• JohnLocke
    18
    I look around society and I see a very unnatural state. For example, I see a drive to force almost against our will different segments of society, different groups, different biologies, different backgrounds, together in a way which, compared to a historical sense, seems very forced, engineered, calculated, planned and ultimately is unnatural in that historical sense. This what I would describe as a relentless drive to bind different people together, by using technology, has grave implications for the future of humanity, beyond simply a materialistic sense, which is what I think it is designed to do, for example, to lessen the social, cultural, biological differences between different peoples which have been created organically historically and thus might be considered to be true in the sense that, when left to simply time, a system, such as the arrangement of people into particular groups, patterns and structures, sorts itself out in a way which it likes most, whether because it is most efficient, or productive, or simply natural.

    For example, do different racial groups exist because this is the most natural and logical state which has evolved over time, kind of like how bees create hexagons because they are the most efficient shape to create in the natural world since they use the least amount of energy. If you apply this to the history and evolution of humanity historically, then perhaps differences in race, societies, cultures do simply exist because they are the most logical to have evolved over time, outside of the new impinging force that is technology, particularly the way in which it is used in order to unnaturally weld, bind and blend these differences together, for mostly political and economic reasons within an arbitrarily created human system of governance that is new compared to those historically evolved differences.

    So, when this technology is used to artificially eradicate such differences, this damages the completeness of those differences such that they become less and less different and more and more similar. This, I think, is unnatural for the human psyche to fathom and is a kind of jolt to the human experience of the world as a product of those historical differences. What, I think, this leads to is a conscious recognition in the human psyche of an impinging sense of unnaturalness that contradicts the very essence of human existence and a sense of erosion of personal choice and freedom that speaks to what it means to be human... So, I think technology can be thought of as a negative force in the sense that it is being used to push different societies together, which historically had a good, natural reason, to be separate.

    Translated into day to day life, this might be observed as computer algorithms binding different ethnic groups together, or different cultures juxtaposed next to each other, in order to create a new kind of unnatural society where there is less originality but more commonality. This has many ethical implications which create the sense of unnaturalness but seem to be digested by the human psyche, almost like forcing a child to eat vegetables, in a state of stasis because the human psyche recognises the unnaturalness but has not yet challenged it. If these differences want to be bridged, they will do so naturally and gravitate towards each other without the intervention of a forceful technological structure that is disturbing the natural equilibrium of the system of natural difference.
  • BC
    13.5k
    I see a very unnatural state. For example, I see a drive to force almost against our will different segments of society, different groups, different biologies, different backgrounds, together in a way which, compared to a historical sense, seems very forced, engineered, calculated, planned and ultimately is unnatural in that historical sense.JohnLocke

    Whether natural or unnatural, several forces are at work. First, population growth. When I was a boy, the population was 2.5 billion (1950); 70 years later, it is about 7.8 billion. Never mind whether 7.8B is too many, 5 billion extra people means more interaction with other people, desired or not. Second, global warming. As the climate heats up, more and more people will find themselves in areas where adequate food and fresh water are going to be harder to obtain. These people will be heading towards more livable locations. Third, trade. More people, more transportation, more production and consumption, etc. brings people together, if not for decades, at least often for shorter periods of time.

    Fourth, relief programs. Minneapolis has a large Hmong and Somali population. Did the various refugee groups look over maps and decide that a cold northern hemisphere city was the best place in the world to live? Probably not. But part of the mission of Lutheran Social Services is refugee resettlement -- a mission for which they get paid on contract. There are also quite a few Vietnamese, Karin (Christian refugees from Burma), and some others. I'm not complaining, but there are ways and means for these people being here instead of Rome or Rotterdam. Migration, legal or not, is a fifth cause, driven by poverty or by horrible governments.

    My guess is that there are no social engineers pulling levers behind the curtain (cue the Wizard of Oz) reshuffling population.

    There have been many population shifts in the US. Between 1914 and 1950 many blacks fled the south for (hoped for) better lives in northern cities. Waves of European migrants rolled west across the continent. Imagine how the Aboriginal populations felt about "forcing societies together".

    I grew up in the rural midwest, where population is still more thinly spread than New England, S. California, Florida or much of Europe. I have lived in much denser cities with more diverse people than Minneapolis. Density and diversity make for livelier social scenes. But I like the social distancing of frosty upper midwesterners. I feel your discomfort with too many people. It will get worse, inevitably.

    They were there, now they are here. Get used to it.
  • Tom Storm
    9k
    Please use paragraphs your stuff is dense.
  • counterpunch
    1.6k
    Natural doesn't necessarily mean right or good.
    See 'naturalistic fallacy.'
    It's next to Nazi in the dictionary!
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    Knew this would be some racial segregationist bullshit right from the 2nd sentence.

    So many paragraphs just to say "I don't like race mixing, and you shouldn't either".
  • T Clark
    13.8k
    So many paragraphs just to say "I don't like race mixing, and you shouldn't either".StreetlightX

    I understand your uneasiness, but I'm not sure your hackle-raising is justified. We'll see how this shakes out, if you'll let it.
  • T Clark
    13.8k


    First of all, please use paragraph breaks. It makes posts a lot easier to read and more people will read them. A wall of text is daunting.

