That was a great joke by Sapolsky but not one of the Rogan followers noticed it enough to comment about it.
First of all Thomas Mann did not have t.b. when he wrote the book, but that is what Sapolsky implies with his joke.
I'll check just to make sure!
Course of Illness | Lapham's Quarterly
Inspiration leaves Mann's mountain | World news | The Guardian
Mann visited Davos in May 1912. His wife Katja had fallen ill with acute bronchitis and had been advised to spend six months in the mountains.
Like Castorp, Mann discovered a spot on his lung - but unlike his hero, he left Davos after just three weeks.So maybe Mann did have a "touch" of T.B.?
Anyway I read the novel as my senior year of high school, English thesis paper. I remember enjoying the book immensely but on the last page I had a tear rolling down my cheek. Was I finally just so glad to finish that huge tome or was I sad it was ending? I'll never be sure. haha.
My argument of my senior year high school English paper was that we need to confront death to figure out the truth of life. I never saved the paper I guess.
But the qigong training definitely does that! Qigong master Jim Nance http://guidingqi.com shared a story for his qi-talk at the SFQ center - back in 2012 - how he had been initiated into the Native American Ojibwe secret society of shamans and they did long intense super hot saunas that were totally unbearable. In the midst of the mist in the silence suddenly a Native indigenous shaman said,
"In the beginning was the word...."
Immediately an elder replied:
"And it was misunderstood."
Jim said when he heard this he burst out laughing so deep that something in his mind opened up.
This phrase actually is "in the beginning was the Logos."
And so I studied the book of John intensely in high school bible class - at my Christian high school that just recently blew up!
Jim Nance shared how not only did he not learn to read until he was 19 years old but more importantly he used to sit for hours a day on a porch without thinking anything at all - his mind empty of words!!
Jim said he had to teach himself to have "internal language" for thinking. He naturally was in samadhi visionary consciousness and I think it was his grandmother who sat with him on the porch and she was half Native indigenous ethnicity.
I have my book of Jim's memoir so I could check but it will be better when his book is finally published! He told me he was giving the book over the phone to a publisher who is editing and transcribing his verbal book! But it was already a huge tome like the Magic Mountain - by just his mid-life age.
By the way my high school sports team had been called the "Indians" and then we had a Native indigenous activist from A.I.M speak to our whole school. We promptly changed the team name to the Cardinals. That was my first direct experience of an "activist"!
And so "Minnehaha" itself is a made up name inspired by the indigenous name for running water - Minne - with the "haha" added by a deluded European colonialist famous poet - Longfellow.
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