Great imperative meme

Geoffrey says, "About a week ago, I was reading an interview with the former Prime Minister of Jamaica, Michael Manley, and I came upon the quote, 'The only imperative of my life has been egalitarianism.' And I thought: What has been the great imperative of my life? And then, I thought, this would make a great meme." It does, Geoffrey. And thank you for tagging me.

My life has been goodly influenced by certain things that are too numerous to mention. Most are also personal, but let's find a way of talking about them without revealing innards, shall we?

The great scourge of our society today is the fact that treatment is often meted out in terms of uncontrollable parameters like, for instance, the activity of melanocytes in the skin. Such activity does not depend on the character of the owner of the skin in question. Melanocytes produce melanosomes, organelles that contain melanin, the most common light-absorbing pigment the animal kingdom boasts. Plants have melanin, too.

In humans, melanin is found in skin, hair, the pigmented tissue underlying the iris, the medulla and zona reticularis of the adrenal gland, the stria vascularis of the inner ear, and in pigment bearing neurons of certain deep brain nuclei such as the locus ceruleus and the substantia nigra. Melanin is the primary determinant of human skin color.
http://en.wikipedia.org

Your locus ceruleus has melanin, and so does mine. Our substantia nigras, too. Here's something else many people don't know about: you and I, yes, you, have the same concentration of melanocytes (cells that produce melanin, melanin expresses pigmentation) in the skin. This has a direct bearing on several things, including skin colour. Maya Angelou and Walt Whitman (both pictured here) had/have the same concentration of melanocytes in their skin. So why was/is one pale and the other one tan?

Melanocytes insert granules of melanin into specialized cellular vesicles called melanosomes. These are then transferred into the other skin cells of the human epidermis. The melanosomes in each recipient cell accumulate atop the cell nucleus, where they protect the nuclear DNA from mutations caused by the ionizing radiation of the sun's ultraviolet rays. People whose ancestors lived for long periods in the regions of the globe near the equator generally have larger quantities of eumelanin in their skins. This makes their skins brown or black and protects them against high levels of exposure to the sun, which more frequently results in melanomas in lighter skinned people.

With humans, exposure to sunlight stimulates the liver to produce vitamin D. Because high levels of cutaneous melanin act as a natural sun screen, dark skin can be a risk factor for vitamin D deficiency.
http://en.wikipedia.org

These are scientific facts that almost every man, woman and child should be aware of. If you know a bit about Charles Darwin, then you understand why we're different. We're different for the same reasons that a zebra is different from a race-horse, and chihuahuas differ from poodles. I think that it is important to note that zebras may harbour and may express similar thoughts to race-horses, and Idi Amin to Adolph Hitler. That is what judgement should be based on, for both the Equidae, and the Hominidae. These should not be judged on the number or colour or slant of their stripes, despite the idiomatic meaning of stripe to mean "kind or type." Nor on the number or concentration of freckles, on their faces, nor on the activity of melanosomes in their epidermis. This should be clear enough.

The great imperative of my life has been to fight and expose and condemn discrimination and segregation based on race, religion, handicap, sex, or any other parameter over which homo sapiens has no control. I'm thinking melanin, too, as you may have guessed.

The great imperative of my life has also been to stand up for the underdog. Take an example. We have both rich and poor criminals. Poor criminals are more likely to receive the wrath of society than rich criminals. Of course that depends a lot on the fact that rich criminals run TV stations and control the police.

The greatest imperative of my life, therefore, is to write poetry that brings these injustices to the surface, without losing any music that I have the capacity to put in a poem, and without sounding off and scaring the reader with pedagogical sermonising. I know that this entails a lot of work on my part, in order to hone my tool-bag, but I'm ready, and I'm learning.

Like Geoffrey said to those he tagged (and to other commenters, who are also invited), the response doesn't have to be elaborate or long. But it should at least complete the sentence, "The great imperative of my life has been..." The tag goes out to the following blogger friends:

• Annie
  
• Thami
• Paris Parfait
• Jim, and
• Lyrical Cathy