Deborah found this beautiful quote in Jean Leidhoff's Continuum Newsletter:

"Ideologies arise when people feel they have no real somatic anchoring.
The person who is truly grounded in him or herself as a biological organism
may espouse a cause, but they do not need it in order to feel that their
existence is validated.  God and country, feminism and sixism, Judaism and
anti-Semitism, the religious fundamentalism of Bible Belt Baptists and the
self-conscious intellectualism of the The New York Review of Books - any
'ism you care to name, really - all are attempts to create meaning for
human beings who, if they had not suffered some sort of primary loss early
on, would not need it.  For the (extremely rare) healthy person, life is
its own meaning; they do not need an 'ism to stuff the gap, to feel ok.  In
our society, however, 'isms and ideologies are as widespread, and as
addictive, as any drug one can think of."

-From Coming To Our Senses by Morris Berman

I agree.  This seems applicable to just about all of us.

Deborah and I will be away for two weeks, so we will not be responding.  We
will return to probably 200+ posts though:-|

Adios,

Zephyr