Speaking with James W. Prescott today, now in his late 80s, after more than fifty years of passionate scientific research into the embodied roots of love and violence, I shared the essence of my last conversation with Ashley Montagu, of similar tenure, with over fifty books on being human.

Ashley, do you have a moment? Sure,” he said, I’m tidying up the library. Don’t want to leave a mess for the wife. You have written over fifty books on being human, the most essential themes. Was it worth it?

Michael my boy, all my book a classic, he said. You know, the definition of classic is a book that sits on a shelf and nobody reads. I consider myself the luckiest man alive. I have lived my life exploring and doing exactly what I consider was most important. Then he paused. But don’t neglect your family!

In his day, when Joseph Chilton Pearce published a new book, he was swamped with emails, interviews, and speaking invitations. Having labored to publish his last, Joe received none. For most, even the truly inspired and visionary, one’s light grows increasingly dim in the exploding glare of pop culture’s flashing neon lights. As noted; culture shout - wisdom whispers.

The proposed exploration of Joe’s life and collected insights is canceled due to a lack of interest. I will consider creating a podcast that highlights what would have been explored, less the Q and A, and engaged dialogue. In the meantime, I have a family to nurture.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle we each face is the open-ended nature of true intelligence and wisdom, as opposed to knowledge and imagination. Real development is not the accumulation of knowledge. He or she with the largest flash drive is not the most developed, the best human possible.

What does it mean to be a human being? What are the astonishing capacities that make being human unique in all the world, perhaps in all the worlds? What are the self-inflicted limitations that prevent those capacities from unfolding? Is there anything that can be done to take the lid off of our own, and our children’s, true development? Why, after millennia haven’t we become more than we are? Is it becoming even harder, with each new development, to discover, awaken and develop the miraculous gifts nature has hidden in each of us? Which side is winning; the dark or the light?

MM