Oh we are cynical, oh we are hopeful, By Mark Morford

What sort of species is this? What are we made of, really?

Here is what you already know: We are preternaturally jaded and fearful, burned-out to the core. We are ever at the mercy of our myriad dreams of destruction and death, ravaging us like salivating demonhounds in the night. And not in the good way.

Poll after poll, study after study says the human animal is a fragile, troubled creature. Our bodies are a million ways amazing, but they are no match for the ruthless machinations of time and industry, freeway crashes and health care collapse. We are held together by rubber bands and duct tape, shot through with 10,000 prescription meds, therapies and surgeries, as we offer a thousand nervous prayers for that unsettling chronic pain to please, please, please subside, just a little.

Poisons abound, in our food, furniture, the very air we breathe. We are crammed like a Texas Wal-Mart with so many chemicals and toxins, afflicted by so many ailments and mental illnesses that it would take a book the size of Freud's fetish dungeon to list them all. ...

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