MOST INTERESTING ESSAYS 2/5/26: 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, JESUS SAYS
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.
Robinson shows society treats people unequally, wages war for power, lacks control over behavior, and deceives itself about human nature.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“Gilead”
By: Marilynne Robinson
Narrated By: Tim Jerome
Marilynne Robinson (Author, received the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for “Gilead”.)
“Gilead” is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. It is cleverly written by Marilynne Robinson and beautifully narrated by Tim Jerome. Some listeners may have a hard time getting through its religious point of view. It is largely about belief in God. However, it’s truth about human nature makes it a classic regardless of one’s religious beliefs.
In broad outline, it is about three generations of preachers, a grandfather, his son, and a grandson, who live in Gilead, Iowa.
There is the grandfather who fights on the Union side of the Civil War in Kansas, presumably because of belief in human equality and union. However, it appears his son cannot justify killing of any human being, for any reason. Later, a listener/reader finds there is a rift between the Civil War’ preacher and his son who also becomes a preacher. The son becomes a father who has his own son. This book is like a letter to his son to explain his journey through life and what he has learned. The story begins by recalling a trip he and his son take to discover the grandfather’s grave in Kansas.
The journey is in the late 19th century.
The grandson accompanies his father on the arduous journey from Gilead to Kansas. They begin in a horse drawn carriage but because of weather leave the horse and carriage to walk the last miles. It is hot. One realizes the father’s decision to travel with his son is for many reasons beyond companionship. One presumes the father is ambivalent about the grandfather’s decision to join union soldiers with a willingness to kill secessionists opposed to abolition. One wonders if the father is saying there is no justification for War. The story gains broader interest at this point.
KILLING IS NEVER JUSTIFIED.
After having found the grave, the father relates a story of burying his father’s gun and some shirts. The gun and clothing are dug up. The bloodied and dirty clothes are washed, but they do not come clean. The wife of the letter writer and preacher finally throws them away, but the gun is reburied, dug up again, dismantled and thrown into a lake by the preacher. The vignette suggests the father believes killing is never justified, even in a war meant to preserve union and abolish slavery.
Preachers.
The father’s writing suggests there is a gap in ages between him and his wife. We find he is 67 when he marries his wife who is in her 30s. The preacher is nearing death by the time of the letter to his son is written. With the gap in their ages, there is a hint of jealousy about a man raised by the preacher’s best friend, who is also a preacher of the cloth. The son is Jack Boughton. Jack often played baseball with the preacher’s son, but the preacher had been told by Jack Boughton’s father to be wary of Jack.
The carrot and stick of parenting.
The impact of neglectful parenting is referred to in a sermon noted in the preacher’s story. Jack Boughton’s intelligence and education combined with parental neglect is inferred to be a cause of atheism and a penchant for illicit behavior. This creates a tension between the preacher and his close friend’s son, particularly when the childhood friend visits the preacher’s wife and son.
One comes away from Robinson’s story with a summary of the flaws of humanity. At the end of the author’s story, Jack Boughton has created a second human nature crises that will resolve itself in either happiness or tragedy. Robinson shows society treats people unequally, wages war for power, lacks control over behavior, and deceives itself about human nature.
American Democracy will either fail or evolve by choosing to ignore or address the stated purposes of the Constitution.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“Solitary: Unbroken by four decades in solitary confinement. My story of transformation and hope”
By: Albert Woodfox
Narrated By: JD Jackson
Albert Woodfox, (1947-2022) Author who spent 43 years in solitary confinement in Louisiana’s Angola prison.
Woodfox dies at the age of 75 after being released in 2016.
“Solitary” is about American injustice on many levels. Every societal injustice is magnified by America’s penal system. There is racial discrimination, healthcare disparity, legal system bias, and law enforcement use-of-force to name the most prominent magnifications. Albert Woodfox’s story is a lived life in prison that exposes those levels of societal injustice.
Woodfox’s book is about America’s prison system, but it addresses growing up in the baby-boom generation.
Woodfox, like every human being, is a prisoner of mind but he becomes a physical prisoner in Angola, one of many prisons in America. Woodfox’s tragic life appears emblematic of many poverty-stricken baby-boomer’ lives in the 1960s. His story tells the world what it was, and undoubtedly still is, to live life in America when you are poor, ill-educated, living in a broken home, and/or Black.
Albert is born in Louisiana to a Black father (who retires after 25 years in the Navy) and a loving illiterate Black mother.
When Albert is a young child, his mother is compelled to leave her husband because he becomes a violent abuser after retiring from the Navy. Albert is raised in New Orleans by a single parent. His mother struggles to feed and clothe Albert and his siblings. Albert’s life in New Orleans includes petty theft and the troubles of untethered youth in a home where a single parent is not present because he/she is working to feed and house the family.