    Every one of us has ancestors who lived in Africa. They started to move out into the rest of the world 100,000ish years ago. They got to Australia about 50 thousand years ago. Between 10 and 15 thousand years ago they moved through Alaska into Canada, the US, and on down to Central and South America. About 2,000 years ago, people who started out in China got in boats and populated Oceania.

    People in Hungary speak a language related to Finnish which originally came from northern Russia via northern Scandinavian. Those languages, plus almost all languages in Europe grew out of language originally from India. People in Madagascar speak a language closely related to Malaysians. People in Turkey speak a language closely related to Kazakhstanis.

    I'm reading a really good set of books now, "The Mongoliad" by Neal Stephenson and several others. If you have ever read any of Stephenson's work, you know that he likes to teach us stuff. In these books, he is teaching us about the Mongol invasion of Europe in the 13th century. The book centers on 1241, the height of the invasion. The Mongols took over China, Korea, Siberia, and Europe as far east as Poland. Their plan was to go to the Western Sea, the Atlantic. They probably would have made it except their Khan's kept dying. Whenever that happened, all the leaders had to head back to Mongolia to elect a new one.

    The Mongol's were skilled fighters. Relentless and brutal. They killed millions of people - men, women, children indiscriminately. If there was any resistance at all, they just killed everyone. People thought it was the end of the world. They, along with the Huns back in the 6th Century (if I remember correctly) mixed up the ethnic makeup of the entire "civilized" world unless you count Mesoamerica. The Turkish language came from Central Asia - Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, all those other stans.

    Then, of course, the Europeans brought black people from Africa to the new world.

    This has been going on since the beginning of civilization. I live outside of Boston. When I go into town, I see Indians, Pakistanis, Bangla Deshis, Koreans, Brazilians, Chinese, Japanese, Burmese, Cameroonians, Congolese, and on and on. I love it. There are so many good, inexpensive ethnic restaurants. Women from other cultures are beautiful. Listening to all the voices on the subway is like travelling around the world. Many of the people are happy to talk about where they came from and how they got here.

    Better get used to it.
  • Tom Storm
    9k


    You've expounded (amongst other things) a fine example of the is-ought problem. Identifying moral properties with natural properties is generally seen as a fallacy. In other words, you can't really make conclusions about how things ought to be based on what is (or what you think happens) in nature. Human beings bend and twist nature all the time, from obstetrics to insulin for diabetes.
  • NOS4A2
    9.2k


    What does it matter? We’re of the same species. In fact, we are the last extant species of human being, and it is quite possible we mixed with our extinct cousins once we left the mother continent, long before any modern technologies.
  • Kenosha Kid
    3.2k
    So many paragraphs just to say "I don't like race mixing, and you shouldn't either".StreetlightX

    Worse: "... and I know you don't either, so it's a conspiracy to force us together against our will." Bingo if he's a Jesus freak.

    It looks like the exact opposite. We're cohabiting pretty peacefully without anyone intervening and, instead, the racists among us are making a concerted political effort to stop it, viz. Trump and the white supremacists in the US, UKIP and Brexit in the UK, Penn's abject failures in France among the various racist parties in Europe vying for a tiny slice of proportional representation. It seems to take a lot of effort to keep people apart, which is extremely encouraging. My step-kids' generation look on appalled and will hopefully put another nail in the coffin of the dead argument made by the OP.

    There are people who hate difference (difference in appearance, difference in sexuality, difference in beliefs and opinions) and people who love it. Most of us seem to be in the second camp, so don't be too surprised if, when the racist eye is off the ball, people just naturally come together again.

    As for overcrowding, gotta stop breeding so much. There's a potential anti- or discerning immigration argument there maybe.
  • baker
    5.6k
    I look around society and I see a very unnatural state. For example, I see a drive to force almost against our will different segments of society, different groups, different biologies, different backgrounds, together in a way which, compared to a historical sense, seems very forced, engineered, calculated, planned and ultimately is unnatural in that historical sense.JohnLocke
    Sure, but the class/caste/segregation system is still well and alive, it's just more subtle.

    The egalitarianism that is officially pushed on us is illusory, and a well-adjusted person knows this. People still operate out of a class/caste/segregation mentality and are expected to do so, it's just not politically correct to admit to it.
  • Cheshire
    1.1k
    It's contradictory to state the emergence of race as natural and then recombination as unnatural. If a logical error is worthwhile. Otherwise, it's a slightly covert rendition of the conspiracy to eliminate Caucasians that has been binding fools to ignorance through fear for hundreds of years.
  • Kenosha Kid
    3.2k
    Otherwise, it's a slightly covert rendition of the conspiracy to eliminate Caucasians that has been binding fools to ignorance through fear for hundreds of years.Cheshire

    You might be onto something there... Caucasians that forced themselves on almost every indigenous peoples on the planet...
  • Olivier5
    6.2k
    I you don't feel like having sex with people that are racially different than yourself, don't. But others might find it exiting or fun. What do you care?
  • Wheatley
    2.3k

    :100:
    Mind your own business!
  • Olivier5
    6.2k
    Exactly. Racism is just a form of jealousy.
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