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Biological Entrapment

Something in the human psyche loathes the indignity of being an organism at all: a convoluted alimentary tube driven by genes to fecundity, eating its way through the world until it too becomes food for literal worms. We have grander pretensions—to be as gods, pure, unbounded, with immortal eyes open upon an infinite horizon. The very concepts of spirit and spirituality deny the limiting animal context. The idealistic belief that what one truly is, despite all appearances, is spirit or soul, expresses a characteristic revulsion at being trapped in the temporal sheath of flesh.

RELATED TAGS: [spiritual aspiration/pretention, quest for godhood/divinity, identification with spirit, masculine idealism, way of (the) flesh, biological entrapment, horrors of nature/biology, Annie Dillard, amoral nature, nature is wasteful/extravagant]


© Copyright Dan Bruiger 2008. All rights reserved.