HOW DO WE DEFINE A PERSON?

 I consider myself a person because I am self-aware.  There are probably not more than a dozen people in the US and perhaps a hundred in Sweden with my name, Elof Axel Carlson.  I can be identified by my anatomy which includes photographs of me at different stages of my life cycle. My 83 year old portrait is not too different from my 55 year old portrait but it is considerably different from my 30 year old unwrinkled appearance. My fingerprints, of course, have not changed since I was a youth. A very complete autopsy at my death would reveal a considerable amount of information about my various organs and tissues. I am also a person defined by the artifacts of my life.  I have a personality that is known to my family, students, and colleagues over the years. Readers know me through my books, articles, and this Blog.  For some of you it is as if I am conversing with you. I could add those items to a variety of social and historical facts to make a CV or curriculum vitae, which I used to use when I was seeking a job. It was used by deans and committees to create an overall impression of who I was as a person.  For the most part my written record would not give many clues to others about how I look or what my personality is like.

At a genetic level, I have a unique genome that no other person alive or dead has.  Our genomes can give some information about us as persons.  If there is an abnormal chromosome number, we could predict that a person with trisomy-21 has Down syndrome, trisomy-13 has Patau syndrome, trisomy-18 has Edwards syndrome, and for the sex chromosomes, individuals who are XXY have Klinefelter syndrome and those who have an unaccompanied X are said to have Turner syndrome.  Today people can have their genomes sequenced, partially or completely, depending on how much they are willing to pay. They can learn about their risks for a variety of disorders and get some insights into their ethnic or racial ancestry.  Their DNA might also reveal a number of physical traits.  But reading my entire genome will not tell you what books I wrote, what field I worked in, or the type of information you could obtain by reading my CV. At a physiological level, you could learn about my blood types, my HLA tissue antigens, and a variety of health conditions and past illnesses I have had. When my physicians do laboratory tests, they are interested in my risk factors for diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, and other diseases. If I were consumed by a fire and my jawbones were left relatively undamaged, my current dentist would be able to identify me from my extractions, implants, crowns, and fillings.

I have no conscious awareness of who I was before I was about three years old. I would be unaware of my name as a fetus, unaware of existing as a fertilized egg.  I think of personhood as a process of becoming rather than an event that is assigned by society as fertilization in an oviduct, implantation into a womb, birth that is recorded on a birth certificate, or concluded with a death certificate. Like Walt Whitman, I contain multitudes of people through their contributions to civilization – thousands of words coined over centuries, hundreds of ideas and values that I was taught and absorbed into my personality, and,  of course, some 25,000 genes that were transmitted from Swedish farmers, pious Lutherans, polytheistic Vikings, Orthodox Jews in Ukraine, survivors of pogroms, who some 1900 years ago were scattered by a Roman conquest of Jerusalem. 

COMPARING THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGES WITH THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE

     I enjoyed reading Margolit Fox’s new book, The Riddle of the Labyrinth which discusses the decipherment of Linear B in the early 1950s.  The book discusses the major players in the process.  Arthur Evans found the tablets with the unknown script at Knossos in Crete. He tried for 40 years but did not succeed.  Alice Kober figured out what type of language group it was by studying (before computers) the associations and endings of syllables or words.  Michael Ventris finally realized it was an ancient Greek language using a totally different alphabet system.  Each of the contributors was flawed and yet each had some major insight that turned out to be correct. The book raises questions about their personalities and the influence social circumstances had on their careers and personal lives. As I read the book, I thought of the relation to coding, translating languages, and linguistics which does a comparative study of languages including their evolution.  At the same time I thought how this field differs from genetics with its genetic code, role in translating nucleotide sequences into amino acid sequences in proteins, and the evolution of life from a molecular level to an organism and population level. 

     Languages are clearly created by people but they are not intelligently designed by a creator who invented French, Korean, Swahili, or Greek.  Those languages evolved over the years.  When we read 19^th century literature, we find it wordy.  When we read Shakespeare, we need a footnoted copy to figure out the meaning of words and idioms of the past.  Reading Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is easier in translation than in middle English.  Reading Beowulf is virtually impossible without old English dictionaries or footnotes.  In a similar way genes have evolved by mutations over eons.  Just as there is a social selection of which words  survive and which ones get lost, there is a natural selection for mutational expression which leads to extinction (no progeny) or survival (the adaptive conditions won out). We are not troubled that modern languages did not exist some 3000 years ago but have evolved. Yet those who believe in an intelligent designer for the origin of species cannot imagine how humans can be derived from ape-like ancestors or how mammals could be derived from reptiles or reptiles from amphibians, or amphibians from fish working backwards to the origin of early life forms as bacteria-like or virus-like.  

