How much of what a student learns comes from what is taught, and how much simply bubbles up--from a subtle world view or vision--flowing just beneath what is taught? Consider the image above (which I found hanging from a classroom wall.) At first, it seems harmless enough. Notice the progression to a modern human (complete with briefcase) indicating our collective progress and evolution.
Part of civilized culture's inference of superiority comes from this idea, this ability to self improve (and our ability to chart these improvements, through time, relative to things like health, sanitation, general living and intelligence.) The grand secret is that many of these improvements are relative improvements. Lets take, for example, the modern running shoe.
Over time, in an arc of progress, the shoe has made improvements upon itself, constantly evolving new ways of stabilizing the foot & cushioning impact. The catch: studies indicate that higher end running shoes have a rather high correlation with injury.
Only recently has minimal footwear returned to popularity, as we seek to emulate the barefoot runner. Personally, I have begun to wear footwear similar to that seen below.
A barefoot runner generally strikes the front or middle portion of the foot down first, with the heel to follow--touching the down lightly. The foot works, and it has worked for a long time. It doesn't need to go through a technicolor series of quantum leaps, because, again, it already works. [This does not mean that long term muscle imbalances from the foot up can be disregarded. One may have to bridge these worlds, carefully and therapeutically, on a case by case basis.]
However, when our culture deviated onto a different track and began wearing modern shoes, there was a space instantly born, with plenty of room for a better shoe.
Meanwhile, for all this time, many indigenous peoples have been running long distances daily--without demonstrating the injuries westerners typically associate with running. These injuries are largely derived from striking heel first (with disregard to the function of the foot in general.) Now we are learning to run again.
By the same principle, when we create enclosed spaces and fill them with artificial light, we've created plenty space for improvement. That sixty watt bulb has a long ways to go to achieve the quality of the sun (that star at the center of our solar system.)
Now progress has a place to dance, and it may reinvent the bulb in a series of forward moving leaps. What it's really doing is moving toward the quality of sunlight, which itself needs no improvement.
All of this business of improvement is more or less improvement upon our own, radically new, way of life. We can acknowledge powerful improvements, however, it is good to understand their context, because they are occurring within our culture's own particular way of living.
We may feel the forward moving rush, as discoveries push us through progressive dances of improvement. However, behind the freedom of newly created options, there my be a subtle, barely tangible wall, behind which, hides an optimal high quality given.
This may be sunlight, a simple (nutrient dense) traditional food, a healthy way of posturing the body and so on--which we may have lost or let fade too far into the background.
After all, what are a thousand paralyzing options, in countless grocery isles, if none of them contain the basic ground elements of nutrition and energetic integrity?
If superwoman were to come to earth, she would have all the choice of men--but, really, she is looking for a man of steel. Her man... he is (or was) on the planet Krypton.
The point is we have to wonder if some proclamations of freedom are inversely proportional to true quality.
Is freedom a hundred thousand lesser variations or one high quality given that, once upon a time, you didn't have to give a second thought to--because it never interrupted your dancing with it? Sunlight. Darkness. Water. Air. Dirt. Food. Community. Motion. Flow. Life.
This is not to say that our world doesn't provide variety at the realm of the high quality given. Often there is loads of it. The Kalahari bushmen utilize 85+ high quality edible plants as the mainstay of their diet. A documentary entitled "The Story of Man" shows how blood analysis traces the Kalahari Bushman back as our earliest living ancestor, the closest people we have evolved from.
Jared Diamond, the author of The Third Chimpanzee, remarks that the Kalahari Bushman "have leisure time, sleep a lot, and work no harder than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food has been reported to be only twelve to nineteen hours a week.” And there they are living right under the crazy sun.
Lets return to sunlight as an example of a high quality given. Consider the light we encounter from the sun, and let's consider it all the way back to source. The warmth we feel on our faces is an extension of that ball of light and fire. It is as inseparable from its source, as stream is from ocean. (this is a backwards flowing analogy, but still.)
The sun we see through the sky is literally touching our eye, intertwining with our system, correlating to the release of specific chemicals. These correlate with specific moods we feel when as they reach our cells. These moods then correlate with specific desires and responses to life, correlating, therefore, with our perception of the world. That perception drives the things we do and influences the choices that are made.
Without the sun, perhaps our perception of the world, if unsatisfactory, would have us reaching externally for satisfaction. We could slip into a whole realm of drugs and marketed goods--many of which further complicate the situation. For they are also quick changes that don't quite fit the puzzle of our very beings.
