Monthly Archives: February 2013

The Neurological Roots of Experience

An Addendum on the Incest Theme

Let me explain a little further about the incest notion. Incest is a spiritual problem as are all problems for we aren’t a body who has a spirit but we are a body who is intrinsically an expression of Spirit. When incest takes place, something has gone horribly awry in the depths of the human heart and sometimes, though not always, finds expression in behavior. But it is first and foremost a spiritual matter. Now, of course, when addressing this issue as a clinician, my first concern was not so much the “spiritual” as the behavioral—the behavior had to stop and thus the legal system had to be employed. And by here speaking of the issue as “spiritual” I do not diminish in the least the horrible nature of the deed itself.

And by “spiritual” here I am not speaking of “Spiritual” necessarily as in God and such…though ultimately that is where this “spirituality” leads. But I am talking about the subtle intricacies of the human heart, the hidden fancies and whims which for most of us are filtered out of consciousness. Some are not so fortunate and have their conscious thought violated by these thoughts and are often overwhelmed with their intoxicating lure. When the intoxication becomes too intense, acting-out often occurs.

The spiritual incest phenomenon reflects a great distrust of the world and I suspect it stems from a great distrust of the man/woman’s own physicality. He…and I’m going to focus on the male…is fearful of the outside world and comes to find the realm of private fantasy more appealing than that of the outside world. Sure, the outside world beckons but to venture there exacts a price, it entails risk and fear, and it is easier to just retreat within a private world. And this “private world” inevitably is orchestrated in the dynamics of the parents who have their own deep-seated problems with personal and physical intimacy. And this poison deepens and evolves, becoming increasingly convoluted, and when children come along they inevitably imbibe of this atmosphere and internalize it. And, this is true even when some of these families never actually become “incestuous” overtly. For some reason they mercifully they maintain the physical boundaries but the spiritual boundaries are not there and the children are enmeshed in a morass of expectations which always include a disdain and fear of the outside world. This often gives rise to some of the families who decide to “home-school” their children, keeping them from being “contaminated” by that “evil and wicked world out there.” And they almost always adopt religious views which encourage this poison.

But this same dynamic is often present with the hyper-conservative extremist groups. They reject the world, turn within, and end up feeding on themselves; or, as Shakespeare put it, they find themselves “feeding even on the pith of life.”

The Incestuous Nature of Political Extremism

3 Replies

I am one of those guys who see both sides of any particular issue and, in fact, see multiple sides of many issues. That stance in life has become problematic if one is not careful as it leaves one wishy-washy, unable to take a stand, and given to be a “commitment-phobic.” And certainly it was no accident that I did not commit to marriage until I was 37!

So, on the current political morass my country is facing I do see the need of a solid Republican Party as well as a solid Democratic Party. And I do see arrogance on both extremes. HOWEVER, what is going on with the Republican extremists, more or less the Tea Party, merits the full brunt of my analytic knife.

Any group who lives in “the bubble” like they do end up feeding on themselves to the point of catastrophe. One classic example of this insularity run amok is an incested family, a family that has become so insular, so barricaded from the outside world, so deprived of external reference, that they do feed on themselves as demonstrated by sexual violence. And in so many of these families the poison does finally erupt into physical violence and murder and mayhem ensues. (An example of this occurred in my state in the 1980’s. You can google Ronald Gene Simmons and Arkansas if you are interested.)

Now if you interpret this to mean that I am accusing the Republicans of incest you are really not a discriminating reader. My point is that incest is an illustration of the poison that the extremists of that party are infected with and that poison has been allowed to filter out into the ranks of the party as a whole. This is best illustrated in how they have ostracized two of their on in the past year for merely demonstrating a willingness to fraternize with President Obama. I’m speaking of the ex-governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, and the current governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. Christie deigned to accept Obama’s help for his state last fall when it was ravaged by a hurricane, was photographed with Obama, and was recording thanking Obama for his help. As a result, Christie is now persona non grata with the Republicans and last week was, like Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer, not invited to participate in one of the Party’s “Reindeer games”—the Conservative Political Action Committee. And Crist’s mistake was warmly receiving Obama shortly after his election in 2008 and even being seen embracing the President.

These extremists do not want any outside influence. They know the truth and they insist that others accept that truth and these others will not have their approval unless they accept the party line. They have the obsessive need for purity which I discoursed about earlier in the week. This too is incestuous as the incest dynamic reflects a need for self-sufficiency, an unwillingness to “marry-out”, and an unconscious belief that the family unit can meet its own sexual needs and this in turn is ultimately about meeting one’s own spiritual needs without outside influence. This is evil. And our world has before us a glaring example of where this poison leads—the Taliban!

