The John Muir ProjectBy: Dr. W. Kaya Erbil

Chapter 1

“A city is a place that can offer maximum freedom.  Otherwise it’s incomplete.”1

“Cities really are mental conditions.  Beijing is a nightmare.  A constant nightmare.”2

“One of the reasons religions are widely accepted is spiritual laziness and its resulting fear.”  (6:10 a.m. December 24, 2010)3

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”4

I am polling 100 people as to the single word that strikes them the most relevant and interesting with regard to the topic of the book, environmental influences to mental disorders.  I give each participant an approximately 5 minute description of the overall topic spontaneously and then recite and show them the five statements.  Then I ask for their answer.

1 Ai Weiwei-isms, p. 51.2 Ai Weiwei-isms, p. 51.3 Ai Weiwei-isms, p. 58.4 James 1:27, NIV.

Poll results so far (6/20/2013, 9:21 p.m.): Freedom, freedom, your, cities, cities, freedom, cities, nightmare, spiritual laziness, freedom, freedom, maximum, polluted, apologize, and polluted…

The most important aspect of shaping your mind into a new state is adapting to new environmental stimuli.  This is the basis of what is called learning.  Making transitions between states of learning can be thought of as what is commonly called thinking.  I believe individuals can at times think themselves into sanity or madness, happiness or sadness, euphoria or depression.  The mind is extremely plastic and supple throughout life we can learn and think.  However, over time we can lose this plasticity. Regular

physical and mental exercise is absolutely essential to maintain proper health of body and mind, particularly in our overly sedentary technological society.     For the average city dweller who travels along a fixed path of daily routine, usually in a car or other sedentary mode of transport, simply changing the route one travels can stimulate neural connections.  If a person is depressed, perhaps the change may foster a better state of mind.  This is the essence of psychogeography as applied to treating mental illness.  New routes for new moods.  New situations, for new psychology.  Thus, I hypothesize that the skills and tools of the Situationist International can be employed to treat mental illness and to help heal spiritual ailments.  Write two paragraphs explaining this concept this point in more detail through writing and psychogeographic experimentation.  One subhypothesis is that taking an individual that follows a rigid, strictly-defined monotonous routine in a state of depression and placing that person into a new compassionate and stimulating environment is extremely helpful in alleviating symptoms of depression. Subhypothesis 2 states that regular sustained exercise along with lectio divina meditation can greatly enhance mental and physical health. Indeed, with a miracle of God, it may alleviate the need for heavy medication medication, even if the mental illness is bipolar disorder I or schizophrenia.  I am not encouraging people to go off their medication but rather, I am hypothesizing that the mind, with the help of God, can be healed to such an extent so as to render medication less necessary. I wrote the following during one of my first periods of psychosis from what I now know is stemming from bipolar disorder.

“”What, then, is this “matter more dark and awful,” as Chesterton put it, that neither Orthodoxy nor Eckhart is able to confront? Let us turn to Chesterton himself, to his religious thriller “The Man Who Was Thursday.” It tells the story of Gabriel Syme, a young Englishman who makes the archetypal Chestertonian discovery of how order is the greatest miracle and orthodoxy the greatest of all rebellions. The focal point of the novel is not Syme himself, but a mysterious chief of a super-secret Scotland Yard department who is convinced that “a purely intellectual conspiracy would soon threaten the very existence of civilization”:

He is certain that the scientific and artistic worlds are silently bound in a crusade against the family and the state. He has, therefore, formed a special corps of policemen, policemen who are also philosophers. It is their business to watch the beginnings of this conspiracy, not merely in a criminal but in a controversial sense …. The work of the

philosopher policeman … is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. The ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. We have to trace the origin of those dreadful thoughts that drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime.”

As cultural conservatives, would put it today, deconstructionist philosophers are much more dangerous than actual terrorists: while the latter want to undermine our politico-ethical order to impose their own religious-ethical order, deconstructionists want to undermine order as such:

We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential idea of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely want the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a great fullness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people’s … The common criminal is a bad man, but at least he is, as it were, as conditional good man. He says that if only a certain obstacle be removed – say a wealthy uncle – he is then prepared to accept the universe and to praise God. He is a reformer, but not an anarchist. He wishes to cleanse the edifice, but not to destroy it. But the evil philosopher is not trying to alter things, but to annihilate them.”

This proactive analysis demonstrates the limitation of Chesterton, he is not Hegelian enough: what he doesn’t get is that universal(ized) crime is no longer a crime – it sublates (negates / overcomes) itself as a crime and turns from transgression into a new order.”

The Monstrosity of Christp. 44

-Zizek

In the twentieth century, the German spirit-Mind was sent through the needle of World War I and World War II into a new world order, the process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Germany was tragically united under the Prussian order in the nineteenth century. How different it would have been had it been Bavaria? … or even Baden-Württemberg?

In 1927, within the eye of the needle, Heidegger defined Equipment (German: das Zeug) in his polemic book “Being and Time.” A nearly un-translatable term, Heidegger’s equipment can be thought of as a collective noun, so that it is never appropriate to call something ‘an equipment’. Instead, its use often reflects it to mean a tool, or as an “in-order-to” for Dasein (to a first approximation, the human being). Tools, in this collective sense, and in being ready-to-hand, always exist in a network of other tools and organizations, e.g., the paper is on a desk in a room at a university. It is inappropriate usually to see such equipment on its own or as something present-at-hand. Very few Americans approach German history with understanding. They live sheltered lives, protected from the extreme cruelty of the human being. They are not taught about it in school and fail to seek to learn about it later in life. The cost of this state of Mind is that it views the world “merely” as “Equipment” ready-to-hand. For example, the American remembers the death of 6,000,000 Jews but has forgotten the Essence of the Holocaust.

Today, from a metaphorical perspective, the Earth and all that is Primal is the “New Jew.” For example, the Native American, “small-town” America, and the Snowy Owl.

We are destroying the environment that brings poetry to Dasein. The human being is dual: God – “World is always spiritual world” and animal – “The animal has no world , nor any environment .” Today, the God-Human is a being-in-technology. The Animal-Human is a being-in-nature.

Together, the Animal-Human-God brings-forth:

“Spring

Somewherea black bear has just risen from sleepand is staring

down the mountain.All nightin the brisk and shallow restlessnessof early spring

I think of her,her four black fistsflicking the gravel,her tongue

like a red firetouching the grassthe cold water.There is only one question:

how to love this world.I think of herrisinglike a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws againstthe silenceof the trees.Whatever else

my life iswith its poemsand its musicand its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darknesscomingdown the mountain,breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her -her white teeth,her wordlessness,her perfect love.”

- Mary Oliver

I love Bears.”

The writing reflects my deep interest in justice and memory of tragedy, memory of the holocaust.  The reason why engendering memory in the American consciousness is that meditation on this vast tragedy can engender great compassion for other countries that are currently experiencing similar scale genocidal events.  I state in the passage a subconscious desire to save all beings from suffering.  This is the central driving force behind most of what I do since writing this passage.  The central reason I entered seminary is to save all beings from suffering, the reason I struggle with depression is I see a world that does not seek to save all beings from suffering, bipolar mania steps in some way from seeing and feeling the cold calculating American rationality that does not reach a hand to the suffering individuals who are poor and helpless.  Compassion meditation on the holocaust for me is a greatly healing experience in the long run, even though in the short term it may cause intense bouts of psychotic mania.  These manic episodes often include me screaming in terror at the top of my lungs in places like church, Quaker meeting, and my own academic father’s office David G. Lynn.  The intense memories and thoughts that come from these periods of mania all stem in some way from my interaction with my environment.  I may be genetically susceptible to bipolar disorder I, but it is the environment of my American surroundings that injects stimuli into my mind and brain that leads to the expression of bipolar mania.  American visual culture is one of the most violent cultures on earth.  It is for this reason that I no longer seek to participate in the reception of any image or sound that has to do with violence and death.  Rather, I seek to be fed the opposite, life giving images and sounds

of peace, tranquility, and universal love.  However, it goes further I believe that by having walked trough a dark tunnel in the past few years seeing images of suffering that I have a deep compassion for helping all beings heal from suffering.  Without the knowledge of how the environment that we live in contributes to suffering, I would not be able to effectively and completely help others heal from suffering.  It is for this reason that I believe God sent me through the darker experiences of my life.  To learn what it is like to suffer so I could have a sixth spiritual sense of how to help others who are suffering.  To this end I now believe that God cultivated a flower of understanding in my heart, the lotus grows from mud.

Hard evidence for environmental contributions to mental illnesses paragraph or two. In the past few decades, significant advances have been made in the elucidation of genetic and neurochemical factors behind incidents of mental illnesses such as depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. This progress is due the revolution in molecular biology, DNA sequencing, and psychopharmacology. In stark contrast, environmental influences have been difficult to identify. This is perhaps due to the challenges associated with performing controlled scientific studies on human subjects that have grown up in diverse environments. A myriad of different factors influence a persons growth and development, factors that are difficult to control in scientific studies. Indeed, each individual is unique taking a distinctly trajectory through life. Even if such studies on environmental influences of mental illness can be performed it can be difficult if not impossible to distinguish between correlation and causality. Despite this caveat, researchers have made some progress on identifying environmental factors that may contribute to mental illness.

A recent review in Nature highlighted state of the art knowledge regarding the link between environment and one particular mental illness, schizophrenia.5 The authors of the article pointed out, “Psychotic syndromes can be understood as disorders of adaptation to social context. Although heritability [genetic factors] is often emphasized, onset is associated with environmental factors such as early life adversity, growing up in an urban environment, minority group position and cannabis use, suggesting that expose may have an impact on the developing ‘social’ brain during sensitive periods.” One of the most well established environmental factors associated with the emergence of schizophrenia is living in an urban environment (urbanicity). Studies known as “meta-

5 Os, Jin van; et al. “The Environment and Schizophrenia.” Nature, 468, 203-212.

analyses” suggest current city dwellers have a increased chance of developing anxiety disorders (21 % increase) and mood disorders (39% increase).6,7 For schizophrenia, individuals are twice as likely to develop the condition if he or she is born and raised in cities.8 Neuroanatomical studies have recently identified a nucleus in the brain associated with the influence of city living and urbanicity on the emergence of mental illness. Areas of the brain associated with social dynamics processing are influenced by urbanicity, leading to the emergence of mental illness.9 From a philosophical perspective, one interpretation of these data is that the brain, and therein the mind, is in an intimate relationship with the environment. It is impossible to deconvolve environmental from biological influences on brain function because the mind and the environment constitute a unified whole.

This assertion is a central component of a recent book by Liah Greenfeld entitled Mind, Modernity, and Madness: The Impact of Culture on Human Experience.10 In this book Greenfeld seeks to elucidate the nature of the relationship between the biological brain and the social network of humanity. To accomplish this daunting task, she carefully defines the nature of the mind-body problem as a three tiered interdependent system. The first tier is the material. This realm of matter is the sphere of atoms, molecules, solids, gases, and liquids. Intimately linked with the world of matter is the sphere of the organic. The organic reality of matter is the reality of life. Material elements self-assemble to promote the dynamics of life; life is an emergent property of matter. Lastly, at the intersection between the organic layer of life and the symbolic is the sphere of culture and mind. As a holistic whole, this aspect of the mind-body relationship incorporates together with the material and the organic to establish a seamless interdependent web of being. Together, the mind-body relationship is defined in such a way that previously elucidated relationships between mental illness and the biological (genetic, neurochemical, and anatomical) are placed into close relationship with mental illness and the culture. Adopting this framework opens the door for

6 Lederbogen, F. et al. “City Living and Urban Upbringing affect Neural Social Stress Processing in Humans.” Nature, 474, 498-501.7 Schoevers, P. et al. “The Current Status of Urban-Rural Differences in Psychiatric Disorders.” Acta Psychiatr. Scand. 121, 84-93.8 Krabbendam, L. et al. “Schizophrenia and Urbanicity: A Major Environmental Infleunce-Conditional on Genetic Risk.” Schizophr. Bull. 31, 795-799.9 Lederbogen, F. et al. “City Living and Urban Upbringing affect Neural Social Stress Processing in Humans.” Nature, 474, 498-501.

