It’s easy enough to say that we as
humans all have our various obsessions, from cleanliness to collecting, but
when an obsession comes from without, it can be significantly more impactful.
Obviously the fungus attacking the ant’s nervous system is a morbid example of
this takeover, but the other two examples prove no less significance to this
claim. Geoffrey Sonnabend, the neurophysiologist, upon listening to an amnesiac
lady sing was inspired to theorize his take on the human condition of memory,
or rather forgetting said memory. His theory tried to explain such phenomena as
Déjà vu, premonition, as well as memory loss in general. The second story also takes place in South
America, but involves the discovery of a very small bat. Donald R. Griffith,
upon stumbling across Bernard Maston’s claims of an evil spirit, was driven to
seek out the answer to what that spirit was: a bat. Had he not come across that
account, his journey and subsequent trials to capture this unproven bat wouldn’t
have happened.
These examples of people being infected
with the urge to solve a problem they had not yet known existed until it came
upon them are what I think the author believes about our culture. We as humans
get inspired, touched by the outside world, and only that takes us away from
the comfort of home. Only be experiencing outside influences can we make
meaning of our life. I would say both the author and I agree on at least this
point.
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