Last night was a good-mood kind of insomnia, I was creative and fun and wrote a lot, not that much ended up coming of it. Tonight isn't so great. I'm really cranky and starting to think about hitting myself over the head really hard just so I can get some rest.
Tonight, I'm thinking about the reptile complex and that horrifying second when someone lets theirs show and you see the instinct to take and take that seems to drive some people, and you wonder if somehow it is somewhere in you as well. In one of Laurie King's books, Sherlock Holmes says that all murders are essentially self-defense as people defend themselves against poverty and insecurity and such.
Kids who are abused permanently bear scars and decades later are often still letting reactions to that abuse drive their behavior. It's one of those nights were I feel like all of humanity has psychic scars from the hunting and gathering years, and we're still fighting caveman fears of not having enough.
Some nights I believe it, sometimes the idea that all of the world's institutions are run by taking and fear seems very real.
It's starting to seem like a good time to run out to that all-night Kinkos and print up the invitations to a baby shower I'm throwing. Our-Hero-Charlie-the-Vanquisher's daughter Victoria is due in early September. The kid is still in utero, and I know how strong my feelings for her are already.
Victoria will come into this world pre-loved, one more generation evolved away from the cavemen.
Good luck, Kiddo.
CC
5 comments:
Oh, give up. Skip law school. Go to seminary. I think you’ll end up a minister in the end anyway!
Blessed be!
remember the snake story? It's that atmosphere of hate and fear. It's generalized.
This too shall pass....
Kim: No, this is the opposite of the snake story. If you believe in the reptile brain, you believe that we all have the capacity for great evil pretty much all the time. If, like Ivan, we just do evil because we percieve that other people are doing it, then we will quickly become creatures of total selfishness because the capacity is there. We have to rise above it, every day, every hour. I don't know if I believe that in the light of day, but it worked for me last night.
(Kim and I are talking about the russian folktale that is cited in the second comment here.)
Anonymous: Is that a threat?
Smiling,
CC
Oh, I agree completely. We have tha capacity for evil, but we also have the capacity for good. One of the main purposes for religion is to reinforce the good over the bad, to encourage us to stay in the viewpoint of compassion and kindness and justice and minimize the viewpoint of blind selfishness.
The snake story postulates (at least that's my memory of it's impression) that there are vast washes of each viewpoint that run through the culture, tipping the general attitude one way or the other, and we are all influenced by the current cultural view to some degree.
Remaining kind and generous when the culture as a whole is in the selfish mode is an uphill battle, but by no means impossible. And worth fighting for....Maybe even more important that when the culture is in selfless mode, because it's harder.
By the way, for sleeping, have you tried a warm shower before bed?
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