An old philosopher that I know has some interesting views of life.  We discuss them at length, so I asked if I could plagiarize his thoughts here on VofA.  “Yes”, he said, “so long as you write them under my name.”

OK by me, so here goes:

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The people that migrated to America in the early years were by and large the adventurers, disenfranchised and the footloose of Europe, and to a lesser extent, other parts of the world.  The contented, enfranchised and satisfied stayed home where they felt comfortable with the existing order of things.

Could it be that the gene pools of the two groups came to be skewed subtlety to favor either the restless gypsy nature or the contented pillar of society nature?  The traits of those that left and those that stayed behind define the subtle but very real difference between the American mentality and the European mentality in particular.

Those that came to the new world were restless to move on to new opportunity.  And that didn’t end when they hit the beaches of North America.  They were driven to see what was over the next hill and make their fortunes further west.

Many were refugees, of course, but they were often outsiders in their places of origin because they were restless by nature,  And this tendency to hit the road was handed down to their progeny.  Horatio Alger’s admonition to “Go west, young man, go west” fell on receptive ears. 

This genetic inheritance may be seen in our most popular, and distinctly American, form of music.  Country Western music and its evolving derivatives are very much about being down and out of luck and hitting the road to leave the troubles behind and start anew.

And unlike much of Europe (until recently) and the rest of the world, Americans have always expected to come and go wherever and whenever they please without restriction or official sanctions such as identification papers to travel.  This is considered a birthright in America, and it is as American as the flag, mother and apple pie.  And it derives directly from our nature as dictated by our gene pool that is slightly skewed to produce restless behavior.

A case can be made for the argument that the United States would look very different today if the differentiated gene pools had not occurred.  The nation might have fewer states.  Those states might be clustered in the north east and on the east coast.  The western part of the continent might be Spanish, or quite possibly one or more Native American nations.  We may not have pioneered the automobile for the masses and the road and fuel infrastructure to support it.  These are just a few of the possibilities had the gene pools not differentiated along the lines suggested above.

May you munch on this food for thought from

The Curmudgeon

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