|
Keith you said:
I believe that all humans should have equal rights in some basic respects,
but I don't believe that, for example, an unintelligent person should have an
equal vote as me on complex matters such as nuclear power, were there to be a
one-issue election,
REH comment:
Keith, this seems so totally at odds with your
opinions about art. Should we ask for one's resume when
deciding whether an artist will live or die based upon the quality of their
art? Especially given the miserable record of accomplishment over
the years by the intellectual crowd in picking masterpieces and seminal
art? Here in the US homo-economicus even insists upon an
enforced ignorance on the part of Presidents by insisting that they only serve
long enough to learn the job and then leave "for the greater
good." People who know nothing about the value or meaning of
my work make decisions about how well I will live or if I will make a living at
all in my work all the time. Perhaps it is in your work where you
see how miserable composers have been treated by the ignorant that you are
beginning to make that cross reference and realize the flaw that could make you
as miserable as Duparc or Beethoven in his later years while he was writing the
Ninth Symphony. Often the greatest minds are at the end of a
line and so their children won't even benefit from their parents having
triumphed over societal abuse by those who were ignorant. Well, it
is just an interesting principle that you espoused. I'm
surprised to hear you say it given your opinions about contemporary music and
art.
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2003 2:16
AM
Subject: [Futurework] We are young chimps
(was: Friendliness is genetic.)
At 21:25 27/05/2003 -0400, Brad McCormick
wrote:
Ray Evans Harrell wrote:
Maybe there is a problem with
homo economicus? [snip]
Perhaps some will be interested
to hear that, on a
different list, I have been following a thread
which
argues that we and chimpanzees are essentially equivalent
(our
genes are 99.44% the same -- good enough for
Ivory
soap...).
It's a matter of judgement as to what are the
crucial genes and what are not (when making comparisons between the species)
but it's certainly true that all geneticists believe that the chimps and our
genes are anything between 98% and 99.5% identical. Given that we have about
35,000 genes, then the number of unique genes that we possess is about 300
plus or minus about 100. That's more than enough to make us very different
from chimpanzees in many ways.
So, if you do not know already,
be hereby apprised that
there are PhDs out there who are asserting
that
"chimps R us", and that chimps should have equal rights
to
humans, etc./et al.
I don't even believe that all humans
should have equal rights. Do you? I believe that all humans should have equal
rights in some basic respects, but I don't believe that, for example, an
unintelligent person should have an equal vote as me on complex matters such
as nuclear power, were there to be a one-issue election, for example. I even
read a letter in the Independent some days ago apparently from a Down's
Syndrome girl who said that because she gave her mother so much pleasure then
Down's Syndrome foetuses should be allowed to live and not be aborted.
Economists have paltry
imaginations: they are only able
to reduce homo sapiens to homo
economicus. "Real scientists"
are able to reduce homo sapiens to
homo chimpiens!
Why are you so upset about this? Besides the
fact that our genes (and brains) are almost identical to chimps' it is obvious
that, in appearance and in practice, we are very different. I notice
that from elsewhere you don't like Medieval notions. But, in trying to
maintain that man is a unique species -- in the sense that we are quite
separate from all others in some sort of fundamental way -- is very much an
anthropocentric, Medieval notion. Why aren't you consistent? We are certainly
different from other species in many ways but we are still the product of
evolution as all other species are.
As John F Kennedy did not say in
Berlin when he made the
mikstake of confusing Berliners with "Berliners"
(pastries):
Ich nich bin ein
chimp!
Here are two facts for you to consider:
1. We
are born 17 months' premature. If we were born so that we were as physically
capable as chimps at birth then our brains would be too large to emerge
through the pelvic girdle of the mother. So we're born prematurely while our
brains are small enough to get through safely. Our brains develop hugely in
the months immediately after birth before slowing down relative to the rest of
our bodies.
2. The profile of a baby chimps' face is almost the same as
the profile of an adult human.
To biologists this phenomenon is unusual
but far from unknown in several cases. It is called Neotony. It occurs when
one species gives rise to a juvenile version of itself. We appear to be a
neotonous version, not of chimps, but of the species that was the predecessor
of both chimps and ourselves. (Therefore, don't take the Subject title of this
message too seriously.)
Keith Hudson
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper
Camden Place, Bath, England
|
