WillSpirit

Where Will meets Spirit
∞ A Blog Devoted to Balance, Peace, and Clarity ∞

A formerly depressed physician tells stories of trauma, grief and recovery, and offers suggestions for emerging from darkness, living with mood swings, and awakening to life.








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    • Dear Visitors:
      Although I trained and practiced as a physician, my background does not include formal instruction in psychiatry beyond basic medical education. This journal presents ideas about treatment philosophy, but must not be considered therapeutic advice. Abrupt changes in one's psychiatric medications can trigger profound cognitive, emotional, and physical symptoms, including suicidal thoughts and actions. Consequently, pharmaceutical agents should not be increased or decreased without supervision by a mental health clinician.

    • ON THE OTHER HAND, your brain belongs to you, and your opinion counts. If you decide that changing your medication regimen will serve your best interest, then I believe your providers have an obligation to help you try to achieve your goals. I want everyone to be educated about their options, and do what will be most helpful for themselves. No one should feel pushed around by dogmatic and/or limited viewpoints, whether those of psychiatrists, anti-psychiatry advocates, or myself.




Symbiotic Spirit

One of my recent reads was Darwin’s Blind Spot, by Frank Ryan. Having studied biological sciences in college, graduate school, and medical school, it surprises me that a significant battle among evolutionary biologists completely escaped me until now. Although Ryan’s book held little factual information that was new to me, I learned that behind the scenes almost since the time of Darwin a philosophical struggle has roiled through evolutionary sciences. In brief, it pits those who emphasize individuality and competition against those more inclined to highlight interdependence and cooperation among organisms.

Why do I mention this conflict in a blog devoted to ‘Peace, Balance, and Clarity‘? Because the disagreement is emblematic of a much larger tension in modern society. On the one hand, we have those who value rugged individualism, unfettered markets, and aggressive exploitation of resources. On the other are those who build their lives around ego-denial, cooperative exchange, and conservation. It would be difficult for me to write this without making my own preferences obvious, so I’ll state openly that it seems excruciatingly clear to me that the era of raw competition in human culture must come to a close, to be replaced by an ethos of inter-reliance. Only then will we find anything like true peace in the world.

But it is also clear that many would disagree. Especially here in the United States, where freedom is defined in marketplace terms, the idea that humans could actually cooperate and trust one another beyond the ethic of tit-for-tat gets treated as naive and laughable. Whereas many countries have perfectly respectable socialist parties, in the USA socialism is a dirty word.

The naked hostility that market-indoctrinated scientists have expressed toward those biologists who dare to point out the massive interdependence and cooperation that underly evolution comes as no surprise in this culture. The question is, can this bias be changed?

Fortunately, Ryan’s book does not stand alone. Many other texts have been written with an eye toward enlightening people about the power and universality of symbiosis (a technical term which is variably defined, but loosely refers to unrelated species depending on one another for survival). I find it encouraging that the scientific mainstream is awakening to the limitations inherent in Darwin’s vision of evolution, wherein adaptation is postulated as solely due to unmitigated competition between organisms. It is a sign of positive change.

But doesn’t science stick to simple facts? Isn’t it a cool, rational enterprise that prizes open-mindedness? Not much more than any other human activity, it turns out. The great geniuses come in two broad categories. Some, like Einstein and Darwin, solve a discipline’s difficult problems after they’ve been building for some time. These are the fortunate ones, who achieve acclaim quickly. Others have a more difficult road, in that they solve problems that other scientists don’t even want to see. They take much longer to be recognized, and seldom achieve the Godlike status of the ones who rescue a field from acknowledged confusion.

And why wouldn’t scientists want to see certain facts? Often because they fly in the face of broader cultural values. In the case of cooperation as a prime mover in biology, it has long faced opposition because it directly contradicts capitalism’s claims of reflecting the order of nature. An evolutionary theory based on competition (survival of the fittest) works nicely to bolster the insistence by dominant marketeers that unchecked opportunism is the best foundation for society. Scientists depend on the ruling powers for funding and positions, and are therefore inclined to view reality in ways that support the competition ethic.

In contrast, a biological theory that demonstrates widespread cooperation in nature and demotes the value of strife as an agent of evolution undermines those who insist unregulated competition will somehow solve the world’s problems.

It probably looks like I’m getting off-track here. I implied this post would touch on spiritual issues, but I’m writing about political ones. It turns out that in this case the two are related. The universal teaching of spiritual systems is that we are interdependent and should treat each other accordingly. Until recently, cynics could point to the accepted theory of evolution as indicative of a natural order devoid of such ethos. Now that the tide is turning, it is becoming increasingly clear that the higher truths sages have espoused for ages are reflected in a deep and profound way in the structure of life itself.

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Symbiotic Spirit was published on July 17th, 2010, with these tags: , , , . To date, this entry has received no comments.






Organism, Writ Large

Paramecium

In an earlier post, I praised Douglas Hofstadter’s vision of consciousness as a product of recursive and resonant self-reflection. The point of that essay was to highlight the profound value of observing one’s inner life: mindfulness brings one to the threshold of the sacred. Without in any way focusing on meditation, Hofstadter captures the essence of contemplative practice.

There are aspects of his philosophy that trouble me, however. In particular, I mentioned in passing that Hofstadter believes a computer could embody a self if it were sufficiently complex and possessed motivational drive. Although this sounds sensible in theory, in actual fact it seems unlikely that a synthetic consciousness could ever be similar in any meaningful way to a human mind. I’ve been reading a number of authors who write about consciousness, the brain, and the prospects for artificial intelligence. As near as I can tell, they divide fairly neatly into those who think machines will someday emulate the human mind, and those who believe computers will never achieve consciousness. On the whole, it appears that those with primary backgrounds in mathematics or computer science tend toward the former position, while biologists tend toward the latter. Those with religious perspectives also contend that consciousness is uniquely human, but I’m setting their positions aside for the purposes of this post.

Since I am a former research biologist and a trained physician, it should be no surprise that I believe human consciousness lies beyond the capability of machines, no matter how advanced. Hofstadter has made an important contribution in recognizing reflection as the key to an entity having a sense of self. It may be that auto-observing machines will someday be created, and perhaps they will have selves of some sort. But whatever awareness arises will not be human, or even human-like.

The philosopher Alva Noë makes the point that even minute single celled organisms have well-defined agency. They move toward nutrients and away from threats, for instance. In other words, there is a motivated quality to life all the way down to the unicellular level. The fertile yearning and striving characteristic of living things arises at the very trunk of the tree of life.

I think this is a central and important point. Much of our conscious experience comes from our biological imperatives. In fact, some have proposed that even our capacities for art, song, and innovation evolved because early humanoids with such skills were more sexually attractive than those less talented. The patently biological reproductive drive may underly the most rarefied human activities.

Even if a machine could be designed to pursue goals in an internally motivated way, such behavior would be a high-level addition to its programming. The device might look very human-like to an external observer, but its motivation would be an accretion onto a logic-gate architecture; it seems very unlikely that the inner experience of such a machine would resemble human consciousness at all. Semiconductor logic gates do not embody desire, whereas yearning is utterly fundamental to life. Self-reflection may engender the mysterious quality of conscious awareness, but drives establish the core experience of every biological organism.

As we all recognize, biological drives also underpin much of our misery. Who hasn’t been stung by amorous (read: reproductive) yearning? Who hasn’t developed excessive hunger for one or more bodily pleasures? How much of our suffering comes directly from our identities as organisms with powerful instinctive desires? The same is true for our joy, at least in its less refined forms. Isn’t it the case that passion and excitement come directly or indirectly from biological currents? In some sense or another, these currents can be detected in every living cell.

So although self-reflection may be central to our feelings of self-identity and conscious awareness, much of our experience originates far below any such complex mental activities. Much of our sense of being human results from the more ancient condition of being a living organism, writ large.

The key to satisfaction is to reconcile the high-level awareness that comes from self-reflection with the surging forces of instinct roiling around our cells, tissues and organs. The watcher may be the product of recursive self-reflection, but what it watches is the moist and messy business of life.

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Organism, Writ Large was published on June 18th, 2010, with these tags: , , . To date, this entry has received no comments.






Self Love and the Biology of Self

Heart&Lungs

In recent months, a plan has formed to wean myself away from the comforting bosom of therapy. A post I wrote six months ago detailed the huge amount of psychotherapy and group work I’ve completed. Some of it enlightened me, some of it led me astray, and much if it had little effect at all.

Just as I prepare to swear off therapy forever, fate has brought me a counselor who truly helps me. Partly it’s a good personality match; partly the ACT philosophy he adheres to works well for me (as discussed on this site many times); and partly I’m finally ready for a fundamental change.

