Counterfeit inequality: blank slate individualism

[scourge]

This blog entry is one of the craftier lies that misinform policy, luring us into discordant extremes of inequality and an untenable civilization heading into balkanization:

As unique individuals – each with our own set of individual will, skills, values, and discipline – we inevitably diverge to varying degrees and directions, which by this very nature causes us to develop unequally.   Some people are more apt for certain tasks than others; some are better at math or science; some more athletic, artistic, or musically talented; some people are tall, short, fat, or thin.  The list is nearly infinite and this is the truth that fosters competition and accomplishment, both of which are the seeds from which human innovation have traditionally sprung.  If everyone were truly equal in reality, concepts of ambition, self-improvement, and work ethic would be products of the past because we would all be identical in physical, mental, personality, moral, and spiritual makeup.

As we are all created equal our states of being (e.g., race, sex, ethnicity, etc.) are common human starting points from which our individual uniqueness can then begin to develop and flourish.  In this sense we all start with an equal slate, so to speak, but it is our own perspectives, environment(s), and personal makeup which determine our paths of singularity from there.

http://giftoffreedom.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/the-truism-of-equality/

It snares us in the middle portion by offering us developmental inequality but immediately slams shut the jaws of the trap by denying any hereditary causes consistently observable in sociobiological inequities.

In other words, evolution exists shaping all sorts of different living things in the world except for humans. Humans evolved precisely uniformly, even on different continents in radically different environments to which all sorts of tribal groups adopted in their own distinct manner for a hundred thousand years.

• We were not created, we evolved through stages of speciation
• We were never at any point ALL equal in any meaningful way
• We therefore cannot have all been created equal
• The foregoing is the authentic self-evident truism

[Transcix]

I'm not sure about your interpretation, Scourge.

• We were not created, we evolved through stages of speciation
• We were never at any point ALL equal in any meaningful way
• We therefore cannot have all been created equal
• The foregoing is the authentic self-evident truism

This refers to superiority in the sense of survival of the fittest which obviously guided human evolution thus far up until recent history. But I think the author is talking about a different kind of superiority. I think you should appreciate this because you, too, often talk about a different kind of superiority, for example you talk about improving the gene pool, in which case you would break from traditional survival of the fittest--which focuses on having sex as much as possible with partners the most likely to produce offspring the most capable of repeating the same process--by redefining "fitness" to mean the ability to be wise and strong and be able to discern who to reproduce with in order to improve the gene pool.

If the author is putting value mainly on one's individual uniqueness, then everybody would indeed be a blank slate *so to speak* as uniqueness is not beyond the attainment of anybody, barring physiological defects that detract from the basic building blocks of sentience. However I definitely don't like this view, I think it's misleading, because if the slate is blank then why does it exist at all? Evoking the slate implies that the real physical, practical differences we all have are less pertinent, in contrast to this blank slate. But the blank slate only refers to the fact that we are all relatively free to paint our own personalities and respective uniqueness--this has nothing to do with how skillful we are at a given task compared to other people, and shouldn't be conflated with it to smooth the rough edges of feelings of inadequacy or to promote the value of limitations. We're unique in both our strengths as well as our weaknesses, more specifically the human condition is finite and thus we each specialize in different ways, allowing for losses in one area in order to divert capacity towards strengthening another area - the creation of an identity. In contrast for example, a truly *omnipotent* deity could not possibly possess any such identity, for it would need to necessarily be equally capable and equally-leaning in all possible ways (ex: if it has an emotional whim in one direction, it must be 100% able to have it also in the other direction, but the whim of course can't just arise at random as if the deity were supremely skitzo, rather it would stem from an underlying pattern of organization, a pattern which can't just be wholly diverted with the flick of a switch).

[tardocaust]

Brain size and smarts are, to some extent, genetic — and now, a team of more than 200 researchers has uncovered specific genes that are linked to both brain volume and IQ.

Though scientists have suggested bigger brains are "smarter," this study is the strongest case yet for a genetic connection to brain size and to IQ. Of course, brain size is not 100 percent correlated with a person's intelligence, and other factors, including connections between brain cells and even a person's experiences, play roles.

"We found fairly unequivocal proof supporting a genetic link to brain function and intelligence. For the first time, we have watertight evidence of how these genes affect the brain," said lead researcher Paul Thompson, a neurologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine.

http://www.livescience.com/19692-genes-brain-size-intelligence.html

[scourge]

Project leader Dr Virpi Lummaa, of the University's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, said: "We have shown advances have not challenged the fact that our species is still evolving, just like all the other species 'in the wild'. It is a common misunderstanding that evolution took place a long time ago, and that to understand ourselves we must look back to the hunter-gatherer days of humans."

Dr Lummaa added: "We have shown significant selection has been taking place in very recent populations, and likely still occurs, so humans continue to be affected by both natural and sexual selection. Although the specific pressures, the factors making some individuals able to survive better, or have better success at finding partners and produce more kids, have changed across time and differ in different populations."

http://phys.org/news/2012-04-darwinian-human-evolution.html