10 Greenfeld, L. Mind, Modernity, and Madness: The Impact of Culture on Human Experience, 2013, …

cooperation between the sciences, the humanities, and the religion. [539 words for 06282013]…

Greenfeld goes on to ask the question, “But what if our culture of limitless self-

fulfillment is actually making millions desperately ill?”11 Indeed, she argues in her book that the psychiatric community has overlooked the connection between egalitarian society and mental illness. She carefully elucidates a significant “cost” associated with living in the “free” American society. In this society, while individuals have “limitless” freedom to determine their own path they are also placed under enormous stress to “constantly appraise their identities, manage their desires, and calibrate their place within society. For vulnerable individuals, this pressure is too much.”12 Examining extensively the history of specific cases of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, she hypothesizes that mental illnesses are “dysfunctions of selfhood caused by society’s overburdening demand for self-realization. In her rigorous diagnosis, madness is a culturally constituted malady.” Considered together with the material and organic evidence supporting “social brain” dysfunction in mental illness, Greenfeld’s analysis extends this causative factor to the sphere of the cultural. [193 words, 06292013]

If Greenfeld’s model of the mind-body relationship is true, then it may be possible to reverse the environmental effects that cultivate suffering and fear in the average American, including my own, heart by both active and passive practices of compassion prayer and meditation.  Active meditation and prayer involves such practices as cultivation of silence, lectio divina (the repetitive reading of spiritually healing passages and scripture), walking meditation, yoga, and other “mindfulness” practices may all work together to treat mental illnesses. Broadly defined, mindfulness is a conscious awareness of being in the world. An aim of mindfulness is to be fully “present” in any action that an individual engages in during his or her walk through the day. Delivering a spontaneous honest presence in the world despite my struggle with bipolar disorder is an example of how mindfulness facilitates inner peace and tranquility. I would not have been able to deliver such a presence in the world without the incorporation of the mindfulness practice of honestly. As a person of faith, I feel the presence of God in mindfully performed activities.

[Write a paragraph on the limits of secular mindfulness] 11 Greenfeld, L. Mind, Modernity, and Madness: The Impact of Culture on Human Experience, 2013, …12 Greenfeld, L. Mind, Modernity, and Madness: The Impact of Culture on Human Experience, 2013, …

Mindfulness, as practiced by the secular medical establishment, emerged out of attempts to adapt certain meditative and contemplative religious practices to the secular clinic.13 As they are practiced today, mindfulness based therapeutic practices are “Heralded as the cure for all manner of maladies, from depression to high blood pressure.”14 In the modern clinical setting patients are taught mindfulness practices as entirely secular and no emphasis is made on the fact that mindfulness has for centuries prior been practiced by devout religious practitioners. Buddhist monks in India, Tibet, Korea, and Japan practiced meditations to end attachment to thoughts and escape suffering associated with the endless circle of birth and death; Jewish, Christian, and Muslim mystics practiced contemplation to dissociate from the material world and inhabit the cultural sphere through direct encounters with God; and Hindu Yogis practiced yoga as a means of emptying the body of ego to prepare for an encounter with the divine presence. Since the enlightenment, a gradual growing distrust of the religious aspects of life has permeated Western medicine. Associated with the superstitious and the supernatural, religious practices were purged of any spiritual content. This secularization process has led to a massive confusion for many people who seek structure in establishing their personal destinies. Indeed, extending Greenfeld’s hypothesis that mental illnesses are associated with the stress caused by loss of rigorous structures for determining personal destiny it may be possible to postulate that the death of traditional religious practices in the West are a major cause of the modern epidemic of these conditions. Speaking from personal experience, I have found that symptoms of what has been diagnosed as bipolar disorder I emerge most severely when I am under vocational and marital stress. Both of these factors are intimately connected to my own sense of personal destiny. Indeed, the Nietzschean “death of God” may have contributed to the modern epidemic of mental illness. [06292013 continue onto Christian mindfulness in the next paragraph …]

