Friday, June 26, 2009

Politcs + Power = Predictable result

It's said that we get what we pay for. With politicians, that certainly seems to be the case. Pseudo-religion and political chicanery have produced a batch of legislators who grasp for our wallets all the while professing noble intent. Believing that sexual misconduct wouldn't be involved within this atmosphere of power and greed requires tremendous naivete.

The recent spate of those who've dallied with women not their wives remind us of the importance not of faithfulness, but why so many insist that monogamy is some sort of virtue that the rest of us should aspire to.

Sociobiologists have long questioned whether some men are simply programmed for dalliance, whether the genetically implanted need to further improve the species though diversity of mating trumps the religiously enforced rule to remain faithful. That the futility of such sexual repression makes a liar out of so many, brings the very rule into question: Is it realistic to require marriages to remain forever exclusive?

Dan Umanoff, a doctor whose prolific postings about addictions are so often at odds with the medical community's treatment of the subject, postulates that some evolutionary need is being fulfilled here, that without these perjoratively labeled "addicts", mankind would be hopelessly stuck in a reactionary, conservative past of the nature religion reinforces. Umanoff coins the term "hypoism" to collect all whose addictions, may include drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, gambling, business workaholicism, OCB, or simply ADD, under a roof of excess, suggesting that the allele labeled the "hunter" gene is also found in so many whose contributions to society we so much admire, yet with personal lives so prone to tragedy.

Micahel Jackson is certainly among those whose eccentricities has evolved music beyond those he once emulated, but whose personal peccadilloes left him the subject of an endless barrage of bad jokes. Whether we can have one without the other seems to be the unanswerable question; can someone whose gone through extraordinary lengths to build a career through personal obsession suddenly relinquish that quest once the "goal" has been attained? How long can Michael Phelps stay out of the water before he turns into just another fast swimmer?

Many atrocities have been committed in efforts to keep the hypotic "hungry", therefore retaining the desire to achieve even through artificial means. Saltieri's deceit of Mozart gave us some of the best music this world has ever seen, yet likely contributed to his early demise.

Today, we have a couple of million inmates in American prisons, some guilty of no more than adherence to their biological urges, yet we construct complex systems whereby these hypoism victims can be judged and set aside from society despite increasing evidence that such behavior can be re-directed constructively. But then, perhaps those in a position to extend forgiveness and progressive treatment have a vested interest in status quo, in bringing everyone down to their level instead of up to the levels of society's mavericks.

We're not paying our politicians enough to promote progress, and we clamor for non-reform. Every neoconservative position taken, every fanatically religious position adopted, every anti-evolutionary position voiced, is yet another impediment from the duplicitous exhortation for us to be what we want to be.

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