living, thinking and writing
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| PRACTICE living, thinking and writing |
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Friday, March 18, 2005 What a difference a 0.1% makes… It feels such refreshing to know that any two human beings share 99.9% of identical genetic code. All the differences including eye color, height, body hair, possibilities of getting cancer are only decided by the rest 0.1% of the human genome, which is called ‘Single nucleotide polymorphisms’(SNP))(Wall Street Journal, Feb.25 2005, B1). I’m not writing about human genetics in scientific sense, which is a topic I had been quite intrigued since Bin works on the department of human genetics of UCLA. I’m just so amazed by how such similar human beings look and live so differently in the world. Los Angeles is a melting pot, and it is the most diversified neighborhood I’ve ever stayed. At Westside, we see Jewish men in their small black hat everywhere on Sunday; actually one block to our home there is a synagogue, where some low-profile ceremonies are going on every day however, Westside is very much dominated by an Arabian, especially Iranian business. Persian restaurant, Persian bakery and bridal store, Persian bookstore, Persian carpet, gallery, you name it. Then, perpendicularity to Westwood avenue, about 100 yard away, there is a huge Mormon temple with the tallest monument of West Los Angeles, which is my lighthouse when I’m immersed in the traffic ocean. And of course there is a Christian church not faraway, with charity picnics all year long. I often speculated that the world will be much more peaceful if Gaza can be west Los Angeles. But why it only happens in places like Los Angeles? Well, from the perspective of human gene, I guess all these people of different religions and ideologies that can co-exist peacefully in this land because they share some identical genome. Whybrow, a UCLA professor thinks the same way; in his book ‘American mania’, he suggests that immigrants share the genesis of risk taking that traced back to Homo Sapiens. Dopamine system plays a central role in curiosity and novelty seeking, behaviors that feature prominently in the typical migrant profile. Hence, ‘it is the relative activity of these information superhighways-the genetically programmed balance among these systems-that helps determine the differences in behavior that exist among individuals”(P.63). Such genetically programmed information processor determines mindset of risk-taking, reward-seeking, curiosity and upward mobility for migrants, and consequently it’s in the blood of the offspring of migrants. I guess war or conflicts often start from fear, fear of people from other side because we don’t know them. But the migrants, who inherit this brave gene (literally!) in their blood, reach out for strangers and find they are similar at 99.9% degree, so they decide to make peace and live on the same block. For a more prevailing phenomenon, I often wonder if class is a product of fate, or say, genetics, the 0.l% in our discussion. Every night, we went out walking, we will see a black cat meowing in front of our neighbor’s door, where it often finds pet food left by our kind neighborhood Denise. He (I assume it is a ‘he’, since it’s black) is just an ordinary black cat, sleeping on top of car hoods at winter’s night when engines are just turned off and you can’t tell him apart from several other black hats lurking abound the neighborhood. Meanwhile, inside Denise’s apartment, there is this 16-year-old Missy, a Himalayan pussy with long fluffy shining hair and emerald eyes. Not to worry about the food or cold winter, Missy enjoys the stroking and fondling as well as the full attention of Denise. If there is a cat version of TV show ‘upstairs, downstairs’, it should be called ‘outside the door, inside the door’, I guess. Discovery channel has a special about beauty and human beings, packed with statistics of high correlation between good-looks and successful careers. At the end, the narrator says something like born with good-looks is like winning a lottery in genetic pool; it is unfair, so deal with it. If you think about those18th or 19th English or French novels, beauty is the only pass for poor girl/boy to enter the higher class (except Jane Eyre, but Bronte made her a moderate rich heir and made Rochester blind and limp at the end to balance their status). Americans don’t like the word ‘class’, as Fussell points out in his book ‘Class’, since every individual is suppose to be born equal and has equal right in this freeland. But if you see the recent cinema sensation ‘Sideway’, you could not help but wonder if all Paul Giomany’ fuss about wine is his struggle to keep his losing sense of class. According to Paul Fussell, the denial of the existence of class is mainly prevailing among people with middle or prole economic status. Class is a very favorite topic for people in upper class and class is there form the very beginning of your life: what part of England that your ancestors are from, the city where you are born, your height, how thin is your chin, how high is your forehead and your nose. Class is in your blood. However, if you are not born high, there are ways you can appear less low. The book written in early 1990s is still very enlightening when read today. And now we know these fundamental difference deciding your life is only the 0.1% of variation in your genes. Unfair? Deal with it. I should stop here, before I really get lost and talk like a racist. On the flip side, recognizing the 0.1% of the nature selection and enjoying who we are, maybe you will have a good attitude, expect better, settle for less and embrace happy life. posted by lmeimei @1:46 PM| permanent link| | |
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