Michael Tsarion on Race, Jordan Peterson, and Why Conspiracy Work is Spiritual Work |372|

Cool episode Alex! I applaud you for going where so few dare tread these days, in true Skeptiko fashion.

But I think you're wrong about feeling a connection to the land and it's people. Imagine you were forced to leave your home, and everything, everyone you know for a new place. You'd feel it.

I moved halfway across the continent from where I had spent my entire life. I thought it would be no big deal, since I didn't really feel like I had any connection to where I grew up. In fact there were things I actually hated about it!

But the separation was a killer! I missed my "home". I felt it in my bones, it was more than emotional, it felt like it was physically painful. It has diminished over time. I still miss it but I'm learning to love where I am. But I finally understood what was meant by a connection to the land.

I think it's different for Americans because we do feel a connection to the country we were born and raised in, but have also been brow beaten with the idea that it was "stolen". I think because many of our ancestors immigrated here, even if hundreds of years ago, the ancestry goes back millennia, so maybe there's connection to European land that we just aren't aware of (or whatever land your ancestors originated from). Like a connection passed down generation to generation, but diminishing over time, though never really lost. Kind of like a morphic resonance, if you will.:)

But that connection is very real. I imagine it's strength also goes in accordance with how long your specific ancestry has occupied those lands.
 
The way I see it, there are concentric circles of similarity expanding out around us and we are engaged in the process of exploring the nuances, the similarities, and differences. Our highest forms of art and drama are all about exploring these nuances, the metaphors, and the great and small connections across time and space that form the meanings of the stories we tell. As with Sheldrake's Morphogenetic field, I think connections based on similarity exist beyond what we currently consider to be the physical.

We can choose to identify with something big or something small. There are trade-offs for going with either one. You can identify with your family, your ancestors, your tribe, your race, your state, your sports team, your species, or the planet... or maybe even the galaxy and universe.

A small circle of identity provides more freedom with fewer but stronger connections. A larger circle of identity can provide more connections that are weaker.

Identifying with your most immediate ancestors and land can build a long lasting meaningful stories and can bind a group of people together, but this story and the traditions are structures and structures can feel amazing or they can feel like prisons - and the way one perceives it likely has to do with both personality traits and where one finds oneself within the social hierarchy.

The oligarchs use identity to either divide or unify groups of people. If a group of people poses a threat to an agenda, the way to dis-empower that group is to eliminate the group identity, create shame around the group identity, and/or create newer smaller competing group identities. So depending on the circumstance, it might be advantageous to make people ashamed of their heritage or ashamed to focus on their immediate ancestors/land/race and consider themselves world citizens. In other circumstances it might be advantageous for the oligarchs to make people conscious of their race, their heritage, and their differences.

If people want to identify with their closest circles of similarity and be proud of their history and even their extended history going back thousands of years, there's nothing morally wrong with that and and there is nothing "racist" about that, and it can possibly add meaning to one's life. It is not wrong or "speciesist" to prefer human companions. Likewise it isn't wrong to prefer people more similar to yourself than different and you can choose what similarities are important to you.

Groups of people sufficiently empowered can be awesome or dangerous. Races are different, but not THAT different. We can all be friends and family if we want to be. And as long as we have a free and open internet that allows the networking form of organization to grow organically, and that allows people of diverse backgrounds and perspectives to keep talking, I think the danger of some new race-based superiority complex wreaking havoc like it did in the 20th century is almost nil.

Hey Hurm! I haven't been here in ages, glad to see you're still around. I always enjoy your posts. :)
 
However, it is interesting that Ian Stevenson's work seemed to throw up a lot of cases or reincarnation in which the spirit seems occupy successive bodies in close proximity.

David, thank you for this reference which I was unaware of. It’s something that has been growing on me for awhile now that so many of the reports of reincarnation cases that I hear about seem to indicate this proximity whether geographically, culturally or ethnically. I haven’t read as much as I should on this topic so forgive me but I don’t hear of many case studies where children are describing having past lives in cultures or places they seeemingly have to no right to know about. Usually it’s a causasian describing a fairly Eurocentric kind of past life. Not proof of anything one way or the other but interesting in its own right.
I’d be curious to know if there are enough case studies of past lives involving individuals other than Caucasian’s to see if there were similar patterns. Frankly, a little part of me is worried that past live study is a western cultural phenomena. Our own little brand of woo like apporting is to the English or voodoo to the people of the Caribbean. Evidence and case studies are still coming in. Maybe until heart disease and CPR become as rampant in other parts of the world as it is in the west we won’t know much about their NDE’s or perhaps until we have better lines of communication with researchers in The Far East. There’s so little data on this but i feel that there maybe something important here with race and soul.
 
