• balance

Context: a young woman seeking enlightenment at an ashram in India asks her guru how she can find balance

Equobenity:

T.

appropriate

choices between e. and q.

is where God is found

"To find balance you want," Ketut spoke through his translator, "this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have four legs, instead of two. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God."

Eat, Pray, Love: one woman's search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert [Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Books; paperback 2006; page 27]

•    •    •

B

• betrayed, betrayal

Context: Kathy Birk's expression of betrayal remains as tragic and as apt today, in 2013, as it it was twenty years ago. How do men and women of business become so callous, so dishonorable. If a member of his own golf club treated the club's paid manager this way, wouldn't the member be asked to resign? Or worse? As this 1991 article about Kathy Birk was being written, she had become the manager of one of Dean Witter's branch managers where she was still known as someone who "plays by the rules."

Equobenity:

u.

Kathy Birk is known among colleagues and competitors for her dedication to playing by the rules. It's a passion she didn't come by casually. When she took her first job as stockbroker for Prudential Securities in 1980, she felt most comfortable selling ultra-low-risk investments. Her favorite annuity, National Investors, seemed so safe that she even sold it to her parents, who invested the bulk of their savings in it.

            "One day, abruptly, National Investors went bankrupt, leaving her clients, as well as her parents, in the lurch. She felt terrible. Even worse than the losses, she was haunted by her belief that Prudential's head office had deceived her, keeping the stock of National Investors' parent company on its 'buy' list up until the day the annuity went into receivership.

            " 'I couldn't believe no one had tipped me off,' said Mrs. Birk. 'Someone had to have known what was going on.' Soon she quit.

            "Looking back, she faults herself for having believed in others so blindly. Her chilling experience, during which she considered quitting the business entirely, highlights one of the root tensions in the retail end of the financial services business: the conflict between selling and the responsibility to the customer."

"Trying To Play By the Rules" by Seth Faison (The New York Times 12/22/91)

Here is a list of  "humorous" rules for bosses when they want to avoid the Kathy Birks of the world. They form the cruel guidelines for bosses and CEOs. One way for anyone to become corrupt is to follow them:

 (1) When in charge, ponder.

(2) When in trouble, delegate.

(3) When in doubt, mumble.

James H. Boren 1925-

•    •    •

B

• books

Context: Barry Lopez quotes a great classicist on what will teach you if you want to learn.

"These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice, as inaudible as the streams of sound conveyed day and night by electric waves beyond the range of our physical hearing; and just as the touch of a button on our set will fill the room with music, so by taking down one of these volumes and opening it, one can call into range the far distant voice in time and space, and hear it speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart."

                                                           Gilbert Highet

Lopez:

"Highet was a classics scholar. The words reflect his respect for the ideas of other cultures, other generations, and for the careful deliberations of trained minds. Euler is in this mold; keen and careful, expert in his field, but intent on fresh insight. At fifty-seven, with an ironic wit, willing to listen attentively to the ideas of an amateur, graciously polite, he is the sort of man you wish had taught you in college."

The Highet quote is from Crossing Open Ground by Barry Lopez (Charles Scribner's Sons & Macmillan Publishing Company; 1988; page 169-170)

The T. position, the transcendence of this e., book learning and q., experience, is worth noting. The two reinforce one another, taking turns to push the other along. Effective people prize their teachers as much as their own experience, and their experience as much as their teachers.

•    •    •

B

• boundaries, that which is bounded and limited versus that which is limitless, without boundaries

Context: A pianist accepts and revels in his boundaries. A teenager rebels against boundaries sensing freedom in the coming future. Tragedy and needless death results from the failure to accept either legitimate limitations, or to refuse dangerous freedom.

Equobenity: the T. or transcendence of

T.

there is no age, no person's natural inclination, no state of health

unable to know the fulfillment and pleasures

of boundaries and, equally,

to know the fulfillment and pleasure

of that which is limitless

The T. position, the transcendence, demonstrates a new thing, an object, an attitude, a state just now created. The transcendence of this equobenity occurs when a person correctly understands when and why boundaries are necessary, at the same time maintaining a sense of how much that remains limitless.

Examples:

A pianist fully accepts the boundaries of the piano itself and the music from which  h/e is playing. At the same time h/e feels with his soul that how h/e plays is limitless in its possibilities

A teenager accepts the boundaries of parents and school but is always pushing and rebelling against these boundaries. H/er unlived life stretching out ahead of h/er, tells h/er there are no limits to what sh/e can aspire.

• category

Context: : A form was invented by the 18th century botanist, Linnaeus, so that we could "sort out" the varieties of life on earth. Here, it is just one small bird, one swallow to be sorted out and classified.

Equobenity:

           e.

"As the species rustica belongs to the Hirundo, so the genus Hirundo belongs to the swallow family, Hirundinidae, which includes some twenty other genera as well. The family Hirundinidae in turn, belongs to the order Passeriformes (the so-called perching birds, most familiar in field and garden), which belong to the class Aves, which belongs to the subphylum Vertebrata of the phylum Chordata, which belongs to the animal kingdom, which belongs to the ultimate category, that of life-on-earth. Life-on-earth constitutes one web that relates the swallow to the human observer (Homo sapiens, of the family Hominidae, of the order Primates, of the class Mammalia, of the subphylum Vertebrata...etc.). So the swallow, if not my brother, is at least a cousin, and all life is one."

                                                                                From Louis J. Halle's "The Appreciation of Birds"

•    •    •

C

• change: A situation that needs changing, in this case the deteriorating African nation of Mozambique.

Context: Through his own inventive efforts Greg Carr has made his millions. He is young. What is he going to do with the rest of his life? Suddenly he knows. Suddenly his mind pulls itself together and his life changes. A decision is taken all at once. He gives up what he had been doing and takes on a whole nation in need.

The impoverished mode of e. is a failure to see the irritations and mess-ups of being an amateur and a busybody.

The impoverished mode of q. is being a couch potato who deserves what defines

h/im.

Greg Carr calls this "the moment when one fever breaks and gives way to a new

fever, the moment of self-regard when one calls oneself into question and reverses course.

He commissioned a filmmaker, Jessica Yu, to make a documentary about people who experience an 'Agave moment' --a terrorist, for instance, and a bank robber, who suddenly saw themselves engaged in action of a kind that they wanted to believe they stood against.

In Carr's own life, there was no severed head, no drama worthy of Euripides. But the chapter that was at odds with the way he thinks of himself was, he said, the years he spent as a 'crazed businessman' --and after he cashed out he went through a long period of not knowing what to do."

Greg Carr ("The Monkey and the Fish: can Gregg Carr save an African ecosystem?" reported by Philip Gourevitch, The New Yorker; December 21 and 29, 2009, page 99)

•    •    •

C

• chaos

Context:

the instructions on how to work the elevator, as posted in a hotel in Belgrade

                        e. chaos as serious                   q. chaos as amusing, funny

"To move the cabin, push button for wishing floor. If the cabin should enter more persons, each one should press number of wishing floor. Driving is then going alphabetically by national order."

The New York Times, 11/15/84, headline (on Op-Ed page): "Truly Inspired Gibberish")

     What about the splendid and creative chaos of a genius? Can't we afford to at least leave them alone?

But how wonderful it is that Ludwig Alois Ferdinand Ritter von Kochel  neglected his work as a botanist long enough to bring order to the hundreds of works of Mozart.

"The thematic catalogue which Kochel's all-encompassing approach compiled, still in use today in spite of many reshufflings, was undreamed of prior to his effort, and arose out of the attitudes of the scientific spirit of the 19th century. "

The New York Times, 7/8/90, Headline: "If Mozart Has Arrived, Can Kochel Be Far Behind?" by Will Crutchfield.)

•    •    •

C

• control

There two issues that undo us all, and cause grief, war and suffering

Equobenity:

"I met an old lady once, almost one hundred years old, and she told me, 'There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, control and love, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge?' Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief and suffering."

Eat, Pray, Love: one woman's search for anything across Italy, Inida, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert [Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Books; paperback 2006; page 157]

•     •    •

C

• conversation

both equobenity and the impoverished mode

Two people, a listener and a speaker, have a conversation. The conversation is the T. position, the transcendence between two opposite but forever paired goods: speaking/listening. The T. the conversation, is a "new thing". No one has ever had this conversation before. It has just been born. You can hear the flow when three or more people are talking and it has the good tension of really listening and responding, of really getting somewhere. The equobenity has to do with the listening itself, the talking itself. One person speaks, everyone listens. If it's important and someone starts to talk quietly on the side, the speaker might say, "Hey can this please wait? If we don't all hear this at once, someone will be left out of something." So the equobenity is the dialogue, between however many people.

