Should we survive this ongoing nightmare of living in a society governed by monsters, I'm sure that future generations will regard Phil Rockstroh as the greatest American writer of our current period. He will be regarded as someone who captured the essence of coping with life in a not-very-sane society, and someone who offered sound suggestions on how to live in a society run by monsters in order to preserve one's humanity and to avoid becoming a monster, too.
By a refusal to grieve, by lapsing into a host of manic evasions, one risks becoming a monster -- a being devoid of empathy that, in an attempt to avoid experiencing suffering, will wound, demean, and exploit the things of the world.
In collective terms, we know this state as the agendas of empire. Conversely, to embrace one's humanity, one must accept being shattered by grief, yet restored by love, simultaneously. Being in unashamed possession of a heart, both broken and whole, serves to mitigate the compulsion to act in the manner of a monster.