Language and our Unity with God

1 Reply

I’ve always loved words and early in school discovered I had a facility for them. I had no understanding of it at the time, but in my early development I was experientially discovering that our alphabet is “26 toy soldiers that guard us from the rim of the abyss.” (Nikos Kazantzakis) My memories of those years, especially in the first grade where these “toy soldiers” first befriended me, are kind of murky. But I know that it was a stressful time.

Late in grade school the French language came to this little central Arkansas country school. Now why in the hell it was French I’ll never know. I suppose the legislature appropriated money for the schools to help pull the state out of the stone age and a government bureaucrat told the school board, “Now you’uns need a fur’en language.” The superintendent must have said, “Why hell, Why not French?” So I fumbled with the French language and was fascinated that in another country, far off from my little provincial world, people made different sounds for things that I used English for. I was bewildered. And I guess this was the dawning of some suspicion that reality might not be as rigid as I had been taught, that there was more fluidity in reality than my tribe really wanted me to know about.

So I took French often in high school also though I really didn’t learn much beyond “Paylay vue francay” and “Ooh ay la bibliotech?” And I continued in college as I had to meet a language requirement but still did not become fluent in the language. I found it interesting but could never immerse myself in it, I could never “think” in the foreign tongue, and so fluency never came my way. And since then, I’ve dabbled in Greek and Spanish and have read extensively in the field of linquistics. But when I have traveled abroad, I’ve always had to rely on “the kindness of strangers” or my wife’s greater finesse with other languages.

But instead of my awkwardness and lack of finesse with other languages, over the decades I have come to love words, to love language, and to delight in learning intricacies of other languages. Swimming in the blog-o-sphere has whetted my appetite as many new friends have introduced me to foreign concepts and provided criticism of own “well-worn words and ready phrases that built comfortable walls against the wilderness.” (Conrad Aiken).

I’ve said all of that to get to this: Twenty-five years ago I had the first real glimpse into the heart of language, seeing for the first time how it is not merely something we use but is something we breath, something we live in, and something that shapes us. I was reading about an oriental philosopher…or perhaps Alan Watt (as those were my “Alan Watts years) and the author pointed that in a particular Eastern language one who observes a book will say, “The book is seen,” whereas in the West we will say, “I see the book.” This anecdote so vividly illustrated how English reflects the Western detachment from the world and the tendency to, therefore, see the world as something to deal with objectively. This facilitates seeing the world as something to possess, something to exploit, something to “develop.”

And it also explains why Western Christianity has this view of God as someone who is “far off”, so removed from human life, and so inaccessible. Yes, Christians teach that in Jesus God was “made nigh by the blood of the cross” but their belief system reflects the insidious belief that he is still “far off” and needing to be appeased by believing and behaving the right way. They don’t understand that “the kingdom is within.” They don’t understand their unity with God.

Thoughts about the “Saved vs. Unsaved” Paradigm

2 Replies

Now I’m not going to dismiss the “Saved/Unsaved” notion. Christianity is part of our world culture and “saved/unsaved” is part of Christian tradition. I’m just much less certain about use of the idea and have deep-seated convictions that it is usually merely a means of the ego to trot out one of its favorite paradigms, “Us” vs. “Them.” You see, drawing distinctions is one of the earliest developments in the human psyche and is absolutely necessary if an ego is to emerge. The determination of “self” vs. “not-self” is an intrinsic part of the operation. If we never learn to draw a distinction between our self and that which is “not-self” we will have grave problems to say the least. In fact, many of the behavioral problems that mental health professionals deal with are boundary issues stemming from an impaired ability to draw that distinction.

And I have faint memories of learning to draw this distinction. And I know from my clinical work that the toddler’s discover of the word “No” is a key hallmark of this step in development and is an essential step in determining “self” vs. “not-self”. I remember very well the comfort in knowing that there was an “us”…meaning my particular family…and that we were separate and distinct from “them.” I also remember when this “us-them” paradigm began to grow in power in my life and when I learned that “saved-unsaved” was one of the primary ways in which the world was divided up. In fact, in that mindset, it was the most fundamental and most important division as it determined who was going to heaven and who was going to hell, who was “right” and who was “wrong.”

