HAVE our smart phones detached us from the natural world? Has contemporary technology removed part of our feelings for others– objectification run amok? Is our humanity gone?

What’s the psychology of the male mind?

These are questions which might be asked after reading Chelsea Ruxer’s short story, “Tanks Growing Like Flowers.”

(What would Jerry Mander say about it?)

Fiction has the ability to raise questions about the world and ourselves. At its best, no art form is more relevant.

I listen as he explains how the world has evolved from a Hobbesian state of nature into a social contract which mirrors it, in which island on island crime is necessary and resources spontaneously regenerate. War is expected, and polite.