The healthiest, most terrified Generation in history

michael marshall

If you were a child between July 1945 and October 1963, you were literally part of the "BOOM" generation.

"BOOM" as in the large loud bang made when an above-ground atomic bomb test went off somewhere and yet more fallout drifted down in your morning glass of milk.

(And studies have now confirmed that the more of that life-giving, much-advertised, fresh milk you drank in the 1950s, the better your chances become to die of cancer today.)

But we thought then, not of a slow death by cancer when we were old, but of our entire world all expiring one sunny day, whenever the West and the East chose to go CODE RED.

Terrified we were, yes - but also very healthy - thanks to all those "antibiotics-before-bacterial-resistance".

O Manhattan ! , island home of  both the manhattan project and natural penicillin, you sure have a lot to answer for....

Who is the Commensalist ????

We must all learn to live together within Nature: all diners at her common table (commensal) or all learn to die together, frying up in the upcoming global climate meltdown."   (Blog Mission Statement.)

Well.... it isn't me --- I mean I am a commensalist, very much so ---- but I am not THE COMMENSALIST

I consider that honor belongs to Martin Henry Dawson.

Dawson was not the first or the most prominent basic scientist to dive deep into biological commensality, in the exact scientific sense of the word.

Nor was he the first by any means to demonstrate acts of ethical commensality - that happened a long, long time ago.

But I believe he was the first ever to act ethically upon what he had newly learned scientifically : in my sense of the terms, he exhibited Scientific Good Faith rather than Scientific Bad Faith .

That is his Popular Science (assembling a small ramshackle operation to grow penicillium slime so he could save the lives of unwanted terminal 4F patients with impure penicillin) ( a joint commensal operation of doctors, 4F patients and microbes) was created in the same spirit as what he had learned in his Public Science : seeing Nature's smallest, weakest, "stupidest" beings display the amazing ability to surmount difficulty after difficulty to go on living.

At a time when all his medical and scientific colleagues world wide had drunk deep of the Kool Aid of  Chemical Autarky and produced no penicillin, he worked instead with Nature's smallest, weakest beings to help Humanity's smallest, weakest beings when they needed it most ...

To add that he did all this when he himself was dying of a painful disease, seems almost trite.....

Who is the Commensalist ????

Michael Marshall

Well.... it isn't me --- I mean I am a commensalist, very much so ---- but I am not THE COMMENSALIST

I consider that honor belongs to Martin Henry Dawson.

Dawson was not the first or the most prominent basic scientist to dive deep into biological commensality, in the exact scientific sense of the word.

Nor was he the first by any means to demonstrate acts of ethical commensality - that happened a long, long time ago.

But I believe he was the first ever to act ethically upon what he had newly learned scientifically : in my sense of the terms, he exhibited Scientific Good Faith rather than Scientific Bad Faith .

That is his Popular Science (assembling a small ramshackle operation to grow penicillium slime so he could save the lives of unwanted terminal 4F patients with impure penicillin) ( a joint commensal operation of doctors, 4F patients and microbes) was created in the same spirit as what he had learned in his Public Science : seeing Nature's smallest, weakest, "stupidest" beings display the amazing ability to surmount difficulty after difficulty to go on living.

At a time when all his medical and scientific colleagues world wide had drunk deep of the Kool Aid of  Chemical Autarky and produced no penicillin, he worked instead with Nature's smallest, weakest beings to help Humanity's smallest, weakest beings when they needed it most ...

To add that he did all this when he himself was dying of a painful disease, seems almost trite.....

When Modernity said MAN above Nature, they meant it ...

"We must all learn to live together within Nature: all diners at her common table (commensal) or all learn to die together, frying up in the upcoming global climate meltdown."   (Blog Mission Statement.)

The MAN bit I mean.

Modernists did (and still do) see women,children ,natives, savages,primitives, animals, ethnic minorities, the 'defective' and pretty well everybody else but themselves as part of Nature, far, far, far below them.

If you plug in  'well-off' ,'powerful', 'but still angry' ,'old', 'white' ,'protestant', 'males' you pretty well have the sort of MAN that still ,still, thinks he is not part of Nature but flying in a sort of reverie/haze/daze miles above it.

In his mind.

And I mean that literally not figuratively - these guys sorta, half, admit that their bodies are part of sordid, damp, sticky, icky, Ole Nature.

But their minds, their minds !!!

Their pure Platonic , all-seeing, all-hearing, all-knowing, minds.

They are not part of part of Nature, but rather live in a parallel universe of mathematics, logic, rationality, utilitarianism .

Cool, calculating ,un-emotional, un-sentimental Man.

This is the sort of wet dream that all well-fed ,well-off, underworked & over-praised teenage boys have.

The sort of day-dreams you have when mom and dad wait on you hand and foot and you grow up thinking the whole world is your oyster.

Spoil your child and he will end up, inevitably, spoiling your world - your whole world, from the top of the atmosphere to the bottoms of the ocean.

If our teenage sons still have these wet dreams when they grow up, then the world knows them Modernists ( or Republicans or Soviets or Fascists or Progressives.)

However, rather like the Pharisee said long ago,  "I thank God that I am not a Modernist ---- I am a Commensalist..."

When Modernity said MAN above Nature, they meant it ...

Michael Marshall

The MAN bit I mean.

Modernists did (and still do) see women,children ,natives, savages,primitives, animals, ethnic minorities, the 'defective' and pretty well everybody else but themselves as part of Nature, far, far, far below them.

If you plug in  'well-off' ,'powerful', 'but still angry' ,'old', 'white' ,'protestant', 'males' you pretty well have the sort of MAN that still ,still, thinks he is not part of Nature but flying in a sort of reverie/haze/daze miles above it.

In his mind.

And I mean that literally not figuratively - these guys sorta, half, admit that their bodies are part of sordid, damp, sticky, icky, Ole Nature.

But their minds, their minds !!!

Their pure Platonic , all-seeing, all-hearing, all-knowing, minds.

They are not part of part of Nature, but rather live in a parallel universe of mathematics, logic, rationality, utilitarianism .

Cool, calculating ,un-emotional, un-sentimental Man.

This is the sort of wet dream that all well-fed ,well-off, underworked & over-praised teenage boys have.

The sort of day-dreams you have when mom and dad wait on you hand and foot and you grow up thinking the whole world is your oyster.

Spoil your child and he will end up, inevitably, spoiling your world - your whole world, from the top of the atmosphere to the bottoms of the ocean.

If our teenage sons still have these wet dreams when they grow up, then the world knows them Modernists ( or Republicans or Soviets or Fascists or Progressives.)

However, rather like the Pharisee said long ago,  "I thank God that I am not a Modernist ---- I am a Commensalist..."