Street Juice
Platinum Member
If the Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest view of the world is accurate, then, among humans, the normal state of affairs is inter-group conflict. Genocide, far from being a moral failing, is a strategy for success. Nepotism is encouraged and admired and instilled in the young as a virtue. Someone advocating for universal human rights is an object of scorn in a Darwinian world.
In our modern American culture, it is clear, our group has rejected that Darwinian world view. Genocide is condemned, nepotism is a vice, and even the mildest reservation expressed for the idea of universal human rights is sanctioned. We are thoroughly convinced by the obvious rightness of our group's position concerning other groups, and the idea that some other group might hold a different view is so fantastic it renders the other group too alien to even think about seriously. It should be obvious, however, that just because our group has taken the non-Darwinian stance to be self-evident, it doesn't necessarily mean all groups have.
It should also be obvious that humans can be grouped in many different ways. We can be grouped by nation, of course, and by ethnicity, race, language, religion, and so on. In fact, each of us is a member of multiple groups, which overlap each other in myriad ways. Until now, the nation grouping has seemed the most adaptable to encompassing the widest variety of members of other groups. But with nationalism under attack in the United States, nationalism is losing its holding power and flexibility; other groupings are rising to preeminence.
What if in the United States, among these rising groupings, there is some racial group, or ethnic group, or other kind of group that does not see the non-Darwinian view of the world that all men are created equal as self-evidently correct? What if this group holds the position that, in fact, it is self-evident all men are not created equal? That genocide is self-evidently a strategy for success? That nepotism is self-evidently a virtue? That the doctrine of universal humans rights is as self-evidently absurd as the belief among Chinese peasants that eating the penis of a clay religious icon will help a woman conceive?
If there were such a group, how would you identify it?
In our modern American culture, it is clear, our group has rejected that Darwinian world view. Genocide is condemned, nepotism is a vice, and even the mildest reservation expressed for the idea of universal human rights is sanctioned. We are thoroughly convinced by the obvious rightness of our group's position concerning other groups, and the idea that some other group might hold a different view is so fantastic it renders the other group too alien to even think about seriously. It should be obvious, however, that just because our group has taken the non-Darwinian stance to be self-evident, it doesn't necessarily mean all groups have.
It should also be obvious that humans can be grouped in many different ways. We can be grouped by nation, of course, and by ethnicity, race, language, religion, and so on. In fact, each of us is a member of multiple groups, which overlap each other in myriad ways. Until now, the nation grouping has seemed the most adaptable to encompassing the widest variety of members of other groups. But with nationalism under attack in the United States, nationalism is losing its holding power and flexibility; other groupings are rising to preeminence.
What if in the United States, among these rising groupings, there is some racial group, or ethnic group, or other kind of group that does not see the non-Darwinian view of the world that all men are created equal as self-evidently correct? What if this group holds the position that, in fact, it is self-evident all men are not created equal? That genocide is self-evidently a strategy for success? That nepotism is self-evidently a virtue? That the doctrine of universal humans rights is as self-evidently absurd as the belief among Chinese peasants that eating the penis of a clay religious icon will help a woman conceive?
If there were such a group, how would you identify it?