They create new gaps to improve upon--making room for new advances, new perceptions of ourselves getting better, new perceptions of progress and superiority, new perceptions of being at cutting edge of brilliance.
All of this because we spent our time underneath some fluorescent lights. Do you feel it?Ironic that we may read our children this:
"There was an old lady who swallowed a cat.
Imagine that, she swallowed a cat.
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird...
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly"
-Rose Bonne
Consequently, the vitamin D deficiency (from not getting enough sunlight) provides a nutritional gap that new vitamin-fortified foods seek to fill--again, indicating progress. When these foods correct a deficiency, we may recognize them as better foods (even if they are deficient in some way themselves--due to other quick changes folded within.)
Hype and the spotlight of fashion may follow. Marketers may get involved, as advertising campaigns seek to nudge the purchaser toward particular foods--not in the vein that those foods are best for us, but because they are better than what we experienced before. We don't, however, take that comparison far enough, beyond the bubble wall of our own short, collective memory.
Our history goes back way further than that, certainly further back than the invention of the modern shoe.The trick is we are comparing our new experience to what we experienced before, within our own cultural reference. Comparing one product to another (from the same central isle of the grocery store) may be like comparing two trees, side by side, on the same little island. Maybe, however, we're on the wrong island.
We think we are going straight to the center of the tootsie roll pop, but it's only ourselves hiding in there... along with a mirror reflecting own cultural distortions, and a lot of sugar.
However, if we dive in and leave the island, not only do we get some perspective, looking back, we may notice that the land continues, however obscured... and out there, outside of our isolation, we might just find what works.
“The world is always changing. We have to look to the past to find out what doesn't change [relatively speaking.]" So, we dive in.
We've been with the sun since the beginning, and Vitamin D is but one of its benefits. The sun offers a "full, naturally balanced spectrum of light, including ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths. It's intensity and color temperature change throughout the day."
The sun is our relationship partner--though we hardly show up to the affair. According to the EPA, the average American today is indoors or in transit 98% of the time and outdoors only 2% of the time.
Now words flirt with truth, and truth is usually in context, so there are exceptions here. Residents of Iceland fare well during months of darkness, for example, due to dietary intake of vitamin D from fish. Plenty of tribal people wear simple shoes. You only have to watch the Planet Earth Series to witness the relatively rougher aspects of life. Some tribal populations clash in some way or form.
In general though we seem to fare well when we fall back to the importance of natural light, the benefits of being barefoot, the benefits of sitting in ways that complement our physiology--rather than ways that challenge it. Remember those uncomfortable high school chairs. Do you feel it? What are the repercussions of sitting (not squatting) all day? What are the repercussions of everyone leaning to one side all day... and having virtually no contact with the actual ground, the actual earth, at all?
Have we even evolved to sit in chairs? Squatting is clearly better for our physiology. The pelvic bone is more free to float around, rather than being locked into position. And how effectively do we learn in confines of modern chairs? Stuck bodies encourage stuck minds. Stressing the mind certainly stresses the body, and the reverse is also true.
The chair, like the shoe, might be best removed, altered, or at least reconsidered, as we invite an evolution of ergonomically correct chairs. Will any chair ever exceed squatting in terms of its benefits?We, and all those things we share stage with (chairs, snacks, shoes, foods, other creatures, weather,) are like pieces of an elaborate mufti-dimensioned puzzle.
Nutritionally speaking, this is the concern with producing genetically modified foods, which are essentially changes to one puzzle piece, which locks into the surrounding puzzle, which includes our digestive systems. A puzzle piece that is 99.99% right may or may not quite fit. At the very least, the increased pesticides, that the food was genetically modified to withstand, don't.
We may have yet to discover the very fine edges of that puzzle to reveal what does fit. Perhaps the whole puzzle has to be grabbed at once and shifted! Ecosystems typically evolve together... mostly slowly. (Otherwise, picture a kid trying to put square peg in round hole.)
If only one piece of the puzzle is shifted, the other is left to adapt if it can adapt. And, then we may be the foot that no longer fits Cinderella's shoe. And I suppose that's natural too.
I like the example of the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs---by kicking up enough particulates to block out the sun, kill photosynthesis, and radically cool the the earth. If the conditions no longer fit the organism, the organism is challenged to the brink. Obviously, after 5 major extinctions, it may be perfectly natural to witness quick changes come to alter the world.
In other words, who is to say it is not the intent of the world/universe to have a shift or a quick change? However, by the same token, who is to say that the desire which burns in me, right now, all the way to the fingers typing these letters, is not also the intent of the world. What then of choice?
