Madness and Civilization

Moderation in all things, even things that aren't stuff. And so too, with sanity? Between madness and sanity lies the brilliance of possibility, the power of strength, and the luminosity of spirit.

And it is this way even before society has determined what madness is; for homo sapiens is both naturally social and evolutionarily socially-aware. What is this evolved sense of social awareness? What it is aware of is not always clear (that is to say, what it attunes itself to and how it is affected by this attunement). However, its presence is evident always and it is felt most keenly in this thing called empathy. It seems that our specially (species-ally) social-egregious nature has developed the literal-physical capacity to in-feel (em-pathos), which is the capacity to feel myself exactly what it is that you feel. It was and remains best for our species that we each have this capacity to share our emotional experiences with one another, and be confident that they have been shared accurately.

But what of madness and culture? What we seek are the roots of civilization, since it is civilization wherein our own roots lie. And though it would seem that culture is the expression of a civilization, that civilization predates culture, the truth is precisely the opposite.

There is a pre-civil culture that has been imprinted upon the genetic makeup of every human being. And we are approaching it again, returning back to a more basic humanity.

And so, civilization, as the civilizing of mankind, as the domestication of homo sapiens by itself, as the human counterpoint to the ecological process of evolution, as the attempt for mankind to provide its own impetus for the improvement and progression of the species... and so, this great experiment called civilization has thus far achieved nothing, precisely.

It is my hope that civilization has thus negated itself such that it may come to know itself better and thereby proceed toward the creation of a truly human civilization, where humanity itself (as the humanness of humans) is neither demonized nor deified, but rather cherished and, more frequently, cautioned.