I was thinking the other day, as I sometimes do, and I found myself considering the following question:

According to Wikipedia, "The term 'Renaissance man' was first recorded in written English in the early 20th century. It is used to refer to great polymaths like those of the Renaissance." Do you think such people might have just been really smart folks with ADHD?

I have a handful of local, carefully-crafted AI assistants and I posed the question to one of them. I thought I'd ask one of them and share the results.

In a previous post, we examined how the human brain has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to support the survival of Homo sapiens as semi-nomadic hunters and gathers. Much of the research behind it didn't seem appropriate for the original post, but it seemed worth sharing. Let's talk about some of the specific affects of our mental adaptation.

Growing up with evangelical Christianity, evolution was a no-no. It wasn't accepted on any level and it was even the butt of jokes. As kids we'd sing this little song:

I'm no kin to the monkey no no no
The monkey's no kin to me
I don't know much about your ancestors
But mine didn't swing from a tree

Cute, huh? (Though technically, humans are apes, not monkeys!)

A few weeks back, I had lunch with a lifelong friend; he's now a successful Southern Baptist minister. We've been friends since the second grade, and his dad taught me so many things that I, as a child without a present father, needed to hear. Despite our differences, we are still friends, and I value that relationship more than he likely knows.

When we lunched, he asked some questions about my "deconstruction." I told him that I considered a pivotal point to have been 9 December 1980. That was the day after John Lennon was murdered, and the day when I heard the news. It was the day that I went to my private Christian school and was told that John had "lifted up his eyes in hell." While there are so many points along the way that contributed to where I came to be, I feel like that one was of high importance.

I was in my car, which does not happen very often these days, and an audio book by Seth Godin was playing from my phone through the car's audio system. My phone would sometimes ding, which would stop the book for about five seconds.

It was not often that I talked on the phone, but that time I was really sick of it. Consumer goods, like phones, are made for the biggest groups. This was one of the many things that came to mind. Smartphones are made for TikTok users who can do more with one thumb than I can with both. To put it another way, Kenn can't use the smartphone like many consumers.

A prophet is not revered in his own country, according to the Christian Bible.

After years of working in the IT department of the City of Chattanooga, I had moments like that. I "grew up" professionally there, so it felt like my home country—the place where I was raised.