Last week was one of the most unproductive weeks of my life. And that includes the week I needed to recover from stupidly trying mushrooms in my misspent youth. Older, wiser and weaker, I spent last week alternatively napping, pooping, slurping soup and downing a copious amount of Tylenol in an effort to stave off the chills, hot flashes and assorted effects of The Flu.
If you haven't had a flu shot, I highly recommend it. Because this iteration of the Flu is a bitch.
In my semi-lucid hours I picked up a book I had started several months ago. Hint: I have many books I started many months ago. Thanks to my advertising-induced short attention span, I rarely reach the epilogue. But in Carl Sagan's case, I did.
This is a fascinating book that delves into the evolution of human intelligence, which any casual observer of the last 10 days can tell you is in short supply.
Sagan, the predecessor of Neil Degrasse Tyson, writes in a simple relatable style. Though I will admit certain passages regarding lobes, limbic systems and R-complex processes left me scratching my head. Nevertheless, the book takes us on a great journey exploring dreaming, hemispheric functions of the brain, and even a preview of artificial intelligence.
Keep in mind the book was published in 1977, when I still had a full of hair and Apple computer was still being soldered together in a Northern California garage.
"Waz, what's a motherboard?"
If you have any interest in what makes us click, I suggest you make your way to amazon and click up a copy for delivery.
And while I offer no spoilers, I will leave you with this powerful summary that is uniquely fitting for our time:
There is today a resurgent interest in vague, anecdotal and often demonstrably erroneous doctrines that, if true, would betoken a more interesting universe, but that, if false, imply an intellectual carelessness, an absence of toughmindedness, and a diversion of energies not very promising for our survival.
Such doctrines include astrology; The Bermuda Triangle; flying saucer accounts,; belief in ancient astronauts; photography of ghosts; pyramidology; Scientology; auras and Kirlian photography; the emotional lives and musical preferences of geraniums; psychic surgery; flat and hollow earths; remote cutlery warping; astral projections; Velikovskian catastrophism; Atlantis and Mu; spiritualism; and the doctrine of special creation by God or gods, of mankind despite our deep relatedness, both in biochemistry and in brain physiology with the other animals.
They are mystical and occult doctrines, devised in a way that they are not subject to disproof and characteristically impervious to rational discussion.
It is only in the last day of the Cosmic Calendar that substantial intellectual abilities have evolved on Planet Earth. The coordinated functioning of both cerebral hemispheres is the tool Nature has provided for our survival. We are unlikely to survive if we do not make full and creative use of our human intelligence.
Yes!
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