Well if you take that argument to its extreme, you would invalidate all discussion of human variability. For example, if you know someone has sickle cell anaemia, there is a high probability that he has some black ancestors, or is himself black. There clearly are differences in the races, but equally clearly we are one species - we can interbreed without problems.

One problem with arguing from genes, is that humans and chimps famously share 98% of their DNA (however that is exactly defined). I think the "Third Way" people would argue that some genetic information may not be stored in the DNA (epigenetics being at least a hint in that direction, even though the tags fall off at some point).

I am not sure if you were making a partly political statement, but similar statements might figure in a political discussion about race. I am wary of mixing science and politics. The genetic make-up of a human being obviously has nothing to do with what rights/responsibilities he should be given - so genetics considerations should not be relevant to politics.

David
What do you mean by black ancestors? We all come from black ancestors. Do you mean black people from Africa or black people from Australia, or both? If you mean Africans, do you mean sub-saharan Africans or North Africans?

I agree with you that you can't state much about human phenotypes from genes. We share 90 percent of our genes with cats and 60 percent of genes with the banana.

Amongst human species, most genetic variation is accounted for by regional factors, not racial factors. But as soon as we talk about regional factors then we must note that people who inhabit the same region or area share the same environment, so then we have to take into account epigenetics.

Ironically, noting the silliness of using science and genetics to define that category known as "race" is not a political statement.

When Americans talk about "White Americans" and Black Americans" and argue about race problems in America, they are making political statements. US culture is divided by race purely due to cultural reasons not biological or genetic reasons.

Genetics has almost nothing of much value to say about why white neighbourhoods are on one side of the road and black neighbourhoods are no the other side.
 
I see this interview and these questions as cutting edge, and over my head, but I am fascinated nonetheless and have a couple comments and questions to add.

This delicate topic we must define each word as each has come to inhabit various nuance--race, or class, new words, old words, redefined words. What we know is the blood does matter, but how it matters we have little clue b/c each is in it for his own aggrandizement and science has long led us astray on these matters.

Genetics, epigenetics does have its roots in eugenics. As ugly a word as that is, it is not Nazis alone who practiced this or advocated it. The reason folks hate to talk about race and bloodlines is b/c of this and we should just spell that out, imo.

So, what do you think of eugenics? What about how it was envisioned by advocates such as Margaret Sanger? And Hellen Keller. Of course we know better than to attribute this to only the 'white' race, it is as old as humanity and crosses all 'racial' lines. It's also something of a #1rstworldproblem at the moment, which makes it particularly relevant here. It is directly related to the depop agenda as well.

I'd argue race/class are not tied to land, per se. I expect there may be a 'higher order' associated with land, but this is just a feeling based on my own experiences. I expect the land has energy in it that can move certain individuals no matter what background, they simply are magnetized to it.

Alex, your ancestors are Greek, and you feel at home with no need to venture toward that past, but could that be maybe b/c Southern CA, more than I think anywhere in the Us, shares so much of the attributes of Greece? I don't know, I'm a 'Euro-mut' and was something of a vagabond until we settled here in rural East Texas, something that neither of us could have predicted or ever desired, but still it 'spoke' to me in a way that changed everything.

Of course I loved this interview b/c I really appreciate the work of MT and especially his current work on Unslaved b/c he and David Whitehead have an amazing rapport I think. And, they connect to the past! We need this, so gravely. I believe, as so many previous have said, these days are the 'revelation of the method'. The elite are 'tipping their hand' so to speak. Those who are not paying attention are missing the moment.

The 'conspiracy' is real, and it is 'spiritual', because like the naked emperor, one will continue to play the charade, or one will call a spade a spade. It is not nice to sound so cliché, but I give into it sometimes.

It's good I still have moments of disagreement. Like when MT says he appreciates the 'insiders' and how we need them.
Mice nibbling at contaminated grain, but hopefully I'm wrong.
 