But what I now see is the ego reward that came with imposing that template on the world. It was exhilarating to know that I was part of “us” and that “them” did not belong there. And, yes I was horrified to know that, nevertheless, “them” would eventually burn for eternity in hell. ( I guess on some level I was really pleased that it wouldn’t be me though! I definitely took some satisfaction that “one of these days” God was “gonna kick ass” on all those rotten sinners!)

As I grew up this religious ardor diminished but for decades I know that whether or not anybody I met was “saved” or “unsaved” was an immediate issue. It was a template that I imposed on everyone, reflecting that deep-seated need to maintain a primary perceptual grasp of the world, I was “us” and they were “them.” And this also paralleled my view of the very world itself, the whole of God’s kingdom, flora and fauna. I was separate and distinct from “it” and did not see it as a matrix which ultimately was an integral part of God’s granting of my very existence.

In my participation in the blog-o-sphere the past two years or so I have met many conservative, evangelical Christians who, though more conservative than myself, demonstrate less rigidity in their faith and offer love and acceptance more readily. One in particular even had the audacity to discourse about lessons he had learned from atheists he had met. (Check out T. E. Hanna, http://ofdustandkings.com/author/TEHanna/) Hanna’s stance is that when a Christian meets an atheist, he should not immediately go into overdrive with, “Uh oh. He’s going to hell. How do I get him saved?” His attitude is to accept the person as he is, accept him lovingly and unconditionally, and not assume that it is his responsibility to cajole, intimidate, and manipulate that person into becoming a Christian. I think his attitude is like mine, that we should “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling” realizing that as we do this, God will take care of any converting that needs to take place. But when we are obsessed with “winning souls for Jesus”, we are often merely obsessed with making other people believe just as we do.

Neurophysiology and Political Beliefs

3 Replies

Several times in recent days I have addressed the subject of purity and the problems it poses when it becomes an obsession. These obsessional purists eventually live in a bubble and seek to obliterate anyone who would deign to think or behave differently than they do. I have received some very interesting responses from this blog post, some of which provided further grist for my mill. One suggested a neurological dimension to the conservative mindset (see “neuro notes” on wordpress) which led to even further google exploration on my own. I am going to share with you an article from Mother Jones magazine which suggests that conservatism is not a function of reason as much as it is underlying neurophysiology. Now in fairness, by extension the same can be applied to a “liberal” mindset or any other mindset. Our “thinking” is not autonomous and “objective”. There is always an underlying neurological substrate that influences our thinking, our reasoning. This is related to an observation I have shared several times from a source I cannot recall, “Our thinking is the belated rationalization of conclusions to which we have already been led by our desires.”

Now, I know the terror that this strikes in some hearts. I know because I once lived there and recoiled when notions of this sort were proposed. These notions always brought to my mind the arch enemy of my conservative mind, “RELATIVISM!!!!” And relevant to this demonic buzzword, there was the fear that “nothing is real.”

I do not see it that way now. Yes, things are much more relative than I used to think and much more relative than they appear to most people, especially conservative extremists. But I do believe in an Ultimate and do so with great passion. I just don’t have as much confidence anymore in my ability, or the ability of any human, to grasp and understand and control that Ultimate with his/her mind. When we allow our spiritual exploration to take us beyond that neurological substrate, and beyond any other underpinnings that science might posit, we find a primordial emptiness (or Nothingness) and that is where faith is required, faith in the sense of hope. This emptiness is expressed in the Christian tradition as “kenosis” or “self-emptying.” This requires an humility which the ego finds repulsive.

This leaves us seeing our beautiful world “unreal” in ultimate terms. But it is the only reality we know (as in consciously “know”) and is very important as it is the means by which the Ultimate can begin its/His unfolding. This hidden world gives the “seen” world meaning and therefore allows Essential Beauty to become manifest.

I’m going to share some of the wisdom of Lao Tzu before I conclude with the Mother Jones article by Chris Mooney:

Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,
By vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use;
The use of clay in moulding pitchers
Comes from the hollow of its absence;
Doors, windows, in a house,
Are used for their emptiness:
�Thus we are helped by what is not
To use what is

MOTHER JONES ARTICLE

The past two weeks have seen not one but two studies published in scientific journals on the biological underpinnings of political ideology. And these studies go straight at the role of genes and the brain in shaping our views, and even our votes.