       One major difference is the time scale of evolution.  For languages it is about 4000 years at most for written languages.  They have the advantage that symbols or words written in stone have survived.  In a similar way there are fossils that go back millions or 100s of millions of years.  They are more difficult to interpret than the languages used since humans began writing their transactions and thoughts. But no one would argue that Jesus spoke English or that the Biblical texts handed down were written in English for Moses to read.   Nor should one readily doubt that the life on earth differs in kind and complexity as we examine more ancient rocks.  The human bones in our graveyards are not found in the rock strata that give us dinosaurs.  Whale bones are not found in the ancient seas that teemed with crinoids.  

OUR EVOLVING VIEWS OF RELIGION

When I was in fifth grade in Brooklyn, I recall reading books in the school library on mythology. I was engrossed by the ancient Egyptian and Greek deities.  At the time I had no religion because both of my parents had abandoned their religious beliefs before I was born. This gave me the freedom to think about religion without feelings of guilt.  One thought I had was almost astounding to me.  No one in 1942 believed that Zeus, Hercules, Athena, Aeolus, Medusa, and dozens of other Greek gods were actual gods.  We referred to them as myths of the past.  But at their time (and for many centuries) virtually all of those living in the Greek civilization from Homer to the rise of the Roman empire believed in those deities, worshipped them, prayed to them, and made sacrifices to them.  If gods come and go over the millennia, why do we believe any religion is the one true religion and all others are mistaken? Later, in high school, I took a somewhat different view of religion as an attempt to make sense of the universe, especially our own lives at a time when science was non-existent or knew very little about the universe and how it works and its past history.  

About 1960 I took an interest in Unitarians because it was a creedless religion and Nedra and i sought a place where both of us would be comfortable. Some of the Unitarian ministers over the years have considered themselves atheists or agnostics. Like me, they thought religion provided something valuable but it wasn’t the supernatural.  What attracted me to them was their belief that humans form and need communities.  A religion that does not offer a creed, but instead offers humans a chance to think about questions that are important—like why there is existence, how life began, what meaning do we create for the one life we have on earth, and why we have so many diverse answers to these questions, I found immensely appealing.  Despite efforts of religious leaders to make religion permanently fixed in its creed, rituals, and status among hundreds of other contending religions, religions undergo change. There are hundreds of Christian denominations ranging from liberal to rigid (“fundamentalist”) in their interpretations.  A similar spectrum (but with fewer denominations) exist for Jews. There are many forms of Buddhism. There are different Muslim traditions; the most familiar to those who are not Muslims are the Shiite and Sunni branches in the Middle East. 

Everything changes.  I expect many religions will be demoted to the status of myths and new ones will arise to meet the needs of cultures that may not arise for hundreds of years.  They will have different views of life and society we cannot predict.  If humans can extend life so that most people could live reasonably healthy lives for 100 to 120 years, I expect those with 50 years of retirement will have different needs from those who are considered old today in their 70s.  If we do colonize the moon or Mars in the next two or three centuries, I would not be surprised that their religious views will show the same tendency to diversity as those that have evolved on earth. 

WHAT CONGRESS SHOULD BE DISCUSSING

Instead of abortion, birth control, the war on religion,  socialist take overs of the US, class warfare, investigations into the President's birth, mandatory prison sentences, pulling out of support for Public Radio, and the war on drugs, this is what Congress should be discussing:

·     1)   The conflict of interest between representing the needs of people of the district and representing the interests of those who give generously to finance campaigns for election or reelection.

·      2)  Ways to prevent big dollar tax avoiders pay their share of taxes instead of hiding them in foreign banks, secret accounts, and loopholes placed by Congressional representatives at the suggestion of lobbyists.

·     3)   Ways to prevent self-serving gerrymandered districts that victimize whichever party is not in power in that State. There are ways to make them balanced and not based on race or economic status.

·       4) Ways to prevent states from making it difficult, if not impossible for US citizens to vote in elections.

·     5)   Shifting some of the money given to defense to rebuilding and repairing the nation’s infrastructure of ports, railways, airports, canals, dams, electric grid, roads, and bridges.

·    6)    Giving the same tax breaks, subsidies,  and start up benefits to the non-fossil fuel, non-polluting energy efforts using wind, sun, tides, and geothermal energy.

·    7)    Making sure that every person in the US has access to health care equivalent to that given to our Congressional representatives and military members.

·   8)    Federal regulation of those industries that pollute our rivers and lakes, deplete our resources, endanger our environments, or diminish our national parks.

·       9) Federal regulation of those industries whose products may endanger the health of those users of products that may contain carcinogens, mutagens, toxins, and teratogens.

