Do you agree?
- I disagree
- I agree
In a world dominated by growing populations and diminishing resources, where space comes at a premium and more and more peoples are asked to coexist within smaller and smaller spaces, the need for equalitarian ethical systems becomes vital and essential to survival and continuing growth. Without it the inevitable conflict and implosion would result in a return to past conditions or in a period of chaos and deconstruction.
It is, therefore, natural that ideologies and theologies that preach a harmonious coexistence and a passive demeanor are to appear first in societies and cultures where overpopulation forces a need for demureness and peacefulness. No surprise then that Buddhism and Hinduism were to come to be first in places such as India and China or that, later on, they would take hold, in a mutated and diluted form, in the west under the moniker of Christianity. Where open spaces and frontiers exist, all ideas of equalitarianism and altruism are blasphemous, whereas in environments with no such frontiers they become sacred and holy.
We live in such a period of no frontiers and little open spaces.
So, such ethical systems, as the before mentioned, are crucial in soothing over human distinctions and differences by finding commonalities with which each individual, if it is indoctrinated early on, must replace natural tendencies to perceive what is different from it as ‘not of its kind’ with an overarching morality that makes it perceive all as part of the same and all differences a matter of detail with no other significance. In crowded environments all deviations are swept under the carpet, they are steamrolled into conformity and ignored on principle. This is how stability and harmony are maintained and ensured, morality becoming the glue that keeps contradictory elements of differentiation in union and balance.
Anything that differentiates or hints at any divergence from a norm or points to inferiority or superiority must be quelled and surpassed on moral, humanitarian grounds.
In our modern world this flattening of humanity persists with the dominance of democratic, non-aggressive or passive-aggressive political, theological and ideological systems that is leading to the slow extermination of all divergent cultures, besides the dominant western, North-American one, appropriately called globalization {Americanization}. Any culture or ideal that preaches isolation or superiority or a desire to remain distinct must be eradicated in the name of continuing peace and prosperity.
They call this the opening up of markets in a classic case of Orwellian linguistic distraction.
Current events in the middle-east and elsewhere and the widespread clashes between civilizations that are occurring presently throughout the world can be seen under this light of forced conformity to a dominating ‘norm’, in this case exemplified by the single global superpower, but are also occurring between lesser secondary regional powers {China, India, Russia, an emerging Europe}.
It is this trend of equalitarianism that is force-feeding us an ideal human condition where no physical or intellectual differences are easily accepted to mean anything relevant or decisive. Any differences in performance or behavior are easily explained away by blaming specific life events or special environmental conditions in the hope that an underlying pattern isn’t perceived or made known and so the sense of oneness and similarity isn’t disturbed or put into question. Where talents and strengths are awarded to the individual all weaknesses and failings are excused away by pointing to childhood circumstances or blaming it on this or that special circumstance, disease or syndrome.
The ‘modern’ western disease of unbridled irresponsibility and the consistent unburdening of every individual from accountability concerning personal actions and behaviors are telling and the consequence of the extreme need to preserve the artificial sense of uniformity and oneness.
This is more so the case in matters of race and color.
I would admit that external physical traits do not necessarily mean a difference in intellect or in spirit but neither would I say that it doesn’t. What I would say is that physical characteristics do point to past environmental conditions that may have persisted over a period of time that resulted in physical alterations of appearance.
But why is it that physical alterations exclude intellectual ones as well?
We are all the sum of our pasts and it is this past that determines and limits our potentials in all areas of importance. It is true that each individual must be evaluated on his/her merits but it is also true that general physical commonalties do not exclude general mental commonalties. If it were not so then all science would be impossible and disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, biology etc. would be impossible.
Also there is some confusion around the delineations of race, particularly in our present world of mixing and commingling, but nevertheless external discernable characteristics still prevail and are easily distinguishable. Although this assimilation is resulting in shades of racial characteristics and a resulting degree of differentiation much less distinguishable from past times, where geographical barriers and technological levels ensured racial isolation, it is still relatively easy to notice physical racial characteristics in specific humans that hint at ancestry and lineage.
THESIS
If we are to believe current anthropological theories, we are all descendant from an original species that came to be somewhere in Africa in the distant past. This ancestor of ours, eventually evolving into a homo-sapient, had the qualities necessary to become a dominating species, in its local setting, that inevitably lead to an unprecedented population explosion that forced migrations into new geographical areas of unclaimed territories. This forced expansion of human dominance pushed the periphery of this migration-wave into harsher environments and eventually resulted in an alteration of physical appearance.
But why do we assume that the alteration was only limited to physicality? If, for example, long-term exposure to less extreme sunlight resulted in smaller melanin levels in the skin causing discoloration or a loss of pigmentation, why should we not also consider the possibility that other environmental circumstances may have not also resulted in other chemical physical alterations causing perhaps intellectual or psychological differences as well?
Why? Because it is too controversial and disturbing to the status quo to do so, and so science, being dependant on funding from the system itself, limits its scope of speculation and exploration and pays lip-service to the powers that demand conformity and non-confrontation. The educational system becomes a disseminator of acceptable forms of knowledge that do not contradict the popular norms too much and a business more concerned with becoming self-sufficient, popular and wealthy than in nurturing thought and minds.
But I digress.
As human populations adapted to new inhospitable conditions and generations were raised under new weather and nutritional conditions, their outward manifestations also changed to mirror this environmental alteration. Meanwhile back in the original ancestral places of sub-Saharan Africa the alterations were not as necessary and so no great evolutionary changes happened, beyond the slow natural evolution caused by chance mutations and small climactic and social transformations.
If diversity and challenge is the mother of modification then the lives, of these humans existing on the fringes and the frontiers of human expansion, were hard and unforgiving and they were pressured to become creative and cunning in order to survive, widening an ingenuity gap between them and those still populating areas that were more ‘natural’ and ‘comfortable’ for the human species.
If we could study two twin brothers where one is forced to leave home and survive in the cold, cruel outside world while the other was allowed to continue existing in the comforts of his place of birth, then we can assume that if a decade later the two were to be reunited there would be a perceptible difference between the two. One, being challenged to survive or perish in circumstances it was not previously aware of, will exhibit the strength, wisdom, worldliness and cunning of one that has met a challenge and survived it while the second will exhibit the stagnating effects of remaining within the environment it was born and raised in.
This separation and reunion can be said to have occurred in the human family.
Centuries later, after a segment of humanity had been required to adapt to inhospitable challenging environments and after this had lead to the creation of great civilizations and cultures, the departed brothers returned to the home, this time as conquerors, explorers and dominators to find their siblings still in the same state they had left them in; stagnating in a pool of superstition and primitiveness that was the consequence of an absence of need.
The historical events afterwards are all well known.
The weak become fodder and the tools of the strong.
It is true, as I said previously, that each individual must me measured using his/her personal merits on a case by case study but physical similarities do not exclude, but reversely include, the possibility of there being mental similarities as well between individuals that exhibit the same external characteristics or the same traits of pedigree.
If dog pedigrees can be bred to behave in like manner with similar intellectual levels and physical traits, using only external cues, then why is this breeding not possible through more natural means?
The easiest way to study a phenomenon isn’t to look back in time into its history or by speculating on what influenced what in what degree, but to study the final result and the conclusion of this historical voyage.
Although racial qualities does not ensure levels of achievement it does determine level of potential achievement in the same way that being born to tall parents does not make certain the final height of the offspring but it determines the potential height if the environmental circumstances remain constant and generous.
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