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Dilbert_X wrote:

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Disputed and frequently twisted.

Looking at it from a "common sense" perspective for a moment, how often do you think ancient man encountered humans of vastly differing ethnic makeups that this would have become genetically hardwired? Why aren't more people racist today? Why don't you hate Asian women? Or maybe you do, I dunno. Don't you just treat them like sex objects?

It's probably easy to think racist tendencies are inherent when you spend your whole life immersed in them.

When ancient man encountered humans of vastly different ethnic makeup one side was typically annihilated.

Its not about hate, its about your tribe dominating the other tribe.

more arrant fucking nonsense taking from the ‘vague historical generalisations from someone who doesn’t read history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, or anything relevant toolbox’.

‘we wiped out neanderthals so we must be racist everywhere across all times universally’ is fucking laughable. nevermind that there’s clear signs of interbreeding and mixing between early hominids (we have traces of neanderthal DNA). NEVERMIND that you’re talking about effectively different SPECIES not race. race as a category and racism as an ideology are relatively modern. ‘ancient man’, whatever that vague term means - neolithic? ice age? bronze age? - didn’t look at one another in typologies defined by race.

where does this ‘annihilation’ occur when ‘vastly different’ peoples meet? where are the systematic, racially motivated genocides? it didn’t happen between early european civilisations and arabs, the near east, or africa. it didn’t happen between marco polo’s europe and india or china. it didn’t happen between the dutch, portuguese, british, or americans and japan. in all these cases, establishing trade seemed to be more important than racial annihilation. it happened in the new world and americas almost incidentally due to the unknown happenstance of disease. rome salting carthage or the spanish crown razing the incas were about trade and expansion, not race.

or do i have to point out to you yet again that the early jewish history as outlined in the talmud/old testament is legend, not history, and chiefly trumpets the regional power struggles of peoples ... which we would today regard to be commonly of the same genetic race?

tribal warfare is not typically motivated by racial antagonism. you do realise there have been continually warring tribes in the amazon that are the same ‘race’, right? and don’t you always accuse ‘africans’ of savagery because they’re forever, er, at war? (let’s not even get into your theses about the monolithic ‘black’ race again).

if you’re going to be racist, or more appositely xenophobic, then at least own it and be clear-headed about it. leaning on vague and grandiloquent-sounding bullshit like ‘we have been racist since ancient man’ is not good enough. you’re a grown adult.

Last edited by uziq (2020-12-14 01:32:47)

all this talk of ‘instinct’ is bogus. you’re talking about the complex inter-relations, first between tribes, which are complex enough groupings (100 years of professional anthropology will attest to that), but then in a glissando passage quickly between nations, kingdoms, empires: everything. you justify power dynamics between great nations based on ‘instinct’ as if you’re talking about dogs sniffing one another. it is fucking moronic my guy.

and pathetic too. good for you we’re in a books thread. you can begin an education in earnest today.

we don’t know why neanderthals went extinct btw. there are only hypotheses, obviously. only you approach it with the stink of racist-superiority bullshit. only you, the ignorant, act so sure about something that every expert must heavily hedge and caution. there are traces of neanderthal DNA in modern populations of homo sapiens, again, which would suggest some interbreeding at least. not a racial cataclysm in which we murdered the ‘different’ group. species go extinct for multiplicand reasons.

or is natural selection and evolution still a ‘racist’ process in your godbrained-scientist mind, too? you are so fucking victorian that it’s laughable.

Last edited by uziq (2020-12-14 01:54:01)

Harmonious balance invariably has conflict at every periphery, its why the world is divided into countries.



H I S T O R Y !!

Anyway, your theory is nonsense and has been replaced by a new one - survival of the fittest

Dilbert would you be surprised to learn that multi-ethnic and multi-racial governance has actually been the norm throughout history? Ancient Sumer, egypt and carthage were multi ethnic. Rome was multi ethnic. Charlemagne's kingdom was multi ethnic. Every empire that followed, which by the way existed for longer periods than the current state of affairs in international relations, was multi ethnic. I can go on.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-12-14 03:46:20)

the funniest thing about all this cod-scientific discourse (and there are many funny things) is just the staggering lack of self-awareness and analysis applied to it, even within his own life.

so you're racist 'because instinct', something biologically grounded, and you're a fan of importing (problematic) categories and hierarchies from the lower-mammalian kingdom. but doesn't that make you, as a childless man, living at home, moaning about his managers at work constantly, a 'beta male' or a 'runt' or whatever? aren't you a biological failure by your own august and objective scientific measure?

'it's survival of the fittest, baby', says a man who hasn't managed to secure a mate, has no offspring, and who whimpers and moans about his superiors at work. why aren't you a red-blooded male with many issues? why haven't you scaled the corporate-career hierarchy to become 'top dog'? why isn't dilbert the chairman or boss of his own engineering consultancy? instead you pay women for sex, you have no interest in procreation, and you moan about your managers at work because you elect to be at a subservient worker drone. i take it that you view yourself thoroughly as a 'beta male', right? because according to these iron and immutable hierarchies, present in nature, for all time, throughout our species, you are a beta and a failure.

