Champollion le Jeune, who unraveled the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics from the Rosetta Stone, referred to a collection of ancient funerary texts as the Book of the Dead (Les Livre des Morts). The title grew out of the habit of grave robbers to refer to a roll of inscribed papyrus found with a mummy as Kitâb-al-Mayyit, or “book of the dead man.” The supposed author of the Book of the Dead was Thoth.
 
Thoth seemed to have been a relatively important figure in the pantheon of Egyptian gods. It was Thoth that gave the Sun God Ra the power to defeat an evil force that lies below the eastern horizon. Ra could daily rise because Thoth provided him with the incantations to paralyze the limbs of Āapep, that force called “the Great Devil.” Egyptian religious scholars probably from the First through the Fourth Dynasty (and possibly beyond) wrote Thoth’s texts that would accompany the dead on their journey to a permanent place in the Kingdom of Osiris.
 
Now here’s where you come in without either dying or being mummified. Thoth was a very powerful god. He was the voice of the Creator. According to E. A. Wallis Budge, who published an English version of the Book of the Dead in 1920, Thoth was more powerful than Osiris.*  He was an advocate for humans, and he wrote the laws by which both heaven and Earth operate. And one more thing: “His words were almighty and once uttered never remained without effect.” Yes, that’s you in the age of social media and a worldwide Web of statements and ideas. What you utter online never goes away. What you have uttered never remains without effect.
 
Choose your hieroglyphs wisely, my sons and daughters. What Thoth wrote millennia ago can still be read anywhere and at any time.
 
* https://ia801408.us.archive.org/17/items/thebookofthedead07145gut/8bkdd10h.htm  

Early in the twentieth century George Bird Grinnell published stories from peoples who inhabited northern western USA and adjacent southern Canada, the groups collectively known as the Blackfoot Confederacy or Niitsitapi or “The People,” traditionally nomadic hunters and fishermen. As other groups of people have done over centuries, the Blackfoot, or Siksika, had accumulated wisdom and stories that are both instructive and entertaining. The first story in Grinnell’s collection, entitled Blackfeet Indian Stories, is “Two Fast Runners.”*
 
The “two fast runners” in the story are an antelope and a deer. As the story goes, the two met on the prairie and argued over which was the faster. They raced in the open spaces of the grasslands, and the antelope won. The deer, believing the antelope had an unfair advantage in the open space, challenged the antelope to a race through the woods. In the woods, the deer won.
 
The lesson is a simple one. You’ll be more likely to find success in your element, in familiar places and environments you know best.  
 
* Gutenberg Project 13833-h.txt or 13833-h.zip, George Bird Grinnell, Blackfeet Indian Stories, 1915. https://ia902700.us.archive.org/20/items/blackfeetindians13833gut/13833-h/13833-h.htm

1943. War. Not just any war. World War. The Soviets break through German lines to reach Leningrad, taking relief supplies to citizens. The Americans take Guadacanal. The British use bouncing bombs to hit dams at Mohne, Eder, Sorpe, and Schwelme to cut power to the German’s industrial sector in the Ruhr. An Allied convoy escapes an attack by 33 U-boats without a single supply ship loss; to regroup, the U-boats withdraw from the Atlantic after their failed attack, but after D-Day, Germany loses its U-boat bases in northern France. June 6 is forever after called D-Day. Patton takes Palermo. Mussolini is deposed. Hitler orders a retreat from Sicily. Aluminum foil dropped from British planes “foils” German radar. Hundreds of British bombers attack Berlin. And all the while all this and more fighting, supplying, strategizing, and dying takes place, S. H. Graham of Ithaca, New York is writing a piece on butternuts for the Northern Nut Growers Association’s Thirty-fourth Annual Report.*
 
Stark contrast, isn’t it? Literally, the planet is in the midst of destruction and death in a war that will cost tens of millions of people their lives. And S. H. Graham writes, “Many experienced nut tree propagators have little success in grafting the butternut.” He then goes on to discuss the work of nut-tree propagators and to warn that the butternut tree “bleeds freely when cut” (p. 86). Bleeds freely! At the same time as the Thirty-fourth Annual Report, one bombing raid alone killed more than 40,000 people in Hamburg. Bet there was free bleeding.
 
And so it is with our own times. Our issues aren’t perceived to be issues by everyone. What we consider to be important others might ignore—or even mock. Such is the nature of humans. At times we are ant-like, strung out gathering and not paying much attention to a distant colony member squashed either intentionally or unintentionally. Each of us has a role to play; each of us has a concern that often is a local one, a concern limited to place and like-mindedness. At times, we are the squashers: We squash the issues of others—or worse, squash other members of the colony.
 
