And a lot of awesome alliteration, also. It's been awhile since my last post, as you've no doubt noticed and a lot has happened in the world. One item of pressing business I wanted to jot a few notes on is the continuing struggle of the caveman. The Geico commercials that have run these past few years have severely compromised our efforts to bring equality to our two species. It's true that I'm not actually a homo neanderthalensis, but because I've spent most of my life looking like one I feel I must be a brother in hairy arms. The incident that sparked this tirade occurred last week as I was buying groceries with my family. A woman saw my son and remarked to her friend under her breath that he was so cute, it was just a shame he's half caveman. The ignorance! I couldn't believe that after several hundred thousand years we can't get past this kind of senseless bigotry. I suppose it's true that speciesism is it's own punishment for that woman doesn't know me or my child or anything about the great things our species does for the world and therefore has condemned herself to live inside her own hate-filled pseudo-head. It did, however, give me cause to reconsider why I was so mad about this phenomena.


While many of my comrades have gone so far as to bellow for reparations for homo sapiens' attempt to wipe us out, I say let bygones be bygones, and Darwin be-darned! We can live in harmony on our little twirly dirt bubble, but it's going to take some work. First we need to stop thinking in terms of species, and this definitely applies to us first. We neanderthals can't keep using our violent past with humans as an excuse for our current plights. I personally have never had my life threatened by a human, just a little ego bruising by people who more than likely pass the same kind of ignorant judgement on the very next person they pass because of body image or wardrobe or anything else that short-sighted hate-mongers decide isn't acceptable. We also need to stop calling attention to species in the media. While a frequent cable news special highlighting the modern caveman experience makes us feel important it actually accentuates the line that we have drawn between us. Organizations that have been set up to help our cause and protect our rights have actually done more damage to our sense of unity with the human race. Any time a specific species is mentioned in the name of a group or a story about an individual we take a major hit to our credibility and the legitimacy of our claim of equality.

In closing let me say that we may look uncouth to humans. Our hairy... well, everything... and prominent brows may cause some to stare, but it is no different for obese people, or attractive people, or people with ragged clothing. These image judgements are specious at best and divisive at worst. We are the same as any other sentient being on this planet. We brought the world fire, for crying out loud! How hot is that? I am not a mindless brute, humanity, and neither are you. Let's all just get along.

• Please note that the preceding post is a piece of fictitious satire and any claimed resemblence of the symbolic cavemen to real people is merely an unfortuate by-product of the author's inability to come up with anything more creative.

• No cavemen were harmed in the making of this post.

While this topic has been stewing in my head for quite some time, in light of the recent birth of my son I've decided to write about this very controversial topic. I'm talking about abortion. I wanted to know more about that ubiquitous court case, Roe v. Wade, so I propped my eyelids open with some toothpicks and read the whole shebang (if your Nyquil ever seems a little inadequate, pick up a court document, it's guaranteed to be snooze-a-licious). While very informative and extremely well researched, the court's opinion seemed to lack what I consider common sense. Let me break it down.


The Supreme Court, in the spirit of following precedents (which is its banner responsibility), gave a succinct but detailed history of abortion legislation throughout history. From the ancient Greeks on down to the, then, present time they noted what other governments had considered legal action in pregnancy termination. They made sure to emphasize that the wisdom throughout the ages has been that until the fetus is "quickened," or in other words animated, it was still considered part of the mother and therefore not a separate entity.




Here's the problem I have with this "wisdom." Once the elements of life have combined, namely the sperm and the egg, to form a zygote, they are no longer divisible. The fetus, even before showing "signs of life," cannot become anything other than a human being. Essentially, the precedent that the court decided to uphold stated that a fetus in the initial stages of growth is no different to the woman than her spleen, as if that spleen could one day develop a heart, a laugh, a preference of beverage at Sonic, or a passionate love for another person. So I contend that once the other organs of a woman's body start to develop into independent organisms then I will eat my words, but until then I hold that this is faulty reasoning based on archaic logic.


Now I realize the troubles that lie in wait if abortion were to be made illegal, outright. I am fully aware of the various extenuating circumstances that arise with pregnancies, not the least of which is the case of rape. I can touch on that another time, but for now I'll stick with plain Jane, good old fashioned consensual sex. Women's rights activists claim the right to choose what they do with their bodies, and I completely agree. I whole-heartedly support a woman's freedom to do what she wants with her body. However, as I stated earlier, the fetus of an unborn child at every stage of pregnancy is a separate person with a body of its own over whose mere existence the mother should not have liberty to end. A woman who decides to engage in an act that has any possibility of resulting in a life has made her choice, and if she also chooses to look at herself as being "punished with a baby," then there are people waiting years, even decades, for the chance to raise a child, people who haven't been given the gift of fertility that she has.


No matter which way you slice it, the halting of a life's natural development at any stage is inherently bad. I apologize if any toes were stepped on, and by that I mean I regret that your toes were in the way. There's simply no other way for me to look at life now that I, even presently, hold it in my hands and feel the full weight of responsibility for it on my shoulders. And here is where I end this lengthy tirade.... for now.

