MOST INTERESTING ESSAYS 12/4/25: THEORY & TRUTH, MEMORY & INTELLIGENCE, PSYCHIATRY, WRITING, EGYPT IN 2019, LIVE OR DIE, GARDEN OF EDEN, SOCIAL DYSFUNCTION, DEATH ROW, RIGHT & WRONG, FRANTZ FANON, TRUTHINESS, CONSPIRACY, LIBERALITY, LIFE IS LIQUID, BECOMING god-LIKE, TIPPING POINT, VANISHING WORLD
“The Secret of Secrets” is an entertaining adventure that makes one wish they had the genius of its main character, Robert Langdon.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
The Secret of Secrets
Author: Dan Brown
Narration by: Paul Michael
Dan Brown (Author, famous American writer of thrillers who wrote “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons” among others.)
Dan Brown’s fictional Robert Langdon is made famous by Tom Hanks in the “Da Vinci Code” and “Angels & Demons” movies. The author’s “…Secret of Secrets” will add to Brown’s fame. Brown is a polished writer who has created another imaginative story that blends myth with belief that is as entertaining as Sir Arthur Conan Doyles’ adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Like Sherlock Holmes, Robert Langdon is a polymath who has knowledge of science and life that beggars one’s imagination.
To remind listeners of Brown’s earlier works, his hero is Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of religious iconology and symbology. Langdon’s extraordinary ability is like Sherlock Holmes’ in that he can integrate knowledge with abstruse details of Brown’s created characters and circumstances. Langdon is a friend of Katherine Solomon, a scientist who has written a book that allegedly explains how human consciousness exists after physical death. Solomon argues consciousness is a fundamental force in the universe that challenges belief in materialism and religious doctrine. Consciousness beyond death challenges belief in ethics, free will, and the fundamental nature of reality. Consciences of every deceased person lives in a cosmic space containing the many minds of all humans that have died. There is no God. This cosmic consciousness influences the direction of all human life by being accessible to living human beings.
If Solomon’s idea gained purchase in society, Brown’s story infers it would challenge the foundations of society. It would challenge religious beliefs and create political and social instability. The idea of consciousness as an eternal force of nature is viewed as a threat to the ways of the world. An organization run by an obscure and secretive group led by Everett Finch views Solomon’s thesis as a threat to society and the world in which his power and influence would be diminished. The book Solomon has written is to be erased from the world of knowledge. Finch’s plan is for Ms. Solomon to be murdered, and her research and book destroyed.
The setting of the story is in Prague, Czechoslovakia because of its reputation as a mystical area of the world with its history, and ancient architecture. Ms Solomon is there to participate in a lecture in Prague, a beautiful city that is associated with mythical beliefs like the Jewish belief in Golems that were originally identified as protectors and then evolved into murderers without conscience or purpose.
Brigita Gessner is a neuroscientist in Prague who is experimenting with the principle of consciousness as the underlying biological theory of eternal consciousness that is similar to Solomon’s belief. Gessner is being targeted for elimination by a Golem as an agent manipulated by Finch’s organization.
Golems were once identified as protectors that became murderers who lost their way without understanding their original purpose.
“The Secret of Secrets” is an entertaining adventure that makes one wish they had the genius of its main character, Robert Langdon.
“All the Worst Humans” is a macabre but revealing look into the darkest corners of public relations.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
All the Worst Humans (How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians)
By: Phil Elwood
Narrated By: Holter Graham
Phil Elwood (Author, public relations operative, graduate of Georgetown University with graduate studies at the London School of Economics.)
“All the Worst Humans” is a macabre but revealing look into the darkest corners of public relations. It is an anecdotal story, with a ring of self-effacing truth by Phil Elwood who specializes in spinning news about morally corrupt people and bad events. A listener is skeptical of Elwood’s integrity because of the nature of what he does for a living. Elwood manipulates societies understanding by spinning the facts of current events to hide what truth there is in history.
Reputable historians certainly try to accurately report the facts of history, but truth is malleable based on the facts that are chosen. Though Elwood profiles himself harshly as a troubled human being, he is like a disreputable historian who spins facts that have little to do with truth. Elwood’s job is to make facts tell a kind of “truth” that makes bad people and/or events look good or at least better than bad.
Elwood’s self-effacing story admits his weakness for alcohol and addictive drugs.
Elwood manages to become an intern for Congressional representatives like Senator Daniel Moynihan after failing to graduate from college. He corrects his college failure with the help of his congressional contacts to enter Georgetown University where he earns a college degree.
Elwood leaves his Congressional internships and the contacts they entailed to become a success as a public relations operative.
He becomes an operative who spins facts to change the public’s perception of people and events. Elwood is an “operative” because he contacts legitimate media writers/broadcasters and political influencers to change their minds about people and events that are or will become news of the day.
Elwood’s story begins with an FBI phone call that asks for the correct number of his and his wife’s apartment address.
He arranges for a meeting with the FBI in an hour after the call, purportedly to allow his wife time to leave with some of the files in their apartment. This is a puzzling beginning to a wild explanation of Elwood’s life. One is unsure of how much of what is written is spinning the truth of who Elwood is and what he believes. One wonders if Elwood’s story is just an entertaining vignette of a complex and intelligent writer, a public relations expert, or writer of fiction. (A brief review of the internet shows Elwood is not only a graduate of Georgetown University, but did graduate work at the London School of Economics.)
Peter Brown (American-based English businessman who became part of the Beatles’ management team.)
After Elwood’s stint as a congressional intern, he is hired by a public relations firm headed by a former Liverpool Beatles’ assistant, a man named Peter Brown. Brown became an officer of Apple Corps, the Beatles management company. Brown was instrumental in arranging the wedding of John Lennon to Yoko Ono in Gibraltar which is made famous in Lennon’s song “The Ballad of John and Yoko”.
Elwood offers examples of work that he does as an operative for Brown’s company. Brown, or someone from his office, calls Elwood to “baby sit” Libyan executives who work for Muammar Gaddafi in a trip to Las Vegas.
Elwood explains they carried millions of dollars in suitcases they kept in their hotel room. They lost thousands of dollars at the gaming tables and used Elwood to arrange private plane trips and ferry suitcases of money to pay their gambling bills and travel expenses. Elwood feared for his life and was relieved to see them off in their private jets after steering them away from what could have been a public scandal in Las Vegas.
Elwood explains how he is ordered by Brown to use his contacts in Congress and news publications to make Gaddafi look more like a statesman than thug in his 2009 United Nations Speech.
Elwood was tasked to make Gaddafi look humanitarian rather than venal by arranging interviews and media engagements that would emphasize his role as a revolutionary, not authoritarian leader. There seem to have been some successes but the speech at the UN and the debacle over a tent on Trump’s property made Elwood’s public relations effort a failure. Elwood is eventually fired by Brown and leaves with a sense of enmity toward Brown.
Elwood eventually slips into another morass when asked by his new public relations employer to make Nigeria look better than the Boko Haram kidnappers who took 276 schoolgirls from a Government Girls Secondary School.
Elwood is unsure of what he can do despite travelling to Nigeria to convince the government they needed to act in a way that looked like they were concerned. Elwood admits he fails and that the appearance of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist who was nearly assassinated by Pakistani thugs, entered to insist Nigeria must do something. Elwood is fired again.
In another incident where Elwood is working as a public relations operative, he consults with Antigua after the United States threatened to prosecute Antigua for online gambling services.
The Antiqua leader worries that it would destroy tourism in his country if they fought America’s threat. Elwood explained the loss of revenue from online gambling far exceeded tourism income and that he would plant a story in the media about restraint of trade as being un-American. Elwood suggests to the Antiqua government that they take America on with a complaint to the World Trade Organization. Antiqua follows the advice, and successfully remains an online gambling mecca. But Elwood, despite his successful spin of the facts loses the account and is fired again.
Elwood then slips into a very gray world where money is being laundered by the Israeli government.
Elwood becomes a conduit for the laundered money and is contacted by the FBI. The story comes full circle, and its ending adds to the value of Elwood’s story. Public relations are a sophisticated way of muddling the truth. Being smart is two edged when it comes to the truth. Ignorance is not bliss but spinning the truth can kill you or put you in jail.
Elwood considers suicide because of his dodgy reputation and fear of losing his marriage. Through treatment with ketamine, Elwood recovers some level of mental health. Treatment with ketamine is an ironic fact in view of the recent death of the comedic actor Matthew Perry. In a twist of fate, Elwood is spinning the benefit of ketamine while its use is being abused by the public today.
Do humans upset nature or are they another victim of nature’s balance?
Blog: awalkingdelight
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
“Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead”
By:Olga Tokarczuk, Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Narrated by: Beata Pozniak
“Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” is well narrated, but its appeal seems lost in translation. The book is written with financial support from the Czech Republic. It makes a fundamental point about the animal world, but its story is diminished by its main character’s representation.
WINTER IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC
The heroine of the story believes in astrology. Those who are non-believers are distracted by the heroine’s constant reference to what many, if not most, consider a pseudo-science. Janina is an older woman who lives in a small settlement in the Czech Republic. She is a schoolteacher who has responsibility for the caring of second homes in a wilderness settlement when not in use by their owners. There are only a handful of residents that stay in the settlement during harsh winters.
The story begins with the death of a year-round resident. It appears the death is an accident from choking on a deer bone, but several mysterious deaths occur in that winter that make the local police realize a murderer is in the area.
The schoolteacher argues the deaths are a result of a rebellion against hunters by deer and wolves that have been indiscriminately hunted and killed for sport. She supports her argument with evidence of deer and wolf tracks near the death scenes. She reinforces her unwavering belief with astrological observations of the planets, human’ dates of birth, and the solar system’s orbital interference with each other.
The schoolteacher argues to all who would listen that indiscriminate human predation is causing an animal rebellion in their remote location.
She has mysteriously lost two pet dogs in this winter of death. The truth of her theory of rebellion becomes less believable and more mundane with the discovery of more human deaths and her characterization of her pets as lost daughters. Her dogs may have just run away or been eaten by wolves. With more human deaths, the police are convinced there is a human murderer in their midst. The story becomes a murder mystery, not a conspiracy foretold by the heavens.
What actually happened to her dogs is the clue that solves the case.
One surmises the underlying meaning of the story is that human beings are indiscriminate murderers of nature.
How many buffalo, elephants, lions, wildebeests, rhinos, tigers, boar, elk, and deer have been hunted and killed by humans for their ivory or trophies with carcasses left to rot?
In one sense, all predation is simply a way of keeping nature in balance. In another, human predation upsets the balance of nature by volitional choice. To the author, it is the second sense that tells listeners–humans do not preserve but arbitrarily upset the balance of nature.
The murder mystery is solved in the end, but the question lingers. Do humans upset nature or are they just another victim of nature’s balance? Time, not religion, science, or fiction, will tell.
REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE 