Seeking the Soul.

And so we come to see that the Founding Fathers while not, technically, Chinese, nonetheless shared many of the most becoming hallmarks of advanced thought with the Morning Suns of China’s Cultural Revolution, viz paranoia, obsession, hysteria, grandiosity, frenzy, and like that.

What would account for this trans-temporal, trans-cultural congruence of mental and emotional different able-ness?  We turn to our betters for guidance on matters of this heft and the Better immediately at hand is Professor Gordon S. Wood, he of The Idea of America.  In one of the passages excerpted previously Professor Wood advances the hypothesis of “a revolutionary syndrome.”  It is observed that this is a tentative advance by Professor Wood.  He “leaves it in the air,” he “throws it out there,” I say he does not engage in further elucidation on this hypothesis.  It is further this observer’s observation that the word “syndrome” itself is often attached by Betters to airy things thrown out there without further elucidation because they don’t know what the hell they are.  Thus Human Immunodeficiency Virus was originally called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome before epidemiologists knew better. A syndrome is a set of observed things that are grouped together in the observer’s mind.  Professor Wood observes revolutions and tweety birds and groups them together and calls them a syndrome.  Unless the Founding Fathers were Chinese I do not have a better idea.

In this imperfect observer’s imperfect education on the soul syndrome it has been observed that human behavior and misbehavior do not know the bounds of time and culture.  They are bounded only by our species able-ness and we are able.  Every species of kindness that a Chinese has exhibited an American has too, and every species of cruelty.  All advanced thought, all…whatever. This sameness is fundamental and it is a grievous annoyance to this observer. If annoyance were a crime it would be a felony--capital annoyance—to find similar species of fowl in the heads of Thomas Jefferson and Song Yaowu.  I so find.  

It doesn’t end there.  Chinese and Americans, and Swedes and Muslims and Zulus, are different--the whole zoo is filled with specimens of our species who are manifestly different, viz: those people live here (point to map); these others live there. Those are different places. They say “ni hao,” these others say “what’s up.” Those who say “what’s up” bleach their teeth.  Those who say “hej” sing Dancing Queen. These are fundamental also—I hold these truths to be self-evident. 

It seems with behavior and misbehavior and thought and mis-thought it’s a matter of proportion. You take the same ingredients and mix them in this way and you get a soufflé. You mix them that way and you get an American…omelette. So Chinese and Americans (and etc.) have “turned out” differently.  One has a people’s republic, the other has people and a republic but--you can’t fool me--those are different. I don’t know what Zulus have.  I prefer what Americans have but then I’m American, like Thomas Jefferson.