After several releases and returns to Angola, in 1971 Albert becomes known as an acolyte of the Black Panthers.
Albert grows up tough and independent but without purpose in his life. He quits school and evolves from petty criminal to armed robber. He first becomes acquainted with the Black Panther movement when he is jailed in New York. Association with the Panther movement changes his life. He is arrested and imprisoned in New York. He becomes a participant in the New York prison riots and adopts much of the Black Panther philosophy, i.e., a belief in Black nationalism, socialism and armed self-defense in the face of white discrimination. Albert began to believe in himself, improving his education by reading, and more importantly, respecting what is right in his life rather than what is expedient.
Woodfox is released from the New York prison system but is remanded to Angola for escaping the Louisiana prison system from an earlier crime.
He finds Angola is the same pit of despair it was when he was first imprisoned in Louisiana. Angola remains poorly maintained and continues to treat inmates, particularly Black inmates, inhumanely. However, Albert’s life is changed by the Panther’ philosophy. He begins to feel there is purpose in his life. His purpose becomes uniting prisoners (the Black Panther’ symbol of a closed fist meaning a “coming together” like the 5 fingers of a hand). Black prisoners come together in an effort to improve their treatment and education in prison. He allies himself with another devotee to begin a chapter of the Panther’ movement in the Angola prison.
The Black Panther movement began in 1966 with Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Their plan was to unify African Americans to challenge police brutality in Oakland, California.
The movement failed because of internal tension, the FBI’s successful effort to undermine the movement, and determined white American resistance. Despite the demise of the movement, the idea of unifying African Americans against white privilege and unequal treatment survived despite the fall of the Black Panther movement. The movement has had a lasting impact on prison reform, community programs to improve education, and health services in poor black communities.
In 1974, Albert Woodfox is tried and convicted for murdering Brent Miller, a prison guard who is a third-generation guard at the Angola prison farm on which inmates worked. There is no concrete evidence to show Woodfox murdered Miller
He is put in solitary and remains in solitary for 40 years where he spends 23 hours a day with 1 hour for prison-yard exercise per day. That one hour per day is reduced to 3 hours a week in his last year of imprisonment. Amazingly, Woodfox survives and after several appeals, delayed and fought by the State of Louisiana, Woodfox is released to die a free man.
“Solitary” is an amazing tribute to the strength and resilience of human beings.
Woodfox becomes a self-educated American despite his horrendous treatment in the American prison system. He, and other prisoners, expose the failure of the American penal system to be more than an incarceration system to separate criminals from the general public. In that exposure, Woodfox shows changes were made in Angola and other prisons but far from turning prison into the rehabilitative need of society.
The fundamental cause of America’s failure is not achieving the stated purpose of equal opportunity for all in the Constitution of the United States.
The inferences one draws from “Solitary” reinforces America’s need to address the root causes of failure in its prison system. All men are created equal. America must improve government policies that assure the health, education, and welfare of its citizens. Woodfox’s story of Angola suggests socialism will cure the ills of American society. The truth seems more to be whether American Democracy will evolve or fail by choosing to ignore or address the stated purposes of the Constitution.
Machiavelli describes effective governance as brutal, manipulative, and amoral. St. Augustine infers good governance comes from belief in God and adhering to scripture.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“On Grand Strategy”
By: John Lewis Gaddis
Narrated By: Mike Chamberlain
John Lewis Gaddis (Author, historian, political scientist, professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University.)
In a September 21, 2021 article in “The New York Times” Beverly Gage resigned as the course leader for “…Grand Strategy” (where Gaddis is a professor), “…saying the university failed to stand up for academic freedom…” She is noted to have said ‘I am not teaching “…Grand Strategy” the way Henry Kissinger would.’
Beverly Gage, in her resignation from Yale is noted to have said ‘I am not teaching “…Grand Strategy” the way Henry Kissinger would.’
The book author, John Lewis Gaddis, implies every accomplished political leader has a Grand Strategy. Historians can always criticize another’s study of political leaders or their place in history but having a strategy is a paramount requirement whether one is an American President or course leader at Yale. So here is a puzzle about the Gage’s resignation and her critical comment about Yale’s Grand Strategy for a teacher’s academic freedom.
One wonders what Ms. Gage meant in referring to Kissinger.
In any case, this is a review of John Lewis Gaddis’s book, “The Grand Strategy”. He begins with an animal analogy by suggesting good governance relies on being like a fox or a hedgehog when acting as a political leader. A fox characteristic is surreptitious and sly while the hedgehog is straightforward and aggressive. He argues governance that uses only one of these characteristics achieve singular objectives but balance between the two achieves the best results. The entire book is about the history of governments that have prospered or declined based on the presence or absence of balance.