 Here's a description of the impoverished mode of people talking:

"Nichols and May specialized in the language of received wisdom: they improvised on the way people talk when they think that they are sounding smart or hip or just impressively reasonable. This was Feiffer's specialty too. His strips are almost always the same: people who are trying to talk their way through or around something, and end ensnarled in their own discourse, because the discourse is not, in fact, their own. Feiffer's strips are about a borrowed way of talking, about the lack of fit between people and words, about the way that clichés take over."

The New Yorker, 1/5/09 page 43

• dilemma

Context: Someone is torn between being with friends and checking on a [presumably] older person for whom the speaker feels responsible.

Equobenity:

"I walked away, my head filled with questions: What if he's inside and disabled? What if he's had a stroke, or slipped and broke his hip in the shower? How long would he last? What would he think of his friends laughing and sniffing indelicately outside his door? Why am I not doing something? What if that were me in there?

But then I thought: How many times have I let my imagination get the better of me? How many times have I thought the worst and been wrong?"

Poe Ballantine, "An Unfamiliar Form of Solitaire" (The Sun, August 2001, page 28)

•    •    •

D

• disorder

Survival. Out of profound, existential disorder erupts the recognition and desperate need for order. General Schwarzkopf was the commanding American general in the 1991 limited war to free Kuwait after Saddam Hussein's invasion.

The following quotation, from an A. von Bogulawski, is one of Schwarzkopf's favorites. It describes the kind of situation that is so chaotic and so threatening that to survive a person must indeed find some kind of order, achieve some coherent understanding. But perhaps this general's ruling maxims were not tough enough to make him successful; his name has not become familiar even if he did win battles. When people talk about how they survived something, or how they achieved something they usually include in the telling, what factors were present including how the person was figuring it out, i.e. we hear the wisdom, the rule, the proverb that added strength. But we hear nothing like that in this account, no pride or ego in his description. His account is so poignant because Bogulawski just speaks from the thick of it.

Equobenity:

e. disorder, chaos: creates new possibilities with old    q. order : maintains the status; new control

e.

"For what art can express that of the general--an art which deals not with dead matter but with living beings, who are subject to every impression of the moment, such as fear, precipitation, exhaustion--in short, to every human passion and excitement. The general not only has to reckon with unknown quantities, such as time, weather, accidents of all kinds, but he has before him one who seeks to disturb and frustrate his plans and labors in every way; and at the same time this man, upon whom all eyes are directed, feels upon his mind the weight of responsibility not only for the lives and honor of hundreds of thousands, but even for the welfare and existence of his country."

Headline: "Operation Desert Norm" by CDB Bryan (The New Republic, 3/11/91)

•    •    •

D

• doubt

Context: Maintaining respect for Richard Feynman's expressed value for doubt even though he doesn't seem to value certainty to the same degree.

Equobenity:

q. The physicist Richard Feynman wrote whole books on the transcendent value of doubt, but (undoubtedly) there is doubt's impoverished mode. And he never mentions doubt's other side: certainty.

 e. "I have never known a man who died from overwork, but many who died from doubt."

Surgeon Charles Horace Mayo, quoted in the Washington Post; THE WEEK, 12/26/08 – 1/9/09 page 19

•    •    •

D

• duty (its impov. mode)

Context: Taking stock of one's attitude to pure pleasure. One asks, "To whom and to what is duty owed? To oneself? To the standards of a strict family upbringing? But in this quotation the speaker  has no spouse, and no children to help one lean to family duty.  No, the conflict is all in her own head. Too much "duty". She needs to shake it off.

"While I have come to Italy in order to experience pleasure, during the first few weeks I was here, I felt a bit of panic as to how one should do that. Frankly, pure pleasure is not my cultural paradigm. I come from a long line of superconscientious people. My mother's family were Swedish immigrant farmers, who look in their photographs like, if they'd ever seen something pleasurable, they might have stomped on it with their hobnailed boots. (My uncle calls the whole lot of them 'oxen'.) My father's side of the family were English Puritans, those great goofy lovers of fun. If I look on my dad's family tree all the way back to the seventeenth century, I can actually find Puritan relatives with names like Diligence and Meekness."

Eat, Pray, Love: one woman's search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert [Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Books; paperback 2006; page 60]

•    •    •

• empathy

Context: an editor does not fail to understand people even though others would think they are stupid or nuts or "in their own world." If this is the doctor's fulltime job he must feel the division and pressure between the two sides of this equobenity.

Equobenity:

            e. their reality becomes my reality                  q. my reality is not theirs                      

"The editor of the US edition of the "Guinness Book of Records", Mark Young, has about 65 calls a day from people who think they have an item that sets a record for the book.

"Often the item is no more than a personal idiosyncrasy such as the man from India who sent in an X-ray film of his stomach who had starved himself for four days in order to make his stomach look like a lion's head, or the woman who called to say she could floss her teeth in twenty seconds and was sure this was a record, or the man who could do more consecutive belly-flops than anyone else and thought this was a good example to set today's youth.

"It is Mark Young's job to play 'coach, referee and cheerleader to the supplicants'....Mr. Young, 32 years old, seems to have the right temperament for the role of ambassador to the world of superlatives: a smooth British diplomacy, a breezy unflappable manner and a healthy respect for efforts that could easily be dismissed as wacky stunts.

" ''The fact is, these people are not nuts,' he said. 'They're quite serious, and if you can't understand that, this job will drive you crazy.' "

The New York Times 10/7/92, reported by Adam Bryant

•    •    •

E

• eternity

"Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?"

Tom Stoppard, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" [1967] Act 2

•    •    •

E

• etiquette

Context: These are the rules about how we handle, literally, the American flag.

Equobenity:

                        e. rules followed to the letter  q. make up rules as we need them

Flag Etiquette rules for the American flag are as follows:

e.

"The Flag should not be raised before sunrise and should be lowered at sunset, if possible. It should be hoisted briskly and should be lowered slowly and ceremoniously.

Every home, every industrial establishment, every public building should own a Flag and display it.

The use of the Flag as a receptacle for receiving, holding, carrying or delivering anything should be prohibited.

When display at half-mast, the Flag should be first raised to the top of the staff and then lowered to the half-mast position. On Memorial Day, it should remain at half-mast only until noon, and then hoisted to the top to remain until sunset.

For primary school children, the following oral salute is recommended: "We give our hands and our hearts to God and our Country--One Flag, One Country, One Language.

No advertisement can ever be placed on the Flag-nor can it be used as or with a trademark. It should never be worn as a whole or part of a costume.

When the Flag becomes worn and dilapidated, it should be destroyed by burning without ceremony. No one should be present save the person charged with destroying the Flag.

Do not carry the Flag flat or horizontally, but always aloft, full and free.

Do not display the Flag on a float in a parade except from a staff.

Do not fasten anything in the nature of advertising to a pole from which the Flag is flown.

Observe these rules and maintain the traditions of our Flag, practically the oldest of all, the most beautiful and the Flag which has never known defeat. In 1917, the Flag was in a World War for the first time. We hope for the last time.

The American flag should not be sewn on athletic costumes or worn in any way other than by placing a small unattached Flag on the left breast.

While nothing can add to the beauty and dignity of the Flag, nevertheless the use of gold or yellow silk fringe on the Flag has grown out of years of custom, and there is nothing objectionable in the practice.

There can certainly be no harm done by washing or cleansing our flag providing it is done at a person's own home and is not sent out to anyplace where it might be used disrespectfully.

It is considered a mark of disrespect to have a pipe, cigar or cigarette in the mouth when the hat is removed in respect to the Flag.

When "The Star Spangled Banner" is played and the Flag is not displayed, all persons should stand and face the direction from which the music comes."

Headline: "American Flag Etiquette" excerpted by Andy Rooney (Hudson Register Star, 1/2/90)

• fair

Context: : What is fair with regard to European policies in Africa? How to stop what is being done to Africa?

Equobenities:

"If we really cared about Africans...

"Europeans can do more than just wring our hands over the sad plight of the Mediterranean boat people, said Jakob Zimm.  (see below) We've all been horrified by the images of the desperate, hungry Eritreans and Somalis crammed into rickety boats run by heartless smugglers. We've mourned at the sight of rows of coffins, many of them child-size, containing the bodies of the hundreds who perished on their failed journeys to a better life.

"We can't let them all in, obviously, nor can we solve all of Africa’s ethnic tensions or governance problems. But we certainly can give Africans a shot at a better standard of living in their home countries, through 'the true opening of European markets to African products and the dismantling of trade-distorting subsidies.'

