Whoa! How did we get here? I mean “to this emotional state.” Moody? Was it always like this? What word did our medieval predecessors use for moodiness? It certainly wasn’t mood in the sense that we use it. They had to have some word for people who moped in sullen self-absorption, apparently quietly angry at the world.
 
Our word mood derives from Anglo-Saxon mód that probably indicated “the spiritual part” of humans. But don’t think monk in a chapel. The word incorporated courage, high spirit, pride, arrogance, and even wrath in people and greatness and magnificence in inanimate objects. Other related languages, like Old Saxon, Old Frisian, and Old High German had meanings that included mind and heart. How we have changed!
 
Think now. Moody person. What’s your image? Is it a person of courage? Of high spirit? I’m guessing it isn’t. You are probably thinking mopey-head sulker. How did we get here? What transpired between medieval and modern times that altered not just the nature of civilization, but also the nature of individuals that adopted a very different sense for mood?
 
Is it the softness of life outside the boundaries of natural catastrophes, war, and violence? Or is it that even those events exacerbate moodiness in the modern mode? Is moodiness a part of humanity for generations to come? Is it the product of self-absorption, of a ME-culture?
 
Take stock. In what circumstances do you see moodiness? Does it, for example, occur during acts of selfless charity? Is it ever present during emergency aid? Oh! Maybe it does occur during those instances, but not in the modern sense. More likely you see it in the medieval sense of courage and high spirit (but not in the medieval sense of wrath). Are moody people likely to be those who pull people from burning cars? Do they stop to give aid and comfort to those in need? Are they prepared to face the harsh realities of life?
 
How did we get here? I mean where so many in our society have come “to this emotional state.” Something changed between the medieval past and the present. I can’t imagine what change will occur between the moody present and the future.

What is the most valuable mineral on Earth? Diamond? Ice (Yes, ice is a mineral)? Some native gold or gold ore? Hematite, an iron ore? Wolframite (tungsten)? Ores of titanium or platinum? Argentite (silver)? How about apatite? “What’s that?” you ask as you cup your hand behind your ear.
 
If you read “The Many Facets of Apatite” by John M. Hughes, apatite is incredibly important.* The set of minerals lumped together as “apatite” includes fluorapatite, chlorapatite, hydroxylapatite, and an apatite group.  All contain as part of their basic makeup phosphate molecules (PO4). With such variation, apatite can be colorless or just about any color (green, brown, blue, white, yellow, gray, red, pink, purple). A well-developed crystal of the mineral has hexagonal structure. Apatite minerals form in igneous or metamorphic rocks.
 
So, why is this stuff important? According to Hughes, “Apatite forms virtually all hard parts of the human body.” It’s also important in the anion exchange that allows fluoridation to protect our teeth from decay. It serves as an investigative tool to distinguish between “benign and malignant breast tumors,” serves as the “principal raw material in the fluorescent lighting industry,” and is useful in making lasers, storing radioactive materials, and stabilizing metals in environmental cleanup projects. Most importantly, “even the exponential growth of the human population to seven billion …has been allowed by the extraction of sufficient P [phosphorus] from apatite ore to provide fertilizer to feed the planet’s population.”
 
I like that food connection at the end. Stuff that most Earthlings are unfamiliar with actually makes it possible for them to live. Bliss in ignorance. A mineral most of us would not recognize sustains us. Important to the rise of modern civilization, apatite will play an increasing role as a burgeoning population requires a larger appetite for apatite. The mineral will enrich our arable soils with an important nutrient while most of humanity remains unaware they hunger for its increased use.  
 
And that’s the way it is for other aspects of our lives. Others around support our lives. Others have crystallized our opportunities, have helped to protect us, and have fertilized the seeds of our intellectual growth. So, apatite serves in a way as an analog of our nonphysical existence, but there is another parallel. As Hughes notes, “Despite its remarkable utility and its fundamental role in feeding the world’s population, the details of the apatite atomic arrangement are not fully understood.” How’s that a parallel? Think of how little we know about the interior “arrangement” of motivations that drive others to help us. Is it their appetite for selfless good in anonymity like apatite?
 
* DOI: 10.2138/am-2015-5193 Published on May 2015, First Published on May 12, 2015; American Mineralogist online at http://ammin.geoscienceworld.org/content/100/5-6/1033.abstract