A Sense of Urgency:                                         page two Working with children on a daily basis for thirty-some years presented a rather natural laboratory setting.  The introduction of determinism in my freshman philosophy class struck a resilient chord which has remained intact throughout my grown-up years.  All I had experienced up to that introduction lent a fragile but endurable logic to deterministic thought.  In my specific case, it was free-will's sin, hell and damnation, religiously declared attributes, which drew my attention and energized my thinking.  Those concepts were discordant.  They didn't ring true, but from a theological perspective, from a religious viewpoint, one cannot dump classic doctrine just because it feels wrong.  Wishful thinking is no more acceptable for the determinist than it is for the free-will advocate. As I worked with children, it became increasingly apparent the lives of my eight, nine, ten and eleven year-olds had pretty much been determined for them; they were merely performing according to the script life had handed them.  They could no more behave autonomously independent of previous experience than maggots could spontaneously appear on rotting meat.  There is no magical developmental moment when independence from previous experience is made possible.  How we think and what we think about is determined by previous experience.  Previous universal experience provides the tools and material.  Those tools and that material is a closed set and unique to each individual.  Tools and material are determined by previous universal experience. The tools and material my children possessed were all they had to navigate life with and those elements were placed within them by their experience.  Getting older merely improved their tools, (the physiological maturation of the brain) and provided more material to physiologically manipulate.  Exposure to developmental education fundamentals and Attachment Theory only strengthened these observations.  The journey to where I am today was fueled by irrational religious tradition rather than personal pride.  I was less hindered with thoughts of being a puppet on a string than I was with the possibility misjudgment regarding free-will might land me in hell!  I was respectfully precocious.  I was an oxymoron; an enigma!  The fact I hadn't spent a day inside the bun didn't hurt.  I was always thinking heretical thoughts.  It never occurred to me not to contradict authority.  Growing up in the sixties didn't hurt either. By the end of the eighties I had already established for my Self a determined Life Philosophy:                               Each is doing the best they can with what life has given them. or, said another way:                          Each is the sum total of their genetic predisposition and life experience. I didn't read Steve Pinker's Time Magazine article until early two thousand, seven.  Steve's article was no revelation.  It was simply reinforcements for a beleaguered army; confirmation of what I already knew to be true.  It was nice knowing someone from Harvard agreed with me!  All I had was knowledge.  Steve had credentials.   My frustration with the Steves of the world is, they open the cupboard door, get the glass out, put the glass on the countertop, open the refrigerator door, take out the orange juice, close the fridge door, open the orange juice bottle, pour the juice into the glass, put the lid back on the bottle, open the fridge door, put the orange juice back inside the fridge, close the refrigerator door, and... Isn't that frustrating?  Hello?  Is anybody home?  Yoo-hoo!  Yo!  Shit!  Would somebody please do the obvious?  God dammit!  Drink the mother-fucking orange juice, will ya! Now, I know why my family won't drink the orange juice.  They think...no, they do not think!  They believe drinking orange juice will make God angry and then he's gonna glue their little ass to a fiery toilet seat forever and ever and ever.  That kind of believing is gonna make a person do a lot of crazy things!  It's not likely they'll ever see the outside of a bun! That I can understand. But atheists and hard nosed, scientific method worshipping, scientists; what's keeping them from drinking the orange juice?  Why the heck do they insist on staying inside a bun filled with a bunch of religious zealots?  When a preponderance of evidence; when neuroscientists, colleagues, have amassed overwhelming evidence that consciousness is physiological brain activity* and merely an after-the-fact awareness, and only intuition, a direct sense, or better yet, common sense, suggests otherwise; with a glass of ice cold refreshing orange juice sitting on the counter-top, why in hell don't they drink it?   Could it be something as insubstantial and silly as pride? If I was Columbus, Copernicus or Galileo and living in the Dark Age, I'd just shake my head, roll my eyes, and grin.  But I'm not any of those guys, and though we still seem to be in the Dark Age, it's going to get a hell of a lot darker if we don't come to our senses and start working our butts off to change this universal mindset. Al Gore is wasting his time.  Global warming is a symptom and not the disease.  If, perchance, we manage to contain this symptom, there will be another, and another, and another, and the patient will eventually die.  Frankly, it matters not the least or the most or anywhere in between whether Hillary, Obama, or John becomes the next president. This psychological social psychosis is the critical issue.  The disease must be addressed if mankind is to survive. Please talk.  Somebody, anybody, please, at least talk.  If we're all going to be extinct'ed, I'd just as soon be extinct'ed talking about it, than be extinct'ed polishing my useless pride. Dialogue.  Exploratory dialogue.  A tincy-wincy bit of curiosity.  Perhaps an intellectually playful, irreverent, selfless, a non-aligned, uncompromising and deeply Unconditionally Loving intern who would be willing to risk their professional and institutional potential and quite possibly save the world; give life a  chance and give me someone to talk to.   I love orange juice and everything.  I do!  But, really; there's plenty of orange juice to go around! And, thanks again for the subscription opportunity.  Much appreciated!  It won't be wasted by me, anyway. * Steve Pinker; Time Magazine; January 2007                                                                  Return to Main Content Page