Sunday, May 5, 2013

Henry Dawson never changed his mind about the Overdogs, but the World did ...

The idea that Nature favours the ubermenschs and overdogs,  that 'Might is Right' , were pretty well universally accepted, albeit sometimes resignedly, in 1939.

Henry Dawson, drawing much different conclusions from his decade long study of the constantly varying battles of Human-Bacteria Commensality, certainly didn't agree.

He gave at least equal odds to all the untermenschs and the underdogs of our natural slash human world.

His ideas were pretty outre with his fellow scientists and his fellow human beings in 1929 ......or even in 1939.

And remained so until about 1943, when the repetitious failure to have 'The War' go anywhere near the direction the various overdogs would have it go, caused many people around the globe to look at the maxim 'Might is Right' in a more jaundiced light.

Dawson never changed his mind - but  eventually the World did, thanks to WWII's unexpected off-coursedness.

The War's end found the World feeling much less Modern and feeling much more post all that sort of stuff - a position that has only grown stronger in the world, in the seventy or so years since Dawson's premature death in 1945.

I can only hope the irony amuses Dawson, wherever he is right now ....

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