We live in a complex, ever-changing world full of slow and quick change. However, if we are building our own meteor and have the sentience to decide whether to keep building it, what shall we do? (Excuse me while I change into something less comfortable?)
“There are no rules now.
You who bore me, taught me, raised me.
Mother, Father, friends, lovers,
You are my brothers and sisters now.
All that you taught me to help me in life
Is no longer true, unless I find it so.
Your truths for you, mine for me.
But I, being some part child still,
Grieve for the missing parents to be no more
Nor to be a parent myself.
No longer even a child of God but co-creator.
This is frightening.
This is glorious.
-Jane Bishop, from Nepo's book.
I would add that this is power... the ability to fire little meteors into our own world. "With great power comes great responsibility." When we talk about changing what we eat, we talk about changing tiny components which dock on specific sites of our cells. We are eating puzzle pieces.
However, these puzzle pieces are not entirely tangible, especially considering, even the nature of atoms, which in the realm of discussion, are mostly empty (if empty is even possible--with electrons appearing and disappearing in a quantum sea.)
The distance between nucleus and the nearest fuzzy idea of an electron may be, essentially, miles apart. So, more appropriately, we fit the world like a fluid energy puzzle, and if we change the world quicker than we change ourselves--or change ourselves quicker than we change the world, we may find our current form obsolete. We, essentially, create a new mosaic into which we may not fit. [Artificial intelligence opens up a whole other can of worms.]
We live on a thin slice of earth, and if we fill that space with that with which we are not compatible, right down to the particles of air we breath, we have to consider that we have surrendered a portion of our space.
It goes way beyond this, because if that thin slice is made incompatible for even a fraction of other creatures, the domino affect can shift the radically shift the mosaic right back to us.
For example, a cow may face, not only a radically confining environment, but a quick change diet composed of corn (genetically modified corn no less) rather than a smorgasbord of grasses.
The cow, furthermore, passes along to the consumer a lower fat soluble vitamin count, a lesser quality fat in general, & complications arising from antibiotics (given to cows with now lowered immunity.)
What about farmed bees that are fed fructose syrup? Are they resistant to all they need be resistant to? Are they up for pollinating all those plants on which the world depends? In some countries, such as Japan, fitness is valued in relationship to work, but these workers work for more than a single company or country. And what about s/he who consumes the honey?
Recently I learned that direct current (DC) electricity travels on the outside of the wire. In a way, we are like that too, clinging to a stream of food and world coming right through us, mouth to exit, mind to action. We are what we eat eats. We are what we interact with interacts with. We are what we live with lives with. We are what we dance with dances with.
In this sense, we are not merely ourselves, but the whole dance, the whole system with which we are intertwined.
One has to admit there is always an exception to any rule--and that quantum leaps are possible (what with particles co-existing as waves in a boundless mystery.) Everything we think is set in stone turns out not to be. There could be great hidden potential within our own genes, hidden abilities which may not switch on (until we place ourselves in the exact situation that flicks the switch.)
Then there is our very reaction to the environment, which itself is not solid, but a great sea of mystery we all swim in. Our very thoughts are undeniably & fluidly tied to it. We seem to live in an electric unset sea.
Certainly in a future entry, we can delve deeper beyond the apparently physical, to discuss: spontaneous remissions, power of mind, exceptions to rules (in that realm where we or I doesn't easily apply.)
Our words are explorers seeking to go new places, but they are built sometimes of the place that made them, so, like our culture, they must adapt in time. Still, aren't they beautiful?
For now, lets address the system in a tangible, physical earthy way, regardless of what holds it in form. Let's say its a relative factor in our culture to go out of style. Let's speculate also that our diet has changed from what is native to us. Let's speculate that, as a result, the composition of nutrients in our skin has changed.
Now, assuming we and sun to be dance partners, locking fluid arms in the great mosaic, who then has made a quick change and, without warning, changed the dance moves, relatively speaking? Who has gone out on the dance floor, ditched the program and started fancy break dancing---with our partner still standing there burning like a fireball. The sun or us?
In answer, to our concerns about sun exposure, we apply sunscreen--itself often containing numerous brand new, never before danced with, quick change agents. We also may reduce natural light exposure in general, but something to consider, as previously mentioned, is that the quick transformation in our own skin composition--due to rapid changes in our diets (relative to those of our ancestors, outside the bubble,) may be a factor in the sun-skin relationship and its negative consequences.
