In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Posts tagged as John Donne
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Meditation MMVII. Metaphysics and Cancer in the Age of Molecular Medicine
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Perchance the cell for whom these caspases toll may be so ill that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself much better than I am, as those who are about me and see my state may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. Homeostasis is diffuse, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she creates a stem cell, that action concerns me; for that stem cell is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and engrafted into the body whereof I am a member. And when she engulfs an apoptotic cell, that action concerns me: all cells are one genetic code and is one volume; when one cell dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated.
Life employs many signaling pathways; some by senescence, some by dysregulation, some by cytotoxic agents, some by immunogenic response; but life’s hand is in every pathway and binds up all our scattered apoptotic fragments again in that library where every antigen and epitope shall lie open to one another. As therefore the ligand that initiates apoptosis may call upon both the stem cell and its daughter cells to come, so this signal calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the threshold by this state.
Disruption within the microenvironment (in which antigens and membrane proteins, cytokines and reactive oxygen species all mingle) may affect which cells should apoptose first; and it was determined that those that divided first should be called earliest.
If we understand aright the dignity of this molecule that signals mitochondrial uncoupling, we would be glad to make it ours by dividing early, to make it ours as well as his whose indeed it is. Apoptosis tolls for him that thinks it doth; and though it signals again, yet from the instant of cytochrome-c release he remains united to life. Who casts not up his receptors to growth factors when they stimulate hyperplasia? but who shuts off his receptors from cytokines when infection breaks out? Who bends not his kinases to any molecular switch which upon any occasion signals? but who can remove it from calcium ions which transmit a piece of himself out of this world?
No cell is an island, entire of itself; every cell is a piece of the organ, a part of the main. If a mutant clonogen be washed away by phagocytes, this body is the less, as well as if a normal gland were, as well as if an organelle of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any cell’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in life; and therefore never send to know for whom apoptosis tolls; it tolls for thee.
Neither can we call this a begging or a borrowing of misery, as though we are not miserable enough ourselves but must fetch in more from the next cell, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for injury is a treasure, and scarce any cell hath enough of it. No cell hath stressors enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made more fit for life by that affliction.
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Declaration of A Connected Society 0.1
Two score and one years ago, computer engineers brought forth a new electronic world conceived in connection, dedicated to the proposition that all people are social. Now we are engaged in social wars on the internet, testing whether the global community, or any community, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to renew the social bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and our gods entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of humanity requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to a sustainable, vibrant society.
We the people of the internet, in order to form more perfect communities, wish to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common good, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and promote this credo to help enhance society online and in real life.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their online presence with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are connectedness, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, communities are instituted among people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the community, That whenever any community becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to engage and to self-expression, and to institute new communities, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. prudence, indeed, will dictate that communities long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism or in the face of unresponsive communities, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such institutions, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
We have come to dedicate a portion of life online, as a starting point for those who engage online that that electronic world might live and thrive. But, we can not dedicate this ground alone, for no one is an island, entire of itself, either online or in real life. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Connectedness through community is the wing wherewith we fly to grace. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work thus far so nobly advanced.
It is therefore for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from both the real and electronic worlds we take increased devotion to that this world, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that communities of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
