Some more connectedness

As it happens so many times, while writing on connectedness in last weeks' post, my attention came to an old books-on-tape edition of "Stranger in a strange land" by Robert Heinlein.  In this book the hero is a young lad who was conceived during a space travel between earth and mars.  The crew were selected couples so the opportunity for something like that was very large.  The space ship lost contact and was never heard from again.  Years later another mission was launched to mars and it found a young man, an earthling, who was raised by the martians.

The young man, Michael Valentine Smith, was brought back to earth and literally fought over by the politicians, scientists and the like.  Meanwhile he is brought under the protection of a small group of people who help him assimilate into the earth culture.  At the same time the influence of the martian culture began to rub off Smith onto the earthlings who formed that protective group.

This allowed Heinlein to present terms such as 'grok' or grokking', water-sharing, and a totally 'new' concept of love perhaps in a universal sense.

To grok was to know with a perfect understanding of all aspects of the concept or object in question.. with people it was a mutually merging rapport.  The water sharing was a ritual which symbolized the bond between humans.  And since martians did not recognize the difference between sexes it was a universal sharing that made all being 'water brothers' both men and women.  Love is the unconditional love that is talked about between some animals and humans and only rarely between humans themselves.   This is an emotional bond so complete that it transcends all the petty needs of personal ego. 

I could go on and write a complete book repoort but then that might spoil it for those who are interested and ready to think about those terms.  There are flashes of science fiction about the story but the underlying philosophy is appealing to those who can see beyond the everyday greed and jockeying for position in our culture today.  And it is this connectedness that is perhaps the salvation of our human race as we careen toward the future.