Will He Listen?

I was casually speaking with an internist when halfway through the conversation, he put on his spectacles. I commented that now he could HEAR better (since we understand a lot from visual cues like facial expressions, body language, and by reading lips). He laughed and then told me quite seriously that he does swallowing exercises. The use of the Stylo-Hyoid muscle pulls on the membrane of the ear and also opens the Eustachian Tube, thus aiding in hearing.

I had an epiphany, which I quickly revealed to him. I always believed that women loved to cook; they enjoyed feeding their man and got satisfaction out of seeing him content. I was led to believe that this was done as an expression of love. ‘The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach’ was the mantra I always heard.

NOT SO, my fellow readers. It is all part of a PLOT extending back to a time immemorial when through the use of magic, intuition or divine revelation, women learned that swallowing aids in hearing. Women have been trying to get us men to LISTEN so they are feeding us! Feed him, he swallows, his ears open, he hears better. Score one for the women.

(Now I know why women won't swallow. Consider me scoreless)

VOYAGER

At the time, I didn’t think much of it. It was just another episode of Star Trek Voyager, which I watched out of loyalty to Star Trek but without the same interest as in the original. Voyager was caught in a gravity well of a planet at its infancy of ‘human’ development. The people looked to the heavens at this new light in the sky and worshipped it as a powerful god (apparently concurrent with Voyager’s arrival, gravitational stresses began to rock the planet with frequent earthquakes). The rate of evolution on this planet was accelerated so in Voyager’s brief time, they witnessed the people evolve. New technology shifted the people’s focus from an unknowable god to understanding that there is a vessel in space yet still revered as a powerful force. It remained an icon where children had toy models and stories were told of its arrival. Technology reached a point where the people realized that Voyager was the cause of the quakes and they literally went ballistic by launching a nuclear strike at Voyager. They were quickly dissuaded and eventually the culture was able to assist Voyager in breaking free.

An old man looks to the heaven and sees the light that ‘thousands of years ago’ had appeared in his sky to influence the religion and culture of his people, disappear in the blink of an eye.

As I was nodding off to sleep the other night while thinking about the impact of religion on society, this episode of Voyager took on a whole new meaning to me. I thought of how primitive human’s sought, to the best of their abilities, to explain the universe and worship that which they could not comprehend. As time went on, human’s gained knowledge in the sciences and began to explain the forces of nature as just that. While still remaining an integral part of our culture, the attacks on God had begun. Many feeling that ‘God’ is the root of many of the evils that we witness today (suicide bombers, Jihad, ethnic cleansings, etc.). Others believed God to be a social construct as Emile Durkheim wrote that man projects his image onto the cosmos. Marx felt it was the opiate of the masses, a political tool to achieve control and compliance. The skeptics have deconstructed the Bible and have removed the foundation of western religion. Nietzsche has declared that ‘God is dead.’

But what will our wise old man think or see as we move to the next stage of our evolution. Will we lose our God completely? Will our culture suffer such a shock that it can’t recover? Will God be successfully redefined to meet the spiritual needs of modern society and will God be a universal God of all the people’s of the earth? We are at a very crucial crossroad in understanding and appreciating the role God has played in our culture and history. The lessons we can gain from analyzing history with an open mind can lead us to greater insights into human nature and a more honest & sensitive approach to our interactions with our fellow humans.