·      10)  Finding ways to employ those laid off from work so they can support a family.

·       11) What should be an adult minimum wage?  Why is this exempt from cost of living annual changes?

·     12)   Why does our military budget greatly exceed all other nations?  Is it inflated beyond reasonable costs of manufacture and testing?

·      13)  Why are health costs in the US far greater than any other country? Are hospital costs and medical and pharmaceutical costs inflated beyond reasonable costs of production and care?

·       14) What should be done to address the long term prospects that people are living longer after retirement. Should benefits be graduated based on age of retirement? Should Social Security taxes be extended past income caps that are highly beneficial to those who least need social security?

115) What measures should Congress initiate to protect coastal cities at or near sea level from being inundated in the coming decades by rising sea levels (it does not matter whether the cause was human energy use or natural cycles). 

USING DRONES IN WAR IS AS DANGEROUS AS THROWING A BOOMERANG WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED

Nedra and I saw a documentary on the use of drones in warfare. It was a very unsettling experience.  The photographs and films of dead children and the sight of them in hospitals with their healing wounds and lost limbs makes it difficult to accept the term “collateral damage” as anything less than a rationalization that some critics would condemn as  evil.  If it is terrorism to us when a suicide bomber blows up a bus or hotel, it is an act of terrorism to civilians in Pakistan who are sacrificed as “collateral damage” in an effort to assassinate a person on a kill list.  It is also disturbing for those who believe in the importance of law.  To be placed there by an anonymous informant (often the way espionage picks up information) who cannot be challenged in a court of law makes it hard to distinguish from what used to be called “kangaroo court” justice.  The use of kill lists also invites a similar tit for tat response to these killings. Do those who do this not think of the capacity of vengeance among the survivors and neighbors of the “collateral” dead?   What about the psychological effects on those who kill at a distance and do not see their victims, but learn of the collateral dead through TV or newspaper accounts (if they are publicized in their neighborhoods)?  I recall reading Howard Zinn describing his work as a bombardier in WWII.  As the war was coming to an end he was sent on two last minute missions.  One was in southern France.  The other was in Czechoslovakia.  In both cases he dropped the bombs on the targets. When he returned he was told that these were successful military missions with little collateral damage.  A few years later he was in Europe and decided to visit those towns.  He learned to his horror that he killed some 2000 civilians in France as well as German soldiers who had fled Hitler’s losing army and were hiding in what they thought was a safe area until the war ended.  He also learned that some 800 civilians were killed in Czechoslovakia.  He also learned, from a later search of war records that the mission to southern France was added on to bolster the record of a commanding officer who hoped for a promotion.  I have no way of verifying Zinn’s account, but I do not doubt its likelihood because war is rarely clean and ethics are set aside or interpreted  to satisfy rationalizations that argue that these means are essential for survival, honor, or justice.  What worried me most about the documentary on the use of drones is that they are cheaper to make than fighter planes and many countries are now making them.  The technology to target them is also not so sophisticated that other countries would lack the skills to make them. I hate to think what it would be like for those drones to be in the hands of dozens of countries or even home grown terrorist groups who do not like Jews, African Americans, liberals, illegal immigrants, union organizers, Muslims, gays, Tea party extremists, fanatical fundamentalists, Wall Street tycoons, and billionaires perceived as robber barons.  Both the extreme left and the extreme right are vulnerable to those who make their own kill lists.  I hope we once again bring back “a rule of law” and not this murderous philosophy of by-passing the court protections written into our constitution. 

WATCHING OUR CENTURY REPEAT ITS PAST

BLOG --  WATCHING OUR CENTURY REPEAT ITS PAST

I read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit.  It is a biography of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft supplemented with the lives of what were later called “the muckrakers,” and what we would today call investigative journalists.  They included Samuel McClure, Ray Davis, Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, and William Allen White.  Goodwin writes a compelling narrative and brings to life the Gilded Age which led to the progressive movement as a response to the excesses of the wealthy few and the neglected many.

How bad were those times?  Consider child labor.  It was not thought harmful to send children to fill the coal carts in mine shafts.  No one thought it their concern if the elderly were unable to work because of the infirmities of their bodies or minds.  No one of their employers thought there should be a retirement income for them.  It was their family’s responsibility.  No one of their employers thought there should be a minimum wage.  No one of their employers thought they should be regulated for safe conditions of working (if there was an accident it was the worker’s fault).  If big companies made secret deals with railroads for cheaper rates to force small business competitors out of business, that was just good laissez faire capitalism at work.  If insider trading made the rich richer and the smaller investor broke, that was just good laissez faire capitalism at its best.  Regulate it?  Horrors, that was socialism and big government restraining trade.  If legislation was needed to provide rights of way for the railroads, campaign contributions or outright bribes determined where those rails would be placed and who would benefit.  Bags of money bought jobs – chiefs of police, judges, Senators. 