"In years past European countries 'systematically destroyed the African agricultural system' through our export subsidies, as we dumped our crops in African markets. We've gotten better about that and have reduced some of the tariffs that penalize African goods, but 'there is still no fair competition.'

"Africa has nearly one quarter of the world's arable land, yet produces less than one tenth of the world's crops. Until the European Union allows famers there to compete fairly with our own, Africa’s economy will remain 'too weak to give its people reason to stay.' " (italics EE)

Best columns: Europe; from Austria, Jakob Zimm in Die Presse (THE WEEK November 1, 2013 page 12)

•    •    •

F

• faith

" 'The Age of Anxiety' assures us that fear and lust have, in faith and purity, a cure so potent we need never know panic or be defeated by Self.' "

Marianne Moore, reviewing for The New York Times, W.H. Auden's book "The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue" as reproduced in the Princeton University Press booklet: Literature 2013, page 20

Context: Are fear and lust only impoverished modes? Only something for which we must find a remedy and cure? If not, how do we describe their equobenities?

Equobenities:

on the great field where choice takes place

it is so vital that all the diverse opinions,

learned and not learned

be heard

that extra spaces must be left open

the Etc. is

so important that without it and its legitimacy

we would tumble into oppression once more

To repeat:

" 'The Age of Anxiety' assures us that fear and lust have, in faith and purity, a cure so potent we need never know panic or be defeated by Self.' "

Marianne Moore, reviewing for The New York Times, W.H. Auden's book "The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue" as reproduced in the Princeton University Press booklet: Literature 2013, page 20

Now we ask, will "faith and purity" be a "potent cure" for the impoverished mode of "fear and lust?"

The impoverished mode of fear, along with a general weakening, loss of one's self and the self's unshakeable meaning, is a loss of faith, faith in the religious sense and faith in the worldly sense, a faith that something good can still happen, that there can still be rescue, justice, return.

The impoverished mode of lust has to be a kind of excoriating infiltration, a state of being from which one feels there is no possibility of escape. An addiction.

To achieve any kind of faith in the midst of overwhelming fear, or to seek purity even as your body is racked with unrelieved lust, must seem impossible. Surely the "patient" must be removed from the physical source of fear and of lust; h/e must be persuaded to start talking.

There are thousands of good souls who will talk as "patients"
need to talk. Are there as many ways to find such people? And are there enough people of empathy who will listen?

•    •    •

F

• family and in particular, family as part of all political systems.

Context: Without thinking we are "training" our children, we act and believe in certain ways, and not in others. Our children absorb our values, our ways of interacting, the limits or breadths of our interests.

Equobenity:

e.

"Families are not only personal but political entities; in fact, far from being exempt from politics, family relations in their political patterns are important seedbeds and training models for the conduct of a nation's political life, one reason that states and state churches struggle so arduously to shape them. What is considered just and acceptable in some versions of family life --as, for instance, ritual mutilation, wife or child beating, refusing women the right to drive or travel on their own authority, the abandonment of unwanted babies, or divorce only on the husband's initiative-- will rarely be penalized by the state, particularly if the practice has been sacrilized through theological sanction, and is presented as an expression of God's will. "

"Dinner With Persephone" by Patricia Storace (Pantheon Books, NY, 1996, page 338)

And later in the book Storace adds to this:

"__one indication of a country's capacity for diplomacy, for compromise, negotiation, promise making and keeping, may be found in the relations of its men and women, which are the models and training grounds for making alliances, for the negotiation, discussion, and maintenance of common interests without the use of physical force, for the cultivation and sustaining of trust."

                                                ibid. page 385

•    •    •

F

• force, the life force

Context:  Force, as a written word, appears usually in its impoverished mode. But, like fear and lust, force is also one half of a powerful equobenity. In fact, can there be a more potent and necessary equobenity?

Equobenity::

            e. life force, survival               q. thanatos, lure of sleep, death

The biologist Elisabeth Tova Bailey, researching the lives of snails, came across this description of a snail's love life as observed and described by Gerald Durrell in his autobiography. A ten-year-old boy at the time, Durell was living with his family on the Greek island of Corfu. One day he went into a forest after it had been raining. Bailey quotes Durrell:

" 'On a myrtle branch there were two fat, honey- and amber-coloured snails gliding smoothly towards each other, their horns waving provocatively… As I watched them they glided up to each other until their horns touched. Then they paused and gazed long and earnestly into each other's eyes. One of them then shifted his position slightly so that he could glide alongside the other one. When he was alongside, something happened that made me doubt the evidence of my own eyes. From his side, and almost simultaneously from the side of the other snail, there shot what appeared to be two minute, fragile white darts… The dart from snail one pierced the side of snail two and disappeared, and the dart from snail two performed a similar function on snail one… Peering at them so closely that my nose was almost touching them…[I watched as] presently their bodies were pressed tightly together. I knew they must be mating, but their bodies had become so amalgamated that I could not see the precise nature of the act. They stayed rapturously side by side… and then, without so much as a nod or a thank you, they glided away in opposite directions.' "

"The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating" by Elisabeth Tova Bailey (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, NC; a division of Workman Publishing, NYC, NY; 2010, page 122 and 123)

Bailey goes on to describe the love darts scientifically as

"--arrows of calcium carbonate, and they look as if they've been crafted by the very finest of artisans. They are formed inside the body of the snail over the course of a week and can be as much as one-third the length of the shell. The dart's shaft is hollow and circular and, depending on species, may have four finlike blades, which are sometimes flanged; one end is harpoon sharp, while the other end come to a flair with a corona-like base…Some species produce a new dart for each mating; others withdraw and reuse them in successive matings."

ibid.

Extraordinary as is this description, there is something far more extraordinary and yet it is so familiar that many people have never thought about it, much less taught themselves to be amazed and stunned by it. This stunning reality is the life force. What is this force that applies itself to every action? Inserts itself into every action, both habitual actions and actions beyond our wildest imaginations -as in the mating of snails? Of what does this force consist? To what is it allied? On what does it feed? How free is it? What encourages it and what discourages it? How did it come into existence? What is it?

• generalization

Context: Generalizations are dangerous partly because it is so tempting to make them. And because how often they are based in some way on the speak h/imself.

Equobenities:

"I now perceive one immense omission in my Psychology,

--the deepest principle of Human Nature is the craving to be appreciated, and I left it out altogether from the book, because I had never had it gratified till now."

William James 1842-1910

•    •    •

G

• give back

Context: The actions we perform in our lives defines our life.

Equobenity:

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

"Candida" by George Bernard Shaw [1898] act 1

•    •    •

G

• "Go! Go! Go!"

Context: The novel's narrator, Simon Morley, is being persuaded to accept the offer of an unusual job and is hearing reasons he should take it. Rube does more than that, he lays out a choice between two kinds of life.

Equobenity:

e.

"[Rube] said, 'So this is what you have to do: take a chance. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, grab your nose, and jump in. Or would you rather keep on selling soap, chewing gum, and brassieres, or whatever the hell it is you peddle down the street? You're a young man, for crysake!' Rube sliced his hands together, dusting off crumbs, and shoved several balls of waxed paper into his lunch sack. Then he stood up quickly and easily, the ex-footballer. 'You know what I'm talking about, Si; the only possible way you do this is to just go ahead and do it.' "

"Time and Again" by Jack Finney, (Scribner Paperback Fiction; Simon & Schuster; 1970; page 15)

•    •    •

G

• goal

"The soul that has no fixed goal loses itself; for as they say, to be everywhere is to be nowhere."

Michel de Montaigne, quoted in THE WEEK, 9/2/11

Context:

Equobenities:

 When there is a serious problem (corruption, stealing etc.) q. has stopped being efficacious. If the powers that be do not turn to e. there will be unending trouble. This is true in both of the following equobenities. To lay down rules and then neglect them, or, conversely, be lax about rules until something doesn't suit the lead guy and down come the ax. Both of these are examples of falling between two stools, doing a little of this and a little of that. This often means losing both sides, or spoiling both sides.

O.

"If the NCAA doesn't come down hard on one of its biggest moneymaking teams for a scandal of this magnitude, it will have the 'legacy of a paper tiger.' "

THE WEEK, September 2, 2011

Second equobenity re goal.  This is an equobenity with [presumably] less severe consequences:

If e. is declared and no exceptions are allowed, the speaker could be moving down to u.

On the other hand, if q. was my friend and I counted on h/er for a good skiing weekend I think I might make my own plans. On o. coming up?

Both statements can very well be equobenities. Period.

