CHAPTER 1
Introduction
The first decade of the new millennium was increasingly turbulent, asnews headlines reveal.
Dotcom bubble crash—Vladimir Putin elected presidentof Russia—Concorde crash in France kills 113—Sydney hostsOlympic games—Wikipedia launched—George W. Bush swornin as US president—Terrorist attack brings down World TradeCenter towers killing thousands—First tourist in space—Applelaunches ipad—Euro currency begins circulation—Deadliest actof terrorism in the history of Indonesia—Columbia space shuttledisaster strikes—Second invasion of Iraq begins—Human genomeproject completed—Record heat wave kills tens of thousands inEurope—Myspace introduced—China launches its first mannedspace mission—Worldwide oil production hits plateau—Twitterlaunched—North Korea conducts its first nuclear test—SaddamHussein executed—Global economic recession—Shootingrampage kills 32 at Virginia Tech—Market blast in Baghdad kills100—Prime minister Bhutto of Pakistan killed—Minneapolisbridge over Mississippi collapses—First recorded hurricane inSouth Atlantic—George W. Bush reelected—Olympic gamesin Athens—Train bombing in Madrid kills 200—First privatelyfunded human space satellite—Facebook launched—New world'stallest building in Asia—Indian ocean earthquake results in aquarter million deaths—Youtube launched—Suicide bombersLondon—Hurricane Katrina decimates New Orleans–AngelaMerkel first female chancellor of Germany.
After selling our rural paradise in 1999, we moved to the state ofWashington, where we bought a derelict house on two acres of land withsaltwater frontage at the south end of Puget Sound. In February 2001,a major earthquake (6.8 on the Richter scale) with the epicenter but twomiles from our house provided ample adventure. It was our second suchexperience, the first (6.9 magnitude) having occurred in February 1989,with the epicenter but four miles from our ranch house in California.
Sales from my recently published book, One from Many, werebrisk and brought even more invitations to speak and consult, which Ihad little desire to pursue. After ten years of intense effort to catalyzeinstitutional change without notable success, I had become disillusioned.As the closing lines of Voltaire's Candide advised, "perhaps it is just aswell to stay at home and tend one's garden."
I wanted no more of travel, notoriety, and fruitless effort. Imethodically put aside activities of the past as I turned my attention torebuilding the derelict house, creating two acres of gardens, oil painting,hand-lettering in stone, and, as ever, continuing my incessant reading,writing, and study, including another 2,200 reflections on life andliving.
As 2003 began, we were comfortably settled in our new but smallerShangri-la, with sweeping views of rocky beaches, lower Puget Sound,a forested, far shore with the Black Hills in the distance. I continued tomake an occasional speech and work with the Patient Safety Institute,a not-for-profit effort by leading people in the medical field who wereattempting to create an electronic medical information system to reducea rising tide of medical errors resulting in death or serious injury.
Ironically, in October, the cartilage in both my knees gave out anddouble knee replacement became necessary. The surgery was successful;however, when I regained consciousness, both my arms were extremelypainful and the side of both hands and two fingers of each were paralyzed.Neurological testing revealed major damage to the ulnar nerve in eacharm.
The surgeons, anesthetists, surgical nurses, and hospitaladministrators denied any knowledge of possible cause, yet the factremained that both arms and hands had been in perfect shape whenanesthetics were administered and severely damaged when I awoke inthe recovery room.
Six months later came news of colon cancer. With great trepidation,I returned to the hospital for more surgery to have a third of my colonremoved, this without apparent medical error. Within months of thecancer surgery came diagnoses of sleep apnea requiring use of a machinethat delivers constant air pressure through the night via a face mask,then chest pains due to a blocked heart artery that put me back in thehospital to have the artery probed, opened, and a stent inserted.
I made one last attempt to create institutional change when thesecretary of Health Education and Welfare asked if I would help createa national organization for the evolution of the American HealthInformation Community, a semiformal group working to advance theautomation and electronic transmission of medical information. Afterworking on this for a year and creating a concept, an organizationalstructure, requisite bylaws, and proposing a plan to bring it into being,political pressures caused the department to take a different approachthat I knew was certain to fail. I declined further participation as itfaded away.
