June 12, 2010 at 7:00 a.m. at 1205 Valley Road: I think that most of the revelations I have are when I am in a half awake state in the mornings sitting on the toilet or standing at the window looking outside at the birds in the trees and at the feeder. This morning I noticed that the blue jay has to work hard for the goody in a sunflower seed. No problem for a cardinal or house finch. Chickadee has same problem as blue jay. Both bang their beaks containing a single seed against their perch until it opens, either at the feeder or by taking their seed up to the “green room tree,” so named because it is where the birds usually await their turn to go onstage at the feeder. I think I might put out some gentler food for the non-finches, but will have to think about that. I wondered this morning how many cranial nerves birds have, and how much variation there is among species. Wonder now about dominance hierarchies, and how genetic and social factors make their contributions. How are they experienced and expressed through the contributions to the minds of various creatures? How does the neuroendocrine system of the boobies, albatrosses, frigate birds that evolved in the Galapagos compare with that of birds and other creatures that evolved to fear us predators in Southwest Georgia? If we fed birds Xanax, what would happen to their fear? Their judgment?

I would think, the same think that is already happening to human social judgment. It would disappear.

Another revelation this morning came in the form of a question: If everyone had a concept of ecology that included the sense of mind, in contrast to the dualistically based Cartesian sense that our culture--- including the psychiatric community---suffer, would there not be a much more harmonious acceptance of self and others, a Schweitzerian sense of reverence and awe, an aesthetic appreciation of the Mysterium Tremendum concept of Rudolph Otto? Everyone would be a self therapist and a therapist of others; moreover, another question: What would change in the need for psychotherapists, including psychiatrists? Wouldn’t the whole world become temporarily a grand Alcoholics Anonymous Community?