We’ve heard the stories about Marie Antoinette’s husband. Not a good king. More than a bit self-absorbed. Pudgy. Supposedly, he was obsessed with hunting and eating. Possibly also with Marie Antoinette. Point is he seemed to be one whose identity centered on the fulfillment of his desires. Anyway, on July 14, 1789, he scribbled one word, and only one word, in his diary: “Nothing.”
 
Of course, even the most ambitious among us might now and then have a day at the end of which we remember as uneventful. But nothing? Not even a tiny thought worth remembering?
 
Louis XVI wasted an opportunity. Partly, he might have been the victim of larger circumstances, like being one of a number of kings named Louis, but what are we to say about someone who is the leader of an entire country and who writes “nothing” to summarize a day?
 
And there YOU are, neither king nor queen, recognizing that no day in YOUR life can be summarized by the word nothing.
 
Right?
 
What will you write tonight?

Way back. I mean waaaay baaack, 1815 it was. Maria Edgeworth and Richard Lovell Edgeworth published a two-volume work entitled Practical Education.* Think about that. The War of 1812 ended, a powerful hurricane called The Great September Gale hit New England, and James Madison was President. The Handel and Haydn Society gave its first performance in Boston, and a number of influential people, like Robert Fulton, John Singleton Copley, and Archbishop John Carroll died that year, to be replaced by more significant people like Horace Wells, anesthesia pioneer, Henry Bibb, abolitionist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton the suffragist, John Banvard the painter, and George Meade, Civil War general, who were all born that year.
 
Modern America was shaping up, getting some of its current character. And along that road from the explorers through colonial days to the young republic and more recent times, the country developed an educational system, at first under the auspices of people imbued with devotion and then under those of more secular bent. And there were the Edgeworths, thinking about what education “should be about” and how it relates to our daily lives. You might be surprised that all the issues they address we still address today.
 
First, before learning a couple of things the Edgeworths had to say, let’s address the current status. Given that Americans spend billions of dollars every year on education, it seems evident that the population has an interest in the subject. Given that there is so much contention about what should be taught and how it should be taught, it also seems evident that we have not, in more than two centuries, resolved our educational problems. It also seems unlikely that a diverse population in the melting pot called America will ever, regardless of efforts to “standardize” and efforts to propagandize, ever find unity on the issues of what and how.
 
Second, let’s look at what the Edgeworths say. They address a wide variety of issues, one of which is applicable to those of us living in the Age of Propaganda: “On religion and politics we have been silent because we have no ambition to gain partisans, or to make proselytes, and because we do not address ourselves exclusively to any sect or to any party.”
 
Think of that last sentence: People in education without an agenda. How different from the unionized faculty of today!
 
Eventually, the Edgeworths get around to discussing the use of language. And that’s where the title of this blog comes in. In the Age of Political Correctness, we are accustomed to euphemisms—that is, to “acceptable” euphemisms. Every group seems to have those subtly described behaviors that serve to protect the mind from specific realities. “We must not only be exact in speaking truth to our pupils, but to everybody else…to friends, to enemies” (171).
 
And now, numbers. “Numbers keep one another in countenance: they form a society for themselves; and sometimes by peculiar phrases, and an appropriate language confound the established opinions of virtue and vice and enjoy a species of self-complacency independent of public opinion and often in direct opposition to their former conscience. Whenever any set of men [we can also say women] want to get rid of the shame annexed to particular actions they begin by changing the names and epithets which have been generally used to express them, and which they know are associated with the feelings of shame: these feelings are not awakened by the new language and by degrees they are forgotten ore they are supposed to have been merely prejudices and habits, which former methods of speaking taught people to reverence. Thus the most disgraceful combinations of men, who live by violating and evading the laws of society, have all a peculiar phraseology amongst themselves, by which jocular ideas are associated with the most disreputable actions” (217).
 
The next time you listen to a political debate or one on education policy, observe how groups (that is, in the Edgeworths’ terminology, “numbers”) use their special phraseology to justify their own actions with jocularity or to ridicule their opponents’ actions, language, or thought processes. The “custom” of any group “has the prescriptive right to talk nonsense.”
 
