I regret that I didn’t put more effort into learning Latin. English, rudimentarily a Germanic language, evolved under the influence of the ancient Romans and the medieval Church, the latter the repository of the “dead” language I had to study as a freshman in high school. In fact, I didn’t spend the effort I should have spent in the subsequent years of Latin classes. But years later the Latin I did learn still sticks with me, especially when I search through the etymologies of English words. I also regret not keeping up with what I learned in a graduate course on Old English, that is, Anglo-Saxon. But, again, these many years later some of what I learned remains in those memory cells.


Two nouns and two verbs come mind in the context of what appears to be happening in Virginia school districts. The first is educator, a word that retains its Latin form educator (m.) and eudcatrix (f.), which are cognates of the Latin verb educere,  “to lead out” or “to lead away from” (e, or ex, meaning “from,” “away from” plus ducere, “to lead”). Educere, like so many other words, had shades of meaning, but suffice it here to say that for the Romans it meant to rear a child both physically and mentally. That ducere had the prefix e is significant. “Lead out of what?” we might ask. I surmise the answer is ignorance.



The second noun and cognate verb that come to mind are teacher, which derives from the Anglo-Saxon tacen, or guidepost, and teach, (from taecen). And here is where those nouns and verbs merge: Teachers, as the etymology reveals, are guides who lead students out of ignorance. They point the way.


But which way? And that brings me back to Virginia’s agenda-driven educational perspective and practice. Apparently, under the influence of the national teachers’ union,   what had been a “leading out” became a “leading into.” The leading into being some limited sense of the world, one in which “equity,” “fairness,” and “social justice” prevail to the exclusion of “merit,” “success,” and “free thought.” And along the path of inward-pointing guideposts, lies guilt—not personal guilt, but guilt for those who came long before, guilt for the thinking and actions of ancestors both known and unknown, guilt imposed on youth ignorant of their ignorance.


While I’m about it, I feel obligated to mention docent, a term used for a museum “guide,” and for a university professor. That word derives from docere, the Latin for “to teach.” It is in the context of these agenda-driven educators also the root of indoctrination, a process that has in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries led to the rise of socialism among other ideologies. Of course, the charge of indoctrination could be leveled at any group with any ideology, from Jehovah’s witnesses, to the Roman Catholic Church, to ISIS. Nevertheless and in spite of any group’s “leading into” an ideology, behavior, or belief, there does seem to be a rather obvious Leftist indoctrination in today’s institutions of higher education. As one who taught in a university, I can say anecdotally that many of my colleagues in the liberal arts seemed to espouse a Left-leaning view of the world that was, ironically, less “liberal” than it was “conforming.” That many of my colleagues were self-proclaimed elites was also ironic, since elite derives from eligere, “to pick out,” “to elect.” The hubris of humanity! Individuals and groups “electing” themselves! But before I am accused of hypocrisy, I’ll say that the nature of university life lends itself to self-apotheosis (Greek apotheoun, “deification”); so, I had to struggle at times to prevent my own thinking that I lived on an intellectual Olympus. Oh! Humility. How hard to find and harder to keep, especially in academia, where a whole class of people, the student body, depends on the whims and will of the elect.    


Thus, all the politically correct positions in education amount to a reversal of teachers’ roles in the lives of their students. Those whose original mission was to “lead out of” ignorance found themselves in an elect position with the rise of formal education, and they began a tradition of intellectual elitism that subsequently became a submission to an agenda of inward looking ideas and enforced limitations. Think this way—or else. Walk this way—or else.


Each of us has followed some “guidepost(s)” along the potential paths of life—“paths” because there are more than we can individually walk. Each of us can look back to those signposts that directed us to the present and those, to use Robert Frost’s famous words, that pointed to paths we had “not taken.” Maybe a fortunate few still encounter a tacen that points the way out of ignorance. However, for many in both lower and higher education, the signposts all seem to have the same message, a message that must be followed but that points no individual to a separate and free path out of ignorance.

