You Might Be a Late Bloomer The life secrets of those who flailed early but succeeded by old age; The Atlantic, June 26, 2024

David Brooks, The Atlantic; You Might Be a Late Bloomer: The life secrets of those who flailed early but succeeded by old age

"“Young people are just smarter,” Zuckerberg once said, in possibly the dumbest statement in American history. “There are no second acts in American lives,” F. Scott Fitzgerald once observed, in what might be the next dumbest.

But for many people, the talents that bloom later in life are more consequential than the ones that bloom early...

Successful late bloomers are all around us. Morgan Freeman had his breakthrough roles in Street Smart and Driving Miss Daisy in his early 50s. Colonel Harland Sanders started Kentucky Fried Chicken in his 60s. Isak Dinesen published the book that established her literary reputation, Out of Africa, at 52. Morris Chang founded Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the world’s leading chipmaker, at 55. If Samuel Johnson had died at 40, few would remember him, but now he is considered one of the greatest writers in the history of the English language. Copernicus came up with his theory of planetary motion in his 60s. Grandma Moses started painting at 77. Noah was around 600 when he built his ark (though Noah truthers dispute his birth certificate)...

I’ve noticed this pattern again and again: Slow at the start, late bloomers are still sprinting during that final lap—they do not slow down as age brings its decay. They are seeking. They are striving. They are in it with all their heart."

Darwin Day Revelation: Evolution, Not Religion, Is the Source of Morality; HuffingtonPost.com, 2/12/16

Clay Farris Naff, HuffingtonPost.com; Darwin Day Revelation: Evolution, Not Religion, Is the Source of Morality:

"Murder stands as most heinous of immoral acts, yet we find that the countries with the lowest murder rates include those with the lowest rates of religiosity: Sweden, Japan, Britain, and the Czech Republic, to name a few. Murder rates in medieval Europe, when religion was universal, were ten times modern rates. Within the U.S., states that have the highest rates of religiosity also tend to have the highest murder rates.

Homicide is not an exception; this pattern holds for other crimes. Are we perhaps capturing an affluence effect? Nope. Vietnam is a poor country (per capita GDP ~ $5,000). It is both moderately religious and murderous -- but still has a lower homicide rate than the wealthier and more devout United States.

So where does morality come from? Evolution. This is as close to certain as science gets.. Human universals are pretty good evidence for a start. It turns out that a prohibition on murder is found in every known culture. (Of course there are individuals -- drug dealers, dictators, and fanatics, for example -- who use murder as a tool of their trade, but they are the exceptions.)

Most human universals are not moral matters. Jokes, tools, and aesthetics have no inherent moral valence. That we can pick out some behaviors as morally relevant is a clue. That we can pick out some behaviors as morally relevant is a clue. It points to the fact that we have evolved moral instincts. At root they are empathy, disgust, and fairness."