Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Just So We Know


















Just so we know - and understand, there's a significant segment of people in this society of European descent who believe they are racially superior and that lesser evolved 'races' who can't make it in this dog eat dog world will remain, poor, under-educated and lost - until they die off [1].
They believe this will keep the gene pool of humanity strong and that's the way nature wants it. They believe this isn't really racism, it's just natural selection, the survival of the fittest. But this notion is actually the very core of racism; it's not natural - and most importantly, it's a falsehood.






These persistent 19th and 20th century ideas are rooted in Darwinism but they are actually a perversion of an already questionable theory. Darwin believed organisms are descended from one, or several common ancestors and have diversified from this original stock into all the variety we see. He believed those individuals with heritable traits better suited to the environment will survive and have more opportunities to reproduce and their offspring will also benefit from the heritable, advantageous character. So over time these variants will spread through the population.


Darwin himself credited his so-called discovery of evolution to Parson Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), who claimed that mankind faces "scarce, limited resources," and that human population growth will sooner or later outgrow those fixed resources. 

Darwin emphasized his dependence on Malthus right in the introduction to his 1859 book The Origin of Species, whose full title is On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life:

“I happened to read for amusement Malthus on population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence…it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.”  
-Darwin



These ideas were a reflection of the social and political climate of Europe at the time. A time of brutal violence and struggles for power, resources and survival. Coming out of the Middle ages with it's sadistic inquisitions, despotic kings, corrupt Church, devastating Black Plague and harsh feudalism, Europe was just beginning to spread its worldview around the world in search of more wealth and resources to exploit.

Charles Darwin



Malthus just happened to be the official chief economist for the British East India Company; the largest colonizing monopoly the world had ever seen, with an army in the late 18th and early 19th centuries that was larger than the army of the British government itself.

Malthus' view was a necessary theory for those associated with the East India Company because, as they inventoried Earth, it offered an incentive for them to have the food and the resources for themselves to the exclusion of other people. It began to create a global "us against them" mentality.











Darwin, an associate of Malthus with many colleagues in the East India Company, assumed the same view that those who were fit survived and those who weren't, presumably, didn't survive.

 Darwin wrote:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes ... will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla  (Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 2nd edition, New York, A L. Burt Co., 1874, p. 178).
As John Koster notes about Darwin's view on race, he: 'never considered the 'less civilized races' to be authentically human.' From here, these racial ideas spread- designating black people as subhuman and closest to the apes.
Francis Galton ‘was among the first to recognize the implications for mankind of Darwin’s theory of evolution. He believed that talent, character, intellect, etc., were all inherited from one’s ancestors as was also any lack of these qualities. Thus, the poor were not hapless victims of their circumstances, but were paupers because they were biologically inferior. Galton believed that humans, like animals, could and should be selectively bred. In 1883, he coined the term ‘eugenics’ [Greek: εύ (eu) meaning ‘well’ and γένος (genos) meaning ‘kind’ or ‘offspring’] for the study of ways of improving the physical and mental characteristics of the human race. Galton believed that if inherited, human traits could be identified and measured, these would then be a basis for the systematic, selective breeding of superior traits. His experiments could be termed the very first attempts to establish a standardized intelligence test( I.Q test).
Books arose such as A Civic Biology by George Hunter. Hunter divided humanity into five races and ranked them according to how high each had reached on the evolutionary scale, from ‘the Ethiopian or negro type’ to ‘the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America’. (George William Hunter, A Civic Biology: presented in problems ((New York: American Book Co., 1914)).


 It was English philosopher and biologist Hebert Spencer who articulated the phrase 'Survival of the fittest' derived from Darwin's 'struggle for existence' or survival of the best adapted. Spencer originated the concept of Social Darwinism. Spencer thought evolution had a direction; from simple to complex from inferior to superior. He proposed that society was the product of change from lower to higher forms, just as in the theory of biological evolution, the lowest forms of life are said to be evolving into higher forms. Spencer claimed that man's mind had evolved in the same way from the simple automatic responses of lower animals to the process of reasoning in the thinking man.

