Me and You

"Why bother with a constant and/or cohesive self in the first place..?"

So why do we bother..? Both in fiction and reality we seem to set much store by rigidly behaving today just as we behaved yesterday. We have our pride and our principles and sometimes we adher to them even to the point of derision or death. It would seem mal-adaptive to have an intrinsic mechanism that drives us to become 'one' person, when a chameleon might prosper better. And yet such a trait seems pan-human.

What worth is being only one certain individual to the individual concerned..?

None at all that I can think of.

Then I remembered my friend, and die-hard drinking-buddy, who suddenly stopped drinking and went tee-total. And about how we aren't all that good friends anymore. And about another friend, who suddenly caught a very bad case of christianity, and about how we went from bosom buddies to erm, not-so bosom buddies almost overnight.

I think we grit our teeth and preserve a coherent and damn near constant self, not through any aesthetic drive to self-expression, nor even from some abstract existential drive to 'authenticity'.
I think we instinctively maintain our particular brand of 'selfhood' simply to preserve social trust. To make sure that the people with whom we deal on a day to day basis know we are X and not Y, A but not B, and therefore safely predictable enough for them to not fear what 'me' tomorrow may bring.

We fear the weirdo or the madman, not because of their (maybe) inhuman strength, nor for their (possible) penchant for eating people's faces - but simply because we cannot know with any degree of certainty what they will do next, or how they will react to what we do, however innocuous in our eyes. Will he shake my hand or break it..? So we freeze, or shoot, or run.

How would my wife love me if I awoke a new person every day..? How would my child dare aproach me if he could not be sure whether my proximity would bring a hug or a blow..? Would my neighbor loan me his mower if he couldn't be reasonably sure I'd give it back and not sell it, or scrap it, or wrap it round his head..?

The irony is then, much of this 'I' we set such store by, and go to such lengths to preserve, is not even for ourselves.

My 'I' is not for me, it is for you, it's always been for you.

...Continued...

(Im)purity of Race

Ultimately, the will to purity of race will not be overcome by any directive of politics, or general opinion, but by human nature itself:

The eroticism of the different.

Of course in choosing a mate we look for the familliar, commonalities of perspective, the right number of arms and legs... But also we seek difference, a particular shade of skin, a curve of eyebrow, the subtle archs and hollows of form.

For some, this carries further than the arbitrary borders of the place they call home. There is a primordial drive that pulls us in the direction of that which we have not seen before, to spread ourselves across the Earth. This spills over into our sexuality, we seek diversity, not the same old same old. Purity of race is a lost cause. And those that uphold it, anti-nature.

Purity, memetically speaking - a closed system of shared cultural references and values and ideas, is also doomed. For it will ultimately have to seal itself off to preserve it's 'cleanliness', and so with time, become slowly more antiquated, stale, and eventually what is outside, will find it's way in.

Either that, or it will find itself in a war it cannot possily win, without dooming itself along with the competing races it attacks. The thing with a quest for purity, it never stops - there is always that which is more pure. Those on that quest will tear themselves apart till the only purest number possible of them exists... One.

What is 'Race' exactly, what defines it..? Let us first look at what race is not:

*I am English. I live in Turkey. I speak fluent Turkish, with a reasonable accent. I can converse with anyone, begger or politician, like a native. But I remain English, a foreigner. Race is not defined by language.

*I am English. I live in Turkey. In one year's time, I will have spent more of my life, as an adult, in Turkey than in the country of my birth. It matters not, I could live in this country until I die, and still, remain an Englishman on foreign soil. Race is not defined by location.

*Is race dependent on the axiom "Born and Bred" ..? Let us imagine a tragedy: A chinese couple, living in London, have a baby. The mother dies in childbirth, the father, in a paroxysm of despair - takes his own life. The infant is adopted into a childless English family. He grows and learns English as his mother tongue, he speaks with a fuency and accent to match any Londoner. He grows up with English TV and American fast food. His education is in an English school, he knows exactly as much about China as any English child. His culture, sense of history, his value-system, is entirely that of England.

And yet, throughout this thoroughly English life, at each level of his development from child to boy to man, ask any of his peers to describe him and they will say - "Oh, that chinese kid/lad/man." Race is not defined by upbringing.

*I am English. I live in Turkey. The sun has turned my skin a shade well within the national average, my hair, my height, my build, my eye colour, are all within that same average. My facial structure differs slightly from the norm - but not distinctively so. And yet, I remain English.

