It's October and I feel it is time for an annual rant, and coming from a clip that discussed Confederacy, I found racism to be an interesting topic I'd like to dissect from a different viewpoint. I don't expect my rants here to have any readers, so they are largely meant for a practice in thought organizing, which I have some problems with. So, racism.
I think that, instinctively, majority of us will tell that racism is wrong. There is a distinct minority that will always say that racism is an opportunity. And then there are those that ask what racism means, and will then gladly fall into one or the other category, depending on cookies. Although a voting power with mass, I'd leave idiots aside here for now and focus on these two divided groups that argue for or against racism.
I am against racism, not because it is not a western value, or because it is illegal by treaties or declarations, or not because my mum and dad said its bad. I am against racism because it is a sad and demeaning way to treat another human being, I am naturally repulsed by it. And I think that, all sorts of papers and books set aside, majority of us are exactly that: naturally repulsed by the unfair treatment of others. I think that the only aspect that changes with time is how we approach the solutions to this repulsion. In a culture where slavery is normal, some of us would turn the head, others would try to help the slaves, when it doesn't bring themselves an immediate trouble.
I think that this ability to tell unfair treatment and unfair people apart from fair treatment and fair people is an evolutionary trait with many benefits, mainly allowing us to be more successful as a social group. And as a human being, regardless of how boring the actual reasons for it may be, it doesn't feel all that bad to know that you're a good person doing and thinking what is right.
However - and here is the divisive part - I do not think that such good-ness is the only trait surviving with evolution, in people. And here I am talking about that minority. Before I get into what I think that minority is, I'd like to actually explain in brief why they are a minority and will always be that: high concentration of people lacking a cooperative moral compass would collapse the species, the society. There are many examples to how that may come to be - or has, in closed societies - but, in simple and brief, its just not stable.
I am talking about opportunists and opportunism. Or parasitism. There are a clear type of people born among us that lack a cooperative moral compass, albeit knowing their own personal morals - or rights, rather - very well. Thieves, frauds, manipulators and professional beggars, and slave owners. The list likely goes on under which labels we recognize them, psychopaths even.
But I'll bring a markant example: in 1994 a large Estonian cruise ferry MS Estonia lost its stability and capsized, typically of such an accident there were practically no survivors, of ca 990 people 850 died. But the relevant example here is what happened as people tried to save themselves: later survivors would testify that there were groups of people that stole their jewelry as the ship was quickly sinking - chains were snapped from their necks, wrist watches and rings removed, and only then would they be freed so that they could continue their struggle for survival in the freezing waters. The faces of the thieves were later not spotted in the photographs of the survivors.
There are a lot of interesting stories of how people behave in the face of death, but usually they resort to their instinctive behavior, be it a strong desire to live, a compelling urge to just give up, or to maximize on the situation at the cost of the well-being of others.
A type of cuckoo people exist among us that do not mind lying or stealing if it gives them benefits, and one thing that they would love more than anything else at all is a personal slave.
Skin colour is just an excuse, a marker, a symbol of necessary difference, and if the skin colour is the same then we simply measure skulls and shape of ears and pin coloured stars on the shirts. Because there will always be those that want slaves, there will always be those that want your things, and there will always be those that will feed you any lie possible, just so that they can be better off. And they are there because it works. It just works.
Cuckoos are handsome, normal-looking birds, fairly large so not too boring to look at. They look like birds and do bird things, lay eggs and sit on nests - when nobody is looking. Because it works. They don't have to go through the trouble of hatching their eggs and feeding their young, let alone build the damn nest itself - it is all extremely tiresome. Instead, their young pop out of eggs in someone else's nest before the original eggs hatch, and merrily push the eggs - or the young that have managed to hatch - over the edge to their doom. (For an european this is the typical cuckoo behavior, but in the family in general such parasitism is practiced only by a "large minority" of cuckoos). Parasitism.
And thus we are divided into what I'd call Normal people, and Parasites. There is no scientific study on this hypothesis that I know of, and generally such traits are put on the account of bad genes, bad parenting or psychoticism - I think we just don't want to accept that some people just are born parasites, because they do have feelings, personality, and personal morals. It is just by chance that our feelings, personality or morals don't mean a damn thing to them, not as long as they don't benefit from it.
And then there are the idiots, the favourite food of every parasite, but as promised, we won't talk about them today. Let them be.
I will sign this rant with two illustrative images of two beautiful white people: