Supernormal Stimuli _____ AKSHR

Supernormal Stimuli

 

A bacteriologist is a man whose conversation always 

starts with the germ of an idea.

 

I’m convinced, he says, 

that if we all had a taste for raw meat

 

there would be no war. 

Forests would not be felled for 

the purpose of making paper.

Without this unnatural craving, 

there would be no need to plant crops.

 

There would be no need to build houses or to wear clothes. 

No one would ever go hungry again.

 

He goes on and on about how we all have it in us:

the taste for meat, 

the desire to reproduce our kind, 

the urge to feel pain and pleasure;

how these things are part of what makes us human;

and because they are so deeply ingrained in our psyche,

we cannot turn away from them.

____ AKSHR