Living free, dying earlier.

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Date: 04 May 2015
• Author: McFarlane, Clive

Byline: Clive McFarlane

We humans pride ourselves as being the ones with the most reasoning skills of all the creatures on Earth. But what really separates us from the rest of Earth dwellers is not so much our superior reasoning ability, but what appears to be a genetic instinct to frequently scorn reason.

This is a serious discourse, so please do not confuse the aforementioned human proclivity with the conservative Republican faction that has adopted defiance of reason as a practicing philosophy.

I am taking about an individual allowing his desire to live with abandon getting the better of his instinct to survive. Young people acquiesce more so than adults to this instinct, which is why they get a lot more fun out of life and consequently, of course, get into a lot of trouble at times.

But adults have...