Biological Essentialism and Mr. Rogers

What is biological essentialism?  If you search online, you will get a wide variety of answers.  Historically, biological essentialism is the view that bats are bats, cats are cats and your long-lost cousin was not an ape.  Even a three-year-old can tell the difference between elephants, which can save a calf from a flooded river, and exploding ants.

 

What’s the connection to Mr. Rogers?  He said that you are not just advanced protoplasm without purpose.  I’m sure you recall the famous song:

 

You are my friend

You are special …

You are the only one like you.

Like you, my friend, I like you …

You’re special to me.

There’s only one in this wonderful world

You are special.

 

BTW, I highly recommend the film.

My latest book has a chapter on Human Nature.  Within that chapter, I investigate the reality of Human Exceptionalism.  This holds that humans are truly special and not just advanced primates.  Please get your copy of Biological Essentialism today! 

Did Koko & Friends ever build a Space Shuttle (which I saw in OKC along with ¼M others)?  Can we find something like the Wren Library (Cambridge) in the Valley of the Apes?

 

Fred McFeely Rogers (d. 2003) was a Presbyterian minister and his kids show lasted from 1968 to 2001.  He left no doubt about the “humans are special” controversy:

 

As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has - or ever will have - something inside that is unique to all time.  It's our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.

 

Rogers also made this profound statement in his commencement address at Dartmouth in 2002:

 

When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch.  That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive.  Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.

 

Mr. Rogers knows the difference between a dog and a Mog (Bob the Dog).

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 

I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him. (Eccl. 3:11,14)

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