In spite of five major medical problems in less than two years, mytreasured routine of rising each morning at five thirty for a half hour ofmeditation and two hours of writing, followed by six to eight hours ofwork in gardens, painting studio and wood/stone shop, then four hoursof evening reading and study, became even more entrenched.
Toward the end of the decade, the habit of ending the morning'swriting with four or five short observations came to a close, and selectingand arranging them for publication took its place.
And so herewith, the second volume of the Autobiography of aRestless Mind.
1Life is messy; only death is neat.
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2Dreams are destroyed by their realization and achievementby accomplishment, but hope lives on forever.
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3Knowledge is the rubble left when wisdom breaks down.
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4Trusting a politician to put the public interestbefore his own is like trusting a dog to deliver apound of hamburger to your neighbor.
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5The two most discontented beings are humans and cancer cells.
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6Under precise, scientifically controlled conditions,life does as it damned well pleases.
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Every man, no matter how intelligent and learned, concealswithin a dunce in a dungeon and a madman on a chain.
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8Life offers everyone truth and comfort. Choosecarefully. You rarely can have both.
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9The young man loves women; the mature man lovesenterprise, the old man loves memories.
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10It is no more sensible to expect morality from science than it is toexpect feathers from a rock. Morality is not what science does.
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11"From a great kingdom [nation] into one great play-table,to turn its inhabitants into a nation of gamesters; tomake speculation as extensive as life; to mix it with all itsconcerns; and to divert the whole of the hopes and fearsof its people from their usual channels into the impulses,passions and superstitions of those who live on chances."—Edmond Burke (1790)
(It's enough to make one believe in reincarnation. This would make anexcellent twenty-first century op-ed piece for the Washington Post.)
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12Even donkeys know it is better to lie on straw than on gold.
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13In the gratification of every desire lies thecreation of more demanding ones.
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14Science asks, "What can we know?" Practicality asks, "Whatcan we do?" Morality asks, "How shall we behave?" Religionasks, "What will we believe?" Wisdom alone is silent.
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15Certainty is not a property of the universe;it is a construct of the mind.
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16Commerce has the cunning to pluck a handful of feathersfrom every goose for each kernel of corn it provides.
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17What makes us believe that every effect has acause and every cause has an effect? Is it not moresensible to think that everything is a complex,harmonic interplay of infinite relationships?
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18Why is it so difficult to see that estrangement from nature andfrom the wholeness of self came about in direct relationship tothe rise of mechanistic, Newtonian science and mathematics?
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19Language is the substitution of symbol for reality, thus the first,immense separation of humanity from the animate earth.
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20At the heart of most immense, intractable, societal problemslie the hubris of science, the ubiquity of technology, themythology of economics, and the corruption of commerce.
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21Dogma has this to recommend it: the believeris isolated from the constant struggle to obtainknowledge, understanding, and wisdom.
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22Formal education has abased itself and now concentrateson making the world safe for centralization of power,concentration of wealth, plunder of the planet,and dominance of science and technology.
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23I would much rather plant a tree than cut onedown, and draw current capital from the sun ratherthan exploit its accumulated reserves.
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24When money's rant is on, what do universities do? Why,leap forward, hands out, with the best of them. What shouldthe university do? Ah, that is another question entirely.
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25We are so obsessed with the nature of the economythat we ignore the economy of nature.
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26Western man conceives of time as a straight string stretching froma beginning to an end. Perhaps it is an integrated mass withoutbeginning or end within which all things manifest themselves andmove about without awareness of where in the mass they lie.
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27Lust for profit has no limit, no conscience, and no virtue.
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28That the words economist and economize have common originsis an excellent example of the debasement of language.
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29In our insatiable quest to know, what has happenedto our capacity to care? In our lust to get, what hashappened to our desire to give? In our eagerness tohate, what has happened to our capacity to love? Theanswers are too unpleasant to contemplate.
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30Knowledge by itself is a means without an end, a sentencewithout a subject. Knowledge alone can no more producea just, equitable, peaceful society than a trumpet cancompose a symphony or a violin play a musician.
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31In our monetized society, stockholder profit is the only thingthat can proclaim with the full force of law, and judicial sanction,"Thou shalt have no other god before me," to which corporateexecutives, politicians, and academics chorus a fervent, "Amen!"
