WHO HAS IT BETTER: CAVE OR CONDOMINIUM MAN?

History's saints and seers often see human existence in sharply different ways. Gift or accident. Joy or tragedy. One thing they can all agree on: Irony....! In tracing the long trajectory of human development from cave to condominium, there may be no greater irony than this: In conquering our ancient fear-of-the-unknown, we are left with the even greater fear-of-the-known.

Exactly how has this come about? Well, that's the irony. Humanity seems designed to seek more and more knowledge about its world, but now that we possess it in quantities greater than ever before, we seem frightened more than ever before. [Genesis speaks about not eating of the "Tree of Knowledge," but trying to jibe that message with this irony may be another subject].

Now if this irony strikes you as getting too theological, not at all. We experience it every day of our remarkably informed adult lives. Engulfed 24/7 by television, newspaper, and Internet coverage of the news of the world, there's not much "knowledge" not being dumped into our living room laps. Notice, though, how it accumulates faster than we typically know what to do with.

Intense up-to-the-minute exposure to wars, terrorism, financial chaos, natural disasters, climate crises, diseases we never heard of before, prescriptions killing their own users; plus the usual suspects like street crimes, drug crimes, schoolyard crimes, sex crimes, and the relentless gorge of political showboating and celebrity burn-outs,

Our psychiatrists speak of the modern refuge of "cocooning." More and more of us seeking less and less of this gorge. Behold our guarded condominium compounds, gated communities, back-yard patios instead of front-porch swings, not to mention those cheaper opiates callously called "reality shows."

This anxiety-of-abundance has come to replace the medieval plagues. Little escape from its strangling fingers. But now here's where one irony breeds another. If medieval times looked to the forces of heaven and hell to explain their world and their existence, modern times often look the other way. Rather than up, down.

Down into our psycho-biological selves -- our libidos, our genes, our DNA. Once more humanity properly seeking more and more knowledge. Only now it confronts a new set of questions. Which may be the better way to cope with the world in which we move? Were the medievalists on to something by looking to forces bigger and beyond our-self ...? Or can science do better by looking mostly within our-self...?

To tame this irony of human knowledge inciting as well as informing, these good questions require good answers.