Passion Flowers

Our perceptions lose all subtlety, our apprehension and understanding of reality is numbed, degraded, stultified, and our days are made up of such relentless distraction and nuisance we see nothing.  Or nothing beyond our responsibilities or diversions.  Reason disintegrates in bedlam, and most are acclimated to nothing more substantial than transient and untrustworthy emotions.

The supremacy of emotion is everywhere visible.  It trumps a critical regard for facts; it trumps analytical assessment of our character, of our thoughts and actions.  The word "passion" is used far too often, as though it confers a kind of nobility to our pursuits, which may have nothing more than selfish and self-serving motivations.

Neuroscientists assert virtually all political belief is inextricably bound to parts of the brain associated solely with emotion.

And the brain is not the mind.