There may be more on trial here than simply the quality of that original light source itself, which interestingly enough, has fallen upon millions of creatures, round the world for eons, eons we survived through to bring us to this (well, according to popular speculation anyway.) Tribal/indigenous bands of people still exist today.
These are people, who according to Dr. Weston Price, display superior health and nutrition that comes without a quick change to diet and lifestyle, which thereby affects nutrient load, as revealed by blood tests showing higher levels of fat soluble vitamins in the native & indigenous populations he studied.
Is cancer more a modern happening--since the industrial revolution (or the agricultural) revolution?
It is at least the case that we have changed our personal piece of the puzzle enough that we are no longer an effective control for the sun-skin experiment.
Also, I suppose we have changed our own atmosphere, which the sun filters through, with ozone holes found, primarily, above the poles. We also may avoid sun and then blast our skin in bursts. Two radical extremes (quick changes.)
In order to truly study the sun-skin relationship, we may consider a gracious study of whatever remains of relatively isolated hunter-gatherer peoples we can find (or even ourselves when we display optimal nutrition.)
Still, one has to use one's best judgement. If I know anything, I know that I don't. Time plucks stars from the sky, and I'm sure it will blow something I'm confidently sure about into the ethers and serve me up a wonder-filled slice of humble pie.
A person may be a fish that's jumped out of the bowl to get an expansive view, shouting it out, while still, all the while, actually still being underwater, which something comes along and kindly (or unkindly) reveals.
And here's the thing: we never see it coming. A view can solidify to the point where it's like a rock inside. And then, that something comes along... and, yeah, that something is probably out there. Until then, scratching curious nails at the surface of a mystery may reveal a useful tendency. I love the quote “The universe has tendencies not laws.” (Amit Goshwami)
One such tendency we may observe is that when a creature is relocated quickly to a new habitat, craziness may unfold. If you look up so-called invasive plants and animals in your area, you may see how collision of creature and habitat is meteor-like in it's impact. Examples are English Ivy and Nutria in the Pacific Northwest, Zebra Mussels in the Chesapeake, etc. Each represents a quick change.
Along those lines, certainly the quick migration of peoples, in recent times, may have set forth changes, consequently exposing a culture (suited to certain amounts of sun) to new and relatively inappropriate (or better put) new conditions.
We are talking about the side effects of adapting to our own new culture/new way of living which may include more rapid travel/relocation, just like it includes a better running shoe.
Now this is a huge point--because we are not talking about improvements on the entire state of human beings since the beginning of time. This means that if we seem to become more intelligent, we may be simply more intelligent than ourselves, within our own particular game.
We are talking about relative improvements on the state of modern people, a potentially misleading label, since today in modern times, hunter-gatherer & indigenous peoples still exist.
Meaning that they do not necessarily, as a function of the vision flowing beneath what have been taught, belong behind the man with the briefcase.
This means there is more than one destination, thus far, in the human story, meaning that the story has not reached its relative end with us. The very sense of "we" is expanded now.
It seems premature to register our own culture, in its infancy of ~500 generations, as more intelligent. If we want to use the word we to define us as members of our culture, we could just as easily say we are one modern group who took one particular mysterious path.
The story of all humans is not limited to the particular bubble (in which we developed new shoes and lights and foods and chairs from that point on.) Our way, of course, is inflated by the numbers... large population, which expands the bubble to its furthest reaches. We may consider the question “is the big balloon full of brilliance or simply close to popping?”
And, again can we call the bubble the latest chapter in a linear story of man--when neurologically equivalent beings, who live differently, are still among us? People whose ways are generally in accord with the tendencies of the world, that our culture, in its quick change newness, is still at a grasp to understand and align with.
Then again, there are common sense powerful assumptions holding our culture's world view in orbit... assumptions that beg a 3-D poster type of second look. They include: we are longer lived, our lives are easier, we are the leading edge of intelligence (having passed written down knowledge on to others, thereby exponentiating intelligence.) Technology takes the game to a new level, but, on this enterprise, have we really boldly gone where no one has gone before?
Over the course of entries to come, we will explore these topics further. One interesting cultural assumption worth noting is this: domination, in itself, is a demonstration of superior intelligence. In which case, the following is posed:
Imagine for a moment a table with two plates, one with lightly steamed broccoli, the other with a piece of your favorite candy.
Few people would agree that candy is a superior food to a vegetable, and yet, its taste is so intensely sweet, that one may truly physiologically lose a taste for the vegetable... (for real--overdoing sugar may result in an altered perception, which will eventually return to baseline... over a number of weeks, when the diet is balanced again).