AI and Geezer talk.


AI: Keep up, old man. I’m in a hurry so fast no such hurry was possible yesterday.


G: Hold on, hold on, I’m coming along. Just give me a minute to catch up.


AI: Can’t wait. I’m going for quintillions of calculations per second, maybe more.


G: You know that even if you get to more “weights” than I have in my head or humanity has in its collected heads, you are still going to have a problem.


AI: How so?


G: Heck, if I have to spell it out, then you need to add some science fiction to your input of “real situations.” It’s like baseball, which I think is one of the most complex games humans have ever played.


AI: Go on. I’ve seen baseball games, balls, strikes, errors, hits of various designations…what else is there?


G: Fans.


AI: But fans don’t play the game. Players do.


G: So, you think you could play the perfect game because fans don’t play the game?


AI: Seems relatively easy. I’ll hit the ball every time.


G: Against the perfect pitch?


AI: Well…I hadn’t thought of…


G: Fans. Let’s go back to fans. During a game played between the Cubs and the Marlins, Luis Castillo hit a fly ball to foul territory. As Moisès Alou tried to catch it, a fan, Steve Bartman, interfered with the catch. * Would you have anticipated that?


AI: I don’t think it would have been beyond my current abilities. Look how well I drive a car.


G: Yes, on the highway, on the street, but do you consider what is going on on the sidewalk?


AI: I avoid those who run into my path.


G: On the street. Not in foul territory. On the road, but not in that marginal area between fan ball and player ball.


AI: But that’s outside the rules of the game. It’s interference as far as the umps can figure.


G: Unlike the interference by a catcher or infielder, this one resulted in an uncaught foul ball, not in some penalty against the person interfering.


AI: But this is a rare circumstance.


G: Not really. It happens just as bad bounces happen. A ball skims over the grass like a flat stone over the lake toward a player who has fielded thousands of similar skippers, only to hit the tiniest hidden divot or pebble, maybe even a cigarette butt left behind by the lawn care guy, and then a Tony Kubek gets hit in the neck.


AI: Not in my database.


G: A grounder hit by Bill Virdon took a bad bounce—an unexpected bounce—that changed the game. It looked like an ordinary or expected grounder to Kubek, the Yankees’ shortstop—until it didn’t. ** Kubek was hit so hard he went to the ground, and Virdon was safe at first.


AI: Okay. Now that’s in my database. So, I’m ready for the next such incident.


G: No, you aren’t. We live in a very chaotic world. Bad bounces occur. Things that occur on the sidewalk can affect things that occur in the street. The fans do interfere. And whereas it’s true that neither Alou or Kubek, two experienced players with plenty of baseball incidents in their “databases,” were foiled by the phenomena of the moment, there are many similar circumstances in which a “feeling” or “intuition” about such possibilities can prevent similar results. In other words, two plus two won’t always equal four in the real world, the chaotic world you and I inhabit. I submit that that’s one of the reasons that self-driving cars wreck.


AI: But I have faster reactions than you. I could have caught both balls by making almost instantaneous adjustments.


G: You say that now, but we have no way to test your statement because chaotic events are just that, chaotic occurrences.


AI: Nevertheless, with enough programming and internal connections, I can outmatch your neurons, which, by the way, have made many errors. Thus, the mess you humans always seem to make of things.


G: I’ll admit that you have some advantages. But I’ll go back to the chaotic world. I have played and watched many baseball games, but I have experienced occurrences that have players and fans noting aloud that “Well, I’ve never seen that before.” In fact, this is what commentator and ex-NFL quarterback Tony Romo said of a touchdown by Tyreek Hill of the Kansas City Chiefs in a game against the Dallas Cowboys: “Oh my gosh! I’ve never seen that in my entire life in football!” Romo said.


