That famous diagram of monkey turning into man is a tiny slice out of a huge pattern. Man is a species that is a constant process of evolution, from the beginnings of life, to the position and form we are in right now. The human brain is the most complex organ ever to have evolved on this planet, and we are still as a species only beginning to understand the potential of what we can achieve. Despite being aware of notions of 'right' and 'wrong', society has not yet reached a level at which the balance is right (for example - war is not illegal where murder is). But there is a constant forward motion (EU, world trade, greenpeace, contemporary buddhism, Governments who don't support the arms trade over humna rights and peace, etc) and we can have a lot of hope for the future. But, anyway, the human race is in a period of massive upheaval, as well as a continuing process of evolution. I have a theory that the human race is reaching an equiavalent as a race to Freud's "mirror stage", mostly due to the advance of technology and the media. For the first time (during the last century) people are becoming aware of all the different experiences of life people are having around the world, from the African famine and AIDS problem, through to the problems of Western capitalism, through to the Pygmies of Burma etc etc etc ... and the human race as a whole is struggling to come to grips with the ideas advocated by Socialism. But perhaps this will come in time? Maybe.

ANYWAY. My initial intention with this post was to try and say that I thing the human brain is a constantly evolving organ that has endless potential and is actually very "young", hence the childlike understanding we currently place on behaviour such as "sanity" and "insanity". I suggest that many people society considers "insane" are in this respect possibly the most highly functional, and that society is unable to understand the transformative people that "insane" people are going through when their exploritary behaviour manifests itself in a manner that is not compatible with everyday society.

DiS-cuss.