heritage of tribal nations. At the same time, America disingenuously encourages human slavery based on false claims of racial and gender inequality. This history lives on in America today with faltering efforts to compensate tribes for their cultural and economic losses, and its failure to provide equal opportunity for all.

Too many people fail to read or understand history. Not knowing history makes repeating it a likelihood.

America has become one of the most powerful nations in the world. Beyond the natural abundance of its land, Jarvis Givens explains the decision of America’s leadership to create an educational system to ensure white America’s political and economic success.

An educational system is a key to the door of American political and economic success.

Common education, focused on grammar, melds disparate cultures, races, and genders into one nation. The title of Givens’ book “American Grammar” is a testament to the method America uses to create an independent nation. Educational institutions became indoctrination centers designed to teach citizens a common language and the importance of conforming to a primarily white male system of governance.

American inequality.

All people, as implied by the American Constitution, deserve to have equal opportunity based on their innate ability, I.e., regardless of ethnicity, race, or gender. Givens shows how the wealth of native lands that were stolen, support of slavery, and gender inequality became culturally acceptable in America with an education system designed to indoctrinate the public. Givens’ history reminds listeners that building a great nation is a work in progress for every country. America’s Constitution recognizes the importance of human equality, and its leaders have made some progress toward that goal. However, America is far from the goal of equal opportunity for all.

America steps back and forward toward the goal of equality of opportunity in every political election.

CONSCIOUSNESS & AI

A.I. is a tool of human beings and will always be a tool. If Pollan is right that human thought originates with emotion, A.I. regulation, and transparency must be aligned with human values of truth, right conduct, peace, and non-violence. If A.I. is used for military or authoritarian advantage, it may lead to the Armageddon of biblical prediction.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

A World Appears (A Journey into Consciousness)

Author: Michael Pollan

Narration by: Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan (American journalist, author, Lecturer at Harvard University, co-founded the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, received an M.A. in English from Columbia.)

Pollan is not a scientist, but he is a writer who has an opinion about consciousness based on detailed interviews with scientists and consciousness researchers. He defines consciousness as the subjective experience of being alive. Pollan interviews mainstream and recognized researchers like Roland Griffiths, and Robin Carhart-Harris while avoiding fringe theorists. He interviews scientists who are empirically grounded by experimental testing.

Roland Griffiths (Deceased American psychopharmacologist.)

Pollan also reads the works of Tononi, a neuroscientist who investigates “Integrated Information Theory”, Dahaene, a neuroscientist who researched “Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, and Thomas Nagel, a philosopher who coined the phrase “hard problem of consciousness”. He attacks the subject from multiple angles with experimental research done by plant and animal neurobiologists, AI researchers, and psychologists. What Pollan concludes from his interviews is that consciousness is the felt experience of being alive. This broad conception takes in all life based on interviews Pollan has with many science experts and philosophers who work in broad fields of human, plant, and animal life.

Stefano Mancuso (Italian botanist and writer, a professor at the University of Florence and the director of the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology.)

Stefano Mancuso explains vineyard-like plants exhibit consciousness in their drive for growth and survival with roots that behave with “swarm intelligence” to detect a pole nearby. A vinery’s root tips communicate with each other and make a collective decision to grow in a particular direction. Though this process is slower than in the animal kingdom, Mancuso’s experiments show vines preternaturally use their root systems to reach out to a planted pole to improve their growth through photosynthesis. The point of Pollan’s observation about plants is that a brain and neurons may not be required to show and sustain life, but plants appear to exhibit intelligence and sentience without a brain or animal-like nervous system. Plants seem to live without thought or emotion.

The easy part of consciousness is observed cause and effect. The hard part is knowing where cause comes from and why it arises in the first place.

Based on Pollan’s interviews of scientists and philosophers, he develops a central argument that animal/human consciousness comes from life’s need to maintain stability. However, his argument is that sentience does not come from initiated thoughts but from emotions that generate conscious thought. The implications of that belief are frightening because it may explain why consciousness leads to futile war. If thought process is a follower of emotion, reason plays second fiddle to action. Current events in the world show Pollan may be right. Fear of nuclear annihilation may be the cause of America’s futile war with Iran. Russia’s fear of becoming a lesser hegemonic power may be the cause of Ukraine’s territorial theft. If Pollan is correct, the futility of war will never end with emotion as precursor to thought and action.

