Addendum on Police

I wanted to make it especially clear on this topic that I respect the type of men and women who choose to become police officers, soldiers--the kind of high-stress warrior position that help maintain a society.  Unfortunately, the exact same high-testosterone, territorial mentality that seems so common in officers can easily bleed over into strongly hierarchical behavior, and a reinforcement of society's hidden agendas.  It is for this reason that making people consciously aware that THESE TENDENCIES ARE UNIVERSAL is so important to me.  It removes much of the guilt and anger, and hopefully replaces them with serious, reasoned discussion of how we can actually create the society we all crave.  Under stress, those unconscious tendencies have kept our ancestors alive for a million years. We're not going to overcome them in a generation or two.  But this is, I believe, the road to healing: whether between the races, the genders, the political parties, or within our psyches as individuals.