'i'm racist because it's pure instinct, simples', says the man who has refuted or 'tamed' his own instinct to have children. what, you can overcome the most basic biological drive of any life-form on earth, reproduction, but you can't behaviourally or intellectually correct course on your racism? hmmm.

but wait, you say, life is more complicated than that, the reasons for why you've failed at xyz are complex and, besides, you have just reasons, etc, biology isn't all, after all. so it's complicated and not at all scientifically literalist and darwinist when it applies to the bungalow-bound homelife of mr. dil-derp, but you can treat entire races of people like shit also 'because science'?

Last edited by uziq (2020-12-14 04:52:18)

Larssen wrote:

Dilbert would you be surprised to learn that multi-ethnic and multi-racial governance has actually been the norm throughout history? Ancient Sumer, egypt and carthage were multi ethnic. Rome was multi ethnic. Charlemagne's kingdom was multi ethnic. Every empire that followed, which by the way existed for longer periods than the current state of affairs in international relations, was multi ethnic. I can go on.

You're promoting the Romans as an example of how everyone can stay within their borders and get along with the rest of the world without conflict?
Wow.

Didn't the Romans conquer more territory through warfare and brutalise and enslave more people than any other culture in history?

Dilbert_X wrote:

Larssen wrote:

Dilbert would you be surprised to learn that multi-ethnic and multi-racial governance has actually been the norm throughout history? Ancient Sumer, egypt and carthage were multi ethnic. Rome was multi ethnic. Charlemagne's kingdom was multi ethnic. Every empire that followed, which by the way existed for longer periods than the current state of affairs in international relations, was multi ethnic. I can go on.

You're promoting the Romans as an example of how everyone can stay within their borders and get along with the rest of the world without conflict?
Wow.

Didn't the Romans conquer more territory through warfare and brutalise and enslave more people than any other culture in history?

The roman empire did not function for over a thousand years by brutally repressing everyone. There was a distinct roman elite, for sure, but many conquered peoples were integrated in the empire through smart power (sharing) politics and by allowing them influential positions within the army and provincial governance. It was often non-romans who were out there defending the roman borders, and several famous roman army units were also exclusively foreigners. Some emperors were even born in peripheries like spain.

Most importantly, people who were conquered were often allowed to live as they had before the romans came. There was no strong imposition of some uniform roman culture on the rest of the world. This and the aformentioned elements have been key to long-lasting empires. Yes, rome was violent and still repressive, but they were effective in building consensual governance across an enormous territory.

Lastly, what was most important in that time was your family ties & allegiance not your specific ethnicity or 'nationality' (didn't exist back then, this is an anachronism). Rome was ruled by powerful families, most of all.

Larssen wrote:

Lastly, what was most important in that time was your family ties & allegiance not your specific ethnicity or 'nationality' (didn't exist back then, this is an anachronism). Rome was ruled by powerful families, most of all.

Dilbert_X wrote:

For 'race' you can interchange ethnic or cultural group, or species, or whatever you like. Any grouping instinctively wants to dominate any other group.

And the romans certainly did dominate.

I think the point was that the Roman Empire is an older example of multiple cultures able to function with, more or less, cohesion. Not, as you suggest, that it was being presented as some paragon of modern sensibilities.

Also, the notion of "survival of the fittest" extended all the way up into societal context is a strangely twisted, self-destructive emotional display coming from a childless immigrant voluntarily living at home with his parents. "Let me post some lions beating each other up, and there! Totally relatable, argument in the bag."

1) Uziq is not constantly bloviating about master races and sub races.
2) Again, nobody's suggesting that the Roman Empire was gumdrops and lollipops. You don't even respect history. Why do you insist on constantly making all these (off base) historical pronouncements?
3) Twisted, and highly misrepresented. Attractive as a way for racists to feel better about their racism. A great way to shrug off the fact that it's a learned behavior that can grow or change with age, education, and exposure. "We can't help it! Inevitability! We're HaRd WiReD!" Piteous.

Suggested reading:

Are We Born Racist? A New Israeli Study Has Some Surprising Answers
Is racial discrimination innate or learned? Are humans programmed to prefer their own group over others? Prof. Gil Diesendruck of Bar-Ilan University’s Psychology Department and Gonda Brain Research Center tries to answer these questions.

Robert Kurzban, who worked with Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, some of the founders of ‘evolutionary psychology,’ argues that racism in the sense of discrimination on the basis of race is a wholly modern phenomenon. Ancient man lived in a world in which he only rarely, if ever, encountered people from another race and with an appearance much different from his own, so the human brain could not have evolved to distinguish between races. Thus, differentiation and discrimination among races is not something inherent in us.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Funny, uziq is a childless wage slave living in a bedsit in a ghetto in a provincial backwater, but we're talking about culture generally so do individual circumstances really contribute to the debate?