The year will be irrelevant: 1943 in the midst of a world war is simply another year with regard to the focus of attention. S. H. Graham of Ithaca probably knew of war events, probably had concerns about the war, might even have had family and friends involved in the fighting. Yet, while some inventors were busy with designs for bouncing bombs and radar countermeasures, he was concerned about inventing a system for enhancing butternut production. In his world, the war was with frosts in spring, Melanconis disease, and beetles. Noting that in central New York “there are uncounted thousands of butternut trees along fence rows…and along little streams,” he goes on to write, “One person with limited time can hardly hope to examine more than a small proportion of them during the period when the nuts are ripe. The scout for better nuts should lose no opportunity to tell his errand to the people that he meets. I have found the average stranger interested and cooperative. He may direct you to a superior tree that you would never otherwise find. For this work one must be able, like the successful inventor, to hold his enthusiasms after many disappointments. If the coveted variety is not found, one at least has been out in the woods and fields during a wonderful time of year” (p. 88).
 
Maybe just like the soldiers in the woods, fields, and hedgerows in Europe or the jungles and streams of islands in the Pacific.
 
Yes, 1943. And yes, this year. There are thousands of uncounted butternut trees and issues to find and examine. Someone has an issue that is not your issue just as you have an issue that isn’t someone else’s. You could, as S. H. Graham of Ithaca recommends, “tell [your] errand to the people [you meet].” Maybe the “average stranger” will be both interested and cooperative. But then, since you are the stranger to whom others might tell their errands, will you be interested and cooperative?  
 
*The Corse Press, Inc., Sandy Creek, NY, Gutenberg file 22587-h.htm, Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-fourth Annual Report, 1943, online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22587/22587-h/22587-h.htm

Let’s not talk about the actual position you might hold on any matter. Instead, let’s talk about your position on any position, on the very act of having a position and on the idea of having a position. What is your position on positions?
 
We don’t consciously formulate all our ideas. We adopt many because to formulate all would require all our time and the thought equivalent to an encyclopedia of philosophy. It’s easier for us to adopt from those who influence us, from significant events in our lives, and from perspectives driven by self preservation—the last including matters of life and death, threats and rewards, and competition and cooperation.
 
I know, those all seem general and vague. I wrote them that way for a reason. I’m not the guy (the guru) on the mountaintop. I’m the guy at the bottom of the mountain who says, “I’m not sure, but you might find the answers you seek a bit higher on the mountain, possibly not any lower than the top. By the way, in all honesty, I should tell you that I have never completed the climb. I wanted to see what’s up there, but either I lacked the will or the energy at the time. My climb has been virtual, a video game search for the truth and for positions I could defend against any challenges. At times I think all my positions are like sequel editions of video games, supposed improvements in appearance without improvements in substance. In fact, I’m not sure if I recognize a position I have that doesn’t have an indefinite edge or an intrusive bubble of an adjacent or opposing position. I might be like that Cosmic Microwave Background Image of the universe 300,000 years after its formation, a collage of hotter and colder spots, with an identified “cold spot” representing hypothetically the intrusion of another universe, a bubble pushing through my own bubble of formation and development.”*
 
“Wow!” you say. You’re usually relatively concrete in your writing, but this stuff is off-the-chart esoteric. Get back to making all those analogies you’ve been writing for your blog, the life lessons and observations that we can use as points of departure for our own thinking.”
 
“Sorry. Here’s the problem. If I write about a particular position that you find offensive, will you stop reading me? How do I know what your position on positions is? Find a position offensive? Do you react emotionally? After all, isn’t finding anything to be offensive a matter of emotions? Or, is your position on positions that regardless of the emotional response, regardless of how you feel because of experience and culture, you look for and analyze the reasons behind all positions? Or, is this in itself an unreasonable position on positions because no one can seemingly hold any position on anything without some emotional involvement? Have you been incommunicado during the rise and proliferation of extreme positions as expressed on social media and on talk shows? Apparently, for every position there is an opposite one or an intrusion of a different thought bubble. So, I guess what I asked at the beginning is what I ask now, ‘What is your position on positions?’”

* ​http://www.ibtimes.com/cold-spot-universes-cosmic-microwave-background-may-have-exotic-origin-2530615 

Modern slot machines have taken on the appearance of video games. Not only do they have colorful background scenes, characters that move, and sounds, but they also have chairs that thump and vibrate to signal a win, even wins of what I might term “losing magnitude.” Play a dollar, win eighty cents: All the stimuli fire the player's brain into pleasures associated with winning.
 