If the soldier physically survives, which is worse, the degraded, lost self of e. that followed orders, or the soul of q. whose capacity for responsible life has been forever larded through with horror and unquenchable sorrow? It is terrible to think of. War must becomes unthinkable for everyone. Universal education in the art of debate should be a first step toward a sanity the human race has not yet to desire.

Pierre, in Book II of Tolstoy's "War and Peace" is one of the novel's central figures. During Napoleon's abortive invasion of Russia, Pierre is captured and taken out with other prisoners to be shot. For the shooters this has become a habit because they have executed so many. The reader lives intensely with Pierre and the immanence of death.

But when the order is received that sets him free, Pierre thinks back to those who were shot and he experiences the terrible rifle shots in his soul.

In the reader's mind each of these now dead soldiers are all alike in their death just as they were to the shooters. We, the readers, see them as identical in their context, as if just one equobenity could serve as an expression for all of them. But it couldn't. And it couldn't for Pierre.

Tolstoy could have written a chapter, a whole book, about each of these doomed soldiers. Each would be involved in their own set of equobenities, life changing equobenities which will now go uncompleted. This is always and forever true about everyone of us. Death, war, stops us in our tracks.

Looking at the violence young people are being taught today (video and other games), an appreciation of peace seems a long way off.

•    •    •

H

• hero and anti-hero

Context: How does a person responds to challenge and also to need? For this perennial question we have a huge literature of heroes, from Homer to George Eliot to Ben Mountain. And we have as huge a literature as anti-heroes, from Knut Hamsun, Kafka, Beckett, and Thomas Bernhard. What is a hero's equobenity? S/he is required of course, to choose on side and not the other. Which will the hero choose? Which the anti-hero?

Equobenity:

Joseph Campbell's "Hero With A Thousand Faces" used every part of the globe, and every century, to show how the hero's behavior differed from the behavior of his siblings. (Until "recently" heroes appeared to be all men.)

The difference turned out to hinge on humility. The siblings who fail the assigned task are too self-confident, too proud. They are above listening to the advice of anyone they consider "beneath" them.

The hero has the quality of assuming, and understanding in what way, "all men are created equal."  He listens to the advice of a crippled old hag at the edge of the woods, a miserable creature his brothers have galloped proudly past.

The Germans have two words that mean gift. One of these words also means poison. The anthropologist, Marcel Mauss, understood this of the power that accumulates around the person (or tribe) that is very rich and gives lavishly to others. Those who can't reciprocate, who can only receive, are eventually corrupted. In effect, they have been poisoned.

But there could be a second consideration. The eldest son of a King, the first one to accept the challenge to go into the dark woods and slay the dragon, and the first of two siblings to die because he hasn't the humility to stop and see what the old hag has to say --perhaps he has been poisoned. Poisoned by being the son of a King, the eldest son and inheritor. Perhaps he has fallen for his position, become entitled, complacent. Perhaps he believes in himself because he assumes he'll do as well or better than his father, because he believes the flattery of sycophantic  courtiers and servants who are afraid of his power.

The hero in him has died a long time before he flung himself on that white charger and, sword in hand, dashed for the forest and the home of the dragon.

Was the Buddha a younger son? Or was there something in him that resisted the lure of the material world as provided by his father?

Today's psychologists tell us that the eldest in a family is the most successful. A younger brother moans, "Why couldn't I have been the eldest?"

Is this because parents have learned to have a better perspective on their own power? Of what their own power, in reality consists? The fact that they can abuse what power they have but also can use it for the creative growth of their child, to "bend the twig so it becomes the tree it was meant to be"?

Does this work out differently in western democracies? In Saudi Arabia, in North Korea, in the many countries controlled completely from the top --are they turning out eldest sons (and daughters!) as heroes? Or are they wondering why they only seem to produce anti-heroes?

There is sometimes a very fine line between challenge and need. One brother is finishing the PhD. which ultimately will define his working life. The second brother has started to lay planking down for a new metal roof on the family garage. It is snowing, there is ice, the second brother falls off the roof and needs immediate assistance. Is the scholarly brother a hero if he leaves his work and goes to the aid of his brother? No, he's responding to need closely connected to himself. And if the roof is at the end of the next street? The brother fell because some unemployed men threw rocks at him, calling him a squirrel? Would the scholar be a hero when he got the call from an observer and rushed over?

The responders to need are legion, bless them. Heroes are also legion, bless them. Literature has long been more interested in anti-heroes. Why? The negativity can weigh on you.

•    •    •

H

• history, the ways of writing history

Context: Should history be written as fact, evidentiary history, not written in the form of essays, not written as religion, not written as opinions?

Equobenities:

T.

there being such a tremendous amount of historical material

to know, and understand, and then to record accurately,

that one wonders:

can any one person embrace both sides of any of these four equobenities?

Or will the transcendence have to take place in our synthesizing minds

after reading both sides?

Two ways of writing history are observed to alternate with each other over a period of time. If a period endures long enough the historian can feel comfortable submitting to this one accepted way.

However, being descriptive during a period of statistical history writing could prevent the historian's work being published. Likewise, an important piece on genealogical statistics, written during a period that emphasizes the individual biography, could mean the statistical work could lie unrecognized for decades.

"In addition to their employment of the narrative mode of exposition, these micro histories are characterized, first, by an emphasis on particular individuals and events, not on groups or structures; and second, by a predilection for the study of people and milieu hitherto unknown and unexplored. Thus, the subjects of these books are frequently peasants, artisans, vagabonds, common soldiers, witches, prostitutes, nuns, friars, and parish priests from the lower echelons of the social order. By far the richest source for these obscure lives has been the records of courts, both secular and ecclesiastical, which exist in thousands of European and American archives and libraries. From this vast, largely untapped repository of judicial records, the patient and careful researcher can reconstruct particular images of 'the world we have lost' and of people who inhabited that world. When successful, this microcosmic focus conveys a sense of immediacy, intimacy, and concreteness that is often absent from analytical histories."

Giovanni and Lusanna; Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence by Gene Brucker (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California; copyright 1986 The Regents of the university of California; page VIII and 1X)

• limits

Context: Falling in love and not having your love returned as fully and permanently in the same way that you love is usually a source of pain --to put it mildly. Nevertheless, in the following instance, the girl's love is so certain and so complete that for her this unrequited love is the universe.

Equobenity:

"She's kept her love for him as alive as the summer they first met. In order to do this, she's turned life away. … It might seem like you're limiting yourself at first, but after awhile you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky." (italics EE)

"The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss (W.W.Norton & Company Ltd. NYC, NY 2005; paperback, page 45)

•    •    •

L

•love (not agape)

Context: Generalities about love are followed here by specifics about falling in love

      Equobenities:

• "Love is a gentle hand which slowly pushes fate to one side."

                                                                              Sigrid Siwertz

one of Henning Mankell's three epigraphs for his 2006 novel "Italian Shoes"

• Three lines from Rainer Maria Rilke's "Love Song" of 1907

"But all that touches us, yes everything

brings us together like a bow-string

which pulls from two strings a single chord.

regretfully the translator is unknown

      Personal, Specific: Falling in love, losing one's own sense of being

Context: Being, that is: ontological. What it's like to be in love

            Equobenity:

                        e. melding with "the other"     q. maintaining sense of self

"—I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have everything. You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog's money, my dog's time –everything. If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will project upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else. I do not relay these facts about myself with pride, but this is how it's always been."

"Eat, Pray, Love: one woman's search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia" by Elizabeth Gilbert (Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Books; paperback 2006; page 65)

On the other hand, here, no matter what happens, the sense of Self is maintained

Context: Here, two lovers are in a relationship

Equobenity:

e. melding into the other -------q. maintaining the sense of self

                                                                           (see quote below)

impoverished mode of the above equobenity:

                    u. only melding, no sense           o. inability, refusal to meld;                                                             of one's self                           fear can cause total withdrawal and so one is protected

The Augusteum is a centuries old structure buried deep under the city of Rome, Italian traffic rushing overhead.  Since at least the 12th century the Augusteum has been put to many uses: vineyard (when it was at ground level), bullring, fortress, cemetery, concert hall etc. Of this structure Gilbert writes:

"I find the endurance of the Augusteum so reassuring, that this structure has had such an erratic career, yet always adjusted to the particular wildness of the times. To me, the Augusteum is like a person who's led a totally crazy life –who maybe started out as a housewife, then unexpectedly became a widow, then took up fan-dancing to make money, ended up somehow as the first female dentist in outer space, and then tried her hand at national politics –yet who has managed to hold an intact sense of herself throughout every upheaval."

