Back in March 2003 I was sitting on a sofa in my tiny yet cozy apartment in Marietta, Ga watching the television. The local news was on and although I generally don't watch the news (its so depressing sometimes), this time I paid close attention. The president (George W. Bush) along with Congress were sending troops into Iraq & thus, war had begun. I thought of all of the young soldiers who would go to Iraq to fight for our country, and also how many of them would not return, or would return never the same. Suddenly, an idea came into my head that I wanted to write about war. I had no idea how I would do it, but that was what I definitely wanted to write about. I had read many novels in which war occured and others where war was the major theme and I wanted to take the same topic and somehow treat it differently. Most if not all novels abour war created empathy in the reader by exposing the bloodiness of battle and the carnage. This is very effective for most but I didnt want most of the human audience I wanted all (many have become desensitized to direct violence through various mediums unfortunately), and so my quest began. At the time I was unemployed, clinically depressed and was busy writing a coming of age story about a young black woman battling depression. I had named it, The Autobiography of Jane Doe since I had taken many events from my own life and some of my actual journal entries and inserted them into this book. I came up with the Jane Doe portion of the title because although it was largely my own story, I was neither famous nor well-known in any way and therefore I was a "Jane Doe"or Everywoman. I became so obsessed with writing about war in some unique and different way that I soon put aside TAOJD and began brainstorming this new "war book" as I initially referred to it. I brainstormed for a couple of months and finally I knew where to begin my thinking process around the plot & philosophy of this "war book". My mind traveled back to the days of high school and college where I had studied ecology and organisms. I particularly reflected back on what I had learned about symbiotic relationships and even more specifically, the symbiotic relationships mutualism (the way two organisms biologically interact where each individual benefits) and parasitism (a type of symbiotic relationship between organisms of different species where one organism, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the other, the host). I went back and dusted off old text & reference books on my shelf) and reviewed the material and refreshed my knowledge of examples in nature of both symbiotic relationships. My fascination was renewed and I began to wonder if humans, physiologically linked to one another through major & vital body systems by another organism, would voluntarily be linked harmoniously -philosophically & socially in order to maintain biological life for the whole. Emotion is the complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical (internal) and environmental (external) influences. Anger is one such emotion and is an emotion related to one's psychological interpretation of having been offended, wronged or denied and a tendency to undo that by retaliation. Humans, throughout our collective history have chosen violence and large-scale wars to resolve & retaliate these feelings of wrongdoing and conflicts. #1 What if an organism such as a bacteria or virus species when introduced (purposely in The Elements) into a human host could somehow link all of the humans physiologically. #2 What if said organism directly reproduced or relied on the very biochemicals released by the human brain during an emotion such as anger and caused the harm of or death of a number of individuals who are a part of the biological whole? #3 Would man, after realizing the physiolocial linkage as well as the cause and the implications (no violent emotions=physical life of the whole) acquiesce to the mutualistic relationship between all members of his species and live peacefully together despite differences? or would mankind be ruled by their violent emotions and therefore face extinction? This was the essence of my brainstorming and I had no choice but to explore my own curiosity and quest to demonstrate that a peaceful existence is vital and possible for all of us. Writing fiction became my highest priority because the imagination allows us to experiment with ideas that could (or should rather) not be explored with real humans in real life . The latter idea is what scientists do in laboratories everyday - hypothesize, experiment, data, conclusions, applications. The writer of fiction, namely science fiction, can do the same things with his or her pen, answering the "what ifs" without bringing harm to living species. Unfortunately, human history is filled with examples of inhumane "human experiments" whose results were disastrous. Initially, I called my "war book" Una Gentis (latin for One Nation/People) since my fictional tribes would be physiologically linked and literally, One people. I came up with the idea that once exposed to the microorganism, four random groups (physiologically) would be formed, seperated by which body system their microorganism controlled when the individual became angry. There was the Cardiogas (the cardiovascular system), The Nervanu (the nervous system), The Resprii (the respiratory system) and the Immuni (the immune system) - while writing this I have to laugh at those early ideas which seem so silly but you have to begin somewhere with an idea. I thought of those soldiers on the news being deployed. I thought of their mothers and children and siblings. They had wives and daughters to escort to dances, sons to play baseball with and they were going to a place with weapons and quite likely, their deaths. I imagined the faces of the mothers, fathers, children and neighbors of the communities they would invade. The amount of death and injury that would come to both sides saddened me and I vowed to finish my work, no matter how long it took and show humanity another possibility. Peace was that possibility and I wanted every last man, woman and child to stop and think that if peace can be maintained through coersion via biological linkage (physiological symbiosis) then mankind, being the highest and most intelligent of all living species, without a doubt had to have the ability and the will to live peacefullly, voluntarily. If we can be forced, we can volunteer. The Kishnu and Lungi in The Elements learn this very lesson as did I - their literary mother, and now I share this with the world. Please return next week for Part II of The Birth of The Elements Trilogy. Do not hesitate to comment, I read every last one of them & will respond in my blog.
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