On Suicide
From a sociobiological perspective, suicide is not a selfish act; rather, it is perhaps the most (subjectively) altruistic thing one can do. If the cells of your body do not receive regular biochemical signals to continue functioning, it automatically self-destructs, a process called apoptosis essential to maintaining homeostasis. Analogously, when humans fail to perceive regular indications from the social macro-organism that they are “needed” and “wanted”, they become lethargic and depressed, extreme cases of which result in suicide.

When next you say to yourself, “I have nothing to live for”—look at your two hands and the arch of your wrist, feel the skin of your arms and the protuberance of your knee, listen to the voice within your mind and the voice that emanates from your lips, and behold yourself—the being who made friends and lovers, who created all that you had lived for, and the only one who possesses the capacity for creating things to live for; and ask again whether you have nothing to live for or everything to live for.

On Time
Time changes everything, first the little things, which accumulate and grow upon each other, snowballing into big things, the things that make and break human beings, make and break whole families and communities. Time builds and destroys, and destroys through building.

On Terrorism
There is no war against terrorism. Al-Qaeda is not waging a war on the United States. A war occurs when two opposing armies meet and start killing each other. In the case of 9/11, a handful of suicidal maniacs murdered thousands of innocent, unarmed civilians. That is not war. That is serial murder on a massive scale — a despicable crime. For this reason, terrorism is not war. Terrorism is above all a hate crime, and its perpetrators are much like those who brutalize gays for being gay. Many in the global community suffer from Ameriphobia, a fear propagated by misinformation, disinformation, and bold displays of U.S. power. The antidote to Ameriphobia is knowledge, understanding, and empathy.

On Wealth (and lack thereof)
The crux of the class problem is not that the “haves” have too much and the “have-nots” have too little, but that the “haves” tend to construct artificial barriers to hoard resources and prevent their natural circulation.

       

Copyright ©2001-2003, Allegra H., all rights reserved. Please contact me via e-mail if you wish to reproduce this material.