The Roman empire isn't really a great example of people getting along in peace and harmony, I really don't know what your point is.

Everyone on earth is racist and tribal and has been since the dawn of time. Pretending its some kind of aberration which only afflicts privileged white people is intellectually corrupt.
Now everyone sees an advantage in bashing white western culture and displacing them. And we're stupid enough to lie down and be walked over.

of course i’m childless, i’m 30 and not yet intending to settle down. you however have missed the boat and ended up in last place. there’s nothing wrong with not having children, of course, but for someone who keeps banging on about ‘instinct’ and ‘a threat to our race’, evidently you’re doing very little else on ‘instinct’ to ‘preserve’ said race. i’m asking you for consistency, not comparing your life to mine. i don’t care how expensive your house is or how many children you have, you idiot. i don’t know you from adam.

bristol is britain’s most sought-after property bubble at the moment. my ‘bedsit’ has 2 bedrooms and is worth about £300k. not a mansion but certainly not a garret, either. it's a modern apartment in the BS1 central postcode, pretty simple really. not that it’s relevant to the discussion at all. i’m asking you why YOU, for all your talk of genetic and instinctual inevitability, can seemingly easily sidestep the call of procreation - you can intellectually review it and say ‘no thanks’ - but then in the same breath argue that your toxic views on race are ‘inevitable’. that’s just fucking dumb. so we're smart enough and can use individual reason, or be acculturated or whatever, out of base instinctual behaviour when it comes to some things, but not racism?

dilbert, for all your affectations of being the resident scientist here, the simple truth is that you’re not a scientist at all. you’re a technician with some boorish opinions. you might have once upon a time ‘done’ scientific research, maybe even at one of the very best schools, but it’s quite evident that in the intervening 20-30 years, you’ve been doing a helluva lot more tabloid reading than ‘science’. you bloviate and talk utter bollocks, dressed up in the thinnest veneer and suggestion of scientism: ‘instinct’, ‘historical fact’, ‘survival of the fittest’. it’s a salmagundi of pop-science morsels that add up to nothing other than gas and audible indigestion, barely concealing your raw prejudices. scientists can say when they don’t know something; scientists can say when the picture is unclear; professional scientists generally practice a good, ethical approach, a ‘whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’ approach.

the simple fact is that science doesn’t tally with your views. what you are frequently claiming as ‘objective fact’ is 19th century cod-science: all the social darwinism, the evolutionary biology, the survival of the fittest stuff, transposing the animal kingdom directly onto modern industrial society. it’s as out of date as children getting mangled in mills. very laissez-faire capitalist stuff. a slight whiff of coal and cordite about it.

the simple fact, really, is that what you are venturing, time and time again, are not objective ‘facts’ or ‘observations’ about ‘history’ (about which, yet again, you have a waterstones’ bestseller shelf understanding), but POLITICAL opinion. you try to present your politics as science, again a 19th century craze used to justify any number of wholly political ideologies and institutions (like imperialism, which is about as natural, instinctual and inevitable as any other mode of government, which is to say not at all).

and, and here’s the rub, political opinions are frequently a composite of emotions, not facts. and it seems to me that the predominant emotions expressed in all your political blague are bitterness, fear, and resentment. that’s why it’s so easy for people to counter your posts with pithy observations about your life and living situation. i mean, look at you! pontificating on the clash of civilisations and the helter skelter race apocalypse, obsessed with brown-skinned grooming gangs and ‘our innocent despoiled white girls’, whilst you’re a childless, bitter shut-in. trying to dress it up as science, because you got an engineering degree in 1983, just isn’t good enough old chap. everyone else here seems remarkably well-adjusted, open, tolerant, and even curious about the world, by contrast. but, okay, 'shame' me some more about not having children at 30. i'm too busy thinking about moving across the world for a new experience. i'm not carrying any hate or suspicion in my baggage. derp derp.

Last edited by uziq (2020-12-17 04:25:18)

lmao we're really at the level of jordan peterson's 'human society is like lobster society' argument. hahahahah.

'ants bite intruders on their nest so therefore i can treat my indian taxi driver like shit'.

The point predictably sails over your head as an opportunity to gripe about Jews is dangled under your nose. Actually read the article, though. It talks about the tendency of people to separate in groups, though what lines are created can be arbitrary. This is the point I'm making when I call your "racism is hard-wired" bunk, bunk.

But look at you as well, living in Australia (yet another land stripped from indigenous people) calling an Israeli psychology professor false because ... he's an Israeli. A+ job, derp.

Honestly who cares if you tipped your cab driver in the face of your painfully bigoted rants against him later. Similar to a boorish patron trying to play grab-ass with a waitress only to then say "but I left a tip, why are you picking on me!" when confronted about it.