Okay, now besides being offensive to contemporary sensibilities or 'morally wrong',  how are all these ideas and their conclusions grossly false and fundamentally innacurrate?



First, a concept based on the belief that all the diversity in life we see is about conflict, 'the survival of the fittest,' or a struggle of individuals or races for existence is seriously flawed. It is too narrow. Nature doesn't work that way. If we look closely and honestly, we see that nature is largely cooperative and symbiotic (indicating mutual interaction between species). Consider the insect species that pollinate the plants, the exchange of vital gases between the plant and animal kingdom, the highly specialized communal societies of ants and honeybees; lionesses hunt together and share in the care of their young, fish rid other fish of harmful bacteria, and small birds protect each other from predators. 

Cooperation is part of nature down to the cellular level. Biologist Lynn Margulis has shown that humans, plants and animals are made up of cells that learned to cooperate long ago. Together they formed multicellular organisms. However, because so many senior scientists were stuck on the notion that relentless competition was the sole theme of life, Margulis had a very difficult time convincing her more senior academics that certain organelles within mammalian cells were once free living bacteria. But overtime Margulis' research and views came to be accepted. Cooperation is now seen as a primary creative force in biology. (Michod, 1999).

So to begin with, Darwinism's assumption that life is a competitive struggle to survive is flawed at its core. Symbiosis and cooperation exist everywhere in nature. [Natural selection can be used to explain gene flow or various heritable traits within a species but currently that's the extent of it's explanatory capacity.]


Second, even if this were true, Hebert Spencer, Thomas Huxley, the social Darwinists, and scientific racists supported the idea that the  "superior, more favored races would wipe out the savage less favored races." But where do we see this in nature?  Where do we see large snakes trying to drive smaller more harmless snakes into extinction? Where do we see lions trying to exterminate tigers, or leopards? There may be conflicts over territory or social roles, but they are usually solved with the minimum of violence, and never with a campaign to dominate and exterminate the other. Nothing similar to the British assaults on the Aborigines of Tasmania, and Australia. Nothing similar to the massacres and expulsions of Native Americans by European settlers.
Even assuming 'natural selection' is a valid and accurate view of the natural environment, what has transpired with eugenics, and racism is not natural selection but unnatural selection. It is the manipulation and control of the human environment in order to benefit Europeans. It is the confiscation, control, consumption and depletion of natural resources to the detriment not only of the other people of the world but all future populations (and all other animal and plant species). Those who believe in scientific racism intentionally developed a society which made it difficult (and at times illegal) for people of African descent to flourish and prosper. This isn't natural selection. It's just malicious greed and selfish cruelty - exhibited, ironically, by people claiming to be more civilized.


Third, the assumption that evolution (natural selection acting on random mutations) brings species from small to great or simple to complex isn't what the evidence is telling us. The underlying belief here is that even if Africans arose tens of thousands of years before Europeans (as we know them today), Europeans ultimately evolved out of Africans into a better, more advanced species. 

For example, at one time many scientists believed (and some still assert) the eye developed from simpler forms to the eyes we now possess. University of Chicago biology Professor Jerry Coyne wrote that human:
"… eyes did not suddenly appear as full-fledged camera eyes, but evolved from simpler eyes, having fewer components, in ancestral species." This dominant theory was outlined by Tufts University cognitive scientist, Daniel Dennett, who concluded that all eye evolution requires is a, "… rare accident giving one lucky animal a mutation that improves its vision over that of its siblings; if this improvement helps it to have more offspring than its rivals, this gives evolution an opportunity to raise the bar and ratchet up the design of the eye by one mindless step. And since these lucky improvements accumulate—this was Darwin’s insight—eyes can automatically get better and better and better, without any intelligent designer."


However, many kinds of eyes exist, but no real evidence of the progression of eye designs from simple to complex can be produced in the natural or fossil world. Examining the compound eye of an insect it can be noted that the eye consists of hundreds or more separate eyes which, in some ways is more complex than the human eye. The oldest eye in the fossil record, that of a trilobite, is a very complex faceted compound eye that dates back 540 million years ago.

Even the notion that human beings descended from a common ancestor that gave rise to chimpanzees and apes is largely speculative. All we know know is that species appear and some species become extinct, and we don't know why. This has been recognized by many evolutionary biologists such as Ernst Mayr who explained in the year 2000 that “[n]ew species usually appear in the fossil record suddenly, not connected with their ancestors by a series of intermediates.” Similarly, a zoology textbook observed that “Many species remain virtually unchanged for millions of years, then suddenly disappear to be replaced by a quite different, but related, form. Moreover, most major groups of animals appear abruptly in the fossil record, fully formed, and with no fossils yet discovered that form a transition from their parent group.” 

What convinced Darwin that we are related to apes is rooted in our similarities in terms of hands, feet, eyes, arms and attitude. This is called homology. Before Darwin, homology was defined by similarities in forms -although explained by reference to design or creation.

Darwin reformulated biology in naturalistic terms, and explained homology as the result of descent with modification from a common ancestor. Which has become a sort of proof (by assumption) of common ancestry. However, logically speaking once you define homology in terms of common ancestry you can't turn around and use it as evidence for common ancestry --without a mechanism that causes the change. So all we have now is what we started with - in some ways apes and chimpanzees seem to look like us. That's it. Without any further evidence we are just organisms that appear similar. And although much has been made about the fact that our DNA is only 1% different from chimps, the actual differences are vast:

17.4% of gene regulatory networks in the brain are unique to humans, our brains have approximately 89 billion neurons- 59 billion more than chimpanzees, chimps are resistant to malaria, and we aren’t, chimps have a great many more genes related to olfaction than we do, they are covered in hair (note- Africans are among the least hairy human groups), they have more alpha-hemoglobin genes and more Rh bloodgroup genes, and fewer Alu repeats, the tips of their chromosomes (Telomeres) contain DNA not present at the tips of human chromosomes.
 Far from being "but a hand-breadth away from our evolutionary cousins at the DNA level," the evidence shows that the genetic differences between humans and chimps amount to "35 million base-pair changes, 5 million indels (DNA instertions and deletions) in each species, and 689 extra genes in humans.

The simple comparison of gene percentages are misleading. Mice and humans both have about 30,000 genes - and share 99% of them- but the mouse genome is shorter than that of humans (2.5 billion letters compared with 2.9 billion). Our DNA is about 75% similar to that of a nematode, which is basically a small soil-dwelling worm. But of course, no one would suggest a nematode is 75% human.

The widespread belief, or myth, is that Africans descended from apes and then 'man' later evolved into the modern European. And that, therefore, Africans are closer to apes in development and intelligence than Europeans. (This myth in varying manifestations is cycled and re-cycled through popular hate and anti-hate media outlets and publications e.g., as posted here: http://www.authentichistory.com/diversity/african/3-coon/6-monkey/.
A high priest of Amun, Karnak,  Nubia, 25th Dynasty

But now let's look at what is actually known in terms of scientific and historical fact.

British paleoanthropologist, Chris Stringer is a leading scholar in the field of human origins. He explains that the "Out of Africa" model shows modern Homo sapiens arose in Africa about 180,000 years ago. Part of the African population of early modern humans spread from the continent into adjoining regions and eventually reached Australia, Europe, and the Americas (probably by 45,000, 40,000, and 15,000 years ago respectively). Regional ("racial") variation only developed during and after the dispersal.


In 1987, research on the genetic material called mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in living humans led to the reconstruction of a hypothetical female ancestor for all present-day humanity. This "Eve" was believed to have lived in Africa about 190,000 years ago. Further support for an "Out of Africa" model has come from genetic studies of nuclear DNA, which also point to a relatively recent African origin for present-day Homo sapiens. “Behaviorally and physically, we began our story there [in Africa]."


We can say that the shared (specific) features of Homo sapiens (e.g. globular braincase, small brows, chin) evolved first, in Africa, while most of our regional ('racial') traits were added much later.” 

In other words, anatomically modern human beings arose in Africa at least 180,000 years ago, [not half-monkeys or half-apes.] All human beings were African, and the changes we see only took place in the last 10,000 years or so.

 “Most of our regional ('racial') traits were added on to that modern template through the action of natural selection, sexual selection, founder effect and drift, as modern humans spread out to the regions where they are found today. Not much DNA is involved, and some striking-looking differences between populations could have evolved quite rapidly.”  ~ Chris Stringer



In 2005, a report came out on the 'evolution' of a gene for skin color that suggests Europeans lightened up recently, perhaps only 6000 to 12,000 years ago. This contradicts a long-standing hypothesis that modern humans in Europe grew paler about 40,000 years ago. According to molecular anthropologist Heather Norton of the University of Arizona, Tucson "The [evolution of] pale skin occurred long after the arrival of modern humans in Europe.”  Researchers made a major breakthrough in 2005 by discovering a gene, SLC24A5, that apparently causes pale skin in many Europeans. A team led by geneticist Keith Cheng of Pennsylvania State University (PSU) College of Medicine in Hershey found two variants of the gene that differed by just one amino acid. ‘The mutation in SLC24A5 changes just one building block in the protein, and contributes about a third of the visually striking differences in skin tone between peoples of African and European ancestry.’ said Cheng.


Then in 2008, a team of scientists tracked down a genetic mutation that lead to blue eyes. The mutation occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago- before then, there were no blue eyes. "Originally, we all had brown eyes," said Hans Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Copenhagen.
The mutation affected the so-called OCA2 gene, which is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives color to our hair, eyes and skin.
"A genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a 'switch,' which literally 'turned off' the ability to produce brown eyes," Eiberg said.

 http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22934464/ns/health-health_care/t/genetic-mutation-makes-those-brown-eyes-blue/#.Valiv_lViko




Visual fiction/propaganda. (There is no proven evolutionary connection between any of the proposed species on this chart. Also, consider, Africans are the original anatomically modern homo sapiens since at least 170,000 years before the appearance of pale Europeans. Yet, oddly, no Africans at all are indicated here.)
So there's no evidence in our past that we are closely related to apes. And there's no evidence of a long, gradual, developmental march forward from Africans to Europeans. As we see, the observable traits or phenotypical differences between 'black' and 'white' were caused by minor mutations that didn't add genetic information, but switched off genetic functions already in place. With this information in mind, it becomes clear that black people can never be considered sub-human or a subspecies of human - because we are humanity itself. We are the ocean, out of which all other streams of people have emanated.
Further, based on the way the natural selection theory works, nature is supposed to be paring down the black population because of our stated lack of fitness to survive the environment. However, we are seeing just the opposite happening. Even in this historically hostile environment structured essentially by people of European descent, the fertility rate of African Americans (2.1) is higher than that of whites, (1.8); with even higher rates of growth in Africa and the so-called Third World as compared to Europe.
 http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/05/17/explaining-why-minority-births-now-outnumber-white-births/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/11414064/How-Europe-is-slowly-dying-despite-an-increasing-world-population.html


Also, it's still not clear whether older fossils of ape-like hominins are truly human like members of the Homo family. The whole notion of transitional species is a matter of narrative rather than fact.

As acknowledged by Ernst Mayr:


"The earliest fossils of Homo, Homo rudolfensis and Homo erectus, are separated from Australopithecus by a large, unbridged gap. How can we explain this seeming saltation? {Saltation, from latin, saltus, "leap"}. Not having any fossils that can serve as missing links, we have to fall back on the time-honored method of historical science, the construction of a historical narrative."
 Ernst Mayr, What Makes Biology Unique?: Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 198.
In other words these are completely separate species that developed along their own lines as apparently apes have.  For years many thought man evolved from apes themselves but as the genetic history is showing apes have been apes for as long as modern humans have been human.
See,( First Chimp Fossils Found; Humans Were Neighbors

Cameron Walker for National Geographic News

August 31, 2005
Researchers have found the first reported chimpanzee fossils in Kenya's Rift Valley, providing the first physical evidence that chimpanzees coexisted with early human ancestors, known as hominins.