*Published by J. Freancis Lippitt, Providence, and T. B. Wait & Sons, Boston, T. B. Wait and Sons, Printers, 1815. Online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28708/28708-h/28708-h.htm#CHAPTER_I
 

“You realize, of course, this problem of life isn’t solvable in my presence,” the Master said.
 
“But sir,” the Student said, “surely you have insights you can pass on. Why do you call life problematic?”
 
“Oh! Sure, I have a few insights, but I don’t know whether they apply to everyone or just to me. When I look at the ‘problem of life,’ I’m caught up just defining the problem. No doubt many have said, now say, and will say that life isn’t a problem to be solved, but rather a series of episodes to be lived adventurously. But that episodic nature is what I call problematic. After all, it’s difficult for anyone to know much about the next ‘episode.’ In the context of unpredictable episodes, I find problematic the ‘purpose’ of life, its explanation, its origin, and its relationship to some other kind of existence, other humans, for example, but also God.
 
“As my Student, you have committed yourself to following me, but I know people can have different kinds of relationship with others, anonymous ones. All of us can, for example, think of some sports hero, some politician, some movie star, or some religious or cult leader as having a powerful influence on the lives of others. That can happen without their personally knowing their followers. Many followers follow anonymously. And there’s reciprocity: Anonymous followers also seem to have an influence on the ‘followed,’ if not individually, then collectively as members of some (adoring) throng, maybe tens of thousands cheering or even swooning in a stadium. And then I would ask you to think Facebook and Twitter; think tabloids; think Entertainment Tonight and talk-show interviews in front of pliable audiences eager to share somehow in the lives of the rich and famous.”
 
“I don’t quite understand. How is this a problem?” the Student asked. “Should I leave you now to go off on my own, discovering what random episodes might have to teach?”
 
In answer, the Master said, “If one ‘follows’ another, for what purpose is the ‘following’? Following is historically a part of life, and it has obviously many motivations. But ‘following’ itself? Is it the nature of life? Are we intellectual, spiritual, or emotional ducklings that bear an imprint? Is ‘following’ built in? Instinctive? Do we from birth seek to follow? And if we do, is it because some have followers that we deem them to be heroic and imbued with leadership? Is it for simulacra? Is it by imposition? That just brings me to another problem.
 
“If we are following, then the question of destination becomes the corollary problem of life. Where are we going? We know from world history how many followers have succumbed to forces of destruction and self-destruction by following; the German people under Hitler, for example. Following gets us into trouble when we have no insight about the path down which we are led. What if those who lead are mere mortals themselves? What if they have no clear path, no ultimate insight? What if their ‘plan’ has a flaw? Or, what if they are simply living episodic lives subject to the same chance occurrences that seem to affect all of us? Even if they do have a plan, hasn’t every such plan—unless it has a specific finite and near-term goal—some flaw, something not anticipated? Remember, my Student, I have always taught you that what is anticipated is rarely a problem.”
 
“Yes, Master, but you also said that because we enter future episodes somewhat myoptically, perfect anticipation is impossible.”
 
“You are becoming wise, my Student. After thousands of years of struggling with the problem of life in all its variations, are we any farther along a path of understanding than the ancients? Think, my Student, of the Upanishads. We don’t know how long ago those responsible for its lines began to offer some advice to follow. Was it several thousand years before Buddha? Was it long an oral tradition before someone took stylus to clay? Why, if we were ‘human’ for something like 200 to 300 preceding thousands of years, did we just so recently become interested in philosophical and theological discussions, in aphorisms, and in advice? Were there no discussions about life’s problematic nature around those campfires of long ago?”
 
The Student then posed four questions: “Is there some way to know what those first humans did? Should we assume that they always followed some shaman, placing their trust in his leadership? Did the most ancient of us follow without knowing the destination? Does it mean that humans have always lived episodic lives and not purposeful, independent ones governed by anticipation?”
 