Very well - the Turks and the English do not display the degree of difference exemplified by say, the English and the Chinese. But say I went there, and had my skin bleached and tinted to match theirs, my eyes surgically given epicanthic folds, I dye and straighten the hair on my head, and wax off most of my bodily hair, would I suddenly 'be' Chinese..?Of course not. So Race is not defined by simply looks alone.

*My child, according to the states involved - has dual-nationality. By Passport - he is at once a British citizen, and also a Turkish citizen. But as you point out, he, at the same time, is niether. In England he will be forever half-Turkish, and in Turkey he will be half-English. I myself could take Turkish citizenship, if I wished. Would that make me Turkish..? No. Race is not defined by paperwork.

So, what does that leave us..? With blood.

Let's first tidy up the language. Blood has no race. Blood is red, and carries oxygen and nutrients and everything else around the body. My blood is exactly the same in form and function as that of any man, black, brown yellow or pink. Do we distinguish race by blood-group..? "Hi, I'm an O(rhesus-ve)'er, how do you do" No. It's genetic heritage we are talking about. Not blood.

• I have a sister - How do I know she is English..?
  
• Because we share common ancestors, Mum and Dad.
  
• How do I know Mum and Dad are English..?
  
• Because their ancestors too, were English.
  
• How do I know Gran and Grandad were English..?
  
• Because they too had English ancestors. And so on.

But my half-Turkish boy may go on to marry an English girl. And their child, one quarter Turkish now, to marry another of English descent... And so on. When will that child, with it's fraction of Turkish derived DNA, become wholly English..? Perhaps when no obvious none-English distiguishing feature remains, in thought, word, physique, or deed..?

But, common ancestory can be taken back. To a time, perhaps in Africa, when the whole of mankind was one.

What is an Englishman, a German, a Japanese man, saying when they declare "I am English.", "I am German.", "I am Japanese." What do they really mean..?

What defines race..? Time. Adaption. Enviroment. Geographic isolation.

The distinct differences in physique are the results of the slow evolution of an isolated gene pool. The long straight blades for noses in Desert people, to deal with hot dry air, the snub noses of polynesians, with their warm, moist climates. Over countless millenia, evolution has equipped these people of the same species with atributes intimately linked to survival in their specific locales.

Genes code for basic behaviors too. So it is not totally unfounded to say that some distinctions in racial character have some rootage in the genetic heritage of the group.

So to answer the question: "I am English." "I am Japanese."

They are both saying exactly the same thing: "I have evolved to the point where I am slightly better equipped to live in this enviroment than you are."

This remains as the best, and only justifiable definition of race. A definition that has only Evolution, and Geographic isolation as it's pillars.

However. The 'Races' are no longer Geographicaly Isolated. I am an example of that, as are millions of ex-pats of differing State-defined nationalities, around the globe. The human species, in it's natural extensions of memetics, society and technology is changing and adapting at a pace far outstripping simple biological evolution. The pillars supporting the concept of 'Race' have fallen.

Humankind will end, just as it began, as one.

...Continued...

An Adaptive God.

One of the stumbling blocks of anti-theistic arguing is that any theist can point to any place on the globe and say "Here, in this place, they believe in some kind of God(s)" without any real fear of being wrong. Logic be damned - everybody has a God, how can they all be wrong..?

Everybody has heard of Tony the Tiger™ the loveable stripey tiger advertizing Kellogs Frosties. Does this 'having heard of him' require his existance..? Obviously not. But, if he doesn't exist, why has everyone heard of him..? Because he's associated with a rather scrummy breakfast cereal, chok-full of vitamins and frosty goodness.

Most people have eaten of Tony, and found him to be good.

But you don't buy Tony for Tony, you buy it for the benefits of the cereal inside, even if it's Tony's face you see when you think of the brand.

Obviously God and Religion are not very crunchy, and do not fit easily into a bowl at the breakfast table, but might theism and cereal-ism have more in common than meets the eye..?

Might the simple belief in a God, and obedience to the strictures of the religion involved, be benefcial in itself, without there actually needing to be anything concrete involved..? Let us see.

The purely motivational benefits of believing in an afterlife have been discussed before, however I put it to you that religions have become so widespread because societies believing in them automatically breed a more competitive group of humans.

It does this in three ways.

1) Religions usually in some way regulate reproduction and the family unit by ratifying some kind of marriage ceremony. In christianity - 1-1 - in Islam 1-4 (if the man is able to support all his wives equally). I can't think of a religion that does not stipulate limits on sexulaity. Sex outside of marriage is frowned upon to the extent of execution in some cases.