Finally, it's important to understand that the whole notion of superiority is thoroughly arbitrary.  We live in a world where it is becoming increasingly obvious that the earth and the all cosmos are part an undifferentiated, unified whole.



The notion of a separate organism is clearly an abstraction, as is also its boundary. Underlying all this is unbroken wholeness even though our civilization has developed in such a way as to strongly emphasize the separation into parts. –David Bohm (theoretical physicist) and Basil J. Hiley (quantum physicist), The Undivided Universe.
This idea was prominent in the societies of Ancient Egypt, traditional Africa, Native America, and in Eastern philosophy, but Western Europe developed under a more peculiar paradigm. Instead of a notion of divinity that was integral within all nature and humanity, God was seen as a magisterial entity sitting atop a great throne at the height of a highly structured hierarchy. This was called the 'Great Chain of Being'.

(See, http://www.innercivilization.com/2010/03/great-chain-of-being.html). 

For centuries Europeans saw the Universe as ordered in a linear sequence starting from the inanimate world of rocks. Plants came next, then animals, men, angels and, finally on top, God. The emergence of modern science and the Copernican Revolution is often considered to have dismantled The Great Chain of Being as a worldview. And as physicists continued to more accurately observe the structure of the universe, such linear, hierarchical structures continued to fall away. For example, James Lovelock has shown proof that the earth is one single organism that sustains itself; this is called the Gaia hypothesis.

"The evidence gathered in support of Gaia is now considerable but as is often the way of science, this is less important than is its use as a kind of looking glass for seeing the world differently, and which makes us ask new questions about the nature of Earth.




"If we are 'all creatures great and small,' from bacteria to whales, part of Gaia then we are all of us potentially important to her well being. We knew in our hearts that the destruction of a whole range of other species was wrong but now we know why. No longer can we merely regret the passing of one of the great whales, or the blue butterfly, nor even the smallpox virus. When we eliminate one of these from Earth, we may have destroyed a part of ourselves, for we also are a part of Gaia." ~ James Lovelock.

If all 'individual' organisms and organs are working together to sustain life what sense does it make to categorize one as superior or inferior to another; not to mention to try abuse and subjugate one or another on that basis. How would we rank our fingers? Is the middle finger inherently superior to the thumb? Is the left hand superior to the right hand? Is the brain superior to the heart? Are red blood cells superior to white blood cells? Naturally, these comparisons seem ridiculous because all of these organs work together for the body to function. This has been the picture the cultures mentioned above emphasized, and what Western science for the past 80 years is coming to realize.
Of course, one could ask, "does this mean there's nothing to the idea of inherent superiority?" Ultimately, as mentioned above the superiority/inferiority paradigm is an arbitrary notion, so any real assertion or attitude of superiority reveals more about the person making that assessment than it does about the object under scrutiny.


In the 1820s and '30s, a Philadelphia physician named Samuel G. Morton collected and measured hundreds of human skulls in order to confirm that there were differences among the races—in particular, a difference in brain size. Morton claimed that Caucasians had the largest  brains, averaging 87” cubic inches, Indians were in the middle and negroes had the smallest brains with an average of 78” cubic inches.
However, Morton had selectively reported data, manipulated sample compositions, made analytical errors and mis-measured skulls in order to support his prejudicial views on intelligence differences between different populations.