Author Liah Greenfeld in her book Mind, Modernity, and Madness: The Impact of Culture on Human Experiences states, “The elements of which the mind emerges to become more than their sum are organic, that is, they are structures, processes, and functions of life, and, as such, are products of the biological evolution through natural selection. They are three in number. Two of these are specific bodily organs, one of which – the brain – common, in the specific evolutionary form apparently required to make the mind possible, to several biological species at the very least; while the other – the larynx – in that specific evolutionary form is unique

13 Kabat-Zinn, J. Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness…14 Lopez, D. The Scientific Buddha: His Short Happy Life…

to the human species. The third element that has made the mind possible is a certain evolutionary stage of the process or function of perception and communication of perception within a biological group – the perception and communication of signs. It is humbling to realize that of these three elements only the larynx is unique to the human species.”15 I find this definition of the components of mind to be very liberating from the overly biological emphasis of modern science on studies and perceptions of the mind. To modern science, the mind is often reduced to the brain. In this context, the mind is considered to be synonymous with the brain. The implications of this reduction are enormous. For example, consider the field of neuroimaging as an example of how the mind is reduced to functions of the brain. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies are often employed to interpret how the mind processes events in life. Neural correlates to the function of the mind are made to specific regions of the brain, as if this is the only method by which the mind operates. The brain is interpreted to be the product of a genetic program, and therein its function interpreted to reducible to a defined program by certain practitioners of western medicine. Overlaid atop this genetic program, sits the neurochemical aspects of the brain. It is here again that western medicine intervenes with psychopharmacology. Psychoactive medicines are employed commonly to “treat” patients that exhibit socially aberrant behaviors, the “mentally ill.” This is problematic for several reasons, first of which is, who defines the criteria for mental illness? What is accomplished by such definition? According to Greenfeld, “Consciousness, on the most elementary level, is indeed the reading and communication of signs.”16 The behavioral patterns of the mentally ill are not entirely reducible to the functions of an individual brain. Quite the opposite is true, the dynamic social structures of an individual’s environmental operate together as a seamless unified whole. The environment of the brain is as, it not more important, than the brain’s “hard wired” genetic or neurochemical structure in determining normal or aberrant function. “The more complex the environment, the more complex is the nervous system. The brain – its governing organ – corresponds to very complex environments. At the same time, the more complex the environment, the more of the genetic programming for the nervous system must be left open.”17 The brain is plastic, malleable to shaping by the environment. The larynx and the perception and communication of signs are channels by which the environment interacts with the brain. The three elements of mind together are help in close unity with the greater social network of humanity, the greater tree of life, and the inanimate environment. Therefore, in the broadest sense the mind is a collective unit spanning across the cosmos. It is in this context, that religious aspects of mind thrive.

Thoughts on Christian mindfulness practices for treating “mental illnesses. Write out how Mindfulness can be practiced in the Christian tradition. How do I plan to practice

15 Greenfeld, L. Mind, Modernity, and Madness: The Impact of Culture on Human Experience, 2013, …16 Greenfeld, L. Mind, Modernity, and Madness: The Impact of Culture on Human Experience, 2013, …17 Greenfeld, L. Mind, Modernity, and Madness: The Impact of Culture on Human Experience, 2013, …

Christian Mindfulness and what mental health benefits do I hypothesize these practices will have. Can cooperatively self-assembled groups of people, congregations, work collectively to perform environmental “drifts” and what mental health benefits will these group practices have for the groups. Mention Quaker meditation silences, prayer labyrinths, and hymn singing as three examples of conventional cooperative practices. Employing Paul Tillich (pp. 114-117, Systematic Theology) as a platform, explain why a Christian mindfulness based approach to traditional secular mental health approaches. Point out the distinction between the biopsychosocial model of mind with the Christian model of mind. Draw out how ultimately both models should be held in close balanced dialectical tension for the healthiest life. Also, explain the vast financial burden to the patient of too much traditional secular care. Lastly, point out that people like my sister at the financial margin who do not have health insurance are able to receive Christian mindfulness based therapy. Something as simple as attending liturgy can heal the brain, mind, and soul since in reality the three, like the Holy Trinity, are one sacred element of the human being. WHO HAS COME UP WITH TRIUNE THEORIES OF MIND?