I loved reading the way the muckrakers did their research for McClure’s Magazine.  When I finished the book I looked up that magazine on the web.  Most of the issues are on-line and free to read. I entered the 1890s and early 20^th century. From Goodwin’s book I reversed my judgments and had more respect for Taft as a President and person than I did for Teddy Roosevelt. Of today’s recent Presidents, Bush the younger is most like Roosevelt in his aggressive actions dragging the US into elective wars.  Obama is most like Taft in trying to negotiate, obtaining as many views as possible, and trying to persuade others without using the spotlight of publicity to harass those differing from him. 

It is depressing to see history repeat itself and I do not doubt that a look back at the Civil War, the Mexican-American War, and the Revolutionary War, would show the same diversity of personalities attracted to government service.  Some seek the fame of being a fighter and conqueror. Some seek to be the peace-makers (but rarely find lasting fame).  Some are corrupt and seek power, money, or prestige.  We try to make government independent of those who govern, and seek laws rather than opinions of those with power and money.  All too often, without regulation or the watchful eyes of muckrakers, our institutions are betrayed by the greedy, the self-deceived, and those who enjoy manipulating others. 

KILLING IDEAS BY KILLING PEOPLE HAS A LONG SAD HISTORY

Killing for non violent behavior or for one’s beliefs occurs in almost all eras of history. The Old Testament is filled with episodes of killings based on idol worship, disobedience, dishonoring a parent, belonging to a particular ethnic group (such as the Amalekites), and unspecified offenses against God (see Genesis 38 and the story of Onan and his brothers). The New Testament tells the story of Jesus killed for his beliefs.  The last two millennia are litanies of killings based on religion.  The creed settled by the Catholic Church could not be easily breeched without punishment to heretics. Sometimes they lost their jobs.  Sometimes they were imprisoned.  At its worst, the heretics were put to death.  The Reformation led to the death of Michael Servetus (not by Catholics but by Calvin who was outraged by Servetus’s heresies). It also led to the death of Giordano Bruno in Rome, also burned at the stake for refusing to reject his own beliefs and writings.  Servetus and Bruno are unusual in their beliefs because they were priests of the Catholic Church who both rejected the Trinity. Servetus is a founder of Unitarianism with his book “On the Errors of the Trinity.”  Bruno also rejected the virgin birth of Jesus and the transubstantiation of the blood and body of Christ during the ritual of the Eucharist.

What is also unusual is that both Servetus and Bruno were scientists.  Servetus independently discovered the circulation of the blood (at least the role of the heart and lungs in “purifying” the air we breathe in and out). Servetus taught map-making, medicine, and astronomy as well as courses in theology.  Bruno taught mathematics, mnemonic methods of memory, and astronomy as well as philosophy as he went through seven or eight universities in his teaching career.  None of Servetus’s scientific work was at issue in his condemnation by both Protestant and Catholic agents seeking his arrest. It was luck that he was tried by Calvin’s court in Geneva rather than brought back to Italy for trial by the Church.  Bruno’s science was tied to his religious beliefs and those scientific beliefs were only one of seven charges of heresy against him.  Bruno accepted the Copernican model of a solar system in which the earth was the third planet orbiting the sun. He correctly identified the sun as a star. He then inferred that all stars had planets and that life must exist on most or all of them.  He also believed the universe was infinite and thus life, the material world, and God are all names of one ultimate reality or God.  That heresy the Church identified as pantheism. 

Galileo also endorsed Copernicus’s model and offered evidence from his use of the telescope he made which revealed moons around Jupiter (he calculated their orbits and predicted their positions on any given day provided to him), craters and mountain ranges on the moon, Saturn’s rings (he called them “ears” because of the way they were tilted), the phases of Venus, and the sunspots on the sun which allowed him to calculate the sun’s rotation and proving the sun was not a perfect globe.  Galileo was charged with disobedience because his published works ridiculed the prevailing Ptolemaic model of the earth as the center of the universe.  Luther and Calvin were in full agreement with the Catholic Church that the heliocentric model should be condemned because it implied the biblical account of the universe was false. Galileo lucked out and avoided a death sentence.  He chose to confess his error, denounce his publications, and spend the rest of his life in house arrest.

It took a long time for the crime of heresy to be seen as an error of belief and not as a capital crime.  In many parts of the world heresy can still be used to justify a death sentence.   Even where it may not be a government policy, individuals can convince themselves that heretics should be silenced by death rather than by the superior arguments they should try to muster in defense of their own beliefs.