There’s no logical difference?
My particular health risks would beg to differ.
There’s differences, but basiing your ooi ion of someone on their race (bigotry and racism) is “philistine, backward thinking”.
There’s no logical difference, but there’s all the emotional difference in the world. We evolved to be suspicious of that tribe over on the other mountain. And well we should have been! They might just come over and slaughter us for our women and land.
Besides, we didn’t evolve to operate in groups larger than about 150. Past that, other people become objects in our minds. We can’t be truly close to more than that many people. What is the Monkeysphere? ( <- solid article on all this)
It’s why I understand the immigrant hate. Earth’s population has more than doubled in my lifetime. “Who ARE all these people and why are they from another tribe?! It was already crowded!”
Only way we get over the hate ironically consists of two seemingly opposed plans:
- We need less people, or at least spread 'em out. Mammals get freaky when crowded.
- Get different sorts of people mixed up. People hate the idea of immigrants, “Meh, the ones I know are great people. It’s those others who are bad guys.”
We’ll get there. There have been massive strides in my lifetime alone.
Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 4 days ago
shalafi@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Got me there! I was referring to the previous post saying we’re so genetically tight as to be scientifically indistinguishable as “races”. But yeah, a couple of base pairs coding for a misfolded protein is certainly a difference!
Maeve@kbin.earth 4 days ago
If we don't extinct ourselves and a bunch of other species, first. Maybe. The current race toward devolution gives me pause to doubt, however.
shalafi@lemmy.world 3 days ago
We’re not going extinct. Humans are the toughest beasts on the planet, the AR-15 of animals. Not the best at anything, not by a long shot, but we’re perfect multi-purpose lifeforms. Hell, we survive in every ecosystem on Earth. Insects can’t even claim that!
But yeah, I’ve commented enough in the past on what we’re taking out with us. Lived through seeing 73% of animals go POOF! since 1970, seen my local ecosphere crashing out over the last 5. I want to cry and scream! And no one is aware. When I talk about it IRL, people are captivated, “You’re right. Hadn’t noticed that. Wow.” You can see their gears turning, truly a new thought.
Maeve@kbin.earth 3 days ago
I do believe climate science. And I do think a nuclear world war would decimate humans. I do hold hope, and recognize very real potentialities.
And right back to football, video games, occasionally maybe standing somewhere publicly with a clever sign.
shalafi@lemmy.world 3 days ago
LOL, I’m a child of the Cold War. You can’t tell me about global thermonuclear war fears! :) Weirdly, us teens just accepted it was a thing that could happen any second. Whatever.
And don’t be so cynical! Educating people like that, showing them how things have changed for the worse in their experience has impact. But you gotta follow through with solutions they can work with! “And that’s why I don’t use pesticides or herbicides. Notice the frogs are back on our block? Seen all the dragonflies? Check out my ponds. They double as mosquito control!”
I think we’re missing the trees in this forest of doom. We’re powerless to fight the megacorps, and bitching about them only makes people feel more powerless. But we can teach people to chip away, give them actionable goals. Put the idea in their heads that, “This isn’t normal or right and you’ve experienced this!”, without being preachy. It’s hard.
I’ve seen massive social and environmental progress in my life. It all started with grass-roots talking points. Don’t say “fag”, don’t toss your cigarette fag (heh), pick up trash that’s not yours, and on and on.
Don’t lecture or lay blame, no guilt trips, talk about the problem in a personally, emotionally understandable way they’ll internalize, give them a solution they can act on right now, today.
Maybe I’m still an idealist. So it goes.