Spudboy100@aol.com wrote (23.11.2001/04:33) :
> (...) I feel no nationalist rage here, only an
> awareness that many Middle Easterners values are what is behind their own
> misery, poverty, inequalities, and injustices; (...)
I was watching a documentary about Mauritania some time ago. It showed
"desert libraries", little lost villages in the middle of the desert,
in which people preserve old books (ie try to avoid that they turn to
dust), take this occupation very seriously and seem to be content with
it. Some of them have lost the knowledge required to actually read the
books.
Though the people looked cordial and nice, I was struck by the
passivity implied. Of course there are librarians in Occident, too,
but they seem to be more useful, as none seemed to actually use the
"desert libraries"...
It occured to me that humanity is supposed to have been born in
Africa, and that some people stayed there, while other moved. I seem
to recall that it was in 35 000 BC that massive emigration to Europe
took place. A few centuries ago, Europeans emigrated to the US. Within
a few decades, some people may start to colonize space.
Each time such an emigration happens, isn't it likely that there be an
important genetic and cultural self-selection ? Those who stay tend to
be more traditional and conservative, content with what they have, and
not willing to take risks. Those who go tend to be more adventurous,
more confident in themselves, more eager to discover new things
(neophile as Max More would say).
Is it not imaginable that, by successive such migrations, an evolution
by self-selection happens (both genetic and cultural), such that you
can basically calculate the "adventurous index" based on the distance
from central Africa ?
Couldn't some kind of over-traditionnalism brought by this evolution
account for some of Africa and ME difficulties ? Couldn't there be
some kind of automatic hatred for the successful and not traditional,
some negative thinking, and avoidance of responsability (think of the
"altruism claim") explainable by such genetic-cultural differentiation
through absence of migration ?
Can't you actually correlate riches to the "adventurous" index : the
farther you go from central Africa, the more riches you find ?
Obviously Extropianism would appear as a new sort of migration
(actually translating into geographical migration if you consider
space) bringing a new such self-selection (whatever the further
changes Extropians actually perform on themselves).
Jacques
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