The Three Tenets of Existential Terrorism

Words are not things or actions. They are vibrations of the air molecules or squiggles on a page. Mistaking words for reality is the mistake that puts politicians in office and sells all of the products, religions, and systems of government on the planet. Saying "Tree" is no more a tree than saying "I love you" means that someone loves you. To perceive reality as it is, one must accept that words are a vehicle for the transference of our perception of reality, not reality itself.
God is dead. I killed him (it, them, her, et al) on November 5th, 1991. Justifiable Homicide. The idea that the universe is run by some cosmic supra-hero concept of ourselves is absurd and unproven. The idea that the creator of the universe put us here in these bodies to satisfy some moral experiment is offensive. The God question; "What are we doing here?", may or may not be valid. At this time, we are here because the physical laws of the universe are not completely against our existence. Our short time of consciousness would be far better served ensuring our survival rather than posturing before some misanthropic cosmic deity.
The only government, the only rule of law, is economics. However our societies are structured, whatever religion or ethnicity, we have all decided that those with relatively more assets have better lives than those with less relative wealth. All measured value is economic value in this system.

Friday, January 9, 2009

first black president


Obama is called  first black president. Big fat hairy deal. There is no such thing as a Black, White, Hispanic, or Asian race. The terminology, although prevalent, has not be quantified. Nor can it be with today's technology. That would require genetic sampling of millions of individuals to determine the make-up of a particular race. If such a thing could be done, it would turn into a taxonomy rather than a few selections on your employment application. It would require thousands of sub-species to exemplify the myriad of arrangements of what is called race.

The problem is that ethnicity is defined in geographical terms by point of origin. Human Beings have been traveling and intermingling for quite some time, millennia in fact. The rate of movement and migration has increased rapidly in the last 400 years and geometrically in the last 100. Human Beings are constantly recombining with people who were geographically isolated centuries ago. This mixing of populations has diluted any possible structure or meaning to the term "race". What specific set of data makes someone Black? I have no idea. Certain large scale tendencies between ethnicity can certainly be found. Blacks have a much greater chance of sickle-cell anemia than do whites. What that means to the individual is uncertain. Environmental and economic factors also play a role independent of race. What is necessary to define one's medical propensity is an identification of the genetic markers for a condition and an understanding of the environmental factors that contribute to its expression.
Having people mark a broad category of race on a page is not a scientific endeavor, but rather a political one. Race defines a plethora of political issues in this country despite the inability to define it. Race is a popular social touchstone, but it is not in any contributing to either healthier lives or better Human relations. To suggest that this information is accurate, meaningful, or rational is to make oneself suspect.
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