> Richard Dawkins – people who say genes are the only things that matter
Turning Dawkins' point that genes do indeed matter (refuting the Tabula Rasa theories of human development and achievement, nothing more) into "only genes matter" is incredibly disingenuous, and, dare I say it, "sociopathic" of the author.
Well, I find that Doug Rushkoff is a great example of a man who spouses a philosophy for which I have no name, but that boils down to making people angry about those who abandon orthodox values. People like Dawkins.
Dawkins is not wrong. If you look at a bird for example, all of its physiology is "one-shot": legs that break easily, fragile wings in which the survival of the bird hinges, and so on. Yet, as a group, birds are wildly successful, they even have that whole thing about surviving a meteorite impact on their record.
Humans are no different; all our feelings for each other, our measure of success, and the things we do to mark ourselves as special, are Nature's trappings so that we attract a mate and pass on our genes. I know that that thought invites a violent rejoinder from anybody, specially from those of us who love Nature, because we are not supposed to love perfidious things.
And we are also incredibly one-shot[^1].
The issue is that there is a fundamental contradiction. We can say "f*ck nature, let's recenter the world on people." That's "man is the measure of all things," a.k.a. humanism. All said, if Dawkins is right, then there is space for improvement, and seeking that improvement is pro-human, i.e., humanist.
Philosophically, the only way to justify that seeking improvement to the human condition is wrong, is by saying that we are the way we were meant to be, i.e., posing a divine purpose, and declaring that Dawkins is wrong. Rushkoff does that but goes further and poses more mundane motives: he says that we can't have good things because the billionaires will get them, instead of using their billions to fix the other problems, like climate change and so. And he uses the word "eugenicist", which have had a very charged connotation since World War II and that has become a cultural taboo.
[^1]: I could start with all the ailments that descended on me the day I turned 40, as if I were one of those devices that break exactly the day after its guarantee expires.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 13.6 ms ] threadTurning Dawkins' point that genes do indeed matter (refuting the Tabula Rasa theories of human development and achievement, nothing more) into "only genes matter" is incredibly disingenuous, and, dare I say it, "sociopathic" of the author.
Dawkins is not wrong. If you look at a bird for example, all of its physiology is "one-shot": legs that break easily, fragile wings in which the survival of the bird hinges, and so on. Yet, as a group, birds are wildly successful, they even have that whole thing about surviving a meteorite impact on their record.
Humans are no different; all our feelings for each other, our measure of success, and the things we do to mark ourselves as special, are Nature's trappings so that we attract a mate and pass on our genes. I know that that thought invites a violent rejoinder from anybody, specially from those of us who love Nature, because we are not supposed to love perfidious things.
And we are also incredibly one-shot[^1].
The issue is that there is a fundamental contradiction. We can say "f*ck nature, let's recenter the world on people." That's "man is the measure of all things," a.k.a. humanism. All said, if Dawkins is right, then there is space for improvement, and seeking that improvement is pro-human, i.e., humanist.
Philosophically, the only way to justify that seeking improvement to the human condition is wrong, is by saying that we are the way we were meant to be, i.e., posing a divine purpose, and declaring that Dawkins is wrong. Rushkoff does that but goes further and poses more mundane motives: he says that we can't have good things because the billionaires will get them, instead of using their billions to fix the other problems, like climate change and so. And he uses the word "eugenicist", which have had a very charged connotation since World War II and that has become a cultural taboo.
[^1]: I could start with all the ailments that descended on me the day I turned 40, as if I were one of those devices that break exactly the day after its guarantee expires.