I just finished a marvelous book by my friend Brooke Williams, Open Midnight: Where Ancestors & Wilderness Meet. His personal exploration of the topic opened up new ways of seeing for me. Here is one of my favorite passages from the book (pages 85-88). I'll share more in future entries.
Hearing Rush [Limbaugh] talking to one of his "dittoheads" always makes me think that we may be sub-speciating.
We are members of the species homo sapiens (human who knows) and the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens (human who know that he knows).
That being true, what would we call the two new subspecies? How about Homo sapiens selfishi and Homo sapiens integradis -- human who is selfish and human who is integrated? Or better yet, Homo sapiens convergi / Homo sapiens divergensis--convergent and divergent humans?
Much better.
I'd read once that children are divergent thinkers in that they're more creative and less constrained and see many different possibilities. Adults are more likely to focus on one thing and look only for ideas that support that focus. They converge on one specific idea.
....
Convergi believes that we're the chosen generation of the chosen species in the chosen country, and that all previous people have existed only for our benefit.
Divergensis lives as part of an infinite system moving toward an unknown future.
Divergensis and convergi now speak different languages and have little use for one another. While interbreeding may still be biologically possible, it is unlikely to happen, the two subspecies having lost any attraction to each other.
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