“Scary questions in themselves, my inquisitive Student. Let me quote the ancient Upanishads: ‘Beyond the great Atman is the Unmanifested; beyond the Unmanifested is the Purusha (the Cosmic Soul); beyond the Purusha there is nothing. That is the end, that is the final goal.’ What if in our current following we reach that goal?”
 
“Can we know by following, Master?”
 
“Go away. Pay no attention to me. That’s the only way you will find your answers. Lead.”

Ever notice that “forecasters” on local TV stations begin by talking about the weather already experienced in the region: “This morning we had above average temperatures,” “We started the day below average, but warmed up to normal,” etc. Are you happy with the history lesson? Isn’t it a bit like looking at a Selfie immediately after taking it, and saying, “Wow! I was much thinner back then,” or “Look at that hairdo. What were we thinking?”
 
Don’t look for a change in the weather forecast presentation. You’ll continue to learn what you already know at the beginning of the TV segment. But then, maybe the logic of presentation is based on showing data already gathered as the substance of the prediction. If a cold front passed by this morning, then colder air should prevail this afternoon. Call it deductively reasoned forecasting based on an a priori probability. Or, say it is a matter of Liouville’s theorem that says the phase-space distribution function is constant along a path. Gosh! It’s all so complicated, all this using mathematical models of the atmosphere and seas to make a weather prediction.
 
You might think that supercomputers in the hands of bright meteorologists could use a grid of data to make an accurate prediction and that inaccurate predictions should be rare. Your experience tells you otherwise. Weather forecasters can do pretty well (although sometimes they fail at this) at making historical statements about the weather (“This morning we had…”). And that’s because using real time data in complex formulae of even more complex theorems is impossible at our current level of data-gathering and computing power. There are just too many places in horizontal and vertical planes to monitor. Sometimes the local farmer (or you) might do as well at forecasting as the TV forecaster.
 
Think about the data sources in making a prediction: There are the horizontal ones that stretch over layers in the atmosphere on a moving planet, and there are the vertical ones that run from surface to stratosphere. Then there’s advection (wind), solar and terrestrial radiation, sea and land ice area, ground and sea temperatures, humidity, pressure, ocean currents, cloud cover and type, and precipitation (rain or snow). Beginning a weather forecast by telling what we already know is pretty much like saying, “I have some good news and some bad news. I’m going to give you the good news first to soften you up before I hit you with a chancy prediction, especially if you want a long-term prediction.”
 
That’s largely the way we do our predicting about human behavior. We use an a priori probability that we variously call stereotype or character or history, and we deduce from what we have already experienced. But like the weather’s complex causes, human behavior also has numerous unknown data points. Of course, sometimes we get “it” right. We just have a feeling that someone will precipitate a certain behavior sometime in the near future. As for long-term predictions, however, we are no better than weather forecasters. Just too much data to crunch.
 
That’s good news. Our inability to predict long-term behavior reveals itself in the changed behavior of many formerly characterized by their addiction to substances or social pressures inimical to their health and the well-being of others.  
 
Would any of us want to be so predictable that our lives are essentially already lived at the beginning of the forecast? Would any of us want the mistaken forecasts of the past to be the accepted forecasts of our personal futures?
 
Probably not. We like to think that however complex weather forecasting is, its complexity pales in comparison to our own, and that no accumulation of data points, no set of formulae, and no a priori forecasts, even with the most sophisticated supercomputers, can unfailingly describe. 

Maybe I’m guilty of writing a “self-help” blog. I say “guilty” because anyone who writes such blogs must have a bit of hubris. “Here I am. I have some things that can help you even though you are a complete stranger and probably better in every way than I.” But you might be similarly guilty: Many of us have a bit of such hubris; otherwise, this would be an advice-less world. We just can’t keep our mouths shut when it comes to the behaviors and thoughts of others. Nebby species? Or, seekers of some Ultimate Truth to share with others?
 