Here is a different facet of the question of race and spirituality:

"The whole history of religions is essentially about weird beings coming from the sky and doing strange things to human beings, and historically, those events or encounters have been framed as angels or demons or gods or goddesses or what have you."


https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a34dme/this-guy-paints-the-sex-he-allegedly-has-with-aliens


Kara Weisenstein Feb 7 2018

This Guy Paints the Sex He Allegedly Has with Aliens
...
“When I was 17, I lost my virginity to a female extraterrestrial,”
...
Then there is Jeffrey Kripal, a professor of philosophy and religious thought at Rice University in Texas. He spent the early part of his career studying erotic mysticism, which led him to study alien abduction literature. “The whole history of religions is essentially about weird beings coming from the sky and doing strange things to human beings, and historically, those events or encounters have been framed as angels or demons or gods or goddesses or what have you.
1517949516693-Collage_Fotor4.jpeg
 
The genetic make-up of a human being obviously has nothing to do with what rights/responsibilities he should be given - so genetics considerations should not be relevant to politics.

Do you think 'genetic considerations' include a propensity for collectivism or individualism?
 
The people we think are not as smart as us didn't get us into the mess we are in.

I wonder if that is true. I accept the 'smart' is relative, but what if it is also 'universal' -- as in the 100th monkey myth?

I ask this more as a thought experiment. They say that 'primitive' cultures had not invented the wheel and more astonishing, they did not know where babies came from. Apparently there are indigenous tribes in Papa New Guinea who even today do not know where babies come from. Sounds like complete nonsense to me, yet this is still what popular history espouses.

I will argue to the end of breath that intelligence does not equate to virtue, but the stupid aren't saving anyone either, and if the smart didn't have to worry about saving them, then in fact maybe they helped this mess considerably.
 
Genetics has almost nothing of much value to say about why white neighbourhoods are on one side of the road and black neighbourhoods are no the other side.

False. People naturally prefer to live and work with people who are genetically similar to themselves.

Absent government coercion, people tend to self-segregate along ethnic and racial lines.

This video shows how people vote and self-identify more along racial lines than they do according to nationality, ethnicity, ideology, economic class, or religion...

 
What do you mean by black ancestors? We all come from black ancestors. Do you mean black people from Africa or black people from Australia, or both? If you mean Africans, do you mean sub-saharan Africans or North Africans?

I agree with you that you can't state much about human phenotypes from genes. We share 90 percent of our genes with cats and 60 percent of genes with the banana.

Amongst human species, most genetic variation is accounted for by regional factors, not racial factors. But as soon as we talk about regional factors then we must note that people who inhabit the same region or area share the same environment, so then we have to take into account epigenetics.

Ironically, noting the silliness of using science and genetics to define that category known as "race" is not a political statement.

When Americans talk about "White Americans" and Black Americans" and argue about race problems in America, they are making political statements. US culture is divided by race purely due to cultural reasons not biological or genetic reasons.

Genetics has almost nothing of much value to say about why white neighbourhoods are on one side of the road and black neighbourhoods are no the other side.
I don't know about you, but I am getting really sick of the political subject of race - with the media endlessly pontificating on the subject. I am loathe to see that topic spark off in this forum.

However, I suppose my point was that - as you yourself endorse - genetic similarity doesn't actually correlate too well with the phenotype - so maybe genes are just far less relevant than we have come to expect! Incidentally, while on this subject, do you know what exactly these percentages - say between chimp and human - actually mean. Are they:

1) Percentage of genes that are identical.

2) Percentage of base pairs that are different.

Or what?

To say, as you do, that all discussions about race are purely political, is not justified I think. Whether or not the racial differences can be traced to the DNA, they are obviously present - skin colour, facial appearance, hair, etc. Black people have other differences, for example they are extremely successful in sport - presumably for some reason! Unfortunately, all humans have a certain tendency to coalesce into groups, which then antagonise each other, so small differences get amplified!

David
 
What do you mean by black ancestors? We all come from black ancestors.

Maybe not. See, for example: https://wakeup-world.com/2013/12/16...-the-out-of-africa-theory-of-human-evolution/ and https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-the-out-of-africa-theory-out/. Also remember that "out of Africa" doesn't necessarily imply "black". There are Africans who aren't black and don't possess negroid features, e.g. people in North Africa. I quote from the Scientific American article:

An examination of over 5,000 teeth from early human ancestors shows that many of the first Europeans probably came from Asia...

"The continuity of the 'Eurasian dental pattern' from the early Pleistocene until the appearance of upper Pleistocene Neandertals suggests that the evolutionary courses of the Eurasian and the African continents were relatively independent for a long period and that the impact of Asia in the colonization of Europe was stronger than that of Africa," the researchers wrote in the new report. "This finding does not necessarily imply that there was no genetic flow between continents, but emphasizes that this interchange could have been both ways."
 
