Arguments, debates take place in ways which defy my understanding. A current debate on the nature-nurture controversy occurs between an old man who is some sort of turncoat, directed against the work of a now-dead woman, which she had done many years ago when she was very young.

The debate had caught-on, at least for a while, exciting those who want their own arrogance massaged, who suspect that others they do not like are inferior in some natural sense, leaving themselves superior in some natural sense. But why – in this context? Why – about the work of a young girl whose impressions may have been guided by some presumptions about the possibilities of the human condition? Why against M. Mead?

Well, she had become famous, the mother of the world, the oracle of oracles who would address all human problems and keep the lid on the world’s dangers. She did not address problems within a clearly intellective context, and she is easy to attack if the problem is shaped in certain ways, for being something, someone she never claimed.

The debater, an old man now, turned in his own life from her field, to one which seemed to locate itself deeply in nature; to be a lobbyist for the natural world, that it is clear to him what this means. He restudied her work of many years ago, and found it wanting, incorrect, of depicting the human condition in any way he considers to be natural.

She, by now mythic, beyond the legend in her own time, staring back at us from the Great Beyond, not fazed by the man, not afraid to wander into any arena where she could debate, could outshout, out-talk anyone. The great debate, and issue in world politics, fought out between personalities which attract and excite and resonate… [and obscure the issues!]

Between here and there, clear vision.

Nothing to shut out,

not a thing to blur

or to halt our seeing forever and with clarity.

We do not always see what there is.

Put glasses on, take them off, shut eyes, open, listen.

See, hear, feel, sense.

The inner voices obscure,

the day is blunted or celebrated,

and we do not hear.

The ears ring clearly,

music plays from the memory,

stirring voices into hums which ring the aura

which reflects the light reflecting sounds.

Like Plato’s caves, we live chained,

seeing shadows;

or the shadows of shadows.

We want, we don’t want,

what there is, what there should be,

cast into the shapes of things,

The objects of desire and moral suasion

moves our honesty,

recasting streams of being and solidifying factuality.

I fought to see,

to push away the curtains and veils of visions;

I fought to hear, to feel not just my feelings resonating,

but what there is.

I found myself floating

upon the waves of a thousand years’

thousand years of why’s and because’s

blunting the sharpness of outline and of detail.

Entering Heraclitus’ river,

I found it always different,

but always different in the same direction;

upstream and downstream.

It never lay still, but neither did I.

Wanting stillness,

seeking to sleep so my dreams

might tell me what was,

I floated,

and lulled myself into the calms

from which I could look out

and tell that all was as it was, was as it is…