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See, I knew you would.
The late King of Pop is dominating the blogosphere this week, and probably well into the remaining summer. Radio, television, tweets, he's all that. The Gloved One rules in death as he did in life.
So why bring him into a science blog? Two reasons.
One is that moments like this provide fascinating anthropological material (stay with me here). As someone who--forgive me--doesn't care about the Man or His Music, I'm having a disorienting experience watching absolutely enormous sections of my species go into paroxysms over an individual who was, even by visage alone, disturbingly bizarre. Throw in the delusions, disfigurement, various allegations of child abuse, and the question of why so many millions see someone transcendently wonderful in MJ becomes one for the evolutionary biologists.
I'm not kidding on this. A fair assessment of crowd behavior would conclude this is not an entertainer much of the world is mourning, but a kind of lesser deity. Like Elvis, MJ will no doubt begin making resurrection appearances soon (Princess Di was seen by mourners before Buckingham Palace had even concluded the official ceremony surrounding her death).
My guess is what lies behind my alienating experience this week is that my brain hasn't popped the King of Pop into the slot that almost certainly exists in all primate brains for "group leader." Once someone occupies that cognitive niche--and fame would certainly do it, though I suspect being associated with rhythmic music triggers some very old cortical sub-routines as well--it becomes hard to see the person rather than the internal representation of the person. There are sound evolutionary reasons why we should expect to find ourselves falling in behind a King, as well as why we should *not* to be able to perceive said King objectively once we have identified him.
But my interest is drawn more this month to a different set of ancient and ubiquitous symbols. As a space enthusiast, I find it fascinating how frequently, in describing the Morte d'Michel, we invoke cosmic imagery.
After all, MJ wasn't just the King, he was a star. Indeed, he was a superstar, presumably a more massive stellar object than others in the local heaven. His rise was meteoric; he shone more brightly than others in his orbit; perhaps it was inevitable he would crash and burn.
This seems to be a cultural universal: as far back as ancient Greece the heroes of the day--say Herakles--were, upon their death, promoted into constellations. Now we talk in commonplace tones about Brad Pitt's star power, or Miley Cyrus' rising star, or Britney Spears' shooting star. Do we love the man who brought us the Moonwalk, temporarily freeing us from gravity's chain? Adorn him with extraterrestrial metaphors.
A non-human anthropologist might see in these ubiquitous gestures an impulse, deep in the human psyche, to leap free of the planet's surface. Even before we knew what was out there, we expressed a profound desire to travel among the greater galaxy. It's as if concomitant with the emergence of human consciousness is a teleological drive eventually to become space-farers.
To be sure, the critical phrase there is "as if." Evolution has no teleology. The mistaken belief that it's trying to get somewhere led us into the various ideological disasters of the last century.
But there may still be room, in a full description of humanity, for a quality we once called fate. We are the species that looks up. And with our song and dance, our ancient social patterning, our joy and our audacity, we're the only one that stands a chance of making a new home there. I think our fate is to become sky-travelers, and more--one day, to sing among the stars.
image: D Sharon Pruitt