As 'literature', there isn't much in common between Anne Morrow Lindbergh's airy if wooly personal essay style 1940 "Wave of the Future" and Michael Prell's 2013 dense cut-and-paste thesis "Underdogma".
But in terms of actual intent, there is surprisingly little difference between the pair.
Showing posts with label underdog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label underdog. Show all posts
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Jocks become society presidents, Swots become society secretaries
The topdog Jock/Football Captain/Rowing Blue/BMOC - they've always been around, even in Martin Henry Dawson's time in university a hundred years ago.
Similarly, the underdog Swot/Square/Boffin/Nerd/Geek .
They were certain to be members of the chess club back then as now (as Dawson certainly was).
They actually liked philosophy class and the classically dead languages (Dawson again).
They dutifully and cheerfully always passed their essays in on time, never skipped class, and when not in the library ( researching, not flirting) were in the high school band or orchestra, no doubt playing like the oboe or something equally, well, nerdy.
The socially adept jocks became natural up front politicians, running first for high school president and then American President.
Meanwhile the more studious, honest and charisma-challenged types were 'urged' to fill the tiring, detail-filled backroom jobs because someone has to step into the breech and it might as well be you - again.
It is hard today to imagine the pocket-protecting chemist ever being seen as the jock and the topdog, but between the wars this was so - chemistry was just so cool, so powerful.
A Swot's revenge indeed when the ultimate underdogs, basement penicillium slime and working class SBEs, turned tables on the topdog jock chemists near the end of WWII...
Similarly, the underdog Swot/Square/Boffin/Nerd/Geek .
They were certain to be members of the chess club back then as now (as Dawson certainly was).
They actually liked philosophy class and the classically dead languages (Dawson again).
They dutifully and cheerfully always passed their essays in on time, never skipped class, and when not in the library ( researching, not flirting) were in the high school band or orchestra, no doubt playing like the oboe or something equally, well, nerdy.
The socially adept jocks became natural up front politicians, running first for high school president and then American President.
Meanwhile the more studious, honest and charisma-challenged types were 'urged' to fill the tiring, detail-filled backroom jobs because someone has to step into the breech and it might as well be you - again.
It is hard today to imagine the pocket-protecting chemist ever being seen as the jock and the topdog, but between the wars this was so - chemistry was just so cool, so powerful.
A Swot's revenge indeed when the ultimate underdogs, basement penicillium slime and working class SBEs, turned tables on the topdog jock chemists near the end of WWII...
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 ....
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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