Not that I’m close to ‘cured’, or even ‘stable’, but something inside seems to be shifting. One good example came in my most recent session. It was the first in almost two months, and had been arranged as an urgent appointment because of severe depression.

The biggest reason for my suffering, being perfectly blunt, has always been self-hatred. My upbringing beat it into me. My earliest memories are of my parents’ bitter divorce, during which it became obvious that my dad despised the role of father. In most of my memories of my mother, she lies in bed nearly catatonic with depression. She couldn’t offer much love. After that came her death, a probable suicide; a six-year-old takes a mother’s dying as a personal rejection. Within weeks I began living with my bitter father and sadistic stepmother. The woman humiliated and tormented me with cold, calculated efficiency. (Those interested can read about her in a memoir fragment .) My dad, narcissistic and obsessed by his work, was also an alcoholic. In short, my childhood taught me to feel unwanted, unworthy, despised, tormented, and abandoned.

Sadly, I still feel all those things, only now the hatred comes from my own heart. This is probably the most sensitive secret I’ve revealed on a site riddled with self-disclosure. It is the root of the worst of my problems. It keeps me at arms length from life and loved ones, because I never believe I deserve either.

My counselor and I have talked about this self-loathing many times. On this last visit, he instructed me to hold out my hand. “Can you love your hand?” he asked.

To my surprise, the answer was, “yes”; loving a body part seemed easy. The full significance did not sink in right away.

My adoration of biology, which goes back to my earliest days gardening and fishing with my grandfather, makes admiration of anything alive no problem at all. People, redwood trees, mice, and all other living things enthrall me. I’m even fascinated by mosquitoes. I have an inborn reverence for everything that lives. But until recently, I had never honored myself for my own biology.

For some time, I’ve practiced a meditation where I simultaneously feel and visualize my internal physiology. I sit on my meditation cushion and breathe, all the time imagining the air seeping into the tiniest passages and pockets of my lung. I think of the oxygen turning my blood corpuscles bright red. While concentrating on the sensation of my heartbeat, I form a mental picture of my heart pumping this freshened blood to the rest of my body.

Even though I regularly settle into my biological nature, it had never occurred to me to love myself as a living organism. I was too busy hating my personality, my decisions, and my sins. All my hatred has been directed at me. Which raises the question, “what am I?” Am I a disembodied mind? Can I really separate what goes on in my brain from the body that holds it? The obvious answer is “no”.

After my appointment with the therapist, I did my usual ‘biological’ meditation, only this time I honored the miracle of my animal form, and allowed reverence to surface. At the same time, I held the thought that I am my body. After all, the sensation of a mind separate from the physical self is an illusion, or even a delusion. It’s the ego’s way of isolating and empowering itself. The truth is that body and self are one. In accessing my respect for my own life processes, I discovered a bit of love for myself. It feels wonderful.

Not long ago, I thought my recent spiritual growth had banished inner darkness. Soon after, I found myself fueling a depression with my habitual self-contempt. The old obsessions, regrets, and fears returned with full force. Having learned from that relapse, and despite this insight about my value as a living animal, I will be shocked if the horrible despair does not soon resurface. On the other hand, perhaps I will remember to feel reverence toward my body, and the biological mind it supports. Perhaps I will feel a trickle of love for myself.

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Self Love and the Biology of Self was published on January 15th, 2010, with these tags: , , , , , . To date, this entry has received 5 comments.






‘Karma Chameleon’

Yemen Chameleon

The idea to write about chameleons in my last post came via a mailing from the California Academy of Sciences. Only I did not mention chameleons, and wrote about the institution’s new building instead. Thinking about why I got sidetracked, I realize the structure has peeved me ever since I visited it after completion. In the process of learning to be a docent, I attended a series of some twelve lectures about the new structure, and it sounded like the coolest thing ever. But when I entered it, the place just seemed sterile to me. The exact opposite of what I expect from a museum about life and nature. Why the place struck me that way remains a a bit of a mystery. Inside, they built an enclosed rainforest. Yes, an actual jungle with trees climbing dozens of feet, vines, waterways, and all manner of creatures. Granted, the animals all live in display cases (except the butterflies, which flutter freely), but the glass boxes present the organisms well. They look as natural as possible under the circumstances. The effort to do something unique and mind-blowing succeeded. And that without even taking the vast aquariums into account.

