Fermi's Paradox ("Where are they?") meets Dawson's Paradox ("Why are they still here?")

Scientists who smallmindedly pursue only one scientific question their whole careers can still end up being regarded as 'great' scientists, if the question they ask (and the answer they provide) is big enough to matter deeply to all of us.

Dr Martin Henry Dawson basically spent his personal research career asking, if life truly was "the survival of the fittest", why it was that Life's most unfit lifeforms - the small, simple,primitive microbes - were also, far and away, its oldest and most successful survivors ?

Because in 1940, it was crystal clear to almost every human on Earth that we were Life's most successful species and that the small weak and primitive microbes were our very antithesis.

But Dawson tried to burst this bubble of hubris and group think , by daring to ask , "well then why are these manifestly unfit beings still around ---- and been around since Life began ?"

Dawson's Paradox was a counterpart to Fermi's Paradox

The famous atomic scientist Erico Fermi once famously asked, if the possibility of many lifeforms in the vast universe is so great, then "Where were they?"

Dawson similarly asked , if the microbes are so manifestly unfit,  then "Why are they still here?"

Mary Douglas : modernity VERSUS darwinism

One of the hallmarks of the Era of Modernity (1870s-1960s) was a sudden worldwide urge among the 'progressive' nations to begin to closely regulate and restrict immigration , a move I argue was directly contrary to the co-current move to embrace Darwin's theory of Natural Evolution as the best engine of Progress.

Now there is no solid proof that having an university education, or having lots of money or coming from prominent families actually makes one more logical or rational when fiercely defending a privileged existence , so we needn't be too surprised at this contradiction in actions among society's powerful.

In Evolutionary theory , a successful sub species (success being defined in evolutionary terms by the number of offspring who live to reproduce) will tend to flow outward , to completely fill all examples of its biological niche.

To a consistent Darwinist (do they even exist ?) reproductive success is the only form of success.

Mankind, according to progressive Darwinists , can't really stop this biological success and really shouldn't - not if Mankind , as an overall species, is to survive and flourish.

So - in evolutionary terms - what could be more natural than the more fecund Chinese and Indians flowing forth to occupy new biological niches in places like downtown New York and London that were once fully occupied by the now reproductively-failing Anglo Saxon race ?

A worldwide trend to increased emigration had began in the 1880s as ocean travel became safer, faster and cheaper ---- soon outbound Indians and Chinese were heading for the mother-cities of the Anglo-American empire.

But Modern Progressives, Mary Douglas fans before the poor lady was even born , said no to this unexpected consequence of Anglo-American modernization.

Just as Douglas said we humans regard dirt as useful matter that is simply 'out of place' or 'doesn't know its place' , so too with these would-be migrant Indians and Chinese.

Chinese and Indian migrants as useful human matter 'out of place'

Two very nice useful races - manufacturing things for us at dead-cheap wages in their native India and China - but once 'out of place', they were simply dirty Pakis and Chinks.

Now the older theory that Darwin's dynamic Evolution was supposed to replace was that of God's Great Chain of Being.

This theory held that there was a permanently static and unique place for every species and sub species in the great scheme of things -- and that all would remain well for everyone , as long as everyone 'knew their place' and kept to it.

That is to say, that the poor and powerless must accept their lowly position in life as God-given and not try any levelling-up social revolutions.

God and Nature had ordained that the poor were poor and the rich rich -----suck it up.

Just as , according The Great Chain of Being, God had also ordained that the Chinese should remain in China and the Indians in India.

(Returning momentarily to Darwin, his theory was simultaneously used to explain why the English were allowed to leave England to rule in places like India and China.)

If the harsh new immigration restrictions from the 1890s to the 1920s were simply the Great Chain of Being re-born, I contend that they were thus far less Social Darwinian than they have seemed to historians.

That is, that they weren't simply designed to keep out those judged 'unfit' because of mental , moral and physical disabilities.

They were really intent on keeping out the biologically successful fecund Indian and Chinese races along with the fecund poor from Eastern and Southern Europe, and thus they were more designed to keep out the biologically super-fit than the biologically unfit.

Claiming that these 'races' were morally unfit as reason to reject them was simply a Social Darwinist ploy to ignore their obvious Darwinian reproductive super-fitness.

All this as part of a series of defensive mechanisms put in place by Protestant middle class elites of Northern European origins desperate to maintain their high social and economic status.

Elites deeply uncomfortable that they were even then were failing to reproduce themselves in their own lands , let alone 'go forth and multiply' in others ...

Gotham's hunky comicbook super-heroes written and drawn by 97 lb Jewish weaklings and a 4F Negro with a bad heart

Forgotten black comic book pioneer Matt Baker, Harlem artist 1921-1959

In 1940 Gotham City (and in the rest of America and the world) , if we can judge by the popularity of certain new super-heroes, moral strength seemed to be equated with physical strength.

Perfect morals requiring a perfect body.

Unfits need not apply to be super-heroes or indeed any kind of hero - moral or physical.