The effect of this is to stabilize the family unit and further ensure that the child recieves attention from its mother and, in most cases, father. In rats, offspring which do not recieve adequate attention from their mothers in the form of licking, closeness etc. - rat-love - grow up stupid. Intimacy inhibits methylation (ie the switching off) of gene-sequences which promote brain growth.

In short - the more intimacy, the more intelligence.

ie: Religion, by encouraging a stable family unit, and preventing oportunistic coupling, increases the intelligence of its believers.

2) Most religions go to various lengths to regulate the diets of their adherents. Bans on various foods - pork and alcohol for example in Islam - Kosher meats in Jewish Orthodoxy etc. Sometimes periods of fasting, Ramazan, Lent are involved. Abstinence and/or moderation. Fish on fridays etc. Big dinner on sundays; hand outs for the poor.

A poor diet and the overindulgence in 'vices' such as alcohol causes increases the methylation of genomic sites varying from genes which produce anti-cancer effects, effectively shutting down the body's protection, to areas of the genome dealing with the immune-system and cell-repair, shortening life and increasing vunerability to disease.

A poor diet in early pregnancy can switch the phenotype of the child produced to a thrifty-metabolism making said child prone to type II diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.

ie: religion, by influencing dietry habits, increases both the fitness of adult members and the phenotype of their children.

3) Any follower of Religion would probably say that with it they feel a little more cheerful about the future knowing that death is not the end of the deal. And a kinship of belief add friends to your social circle and avenues of support you'd never have had without.

Religions have a high 'happiness' value, when compared to say, fatalism, or nihlism. Why is this a factor..?



Because it would seem that women's instinctive perception of a society's future is important.

After 9/11, a strange thing happened in Calafornia - a dramatic spike in spontaneous late-term miscarriages. Of boys. Only boys.

We don't really know why, but after supremely society-wide stressful events - the same thing happened in the 1990's in Germany in the aftermath of the reunification - the sex ratio of new births suddenly skews toward a female bias.

Same thing was recorded in the 90's after the Hanshin earthquake in Kobe, Japan and in Slovenia after the 10-day war during the Balkan conflicts.

The reverse happens in periods after threats have ended and everyone is filled with joie-de-vivre. After the ends of both WWI and WWII birth rates skewed back in favour of males.

In short good times mean more boys, bad times more girls.

One psych-test, questioning 600 mother in Gloustershire, England correlated that women who believed "they would live to a fine old age" were statistically more likely to have male children.

It would seem feeling happier about the future manifests itself in a skew toward males in the sex-ratios of new-borns.

What impact would this have upon society..?

Males are more competitive than females. If the direct method of fighting to the death is prohibited this leads to a lot of economic showing off in the form increased productivity, creativity and hardwork on the parts of the competing males - women being a materialistic lot on the whole.

ie: religion by proxy of sex-ratio skewing, increases the productivity of a society.
A surplus of males is useful in times of war, on the one hand you have more available warriors, and on the other, when they are all dead, you still have some guys left over to knock up the women and rebuild the population.

ie: religion by proxy of sex-ratio skewing, increases the aggressive capabilty of a society.

There are probably other avenues of epigeneticimpact religion can have on a host society as yet undicovered - the field is still relatively new.

But perhaps I have been able to illustrate then that religion, and a belief in God, just like eating a bowl of Frosties™, can have great physical benefit without the actual need for a Tony.

Er... I mean, a God.

Just to be completely transparant:

I assert that the actual physical and reproductive benefits derived from religious belief, with or without God, coupled with the purely social and motivational effects such a belief set lends its hosts - gives religious societies a competitive edge over irreligous societies, to the extent that no such societies exist in any dominant form today.

ie: It is no coincidence that belief in God covers the map, it was always going to be that way.



And it still does not give any credence to the existance of the divine.

...Continued...

Only Human.

Much as we would like to retain the God-like status of 'created in his image' we should perhaps become more familliar, in these times of ever-tightening conflict, to what we really are, the better to rule ourselves.

Some suggested parameters to being human, not meant to be exhaustive:

* Twin cores to everyone: themselves as individuals, and their children, extant or yet to be. Both influences, without fail, colour our behaviour, consciously, unconsciously, savagely.

* We are creatures who function through addiction; each behaviour we find subjectively to be rewarding, becomes an addiction, an itch scrathed without thought. Change is hard, and recidivism will always be tempting if the opportunity to indulge in old habits remains available.