Slot machines are, of course, close relatives of video games because they have computing power. In the case of slots, it’s a matter of generating random numbers. Yes, random. That randomness, however, seems to be lost on certain people. How do I know?
 
First, I confess that I have put money in slot machines, sometimes winning more than I took to the casino. Second, I have observed what some people do in casinos. As the wheels spin or the characters on the video display and scenes set in motion either the eagerness or anxiety of players, some people touch the screen, rub the screen, tap the screen, or try to shake the machine to get it to stop on a payline or in a pay scene.
 
Now computers are fast, very fast as you probably know. The moment—we’re talking a very short moment—one initiates slot play, the random number generator goes to and finishes work. The screen activity is there for driving the pleasure centers and neurotransmitters of the brain. No amount of touching the screen has any effect. Decision to put money in the machine to initiate play equals virtually simultaneous result.
 
And that’s the way all chancy decisions occur. Once we put them in motion, no amount of fidgeting, dancing around, touching something, “rubbing the screen” changes the outcome. Outcomes are often predetermined by the decisions we make.
Whenever our decisions seem bad to others but by chance turn out to be not so bad for us, we think we had something to do with the win.
 
Let’s apply the principle. Someone takes a foolish risk, like getting into a zoo’s lion cage. The person escapes unscathed, heart pounding, dopamine rushing among synapses. The onlookers know the decision was bad; the fool just thinks of win, of having escaped without a demonstrable loss—probably even so in the face of civil penalties or even jail time. One might be able to pet a tiger, kick the ball in a polar bear’s enclosure, or get into a pool with alligators and escape. Some have. Some haven’t. That some have succeeded without apparent injury or death might not be an indication of the full ramifications of their acts. Such instances of "success" might be akin to playing a dollar in a slot machine and winning eighty cents. It is also possible for one to rob a store filled with customers and get away. Some have; some haven't. Randomness often plays a role in success or failure. The Web is filled with stories about criminal acts foiled by chance encounters with police, natural hazards (such as the Russian robbers experienced when their getaway car was struck either by another car or by lightning*), and even armed citizens who happen along.** 
 
Once we put in play a foolish decision, it’s only randomness that works either to our favor or disfavor. There’s little we can do about the outcome whenever randomness is the control. And that’s why I will say every so often: What we anticipate is rarely a problem. Anticipation requires insight, foresight, and planning. Anticipation diminishes the effect of randomness, even in a world replete with it.
 
Just remember that if you initiate play on a random number generator, you are not in control.

* http://www.bing.com/videos/searchq=Russian+robbers+getaway+car+struck+by+lightning&view=detail&mid=6B73607F048D63D5F9606B73607F048D63D5F960&FORM=VIRE
**​http://concealednation.org/2015/01/armed-citizen-stops-assault-and-robbery-four-degenerates-arrested-1/

Some of the grass on the other side of the fence really is better than some of the grass on your side of the fence. Just remember that from the other side of the fence your grass is the “grass on the other side of the fence.”
 
Obviously, there are times when your side of the fence is uncomfortable or even dangerous. That’s the nature of living in a risky place called Earth. So far, you have survived even the most harrowing experiences you’ve had; otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this. Are there less risky places to live? Let’s see.
 
Where there are active faults, such as those in northern Turkey and western California, unpredictable temblors can happen, though their likely occurrences are in somewhat identifiable zones. However, the deadly Northridge, California earthquake occurred along a “blind fault.” In 1976 an earthquake in Tangshan, China killed more than 240,000 people who would not have gone to sleep that night if they knew their city would be destroyed at 3:42 a.m. In America’s Tornado Alley the unpredictable twister can occur, though its likely occurrence might be forecast an hour to a day earlier. During the afternoon of March 18,1925 tornadoes, particularly one called the Tri-State Tornado, killed about 750 people. Many coasts are subject to hurricanes, tropical storms, and tsunamis with varying predictability and strength. On November 12, 1970 the Bhola hurricane killed approximately 500,000 people in Bangladesh.  
 