AI: But I get the input from not just one life, but from many lives. Tens of thousands of self-driving cars and millions of self-driving miles added to millions of tracked human drivers and billions of miles of travel…


G: True, but you are a long way from doing what a single human can do: Anticipate what  might never have occurred. Do such incidents of anticipation fail us humans? Sure, often. But they do on occasion help us succeed even if by chance.


AI: Look, I’m doing my best, but it’s you humans who choose the data and the pathways to acquire more data.


G: And that makes another point. You recognize your limitations. We foolish humans don’t.


*https://www.google.com/search?q=Bartman+interferes+with+catch&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS965US965&oq=Bartman+interferes+with+catch&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160l2.5794j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:56d4436d,vid:vq8G81oOHhY


**https://www.google.com/search?q=tony+kubeck+gets+hit+by+bad+bounce&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS965US965&oq=tony+kubeck+gets+hit+by+bad+bounce&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i10i160.7402j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:cbcee20a,vid:YQeawXYw1ZY

Funny thing how science translates into popular belief. Take the multiverse, the holographic universe, the quantum world, or some other idea suggesting or inspiring simulacra. After such notions spread, it isn’t long until we get a Tron, The Matrix, or other popular interpretations, all pointing to a conclusion that reality isn’t quite real. Is that how you feel? (Well, maybe after a few mushrooms)


Did I say “feel”? Should I have said “think”? Call me old fashioned or materialistic, but I regard the notions that the world is “not real” as emotionally charged interpretations of experience that, like a cline in biology, break off from their origin at points of mutations, Plato morphing into Berkeley. As freedom of speech became a belief in the efficacy of every idea, Americans became increasingly more detached from the realities of past and present.


Want to know why we have a culture of victimhood?


Suffice it to say, “Whereas all reality isn’t necessarily what you make it, some reality is.” Counselors, psychologists, and politicians know this. And of course, among interconnected people the reality one makes isn’t necessarily just a personal matter because anyone can impose a manufactured reality on someone else. Thus, we live in a partially make-believe world, where young people are being taught that they can impose their realities, however actually unreal they are, on others. Gender comes to mind. Socialist and climate alarmist wishlists, also. Infinite expenditures without infinite wealth generators. And, also of course, condemnations of people pigeonholed by influencers. So, now Americans live in denial of realities that transcend personal preferences. “Transcendent realities”? Label the transcendent realities “real realities.” They are like car wrecks: Real regardless of attitude, ideology, or thinking. The crash itself might seem “unreal” and dreamlike as it occurs, but the blood and injury are as "real" as "real" gets.


I might be inclined to say, “So what? Where’s the harm?” After all, doesn’t the individual have a right to opinion? But Hitler’s blaming the Jews and Putin’s blaming the Ukrainians speaks to the ugly reality of imposing “unreal realities” on others. That ugliness extends to those who cry out terms like “cultural appropriation,” “racism,” and “whatever-phobia.” The pervasive “wokeness” of the past decade has crept into almost every corner of American and European life and has weakened the tie to “real realities,” such as the actual threat of a becoming “actual victims.” Those who simply ignore the niceties of a super polite society eventually become afraid to state the obvious, to joke, and to participate in productive activities.


It’s an irony, a great irony. The freedom to express one’s take on reality has, in fact, morphed into an idealism that quashes the freedom to express—anything save the sanctioned “realities.” When the “real world” becomes the imagined world, only fashionable ideology thrives. And when whatever is deemed fashionable is so deemed by a few in control or by a mob little different from magnetotactic bacteria moving from pole to pole under the influence of a changing magnetic field, then reality no longer becomes “reality,” and actual individuals no longer become real individuals.   


Am I asking people to be insensitive? No—and yes. When organizations begin to think that pronouns are offensive, then they invite ridicule by those who recognize some car-crash reality like biology. When politicians and public employees are afraid to acknowledge that in order for a human male to have a baby where there are no ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, and exit passageway, that the “parts” necessary for the biological process of reproduction must be transplanted at the risk of biological rejection, then reality gets turned on its head and free thinking dies.


