Dishonored Prophet

Jesus said a prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among friends and family.

Readers have often flattered me by citing my ability to see through the haze of information, misinformation and events and to cut to the heart of an argument or situation. Accordingly, my thoughts are not merely analytical, but also sometimes prophetic. Very often I write blogs that express the same ideas as those of professional columnists–long before their op-eds are published. My blog, “That’s not who we are–or is it?” https://anauthorsinnermind.blog/2024/11/03/thats-not-who-we-are-or-is-it/preceded a plethora of similar articles by well known commentators. The lead editorial of the Washington Post this past week warned of the dangers of legal sports betting. I wrote a draft six months ago on that topic that I haven’t yet published on this site. Alas, there will be no Pulitzers for me.

This ability to foresee future events may come from that tendency to observe, think about and tie together seemingly unrelated issues, detective-like. It’s a skill honed over years of psychiatric practice. But it was there even in my earlier years.

Recently the Washington Post has published a few editorials citing the falloff of sales of electric vehicles and touting the advantages of plug-in hybrids. I foresaw long ago that the drawbacks of EVs would turn people off from them and wrote about this in my 2022 blog “A Plug for Plug-ins,” https://anauthorsinnermind.blog/2022/09/18/a-plug-for-plug-ins/. In fact, as a 10 year old I “invented” the hybrid car. Alarmed by hearing an uncle say we were some day going to run out of petroleum, and knowing a car recharges its battery as you drive, I envisioned a car with both gas and electric motors that recharged a bigger battery with a bigger generator. I probably mentioned the idea to my parents, but knew better than to think anyone would pay attention to the ideas of a know nothing kid. I was already a prophet without honor in my own land. Sometimes I imagine, had I the capacity then to reach auto executives, we might have had hybrids fifty years ago, and today our planet might be a few degrees cooler. I have driven nothing but hybrids for 20 years. Everybody should have been. How much environmental damage this could have prevented?

In the 1970s I was one of the main researchers in a two year double blind study at the VA hospital in Albany examining the reliability of two- way interactive TV interviews to establish a psychiatric diagnosis. The data were all gathered and we were almost ready for publication when Reagan pulled the plug on funding. We were unable to complete the project and get a paper published. Preliminary data showed diagnoses were reliable. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Again the prophet was silenced. A similar study done by a different researcher that reached the same conclusion was published more than 30 years later, long after zoom interactive medicine came into use.

About 20 years ago, based on the emerging interest in the “metabolic syndrome,” how a sedentary lifestyle and poor diet caused obesity and adversely affected all body systems, I noticed no one had written about the likelihood it had the same effect on the brain, the most sensitive organ in the body. I submitted a paper suggesting the uprise in incidence of depression, anxiety and dementia might have been partly caused by the parallel uprise in the metabolic syndrome. The journals rejected this unknown author saying the premise was “fascinating but too speculative.” Within five years, the connection between metabolic syndrome and brain dysfunction was common knowledge.

Like Casandra, I predicted the future and nobody listened. That’s the fate of the local prophet. Likewise, my novels languish unread even by close friends. “Norman? “ they must think, “ He’s just a regular guy. How could he write a good book?” Yet, though maybe they are just being nice, a number of people who read them have told me they are pretty good.

Those who know us as “regular” people sometimes have difficulty seeing us as possessing “extraordinary” talents and abilities. That’s fine with me. I’d rather be loved than famous.

Anyone interested in having their palm read?