VICARIOUS AND ACTUAL EXPERIENCES IN OUR LIVES

A good portion of our knowledge we know from our own experience of having lived and been aware of what happened to us or to the places we have been.  But much of our knowledge comes from what we have read, heard about, or were taught.  Of the world’s countries I have lived in two (US and Canada), and visited 22 (Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Bahamas, Cuba, England, Scotland, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Russia, Georgia, Union of South Africa, Kenya, India, Malaysia, Singapore, China, Japan, Vietnam, Seychelles).  I have flown over the North Pole, twice circumnavigated the world by teaching on Semester at Sea, and driven coast to coast eight times.  We have driven through most of the states or I have given lectures at most of the states (with the notable exception of Hawaii). I have lived in the US in Massachusetts, Mississippi, California, Indiana, New York, New Jersey, Utah, and Minnesota.

I have experienced living in slums, in middle class comfort, but never in luxuriant wealth.  I have taught at Indiana University, Queen’s University (Ontario, Canada), UCLA, San Diego State University, Tougaloo College, the University of Utah, the University of Minnesota, and Stony Brook University.  I have worked with the Danforth Foundation and the Lilly Endowment for shorter stints of lecturing and consulting universities in Colorado, Missouri, and Illinois.  I have been a teacher (genetics, biology, human genetics, reproductive biology), researcher (6 students received their PhDs with me), and writer (13 published books).  I was an administrator twice (Associate Dean of Graduate Division at UCLA; Master of the Honors College at SBU).  I was the Premedical Advisor at UCLA and served on the Medical Admissions Committee at SBU. 

I have been married twice (four years with Helen; 56 years and looking forward to more with Nedra).  I have had six children (one with Helen, five with Nedra, including a daughter who lived only 4 days).  I have 12 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren.  I am an atheist (in the theological sense of having no god concept), Unitarian (in the sense of enjoying a creedless religion), and Humanist (in the sense of helping others), seeking justice and fairness, desiring the benefits of human diversity (we can learn a lot from each other) and a tolerance of views with which I disagree. I believe that virtue is its own reward. I entertained being an artist, I chose science instead.  I was an elevator operator for three summers in my youth and learned a lot about the importance of labor unions, the hard life of low paid unskilled labor, and the dignity of work.  I grew up with a schizophrenic mother and learned that she could be loving and caring despite her paranoid moments. I grew up with two cultures. My father shared memories of his Swedish boyhood, his lapsed Lutheran faith, and his work in the merchant marine before he became an elevator operator.  I learned to appreciate his loyalty and his joy in listening to music and reading widely.  My mother grew up in New Jersey with immigrant Orthodox Jewish parents from what is now Ukraine and she played her violin at home and liked to paint in the style we call primitive art.  Although both would be judged failures by slipping from middle class to poverty, both were successful in stressing for their children the importance and pleasures of culture and education. I have had the good fortune of enjoying most of my life and learned early to turn discontent into acts of creativity and learning.

BLOG -- A FEW THINGS I FOUND WORTHWHILE LEARNING OVER A LONG LIFE.

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.