(September 18, 2015 at 8:49 am)Ben Davis Wrote:This brings up an interesting question - Is tribalism itself bad? We do try to protect our tribes, whether it is an ethnic, religious or friends group - I do protect my family and my girlfriend as much as I can whenever possible, and I consider that a natural expression of tribalism, even if it isn't based on race or ethnicity, it is certainly based on the fact we share the same bloodline (and as for my girlfriend we simply love each other). I am not using race as a biological concept, rather as an identity/cultural/historic concept. I seriously doubt we can create one single race within a generation because (1) Intraracial marriages are still the norm, at least because most people marry people of the same social class (2) the far-right will most likely grow in some European countries and nationalism can possibly take over again, even if this is not the case for the UK(September 18, 2015 at 8:21 am)paulpablo Wrote: But I think the point is that there's nothing you've said here that couldn't be said about dogs. All males can breed with every other dog breed so their are mixes, they're basically innumerable since you can get mixed breeds and they can breed with mixed breeds and the breeds become even more mixed.
A lot of dogs are artificially bred unlike humans are though which I'm guessing is why there's more of a clean cut difference between a lot of their breeds, grey hounds will pretty much always be fast, great danes will pretty much always be huge. But there is a bit of that in humans, pygmy tribes are pretty much always short, the fastest runners in the world are usually black people.
All of the examples you listed except for Aryan (I don't know what Aryan is) would be considered nationalities rather than race.
I think people need to be educated about the fact that racism is a negative expression of tribalism and nothing else. It served some purpose, in times past, when groups of people needed to protect their scares resources from other groups of people to ensure their own survival. Now o'days, the positive aspects of such tribalistic expression have become all but redundant. As Aractus has indicated, it's impossible to tell one 'race' from another, genetically, and the physiological differences are so few (and easily homogenised within a generation) as to be discounted as an accurate identifier. Race doesn't really exist, racism however is alive and well and must be combatted in every form to ensure equality, justice and fair opportunity for all people.
Isn't racism essentially one form of discriminating people for being different than us, just like we do with pretty much many other characteristics? Usually racism is done by the majority, native race against minority, weaker/powerless groups of unprotected people that no one cares about.
Usually with race comes culture, and people have a tendency to prefer those with similar cultural, national origin and background. It is only natural. If I am an amateur intellectual atheist who comes from a middle class family, I would love to marry someone with more or less similar cultural backgrounds - Usually, this equals the same ethnic background, but there's exceptions.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you