In the beginning of “On Grand Strategy”, one becomes somewhat bored with Gaddis’s history of Athens’ and Sparta’s conflicts with Greece and its defeat of the Persian army (492 BCE and 449 BCE). However, mid-way through the book, one becomes engrossed in Gaddis’s evolutionary theory of nation-state’ governance.
In the Persian Army and its defeat by the Greeks and Spartans, Gaddis explains Xerxes neglected the common sense of moving his vast army across the Mediterranean, let alone feeding and supplying its needs. Xerxes was thinking like a hedgehog. Later, Gaddis explains Napoleon makes the same mistake as Xerxes by attacking Russia without considering the vast size of the country and logistic difficulties in feeding and supplying his army. Gaddis notes Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” chapters that explain how the battle of Borodino is a turning point in Napoleon’s hedgehog action.
Gaddis notes the need for political leaders to keep their eye on the prize. He gives the example of Civil War policies by Lincoln who sought end games for union of the States and emancipation.
When endorsing government policy or ordering military action, Gaddis suggests Lincoln was a leader who understood the need for common sense, i.e., always balancing what can be done with what could be done. Gaddis notes there are times when it appears Lincoln is contradicting himself when, in fact, he is being the fox rather than the hedgehog. For example, some argue Lincoln went back and forth on emancipation, but Gaddis infers he was being a fox because of the political heat surrounding the question and the government’s action.
SAINT AUGUSTINE (354-430, DIED AT AGE 75)NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI (1469-1527 DIED AT AGE 58)
At this mid-point, Gaddis’s history becomes more interesting. He recalls the history of two important characters in modern theory of society, i.e. St. Augustine and Machiavelli. Of course, they lived centuries apart, but each represent critical beliefs that impact nation-state governance. In the 4th century, St. Augustine wrote two influential works, “Confessions” and “City of God” that outline why God was important to him and why everyone should become followers of Christianity to save themselves for the reward of eternity in heaven. Christianity begins to replace leadership beliefs based on the Great Caesars of civilization. Rome does lead the world for another 70 years, but Christianity and other religions redefine the relationship between citizens and their rulers. The centralization of Catholicism by Emperor Constantine in the 4th century diminished the power of secular governments. Life on earth became secondary to the possibility of eternal life in St. Augustine’s “City of God”.
Jumping to the 15th century, Machiavelli’s concept of “The Prince” exemplifies power of governance by secular leaders.
Machiavelli returns political leadership to life on earth in “The Prince”. It is not an abandonment of the “City of God” but a recognition of leadership as it is in this world. Machiavelli experiences the power of political leaders in this world by being imprisoned and tortured for alleged conspiracy to overthrow the Medici family in Italy. Machiavelli’s “The Prince” explains a political theory and leadership of rulers in the “city of man”. “The Prince” returns the idea of governance to the beneficence and cruelty of life here, i.e. not in heaven.
Queen Elizabeth I is Gaddis’ s next example of the changing nature of governance.
Contrary to her half-sister, Mary Queen of Scots who supported Catholicism, Elizabeth reestablished the Protestant Church of England. Elizabeth recognizes the fundamental importance of England’s citizens to her reign as Queen of England. Elizabeth practices the less punitive aspects of “The Prince” to build a foundation for love and respect from England’s protestant, if not Catholic, citizens. The city of God is replaced by the city of man in Elizabeth’s rule.
One can think of many examples that reinforce Gaddis’s theme in “The Grand Strategy” as practiced in America. The senior Bush carefully planned the ejection of Sadam Hussein from Kuwait by building international support for America’s action in the first Iraq war. America’s generals carefully planned the movement of a massive military force, including supply lines, to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The senior Bush did not make Xerxes mistakes. In contrast John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and H. W. Bush’s son, failed to use common sense in America’s mistakes in Vietnam and Iraq. It took a sly fox in the Nixon administration to get America out of Vietnam. This is not to suggest any of these actions were wholly good or bad, but a reflection on the balance between using fox or hedgehog thought and actions to achieve common sense results.
Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997, Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas.)
Gaddis takes reader/listeners through WWI and WWII from America’s perspective. On several occasions, Gaddis refers to Isaiah Berlin and his intellectual contributions to political theory and history. Berlin was born in Russia and educated in Great Britain. He spoke several languages and was particularly fluent in Russian, French, German, and Italian. He believed in individual freedom but explained conflicting values coexist and that there is no single universal truth in life. This reminds one of Machiavelli and makes one wonder if Berlin, who is alleged to have a strong sense of Jewish identify, was an atheist.