P.S.-- I saw the title on a t-shirt somewhere, I thought it was hilarious.

Believe it or not, I've had a harder time deciding what to write about this time than what template to use for this old rag. While I gave serious consideration to writing about something political since I finished up my Political Science class this week, I think I'll stew about it a while longer. A few weeks ago Kjerstin and I were asked to give talks in Sacrament Meeting. Kjerstin's, admittedly, was much better as she talked on being provident providers for our families. I decided, having just finished "Man's Search for Meaning" a few weeks earlier, to talk on adversity. I thought I'd share the gist of the message since it hit my soul with the same magnitude as my body hitting the water during a cataclysmic cannonball.

No one is a stranger to adversity. If you haven't had trials in your life... scratch that... if you haven't had major life-altering tragedies in your life, you may or may not want to check your pulse... or maybe just your frequency of venturing out into the world. The frigid hand of tribulation grasps our lives just as assuredly as death. But this is far from any reason to despair, I've discovered. Dr. Viktor Frankl wrote his most famous work, "Man's Search for Meaning" to introduce the world to his unique therapeutic approach, logotherapy. In a nutshell, he believed that it is through assigning meaning to your life that real mental health can be found. Even finding meaning in our sufferings is an essential extension of this. And a handful of humans throughout history can understand the kind of suffering that Dr. Frankl experienced.

An Austrian Jew, Dr. Frankl endured the Holocaust in its entirety. He had the chance to leave before the occupation, but felt that he couldn't abandon his parents. Subsequently, he spent time in Auschwitz, Dachau, and other scenes of Nazi atrocities. In direct contrast to many works of Holocaust literature, the major message of the book was the appreciation for suffering. Dr. Frankl learned, the hardest way, what suffering offers the human organism. I would paraphrase this but I'd butcher its poetry. In Dr. Frankl's words:

"Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths. Is it surprising that in those depths we again found only human qualities which in their very nature were a mixture of good and evil? The rift dividing good from evil, which goes through all human beings, reaches into the lowest depths and becomes apparent even on the bottom of the abyss which is laid open by the concentration camp."

Suffering, then, has a role as The Great Revealer. It is a tool by which we all may look deep down into ourselves, past all the masks and pretensions that we put up for the world, to see what we really are. As hard as it is to admit, I haven't always handled stressful situations with much grace or honor. I got to see into my own soul in those moments and found some of those not-so-nice qualities we all get a little ashamed of. But is this the reason? Embarrassment? Nope:

"Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not."

The pattern seems simple. You acknowledge that the universe is hurling its worst at you. You take silent mental note of the way in which you respond, remembering that this is a glimmer of who you really are. You bolster yourself up and make the necessary adjustments, trying to reconcile who you are with whom you want to be. You slowly, trial by trial, become the strong, resolute person you were pretending to be before. Above all, you endure gracefully and honorably, because to simply endure something means only to bite your lip and bide your time.

I apologize, sincerely, for the length of this post. But it is something I feel is so important and is a recipe for real happiness. Not very often does a movie quote sum up a desired attitude for me, but this one line from the most recent version of The Count of Monte Cristo epitomizes the same outlook on life as succinctly as works like Invictus. The Count says in a toast "You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout... 'Do your worst, for I will do mine!'"

May we all risk looking a little nuts and show such strength in the very faces of pain, turmoil, and misery. May we live worthy of our suffering, and be happy, not in spite of, but because of it.

Mohandas Gandhi listed 7 blunders that ensure humanity's descent into violence and chaos:

• Wealth without Work
• Pleasure without Conscience
• Knowledge without Character
• Commerce without Morality
• Science without Humanity
• Politics without Principle
• Worship without Sacrifice

His grandson, Arun, added an 8th blunder:

• Rights without Responsibility
  

Goethe said, "It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth where few are willing to search for it." I've thought a lot about this idea the last month or two. It's not exactly a secret that bad things are happening and worse things are afoot. In ways too numerous to count the world seems to be falling apart at the seams. Humanity seems to want to unite only in its effort to divide. The news reports both atrocities or absurdities, occasionally inciting both, as well. It has become almost impossible to remain optimistic about, well, anything.

But I accept the challenge. Light and dark, black and white, good and bad. All things, relatively speaking, are defined by their opposite. Embracing the ills of life and accepting their necessity in contrasting and highlighting all that is good gives one a sense of balance. But for all the ills in the world, we are all still well. In spite of our faults and flaws that may annoy others we are naturally good creatures. Call it societal survivalism or inborn insecurity we endure each others' personality deficiencies in exchange for the warm blanket of mutually assured construction. We keep it together even when all we want to do is destroy. We do it for various reasons but they all are rooted in our desire to be good people. We do it for the love of our families. We do it for the ideal of improving humanity as a whole. We do it because, at our core, we are good.

That's all I have to say about that.