This entry closes an arc based on a news item, In The Courts, in Science magazine about a gifted researcher who did an unwise thing; he molested a young girl. Now he'll spend 14 years in prison, most likely in solitary because he'll be at risk from the other inmates. He's seventy years old and a pioneer in gene-therapy work.
Part 1 shared a bit more about the news items and my memory of Dr. Edwin Teller, someone whom I once aspired to. Part 2 discussed my chagrin at learning that one of my idols wasn't so idyllic and Part 3 shared my learnings from my teachers as I applied them to my teachers.
Here I wonder how we mistake identities -- the who's and the what's -- and if there's something we can do about that.
There are times we mistake the identities of people, transmuting what they do into who they are or vice versa. Earlier in my studies I spent time on the high mesa with a Paiute shaman woman. After a few weeks she came to me and told me she had decided I was to carry the PeaceShield, one of seven Shields in her belief system.Me? How can I? The Peace Shield? After my life?
"Only someone who's had the life you've had knows what it is to carry Peace as a shield," and in a few words she allowed me to transmute, to (hopefully) more closely align and synchronize the who and the what that I am.
So now a pioneer in gene-therapy research is also a molester of young girls. I'm truly sorry that he will not be able to continue his research and glad that a molester of young girls is no longer able to perpetuate that aspect of his craft.
We need to know we might be guilty of mistaking identities with our heroes and probably others. In my case and (I'm thinking) in the case of others, mistaking our own identities with who we think we are and what we want to be.
Humans are amazingly complex creatures and I'd like to think we are mature enough to accept others and ourselves with our flaws even if these flaws are such that we must isolate ourselves from society.
There are qualities we admire or aspire to. We shouldn't allow ourselves to mistake those who contain those qualities with the idealized individuals we create -- yes, we create -- because we need idealized identities -- hence shallow, not complex. Two-dimensional if dimensional at all -- to contain them.
Real people are rich and complex creatures, even when we don't like the richness and complexity they bring into our lives. We dishonor ourselves, deny ourselves our own complexity and richness, mistake identities, when we do not allow each other such.
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I'll be speaking at the Society for New Communications Research Annual Awards Gala Summit on 1-2 Nov 07 in Boston. Come on by and say hello.
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