(06-12-2020, 08:07 AM)Isoko Wrote: Some interesting responses on here. I have to say that from a more conservative prospective, it is disappointing that people on here seem enthusiastic about this potential future. But I have noticed that most of the members here tend to be to the left wing so it is expected to hear the responses.
Without further ado, let's start with....
Blazkovitz,
1) I think that overall your belief in the neverending technological progress of Humanity and the birth of some sort of technological singularity is quite a long way off, maybe even never. I was reading an interesting post by a guy I like to read called John Michael Greer who criticises the glorious technological future theory quite well.
For example, he uses the flying car theory and pulls it apart quite nicely. For decades they have been predicting a huge rise in mass forms of commercial technological that will radically revolutionise life as we know it. Yet it never happened and the last greatest invention was the internet.
Yet now that is starting to lose its ability to innovate and has essentially become a tapped out resource. What has been done has already been done and it is basically being used as a facebook dumping ground for the masses.
Human potential has its limitations. Good reason exists for the average human intelligence being where it is. A lower level of intelligence makes people more likely to die before procreating, although the local environment might make some places (typically tropical climates with copious rainfall) less demanding than the subtropical climates (such as those of Dallas, Rome, or Tokyo), more so the fire-and-ice climates (Chicago, Kiev, or Beijing) near -subarctic locations with tough demands and modest rewards for efforts (Edmonton, Helsinki), let alone polar areas which compel difficult ways of life . (Consider that in the context of Arnold Toynbee connecting human progress to some optimal difficulty in life). It may not be coincidence that early civilization flourished in the valley of the Nile, where people could survive only if well organized and able to do food storage and record-keeping... instead of in the valley of the Rhine River or the Ohio River. The flourishing of ancient Athens suggests that Athens had some particular opportunities and challenges (Athens is in a semidesert area with no easy access to water, which severely limits local agriculture, but requires sophisticated commerce for survival of a viable community; merchants' kids needed above-average learning, and Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle filled the bill for merchants while Euclid was great for teaching the geometry behind the carpentry for building land structures and sailing ships... now you know...
Can technology and intellectual sophistication outpace human learning and innovation? We are close to that point, with robots and computers involved in technological innovation. Add to this, we are approaching the end of the line for material productivity itself creating any perception of increases in human welfare. Obviously we need the basics such as food and will need such intangibles as insurance... but in essence, note well the rarity of three-car garages.
Japan was the first country to reach that condition. Its economic boom ended and has never restarted. We Americans may be facing that.
Quote:In other words, we've peaked out. The only thing left at this stage is genetic engineering but how far that will successfully go is another question. If I am to be honest, I do not think we will be seeing any major revolutionary advances this century.
Also your future, although you paint it as optimistic, scares the hell out of me. It is basically brave new world and I see it as a basically a the road to hell is paved with good intentions scenario. The idea of us losing our Humanity and becoming fully integrated into the machine I think leads to a dystopian future rather then anything positive.
Brave New World -- literally. Such implies its own hierarchy of privilege and deprivation based upon intelligence. But note well that that dystopian society still depends upon the intellectual "deltas" and "epsilons" who end up doing the mindless, repetitive toil such as farm labor.
Human-machine merger? We have long had people compelled to act as if machines, most blatantly as slaves. The lust by some for ultra-cheap labor powerless to contest its treatment always seems to re-emerge; Simon Legree remains one of the arch-villains of fictional literature... and all too real in the Third Reich, which died about 75 years ago. Man will need some integration with machines just to move fast (vehicles) or to work in dangerous environments (space, the deep sea, highly-radioactive or anoxic locations, maybe some very deep (and hot) mines... maybe we will have integration of mechanical parts with the human mind to extend lifespans of the mind or to restore natural mobility to people who have lost it due to amputations or spinal-cord injuries)... but we had better preserve our human characteristics for such to work.
Quote:2) To be honest I think this grand mixing experiment is starting to die down. From my own observations, the vast majority of people usually marry within their own racial or ethnic group. I'd say about 82 percent in Western countries and more closer to 98 percent in the east. The vast majority of mixing usually occurs in America.
