Are different groups of people actually different? It is a question that we don’t seem to want an answer to. How much does it matter about differences? We confuse difference with value judgement. If your unit of measurement is thin or fat and your value centers on size of feet then your measurement has nothing to do with your hierarchy. If we can accept that individuals are different then why do we have a hard time accepting that groups of people are different.
We acknowledge that breeds of animals have certain characteristics. I am not an animal person so I really have no insight into most but I have noticed a few things about dogs. We had a beagle. We only had it for a short time because the beagle had only one purpose in life, to get out and seek the impossible dream. If the door was open a crack the beagle was gone. She was a good dog in a general sense and got along with us just fine but she was a roamer. Later we got a lab. She was our dog. If she somehow got left outside she would sit by the front door waiting to get back into our aura. Were these characteristics of the dog breeds? I think so.
Can you say the same thing about people? I really don’t know. Most subcultures of North American Indians were nomads or semi-nomads. Was this a racial characteristic or just a stage. You had a few tribes, such as the Pueblo, who were stationary. In Europe you had tribes that started out as nomads and eventually settled down. Could you breed for wanderlust in people, you know, make them beagles. It would be a long range project because people live so long and take so long to develop.
We have seen increases in how tall people are in a few generations. We can see that some genes are combined and others remain a selection. What could be bred for? How much of what you see is learned and how much is genetic? And of course the big question that science forgets to ask, “Just because we can does that mean that we should?”
To be continued...
homo unius libri
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Comments are welcome. Feel free to agree or disagree but keep it clean, courteous and short. I heard some shorthand on a podcast: TLDR, Too long, didn't read.