Fifty years ago.............................................

The Moody Blues...................................................Question

 

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war?
'Cause when we stop and look around us
There is nothing that we need
In a world of persecution
That is burning in its greed

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door?
Because the truth is hard to swallow
That's what the war of love is for

It's not the way that you say it
When you do those things to me
It's more the way that you mean it
When you tell me what will be
And when you stop and think about it
You won't believe it's true
That all the love you've been giving
Has all been meant for you

I'm looking for someone to change my life
I'm looking for a miracle in my life
And if you could see what it's done to me
To lose the love I knew
Could safely lead me through

Between the silence of the mountains
And the crashing of the sea
There lies a land I once lived in
And she's waiting there for me
But in the grey of the morning
My mind becomes confused
Between the dead and the sleeping
And the road that I must choose

I'm looking for someone to change my life
I'm looking for a miracle in my life
And if you could see what it's done to me
To lose the love I knew
Could safely lead me to
The land that I once knew
To learn as we grow old
The secrets of our soul
It's not the way that you say it when you do those things to me
It's more the way you really mean it when you tell me what will be

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war?
When we stop and look around us
There is nothing that we need
In a world of persecution
That is burning in its greed

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door?

Songwriters: Justin Hayward

A lesson in enantiodromia*.........................

 That’s a big, broad takeaway of Covid that repeats itself throughout history: Nothing too good or too bad stays that way forever, because great times plant the seeds of their own destruction through complacency and leverage, and bad times plant the seeds of their own turnaround through opportunity and panic-driven problem-solving. The same story, again and again.

-Morgan Housel, from this blog post

*A theory from Carl Jung that an excess of something gives rise to its opposite.

in an ordinary mind............................

      Andre-Louis, on his side, had made the most of his opportunities.  You behold him at the age of four-and-twenty stuffed with learning enough to produce an intellectual indigestion in an ordinary mind.  Out of his zestful study of Man, from Thucydides to the Encyclopaedists, from Seneca to Rousseau, he had confirmed into an unassailable conviction his earliest conscious impressions of the general insanity of his own species.  Nor can I discover that anything in his eventful life ever afterwards caused him to waver in that opinion.

-Rafael Sabatini,  Scaramouche

Wally........................

While maybe not the best role model, he has some skills:

The truth can be elusive..........................

 Says Sherlock Holmes:

     "That process," said I, "starts upon the supposition that when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.  It may well be that several explanations remain, in which case one tries test after test until one or other of them has a convincing amount of support.  We will now apply this principle to the case in point. . . ."  

    "There remained the third possibility, into which, rare and unlikely as it was every thing seemed to fit.  Leprosy is not uncommon in South Africa.  By some extraordinary chance this youth might have contracted it. . . ."

Enters the "great dermatologist", Sir James Saunders, who says:

    "It is often my lot to bring ill-tidings and seldom good," said he.  "This occasion is the more welcome.  It is not leprosy"

     "What?"

     "A well-marked case of pseudo-leprosy or ichthyosis, a scale-like affection of the skin, unsightly, obstinate, but possibly curable, and certainly noninfective.  Yes, Mr. Holmes, the coincidence is a remarkable one.  But is it coincidence?  Are there not subtle forces at work of which we know little? . . ."

-Arthur Conan Doyle, The Blanched Soldier

Ed. Note:  In this story, the narrative is told by Holmes himself, for "The good Watson, had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which i can recall in our association."

Lest we forget...........................

 ". . . innovation is not usually a choreographed, planned, or managed thing.  It cannot be easily predicted, as may a red-faced forecaster has discovered.  It runs mostly on trial and error, the human version of natural selection.  And it usually stumbles on great breakthroughs when looking for something else; it is heavily serendipitous."

-Matt Ridley, How Innovation Works And Why It Flourishes in Freedom