Then there are the places with infrequent risks, such as those places where rockslides, mudslides, lahars, eruptions from long dormant volcanoes, sinkholes and fires destroy property and endanger life. And don’t forget flash floods; they damage property and destroy lives. Actually, there’s no place on the planet free from risk. On December 13, 2014 a small tornado hit a ten-block area in Los Angeles, California. Six months earlier a tornado outbreak hit England. Though unlikely, tornadoes could even hit high latitude places like Antarctica. But, who needs a tornado to threaten a life in Antarctica, where cold temperatures pose a threat? Then there’s lightning. If they weren’t dead, you could ask four Russian thieves about it. Fleeing after robbing a church in December, 2014, the thieves died when their getaway car exploded after it was hit by lightning. One more: On October 16, 2013 a space rock hit Chelyabinsk, Russia, damaging buildings and injuring people. Yes, Earth’s a risky place to live.
 
But here you are in your place. Whatever Earth has thrown at you so far, whatever humans have thrown at you so far, and whatever space has thrown at you, you have survived. Though disasters and social upheavals have destroyed property and killed people, none have ended your existence. You’re here. Regardless of its dangers, your place isn’t as bad as it could be. Some of the greener grass really is on your side of the fence. Be safe, but just to be sure you are, try fertilizing and watering that grass. You could make an even more attractive lawn on your side of the fence.

Great stuff for 1950s science fiction films: A rocket lands vertically, its engines firing to slow the descent for a soft landing. And now it’s been done. The process, called retropropulsion, really works. A rocket could actually land where it took off and in the same orientation it had at launch.
 
Not so for us. Once we launch, we cannot go back as we left. Once we err, the error is history. All human retropropulsion involves substituting through corrections of various kinds: Apologies, replacements, something-close-to-the-original-but-not-quite-the-same. “Good as new” is possible for objects, but often only a simulacrum for human interactions.
 
Maybe landing as similar to launching isn’t an ideal. Maybe landing should be different. Every launch of human misunderstanding has a context that can’t in detail be recaptured. Landings are the context for new launches. The next launch has its own context, possibly a more favorable one.
 
Been in an argument with someone? The two of you need to consider a reconnection as a new context, a new preparation for a new flight. Who knows what you will discover “out there”? Whatever it is, it will be different. Retropropulsion in human affairs is unattainable; the old rocket never lands in the same position it had at takeoff. Once altered, always affected in some way by the alteration. But new launches from new orientations in new contexts for new goals are always possible, even for once used rockets.    

“Our work finds that simple, intrinsic density dependence can induce complex invasion behavior.”* Those are the words of Dr. Lauren Sullivan, who with Dr. Allison Shaw, another University of Minnesota environmental researcher, studies how species, both animal and plant, expand their ranges. Dr. Sullivan lays the background for her studies: “Most theory predicts invasions occur at a constant speed, or that more complex factors like predator-prey dynamics or environmental heterogeneity cause the speed of invasions to fluctuate.”
 
Now trolls. Not the ones that hide under bridges that billygoats have to cross. But internet trolls, those who seem to have little purpose other than to incite anger through brief messages that are inflammatory or irrelevant: This relatively new species has proliferated and increased its range to cover most of the planet. And no amount of honest predation can quash their expansion. There’s an intrinsic density dependence that induces the invasion behavior.
 
In a way, their presence on the Web reminds me of another kind of network, one that was the subject of an unfinished trilogy by Frank Norris. The Pit, the second novel, focused on wheat speculation in the Chicago Board of Trade. Fed into Chicago along the arms of The Octopus (the first novel) of train tracks stretching outward from the city all the way to California, the wheat essentially “invades” the market. It keeps coming; its “density” makes it too overwhelming for control. The main character in The Pit, trying to control the market, cannot succeed. There’s just too much, and it keeps “invading.”
 
The trolls are like that. Their density makes their effect a bit overwhelming for any individual. Get control of one, lose control over the others. The Web’s train tracks are lined with trains carrying them into the “city” from—and outward to—the entire interconnected world. Dealing with one troll at a time, or even with a train of trolls coming in from one direction, takes so much energy that other trains of trolls arrive. Their density is the reason for their success, for their ability to extend their range, for their invasion.
 
Pulling the plug is the only control. But since most of us cannot leave the Network because of our emotional ties, our addiction, pulling the plug isn’t a practical option. We’re like Chicago, the hub of a network. The multiple train tracks and highways that approach the “city” make us an octopus along whose tentacles invaders approach in numbers too large to control.
 
The only place safe from the invasion is offline. If you intend to remain where the tracks converge, don’t allow the ineluctable inflow of invaders to disturb you or rob you of your energy.  
 
* https://twin-cities.umn.edu/news-events/species-spread-spurts-and-heres-why  

What is a chief characteristic of successful people? My guess is resiliency.
 
Do I need to say more? Are you resilient?