Bill McKibben: COVID-19 Is Presenting Us With an Opportunity to Reconceptualize Our Social Lives

It's awkward to discuss silver linings while so many people are suffering and when things might get much worse before they become better. That said, COVID-19 appears to be presenting us with an opportunity to reboot how we should be interacting with each other. Bill McKibben discusses this opportunity at Yale365:

[As Society Reopens], we might actually find ourselves embracing gregariousness. In truth, we began social distancing a long time ago. First came the move to the suburbs: In the postwar years, America spent the bulk of its prosperity on the task of building bigger houses farther apart from each other. This caused environmental woes — all those big houses to heat and cool and migrate between — but it also meant that we simply ran into each other less. The average size of a new house has doubled since 1970, even as the number of people living in it has steadily shrunk — the average density of most recent housing developments is about two people per acre, down from about 10 persons per acre for cities, suburbs, and towns in 1920. Between 1974 and 1994 the fraction of Americans who said they frequently visited with their neighbors fell from almost a third to barely a fifth. That number has kept dropping, now less because of suburbanization than because of screens: If you look at teenagers, for instance, a wild behavioral shift is noticeable beginning about 2012 when the numbers of Americans with a smartphone passed the 50 percent mark. The number of young people who got together with their friends in person every day dropped by 40 percent from 2010 to 2015, a curve that seems to be accelerating according to Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University.

Photo by Erich Vieth

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You Are a Pulsating Universe

Human animals are amazing on many levels. Have you recently contemplated the beauty of your hand? Have you marveled at the fact that you can open it, grab something tightly, sense temperature, gently touch your lover's hair? And if you burn it or bruise it, it will usually heal all by itself. All of those things are so natural that it's easy to forget how miraculous hands are. You would never be able to create a device that replicates all of these extraordinary functions.

But let's dig a bit deeper by reading Neil Shubin's new book,Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA (2020).  The hand is made of cells, and there are parts to each of those cells, and the genetic code for you can be found in each of those cells.  But how does that information contained in your DNA become you?  How is it possible for your genetic blueprint to build and maintain your body?  Shubin's book describes this process beautifully.  I offer the following excerpt.  If this kind of writing inspires you like it does me, I urge you to obtain a copy of Some Assembly Required and find a quiet place to allow your DNA powered body to read your biography. This book is about inspiring science and scientists, but it is, at bottom, about who you are.

New microscopes that allow us to see DNA molecules themselves also let us see what happens as genes turn on and off. For a gene to become active, a molecular game of Twister needs to happen. Inactive regions of the genome are tightly coiled upon themselves, bundled around other small molecules to fit inside the nucleus. These regions are closed off and so are relatively inert. Before a region of the genome can become active, it needs to uncoil and open itself up to make a protein. These are only the first steps in a finely choreographed dance that turns genes on and off. For a gene to activate, its switch needs to contact other molecules and attach to an area adjacent to the gene itself. . . .

So here are the full steps of the dance that goes on when genes turn on: the genome opens, revealing the gene and its control region, parts attach, and a protein is made. This happens in every cell, with every protein. A six-foot-long string of DNA is coiled until it is smaller than the size of the head of a pin. Conjure the image of it opening and closing in microseconds, writhing and turning to activate thousands of genes every second. From the moment of conception and throughout our adult lives, our genes are continually being switched on and off. We begin as a single cell. Over time, cells multiply, while batteries of genes are activated to control their behavior to form the tissues and organs of our bodies.

As I write this book, and as you read it, genes are switching on in all four trillion of our cells. DNA contains many supercomputers’ worth of computing power. With these instructions, a relatively small parts list of twenty thousand genes can build and maintain the complex bodies of worms, flies, and people using control regions spread across the genome. Changes to this incredibly complex and dynamic machine underlie the evolution of every creature on Earth. Always coiling, uncoiling, and folding, our DNA is like an acrobatic maestro, a conductor of development and evolution.

Shubin, Neil. Some Assembly Required (p. 73).

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Goosebumps: Another Vestigial Feature from our Former Furry Pre-Human Selves

Why do humans have goosebumps? The question was answered by an article titled, "Why Do People Get Goosebumps" at Discovery Magazine. Short answer: Our goosebumps are a vestigial feature. Some humans have vestigial tails and some have vestigial gills. All humans are filled with evidence from our fish ancestors as well as our reptilian ancestors.  Neil Shubin explored many of these features in his book, Your Inner Fish (also made into a documentary).

The goosebumps pop up to lift the fur that no longer covers us. Why would our furry ancestors survive better with fur that lifted up? "Hair-raising goosebumps are also a response to threats, which would have made our ancestors appear larger and scarier. Just imagine a cat or dog when the fur is about to fly. Their puffed up hair is an indication that they’re ticked off and are in fight-or-flight mode."

That’s why you might get chills from pretty innocuous stuff, like going to a concert. A screaming crowd alone is enough trigger our goosebump reaction.

“Your emotional brain … is like a tiny, scared rabbit in the forest. It expects death around every corner. So a crowd screaming will sound just like that — something that we should be scared of,” Colver said.

And often, it’s the music itself that gives us the chills. According to Colver, certain instruments, tempos and pitches are known to cause these skin orgasms. An unexpected or particularly resonant sound can initiate our fight-or-flight response.

“Loud noises, or piercing noises (like a sustained high note played on a violin) get interpreted as really threatening,” he said.

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Darrin Patrick’s Final Sermon: Life is Precious and Fleeting

A friend of mine, Darrin Patrick, was a pastor of a St. Louis Church called "The Journey." He died suddenly two days ago. The Post-Dispatch reports this: [N]o official cause of death has been released. The gunshot wound appeared to be self-inflicted; foul play is not suspected." I don't know anything further than this cryptic account.

I hadn't seen Darrin for several years, but I could have tried harder to connect with him again. That's one of the crazy things that life does, right? You don't make enough effort and then, suddenly, it's too late. This is not the first time this has happened to me. Perhaps this was Darrin's last sermon: life is truly precious and fleeting and you need to seize the day and make real efforts to maintain your connections to your people. He would likely add that it is critically important to be creative in those connections, because it was a significant part of his mission to support artists and writers.

When we last visited, Darrin spoke highly of his wife Amie and their kids, but I hadn't met them. Yesterday, Amie posted a sad sweet announcement on his FB page, and I just posted a short comment, which I will paste below. Mine was the 918th comment to her announcement. For another glimpse at what an unusual and innovative person Darrin was, check out this post at Dangerous Intersection.  In fact, I'm going to spoil it: I would bet you don't know of any other pastor who invited an atheist to discuss skepticism in front of hundreds of parishioners as part of a church service.

Amie, you and I have never met, but I am one of the many people touched by Darrin. By no means am I the sort of person that would be expected to fit into Darrin's flock, but I suspect that Darrin was surrounded by such people. He challenged me and I challenged him back and that's how he wanted it. That's because he was a real person, filled with intelligence, good-heartedness and energy but also nuance. I'm so sorry for your loss. Please know that I will miss him too. He changed me for the better and that's the bottom line.

Continue ReadingDarrin Patrick’s Final Sermon: Life is Precious and Fleeting