Today would be Aunt Josie’s 105th birthday; she was born on 04/04/04. Josephine Nicastro Sharp was my great aunt and Goddess Mother; she held me when I was baptized. She was there for me at many times in my life, fulfilling her role as Goddess. I used to think I would not have a career as an independent journalist, if not for Josie. I am staring to think I might not have lived through my 20s, certainly not outside a mental hospital, had she not been there to encourage, support and help finance my creative process, with the most genuine love I’ve ever felt coming from anyone. As many doors around me closed, she helped hold one open; and I would say that all the good that’s come into my life has come through that door. The only photo I have of her is attached to the article below, so in honor of her birthday, I’m reprinting it here. Aunt Josie Forever!
A Plausible Theory for How We Might Get Out of This Mess
My Hakomi Therapy class [Seattle, 2002] was assigned a book called A General Theory of Love and, doing my homework for a change, I gave it a read. Written by three medical doctors, specifically, men I can fairly represent as extraordinarily spiritually aware neurologists, it’s a look at our relationships from the standpoint of brain function. Lest this subject scare anyone away owing to its potential complexity, the first thing I must mention about this book is that it’s written eloquently and never once strays off into technical or intellectual abstraction. It’s also gone to the top of my This Book May Save Your Ass list.
There can be no doubt that our culture is in trouble, speaking emotionally. “A good deal of modern American culture is an extended experiment in depriving people of what they crave the most,” the authors write as the book draws to its conclusion.
What do we crave? Touch, eye contact, the sound of a voice, the reassuring presence of a warm human being breathing next to us while we sleep. What we get is a world in which intimate relationships are relegated to the level of hygienic routine or an optional extra-curricular activity, and in which the skills we need to coexist in harmony with our fellow people are being steadily stripped away.
The problem gets worse the more prosperous we become, as we overeat, overspend and create one substitute after another for human connection, then struggle with the results. The Spam filters on my computer have trapped more than 17,000 pieces of junk email in recent months. Most of them are offering me the comfort of a female body, which would arrive in the form of digital photographs. Pornography sells so well not only because we’re deprived of touch, but also because touch and its emotional results are alien experiences to so many people. We crave the pleasure without the emotional complexity; without the karma that sex can instigate.
This sounds like a romantic argument, not a technical one. But the authors are neurologists, and make their case from the standpoint of evolutionary science that has looked back at the 100 million year history of the emotional capacity that distinguishes mammals. It is not milk production, bearing live young or a coating of fur that makes us so, but rather the capacity to feel and resonate with one another using something called the limbic portion of the brain. Anyone who has ever felt the sweet universe of a child’s gaze has tuned into this portion of their awareness.
The brain, the authors say, evolved in three major leaps and we carry the legacy of each. First was the reptilian brain, located in people where the base of the neck meets the top of the spine. It governs what we do but don’t think about, like breathing and kidney function. Animals that have only a reptilian brain do things like eat their own babies and don’t feel bad about it. (It is clearly the reptilian brain that leads us into the Burger King drive-through.)