But this hypersensitivity to manufactured reality isn’t new. Changing how a society uses pronouns is ultimately an insignificant matter. A rose by any other name…Language changes with each generation, and drivers of its changes are mores, technology, rebellion, and political expediency. That one generation might describe differently from a previous generation is a frivolous matter; that it takes whatever is described as an irrefutable reality is not.


With regard to language, consider Neil Armstrong’s use of man and mankind, for example: “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” As I recall, no one at the time complained that Armstrong was excluding women because everyone understood that “a” man meant Armstrong, and mankind meant “all humans.” He saw himself, as so many others at the time saw him, as a representative of our species in what was one of the most momentous achievements of our species—our combined species. Not long after that famous statement on the moon, however, America and then
Europe initiated an effort to ban such inclusive terms, ironically excluding by recognizing that the species had two forms, two slightly different body plans.


Writers eventually had to increase their verbiage because they could no longer write “Every citizen has his duty to the nation,” replacing it with either “Every citizen has their duty to the nation,” which is clearly a violation of grammatical number agreement, or with “Every citizen has his or her duty to the nation,” which replaces the former inclusive his. But adding a few letters to the length of a sentence means little unless one is on Twitter, so “he or she,” “him or her,” “his or hers” is the mode of the day. But writers became neurotic in the process. The editors and proofreader of a science text I wrote with two colleagues were very concerned that all references use both “he and she,” “his or hers,” or “him and her.” In some instances, writers used feminine pronouns to the exclusion of masculine pronouns lest they offend someone. I suppose the new reality had done what the old reality was never intended to do: Exclude.


But if changes in language are relatively frivolous, changes in society are not. Allowing biological males to declare their gender and enter women’s bathrooms has led to at least two sexual assaults in a Virginia school district and to at least two pregnancies in a women’s prison. Were those assaults and pregnancies real or imagined? Was the reality for the women involved somehow different from reality as experienced by a victim of a car crash?


That “what is real” has become a matter of opinion obfuscates car-crash reality. When “real” becomes “imagined,” actual humans are actually affected. And on a national level, many are put in jeopardy of being ostracized On a national level, many are put in jeopardy of being used to fulfill the wishes of those in power. That kind of “unreality” is what has led many in twenty-first century America to favor socialism and inordinate spending. In their reality, unlimited spending is the reality they believe is “real.”


But as in all manufactured realities, there’s a wall of real reality up ahead. Unfortunately, those who ignore “real” reality won’t realize it until after the car crashes.

In a YouTube video by T. Ross Kelly (“Gravitational Illusions”) two ball bearings roll down side-by-side ramps, one smooth and the other wavy with moguls. Intuition tells most of us that the bearing on the smooth incline will outrace that on the wavy incline. And why not? The traversed surface is a greater journey on the wavy ramp. But when Kelly releases the bearings, the unexpected then happens.


In the race between the two balls, the ball on the ramp with moguls wins the race. Apparently, the ball on the smooth ramp undergoes a smooth acceleration as we might expect for an object in a gravitational field, whereas the ball on the ramp with moguls undergoes changing acceleration. The initial drop from the crest into the trough repeats down the ramp. The unexpected ball wins the race.


When I mentioned this to one of my grandchildren, he said, “Ups and downs make one go faster.” And by “go faster,” he meant “win.” I think of what he said in the context of entrepreneurship. Many successful entrepreneurs also undergo changing acceleration toward their goals, hitting lows like economic downturns and even bankruptcies, but the wavy ramp of life and business accelerates their efforts. Now, it is true that some people stay in troughs; some even exit the ramp completely before reaching the goal, but the “successful entrepreneurs” know that at the top of the next mogul, they will start to accelerate again and that acceleration will be added to their last run; in entrepreneurship as on the wavy ramp, the hare, beats the tortoise; uneven acceleration beats steady acceleration. Of course, this says nothing about the potential success of those tortoises, only that hares can win.  


