Check out this news story about a man in an accident who becomes obsessed with sex
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2007/03/02/nbiker02.xml
And another story about cigarettes and brain damage
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/26/science/26brain.html?ex=1173070800&en=be3bc4c275c96ca6&ei=5070
What do these point to? Biological determinants of personality. This is presisely the issue that prevents me from accepting either traditional liberal or conservative arguments.
Conservatives believe in total free will. Those who are gay, poor, or immoral are so because they are bad people and choose to be bad.
Liberals say that those who are not upstanding citizens are so because of poor early environments, racism, and oppression.
I say that it's genetic. That the solution lies neither in social engineering or "law and order," policies but instead a greater understanding of the human mind. Genetic engineering, psychotropic drugs, and whatnot are needed. We must play God, and we must acknowledge that eugenics is necessary. We must reject marxism and religious fundamentalism.
As I posted about the growth of China, there is a small issue that has been ignored. China has minimal qualms about biologically engineering human beings, due to a lack of western religious influence. In addition to their high IQ and population, they will also fully utilize posthuman technologies. God help Western Civilization, because it seems as if no one in politics these days thinks in terms of the evolving future.
4 comments:
I'm not sure I'd agree with your assertion that conservatives believe in total free will. An awful lot of us "paleocons" do believe in genetic determination, hence much of the push back against most immigration.
BTW, very interesting blog.
I second what Roy said. Free will is a typical liberal, anti-conservative belief.
But I may add that the political vocabulary has been so corrupted that it may make sense to say what you say in America.
I don't agree. Can the belief in a free market and individual rationality truly be sustained if people also believe that humans are automatons determined by their biology?
Surely, that would raise moral questions over the justice of a system that condemns individuals to poverty over their genetic endowments.
Also, I don't think any western (Islam, Christian, Jewish) belief system is possible without free will.
So, religious and economic conservatism are knocked out. The only belief that would survive is proto-militarism, which sees the different races and people in the world guided by different biological endowments that would be against their interests, and must be eliminated.
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