Pollan’s interviews with representatives of the science and philosophical communities strongly implies human thought is as likely irrational as rational and may or may not be concerned about survival. The threat of A.I. is that it is used to reinforce the irrationality of emotion as a precursor to thought and action.

“Burn-In” is meant to reveal how human-machine integration challenges human society, both ethically and pragmatically.

What comes to mind is that A.I. might be able to assuage irrational decisions but A.I. is of no help if human thought is initially driven by emotions. A.I. only amplifies the harmful potential of irrational human decisions with thoughts only initiated by emotions. One comes away from Pollan’s book with fear.

Information is energy in today’s A.I. world., just as steam was in the industrial revolution.

Pollan ends “A World Appears” with a journey through philosophy that is interesting but unique to him. Some may become distracted by his personal journey, but his view of consciousness is enlightening and frightening.

NATIVE AMERICANS

Pember’s story of her life is heartbreaking but it reminds one of the harshness of life for every ethnicity and gender that is unfairly treated in society. Regardless of one’s ethnicity–poverty and unequal opportunity are plagues in every society. They are infections with no known cure.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Medicine River (A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools)

Author: Mary Annette Pember

Narration by: Erin Tripp

Mary Annette Pember (Author, national correspondent for ICT News, journalist, descendent of an Ojibwe family.)

Mary Annette Pember offers a firsthand, intergenerational perspective of America’s effort to assimilate native inhabitants of America. She details the 1950s brutality, hunger, impoverishment, humiliation, and emotional neglect that diminished the economic security and sovereignty of a distinct ethnicity (the Ojibwe) in America. From research of Indian boarding school records and her personal experience, she draws a picture of the ignorance, disrespect, and discrimination by white Americans of a culture different than their own. She notes the unmarked graves, survivor testimonies of boarding school experiences, and government investigations that fail to correct the misbegotten effort to destroy a native culture in America. (The name America came from a German cartographer’s labeling of a map to honor Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine-born merchant, navigator, and explorer in the 15th and early 16th century.)

The multicultural world in which we live.

Her story is not particularly well written, but it clearly documents the ignorance and brutality of a growing white American culture. She presents an emotional truth about American government’s discrimination and why, in modern times, it is still trying to assuage its guilt. Pember’s harsh assessment of nuns who ran early schools for native descendants seems to unfairly discount a stern and punitive habituation that is true of all early “nun-managed” schools in America. In the mid-20th century, Catholic schooling relied heavily on strict order, corporal punishment, and cultural obedience. Their religious vocation reinforced an authority that applied to all students, whether native American or not. That is why the American government chose to create grants to the Catholic Church for indoctrination and education of the Ojibwe and other native Americans.

Protestant and Catholic religions in America.

The U.S. government funded native American Catholic Church schools because of their strict teaching habits. Their teaching style would demand language conformance, common spiritual belief, and reinforce Christian ideals that were acceptable to most of America’s non-native citizens. This is not to minimize the cruelty of these native American boarding schools but to suggest all Catholic schools exercised strict order that went beyond education and devolved into neglect and death in many native American’ boarding schools. The harsh disciplinary treatment of native Americans is worse, but the discipline and teaching methods of Catholic nuns set a horrible precedent that grew out of control in their schools.

Poverty and predation is widespread in the world.

The poverty and predation that Pember reveals in the story of her family’s life grows to be more widespread. The history of America’s treatment of native American tribes is recounted in many books. The constant tribal relocations of the government and murder of native Americans is well documented. Poverty and lack of equal opportunity is shown by Pember to be severe for native Americans just as it was for black Americans. One can only imagine how hard it would be for an Indian woman when all women are equally disadvantaged by poverty and lack of opportunity in the world.

Poverty in the middle east.

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