The Necessity of Joy

The natural state of any creature is joy. I say this not from a standpoint of speculation or attribution but from the standpoint of having lived my life in the midst of nature. From earliest childhood I grew up hunting. But when as an adult I came to live with the forest creatures I had to give it up having recognized the horrors that my simple pleasure wrought in their already complex existence. I even launched an attempt to live in peaceful coexistence with the mice and the wood rats, but alas there was a failure to communicate. The more obvious examples of animal joy are accessible to anyone: the gamboling calf, the rough tumbling of a puppy, the kitten with its ball of yarn. What about the caterpillar on its twig or the snake basking in the sun? There is no sense in quibbling about degrees or demarcations, for we will soon find ourselves arguing about whether or not they have souls. As for me, it is self evident that life is not only conducive to joy, but feeds on joy. And though sorrow may reduce to a separate state it, is most certainly a deficit of joy. There is some thin ice here, and it is not my intention to delve into brain chemistry or socio-pathology: I merely wish to hold up as fundamental the inclination of all creatures great and small to joy, and to point out that was not joy the natural inclination, sorrow would be no burden. The earthworm on the drying sidewalk; the unfortunate human trekker lost in some vast desert: I posit that the distress differs neither in kind nor quality nor volume by weight.

Whether or not the inner configuration we know as joy is familiar to the rabbit and to the wolf is perhaps an open question, but that circumstances can obliterate any creaturely access to joy is beyond question. It is also beyond question that untold millions of human beings lead joyless lives. Joyless because limitations of environment assure that it will be so. Elaborate studies have been done with rats. It has been shown that at certain levels of population pressure a cornucopia of otherwise unknown antisocial behavior emerges in laboratory populations: and this in circumstances of ample food and water.

Gender Issues

A quiet revolution is taking place as we speak. Advances made in the ability to look into the physical-electrical activity of the brain are about to put a great deal of the nature-nurture question to rest: and of course the answer to the question is yes. With regard to the physio-psychological implications of gender it has been found that our brains are at least as different as our bodies. And as someone who has been married three times, I cannot imagine that this should come as a surprise to anyone.

Integral calculus is not the issue here: we are not in any way talking about intellectual ability, or moral rigor or matters related in anyway to the dignity of individuals. It strains credulity to declare that there exist no Darwinian stumbling blocks in the gender minefield, and science is just about to take the guesswork out of the argument. The differences in our bodies are a clear study in Darwinian differentiation, and there is every reason to expect that these differentiations include configurations of the brain that predispose an individual to this nuance, or that, in the realm of problem solving. And it also seems to me that historically speaking, it is time for the Feminine to come to the fore.

A Word About Government

There is no reason to tax one's intellectual sensitivities over questions of government systems or government styles. Governments of all persuasions, left to their own devices, collapse from within due to the cumulative plying of advantage by individuals in positions of responsibility. The collective corruption of individuals is the greatest single threat to public well-being, and the best system that could be arranged for the conduct of civil affairs is one that provides checks against the private ambitions of public persons. Outside of this, any system will do that can get the mail delivered: which is to say that legitimate problem solving is the spontaneous domain of human genius, individually and collectively. 

We can trust the process only if we can trust the processors, and realizing that public scrutiny will interfere with their personal agendas, the true enemies of freedom and justice are like cancers that do not oppose the body: they merely wish to feed upon it. Vigorous openness is humanity's best hope. In such an environment political systems will find their rightful place as honest global sheepdogs.