First, in the American Journal of Political Science [1], a team of researchers including Peter Hatemi of Penn State University and Rose McDermott of Brown University studied the relationship between our deep-seated tendencies to experience fear—tendencies that vary from person to person, partly for reasons that seem rooted in our genes—and our political beliefs. What they found is that people who have more fearful disposition also tend to be more politically conservative, and less tolerant of immigrants and people of races different from their own. As McDermott carefully emphasizes, that does not mean that every conservative has a high fear disposition. “It’s not that conservative people are more fearful, it’s that fearful people are more conservative,” as she puts it [2].

I interviewed the paper’s lead author, Peter Hatemi, about his research for my 2012 book The Republican Brain. Hatemi is both a political scientist and also a microbiologist, and as he stressed to me, “nothing is all genes, or all environment.” These forces combine to make us who we are, in incredibly intricate ways.

And if Hatemi’s and McDermott’s research blows your mind, get this [3]: Darren Schreiber, a political neuroscientist at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, first performed brain scans on 82 people participating in a risky gambling task, one in which holding out for more money increases your possible rewards, but also your possible losses. Later, cross-referencing the findings with the participants’ publicly available political party registration information, Schreiber noticed something astonishing: Republicans, when they took the same gambling risk, were activating a different part of the brain than Democrats.

Republicans were using the right amygdala, the center of the brain’s threat response system. Democrats, in contrast, were using the insula, involved in internal monitoring of one’s feelings. Amazingly, Schreiber and his colleagues write that this test predicted 82.9 percent of the study subjects’ political party choices—considerably better, they note, than a simple model that predicts your political party affiliation based on the affiliation of your parents.

I also interviewed Schreiber for The Republican Brain. He’s a scientist who was once quite cautious about the relevance of brain studies to people’s politics. As he put it to me: “If you had called me four years ago and said, ‘What is your view on whether Republicans and Democrats have different brains?’ I would have said no.” Now, his own published research suggests otherwise.

The current research suggests not only that having a particular brain influences your political views, but also that having a particular political view influences your brain.

One again, though, there’s a critical nuance here. Schreiber thinks the current research suggests not only that having a particular brain influences your political views, but also that having a particular political view influences and changes your brain. The causal arrow seems likely to run in both directions—which would make sense in light of what we know about the plasticity of the brain. Simply by living our lives, we change our brains. Our political affiliations, and the lifestyles that go along with them, probably condition many such changes.

The two new studies described here are likely connected: It is hard not to infer that fear of outsiders or those different from you—along with greater fear dispositions in general—may be related to the role of amygdala, a brain structure that has been dubbed the “heart and soul of the fear system [4].” The amygdala has been repeatedly implicated in politics. Indeed, Schreiber’s research builds on prior brain studies: In a group of University College of London students, for instance, conservatives showed more gray matter [5] in the right amygdala.

So what’s the upshot? How about this: We need a much broader and more thoughtful discussion about what it means if political ideology turns out to be nothing like what we actually thought it was. Scientists working in this new field tend towards the conclusion that the new research should make us more tolerant, not less, of political difference—not to mention a whole lot more humble about our own deeply held beliefs.

(For additional information of the neuroscience of political belief systems, please google Jonathan Haidt for several very interesting and provocative You Tube lectures. Also, please check out this You Tube post by Neuro Notes: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFnAN0Tb-Nc)

The Danger of “Purity”

7 Replies

Several days ago I blogged about the TV series “Breaking Bad” and segued into human culture and its tendency to not allow this kind of self-criticism, which is especially so with hyper-conservative cultures. One reader posed the question about my particular culture (the United States), “How could purity be such an issue in a land of such conspicuous free speech?”

The answer lies in the human heart and its deep-seated and dark need to isolate in a particular mindset, to “know” the truth, to be ensconced in an autistic shell; and when anyone “knows” the truth in this way, then he/she must convince others of this same truth, even at the point of the sword! And that is the reason that in a land of free press an individual or group of individuals will not be content with his/her little universe that American freedom has granted him/her. The poison of his/her interiority is so pervasive, so rigorous, so lethal that it cannot be stopped and it must proselytize. It must spread like cancer.

Of course, this “knowledge” does not employ honest use of human reason. It is a fragile heart that has grasped at the Kierkegaardian “flotsam and jetsam” when overwhelmed by the vortex of meaninglessness….or, to be more precise, when unconsciously threatened by that vortex. This mindset never knows (consciously) the vortex and seeks to destroy any inkling of its existence, not just in its own heart but in the hearts of others also. Thus the demand for “purity”, “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

Some of my readers are from other cultures and may not follow American politics. But if you happen to do so, you know that this “purity” motif is really pronounced right now in the right-wing base of the conservative Republican party. This movement has coalesced in what is known as the “Tea Party” movement within the Republican Party and it is really posing a threat to that party and also to our government. Though it is relatively small, this party screams loudly and have managed to cower the leadership of the Republican party and to influence a broad spectrum of that party.