In this the biggest tool to widespread change is external, stemming from altered social/enviromental conditions, rather than internal, through individual will. A person placed in a location where 'good' behavioural patterns are naturally rewarded, and less altruistic habits penalized, will become 'good'. Goodness with a gun to its head is the only stable method.

* Hume: Reason has no force of its own, to be effective it must pit appetites against eachother. Reason alone, however elegant, will move no-one.

* Our cognitive devices to estimate reward are biased very heavily toward proximity, both physical and temporal, rather than simple objective worth - all our birds are in the hand. Which means we are ant-like in our perspective, in that a reward, as it closes upon our senses, is vizualized, anticipated to the point where, whatever its 'real' worth, it eclipses the sight of others, much larger. The twig pressed against our nose looms larger than the Redwood a mile distant.

The trick of will is to bundle opposing urges against this unreasoned compulsion, until they reach such heights that they always remain visable in the mind's eye as greater, or to arrange things such that the ant of appetite never comes close enough to the shadow of unwanted fulfillment that it should blot out the sun.

* Socially, the human operating-system may perhaps best be described in terms of game-theory. Game theory imagines an undefined number of potentially co-operative events occuring between groups/individuals. The outcomes, cooperative or defective, and the subjective estimates of rewards/penalties recieved after each consecutive itteration remembered by both.

The most successful strategy found so far in simulations is one in which any particular individual is inclined to cooperate as a default, then, even should they be betrayed, forgive their betrayer once before retaliating. A population of this type prospers, and more importantly, is fairly immune to invasion by more selfish strategies.

I would propose that each and every human is running what they call the above: "a tit for two tats" - with one proviso, that they only run this strategy when they identify the individual(s) they are with as "one of us".

This us/them distinction wells from not any particular instinct toward racisim, though racial/linguistic markers are certainly the most obvious dividers of people, but from instinctive estimations of "wether or not we are likely to encounter this person, or this type of person, again." This estimation is critical, because in a one-off encounter, reward-wise, it is always more rewarding to back-stab, and always safer to instinctively believe your opponent will back-stab you.

ie: this instinctive mutual mistrust between two individuals of markedly different races or groups is an adaptive trait - bred into us right to the bone.

* Engineered then, to be co-operative, but in an instinctively biased fashion: the degree of cooperation mediated by -

I: Kin-selection, nepotism: the amount of shared genes.
II: The degree to which individuals count themselves as included in eachother's groups.
III: Sexes of group members.
IV: Past histories between group members.
V: Positions of social hierarchy: how much we believe an individual, aided now, will be able to return the favour later.

* The maximum number of people we can easily relate ourselves to, and the maximum self-policing size of a group, according to Dunbar's corelation of brain-capacity to social grouping in primates is somewhere between 100-200 people, a figure born out through history as the managable number of Centurians, or squads of modern soldiers, also in the groupings of some of the calmer religious sects existing today, and in some of the more novel company management systems.

* Any society participating within a material economy will, in times of peace, be driven to become isolate, selfish and ignorant of consequence in order to support that economy, else that society will become fodder for a greater. In hardship we are required to become adult; in plenty, we are forced to remain children.

* Any form of fairly elected government of short duration cannot move overtly against its largest demographic and remain in power. This almost inevitably creates a tyranny of the weak. And of course, that power must corrupt us, is too hackneyed a phrase almost to even mention: Power protects and nurtures at once both self and progeny, it cannot help but corrupt us.

As I see it, throughout our lives we build in our heads a 'country of the mind'. The topography of this country shifts and alters as we travel through life and experience the outcomes of many, many events, both good and bad, ecstatic or agonising.




This dynamic, ever-changing model we hold is in a great many aspects, ourselves: the elusive self we have built up over the years. We become living cyphers for every experience we have ever had, and thus the path between 'what we want' and 'what we achieve', as you can see in the (extremely simplified) illustration above becomes different, sometimes wildly, from individual to individual, because each individual's country of the mind is different, indeed unique in detail.

Each 'desire-marble' dropped, however mundane and common in nature - 'speak to that girl over there' for example, something everyone does - follows a different path over the ground, depending onto which person it is dropped, and produces a different behavioural end-point, unique to the person in question.

However, some drives, attractive or repulsive - sex and death for example, but also a great many more - remain points of commonality between individuals, whatever cultural or ethnic factors may divide them.

It is these points, these common attractors and aversions, that we must locate, identify and use, to alter ourselves and eachother.

...Continued...