[b]Robert M. Sapolsky
Suddenly, I get this giddy desire to shock these guys a little. I continue, These baboons really are our relatives. In fact, this baboon is my cousin. And with that I lean over and give Daniel a loud messy kiss on his big ol’ nose. I get more of a response than I bargained for. The Masai freak and suddenly, they are waving their spears real close to my face, like they mean it. One is yelling, He is not your cousin, he is not your cousin! A baboon cannot even cook ugali! Ugali is the ubiquitous and repulsive maize meal that everyone eats here. I almost respond that I don’t really know how to cook the stuff either, but decide to show some prudence at last. He is not your cousin![/b]
Another smartass imperialist?
Fossey, Fossey, you cranky difficult strong-arming self-destructive misanthrope, mediocre scientist, deceiver of earnest college students, probable cause of more deaths of the gorillas than if you had never set foot in Rwanda, Fossey, you pain-in-the-ass saint, I do not believe in prayers or souls, but I will pray for your soul, I will remember you for all of my days, in gratitude for that moment by the graves when all I felt was the pure, cleansing sadness of returning home and finding nothing but ghosts.
Sounds like a personal problem.
You don’t have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate.
Unless of course there is lots and lots of money involved.
Being healthy consists of having the same disease as everyone else.
Let’s pin down a disease we all have.
The purpose of science in understanding who we are as humans is not to rob us of our sense of mystery, not to cure us of our sense of mystery.
For example: Why is there something instead of nothing?
Why should people in one part of the globe have developed collectivist cultures, while others went individualist? The United States is the individualism poster child for at least two reasons. First there’s immigration. Currently, 12 percent of Americans are immigrants, another 12 percent are children of immigrants, and everyone else except for the 0.9 percent pure Native Americans descend from people who emigrated within the last five hundred years.
And then all that stuff Marx suggested.