This is what I have learned from a life of 83 years:
1.
Sometimes luck saves our lives. I once
slipped on a wet elevated subway station as the train pulled in. I was dodging the spokes of an umbrella carried
by a very short woman. I once was
running as fast as I could, head down chased by a classmate in a park. At the last second I saw my head inches from
a tree trunk, swerved, and avoided dashing my brains out.
2.
Education
lifted me out of poverty. If I had not excelled in K-12 I would not have
gone to NYU on a scholarship or obtained fellowships at Indiana University to
get a PhD.
3.
We can
repair many of the errors we make.
My first marriage failed because I had avoided dating until my senior
year in college and my courtship with my first wife, Helen, was by
correspondence from IU. Helen was still
at NYU finishing her senior year. After a divorce, I waited six months before
dating again and when I met Nedra we waited a year before getting married.
Fifty six years later, I enjoy her love and personality.
4.
We can do
many things with our lives. I have
enjoyed teaching genetics, doing my own research,
running a laboratory with graduate students, publishing my scholarly findings, shifting
to teaching biology to non science majors, shifting to human genetics, shifting
to history of science, and writing full time. In each transition, I made the choice and
used the opportune time to make it.
Academic life is not a straitjacket and there is considerable flexibility
for those who have the talents and interests to make them.
5.
A lot of
fundamental beliefs are questionable.
I was brought up without a religion.
This allowed me to look at all religions without fear or prejudice. I prefer
living in a natural world and not a supernatural one. I learned to be tolerant because
a lot of people have a supernatural view of existence. I distrust ideology in all its forms, left ot
right, religious or atheistic. I distrust
patriotism that is self serving (like politicians who wrap themselves with the American
flag) or when used to discredit criticism of domestic or international policy.
Pragmatism, not ideology, governs my response to injustices.
6.
Incremental
change is more likely than revolutionary change. Scientific and social revolutions are relatively
rare. The US has experienced only one
overthrow of its government as it shifted from Colonial status to an independent
federation of states within a Constitutional nation. We have had only one Civil War. The rights of African Americans required
decades of an abolitionist movement and the Civil War to end it but it required
another century to give civil rights to African Americans. Incremental changes allowed African Americans
to vote, to eat and shop where whites did and
to marry a person who is not of the same race. These changes were done by the courts, by
federal laws, and by social pressure of a younger generation. So too
in science. Most changes involve new add
ons, new connections, new tools and technology, and new theories that improve or
extend the insights of a broad finding.
7.
It is
difficult to live life without contradictions. I consider myself patriotic, but I acknowledge
that our treatment of Native Americans was unjust, sometimes genocidal, and
filled with insincerity and aggression. I depend on industry and its wealth of
goods and services and appreciate it for those gifts. But I know many are motivated by greed and
are indifferent or hostile to the rights of labor to organize and bargain for
wages, job safety, and pensions. Many industries
are resentful of efforts to expose the damage it can do to the environment or
human health. I consider myself in favor of capitalism as an economic system
but many human needs are better served through socialism where government regulation,
resources, and participation are needed, especially for health and retirement. I consider myself an atheist, a Humanist in
my social concerns, and yet I go to a Unitarian Universalist church because I
enjoy its lack of a formal creed, its strong commitment to social justice, and
its tolerance for a spectrum of views.
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