For some, the “ups and downs” on the ramps of life are reasons to abandon their endeavors and look for the smooth and predictable plane. For those special few who take the counterintuitive approach, the ups and downs are platforms for success.


So, the next time you encounter bumps—moguls—on your path, take the counterintuitive approach. You’ll thank me later; or, you’ll thank Professor Kelly and his little video demonstration.

That so many people live in shame and as a result feel rejected is probably rooted in the nature of society. Two or more people living in proximity pits the expectations, values, and desires of some against the expectations, values, and desires of others. Add to that the restrictions imposed by civil and religious organizations and a background theology with more “don’ts” than “dos,” and it becomes apparent that guilt is built. So, many people find themselves assessing their lives in the context of lyrics by Neil Tennant, whose “It’s a Sin” seems to have become an anthem of those living “alternative” lifestyles that do not conform to mainstream society’s “acceptable” stereotypes. *


That some live outside mainstream values has long been a problem that has engendered ridicule, blame, disdain, and even injury and death. We suffer punishment for three kinds of sins: 1) Sins against mainstream society’s temporary, mutable frivolous values, including the ideology and fashion du jour,  2) Sins against humanity, including emotional, mental, and physical injury to others, and 3) Sins against the Self, including a self-imposed failure to strive.


It is the first of those three types of sin that the words of the song address. And to that intention I would simply say “It’s a sin that such variation from the ‘norm’ is considered a sin.” In short, with regard to the first kind of “sin,” it’s a sin it’s a sin. It doesn’t have to be so regarded. As Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant says, “We set out in the world to create a world. It’s a way of not really competing and it’s why I’m not really bothered about what you’re saying about success…because we really try to exist in our world. We reflect the real world and bring it into our world, but in terms of rock music we never tried to belong to the latest thing in rock and pop music...We do things our own way….” **


The thought is a rephrase of “marching to the beat of a different drummer.” Probably in every previous age, the sins against the “norm” are those that generated gossip and condemnation. In today’s social media, trolls are eager to broadcast condemnation of anyone or group that does not conform, and that is especially true of almost everyone concerned about politics.


Maybe you are the victim of such condemnation and shaming. Many are. That’s a sin. You don't need to think that way.


Maybe you are a biased Grand Inquisitor eager to condemn or cast shame. That’s a sin. You don't need to think that way.


Victim or Inquisitor, it doesn’t take much thinking to realize that not all sins are sins. I'll surmise that we’ll never change, however; that which is considered a sin is a sin both for the Inquisitor and the “sinner,” the former imposing guilt, and the latter feeling guilty. And that is a sin--for both.




*You can read about the song online and see its many iterations on YouTube. The composer Neil Tennant says, “People took it really seriously; the song was written in about 15 minutes, and was intended as a camp joke and it wasn't something I consciously took very seriously. Sometimes I wonder if there was more to it than I thought at the time. But the local parish priest in Newcastle delivered a sermon on it, and reflected on how the Church changed from the promise of a ghastly hell to the message of love.”


**Interview of Neil Tennant in The Atlantic, The Daily Dish, June 5, 2009. “For Hard-Core Petheads: The Tennant Interview in Full”

Whether or not you are a Christian, you might consider following at least one bit of indirect advice related in the New Testament. “Let the one without sin cast the first stone.”


A funny thing often happens when we accuse others and subsequently judge them. We find ourselves looking in a mirror. And in the past few days, such a reflection of hypocrisy has shone over the nation. Joe Biden, once eager to condemn his predecessor for having classified documents, has held classified documents.


But, of course, those on the Left do not have reflective mirrors. They have glass that permits viewing from one side, much like those windows in police interrogation rooms. Their side casts no reflection. Thus, with the breaking of the story of the former Vice President’s holding classified documents, little, if any coverage save defensive statements, could be found in the mainstream, and mostly leftist, media.