Georges Cuvier, the French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "Father of paleontology stated:
“The Negro race is confined to the south of the atlas. Its complexion is black, its hair frizzy, its cranium compressed, and its nose crushed; its prominent muzzle and its large lips obviously bring it closer to the apes: the tribes that compose it have always remained barbarous.”
Even today some look at the technological, military, industrial and commercial developments made by Europeans and use this as a standard to show that they must possess some kind of inherent superior intelligence. Again, this only shows a particular preference for a mode of life for some people, because if all of these developments are clearly leading to an unsustainable depletion and destruction of the very natural environment and life system we arise out of..how intelligent is this behavior?
Current science is showing that “intelligence” and brain capacity is not so much a feature of genetics and heredity, but is a feature of adaptation to the environment.
The brain proves to be very “plastic”. Neural plasticity or brain plasticity refers to changes in neural pathways and synapses due to changes in behavior, environment, neural processes, thinking, and emotions.
Neural pathways connecting in the Brain











Plasticity is a fundamental organizational feature of human brain function. Traditionally, the brain was thought to be hardwired following a critical period in development. However, it is now accepted that the brain has a remarkable capacity to modify its structural and functional organization throughout the life span, in response to changes in environmental input. This brain plasticity underlies normal development and maturation, skill learning and memory, recovery from injury, as well as the consequences of sensory deprivation or environmental enrichment.



Rather than being about skull shapes, brain size, or evolutionary development, it appears cognitive ability is a matter of culture, exposure, environment and an open, receptive mind. Instead of being something we possess, intelligence is proving to be something we access in response to the demands of our experiences and surroundings. So based on our environment and culture we see and define intelligence differently. 

When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:

They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned... . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.

Is this evidence of superior intelligence on the part of Columbus and the Spaniards or simply evidence of a mind warped by cruelty?

As acknowledged by English author Simon G. Powell:



"The entire web of life sustained itself for over 3.5 billion years. Clearly life must be doing something right.  [Yet], we have pretty much run amok and done as we pleased, plundering every possible biospherical resource with no thought of a sustainable morrow, rather like belligerent children running amok in a sophisticated playground and clueless about the various smart life principles that underlie their daily existence."

Another example of how intelligence is hardly a matter of racial heredity, for all that has been made of the "ingenious inventions" of Western science, we have to note that Isaac Newton and the traditions of Europe's early pioneering scientists learned from and were influenced by the Ancient Africans of Kemet (Egypt) and the writings that trickled into Europe from the Moors in Andalusia.
Copernicus said that he had arrived at his revolutionary insights by studying the secret writings of the ancient Egyptians 'including the hidden works of Thoth himself...' Kepler admitted that in formulating his laws of the planetary orbits he was merely 'stealing the golden vessels of the Egyptians'. Sir Isaac Newton stated that 'the Egyptians concealed mysteries that were above the capacity of the herd', such as 'the knowledge that the earth orbited the sun and not vice-versa'...
* Sir Isaac Newton: ‘It was the most ancient opinion that the planets revolved about the sun, that the earth, as one of the planets, described an annual course about the sun, while by diurnal motion it turned on its axis, and that the sun remained at rest’... Newton spent a significant part of his adult life deeply immersed in hermetic and alchemical literature (See, Newton's Alchemical Notes). 


Everywhere you look in natural reality, there is no evidence for European superiority based on any evolutionary model. It's either wishful thinking, a justification for predatory behavior, or propaganda. As long as some people are ruled by fear, greed and insecurity, these types of beliefs will continue.  It is simply our job not to buy into them - and to continue educate ourselves and stay informed.

[1]. ("The followers of Milton Friedman believe, not in democracy, not in the Social Contract, but in an everyman-for-himself philosophy. Every person has to compete within an economic zone where everything is for sale.  If you fail to compete on this narrow and specialized field, it is your fault. The government’s only role is to stage and facilitate economic warfare, the Darwinian survival of the fittest scenario." The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,  Naomi Klein, (2008); See also, http://archives.politicususa.com/2011/06/20/michael-prell-reinvents-social-darwinism-for-the-tea-party.html ; and http://www.politicususa.com/2012/04/05/economic-social-darwinism.html).