Maybe I complain about its success. The museum does such a fantastic job of bringing a tropical jungle environment to San Francisco, that it reminds me of the words from the 1970 Joanie Mitchell song, “Took all the trees, put ‘em in a tree museum”. She wrote the lyrics about a botanical garden in Hawaii, but the Academy takes the concept a step further. Oddly, the sense of that song fulfilled as a prophecy bothers me as much of anything. Has it come to that? A jungle in a bubble?

So I ended up writing about glass enclosures, and comparing them to the way our culture encourages people to rope in feelings, sensitivity and intuition. Our emotions are ‘supposed’ to remain confined, and not let out into the rational world of purchase and finance. We are to wall them off, the way the museum separates dirt, leaves, and bugs from the people walking concrete ramps in designer sneakers. A doomed and misguided stricture, it wipes all the messy ‘nature’ from the human psyche, leaving us with the machine like computations and reasoning of the brain’s neocortex (the evolutionarily ‘newest’ area of the nervous system, much enlarged in humans). When one compares the neocortex to the ‘older’ parts of the brain, sometimes called the ‘reptile brain’, a clear cut difference in regularity and modularity jumps out at you. On a functional level, the neocortex consists of repeating units of nearly identical cellular arrangement, which the brain adapts to different types of information processing in different regions. The ‘lizard brain’ on the other hand, looks chaotic, disorganized, and confusing. More organic and less like a biological iMac. The neocortex, don’t get me wrong, must be the most miraculous structure in the universe. Its capacity for figuring things out, speaking and symbolizing, creating art and song, and all the other human accomplishments must make God proud, if there is a ‘creating’ God (frankly, I kind of doubt that, but I remain open-minded and respect others who have faith that an omniscient consciousness built the universe).

Still, we share the more ‘organic’ appearing and deeper brain structures with a larger proportion of the animal kingdom. Like chameleons. (Did you think I’d forgotten about them?) What I read in that Academy publication said that chameleons don’t change their color so much in order to blend into their surroundings, as they do as an expression of ‘emotion’. It gladdened me to see affective responses freely ascribed to an organism as foreign as a lizard. When people muse about whether other animals have feelings (a discussion that happens more than I like) it immediately occurs to me that they have never loved a pet. Anyone who has bonded with a dog or cat does not need to conduct experiments to try to figure out if the animals emote. Those who love pets know that our non-human companions never stop expressing inner states that look very much like what we would call (for example) happiness, frustration, desire, or love. But I’ll have to admit, seeing the label ‘emotion’ attached to the interior world of a lizard surprised me. Not that I disagree. Even spiders seem to experience fear, for instance (ever tried to catch one and seen how it runs away in a ‘panic’?). Still, I usually think of chameleons as rather prosaic creatures.

Apparently such thoughts border on homo sapien bigotry. I humbly apologize to all reptiles for assuming they lack strong feelings. A male chameleon, in the throes of romance, will display crimson and green in vivid patterns, while puffing up like a decorated soldier on review. The female, if impressed, responds with a toned down version of the same coloration. If bored and uninterested, she turns brown. Would that human females were so easy to read.

Emotions are ancient. We share them with many (perhaps most) creatures on earth. They comprise one of our most touching bonds with the animal kingdom; unlike rational thought, which sets us apart. Emotions transform animals from machine-like entities with robotic needs for food and sex, into souls. Rather than acting like stimulus-response algorithms (if low on fuel, move toward food; if tanked up, search for a mate), they become seductive and flirtatious, ravenous or comfortably sated. Maybe just semantics, you might respond. How do we ‘know’ that a lizard flirts? Aren’t I just anthropomorphizing, to suggest such a thing? Yes. I am doing exactly that. If it looks like seduction, why not assume the lizard ‘feels’ amorous. Why should we jump to the arrogant conclusion that the chameleon has nothing going on inside. Just because we make machines that are incapable of emotion (though people try to make robots that emulate feelings; with eyebrows that move, for instance), have we justification for assuming that evolution works the same way? Does it really make ‘rational’ sense to postulate that emotions as we experience them popped into being along with the neocortex? Isn’t a more parsimonious explanation that they have been here all along? That the only human addition to the realm of feelings is the ability to speak, write, paint, and sing about them?

In that view, which I believe makes the most sense (even though it cannot be validated scientifically), emotions have an primeval heritage that we would do well to honor. Passions animate. They bring us the luxuriant and consuming experiences in life that intellect cannot comprehend. They are the language of the soul, and may even be the closest biological correlate to the ‘spirit’ world. They make animals precious. If other creatures have feelings, then they demand better treatment than they often receive. And so do we.

