I have blogged a few times on the phrase "Laughter is the best medicine". I have not talked about the phenomenon of laughter. When did human's first laugh? How does a baby, with no word's, know that laughter accompanies tickles and belly blowing. Laughter comes throughout the day with the wondering mind of an infant. This would logically be seen as a genetic programming in the human species. What chemical's follow laughter, I'm sure serotonin is one of the result's, but I will save this discussion for another blog.
For me, probably the most profound moment, in my understanding genetic's, a course in both undergraduate and medical school; a simple 15 second moment of a PBS documentary. Genetic's was a combination of Mendel and his fruit fly's and the recent "discovery" of the double helix of DNA. The double helix, heralded and Nobel awarded, was nothing more than an unknown alphabet of profoundly complex interrelationships. We have not progressed significantly over the past 40 year's, but this show was about primate's, a segment on chimpanzee's. Baby chimpanzee's, raised many generation's in zoo's, have a universal instinct to fear snakes; never seen by their mother's or grandmother's. Experience creates genetic programming. Genetic's are at least influenced by the nurture of generations of living experiences. The nature versus nurture question of science turn out to be gray, and not separate.
In medical school, my class was both intimate and exceptionally diverse. The first five years of the rebirth of naturopathy was comprised of adult's who left career's to become naturopathic doctor's. There were 6 nurses, another 5 with doctorate's, Of the initial 76 student's, only 5 were directly out of college. Two of the five abandoned ship the first week, finding the campus to be woefully lacking. Three nurses would drop out by the end of the first year. As we thinned in number, a California college went bankrupt, and NCNM and Bastyr College received around twenty student's who had one year of matching education. A few MD's would join mid education and take a two year program. In 1981, NCNM bought the first independent campus in the professions recent (25 year's) history. With this came a financial crisis, as well as a national sunsetting that would have removed the degree granting authority for out class, which most only found out about in December of our senior year. I was on the board of Trustee's, so I had a pretty long history of reviewing the colleges financial strains with the conversion of a grade school into a college campus, and the addition of a 12 room clinic. Almost failing, a creative combination of bandaids and loans, as well as State circumvention to allow the granting of doctoral degree's. A long story, but the moral of Friday Funny's and the topic of laughter was the first year independent studies of cluster's of student's.
Some studied Karilian photography, other's set up herb study groups, my current primary spent the year doing 9 professional dissections. With pick and shovel, I would break through a gravel parking lot and put in the first herb garden. Two dump loads of zoo doo, and one of soil, this would be an aid to many of the herbal classes in the curriculum. The board would begin to add do'er's and mover's of the Portland area, and with this NCNM survived the crisis of 82, 83, and when the 5 year balloon payment came due, another crisis for the board, navigated again in the proverbial nick of time.
Among the many group's, and shared lunches at local restaurant's, we would discuss genetic theory, with a leaning toward's genetic programming being instantaneous with experience. Not only the recognition of danger, but also the incorporation of art, music, movement, language, song, and the definitive difference between man and "beast" is the historical experience of these tribes of human's. Some hunting walruses, some shooting arrow's, some building castles, some waging war, some planting garden's and still other's sculpting stone.
What we have created to live our current live's include's making shelter, concentrating food resources, making tool's, learning how to co-exist with other two footer's, and occasionally how to harmonize or created harmonic music. I theme this comedy day, as the truth that there is nothing new on this earth, and that we all possess the programming to thrive at any endeavor. So sing, dance, make people laugh, help other's and help yourselves.
This day's pod cast features the return of the worlds first standup, "Grog".
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