The Peripatetic Philosopher revisits an old idea - SODIUM IS SODIUM

Sodium is Sodium

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© November 10, 2005

If the chemist is studying the element such as sodium, he does not say it is his sodium, or that somebody else studies his sodium, and of course they compare notes. Sodium is sodium universally.

David Bohm, in a conversation with J. Krishnamurti, The End of Time (1985)


The roots of psychological conflict may be as simple as the denial that “sodium is sodium.” We like to take possession of our angst as if it is ours, alone, that nobody else hurts as much as we do, is as anxious as we are, or feels as alone as we do.

Part of us sees that we are connected, but seemingly a greater part of us sees ourselves as separate. It is as if we, alone, are experiencing this ordeal called “life” in an impenetrable shell; that no one else has the faintest idea what we are experiencing, when we are all caught up in the same illusion. You cannot see nor can I see it because the illusion has been cultivated, nurtured and has become our identity. It is part of the structure that we call life.

If you doubt the strength of this illusion that wraps us in indefinable patterns, call on someone you haven’t seen in years, remembering how miserable they were or complain to be, and chances are you will see little change in their situation. Misery has become a security blanket, which they have no intentions of leaving.

You visit them, attempt to cheer them up, take them someplace to get free of themselves, and for a while, color comes back into their face, a smile breaks across their lips, and a lightness of being seems apparent. But when you leave, they go back to their same old self. Should you visit them a year or more later, it is as if you had never left. They are back to their old gloomy self. Why is that?

There may be a quietness to you, a caring empathetic intelligence which is non-verbal but felt because you pay attention. It doesn’t last because you are outside; you are with the person but not of the person. It is like going to empty church, and feeling extraordinarily good about yourself in the quiet of the place. Here the only music is the rhythm of the rafters responding to the wind. Like incense, this is ephemeral, comforting for a spell but then it is gone because it doesn’t exist within; it fails to penetrate the cage.

What is there that can break through this cage, this cage that we like to think only encases us when it encases everyone? It isn’t his or her cage, or our cage, but a cage that human beings have built, which might be called the “Cage of Society.”

What can break us out of this cage? It is an element that is lacking, an element that doesn’t belong to the scientist, the religious, the politician, the worker, the student, or to anyone. The 2018 book opens with:


Gentlemen, this is my rule: if I fail I don’t lose heart, if I succeed I persevere, and in any case, I never underhand. I’m not one to intrigue. I’m not proud of it. I’ve never prided myself on diplomacy. They say, too, gentlemen, that the bird flies itself to the hunter. It’s true and I’m ready to admit it: but who’s the hunter, and who’s the bird in the cage? That is still the question, gentlemen.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Double (1846)


Who Put You in the Cage is about the individual and society, and how the individual and society relate to the cage. This author sees postmodern society resembling a cage resulting in extraordinary caged behavior. Individuals continue to make choices, but choices that confine them to diminishing horizons. Unaware of this state, they resort to bizarre often deviant and counterproductive behavior.

Society, which has bought into the idea of progress, has programmed the individual to frenzied “cut and control” exploitation of himself and the environment diminishing material and spiritual resources to the point that the planet is now on life support systems.

Who Put You in the Cage looks at the individual from the author’s own personal and professional life in terms of society and the complex organization in the interest of generating reflection of readers on their own situation.

If we in fact live in cages, then escape might simply be a matter of reexamining the choices that have put us in the cage. That said, this book is not a prescription for release from such confinement. No two escape routes are likely to be the same. Nor does the book present a litany of “right choices” to change the individual’s behavior to ease one out of the cage.

The individual has constructed the cage in which he finds himself, only he can determine the way to deconstruct the cage. Habits become choices as well as behaviors. If such barriers are vague, the book intends to facilitate easing them to the surface.

Each lifestyle situation is a move either towards or away from confinement as each individual roadmap is different to one’s health and rehabilitation. You can see by the chapter headings that the cage is viewed from various perspectives, which should give the reader a sense of where he is relative to one’s own cage. Don’t be surprised if you find the key to escape from your cage is already in your hand.

What is love?

If love is the answer, why is love nothing that belongs to anyone? It is because love is considered personal when it is not. Love is not that. Love like sodium is universal only we treat it as if it is not.

There are a great many things that we consider personal when they are not personal.

Isolation does not belong to anyone nor does togetherness. It is not a personal problem. It is a human condition. Love, or the lack of love is a human condition, an illusion, like God, invented to give comfort in the wilderness of being. We need illusions to exist. That is why they are as real as we claim to be.

Moreover, intelligence is not personal, yet we say this person is more intelligent than this other person. Such perceptions form barriers between ourselves and others that exist only in our minds.

To survive in what we call “sanity,” we give illusions substance that in turn drives us toward separation. We say such inane things as “these qualities belong to me,” implying “not to you.”

Psychiatrists, psychologists and sociologists provide language to these illusions to make them credible and justified. They have taken the baton from religion as guardians of sacred illusions dressing them up in scientific theses (i.e., dogmas) that make the prognostications of the religious in comparison seem inconsequential.

Qualities of existence and behavior belong to us all. It is our fragmentary minds that promotes a divisive perspective. Why might construe this presentation as an elaborate ruse? It is because love while universal cannot claim the universal acceptance of

Sodium is sodium

Yet, love is our sodium. It is our element. It is not personal. Anyone can use it providing they pay attention to others, not in a superfluous fashion, but with sincerity; perceptive of where the other is from that person’s point of view; and sensitive to possible barriers to allow love to take root.

When love connects there is no fragmentation; it sees past differences, dissolves past hurts and bridges to compassion so that two people as persons can get on with their lives without self-conscious insecurity, fear, anxiety or pain.

Does this take courage? Of course. The first step is to “let go” of everything and let love be like what scientists have allowed “sodium to be sodium.”

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PS   Never conventional, I’ve always taken comfort in the Irish dictum: it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission. Hopefully, this approach will be turned into a little book to track by working thinking life through excerpts of my published works. Stay tuned.


NOTE: THIS WAS DICTATED TO BB as I'm still limited to two finger typing.