. . .
K “As the philosopher and geneticist John Prine observes, ‘You are what you are, and you ain’t what you ain’t’ in this life.”
. . .
K “Someday someone will discover that each of us is born with either a dominant ‘I’ gene or a dominant ‘We’ gene.”
J “The ‘Tom’ gene versus the ‘Huck’ gene.”
K “The ‘Fear’ gene versus the ‘Hope’ gene.”
J “The ‘Take’ gene versus the ‘Give’ gene.”
K “The ‘Reagan’ gene versus the ‘La Follette’ gene.”
J “The ‘Do not let them immanentize the Eschaton’ gene versus the ‘Do let them immanentize the Eschaton’ gene.”
. . .
K “As the play plays out, epigenetics play a part. We need to ‘mind our p’s and q’s’ and also mine our ‘a’s’ and ‘g’s’ and ‘c’s’ and ‘t’s’ for insight.”
J “Nurture can temper nature. A person with access to more resources is able, if so inclined, to give things away, material and spiritual. A little more truck allows us to be a little more Huck.”
K “And yet Nature is providing all of us with dwindling resources.”
J “So, if Tom is a huckster once in a while, is Huck a tomster once in a while? . . . No. Maybe not.”
. . .
K “So many of the events today are calculated and calibrated to induce fear and trigger the Tom and the Take and the Reagan gene in all of us.”
J “Research is likely to be advanced if we elect politicians who believe in science and perhaps more importantly in the scientific method. They should give a Crawfoord for any advance in understanding.”
. . .
[See the e-commentary at “Immanentize The Eschaton. Say What? (August 22, 2016)”, “Humanity’s Motto: To Enslave And To Colonize (January 27, 2014)” and “A Taxing Explanation (August 22, 2011)” and the discussion of Martin Luther King’s famous Riverside Speech fifty years ago on April 4, 1967 at “Bush Escalates World War III (January 15, 2007)”.]
Bumper stickers of the week:
I, Tom, fear; We, Huck, hope.
I, Tom, fear and take; We, Huck, hope and give.
I, Tom, fear, take, vote for Reagan and do not let them immanentize the Eschaton; We, Huck, hope, give, vote for La Follette and do let them immanentize the Eschaton.
What if they made a “WePhone”?
“I Me Mine” Beatles (1970)
“America is, and always has been, undecided about whether it will be the United States of Tom or the United States of Huck. The United States of Tom looks at misery and says: Hey, I didn’t do it. It looks at inequity and says: All my life I busted my butt to get where I am, so don’t come crying to me. Tom likes kings, codified nobility, unquestioned privilege. Huck likes people, fair play, spreading the truck around. Whereas Tom knows, Huck wonders. Whereas Huck hopes, Tom presumes. Whereas Huck cares, Tom denies. These two parts of the American Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the nation, and come to think of it, these two parts of the World Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the world, and the hope of the nation and of the world is to embrace the Huck part and send the Tom part back up the river, where it belongs.” George Saunders, “The United States of Huck” The Braindead Megaphone (2007).
“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on ‘I am not too sure’.” H.L. Mencken
e-commentary 