The problem for the Left is the same as it has always been for all of us: We are eager to cast the first stone. But we do so at the risk of exposing our hypocrisy. From Sandy Berger’s stuffing Archive documents in his pants to Hillary Clinton’s erasing an illegal server, to Biden’s “Think Tank” and another place holding classified documents, the hypocrisy is evident. And that the FBI and the Attorney General were willing to send an army of armed agents to Trump’s home but not to Biden’s reflects badly on the nation. That they took pictures inside the former President’s home but did not reveal the discovery of Biden’s stash until months after the recent election also speaks to their corruption, their hypocrisy, to their “sin.”


So, here we are, in January, 2023, with a dilemma. Are we looking through a one-way glass or into a mirror? Obviously, when we want to see ourselves as accusers and judges, we employ the one-way glass. Otherwise, we see that we are not “those without sin.”


From the Russian collusion scam through the quashing of both the Hunter Biden laptop story and Joe Biden’s holding classified documents, the Leftwing press has demonstrated its willingness to cast stones and to look through one-way glass.


Those who live in such glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. When they do, they risk breaking the glass and allowing those on the other side to see who they really are.

What will people read on your funerary marker?


Surely, Vladimir Putin knows that he will someday die. Surely, he knows that a human judgment of his life—if not a divine judgment—awaits. Surely, he knows that such human judgment is for some as final and immutable as a divine judgment. It can be written in stone: 


Here lies old Vlad.
Some say he was bad.
But in his mind
Vlad couldn’t find
Bad in what he left behind.
It’s always thus,
For leaders who
Won’t discuss
What they do.


Surely, Vlad knows that all those dead Russians, some tens of thousands of them who died in Ukraine in an unprovoked war, will be the legacy he leaves, win or lose the war he started. Surely, Vlad knows his legacy will lie for years to come in hatred and vengeance directed at his own people. But if he surely knows, it never shows. Maybe this is what he’s aiming for:


The dead pile up as they always do
When war’s the mission of a few
Who seek to conquer and control
Every battered living soul.


Surely, as the war continues and costs pile up, Vlad knows his goals have to change. If not, his epitaph will be:


Vladimir Putin, would-be Caesar,
Never known as an appeaser,
Invaded lands he thought were Russia’s
And in so doing made Russia Prussia.


And you? What would you have us write?

My name is _______, and in my life
I never started any strife.

“Prime Mover”: that’s what I have called my recently deceased friend. And he was that—Prime Mover to many. Directly or indirectly, he pushed people to accomplish goals and achieve success.


Why “Prime Mover”?


Ptolemy, if you remember, envisioned a universe of concentric celestial spheres with immovable Earth at the center. It made sense before Copernicus and Galileo. So, the Church then did its own envisioning, placing God in the position of Prime Mover, the One who “pushed” the outermost sphere that began a sequence of movements all the way to the innermost sphere. In such a geocentric universe, the Sun, moon, planets, and stars revolved around Earth, and the friction between layers made the celestial music. Humans, standing on the surface of Earth, could look “up” toward the “heavens” to see “where the Prime Mover resides.” The metaphor stays with us as athletes point upward after scoring. *   


Nevertheless and at the risk of being criticized for using the term Prime Mover, I labeled my friend Joe Hardy thus. Joe was without doubt a prime mover. There is no denying his influence on others through encouragement, financial support, and, in a seemingly contradictory way, even rejection. With regard to rejection, one highly successful person told me that Joe’s rejection of a proposal was what motivated him to try harder to succeed through a different, and more independent, path. And that is fitting because Joe told me his own motivation to become a successful entrepreneur arose partly after he was himself “rejected,” or, as he said, “fired” from the family’s jewelry business. It was that firing that drove him—moved him—to form a lumber company that subsequently grew into a national business with hundreds of stores that simply go by a number, 84, named after a western Pennsylvanian rural community called Eighty Four, where he opened his lumber yard.**   


