Sunday, July 29, 2012
the race for geneticly induced identity
Here is another interesting quote from the same source:
If we wanted white people that badly you could change peoples genetics during their birth.
Ignoring the fact that genetics would be changed a long time before birth (this is likely a typo), this presents us with a wonderful question:
How likely it is that genetics would be used to resurrect extinct sub-species of humanity?
The answer is : Not, bloody, likely. The truth is, we already have a branch of humanity to resurrect, it's called the Neanderthal. Neanderthals possessed large brains, could use tools, and best of all, unlike the dinosaurs we actually have a decently sized set of their DNA samples (meaning that we could establish a population that (even if it chose not to breed with us, which the can, an we hope that they will) still wouldn't become inbred within a few generations). They are also probably extinct because of us (or to be precise the cro-magnons - our ancestors), seeing as how they didn't go extinct in any place before we got there (though it could have been a disease we carried and not actual genocide). So it's, kind of, our responsibility to bring them back. Are we? No. Are we planning to? No. Are we talking about it at all? N... well, we could be, but I haven't heard anything as of yet (I only read the popular journals like Scientific American , and not the actual scientific ones).
"Come on"- I hear you cry - "this would require a massive change in the genetic code, we're just talking about very minor changes with making people of one race- another race". You are wrong (imaginary reader, who I made up to ridicule him, because I'm a dick,) the genetic difference between homo sapiens sapiens and homo sapiens neanderthalensis averages to about 0.4% (according to wikipedia), which is (if you believe the same source) about what the average human genetic variability is anyway. That is: it's not any harder to make a, say, Asian baby White (properly white- not just an albino Asian), then it is to make them Neanderthal. But we still won't do it. My guess is we just don't care about people if they don't pay taxes to support the research institute. I might be cynical though.
Racism and Anti-Racism
Several questions have been bough to my attention, by a person whose name I shall not mention to preserve their privacy. I have decided to throw my hat in the ring and explain my poorly-thought-out position on this issue. I would like to further preface this post by saying I live in an ethnically mixed, but racially homogenous (specifically 99.1% were "white" in the 2011 census) enviroment. And that will be using the word "racism" as a catch-all for both biologically and nationally focused biases.
I don't see how i can be being racist against my own kind.
This is actually a misconception one reads a lot on the internet. People will often say racist things about their own people and then claim they're not racist, because, well, how could they be?
To answer this we come to our first stumbling block: Racism is not a Yes/No check-box, it's a scale. One person might want to kill everyone who isn't his exact ethnicity, while another has no black friends (but is otherwise equally courteous to everyone), despite black people representing over 15% of the resident of his neighborhood. Which one is racist? If you answered both, you are correct. If you said guy #1, you are also correct. If you said neither, I really wouldn't want to meet you in a dark alley. And, of course, if you said guy #2, you were guessing at random. The point here is we consider people to be 'racist' if they are more ethnically biased then some set point (usually just above how racist we ourselves are).
Back to the question: they aren't usually very racist, but they are more racist then none- towards their own people. This isn't much of a problem for them, however there have been very serious cases of this in the past, where vast number people would actively hate the fact that they were born into one ethnicity, instead of another ( like wanting to be British instead of Indonesian, or Han instead of Manchu.) The point to take home from this is: ethnic self-hatred is a very real mental disease. Remember: thinking your race/ethnicity/gender/age/sexual preference/hair color/etc. is wose then others is just as racist as thinking it's better. They are all equal in the end.
I don't see how i can be being racist against my own kind.
This is actually a misconception one reads a lot on the internet. People will often say racist things about their own people and then claim they're not racist, because, well, how could they be?
To answer this we come to our first stumbling block: Racism is not a Yes/No check-box, it's a scale. One person might want to kill everyone who isn't his exact ethnicity, while another has no black friends (but is otherwise equally courteous to everyone), despite black people representing over 15% of the resident of his neighborhood. Which one is racist? If you answered both, you are correct. If you said guy #1, you are also correct. If you said neither, I really wouldn't want to meet you in a dark alley. And, of course, if you said guy #2, you were guessing at random. The point here is we consider people to be 'racist' if they are more ethnically biased then some set point (usually just above how racist we ourselves are).
Back to the question: they aren't usually very racist, but they are more racist then none- towards their own people. This isn't much of a problem for them, however there have been very serious cases of this in the past, where vast number people would actively hate the fact that they were born into one ethnicity, instead of another ( like wanting to be British instead of Indonesian, or Han instead of Manchu.) The point to take home from this is: ethnic self-hatred is a very real mental disease. Remember: thinking your race/ethnicity/gender/age/sexual preference/hair color/etc. is wose then others is just as racist as thinking it's better. They are all equal in the end.
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