The DNA Test Experiment

[Kink]

The other day I had a conversation with a friend about borders, nationality, and citizenship. The question he asked me stemmed from this:

"But if you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere. You don't understand what citizenship means." - Theresa May during Brexit. My friend's question was "how do you interpret that and do you agree?"

My response to that is below:

response

Britain, especially, has a history of colonialism. I'm not here to debate whether that is good or bad, but it does translate into the mindset of the political parties and the older citizens. Citizenship and sovereignty are imbedded in Britain. If we pursue the question "do you agree with her statement as a fundamental principle" and ask "is citizenship a fundamental attribute of what it means to be a member of society?" Then the answer seems to point to yes.

However if we try to look at the scope of what it means to be a human and look past politics and patriotism, then for a human to say they're a citizen of the world is almost a meta understanding of what it means to share an earth. The question is, does this meta understanding mean that culture and epistemic differences are downplayed by saying there is no valid citizenship or socio-nation? Or does that mean that beyond that of sovereignty and borders that there is the larger, more abstract view that humans are meant to work as one and retain important differences?

Do borders decide our societies? Yes. Should they? That's the question. And I think it's a very difficult one to answer.

Anyway, I felt that the context of that is going to help the way I view this upcoming video that I want to share. I normally never make threads in here but after my friend asked my this question, I became intrigued. The scope of the sociological ramifications this could have would be huge if accepted as common practise, whether for good or bad.

http://en.newsner.com/biased-strang...dn-t-judge-others-on-their-looks/about/family

Check out the video. What do you think? How did this make you feel?

 

[Cresselia~~]

I remember seeing adverts of this DNA test.
Their conclusion is that no one can be exactly pure blooded, as everyone to a certain extent is mixed. Which is very interesting.

Though I'd personally separate race from culture.
I believe , that in an idealistic world, you'd choose where you want to live and what culture to learn from, and I personally follow many white/ black Japanese people's Youtube. Being able to choose a culture you like is a good thing, and may not necessarily mean you hate your own.

But that said, in a realistic world, some cultures will be way more popular than the others.
If you allow everyone in the world to choose, the vast majority of the people will be flooding into either USA or Europe, and neither USA nor Europe has the capacity to take them all.
Very few people would choose Asia, South America or Africa.

That's why, in a capitalism world, USA or Europe would choose which people to let in, ie: only the most capable of earning money would be allowed in.

Ideally, we could wait for Asia and Africa to develop, and then abolish the borders.
They are showing good results. Number of middle class people have tripled in Africa from the last 3 decades.
Then there's Brazil, that's obviously looking good too.

I'd wait for the world's wealth to be more balanced in each country before thinking about abolishing borders, because unfortunately, doing it now is not possible.

==========

I'm not sure if I'm on topic.
If I'm not, please delete.

 

[Chou Toshio]

I'd really like to make a post digging into the guts of the identity/citizenship/politics topic itself, but since you have framed this discussion in terms of genes/evolution, here's a bit of input there:

If you look at human DNA, we are incredible non-diverse. At the onset of our species (it's emergence from the previous species that had previously given rise to Neanderthal and other modern human species), Homo sapiens sapiens emerged from literally only a few hundred people making up an original group that survived a big die-off of hominids in Africa. They then spread out. There is genetic results that at least in Europe some of other population's DNA (neanderthal) was to a small degree incorporated into ours, but we're all descendants of less than a few hundred related individuals. Compared to chimps or gorillas, humans are incredibly lacking in genetic diversity.

That said, our instincts are not based on those genetic truths of similarity, but on the genes closest to the individual. All our instincts, drive to compete, to survive, and build for ourselves and our tribes are based solely on pushing the genes of the individual, with no regard for "species" (because species is never constant in evolution). What is absolute is only the passing of physical genes of the individual.

This is how the instincts of all species are shaped. So just because we all come from an original tribe doesn't mean that our instincts for tribalism would be any different. I generally think that people have to embrace the "animal" that is humanity in order for us to create societies that work for us. While philosophy, science, and society might have evolved through leaps and bounds through history and culture, our base instincts are the same. Our brains are wired essentially the same as at the onset of humanity. We are functionally the same creature, and it's been too short a time for biological evolution to catch up at all with cultural evolution. So we need to figure out constantly how to make rules and systems realistic for appeasing the base nature of humanity, while also trying to move towards progress that logically betters the world for humanity. It's tough.

 

[aVocado]

Our brains are wired essentially the same as at the onset of humanity. We are functionally the same creature, and it's been too short a time for biological evolution to catch up at all with cultural evolution.

Could that actually be a thing though? biological evolution being driven by cultural evolution?

I've never even heard of cultural evolution before, but googling it gives me the impression that it's an actual thing. I'll have to look more into it later

 

[Chou Toshio]

Could that actually be a thing though? biological evolution being driven by cultural evolution?

I've never even heard of cultural evolution before, but googling it gives me the impression that it's an actual thing. I'll have to look more into it later

Humans are living things, I have no doubt at all that natural selection is still very much working on us in order to better suit us to our environments, diets, etc. However, as mentioned, cultural evolution is faster than biological, and that gap is unlikely to narrow.

I mean, all it comes down to is that besides a very limited pool of animals that can relay information with language, information could only be passed between generations via instinct-- information passed through genes, instead of language/ideas. Animals that have language (like humans, like orcas) have the potential to transform their behavior and environmental circumstances much faster than their genes are able to adapt.

 

[verbatim]

Could that actually be a thing though? biological evolution being driven by cultural evolution?

Yes, a pretty common example is cultural opinions on how many children a family should have, especially within races/castes of a society.

 

[Twisted Kneebar]

Could that actually be a thing though? biological evolution being driven by cultural evolution?

I've never even heard of cultural evolution before, but googling it gives me the impression that it's an actual thing. I'll have to look more into it later

Biological evolution takes a very long time meanwhile cultural evolution happens rapidly. Only people who probably maintained their own cultures with very few changes over several thousand years are hunter gatherers. Compare your culture and any culture from today to the last 50 years. Then 50 years before that. And 100 and so on. Lots of places have the native culture completely wiped out and replaced with the culture of invaders.