Of course, race-mixing implies children who are much more ambiguous about their identity than their parents. People of mixed race (let us say Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet) might find each other attractive for reasons other than appearance, such as having nearly-identical origins (Lenny Kravitz has a white Jewish father and an Afro-Caribbean mother; Lisa Bonet has a black American father and a white Jewish mother. Their daughter Zoe is of course 'half Jewish and half black' in a way that neither of their parents are.
So what way do the children go? Need I go into the details? Do they go for something close to one part of their heritage or for the other? The one-drop rule still matters in perception, but I would suspect that white people who marry someone of partial African ancestry are most likely to marry someone closer to looking white. A spouse 'one-eighth' African is likely to cause fewer problems with white in-laws than someone 'really, really' black.
The most commonplace racial mixing in America is not between black and white, which is the most visible; it is between white Anglo people and various, usually mixed-race or American First Peoples, people of Latin-American origin. I'm not going to count as a mixed marriage some Italian-Argentine and Italian-American couple. OK, so "Jack Rivera", a Mexican-American with many obvious First People characteristics, marries "Jill Sullivan", an Irish-American woman... and they have children. What are they? Or will there be a large population of people of mixed-race people who develop some hybrid culture?
Quote:I know of many young people where I am from in the UK who usually stay in the same communities their ancestors have lived in, marry someone local, have the usual 2 or 3 kids and continue the cycle. I was rather adventurous in marrying a Russian in that regard...
Obviously not as adventurous as marrying a black Nigerian or West Indian... or even a South Asian!
Quote:But the point is I think most people are genetically developed to marry within their own group or to someone very similar to themselves. It usually is even more prominent in Asian countries.
When I was in college in California in the 1970's, I found Asian-American women very tempting.
3) By Western standards I would be considered a Neoreactionary. By Russian standards I am considered centre right. I was once hosting a speaking club and a student honestly said to me that my views would be centrist in Russia...
Quote:So what is actually the political orientation in Russia?
Russia has a very different political heritage from that of any other country in Europe except for eastern parts of Belarus and Ukraine that were under the tsars until 1917 and under Communist rule from 1917 to 1991, except perhaps for the traumas of the Russian Civil War and Nazi occupation. Soviet-era satellites and even western Ukraine and Belarus and the Baltic states had differences of history. It is easy to think of countries like Poland and Romania to be recent Soviet satellites... until one realizes that Commie rule in such countries ended over thirty years ago. Thus many young Czechs and Hungarians have no memory of Communism, although they know that Communism was a bad idea.
Quote:Well the vast majority of the population would be considered centre right like myself, which would once again mean the entire population is neo reactionary. Even the liberals of Russia usually tend to be within this orientation.
To be right wing in Russia is to be a Putinist. Mother Russia is greatest country in all the world! Far Right is basically kill 'em all. Left wing ideas never do that well here and are usually seen as Western derived.
Russia was a strong participant in neither the Renaissance nor the Enlightenment; contrast Poland, a full participant in both. Such monarchs as Peter the Great and Catherine the Great found a veneer of such useful. Russia had its intellectual awakening only in the nineteenth century. But that was in technology, science, literature, and music... and to a lesser extent visual art... and not in politics. It is arguable that Lenin was successful in establishing his cranky version of Marxism only because Russia had not sorted out political life as even Germany had.
Quote:In the West, therefore, liberalism is too prominent within the societal structure meaning that right wing is really some form of liberalism.
I remember reading a book in which the writer disparaged the idea that Churchill was a revolutionary and that Hitler was a reactionary. If anything Churchill was the reactionary as someone defending old, entrenched decencies in his country's political heritage and Hitler was a revolutionary for breaking down such old decencies. Churchill was good; Hitler was of course demonic. At that, the relevant issue is good versus evil, and if one must choose between a revolution that largely serves evil purposes and some stodgy, shopworn conservatism that preserves old virtues, then one must be a conservative. The political problem in Russia is that liberal ideas are still exotic in ways in which liberal ideas are no longer so exotic in places such as India, Indonesia, and Japan.
Quote:4) Actually that isn't Putinist propaganda but the vast majority of ethnic groups in Russia get along. They live separately and usually marry within their own groups but overall there isn't any animosity and ever has been.
The world has plenty of lessons about people seeing that people somewhat different from themselves as enemies due to difference alone, often on something slight (as between Germans who have Jesus and Germans who had most of the Christian Bible as sacred text but were resolute in believing that they did not need Jesus) is pure tragedy.
Quote:I'd say this great melting pot concept is more of an American thing if I am honest.
It is a reality in the UK in part because some people of African origin (former African colonies of the UK and certainly the West Indies) have far more in common with Brits by culture than do any white non-British Europeans! The difference in America is that American blacks still largely feel some heritage of slavery in America -- and slavery compelled African-American slaves to adopt a culture different from that of the surrounding white population. The historian David Hackett-Fischer tells us that slave-descended African-Americans have no cultural legacy from Africa because the early slave-masters compelled slaves to abandon any such heritage. To be sure, slave-descended African-Americans have been highly creative in establishing culture distinctly theirs at the outset that has been good enough for attracting the interest of non-blacks. But that creativity is distinctly American.
Now for Eric...,
You know Eric, I actually want to apologise to you. I think we got off on the wrong foot and have been in this sort of cold war since. What do you say we let bygones be bygones, shake hands and just get on? I like posting here, you like posting here, so let's be big men about it, eh? If your ever in Russia or I'm ever in America, I'll buy you a beer sometime.
Quote:Despite being democracies, Japan and South Korea still refuse to accept refugees into their countries and only usually marry within their own group. Same with China. Due to a lack of marriage partners, rather then marry outside the race, they are doing what they did in the past and marrying people closest to them racial wise. In Japan's case this would be Koreans, Chinese and if they feel more adventurous, Filipinos and Thai's. This usually happens once every so many centuries in these countries until things stabilise and they start to focus on being "the cleanest race" again.
I would suspect that the "Thai", "Filipino" and (you missed) "Vietnamese" that Japanese people marry are largely descended from the Chinese diaspora within those countries. I suspect also that there are less visible immigrants from the US and Brazil -- but such people are typically of Japanese origin.
Quote:As for Europe, it's less conservative then Asia but way more conservative then say the U.S. I would honestly say the only major change for Europe has been less group intermarriage and more marriage between fellow Europeans. But this is mainly amongst the middle classes.
I can easily imagine German citizens marrying French citizens of German stock in Alsace. Many Austrians are of Slovene, Croatian, Czech, or Hungarian origin...
Quote:I'll go a step further and say that rather then a coffee coloured future, it is likely European starts to dismantle some of its traditional nation states and reshapes itself into new regions, very similar to what happened with the German states before Bismarckian unification.
Homogenization between people with similar languages? Maybe... But consider that what a Roman said of imperial Rome -- that when one speaks of people, the Orontes (in the border area between modern Syria and Turkey), the Nile, the Ebro, the Vardar, the Seine, and the Po (far-northern modern Italy was then called Cis-Alpine Gaul due to a Celtic population) flow through the Tiber. More recently during British history, the Indus, Ganges, Irrawaddy, Niger, and Zambezi rivers flowed into the Thames. The Poles may look more like white English people than do largely-black Jamaicans... but the largely-black Jamaicans learned English ((or their ancestors did) in schools modeled after English schools.
Quote:Still, your views are very American and I agree that for America, it is the likely future. As a friend of mine from Finland once jokingly noted to me, "in America, 1/3 of the population will deliberately shag outside their race. 1/3 will not shag outside the group. The remaining 1/3 do not care who they shag." He also noted that America's future is likely to be the orange man from South Park.
Ugly as the topic is, American pornography has multiple categories, and among the categories are race-based porn that often play up stereotypes about different 'racial' groups. That itself subdivides into some involving dominance relations between mixed couples. Porn says much about the sexual hang-ups that people have, and it wouldn't be lucrative if people did not have those hang-ups.
Interracial marriage (unless involving elderly people) will more likely result in mixed-race children than will "shagging", but in the latter there will be 'accidents'. Children of a white person and a mixed-race person are still mixed-race, but at some measure of dilution of the non-white ethnicity some offspring can pass as white (or at least not black) without really trying.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