Related to the “purity” issue is the fear of having been “penetrated.” This fear of violation was most clearly articulated last year when Michelle Bachman (who I like to describe as “Michelle ‘Deep Penetration’ Bachman) raised the hackles even of her Republican party by arguing that Islamist extremist had “penetrated deeply” into our government. In this purity obsessed mindset, always rife with paranoia, any incursion of “difference” is seen as a threat, a threat that must be deterred and even obliterated. For if their purity is violated, it will shatter…in their estimation…like a fragile vase. I argue, on the other hand, that mature purity can withstand threats and survive with the ensuing ambivalence, not giving in to the temptations of impurity

This purity obsession is compensatory. It is a defense mechanism designed to block the ravaging impurity which lurks in the human heart and is feared by these extremists to be seeping out and threatening to overwhelm them. Karl Jung said, on the other hand, such impurity (which he called the shadow) is to be acknowledged, embraced even, and thus deprived of its power. And “embracing” this dark energy does not mean succumbing to it. Those who are most likely to succumb to it are those who resist it the most. As Jung put it, “What we resist, persists.”

“Breaking Bad” and our Collective Shadow

1 Reply

I have recently been watching the first four seasons of Breaking Bad, finally relenting to the pressure of a good friend who insisted it was television at its finest. He was right. It is the most compelling television presentation I’ve ever seen. The story-line, the plot, the character-development, the acting, the directing, the cinematography is absolutely magnificent. I don’t watch a lot of popular television but once I started viewing this series, I could not stop and even now have embarked on the recently available season five.

BUT, this show is intensely disturbing and dark. Usually with a description like this I would refer to grisly violence and sexual perversion; and there is some violence but the real disturbing violence is psychological, emotional, and ultimately spiritual.

The story is about a benign…even lame…high school science teacher who learns he is dying of cancer and is going to leave his family nothing. He happens to be suddenly exposed to the world of methamphetamine manufacturing by his DEA brother-in-law and decides, “Hey, I can do that.” And he does. And he does it well.

From episode to episode he is lured down the dark path of drug culture though he always avoids use of the meth himself. But relentlessly he makes poor decisions which lead to other poor decisions which brings him to a point where he has gone over to the dark side…he has “broke bad”…even though he continues to have the façade of a middle class citizen who is recovering from cancer.

But Breaking Bad is not about the drug culture, nor is it a “made for tv” morality story. It is about human ugliness and the way in which good, upright people can suddenly find themselves in the middle of this “shadow side” of life through a series of unfortunate events, compounded by the willingness to forego moral principles. Early in the series I found myself asking, “Why am I watching this?” It was so disturbing, creating unrest in my heart that I usually find only with violence in movies.

As I paid attention to my reactions as I watched the series, I could not help but observe that many world cultures would not permit this kind of social analysis and criticism. The Taliban, for example, would never allow self-reflection of this sort to take place. In fact, ultra-conservative ideologies of all stripes would not allow such self-reflection and would radically extirpate the first hint of such a tendency. In fact, in all ultra-conservative extremency there is always a theme of “purity” which serves the purpose of keeping out this “shadow side” which our culture permits in shows like this and in the arts in general. (Anthropologist Mary Douglas and psychologist Julia Kristeva are two people who have addressed the problematic nature of this “purity” obsession.)

And, for all the problems that our culture does have, I feel that ultimately to own this “ugly” dimension of our experience, to articulate it through various forms of art, is to give vent to it. Otherwise, we always project it onto others, that ubiquitous “them” out there, that “barbarian horde” which is always threatening our perimeter. We fail to own up to the wisdom of Charlie Brown, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Epistomology and Confirmation Bias

2 Replies

The recent controversy in the United States over Chuck Hagel’s nomination by President Obama for Defense Secretary has given rise to the usual right-wing hysteria and obstructionism. Last week these conservatives seized upon a humorous note made by a New York newspaper columnist who facetiously suggested that Hagel had opined in Islamist radical newspapers, taking that columnist’s satirical quips as being factual.