"Eat, Pray, Love: one woman's search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia" by Elizabeth Gilbert (Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Books; paperback 2006; page 75)

•    •    •

L

• life force ( a repetition from Choice A to Z, under F)

Context: The biologist Elisabeth Tova Bailey, researching the lives of snails, came across this description of a snail's love life as observed and described by Gerald Durrell in his autobiography. A ten-year-old boy at the time, he was living with his family on the Greek island of Corfu when he went into a forest after it had been raining. Bailey quotes Durrell

            Equobenity:

e. to think you know something            q. to know you know hardly anything

" 'On a myrtle branch there were two fat, honey- and amber-coloured snails gliding smoothly towards each other, their horns waving provocatively… As I watched them they glided up to each other until their horns touched. Then they paused and gazed long and earnestly into each other's eyes. One of them then shifted his position slightly so that he could glide alongside the other one. When he was alongside, something happened that made me doubt the evidence of m own eyes. From his side, and almost simultaneously from the side of the other snail, there shot what appeared to be two minute, fragile white darts… The dart from snail one pierced the side of snail two and disappeared, and the dart from snail two performed a similar function on snail one… Peering at them so closely that my nose was almost touching them…[I watched as] presently their bodies were pressed tightly together. I knew they must be mating, but their bodies had become so amalgamated that I could not see the precise nature of the act. They stayed rapturously side by side… and then, without so much as a nod or a thank you, they glided away in opposite directions.

"The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating" by Elisabeth Tova Bailey (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, NC; a division of Workman Publishing, NYC, NY; 2010, page 122 and 123)

Bailey goes on to describe the love darts scientifically as:

"--arrows of calcium carbonate, and they look as if they've been crafted by the very finest of artisans. They are formed inside the body of the snail over the course of a week and can be as much as one-third the length of the shell. The dart's shaft is hollow and circular and, depending on species, may have four finlike blades, which are sometimes flanged; one end is harpoon sharp, while the other end comes to a flair with corona-like base…Some species produce a new dart for each mating; others withdraw and reuse them in successive matings."

ibid.

Extraordinary as is this description, there is something far more extraordinary and yet it is so familiar that many people don't think about it, much less taught themselves to be amazed and stunned by it. This stunning reality is the life force. What is this force that applies itself to every action? Inserts itself into every action, both habitual actions and actions beyond our wildest imaginations --as in the mating of snails? Of what does this force consist? To what is it allied? On what does it feed? How free is it? What encourages it and what discourages it? How did it come into existence? What is it?

• many

Music is ubiquitous. It is heard by many and created by many. It is also one of our essential mysteries. What is it? Why is it? Here is one simple aspect of it.

Equobenity and the T. position:

                        e. the one                                 q. the many

T.

music as it is heard by millions

From Pablo Neruda's "Ode to Solitude"

"in its search for self-expression

music sought out

the choir's coral hardness.

It was written

not by a single man

but by a whole score

of musical relations."

Pablo Neruda, "Odes to Opposites" (Little, Brown and Company, 1995; page 103)

There are many arguments for the e. position, the solitary creator, the solitary musician practicing for the concert, the lone conductor. But we are all both, both solitary and part of some family of same-minded people.

•    •    •

M

• motivation

Context: Are there ways America and western Europe can help the deadly and worsening situation in the middle east? Everyone fighting is fighting for what h/e wants. Should there be thinking about this equobenity? Are we seriously thinking about ethics? Do we understand everyone's motivation? Our own?

Two equobenities:

Here is an example of motivation on a bigger scale than just the small fighting factions, but not on a scale large enough to take into account western Europe which abuts the Levant to the north, and America, Israel's best friend.

"Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Snub to the U.N.: In an act unprecedented in U.N. history, Saudi Arabia has refused to accept a seat on the Security Council. Surprising the entire U.N. and evidently many Saudi diplomats, U.N. Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi said the county would not join a body that had failed to stop Syrian bloodshed, end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or rid the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction --an apparent reference to Israel' presumed nuclear and chemical weapons. it was the first time Saudi Arabia had been elected to take one of the 10 rotating seats on the council, which also has five permanent members.

 " 'The Saudis no doubt quickly realized that being on the UNSC would mean they could no longer pursue their traditional back seat and low-key policies,' said Princeton professor Bernard Haykel.' "

Briefing: The Sunni-Shiite war (THE WEEK November 1, 2013 page 7 and 9)

Is this what Professor Haykel meant:

The Sunnis have a new backer: "The Saudis are funding a militant leader n Syria with the aim of uniting the disparate Islamist militias under the banner of the Salafists, Sunni hardliners."

ibid

There must be created a universal system of ethics, a system that is separate from, and more binding than, religion, a system that is understood by all peoples, agreed to by all nation. If we could go back a hundred or so years, it would be easier. Small groups seem to manage themselves very well. But going backward is prohibited. Ethics has to be our next destination for our wretched, war-torn journey forward.

•    •    •

M

• mystery

Context: In spite of rigor and objectivity in research, in spite of the strength derived from vigor and objectivity, nevertheless, even though no error has been made, it is still not possible to know all there is to be known about any single creature or any single phenomenon. Scientists sometimes feel the power of this but it can feel like a dilemma. However, there is a benefit for all of us, for scientists, from the quantum world.

e. mystery and awe                   q. new factual information and new understanding

We can "cultivate within ourselves a sense of mystery – to see that the possibilities for an expression of life in any environment, or in any single animal, are larger than we can predict or understand, and that this is all right. Biology should borrow here from quantum physics, which accepts the premise that, under certain circumstances, the observer can be deceived. Quantum physics, with its ambiguous particles and ten-dimensional universes, is a branch of science that has in fact returned us to a state of awe with nature, without threatening our intellectual capacity to analyze complex events."

Crossing Open Ground by Barry Lopez (Charles Scribner's Sons & Macmillan Publishing Company; 1988; page 202)

If we will accept it in that way, the e. and the q. positions provide us with an ongoing T. position, the transcendence.

• nail

 For want of nail the shoe was lost.

" The modern world's online commerce system rests entirely on the secrecy afforded by the public key cryptographic infrastructure."

The New York Times, 2/15/12 Headline: Researchers find a Flaw in a Widely Used Online Encryption Method", by reporter John Markoff

•    •    •

N

• nature

Context: Nature protected by law. Also: the impoverished mode of leisure activities

"In the years following, Fields gained a reputation as a man who cared passionately for the health and welfare of waterfowl populations. He tailored, with the help of assistant refuge manager Homer McCollum, a model hunting program at Tule Lake, but he is candid in expressing his distaste for a type of hunter he still meets too frequently –belligerent, careless people for whom hunting is simply violent recreation; people who trench and rut the refuge's roads in oversize four-wheel-drive vehicles, who are ignorant of hunting laws or who delight in breaking them as part of a 'game' they play with refuge personnel."

"Crossing Open Ground" by Barry Lopez (Charles Scribner's Sons & Macmillan Publishing Company; 1988; page 35)

•    •    •

N

• nonsensical

Context: Nonsensical has a happy place among the equobenities: children playing, theater, entertainment, clowns, circus ---But in terms of where you put your money today: in corporations whose products add to the carbon emissions of global warming? In business that refuses change if change involves serious sacrifice? Is this rational? Or is it the unplayful, impoverished mode of nonsensical?

Bill McKibben:

"It was wrong for college endowments to profit from apartheid. It's completely nonsensical for them to pay for educations with investments that will guarantee there's no planet on which to make that learning count. Pension funds can't sensibly safeguard people's retirements by investing in companies that wreck the future. The CEO of ExxonMobil this summer threw down the gauntlet --climate change was real, he said, but the company wouldn’t adapt its business plan. Instead the planet would need to move its 'crop production areas,' an impossible task and a supremely arrogant demand." (italics EE)

Orion Magazine, quoted from "Which Side Are You On? " by Bill McKibben  page 12 and 13 (Orion, Great Barrington, MA; November/December 2012)

•    •    •

N

• nuance

Context: Enid Nemy has pointed out that whether a bromide is trite, as in "a penny saved, a penny earned" or "a rolling stone gathers no moss," they are all present when they are needed. And here is nuanced "Don't burn your bridges."

less nuanced:

e. say what you think              q. keep quiet about what you think

            impoverished mode of e. , u. ,"can get you into a lot of trouble"

            impoverished mode of q. , o. , prevents progress; you're as wimp

 more nuanced:

                        e. express opinion tactfully     q. try it out on friends first maybe

           "Sometimes the saying is interpreted in a way that was not meant, as when 'Don't burn your bridges' is interpreted by the grown daughter, Adriane Gaines, now the corporate vice-president of NBN Broadcasting, a national radio network, as meaning, 'Your mouth can get you in a lot of trouble and it doesn't pay to say everything you feel like saying.' In fact, she took the interpretation to still another level and says that what she learned was that, 'you should keep people's ego intact, and I work at that.'

