All Men Are Created Equal

The history of civilization is brief. A scientific analysis of artifacts from a cave in South Africa reveals that man were carved bone tools, using pigments, made beads and even used poison 44,000 years ago. And a study of the nearly 2,000 figures of the more than 17,000 year old paintings of the Lascaux Caves in southern France, reveals symbolic dot clusters within figurative images that correlate with the heavenly constellations of Taurus, the Pleiades and the grouping known as the "Summer Triangle". But, if we limit our search to historic times apart from prehistoric times when "records of the past begin to be kept for the benefit of future generations" then we need not look further than 5,000 years ago when city-states arose in the Middle East along the Tigris and Euphrates, in the Indus Valley, and in the river valleys of China.

I say civilization is brief, for, anatomically, modern humans first appeared in the fossil record in Africa about 195,000 years ago.

We have come a long way, slowly. And, it is all the more remarkable to know that America has only been around for less than 300 years.

America is unique in the annals of human history, for it stands for the proposition that "All men are created equal".  This revolutionary idea certainly sounded good to the Founding Fathers, and to Thomas Jefferson, who included the phrase in the Declaration of American Independence.

American, and the ideal of equality, has been built generation by generation. We are a new breed, rooted in all races of the world, colored in all the colors of all the races, with all their varying creeds and beliefs - a sort of ethnic anarchy. I am reminded of this fact every time I take a taxi, driven by someone with an unfamiliar name, or visit a restaurant that offers up dishes from every continent, or walk down the main street America and see and hear someone who is unlike me. We are different, and from our differences we draw our strength. And yet, somehow in time, these differences become less and less, until we realize that we are more alike than we are different.

This fact, that, though different we are the same, comes to me every time I visit a school and watch the children of the many different races learning what it means to be American. It is the same process that countless American generations have gone thorough. And, so far, it has stood us in good stead.

All men, and women, are created equal. America is still working on this ideal.

Do No Harm

This is not the slogan popularized by Google, "Do no evil." That was an exuberant exhortation by an up and coming Google engineer, Paul Buchheit, head of the budding Gmail project, sometime around the millenium, when Google was young and innocent.

Rather, it is a shortened version of the peroration in the Hippocratic Oath:

I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel...

More to the point, Book One of the Epidemics, section 2, paragraph 4, states that the physician who treats a disease must:

... be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future- must mediate these things, and have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm.

Hippocrates, and the doctors of the Hippocratic School of Medicine, were from the fourth and fifth centuries B.C.. They lived during the Golden Age of Greece, when the Persian threat had been defeated, and Athens, under Pericles, turned its efforts to fostering knowledge and culture. Instead of war, Athens' efforts turned to the construction of the buildings of the Acropolis, including the Parthenon.

Hippocrates and his followers believed that disease had natural causes and was not a result of the disfavor of the gods. In the seven books of the Epidemics, the followers of Hippocrates reported on outbreak of different diseases in Greece. Their reports were always factual and objective. For instance Book One begins with a description of the weather that lead to an outbreak of disease in "Thasus, early in autumn, [where] the winter suddenly set in rainy before the usual time, with much northerly and southerly winds." Thassos.gr.

Google's version of "Do no harm" was issued in an attempt to wear the white hat, to be less commercial and serve the public good. In its prospectus, before its public offering in 2004, Google explained:

Don’t be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways — by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains...

Since then, Google has grown into a behemoth that rivals Standard Oil in its heyday, the early 20th century. A hundred years later, Google will have to determine if it can combine profit with social responsibility. Check out its corporate philosophy, and one sees that the do no evil manifesto is still proudly stated. See, About Google, Company, What we believe.

Paul Buchheit's Gmail has come a long way, and Blogger, which is an off-shoot of Gmail, has become an open platform for men and women, old and young to write, plead, pontificate, and yes, even bloviate.

Do no evil, do no harm. Either way, it is a good way to live.