Every so often one of us strings along some words of advice that might be worth the listening. I came across such a string in a self-help book of sorts from 1916. Living the Radiant Life: A Personal Narrative by George Wharton James offers this:
 
     “The more sensitive our minds and souls are to what they perceive, the more we receive, absorb, gain, and, therefore, the more we in turn radiate to others, but we must remember that the character and quality of that which we receive will be reflected, therefore it is necessary to be constantly in that attitude of mind which is receptive to good only.”*
 
James prefaced that advice with a discussion of the natural radiance of all things natural, from cacti to minerals, and he writes that we have varying levels of receptiveness to the radiation of different objects. Thus, a botanist might see more in a cactus than a mineralogist, whereas the mineralogist might see more in a crystal. It’s a matter of being more knowledgeable and consequently more open to whatever is radiating its nature.
 
Now back to the quotation as it applies to us as both absorbers and radiators. In the spectrum under which we all now operate, one that runs from computer games centered on killing to social media expressions of hatred, each of us probably finds difficulty in being “receptive to good only.” All of us attend a very public school with a required curriculum of courses in evil. Of course, we could argue that there is a spectrum of good and another of evil. We might even argue that “one man’s good is another’s evil.” Under such situational ethics and judgments, why should any of us listen to someone else? Isn’t our own advice sufficient if it has the same or greater value than that of another?**
 
Do we not accept advice because we think we have an understanding of both truths and Truth that needs no refining? Then consider what James also writes: “There are few people in the world who are true absorbers. We are so full of prejudices, conceits, notions, that we refuse to receive from this, that, or the other source, because, forsooth, we in our pride deem the source unworthy.”***
 
Do all of us need advice even though we reject most of the advice that we get? And on what grounds do we either accept or reject? Humility or pride? Similarly, on what grounds do we offer advice?
 
I think many, if not all, of us have an insatiable desire for Truth, but little desire for truths. How sensitive are our minds to what they perceive? How mirror-like are we in reflecting what we have perceived? And if what we have perceived is more evil than good, is that what we reflect?
 
James is probably right: We need to be good absorbers if we want to be good radiators. If there is any self-help principle that applies, it is that we can help ourselves by becoming absorbers who, on occasion, radiate a little helpful truth.

So, how does this really apply here? I hope that you see in these blogs something to absorb and to radiate in your own manner. The radiating is up to you. One short analogy: The shortwave radiation we get from the sun strikes Earth and then is reradiated in long wave radiation (heat). You get the effect in a greenhouse, but the whole atmosphere is largely heated by the radiation from the surface. Just like the surfaces struck by incoming solar radiation, you also convert the radiation. You are not a perfect mirror. You alter the character of the radiation after you absorb it. Nothing going in comes out the same, and that's why I say this website offers points of departure. I might say something interesting on occasion, but it is your insight that you radiate.
 
*Chapter 1: “The Radiances of Nature.” Pasadena. The Radiant Life Press. J. F. Tapley Co. New York, 1916.
**Isn’t saying definitively that something has variable value an absolute judgment?
**Chapter 22: “Absorption in Relation to Radiation.”

In a karst (limestone) topography, streams can disappear and reappear as they flow into sinkholes at higher elevations, travel through caverns, and re-emerge at lower elevations. Variously called sinking streams, lost streams, influent streams, or lost rivers, they have been associated with myths and legends. When they re-emerge, they are effluent streams.
 
Of all the myths and stories surrounding disappearing streams, none might be more famous than the one associated with the river that runs through an artificial “cavern” in Athens, where a highway overpasses the Kephisos River longitudinally. Strabo, the ancient geographer, describes the same river as having a natural, disappearing section.
 
The river god Kephisos (Cephisus), according to myth, ravished, in Ovid’s words, “the wave-blue water nymph Liriope” who gave birth to “a fine infant boy, from birth adorable, and named…Narcissus.” That we have a personality disorder that derives from union of a lost river and a water nymph might be fitting.
 
