Martin Henry Dawson : The Agape Naturalist

In WWI , Philip Bent VC and Henry Dawson MC displayed great physical courage under enemy fire when they put themselves in lethal danger to rally their men to close a dangerous break in the Allied lines.

This was 'agape' valour in that they did not risk their lives simply for the men in their battalion whom they knew well (kith and kin) but rather they selflessly risked their lives for the entire overall Allied cause.

In WWII , Dawson displayed agape physical courage and moral courage .

Agape physical courage in the sense of selflessly sacrificing his health (and hence his life) to help total strangers.

Agape moral courage in the sense that his opponents were no longer the Hun but rather his own subculture of Allied doctors and scientists who were strongly opposed to his 'wasting' his (agape) penicillin on young people judged to be useless militarily.

But what did Dawson do in the 1920s and 1930s, between these two wars ?

I argue he was an agape naturalist in those years .

Perhaps because he was educated during the years of Alexander MacKay's regime as Superintendent of Education for Nova Scotia , Dawson displayed a wide catholicism of interest in the microbe world compared to other medical scientists and doctors of his era.

They tended to see microbes only as as bad germs to be ruthlessly eliminated or harmless avirilulent germs to be totally ignored.

Superintendent MacKay had gotten all Nova Scotia's rural and small town school children to regularly catalogue the start and end of seasons as marked by the first bloomings or first arrivals etc  of the various flora and fauna.

MacKay wanted to show how the life cycle of all life was affected by variations in the non-living world - the timing of the various seasons affecting directly when the first mayflower of the season appeared for example.

Perhaps this unique 'phenological' effort mentally rubbed off on the young Dawson - leading him to see life on Earth as sharing in a basic global commensality together.

Because during the 1920s and 1930s , Dr Dawson didn't just selflessly help those chronically ill humans dismissed as basically useless and worthless by most other people. He also regarded them as worthy in and of themselves , as they were.

He showed the same evenhanded regard for all when it came to all the 'odd' , 'useless' , 'unworthy of study', 'avirulent' microbes he chose to study at great cost to his career.

For just as he valued the great plenitude of human types, so he felt the same about the great variety and plenitude of non -human life not matter how useless they appeared to be to the rest of humanity.

Simply put,  I am saying that plenticide and selfishness and narrow group-love are much the same, just as support of plenitude  and commensality and agape love are basically the same.

With the sixth mass extinction - happening now - we are practising plenticide on a huge scale - and once again only the agape love of the agape naturalist will halt this madness .....

Agape Love as "brave compassion"

It is unusually difficult to be compassionate when one is also under attack.

I mean not just when enemy bullets are winging your way but also when your entire society, including all your friends and family around you, is seemingly opposing your compassion.

Being brave and compassionate under fire , when your nation expects all soldiers to be so , certainly requires a lot of physical bravery (after all , most VC recipients died while earning it).

But it rarely requires any real moral courage.

By contrast , opposing your own society to display compassion doesn't always require physical bravery - but it certainly requires a great deal of moral courage.

Henry Dawson's wartime compassion meant both having the physical courage to accept that his actions would only hasten his death from Myasthenia Gravis and the moral courage to deal with hostility from his colleagues, employer and national government.

This is why I think it useful to contrast Dawson's WWII Agape valour with the Agape valour he and fellow Nova Scotian Philip Bent VC displayed in WWI...

Scandal : Writers Union of Canada rejects BLOCKHEAD

Great news !

The Writers' Union of Canada has changed its membership requirements and I am still not allowed in.

For a few weeks there , I feared I might be.


I am still not allowed in , but it is not because I am female or black or gay  --- writers' organizations have never been accused of arresting anyone for DWB (driving while black) .

No, it is because I have committed the ultimate taboo in the Union's eyes : I try to do good, as a writer, for others without expecting a reward in return.

I write without commercial intent.

WWCI : 'writing without commercial intent'

Oh , the horror of it all !

As a writer, I am , as Samuel Johnson famously noted , a blockhead : I do not write for money.

I do not copyright my writing (I release it fully into the Public Domain without any sort of reservations) and I give my works away as either e-books or as downloadable print books.

Tractarian ?

Regard my comparatively short works as Tracts or Pamphlets and thus not real books - call me a Tractarian or Pamphleteer - as Eva Tanguay sang , "I don't care, I don't care, I don't care !"

How could I even think about selling my work for self gain when my books (Tracts/Pamphlets) are all about Agape selflessness ?

Did Dr Martin Henry Dawson or Philip Bent VC give up their lives, just for the money ?

So why should I write about their selflessness, for my selfish gain ?

The Writers' Union decision was widely reported and commented upon, in Canada and abroad.

But not once so far have I come across a negative comment on the Union's continued need for their potential members to want to make money off their writing.

Negative comments aplenty for sure from many independent authors.

But only over the Union deciding it had to vet the self published for quality control while letting in those published with someone else's money without any need to meet quality standards.

No one seems to think that working hard and skillfully at your occupation without expecting financial gain - much like the medical professionals in 'Doctors Without Borders' - is a worthy human activity.

Indeed since very few people these days agree to head up a 'professional' charity without being very well paid for doing good , why should professional writers feel any different ?

Right then - as an amateur (someone who does something out of  love ) - it seems only appropriate that I call myself a proud amateur writer - and a 'blockhead writer' to boot ...