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32Logic is the kingdom of opposites in which nothingcan be reconciled. Love has no such difficulty.
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33One of the principle functions of government duringthe past two centuries has been to make economiccrimes against people and planet legal.
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34Our descendants will view our insatiable, destructiveconsumption, and pursuit of economic growth as moralcorruption and mental derangement. They will justly curse usfor their legacy of enormous reparation we will leave them.
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35The earth can easily satisfy the legitimate needs ofall life, but not the devouring lusts of mankind.
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36Our leaders think terrorism is a problem to be solved withpower, technology, and money rather than a paradox to beavoided with awareness, wisdom, and equity. The same istrue of most other intransigent problems facing society.
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37Power demands; wisdom requests.
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38Postmodern education seems a mad effort to divorcethe humanities from the reality of living and relegatethem to the realm of fanciful abstraction.
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39The richest societies are always dependent on exploitation ofthe poorest. The most powerful societies are always dependenton domination of the weakest. We call it civilization.
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40Preoccupation with enemies, constant search for treason,continual appeals for patriotism, and ever-increasing militarymight are signs of an insecure, besieged, deteriorating nation.
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41Despite the achievements of science and technology,present society cannot cure a fraction of the ills it createsor create a fraction of the marvels it destroys.
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42Power without responsibility, wealth without beneficence,fame without morality, and avarice without restraint:is that the message of postmodern society?
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43Belief in the so-called "virtual world" is akin to belief thatperusing a wilderness map can replace a walk through a forest,that eating a menu can replace a meal, or that listening tonews accounts of a town meeting can replace participation.
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44In the past three centuries, the massive, blunderingimmediacy of what, when, and how has trampledunderfoot the essential importance of why.
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45We seem intent on descent into intense, high-tech barbarism.
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46The zeal with which we are led to believe that technologywill eventually save us from ecological, social, and politicaldisaster would be laughable were its consequences less grim.
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47We seem bound forever between things too huge and too smallto grasp, between things too obvious and too obscure to benoticed, between things too good and too evil to understand.
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48What is nature but a resource to be exploited bythe most fortunate among us as they see fit. Whynothing, of course, in the minds of most.
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49We invest in all the wrong things because theyare compatible with the pursuit of profit, whileessential values are discarded as useless.
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50The things that matter most and are essential to a decentsociety—character, ethics, empathy, generosity, love, peace—costnothing, while technology, war, and destructive consumptionare not necessary and cost a great deal. Why do we preferthe expensive and unnecessary to the essential and free?
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51For those who do not believe in the religion of money andrefuse to worship in the temples of commerce, the worldis an increasingly ugly, unfriendly, dangerous place.
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52There is a form of rabies rampant in science forwhich there is no known cure—hubris. It is spreadwhen one infected mind bites another.
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53Every decision, other than those essential to securefood, shelter, and clothing, should be made basedupon its effect a hundred years hence.
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54The great ideas of the past centuries continue totitillate our minds but they no longer touch our hearts.They have become intellectual toys rather thanfundamental beliefs. We reason about them but donot live them. They are in the brain, not the bone.
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55This is the age of violence—violence to planet,species, society, and individuals; violence to lifeitself and everything on which life depends.
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56There is no problem in the world that cannot be solvedif we love broadly, deeply, and wisely enough.
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57This much we can all know for certain: in the eyes of theuniverse, the most learned, powerful, wealthy, or famouscannot be distinguished from the least among us.
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58We are naught but temporary manifestations of thedispersed energy and intelligence of the universe. Howdoes our behavior appear to the pure intelligence andenergy from which we coalesced? Very poorly I suspect.
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59You can't reason with ideology any more than you can with deceit.
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60Everyone knows that children make more messes thanthey clean up. Everyone knows that present formsof societal organization, particularly government andbusiness, make more messes than they clean up. Are we,organizationally, in a state of arrested childishness?
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61Words are raped, pillaged, and plundered of all meaningwhen power's bellow and money's rant are on.
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62A society that believes infinite increase in material consumptionis possible in a finite world is a society of cretins.
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63All medical science notwithstanding, the race between microbesand man has barely begun. My money is on the microbes.
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64Any idiot can impose and exercise control. It takesgenius to ensure freedom and release creativity.