Woodrow WilsonAbraham LincolnFranklin Roosevelt
Gaddis suggests America has had a series of foxes and hedgehogs that have become American Presidents. Some have been intellectuals, others not. Considering President Wilson was a racist hedgehog while Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt were at times foxes and hedgehogs, America survived and prospered through three disastrous wars. Gaddis’s point is that America’s best Presidents have been both foxes and hedgehogs, while most have been one or the other. It may be that America survives because, with the brief exception of Franklin Roosevelt, none have served more than two terms. One President may be a hedgehog while the next President is a fox.
Machiavelli describes effective governance as brutal, manipulative, and amoral. St. Augustine infers good governance comes from belief in God. Gaddis’s history of governance explains why and how both qualities are evident and have served America well.
Frantz Fanon decried colonization and racism to promote individual dignity and family reconnection in his psychiatric practice
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“The Rebel’s Clinic” The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon
By: Adam Shatz
Narrated By: Terrence Kidd
Adam Shatz (Author, editor, professor at Bard College)
Adam Shatz introduces Frantz Fanon to listeners. Fanon was a Black Frenchman, born in the colony of Martinique, an island in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies. Fanon may be classified in many ways but first and foremost one understands he would want to be known as a Frenchman, i.e., a Black individual of French heritage.
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961, graduated from the University of Lyon in France.)
Shatz tells the story of Fanon’s life. Fanon is educated as a psychiatrist who was influenced by Aimé Césaire, a leader of a movement titled Négritude. Négritude was a protest against French colonial rule and assimilation in the early to mid-twentieth century. Fanon lives life by asserting himself as a Black Frenchman with a sense of Black cultural pride.
After an affair with Michele Weyer in college, a daughter is born. The daughter becomes Mirelle Fanon Mendes-France.
Mirelle Fanon Mendes-France (Born in 1948 to Michele Weyer and Frantz Fanon.)
Fanon later marries Marie-Josephe Duble in 1952. Duble was an intellectual, a journalist, and liberation fighter who died in 1989. Fanon and Duble have a son named Olivier who is thought to be engaged with his father’s legacy. Weyer’s and Fanon’s daughter is a scholar and member of the Frantz Fanon Foundation who also works with a United Nations Working Group on African Descent.
Fanon marries a Marie-Josephe Duble. Duble, aka Josie, married Fanon in 1952.
Shatz explains how much more Fanon was than a psychiatrist. Some suggest Fanon was a Marxist because of his anti-colonial beliefs but Fanon’s philosophy extended far beyond Marxist belief in society as an economic class struggle. Fanon was equally concerned about sexism, racism, and colonialism. He embraced a form of humanism. Fannon believed in self-identification as an acculturation process. He considered himself a Black Frenchman, born on a French colonialist island in the West Indies. His life experience as a minority in a colonial country led him to become a practicing psychiatrist in Algeria.
In the 1950s, Algeria was largely populated by Muslim Arabs with a minority of European nationalities.
Arabs in Algeria were poorly treated at a hospital Fanon joined in 1953. He gradually improved their treatment by opening doors to their ethnic identify. Algeria began a fight for independence in 1954. The movement was for social democracy within an Islamic framework that would offer equal citizenship for all citizens of the country. Fanon did not align himself with any religion in what became a violent conflict between French colonization and those who identified themselves as Algerian.
Fanon conflated imperialism and colonialism with racism by institutionalizing control over another based on cultural and/or racial bias.
Shatz shows who Fanon became in the way he treated his patients in Algeria. Fanon argued mentally troubled patients needed to be reconnected to their families and community rather than institutionalized.
Fanon’s focus was on the psychological impact of human torture and the tit for tat revenge of French occupiers and the Algerian resistance.
Fanon was sympathetic to the Arab desire for freedom and independence for citizens of a country searching for its own identity. Shatz shows Fanon abhorred colonization and its social restrictions. Shatz infers he equally abhorred the revolution’s leaders and followers who tortured and murdered non-combatants, including children. What happened in Algeria reminds one of today’s daily slaughter of children and non-combatants in Ukraine and Gaza.
WAR IN UKRAINEWAR IN GAZA
Algeria became an independent nation in 1962 with its own government, culture, and identity. Its ethnic and cultural identity remains the same today as then. It is considered a Muslim country with a majority being Sunni Muslims whose practices play a prominent role in their daily life.
Frantz Fanon dies at the age of 36 from leukemia in 1961, 7 years after the Algerian uprising.
An interesting point in the biography of Fanon is that he recognizes himself as Black in a country that does not commonly describe themselves as people of color but as Algerian Arabs, Berbers, or Europeans. Fanon grows to believe he is Algerian but identifies himself as Black. Black is a broader category of race that makes his story applicable to a wider world but magnifies real-world discrimination based on the color of one’s skin rather than the truth of equal humanness. Of course, as the author notes, the color of skin in Africa is predominantly black and became a frontier for colonization between 1884 and the 1960s.