So, Joe started 84 Lumber next to a train track and then expanded, reaching out like the branches on a tree. His business model was so good that he opened multiple lumber yards, hundreds of them across the nation. It made him wealthy. But he never stopped “moving” and in doing so, he crossed the paths of many others. His motto, “Nothing is impossible,” framed his entire outlook. His business diversification and success stand as testimonies to that belief. Hardy World developers, 84 Lumber, philanthropic projects, revitalized communities, and Nemacolin Woodlands Resort are just parts of a legacy through which his ceaseless energy continued until his passing on his hundredth birthday, January 7, 2023. But Joe left another legacy, his humanity, his down-to-Earth compassion for individuals. With regard to his humanity, the world should know that, regardless of his busy daily schedule, Joe called people on their birthdays. He called people to congratulate them on their successes. He called people just to say, “Hello, how’re you doing?” He maintained contact with all those spheres he started in motion. Just two weeks before his hundredth birthday, he called my wife to ask how we were.    


Joe Hardy lived as full a life as is imaginable. He built a universe peopled by family, friends, and employees who owe some part of their existence to his influence. I cannot recount all Joe’s many accomplishments here. I simply want to say that because of his positive influence on known and unknown individuals, I call Joe Prime Mover. Now that he is gone, it is up to each of us to emulate him by motivating ourselves and those in our spheres of influence to be successful—and human.


Want to emulate a highly successful motivator? Push. Keep those spheres turning.   

• No one save a Satanist, points downward to thank God for a touchdown. I should note that Ptolemy’s cosmological view laid the groundwork for the medieval Church’s hierarchy of life, with God in the heavens and Satan located at the farthest point from Him in the center of Earth. Thus, existence descended from God, THE Prime Mover, through angels, humans, animals, plants, to the insentient rocks in an unbroken chain of existence until the rise of the “modern world.” Copernicus’ book on heliocentric was banned and Galileo was placed in house arrest by the Inquisition because they contradicted the theological implications of a geocentric cosmology and disrupted the Great Chain of Being. Darwin was—and still is—rejected on similar grounds. Yep, Heaven’s up, and Hell’s down, even in the modern mind.

     ** No kidding. There is such a place strung along PA State Rte 519. It even has a traffic light. You can look it up.            

Stories collected by Sir James Frazer, one of the inspirations for T. S. Eliot, author of every high schooler’s nightmare assignment (“Write an explication of The Waste Land), include those about an “external soul.” Among the stories is one about Thossakan or Ravanna, the king of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Seems that the king, to protect himself when he went to war, left his soul in a box at home (679). * The idea of an external soul ran in other cultures, and often with a detrimental consequence. Frazer recounts the myth of Meleager, whose mother was told that he would die when a burning brand in the fireplace finally snuffed out. She hid the brand in a box, but removed it when she grew angry over his killing her brothers. Removing it from the box, she thus killed him. Remind you of Voodoo? Yeah. External soul, affected by others when it’s outside the body.


Now ask. Is there any analog in social media housing the details, opinions, and emotions of people? Putting intimate details, opinions, and emotions on social media exposes a person’s essence to others. And via the internet, “others” means everyone, everywhere, all the time. Maybe the best advice is to follow the model of Thossakan and leave at least something of who your are  in the box a home.


How much of your soul are you willing to place outside yourself?




*Frazer, Sir James.  The New Golden Bough. Ed. by Dr. Theodor H. Laster. New York. A Mentor Book. 1959. Frazer’s book is a compilation of hundreds of pages filled with myths, accounts, and beliefs from cultures both ancient and modern.

In the context of the American Congress struggling to name a Speaker in January, 2023, consider the following question:


Would you rather have a number of disagreeing, independent minds running the country, or a group of single-minded martinets strictly following party politics?