Living With People You Cannot Stand

I don't know why it has taken me so long to write about this. But it is gradually dawning on me, that this has always been an important problem of mine - that began before I was born.

A fetus knows very well what its mother feels about it, and my mother was conflicted - she had two miscarriages before me - little beginners who decided, wisely - that they wanted out. She knew she had to promise something better - and decided on a compromise. She would let me be a healthy baby - but after that, I was on my own - she would not be on my side in a hostile world!

I grew up with a healthy body, but a seriously disturbed mind - in a seriously disturbed world. That thought it was a perfect world - which it was, but not perfect for people.

When I graduated from college, in 1959, as an Electronic Engineer - I believed in therapy, but my therapists, and I had many of them - carefully ignored the main problem we all had. Our world did not like us, and was not good for us. Now, looking back on it - that doesn't seem like such a difficult thing to see. But at the time, it was impossible.

And it continues to be impossible - we cannot see what our world is like. And we resist seeing this, with all our might! We all know something is wrong - but do know what that is, and don't want to know.

This normal human behavior - we became the dominant species on earth, because we believed in ourselves. And we are not about to give up this advantage. We are determined to survive - as a species. But we can also see - this is going to be difficult.

We are clever beings, but our cleverness has gotten us into plenty of trouble! We now rule the world -without the smarts to do this.

And without the smarts to realize - this is our problem.