The New York Times, January 19, 1992, by Enid Nemy. (Headline: "NEW YORKERS, etc.")

•    •    •

O

• order

Context: In 1919 a French  poet, Paul Valery, writes about the European cultivated man.

"But he is an intellectual Hamlet, meditating on the life and death of truths; for ghosts, he has all the subjects of our controversies; for remorse, all the titles of our fame. He is bowed under the weight of all the discoveries and varieties of knowledge, incapable of resuming this endless activity; he broods on the tedium of rehearsing the past and the folly of always trying to innovate. He staggers between two abysses- for two dangers never cease threatening the world: order and disorder."

 "The Crisis of the Mind" from "An Anthology" by Paul Valéry, selected and with an Introduction by James R. Lawler (Bollingen Series XLV-A, Princeton University Press 1977)

so many people

so many opinions

all legitimate if not of interest

therefore

extra lines must be left

Etc. is the most important of all

                      •    •    •

But here is another way of looking at the equobenity of order/disorder. Here is an American, 20th century.

"I got into baking three or four years ago. It was like that movie Waitress with Keri Russell: I was going through some crazy times, and baking was a really calming way to do something that had a definitive beginning, middle and end –a delicious end!"

Peter Som in Food and Wine, December 2011; page 24

When one is deep into either the position of creative disorder, or into the position of order and tradition, it seems beside the point to even consider the validity of the position you are not in. Until it got too "crazy" Peter Som was happy in e. Then suddenly he knew he needed q.

Would the world work better if we were taught early on to ask about "the other side"? If we were taught to take "the other side"  for granted and our decisions  be made from that consideration?

Or, is spontaneous realization so effective, and so much more fun for everyone, that it's really better to let our lives flow as they will, in and out of disorder if necessary.

(Are we really going to let ourselves be influenced by what is "fun"? Yes, a thousand times yes. Dreary old talker that you are.)

"Like the Empress Dowager, President Xi Jinping, finds himself confronting a daunting choice: Change too slowly and risk foundering. Change too rapidly and risk losing control."

Book Review for Sunday, October 27, 2013, The New York Times; Orville Schell review of  "Empress Dowager CIXI; The Concubine Who Launched Modern China" by Jung Chang

•    •    •

P

• privacy and productive discourse

Context: George Steiner speaks of two equobenities in his preface. The first is the increasingly difficult issue of privacy. The second is his concern with the dwindling degree of "freely searching discourse."

The first issue is privacy.

"The first theme is that of privacy, of the altering weight of energy and of emphasis as between the inner and the outer, the voiced and the silent, the public and the private sectors of personality and speech. Could it be that vital resources of inwardness, of disciplined remembrance, of meditative clarity, fundamental to a classical culture, are being eroded by new ideas of extravert and total utterance?"

"On Difficulty and Other Essays", by George Steiner (Oxford University Press, 1978)

Steiner’s second equobenity:

            e. freely searching discourse   q. constrained, limited discourse

"To ask larger questions is to risk getting things wrong. Not to ask them at all is to constrain the life of understanding to fragments of reciprocal irony or isolation. Such constraint now marks considerable areas of political and intellectual discussion, making dissent sterile instead of productive and humane."                                                                                      Ibid

The above was written in Geneva in 1978, decades before our present technological spasm of communication. Steiner concludes his preface by saying the central issue of his essays and nearly everything he has written, is on the theme of why we are becoming more constrained rather than less.

Has he found any definitive answer(s) now, in 2014? Does he suggest any solutions?

There is constant choice between the first equobenity, in small matters and large. If you always have qualms and reservations and if you are never certain about anything, you'll never get anywhere, nothing will ever get done; you may feel a sense of loss and so may those close to you who expected something more.

            On the other hand, if you are always certain –Protect us!

•    •    •

Q

• quit

Context: To quit trying to save your brother? To persist in getting that candy store owner to sell? Who's to say? You.

Equobenity:

etc. is the single most important word

for both the pair, the equobenity,

as well as for the two

impoverished modes

        •    •    •

Q

quite

"almost but not quite"

Context:

Mother to son, "Have you finished setting the table?"

son:

e. almost, not quite                        q. just finished

Context:

Editor of World Paper to President, "Was the treaty signed as scheduled?"

          Equobenity: President:

                  e. almost, not quite                  q. will be signed this evening

Context:

Fence-hanging neighbor, "I thought you said they got married."

mother of the groom

e. almost, not quite                q. everyone thought so

The "not quite" is a lot more interesting as an answer than

the more rational "not yet"; novelists understand the value

of innuendo, out of line, out of whack, irrational

• rapture

this could be someone arriving in Venice after a lifetime of longing to see it. Rapture usually references a romantic novel's description of how the heroine feels in the arms of her lover. Has anyone read of a man feeling rapture under these circumstances? If not, does that mean men don't feel rapture?

The impoverished mode of e. might be a genuine rapture giving way to a feigned rapture, a kind of dramatic rapture. It this can't be reversed, and it's reversal is surely highly unlikely, the duration of the love relationship will depend on whether a (woman) can be willing to "settle" for satisfactory pleasure. can go from e. to q. and end up with T..

The impoverished mode of q. means going without ever experiencing rapture. Who wants to do that? Still, it's a lot better than a wincing kind of pleasure or a satisfactory accommodation.

•    •    •

R

• rara avis

an out of date way of indicating (yes, a bird) a person (usually a beautiful female) who is unique, rare, and yes, precious.

Equobenity:

            e. rare bird, extraordinary person        q. an ordinary person      

The impoverished modes of each side of this equobenity are interesting. One gets very tired of "a rare bird" at the point that one senses it's all being "put on" for one's benefit, to elicit exclamations and amazement. A rara avis needs time out, a moment of being ordinary, if he (very unlikely) or she is to remain a genuine "rare bird."          

The impoverished mode of the ordinary person is quite different: an ordinary person can, and does, rise to the level of being extraordinary when events call for it. Truman becoming President is seen as an example of this; soldiers at war rising to great heights of courage and action; calamity bringing out what is extraordinary in "ordinary" people.

However, no one calls Truman a rara avis and heroic soldiers would shrink from such an expression of appreciation and thanks."

•    •    •

R

• ready witted

Context: how we talk with people, socially, in meetings, to family

Equobenity:

                        e. ready-witted            q. slow but sure on the uptake

The impoverished mode of e. might be the person who uses wit and intelligence to avoid emotion or empathy with others.

The impoverished mode of being slow but sure is if h/e gets into a situation where the only thing valued is the witty rejoinder. Perhaps not the right scene for a thoughtful person to be in.

•    •    •

R

• restlessness

Context: we need restlessness and ambition. As the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, says, "If it weren't for the bee's singular ambition/honey would lay dormant in flowers."

Equobenity:

e. restlessness, ambition          q. peacefulness, quiet

"Restless mother, from your breasts I sucked

electrified milk,

harsh lessons!

It wasn't the moon that taught me

how to move:

restlessness is what fuels

the ship's

static flight,

the engine's vibration sets

the smoothness of the wing,

and if it weren't for the bee's singular ambition,

honey would lay dormant in flowers."

"Ode to Restlessness" from "Odes to Opposites" by Pablo Neruda (Little, Brown and Company, 1995;page 95)

e.

" --comparative study quickly brings out the many uniformities and differences among city-states, while also generating new questions, including about local forms of specialization: banking in Genoa and tiny Lucca, metallurgy at Brescia, the work of goldsmiths at Augsburg and Nuremberg, wool in some cities, silk in others. The city-state was absolutely central to the development of complex forms of taxation, banking, deficit financing and the wholesale production of arms, not to speak of Geneva in the work of church reform, Basle and Venice in the printing trade, Florence in the casting up of political and historical ideas, and, of course, Dutch and Italian cities in the production of art. Size is no measure in the fortunes of high historical achievement."

A book review by Lauro Martines of "The City-State In Europe, 1000-1600, Hinterland, territory, region" by Tom Scott (TLS; "History; A Laboratory for Historians"; August 30, 2013, page 21)

•    •    •

S

Context: Has any society ever existed without its own social code? Here is an example of a social code of the early 1990s

The impoverished mode of e. , the u. , yields withdrawal, suffocation,

fear and a coward's life. It yields the "unlived life."

