Mr. Irwin's post has, once again, that neat "real world" quality that I find
so refreshing. This is particularly so after having gone Tuesday to the
World Trade Center's Borders bookstore to pick up the new volumes on the
Korean War I had ordered from there. I suddenly found myself almost a part
of a major historic statistic. Having been involved in *current* Mideast
history for a few decades and having been on the receiving end of both
Israeli and Arab terrorism, I can think of no better example of how
throughout time,  a few men made history events noteworthy by their
willingness to voluntarily end their personal histories (lives) in a violent
way in order to involuntarily end the lives of thousands of others. Nowhere
in my readings of the Koran nor the Talmud did I ever get a hint that
Abraham's children would be, in one case, sacrificing themselves in order to
kill the others; or, in the other case, sacrificing machine products of
their ingenuity to do the same to their opposites. I recall when my
identical twin brother and I, as small boys, would argue and fight before
others in order to each gain the sympathy of those others. I always felt
that in the end we reached everyone's limit, becoming more entertaining, at
best, rather than persuasive, or impressive when we got violent. So the
Israelis and Palestinians have degenerated to being heartlessly a *means* to
the ends of others. Yet, the UN conference on *racism* ends as a faillure
because by getting tangled in the Zionism issue, it proved that it could not
distinguish issues of nation from issues of race-- in Webster's Unabridged
Dictionary, "race" and "nation" are synonyms! What I'm trying to say is that
maybe human choice is no less "animalistic" than that of animals; perhaps
that is why in neurobiologic research we use animal models in order to make
discoveries applicable to humans. And yet, unlike any other species, we
leave behind fantastic traces of our existance as writings. Thus, as a
zoologist, I do not find study of human behavioral history so novel. Despite
our incredible skill at the technology of making tools, we human primates
still use them for the same reasons lower species use their fangs-- one of
these reasons is to establish a dominance higherarchy-- just as viscious as
any baboon troop! Nevertheless, we leave behind most inspiring *written
words*, that, despite their irrelevance to our behavior, provide future
generations the means to avoid having to painfully relearn the lessons that
we, their decendants so painfully and destructively learned. It is that
which makes our history so important-- not what we do (that's plain zoology)
but what what we do makes us realize-- even though we seem unable to act
accordingly. So, if we relate the actions of the past to the actions of our
students, as Mr. Irwin would have us do, all we get is a lot of baboon
sociobiology. But, while on all fours a baboon is just a damned nasty
monkey, when he liberates his forelimbs from a postural function, he does
things that light-up his pre-frontal cortex and show his contemplative
abilities. Multiply that by 1000x and you get man when he stops ambultating
with his hindlimbs and geedily grasping with his fore limbs, sits down and
*thinks*. Of all that our species has ever done, only the products of its
thoughts make it unique and interesting. Would Mr. Irwin agree?

Daniel E. Teodoru

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