AFRICA BECAME THE FRONTIER FOR COLONIZATION BETWEEN 1884 AND THE 1960s.
Shatz infers Fanon fought the good fight. He decried colonization and racism to promote individual dignity and family reconnection in his psychiatric practice. He wrote about and aided people who were different, underserved, and underrepresented. He wrote two books about his life experience to explain why colonialization and racism were culturally wrong and socially destructive. “Black Skin, White Masks” was published in 1952, and “The Wretched of the Earth” in 1961.
On the one hand, genetic science may cure the incurable. On the other, genetic science may destroy civilization.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“Why Fish Don’t Exist” A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life
By: Lulu Miller
Narrated By: Lulu Miller
Louisa Elizabeth Miller (Author, Peabody Award-winning science reporter for NPR.)
Lulu Miller’s “Why Fish Don’t Exist” reveals the flaw in believing intelligence or position are measures of admirability. David Star Jordan is a founding president of Stanford University. He served from 1891 to 1913 after being the Indiana University president from 1884 to 1891. Jordan gained his academic qualification as a recognized ichthyologist (a zoologist who specializes in studying fish species).
David Starr Jordan (1851-1931, Scientist, founding president of Stanford University.)
Miller begins her memoir in admiration of Jordan but ends in vilification. Jane Stanford appointed Jordan as the first President of Stanford. Their collaboration laid the foundation for what became a research powerhouse for engineering, business, humanities, and sciences. Ms. Stanford’s relationship with Jordan is reported as less than harmonious because in the University’s beginnings there were financial difficulties and differences of opinion about faculty.
Jane Elizabeth Lathrop Stanford (1828-1905, American philanthropist and co-founder of Stanford University.)
Jane Stanford rejects an economics professor’s contract renewal because of his politics and his criticism of immigration. (Ms. Stanford’s and her husband’s wealth came from the railroad industry which was hugely benefited by immigration.) It is alleged that she pressured Jordan to refuse the professor’s contract renewal. Five faculty members resigned after the professor’s termination. Ms. Stanford had a reputation for requiring total devotion to her beliefs which, at times, conflicted with Jordan’s management of the University. More significantly, Ms. Stanford’s drive alienates and makes enemies of many people associated with the University.
Ms. Stanford dies in Hawaii in her 70s. The cause of death is attributed by authorities to be poisoning from strychnine.
What makes her death an ongoing mystery is that Jordan hires a medical investigator who argues Ms. Stanford died from natural causes, a heart attack, brought on by overeating. In much of America, Jordan’s hired investigators’ cause of death is accepted. That is, until a book is written by Richard White in the 21st century, that reaffirms the authority’s earlier opinion. Miller does not suggest Jordan had anything to do with Stanford’s murder, but Miller’s inference is that he initiated a cover-up.
In one sense, Miller is Jordan’s character assassin. In another, Miller reveals the dark side of science.
Jordan is shown to believe in eugenics that advocates selective breeding of the human race. Eugenics is a science meant to selectively breed human beings. Miller explains Jordan believes in forced sterilization (which surprisingly exists in the United States until 1981). Eugenics is the same belief held by Adolf Hitler when he tried to exterminate Jews and create an exclusive Nordic or Aryan race. Hitler established laws for forced sterilization, euthanasia, and selective human breeding.
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
Miller’s memoir of David Starr Jordan shows how science is a mixed blessing. Jordan’s remarkable work in zoology and his role as the first President of Stanford is tainted by his expressed belief in eugenics. The threat of eugenics is greater today than in the past. On the one hand, genetic science may cure the incurable. On the other, genetic science may destroy civilization.
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.
“…Western Civilization” and its Christian and democratic foundation gives little comfort to those who are worried about societies’ future.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“The Foundations of Western Civilization”
By: Great Books Series
Lecturer: Professor Thomas F.X. Noble
Thomas F. X. Noble (Professor at Notre Dame, Ph.D. from Michigan State University, President of the American Society of Church History, received the Charles Sheedy Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2011.)
Noble offers a distinctive view of the foundation of Western Civilization in 48-lectures sponsored by the Great Books Series. There is little doubt about the importance of religion in the world. Noble explains how the Bible is a seminal work underpinning one of the two largest religions of the world, Christianity. Noble explains the Bible, just as the Quran in the east, provides a contract between a singular God and humanity. However, the dialectic of religion is that it binds people together as well as rips them apart. On the one hand, religious belief brings people together with belief in something greater than themselves. On the other, Christian and Islamic believers have maimed and murdered millions.