According to psychologist Craig Malkin of the Harvard Medical School and author of rethinking Narcissism, the disorder manifests itself in many subtypes. Some are grandiose, altruistic martyrs, “self-sacrificing to the point where you can’t stand to be in the room with them.”* But just as we can have a single name for a river that runs on the surface, disappears from view, and re-emerges onto a different landscape, so we can recognize a common flow through true narcissists: “Self-enhancement.” What they think, do, and say sets them “apart from others, and this feeling of distinction soothes them, because they’re otherwise struggling with an unstable sense of self.”**
 
Unstable, just like a river. And, according to Seth Rosenthal of Yale, “They have this constant need to have their greatness verified by the world around them. When reality catches up with them, they may react by becoming depressed.”*** Depressed, as in a sinking stream.
 
Maybe some narcissism runs through all of us, but there’s little danger as long as the stream of our lives isn’t disrupted by that consistent desire for self-enhancement. Actually, most of us probably have more in common with the landscape than with the flow. But landscapes can be altered by streams, so there’s a threat to any stability by flows that appear and reappear and that erode the surface.
 
Just taking an occasional Selfie doesn’t make you a narcissist, and just thinking that you have worth doesn’t qualify you as a narcissist. In fact, maybe a little narcissism—not the pathological kind—might be helpful at times: Auditioning for a part in a play, applying for a job, presenting new research results at a conference, or pushing that first novel to an agent at a book fair. Maybe, just maybe, there are times when everyone should disguise low esteem with some degree of bravado and hubris.
 
We live a delicate balance between landscape and stream, between the ostensibly permanent and the definitely temporary. Because we don’t have much permanence ourselves, it’s easy to be caught up in a flow that disappears from view. That disappearance is our ultimate fate is unavoidable in the karst topography of our finite lives. There are sinkholes and caverns aplenty.
 
Staying on the surface requires some, however slight, narcissism.
 
*Webber, Rebecca. Meet the Real Narcissists (They’re Not What You Think). Psychology Today, Septemver 5, 2016, reviewed on December 15, 2017, Online at https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201609/meet-the-real-narcissists-theyre-not-what-you-think
 
**Ibid.
***Ibid.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Thank you, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus for calling the First and Second Chronicles, First and Second Paralipomenon, or “(Of) Things Left Out.” Were you hinting at something all of us should consider introspectively? Is it a title that, like Janus, looks both back and forward? Could we add the word to “Auld Lang Syne” by Robert Burns as we sing at midnight at the beginning of each new year?
 
            Should old acquaintance be
            forgot,
            And paralipomenon?
            Should old acquaintance be
            forgot,
            and old lang syne?
 
No, something about the wrong number of syllables. But, given the free verse of modern times, why not screw around with meter and rhyme? Who would notice?
 
Seems that the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Book of Kings left stuff out; thus, Chronicles, or, as Eusebius, AKA St. Jerome, would have it, Paralipomenon. Lots of stuff in there about Philistines, Saul, David and Solomon, and esteem for the Ark that Indiana Jones sought. Good thing we have Paralipomenon 1 and 2; otherwise, we might never have had that movie series.
 
So, among the aforementioned, what else was “left out” of those accounts of the kings? The First Book of Paralipomenon contains a bunch of begetting, you know, So-n-So begot So-n-So who begot So-n-So and so forth. Lots of procreating, it seems. Generations begetting generations.
 
Personal histories of biblical procreation aside, all of us can look back on a previous year to ask, “What did I beget?” Or, “What could I have begotten, but failed to beget?” We can easily chronicle years past and “things left out.” Is there ever a time when we look back to say, “Wow! I did everything perfectly.” That’s why Paralipomenon is Janus-like. We can see what we didn’t do, but we can plan to do.
 
If you ask around, you’ll find that most resolutions derive from “things left out” of the previous year, things like getting in shape, making more money, being more charitable, affecting more lives, changing attitudes, losing anxiety, anger, fear, or weight. The source of many resolutions is regret over something left out.
 
Should we each year have to re-resolve? Maybe some practical advice is to change the time frame. Why chronicle an entire year to discover what we left out? Why not a single day? Better, why not ask at the beginning of each day, “What is it that I don’t want to 'leave out' today?
 
If we all do that, chances are we won’t have to include two books of addenda.