OK, class, here’s your homework. You need to read Inside the Monkeysphere by David Wong, so I can discuss it in some future blog posts. (Warning to my gentler readers: Salty language within.)

It’s quite funny, but a lot of what gives this humor its punch is its dark chewy center of disturbing truth. As Wong promises, once you digest what’s in here you will view the world and its history differently afterward, having received a glimpse into what is arguably humanity’s greatest handicap.

Please note that there exist many human individuals with even worse spiritual handicaps, such as sociopathy, runaway narcissism, solipsism, and other forms of what Donald Miller calls “addiction to self” in his book Blue Like Jazz. What’s startling about the Monkeysphere is that it is a property of normal, decent, high-functioning human beings. Gulp.

On second thought, so is addiction to self, honestly, once you start looking deeply enough. Maybe it’s two sides of the same sphere after all.