I don't know about you, but I am getting really sick of the political subject of race - with the media endlessly pontificating on the subject. I am loathe to see that topic spark off in this forum.

However, I suppose my point was that - as you yourself endorse - genetic similarity doesn't actually correlate too well with the phenotype - so maybe genes are just far less relevant than we have come to expect! Incidentally, while on this subject, do you know what exactly these percentages - say between chimp and human - actually mean. Are they:

1) Percentage of genes that are identical.

2) Percentage of base pairs that are different.

Or what?

To say, as you do, that all discussions about race are purely political, is not justified I think. Whether or not the racial differences can be traced to the DNA, they are obviously present - skin colour, facial appearance, hair, etc. Black people have other differences, for example they are extremely successful in sport - presumably for some reason! Unfortunately, all humans have a certain tendency to coalesce into groups, which then antagonise each other, so small differences get amplified!

David
I agree with most of what you say...but black people are good at sport??? Isn’t that a generalisation? There are many cultural reasons why most NFL players are black. Yes, the fastest men ever recorded are of West African heritage, but that is just one region of Africa. I think we need to closely look at the motivations of people who try using terms like Caucasian, Mongaloid and Negroid, as these are simplistic and outdated terms. Speaking of being good at sport, as a white Caucasian of European heritage maybe I should utilise my skiers genes? Damn, I just remembered, I live in a country where it hardly ever snows.
 
False. People naturally prefer to live and work with people who are genetically similar to themselves.

Absent government coercion, people tend to self-segregate along ethnic and racial lines.

This video shows how people vote and self-identify more along racial lines than they do according to nationality, ethnicity, ideology, economic class, or religion...

All this video tells me is that many Americans and British, of all skin colors are racist. This is no surprise to me but where do these seeds of racism come from?
No American who votes in America does so free of influence of ethnicity, ideology, economic class or religion. None of these factors are independent from the issue of skin color in America . The best response I have to these silly bar graphs is a documentary I once saw about a white Zimbabwean women trying to locate her black Zimbabwean school friend. She met her black friend when they were little girls starting school. After they first met, she came home and told her mother that she had made a new friend. The mother asked what color her friend was. She replied that she did not know but would ask her friend when next they spoke.
 
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I agree with most of what you say...but black people are good at sport??? Isn’t that a generalisation? There are many cultural reasons why most NFL players are black. Yes, the fastest men ever recorded are of West African heritage, but that is just one region of Africa. I think we need to closely look at the motivations of people who try using terms like Caucasian, Mongaloid and Negroid, as these are simplistic and outdated terms. Speaking of being good at sport, as a white Caucasian of European heritage maybe I should utilise my skiers genes? Damn, I just remembered, I live in a country where it hardly ever snows.

It is easy to scoff at terms such as Caucasian and the rest, but these were perfectly good words with perfectly good (even if imprecise) meanings. Lots of imprecise words are perfectly useful in the right context (think of "tall" for example).

I think the mistake that the "Left" make nowadays, is to think that these ways of thinking are easily eliminated by endlessly preaching to people. The "Left" also fail to realise that all the other races have their own prejudices as well. The accelerated mixing of people using a mixture of laws and continuous propaganda to suppress dissent, may not end up well at all.

David
 
David, thank you for this reference which I was unaware of. It’s something that has been growing on me for awhile now that so many of the reports of reincarnation cases that I hear about seem to indicate this proximity whether geographically, culturally or ethnically. I haven’t read as much as I should on this topic so forgive me but I don’t hear of many case studies where children are describing having past lives in cultures or places they seeemingly have to no right to know about. Usually it’s a causasian describing a fairly Eurocentric kind of past life. Not proof of anything one way or the other but interesting in its own right.
I’d be curious to know if there are enough case studies of past lives involving individuals other than Caucasian’s to see if there were similar patterns. Frankly, a little part of me is worried that past live study is a western cultural phenomena. Our own little brand of woo like apporting is to the English or voodoo to the people of the Caribbean. Evidence and case studies are still coming in. Maybe until heart disease and CPR become as rampant in other parts of the world as it is in the west we won’t know much about their NDE’s or perhaps until we have better lines of communication with researchers in The Far East. There’s so little data on this but i feel that there maybe something important here with race and soul.
Actually, IIRC, a great deal of the children studied by Raymond Moody were of East Indian descent. I believe the same applied where the majority of them reported past lives not only in the same geographical region, but often within the same village if not the same family.
 
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