A Forced Break From Work

I had surgery yesterday to repair a deviated nasal septum (remnants of a broken nose, a few decades ago). The surgeon also repaired another schnozzola-related problem, swollen turbinates--membranes in the nose that filter the air but that in my case were blocking air flow. The surgeon shrunk them. The deviated septum and the swollen turbinates were making breathing through my nose more and more difficult. The surgeon told me after the surgery that there was more of a mess inside than he expected (broken cartilage and bone fragments--oh my). Anyhow, in the recovery room, in spite of some drainage, I had quite a bit of airflow in the old schnoz, so I'm quite hopeful that the surgery will accomplish what I want it to. For one thing, my snoring, due to having to breath through my mouth when I was lying down, was becoming more and more bothersome to both me and my wife.

The recovery takes time. I had a general anesthetic, morphine and other pain meds. Pretty much knocked out yesterday and sleepy today. Currently I have a splint inside my nose to keep the repaired septum straight. There is some bloody drainage, not much but yuck! (see picture of 'poor me'). My wife is telling me to take it easy and I am following her orders today. I'm not allowed to blow my nose and with the drainage from the surgery, etc. I'm now pretty well blocked up and have to breath through my mouth. It feels like a moderately bad cold, except I'm not sick. I've been napping on and off all day. It's a forced break from working on the Korzybski biography. Although until I finish the manuscript (getting closer and closer--planning to finish it at the end of this year), I can't really get away from thinking about it and always have something simmering on the back burners of my brain.

I'm doing some recreational reading today when I can stay awake. I dug out my old used copy of Dictionary of Thought (1959) by Dagobert D. Runes, one of my favorite 20th Century philosophers. I don't put that in quotes as Korzybski often did when he used the word to indicate that the label didn't necessarily label actual lovers of wisdom). But Runes actually did love wisdom and pursued it. Korzybski would likely have called him an epistemologist (a purr word for him). He must have been aware of Runes and Runes of Korzybski but I haven't found any correspondence or mention of one by the other. But at any rate, I love what Runes says and how he writes. A Jew who loved Spinoza and wrote a huge number of books, and edited more, and was the mainstay of the Philosophical Library publishing house in New York for many years.

Here are a few Rune-ian gems on:

Thinking
Thought is a twig on the tree of emotion and instinct. As it was a million years ago, the first is still an outgrowth of the latter.

Men think quite alike; if it were different, they could not coexist even for a day. But most people judge by traditional or imitated judgment patterns, and snap judgments are the rule and the rulers.

Is thinking ever free? Wherever I meet it, I find it chained to a motive of one kind or another. The world operates on motivated thinking tied to prejudice, opportunism, greed, narrow-mindedness, selfishness, and a thousand other little passions and passionette that clutter up the narrow path of righteousness.