Ironic then if we look deep behind the colourful covers of Gotham's Golden Age of Comics because there we see them mostly written and drawn by weedy Jewish kids from poverty row , along with at least black artist with a bad heart, Matt Baker.


Clarence Matthew Baker was born down South in December 1921 and suffered a bad childhood attack from "the polio of the poor" (Rheumatic Fever) which permanently weakened his heart valves.

Probably told not to play strenuous sports , he learned to love to draw and after high school came to New York to learn art skills at the famous Cooper Union and freelance as an illustrator.

His forte was extremely gorgeous women (and hunky good looking men !) and he soon found enough work to keep him fed and housed.

No comic book artist got well paid or published credits in those days, so he doesn't seem to have suffered any worse in his art career than his white friends and competitors.

(Baker lived at 103 E 116th Street in Harlem.)

Like athlete and coach Aaron Leroy Alston, Baker's story is another case of what might have been, if only his heart condition could have been prevented or cured so he could have lived longer.

Tragically he died, aged only 37, in 1959 --  well before comic book artists found world fame.

His return to partial fame is based on the fact he was the pencil artist for a pioneering graphic novel, "IT RHYMES WITH LUST".

This in turn led to a fuller examination of his total work and to ask - were there other pioneering black comic book artists out there being overlooked ?

But let me state as gently as possible that whether as white protestant or Jew or black, all these comic book artists of the 1940s only got work if they played ball within the social conventions of the day.

That meant no weedy Jew or weak-hearted black (or weedy weak hearted white) was going to be seen in these comic books defeating criminals and Nazis.

So even when non-Aryan hunks took on blond beast Aryan hunks - the Aryans lost the resulting physical battle but won the real (intellectual) battle : their claim that only the physically fit were morally fit.

By way of contrast, in 1940 Dr (Martin) Henry Dawson tried to save weak-hearted Alston's life and would have tried to save Baker's as well (if he had gotten sick in his early twenties instead of his late thirties.)

Dawson saw the 'unfit' as worthy of a full life and worthy of being allowed to do great moral deeds.

He saw potential moral super-heroes everywhere - in the physically fit and in the physically challenged ....

Unfitting-in : Penicillin-for-All overcomes the Allied-Axis groupthink

The academic cum scientific consensus supporting eugenics was once as widespread as the academic cum scientific consensus that human activity is causing climate change is today.

I point this out , despite the fact that I do personally believe human activity is altering the climate and I do not believe that the concepts fit and unfit can ever be anything other than temporary and relative labels in a particular circumstance.

Just as the concepts of "inevitably left wing universities" or "inevitably right wing universities" are equally fleeting when set against the breath of time and were highly dependent on particular circumstances to be accurate.

Once , in many cities the only polling precincts that FDR ever lost were the university precincts - whereas today the only precincts won by losing Democrats in many cities are the university precincts.

Politics in the UK before our current era of post-modernism revealed much the same thing - the weakest seats for Labor used to be the university ridings.

Widespread groupthink (consensus) , particularly one that finds favour among the powerful , can always benefit from a ton of criticism by misfits, the unfit, the non-conformist, the naysayer and doubter, the gadfly, iconoclast and the deviant.

And if that consensus has a core of merit it will survive --- and in an improved form.

But when the current academic cum scientific consensus was that all such critics are ipso facto 'useless mouths' and 'life unworthy of life', as in the case of attempts to criticize eugenic modernity, what we have here sir is global groupthink on bad acid and in spades.

Under such circumstances , genuine differences of opinion become genetic-ized and biological-ized such that anyone who does not agree that only heterosexual married families with kids are 'normal' is probably themself a genetic deviant homosexual and shouldn't be allowed to reproduce -- let alone argue their case.

Similarly, capitalists and racists removed any potential criticism from the poor and minorities in advance by regarding them all as biologically unfit and hence unworthy of life let alone the right to criticize.

Eugenic supporters described many - quite openly - as biologically 'unfit'.

But eugenic supporters failed to admit that they also regarded these biologically 'unfit' as 'unfitting-in' with white Anglo Saxon Protestant middle class values - of not being team players in the great groupthink....

Our monoculture of "BIG" is killing us and our only home - Earth

As was the case (on both sides) during WWII, we live in a (human) monoculture that worships the BIG and dismisses the small , despite the fact that Nature itself hardly reflects this scenario, in fact, much the reverse.

We do so because our powerful and elderly (the two conditions are often related) still support the values of their teenage to young adult formative years under the Late and not so Great era of Modernity.

Modernity's proponents felt it was inevitable that the "fit" ( ie the BIG and the ponderous) would inevitably have all the innings ,all the time, against the small and the nimble.

Today more and more of us younger folk are leaning into the values of post-Modernity, which shows an increased receptiveness to diversity , variety , the local and the small.

But will death take out the Modernists in our midst ( those deniers of any limits on the abilities of the BIG to laugh in the face of Nature's worst), before they take us all out ?

It is a grim race against time  --- which is why I think it is worth re-examining the last time Modernity and the BIG really got sand kicked in their face : WWII ....