Concentrated sugar, lights and sound are strong in that way; They may be enticing, seductive, overpowering. But superior? Where does the choice of concentrated sugar lead? And what truly drives one to choose it?
In the end, does what our culture has to offer amount to a sugary and complicated firework--or a deep and wholesome meal? Or both?
To study ourselves and negotiate our challenges, it may take more than going to the edge of our own culture's history (and placing a hand on the outer wall of our own bubble.) Like Truman (true man, true person, true curiosity, true wonder, true mystery,) we may have to crack open the door.
Perhaps with a bit of distance we may turn back around to see ourselves again, and that would be quite brilliant to say the least.
And in case I don't see you,
Goodnight.
A somewhat unprofessional ADD referenced section:
*Jared Diamond, Excerpts From The Third Chimpanzee and Guns, Germs & Steel
*Daniel Quinn, Ishmael and Story of B
*Ulrich Kraft, Scientific American Mind, an article on Seasonal Affective Disorder.)
*Brief mention... Kazuo Murakami, Phd, The Divine Code of Life (Genes)
*Weston Price: Nutrition & Physical Degeneration
*Mark Nepo: A few random quotes from book The Exquisite Risk
*"The Story of Man" DVD (blood typing to reveal ancestery)
*Christopher McDougall, Born To Run
*Article: "Population as A Function of Food Supply"
*The Truman Show (Movie)
*This quote... “we must look to the past for what doesn't change.” was from a movie. I don't recall which one.
*The quote "with great power comes great responsibility" is from Sam Rami's Spiderman II
Then there is our very reaction to the environment, which itself is not solid, but a great sea of mystery we all swim in. Our very thoughts are undeniably & fluidly tied to it. We seem to live in an electric unset sea.
Certainly in a future entry, we can delve deeper beyond the apparently physical, to discuss: spontaneous remissions, power of mind, exceptions to rules (in that realm where we or I doesn't easily apply.)
Our words are explorers seeking to go new places, but they are built sometimes of the place that made them, so, like our culture, they must adapt in time. Still, aren't they beautiful?
For now, lets address the system in a tangible, physical earthy way, regardless of what holds it in form. Let's say its a relative factor in our culture to go out of style. Let's speculate also that our diet has changed from what is native to us. Let's speculate that, as a result, the composition of nutrients in our skin has changed.
Now, assuming we and sun to be dance partners, locking fluid arms in the great mosaic, who then has made a quick change and, without warning, changed the dance moves, relatively speaking? Who has gone out on the dance floor, ditched the program and started fancy break dancing---with our partner still standing there burning like a fireball. The sun or us?
In answer, to our concerns about sun exposure, we apply sunscreen--itself often containing numerous brand new, never before danced with, quick change agents. We also may reduce natural light exposure in general, but something to consider, as previously mentioned, is that the quick transformation in our own skin composition--due to rapid changes in our diets (relative to those of our ancestors, outside the bubble,) may be a factor in the sun-skin relationship and its negative consequences.
There may be more on trial here than simply the quality of that original light source itself, which interestingly enough, has fallen upon millions of creatures, round the world for eons, eons we survived through to bring us to this (well, according to popular speculation anyway.) Tribal/indigenous bands of people still exist today.
These are people, who according to Dr. Weston Price, display superior health and nutrition that comes without a quick change to diet and lifestyle, which thereby affects nutrient load, as revealed by blood tests showing higher levels of fat soluble vitamins in the native & indigenous populations he studied.
Is cancer more a modern happening--since the industrial revolution (or the agricultural) revolution?
It is at least the case that we have changed our personal piece of the puzzle enough that we are no longer an effective control for the sun-skin experiment.
Also, I suppose we have changed our own atmosphere, which the sun filters through, with ozone holes found, primarily, above the poles. We also may avoid sun and then blast our skin in bursts. Two radical extremes (quick changes.)
In order to truly study the sun-skin relationship, we may consider a gracious study of whatever remains of relatively isolated hunter-gatherer peoples we can find (or even ourselves when we display optimal nutrition.)
Still, one has to use one's best judgement. If I know anything, I know that I don't. Time plucks stars from the sky, and I'm sure it will blow something I'm confidently sure about into the ethers and serve me up a wonder-filled slice of humble pie.
A person may be a fish that's jumped out of the bowl to get an expansive view, shouting it out, while still, all the while, actually still being underwater, which something comes along and kindly (or unkindly) reveals.