Noble explains Christianity began in the same area of the world as the Muslim religion, but several centuries earlier.
The spread of Christianity begins in the 1st century while Muslimism spread in the 7th. The ministry of Jesus Christ spread Christianity in 30-33 AD. Some would argue the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are extensions of the Hebrew Bible. The Jewish Torah and Hebrew Bible emphasize the oneness of God, which is consistent with Christian belief, but the difference is that Jesus was not considered a Messiah by Jews. Jesus was, at most, only a messenger of God to Jews, like Muhammed is considered to Muslims.
Noble notes the spread of Christianity began in the Middle East, centuries before Muhammad’s spread of Muslimism in Mesopotamia.
Noble suggests Christianity’s spread is associated with the advent of Zoroastrianism in Mesopotamia. The prophet Zoroaster believed in a monotheistic faith before the ministry of Jesus in Judea and before the record of Judaism in the Torah of 1400 BC, the later Holy Bible, New Testament, and Quran. The common factor in Judaism, Christianity, and Muslimism is belief in one Supreme Being. Of course, there are numerous differences in these religions after their “One God” similarity. The point is, they all originated in the Middle East according to Noble’s history.
The point Noble is making is that religion is an integral part of the foundation of civilization. Religion brought people together. At the same time, religion became a foundation for difference among people of similar and different cultures. Noble explains those differences helped and hindered the shape of western civilizations.
Greeks feared the tyranny of the majority and were concerned about the lack of expertise in governance and decision-making on the part of the general population. They saw the risk of demagogues. America and the western world have experienced all of these democratic risks. One could argue America is experiencing those risks in 2024.
As these risks play out in ancient Greece, they were mitigated by pragmatic Athenian leaders like Cleisthenes who respected special interests of his time in office. He introduced a lottery system that gave voice and some influence on policy to representatives of these special interests. The people being governed were recognized in public forums that allowed free expression. On the other hand, Cleisthenes instituted the principle of societal ostracism for aberrant behavior of people who advocated against what was perceived as the common good. Future leaders expanded political rights of Greek residents and created a council of special interests to have a direct role and influence in public policy. Public ostracism of Greek citizens for up to ten years was formalized to maintain government’ stability.
Rather than direct democracy, Rome established a representative system of democratic governance.
Noble moves on to the Roman Empire that adopted many of the principles that advanced Greek civil governance. However, rather than direct democracy, Rome established a representative system of democratic governance. Rome made wealth a more important criteria for serving as a representative of government. However, Rome did not use their citizen representatives to make law but only to give vent to their opinions about leadership’s decisions. Rome extended their empire by military conquest but when battles were won, they appointed governors of new territories that granted citizenship to the conquered. Military control is maintained by Rome for centuries, but a voice is given to the citizens of conquered territories. In a combination of military power, alliances with native rulers, and positive incentives, Rome assimilated foreign cultures into a vast empire.
The power and influence of Rome diminished in the 3rd century. Rome’s diminishing power comes from multiple directions. Noble explains the rise of disparate tribal groups challenged Roman authority. The growing influence of religion and diminished gravitas of its citizens accelerated Romes’s loss of power and influence.
However, it is clear the lessons of Greece’s and Rome’s democratic history are guides to the future of “…Western Civilization”.
China recognizes the importance of investment in their military and its economic investment in other countries (e.g., Road and Belt program) to advance its influence and role in the world.
Religion brought societies together while splitting human society in ways that maimed and murdered millions of people.
Noble circles back to a more detailed history of religion. As the Roman Empire begins to collapse, dynasties were formed through the 3rd century AD.
As these dynasties collapsed, Christianity spreads across former Roman controlled lands. The Byzantine Empire formed in 395 CE; Christianity grew through the 15th century to become the largest religion in the world. The Frankish dynasty established itself between 750 and 887 CE, with Charlemagne as its most renown leader. In 774 CE., Charlemagne created a papal state in central Italy. A Frankish dynasty was formed by the Carolingian family (756-887 CE) that managed to stabilize and spread Christian religion throughout Western Europe. The Carolingian family constructed churches and schools to teach Christianity. They created a Carolingian army to protect and expand belief in a Christian God. Noble’s lectures show religious belief in a Supreme Being roils the world. From reading/listening to other histories, governments founded on religious belief are destined to fail.
The remaining lectures summarize the history of the Rennaissance, the Reformation, and the split of the Christian church. Noble’s lectures reflect his erudition, multi-lingual expertise, and understanding of the people of those historical events. The underpinning notion is that religion and its permutations will continue to impact the future of the world, let alone “…Western Civilization”.