If feelings come to us from the earliest forms of crawling life, then they define the animal kingdom in a fundamental way. (Some would even say plants have feelings. I am not ready to go that far, but who really knows?) As I said in the last post, emotion should not be treated like an unnecessary and accidental nuisance. A world of ‘Spocks’ would be an uninteresting planet (would you want to be a Vulcan?). Feelings have a noble lineage, bond us to the natural world, and bring texture to life. Reason just figures things out.

When younger, I thought of myself as a chameleon. I used the term in a sense that the Academy tells me was inaccurate. Chameleons do not go around matching the environment. So calling people who try to blend in with every crowd by that name spreads a false myth about the lizard. In any event, my camouflage skills worked poorly. Yes, I changed from group to group, but even so I seldom ‘fit in’. I made a poor chameleon, in that sense.

With my new understanding of the animal, however, I deserve the chameleon gold medal. My emotions spread through my whole being, and completely change the face I put toward others. When depressed, I am distant, pessimistic, and terse. When happy, I become intimate, excited, and voluble. Two completely different animals.

758px-Dance_of_Love

We are all chameleons in that sense. We all change our aspect according to our inner world’s weather. Some hide their condition better than others, and alter their hue less obviously. Perhaps their inner winds blow less intensely, their passion heats without searing, and the sleet of sadness stings only a little. Or maybe they just enclose the storms better than those with more demonstrative behavior. Either way, we also know people can have such histrionic responses that the main body of humanity shies away, calls them ‘ill’, and wants them to ingest synthetic chemicals. I’m one of those ‘overly emotional’, and ‘too sensitive’ human animals. Society tells people like me to settle down.

Je refuse! I plan to wear my heart on my sleeve with gusto. Not that I want to create havoc in my life, harm others, or ‘lose it’ at inopportune times. But when the ‘spirit moves me’, I shall dance. I will boogie with all the myriad beasts on this earth, and be proud of my strong emotions. My feelings will bind me in spirit with all my furry, feathery, and scaly companions on the dance floor. Including the ‘cold-blooded’, but kaleidoscopic and ardent chameleon.

(I modified the wording of this post on 12 September 2009, c. 04:10 PDT.)
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‘Karma Chameleon’ was published on September 12th, 2009, with these tags: , , , . To date, this entry has received 3 comments.






Prepare for the prodigal’s return

519px-ColeopteraHMNH1

The California Academy of Sciences moved into its state-of-the-art museum and research facility almost exactly a year ago. My training as a docent was conducted in their temporary location near the financial district of San Francisco, in a set-up which I actually liked better than this impressive and environmentally responsible new structure. The designers had made the interim setting look a bit like the laboratory of a nineteenth century naturalist: varnished oak cabinets fronted by glass, exuberant displays of furred and feathered taxidermy next to boxes of crystal-encrusted rocks, and row after row of walnut-colored beetles the size of mice. Every specimen had a neat, penciled label gone sepia with age.

The new place is all steel and glass and concrete, topped by a ‘living roof’ comprised of an undulating carpet of native regional grasses. The broad awnings hold 60,000 photovoltaic cells. There is no traditional HVAC system; instead, the windows actually open. Award-winning and impressive, it no doubt helps the Academy move forward into the third millennium as a significant environmental research organization. But I miss the decorating style of Darwin’s day, when naturalists bragged about the number of ‘specimens’ they collected (read, organisms they killed and mounted). Not that I applaud the wanton destruction of life, just that there was something organic, musty, and mysterious that has since been lost. It almost seems as if, in an effort to compete with the sophisticated equipment and terminology of molecular biology and genomics, ‘natural history’ is editing out the dirt and repackaging itself as another gleaming, sterile technology.

Hopefully, this will help the scientific mission and mandate to rescue the planet from ongoing ecological rape. Perhaps the makeover will convince young women and men to enter the field, by making environmental science look cutting edge, computerized, and cash-rich. Still, I can’t help but feel like a steel and glass partition has been built that separates humans from nature. As a kid, when I went to science museums, it was the dark earthiness of the places that drew me in. The dim lighting needed to protect the exhibits, the smells of soil and fur tinged with formalin, and the sprawling display cabinets filled with dead things all spoke to me on some biotic wavelength that gets blocked by the flashy and hygienic new paradigm.