And here's the thing: we never see it coming. A view can solidify to the point where it's like a rock inside. And then, that something comes along... and, yeah, that something is probably out there. Until then, scratching curious nails at the surface of a mystery may reveal a useful tendency. I love the quote “The universe has tendencies not laws.” (Amit Goshwami)
One such tendency we may observe is that when a creature is relocated quickly to a new habitat, craziness may unfold. If you look up so-called invasive plants and animals in your area, you may see how collision of creature and habitat is meteor-like in it's impact. Examples are English Ivy and Nutria in the Pacific Northwest, Zebra Mussels in the Chesapeake, etc. Each represents a quick change.
Along those lines, certainly the quick migration of peoples, in recent times, may have set forth changes, consequently exposing a culture (suited to certain amounts of sun) to new and relatively inappropriate (or better put) new conditions.
We are talking about the side effects of adapting to our own new culture/new way of living which may include more rapid travel/relocation, just like it includes a better running shoe.
Now this is a huge point--because we are not talking about improvements on the entire state of human beings since the beginning of time. This means that if we seem to become more intelligent, we may be simply more intelligent than ourselves, within our own particular game.
We are talking about relative improvements on the state of modern people, a potentially misleading label, since today in modern times, hunter-gatherer & indigenous peoples still exist.
This means there is more than one destination, thus far, in the human story, meaning that the story has not reached its relative end with us. The very sense of "we" is expanded now.
It seems premature to register our own culture, in its infancy of ~500 generations, as more intelligent. If we want to use the word we to define us as members of our culture, we could just as easily say we are one modern group who took one particular mysterious path.
The story of all humans is not limited to the particular bubble (in which we developed new shoes and lights and foods and chairs from that point on.) Our way, of course, is inflated by the numbers... large population, which expands the bubble to its furthest reaches. We may consider the question “is the big balloon full of brilliance or simply close to popping?”
And, again can we call the bubble the latest chapter in a linear story of man--when neurologically equivalent beings, who live differently, are still among us? People whose ways are generally in accord with the tendencies of the world, that our culture, in its quick change newness, is still at a grasp to understand and align with.
Then again, there are common sense powerful assumptions holding our culture's world view in orbit... assumptions that beg a 3-D poster type of second look. They include: we are longer lived, our lives are easier, we are the leading edge of intelligence (having passed written down knowledge on to others, thereby exponentiating intelligence.) Technology takes the game to a new level, but, on this enterprise, have we really boldly gone where no one has gone before?
Over the course of entries to come, we will explore these topics further. One interesting cultural assumption worth noting is this: domination, in itself, is a demonstration of superior intelligence. In which case, the following is posed:
Imagine for a moment a table with two plates, one with lightly steamed broccoli, the other with a piece of your favorite candy.
Few people would agree that candy is a superior food to a vegetable, and yet, its taste is so intensely sweet, that one may truly physiologically lose a taste for the vegetable... (for real--overdoing sugar may result in an altered perception, which will eventually return to baseline... over a number of weeks, when the diet is balanced again).
Concentrated sugar, lights and sound are strong in that way; They may be enticing, seductive, overpowering. But superior? Where does the choice of concentrated sugar lead? And what truly drives one to choose it?
In the end, does what our culture has to offer amount to a sugary and complicated firework--or a deep and wholesome meal? Or both?
To study ourselves and negotiate our challenges, it may take more than going to the edge of our own culture's history (and placing a hand on the outer wall of our own bubble.) Like Truman (true man, true person, true curiosity, true wonder, true mystery,) we may have to crack open the door.
Perhaps with a bit of distance we may turn back around to see ourselves again, and that would be quite brilliant to say the least.
And in case I don't see you,
Goodnight.
A somewhat unprofessional ADD referenced section:
*Jared Diamond, Excerpts From The Third Chimpanzee and Guns, Germs & Steel
*Daniel Quinn, Ishmael and Story of B
*Ulrich Kraft, Scientific American Mind, an article on Seasonal Affective Disorder.)
*Brief mention... Kazuo Murakami, Phd, The Divine Code of Life (Genes)
*Weston Price: Nutrition & Physical Degeneration
*Mark Nepo: A few random quotes from book The Exquisite Risk
*"The Story of Man" DVD (blood typing to reveal ancestery)
*Christopher McDougall, Born To Run
*Article: "Population as A Function of Food Supply"
*The Truman Show (Movie)
*This quote... “we must look to the past for what doesn't change.” was from a movie. I don't recall which one.
*The quote "with great power comes great responsibility" is from Sam Rami's Spiderman II
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