Rudolf Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom40 years mystery of Golgatha

waldorf education

anthroposophy

[231 words for 06232013] …

GPS trace of a psychogeographic drift through Princeton University and photographs of art along the path.  I felt very random this morning.  I needed to do laundry today, so I went to the CVS to get some detergent.  I left my room early, so I had time to photograph some of the interesting features of the Princeton campus.  One of the striking aspects of the walk was that I resigned myself to loose some control of where I was going.  I relaxed and did not rush directly to CVS, after all what’s the point if the store is closed any way until a certain time.  The central feeling I got from my random walk through the campus this morning was that of feeling the sun’s gracious warmth on my face and body.  One of the more important aspects of being human is embracing nature for all she is worth, even if one is in an urban or semi-urban space.  I hypothesize that careful exploration of spaces in random manners can be used to ground the spirit and bring one closer to God.  “The labyrinth is a walking meditation.  It is a tool that enables us, in the midst of the busyness of life, to be still, and to focus our thoughts and feelings.  Labyrinths can be found in cathedrals all over Europe and have been used by Christians for hundreds of years as a means of experiencing God’s presence and as a metaphor for walking on the journey with God.  The labyrinth is not a maze.  There are no tricks to it and no dead ends.  It is a single circuitous path winding its way into the center.  One uses the same path to return

from the center.  That path is in full view, which allows a person to be quiet and focus internally.  As you enter the labyrinth, pause to center yourself on God’s love and grace.  Clear your mind.  Become aware of your breath.  Along the way, you may pass people or let others step around you.  The path is two ways; those going in will meet those coming out.  Learn to share the space with others.  Open your heart, be still, be silent, and enjoy the pilgrim’s walk.  The labyrinth walk has three stages: 1) A Purgation or letting go of your worries as you begin the walk 2) Illumination or experiencing God’s presence at the center 3) Union or giving thanks for all the blessing of life as you walk out.  Some people come to the labyrinth with questions, others come to slow down from a busy life.  Some come to find strength to take the next step.  And some walk during times of grief and loss.  The labyrinth may be described as a path of prayer, a walking meditation, a crucible of change, a watering hole for the spirit and a mirror of the soul.  Final Thoughts: Maintain silence throughout your walk for your own reflection and that of others.  Move at your own pace.  Feel free to pause any place where a delay feels right.  Do what feels natural.  Remember, everything teaches.”  Labyrinth instruction from Hephzibah Prayer Trail flyer. [525 words for 062213]

Aesthetic experience of a sample walking labyrinth meditation-prayer on the Princeton University campus.

Furthermore, it may be possible for humanity to self-assemble into symbolic groups of peace by directed compassion meditation.  Such a dream is captured by these two poems taken in together:No Matter, Never Mind

The Father is the VoidThe Wife Waves

Their child is Matter.

Matter makes it with his motherAnd their child is Life,a daughter.

The Daughter is the Great MotherWho, with her father/brother Matteras her lover,

Gives birth to the Mind.

A Theater Project for Cooperative Universal Mind Reality (Love is Universal)

One point . another point ..a line from one to the other,extending on into space and back to itself.

Zero-one, zero-onebits of information, of words and images projected onto a screen;word sounds, song sounds in wires and space.

Who would have thought in the days of pounding on rocks,before imprinting on papyrus,before pounding on drums for earth-sounds, sky soundsbefore blowing cedar flutes for sparrows and wind sounds

That from the mind,one man could form a phonograph and light contained in glass;while others inspired love, devotion, no-mind, non-violence.

Who is to say in the future the mind could not projecta fragrant ginger orchid,

and by mere thinking together the sound of peace ..?

Adapted from “Mind Reality” by Chae Sungsook

Can my Facebook page and smartphones like my iPhone 5 be used to take the photograph below of a self-assembled set of humans in the greater image of a peace dove be used by Out of Hand Theater’s Group Intelligence to self-assemble images of peace and religious symbols? I will propose just this in my meting with Out of Hand Theater and Professor David G. Lynn with in August.

I believe this idea could evolve into a new tool for evangelization by self assembly of religious symbols:

This may help mental health and treat my bipolar disorder through releasing the inner tension that I have about the Christian image of the cross.