The impoverished mode of q. , the o. , offers so many options about so many things that decisions are easy to put off indefinitely. One may also have forfeited the safety, the understanding and the comfort of those who follow the code you have abjured.

Code of the 1990s

e. (although for some,  a u.)

"In March of 1992 The New Republic published a chart purporting to define highbrow, highlowbrow, middlebrow and lowbrow tastes. For instance in TV: if we like Nova we are deemed highbrow; if we like Twin Peaks we are highlowbrow; Bill Moyers is definitely middlebrow and Studs is  lowbrow. In music: to like Messiaen is to be highbrow, the Kronos Quartet highlowbrow, Gershwin is, you guessed it, middlebrow, and Pachelbel is lowbrow. The chart also defines these categories in terms of tea, cheesecake, pop music and initials (from EEC for highbrow to KKK for lowbrow.) There is more chaos now, in 2014. Do we still have a feeling for such codes?"

Author Sam Keen says the code we have to break is the warrior code.

Time, 7/8/91, Headline: "Bang The Drum Quickly", Richard Stengel reviews Sam Keen's "Fire In The Belly")

•    •    •

S

• systems

Scientists are seeking the formulas that will pull everything together in one "complex, adaptive system."

John Henry Holland, a computer scientist involved in the new field of complexity, says he is looking for the fundamental rules of nature that...drive all complex adaptive systems. He intuits that:

"there are general principles that govern all complex adaptive system behavior, principles that point to ways of solving attendant problems.

"For the last 400 years science has advanced by reductionism, Dr. Holland said. 'The idea is that you could understand the world, all of nature, by examining smaller and smaller pieces of it. When assembled, the small pieces would explain the whole.' Moreover, mathematical laws could predict all natural phenomena.

" 'In a general sense there is nothing wrong with this approach,' Dr. Holland said. 'It has led to tremendous successes.' But reductionism and the linear mathematics on which it relies, he continued, have hit some serious snags in the last 100 years. The first blow came when scientists like Kurt Godel proved that mathematical systems are always incomplete and cannot be relied on to describe nature.

" 'Then scientists began to take a closer look at nature itself,' Dr. Holland said. The world is filled with complex phenomena that do not behave in a linear fashion and that cannot be explained by reductionism, he said.

" 'We can't add up the parts and understand the whole, for that does not give a good picture of what the system does,' he said. 'The interactions are just as important as the parts.'  A different kind of mathematics, using nonlinear approaches, is needed. "

"Searching for simple rules to explain not-so-simple systems" by Sandra Blakeslee (The New York TimesDecember 26, 1995)

• taboo

Context: What makes something taboo, forbidden? One answer is that it is hidden.

e. thrill of a wrapped gift         q. thrill of the forbidden

The impoverished mode of e., never feeling the thrill of the forbidden, but always eager for gifts, would make you uninteresting to a lot of people, but an easier to handle teenager.

The impoverished mode of q. only thrilled by what is forbidden and not giving a fig for gifts, would make you a rather dangerous spouse and a terrible lot of trouble as a teenager.

A taboo is something forbidden; it is usually associated with sexual taboos. An act can be taboo (pedophilia). Even speaking of something can be taboo. Examples of verbal taboos: sex in the 1940s, masturbation until the 1960s, incest until the 1970s or even 80s –these dates depend on the many facets of any one individual's culture.

Mark Twain had his own take on taboos.

                           e. I am hungry                         q. It is forbidden

"Adam was but human--this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake; he wanted it only because it was forbidden. "

("Pudd'nhead Wilson" by Mark Twain, [1894] ch.2)

When harm is not involved, why not smoke a joint? Parents see the dangers of liking it too much; they know why it is taboo. One wonders if Adam ever reached for another apple.

•    •    •

T

• tension

Context: the tension between two good things describes the equobenity. Here it describes an historian using both narrative and research, going back and forth between them both in such a way as to enlighten the reader as well as to draw h/im in with "stories" of individuals, i.e. he creates a T. .

                        e. research, facts                      q. narratives, stories

Most often "tension" is used in its negative sense: unspoken negativity between two people or two sides of an argument or dialogue. "There was so much tension in the room you just knew it would end badly. And it did."

But as a description of the relationship between two opposing good things, there is no other noun that captures so eloquently the creative nuance of a situation. "This tension between scholarly responsibility and a love of narrative driven by personalities –"

"The retrospective modification of narrative becomes a recurring technique of Montefiore's opus. He will give a colorful, sometimes near-legendary account of an event, then undercut it with a well-researched caveat. Later historical periods, in particular, lend themselves to an indulgence in the dramatic and the luridly violent, and he succumbs with gusto. He cannot resist a good story. But then the correctives will come –these too, given his scholarly integrity, he cannot resist—and an undergrowth of qualifying footnotes may appear. This tension between scholarly responsibility and a love of narrative driven by personalities can occasionally feel uncomfortably bifocal."

"Jerusalem: The Biography" by Simon Sebag Montefiore, reviewed by Colin Thubron in The New York Review, January 12, 2012

•    •    •

T

• think

Context: Are you impressed by someone famous? "Don't be," says Feynman.

Equobenity and its T. position:

T.

to be back and forth between e. and q.

carefully,

knowing why you are thinking at all,

this will produce truth

whether useful or just satisfying

This idea of equobenity

could be called

etc.

because there is always more

to say

always more that needs saying

and we are all so different

g. position

can be global ruin

The T. position, the transcendence for this equobenity is potentially stupendous and as influential  for oneself as for everybody else --but alas, either for good or evil.

Richard P. Feynman won a Nobel Prize in physics for his work with the theory of quantum electrodynamics. The following is quoted from a series of lectures he gave at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1963.

"Also, in case you are beginning to believe that some of the things I said before are true because I am a scientist and according to the brochure that you get I won some awards and so forth, instead of your looking at the ideas themselves and judging them directly--in other words, you, you have some feeling toward authority--I will get rid of that tonight. I dedicate this lecture to showing what ridiculous conclusions and rare statements such a man as myself can make. I wish, therefore, to destroy any image of authority that has previously been generated." (italics EE)

 "The Meaning Of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist" by Richard P. Feynman (Perseus Books 1998, page 61)

•    •    •

T

• tool

Context: Equipment is crucial. It must work, it must last at least the length of the job.

                        e. good ideas, goals, missions             q. good tools to get there

Equobenity and its structure is a tool, only a tool. Cooks talk about sweet and sour, not about spoons and pans. Architects talk about space and proportion, not about hammers and nails. Although if some new technological wonder has come along the discussion could be about whether or not to use it, how much, where, why. Once you know how equobenity works you use it. No point talking about it.

However, there is now 3-D printing:

"The single best edible 3-D sculpture came into being because a pair of Los Angeles architects were trying to make a birthday cake without an oven. That's what motivated Kyle and Liz van Hasseln to develop a process for printing with sugar and water. Since founding The Sugar Lab in 2012, the husband-and-wife team have used crystalized sugar to print everything from intricate lattices that dissolve in cocktails to delicate replicas of an extinct orchid scanned from the Smithsonian archives. They’ve also collaborated with Duff Goldman of Baltimore's Charm City Cakes to create a custom wedding -cake stand made of interlocking hexagons, a design that would be impossible to make by hand. The couple created their tech prototype by modifying an existing printer by 3D Systems (which recently purchased the Sugar Lab). The machine works by wetting dry sugar to create a frosting-like texture; repeated thousands of times, the process slowly builds a three-dimensional structure. 'There's already a cultural expectation that dessert should be sculptural,' says Liz, 'so sugar is a great place to start introducing 3-D printing into people's lives' "

"The Robo-Craft of 3-D Printing; two architects merge art and science with sugar and water." The article is by M. Elizabeth Sheldon in the February 2-14 issue of Food and Wine.

The impoverished mode of e. is never to remember any fact, person, place or date that is not personal. This means that in the usual social setting you are, at first, of some curiosity and even interest, but sooner or later you become a predictable and uninteresting bore.

The impoverished mode of q. is never to have any personal interest in any fact, person, place, or date, but always to have information at your fingertips for thousands of facts, hundreds of people, everywhere in the world and when. You are useful if you will agree to sit in a corner and answer questions, but you are hopeless in any purely human exchange. Besides, you have been supplanted by Google and so you can stay home.

•    •    •

U

• unique

Context: We think we know a lot about nature but how much more is still out there to be discovered? Do we know?

Equobenity:

The impoverished mode of e. of never feeling fear for the unique could get you into some dangerous spots. That skunk over there in your flowerbed, that one with the black and white fur reversed, has rabies and should not be approached.

The impoverished mode of q. of never submitting to the mystery and wonder of what is unique, leaves you terribly deprived.