This illustrated the problem with interpretation for all of us, conservative or liberal. We must remember to utilize the Shakespearean “pauser reason” when we hear or read something, recognizing that it is human nature to seize upon data that satisfies our agenda. Another example was Michelle “Deep Penetration” Bachman about a year ago when she sonorously intoned re the presence of sharia law in two United States communities, presenting the preposterous allegation as casual fact. Shortly thereafter someone pointed out that this was not true and that one of the cities had not existed in decades. Bachman had come across this juicy tidbit and must have had childish delight as she thought, “Oh, wait until I get to announce this!” Well, if she would have employed this “pauser reason”….recognizing that she was about to posit something that was very sensational…she could have had her handlers verify the report. But the information was just too much a “tasty morsel” and she had to pass it on, knowing that her paranoid base would go for it, much like pigs after slop.

But, I reiterate, “This childish naivety is not just a conservative problem. It is a human problem.” We always have our preconceptions and then seek information that confirms this bias, a phenomena known as “confirmation bias” or “epistemic closure.” Yes, even “LiteraryLew”, is susceptible and guilty of this human frailty…cursed be the thought! If we recognize this truth, it can humble us a bit and make us less apt to be too smug and arrogant about our “lofty” ideas and our “gospel” truth. Our ideas might have “lofty” qualities and our truth might have “gospel” qualities but probably not as much as we would like to think. Those “other guys”, that ubiquitous “them”, might just have validity in their perspective and have something to offer us.

My Paean to “Mindfulness” in the Blog-o-sphere!

5 Replies

I love meeting “mind” and will share a Robert Frost poem on the matter. And by “mind” I don’t mean the routine, mechanized palaver, the “well-worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness” (Conrad Aiken) but a “discerning” mind, one that is quickened by what I like to call the “Spirit of God”, one that is wry and witty, one that can “rock ‘n roll”, is even sarcastic on occasion and certainly ironic, one that can trot out an occasional “word fitly spoken”, and to sum it up, one that is “present”. And every time I stumble upon one of these “minds” I am given pause and say to myself, “Hey, let’s check this fellow (or fellow-ess) out! Somebody is home!” And this occasionally happens even with a five year old student. And even with my beloved dachshunds, Ludwig and Elsa, I often get the distinct impression that “Somebody is present here”. (But these doggies are going to have to hurry up and develop more fore brain capacity before they can offer me subtlety!)

Emily Dickinson described “a mind too near itself to see itself distinctly.” She was describing a mind that lacks these qualities, a mind too self-absorbed for the person to see beyond the end of his/her nose….or should I say “knows”? This self-absorbed mind lacks self-reflection without which there is no awareness.

And I have met many of these aforementioned “mindful” people and try to make sure I circulate in a circle where they are apt to be found. And I read literature by writers who are gifted with this quality. Movies and even television-shows can offer this god-given perspective if one is discriminating about his/her choices.

And in the past two years I have discovered that the blog-o-sphere is full of men and women who have this “Presence” and share from it daily. To you, my dear friends, I today doff my hat and thank you for all you have added to my life and continued to do so daily. You know who you are. You are a gift to me but also to your family, friends, and community. What I like to call “The Spirit of God” vibrates in your heart and therefore “winds of thought blow magniloquent meanings betwixt me and thee.” (Archibald MacLeish)

A CONSIDERABLE SPECK
By Robert Frost

A speck that would have been beneath my sight
On any but a paper sheet so white
Set off across what I had written there.
And I had idly poised my pen in air
To stop it with a period of ink,
When something strange about it made me think.
This was no dust spike by my breathing blown,
But unmistakenly a living mite
With inclinations it could call its own.
It paused as with suspicion of my pen,
And then came racing wildly on again
To where my manuscript was not yet dry;
Then paused again and either drank or smelt—
With loathing, for again it turned to fly.
Plainly with an intelligence I dealt.
It seemed too tiny to have room for feet,
Yet must have had a set of them complete
To express how much it didn’t want to die.
It ran with terror and with cunning crept.
It faltered: I could see it hesitate;
Then in the middle of the open sheet
Cower down in desperation to accept
Whatever I accorded it of fate.
I have none of the tenderer-than-thou
Collectivistic, regimenting love
With which the modern world is being swept.
But this poor microscopic item now!
Since it was nothing I knew evil of
I let it lie there till I hope it slept.

I have a mind myself and recognize
Mind when I meet with it in any guise.
No one can know how glad I am to find
On any sheet the least display of mind.

literary lew

prose/poetry/philosophy/religion