Is belief in God worth it? Cook’s history of Muslimism and knowledge of Christianity makes one wonder.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“A History of the Muslim World From its origins to the Dawn of Modernity”
By: Michael Cook
Narrated By: Ric Jerrom
Michael A. Cook (British historian, scholar of Islamic History)
Professor Cook overwhelms one with a voluminous examination of the Muslim World. His history really begins before the birth of the Arab prophet, Muhammad (570-632). However, it is after Muhammed’s revelations and his departure from Mecca in 610 CE, when he and his followers settle in Medina (622) that a more documented history is revealed. Arabs are identified as a nomadic tribe who occupied the Arabian Peninsula, Syrian Desert, North, and Lower Mesopotamia in the mid-9th century BCE. However, notable territorial regions first appeared in the 14th century BCE with the Assyrian and Neo-Assyrian Empires. Cook suggests it is in the 7th century CE that Islam became a force in the Middle East. After the Prophet Muhammad’s death in 1632, the Rashidun Caliphate established itself (632-661 CE).
(REVIEWER’S NOTE: Scribes recreated fragmentary writings and legends of long-dead contemporaries of Christ in the case of the Holy Bible, just as the thoughts of the “last messenger of Allah” were recorded by scribes. Modern science experiments explain human minds do not precisely record or recall the past. The human mind recreates the past and fills any gaps that may arise to complete the mind’s imprecise memory. That is why scribes of biblical or unbiblical history are interpretations of facts of the past, and not necessarily accurate facts of the past.)
With the Ottoman Empire’s dissolution, Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Montenegro, and Macedonia were formed. Three Arab nation-states came out of the Ottoman Empire’ dissolution. They were Syria, Iraq, and Transjordan (now Jordan).
Interestingly, modern states with the highest number of Arab speaking residents are Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. Only Egypt and Sudan have more than 10% of their population who use Arabic as their primary language. The point of this realization is that Professor Cook is writing a history of the Muslim religion, not Arab culture.
What Cook shows is how Muslim belief (24% of the world population) impacted the world.
Cook begins to explain the split between Sunni and Shia religious belief. In the modern world, only Iran, Bahrain, Yemen, and Iraq have Shia-majority populations with a significant Shia community in Lebanon and Afghanistan. Sunni religious belief is practiced by a majority population in nearly 20 countries with a mixture in Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Eritrea, Syria, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan.
A surprising observation by Cook is the impact of a language change in the Middle East. Persian (aka Farsi) became a bridge connecting the diverse communities and histories of the Middle East. This change largely took place between the 9th and 11th centuries. It significantly impacted Muslim cultural beliefs and Iranian culture in general.
Cook implies the colloquialization of translations by Farsi (the language of Persia) of Arab Caliphate’ triumphs and failures molded beliefs of Middle Eastern nation-states. Countries like Iran either adopted or rejected Farsi’ stories of accomplishments and failures by Arab Caliphates. Some failure is associated with moral turpitude, a falling away from Qur’anic teaching, translated into Farsi language.
(Genghis Khan’s sons establish four kingdoms in the Middle East that lasted until 1368.)
Though none of the kingdoms practiced a particular religion, each influenced the course of religious acceptance. The environment they created allowed Christian religion to spread from Russian territory, while Turkish influence leaned toward Islam. Cook explains how young rebel leaders gained followers by successfully defeating and pillaging villages that had poor defenses. With each successful raid, more young people would join the raiders. This incremental growth led to the spread of Christian and Islamic religious influence, depending on the religious leaning of raiding parties.
Cook clearly illustrates how Arab culture lies at the heart of Islamic religion despite its nomadic existence. From the first madrasas (Islamic schools) in the Abbasid Caliphate in the 9th century, the teachings of the last messenger of Allah began with Arabs. Cook explains the religion is unlikely to have flourished without other cultures adoption. Without Persian, Turk, Uzbek, and Mongol societies adoption, the spread of Islam would have been minimized. Muslim belief evolved in a cauldron of conflict with Christianity, Judaism, and other indigenous religions but prevailed as a religion with two faces, i.e., the Suni and Shia Divide.
Like the schism between Catholics and Protestants, Sunni and Shia believe in one God but differ in ways that have roiled the world. In the case of Catholics and Protestants, there is the French wars of 1562-1598, the European thirty years war of 1618-1648, and the Troubles in Ireland in 1968-1998. In the case of Sunni and Shia, there was the battle of Karbala in 680 CE, the Safavid-Ottoman wars in the 16th-17th centuries, the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-1990, the Iraq War of 2003-2011, and the Syrian Civil War that began in 2011 and continues through today.
The forgoing were only human deaths within the two major religions of the world, while neglecting the atrocities incurred between Christianity and Islam. There were the Crusades between the 11th and 13th centuries, the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, The Siege of Vienna in 1683, and the Lebanese Civil War between 1975-1990.