"Below, in plain sight, swim giant creatures from another dimension, confined below the surface no less than we are confined above it. They feel not the breeze but the tides; they have never pressed a solid surface; they breathe by moving forward and can never rest. How may we know them?"

 "Song for the Blue Ocean" by Carl Safina  (A John Macrae book, Henry Holt and Company, Inc., New York 1997, page 10)

•    •    •

U

• unlikely

Context:  one is unlikely to be traveling across a desert on a camel and see a figure not running but bounding over the ground, at great speed, eyes looking at something far above him, and holding a long stick that seems to be a support even though it never touches the ground. In a 1937 book Alexandra David-Neal described this event and the training that made it possible.

Equobenity:

unlikely but true

e.

"Towards the end of the afternoon, Yongden, our servants and I were riding leisurely across a wide tableland, when I noticed, far away in front of us, a moving black spot which my field-glasses showed to be a man. I felt astonished. Meetings are not frequent in that region, for the last ten days we had not seen a human being. Moreover, men on foot and alone do not, as a rule, wander in these immense solitudes. Who could this traveler be?

"One of my servants suggested that he might belong to a trader's caravan which had been attacked by robbers and disbanded. Perhaps, having fled for his life at night or otherwise escaped, he was now lost in the desert. That seemed possible. If such were really the case, I would take the lone man with us to some cowherd's encampment or wherever he might wish to go if not far out of our route.

"But as I continued to observe him through the glasses, I noticed that the man proceeded at an unusual gait and, especially, with an extraordinary swiftness. Though, with the naked eyes, my men could hardly see anything but a black speck moving over the grassy ground, they too were not long in remarking the quickness of its advance. I handed them the glasses and one of them, having observed the traveler for a while muttered:

" 'Lama lung-gom-pa chig da.' (It looks like a lama lung-gom-pa.)

"These words 'lama-gom-pa' at once awakened my interest. I had heard a great deal about the feats performed by such men and was acquainted with the theory of the training. I had, even, a certain experience of the practice, but I had never seen an adept of lung-gom actually accomplishing one of these prodigious tramps which are so much talked about in Tibet. Was I to be lucky enough to witness such a sight?

"The man continued to advance towards us and his curious speed became more and more evident. What was to be done if he really was a lung-gom-pa? I wanted to observe him at close quarters, I also wished to have a talk with him, to put him some questions, too photograph him....I wanted many things. But at the very first words I said about it, the man who had recognized him as a lama lung-gom-pa exclaimed:

" 'Your Reverence will not stop the lama, nor speak to him This would certainly kill him. These lamas when traveling must not break their meditation. The god who is in them escapes if they cease to repeat the nags, and thus leaving them before the proper time, he shakes so hard that they die.'

"By that time he had nearly reached us; I could clearly see his perfectly calm impassive face and wide open eyes with their gaze fixed on some invisible far distant object situated somewhere high up in space. The man did not run. He seemed to lift himself from the ground, proceeding by leaps. It looked as if he had been endowed with the elasticity of a ball and rebounded each time his feet touched the ground. His steps had the regularity of a pendulum. He wore the usual monastic robe and toga, both rather ragged. His left hand gripped a fold of the toga and was half hidden under the cloth. The right hand held a phurba (magic dagger). His right arm moved slightly at each step as if leaning on a stick, just as though the phurba, whose pointed extremity was far above the ground, had touched it and was actually a support. My servants dismounted and bowed their heads to the ground as the lama passed before us, but he went his way apparently unaware of our presence.

"The training consists in breathing exercises practiced during a strict seclusion in complete darkness, which lasts three years and three months ---and continued

"With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet" by Alexandra David-Neel (London: Penguin 1937)

The sweetness in this, what makes it a T. is that Vadinho begins with e. but immediately recognizes the value of q. Recognizing the value of both sides does make him feel split but it's not a harmful split, it's the necessary tension when two sides, both good, have not yet resolved into one.

"First in the street-car, with his hunch and his shame, then walking down the street, Vadinho came as though rent asunder. On the one hand, his haste to get home before the radio dealer arrived --never had he had such a strong hunch; on the other, the hope that Mr. Edgard had beat him there, and that there was no longer the old radio or the money paid by Dona Ligia, money earned by his wife in the sweat of her brow----Rent asunder, in the street-car, coming down the street, entering the house, opening the door. If Mr. Edgard had not yet come, what greater proof the certainty of his hunch? But if he found the new radio installed, he would stay home that night, with Dona Flor, listening to the music, laughing at the jokes. Rent asunder, split in two, came Vadinho."

"Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands", Jorge Amado (Avon Books, NY by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1969, page 165)

Context: a new person is introduced, the Commander, the husband of Dona Flor

Equobenity:

u. I want what I want no matter what the cost.

The Commander is not aware there is another "side" and as a character in the novel he therefore lacks Vadinoh's charm. Neither does the Commander feels split; he only thinks of what he wants when he wants it. Others do notice "the other side." He is not likable.

Context: a great party is given.

Equobenity:

"The Commander said to Dona Imaculada: 'I want everything of the finest and the best.'     

"And so it was. Dona Imaculada might be a cruel burden to bear, but, let it be said in justice, she was a perfect hostess. They had engaged the services of the architect Gilberbet Chaves (and at what a price!) to decorate the gardens where the orchestra would perform.        

" 'Don't take expense into account. I want the best, with platform and everything. Spend whatever is necessary.' The Commander, so niggardly with his employees and with regard to small expenses, opened his wallet wide, reached for his checkbook.          

"Those words fell like honey on the ears of Master Chaves. He loves not having to take expense into account. He spent a fortune, but how beautiful it all was....."

"Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands", Jorge Amado (Avon Books, NY by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1969, page 388)

•    •    •

W

• want, a different kind

Context: To want something and be open to go looking for it, produces great things. Here Tommy Thompson is trying to figure out how to find, explore and retrieve what he could of a famous shipwreck. It was lost at sea in 1857 two hundred miles from Wilmington, Virginia, in 8000 feet of water.

Equobenity:

"Often ideas would come to him as he was falling asleep late at night, or he would waken suddenly, his mind flooding with what-ifs and I-wonders. 'Something might occur to me, then all of a sudden I can't stop and it's three in the morning and I've got to get up at six or seven. But when it starts coming, I can't afford to disrespect or disregard it. It'll never look the same.'

"He would get out his notebooks filled with new and old ideas, his notes from phone conversations, and he would make the connections and ponder the possibilities."

"Ship of Gold In The Deep Blue Sea" by Gary Kinder (Atlantic Monthly Press, NYC, NY; 1998; page 143)

•    •    •

W

• work

Context: There is danger in Greece at a time of anti-Americanism

Equobenity:

 e. the work of peace               q. the work of war

"A number of people have told me to stay at home tonight, and as much as possible today, since it is a day when anti-American feeling runs high, since the United States supported the Greek junta and played a shadowy role in planning the coup that put it in place.

"Warnings have come from enough people, both acquaintances and real friends, for me to take them seriously. One well-known student participant in these protests, who is now a radio commentator and author, is interviewed in the paper. When asked if the legacy of the 1973 Polytechnic is still alive, he answers, 'Yes, like Alexander the Great.'

"An impossible, and sometimes faintly demeaning, comparison is often drawn between the current generation of students, whose moral world is more ambiguous, and the ones of that moment of stark and utter heroism when what was calculated was sheer risk, not the patient estimation of good and evil embedded in each other that the work of peace requires. But it has always been harder to work out how to live a good life than how to die a good death."

"Dinner With Persephone" by Patricia Storace  (Pantheon Books, NY, 1996, page 184-185)

because there are as many opinions

as there are people

spaces must be left for so many voices

Etc. is even more important

the etymology for xenophilic: love of strangers

the etymology for xenophobia: fear of strangers

• yarn, as in story

Context: Several things go into the making of a "good yarn": the charm of the teller, h/is kind of drawling humor, the exaggeration, and usually a surprise ending.

Equobenity:

e. a good yarn                                     q. "just the facts please"

•    •    •

Y

• yearn

Context: one can yearn for something indefinable and maybe never even know what it is, much less get it. Or it can be a girl impatient for her wedding day, a boy rejected in love. It may be an emotion the young know more about that the middle aged. Do the old yearn for death?

Equobenity:

                        e. to yearn, to long for                                    q. "I can wait. It will happen."

•    •    •

Y

• yurt

Context: Used by nomadic Mongols of Siberia, a yurt is a large, circular, portable tent.

Equobenity:

e. "But I really want a yurt!"               q. "The tent is still big enough."