When the emphasis rested on dead specimens, the implication was: ‘there is such an endless profusion of life out there we can afford to kill hundreds of creatures to show it to you.’ Obviously, that lie has been exposed as a dangerous illusion many times over. But now the message has become, “here are a few living creatures that you can look at in a gigantic display case, but if we don’t do something soon this will be the only place these organisms will survive.’ A much more accurate and socially responsible communication, but it is also ineffably sad. Life has gone from seeming fecund and unstoppable, to something weak and in need of our help.

Life on earth is not weak. And it is not the earth that needs assistance, it is the human race. In fifty million years, chances are very good that humans will be extinct. After another fifty, life will be as luxuriant and diverse and breathtaking as it was a mere thousand years ago, before people began leaving widespread technological footprints on the planet. Flora and fauna will recover. What we risk is not life on earth, but the human spirit. We evolved in an ecological web of soil, and sun, and plants, and prey, and predators. The homo sapien heart has not forgotten this. The further we push the natural world out of our experience, whether by destroying it or simply staying indoors, the more lifeless our lives become, bereft of the inexpressible majesty we all recognize in the tiniest buttercup flower. By packaging nature in steel and glass, we are actually locking ourselves in the display case. We think we are free, looking at precious organisms carefully tended by automated climate control. But in fact, we are the ones under lock and key. Life just keeps evolving, and growing, and pollinating, and copulating, and dying, and rotting, and germinating, and giving birth. While we live in concrete boxes and eat microwave popcorn.

This blog has the tagline ‘Where Will meets Spirit’. Our human ‘will’ has brought us to this point. We have bent the forces of nature to serve our desires. But like anything that gets bent, those same influences patiently await the day they will snap back to their native form. Parts of the natural world will be irreparably broken before that happens, it appears. But the momentum of life is stronger, and older, than the human trajectory through earth’s history. Nature cannot be held back forever.

If you put a small number of bacteria on a fresh petri dish, at first the population will multiply and spread at an alarming rate. But the petri dish, like the earth, is a closed system. Sooner or later the bacteria deplete the resources, or a viral pathogen comes in, or some other counterbalancing influence stems the rate of population growth. Ultimately, the numbers crash, until once again the dish holds only a small number of living bacteria. Or none. Humanity sits on the steep upward ascent of the population trajectory. But most of us recognize that the tide must turn, the growth rate will slow, and in all likelihood a catastrophic drop in numbers will be suffered. Many scientists expect global diseases to strike and cause this, but famine or world nuclear war are other possibilities. Even more likely is a combination of influences leading to a sharp drop in the burden of humanity on the globe.

Nature will reassert itself, one way or the other.

Auguste Rodin: The Prodigal Son

In the same way that our global society is attempting (futilely) to crush and control the forces of life, it is also working hard to stifle the human spirit. We are enslaved by a cold and rational mindset that denies the importance of emotion and instinct. By locking the human mind into analytical modes, and trying to devalue or even ridicule sensitivity and feelings, those who profit from the current set-up attempt to guarantee their ascendancy. But by endeavoring to reign in the human pneuma, they are actually enclosing themselves in glass. Those of us whose emotional make-up does not permit us to live in a detached and predictable way remain free. We breathe more deeply, and live more richly out here in the fertile valleys, where moist, black soil is underfoot, and unruly vines cover everything.

We are told that because of mental ‘illness’, we are closed off from the ‘healthy’ condition of stability and dispassion. But like the viewers in the new museum, who eat candy as they look at terrariums, it is those in the hermetic glass houses who are trapped. The rest of us are free to experience the currents of stirring, lush, and earthy emotions. We remain more in touch with the human spirit, and by extension the essence of life on earth, than those who think emotions are atavistic and superfluous, like an appendix. Feelings are not an almost purposeless add-on, prone to abscess and treatable by excision. They are the heart of the human experience, and (for that matter) the human body.

We are the future. Sooner or later the poverty of denying the value and inevitability of emotionalism will be as obvious as the short-sighted stupidity of not living hand in hand with nature. The human spirit may stay bent for a long time, but eventually the organic forces in our hearts will assert themselves, restoring the balance. Let us recognize that we are the ones who have stayed close to our ancestral home, and be ready to welcome the wayward children back to the land.

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Prepare for the prodigal’s return was published on September 10th, 2009, with these tags: , , , , , . To date, this entry has received 2 comments.