Later chapters of Cook’s history reveal the conflicts between the Islamic religion and other major religions in the Middle East, besides Christianity. Many leaders are identified for historians who will be interested in knowing more, but the names become a blur to a dilatant of history.
Infinity time with vintage clock. Digital generatedxr:d:DAFUp8OtUOE:4,j:43587237971,t:22121315
Carroll explains there are four physical dimensions in the world. There is length, width, depth, and a fourth dimension called time. The first three are easy to understand because they are physical characteristics while time is not. Time cannot be seen, touched, or tasted.
Time is a fourth dimension measured by calendars and clocks that divide the past and present into days, hours, minutes, and seconds. Carroll notes knowledge of length, width, and depth are of the past and present while time points to an unknown future as well as the present and past. Einstein refined the definition of time by renaming it space time which combines physical dimensions with observers’ perception of events, i.e., where and when observations occur and where the observer is located. The significance of Einstein’s space time is that the location and traveling speed of the observer affects the perceived time of events. Carroll’s attention is about time as an arrow that only points forward. Carroll explains how events of the present and past can be defined while the future is unknown. An extended meaning of the arrow of time is that it seems unlikely (though not impossible according to Carroll and the current state of physics) that we can physically return to a past.
There is a significant distinction between entropy and loss of energy. Energy is always conserved but it may not be useable for work. Entropy is about increased disorder and randomness of energy states. Carroll defines entropy as a characteristic of matter in the world which is in a state of molecular disorder, randomness, and uncertainty. This definition is reinforced by the discovery of quantum mechanics which experimentally illustrates probabilities rather than certainty at atom-level interactions. (Einstein never accepted quantum mechanics as a truth of life but only a step of discovery in physics. Einstein believed there would be a discovery that incorporates quantum mechanics in an ultimately predictive physics world.) Carroll notes a theory that explains gravity along with the proof of quantum mechanics holds a key to whether Einstein is wrong when he suggested God does not play with dice.
An interesting note by Carroll is that transition from low to high entropy has an interesting effect in an experiment with two separate enclosures that are connected. One has gas molecules in it while the other does not. There is a hole between the enclosures through which molecules can enter. Over time the two boxes will have the same amount of gas through a process of equilibration. This reinforces the idea of conservation of energy while demonstrating energy transformation.
Transformation of energy is exhibited in animal life by its eventual death, but Caroll explains it equally applies to all matter in the universe. The idea of entropy is reinforced by the arrow of time that only points in one direction.
At an atomic level, all matter transforms over time.
Entropy does not mean loss of energy. Energy is always conserved but it may not have a useful work purpose. The second law of thermodynamics, postulated by Rudolf Clausius in the 1850s, explains that heat always flows from hotter to colder through the process of entropy. For example, a low-level heat energy may not serve a work purpose, but it still conserves energy balance. Raising the heat on a cube of ice transforms its molecules from a frozen state to water to steam which conserves energy that can generate working steam molecules to power an engine.
Much of Caroll’s lectures are an examination of Ludwig Boltzmann’s theory of statistical mechanics and kinetic theory. Much of Boltzmann’s contribution revolves around the concept of entropy and a detailed understanding of the behavior of particles in gases, liquids, and solids. He performed experiments that proved the conservation of energy and the equilibration of atoms and molecules as an observable phenomenon.
Boltzmann speculated that in the beginning of the universe, the chaotic activity of its beginning transformed into a lower state of entropy to create what we see in the world.
Ludwig Edward Boltzmann (1844-1906, Austrian physicist and philosopher.)
Boltzmann’s idea came before the theory of the Big Bang. The idea of the Big Bang actually presumes less entropy rather than more before the creation of the universe. Boltzmann’s idea is that the universe began in chaos (high entropy) to form what became known as a Boltzmann brain (low entropy), a thought experiment where a highly advanced brain formed in a void, from which the universe evolved. The Boltzmann brain is like the singularity of the Big Bang where cosmic dust condensed into a low entropy state and then exploded into our universe.
The origin of the universe may, in one sense, come from either a Boltzmann brain or a Big Bang. Both suggest the universe began in a low entropy state.
However, the Big Bang seems more reliably built on evidence by the measurement of an expanding universe with proven remnants (cosmic radiation) from a massive explosive event. Either theory implies the potential for a multiverse that began from a low entropy theory of our universe’s origin.
At this point in Carroll’s lectures, one’s head begins to hurt. He addresses the many ramifications of the origin of life. As one gets older, the principle of entropy takes on a personal meaning. Getting older may make one wiser but not smarter.
REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE 