My very flawed and human emotions constantly tell me that my next door neighbor and that guy I meet with on Zoom meetings are ignorant or downright stupid. I’m sure that you’ve heard at least one variation of the saying that goes something like this: “As I drive down the road, the guy who is going slower than me, and is in my way, is an idiot. He’s going to cause an accident because he’s going so slow, its dangerous. And the guy who goes flying past me, by at least thirty miles an hour, is crazy. This guy is going to kill someone.”
In both historical and prehistorical times the world has very obviously allowed its gut emotions to overrule its head. It has bought into the idea that my neighbor is not really the same type of human as I am, he just can’t be. Those Germans over there, and those Inuit’s up there don’t see the world as I do and that somehow proves we aren’t the same.
If we turn away from our base emotions for a minute and shift our gaze to science we see a different image.
It’s a bit strange that many people now reject science in favor of their emotions. It’s also very odd that they choose to cherry-pick the science they accept. For instance, no one who doesn’t have a mental disease would willingly walk off the roof of a ten story building because they don’t believe in science, but they take reject many theories for a variety of conflicting reasons.
I’d like to divert slightly for a moment to say something about the word ‘theory’. The meaning of the word in science isn’t the same as the use of the word in everyday social use and some people attempt to reject scientific theories using the social definition of the word. That’s like saying I can have a pet tiger because it is after all just a cat. In society a theory is an opinion or belief in something. For instance, I have a theory that if the Beatles had only decided to reunite, John Lennon wouldn’t have been living in New York City and therefore wouldn’t have been shot and killed. There’s no evidence for my personal opinion.
Now, if there was a letter from John to Paul McCartney saying that he was willing to return to London to record a album and prepare for a new tour, that would be evidence of my theory. Another bit of evidence would be the building manager of the Dakota townhomes saying that he was asked by John to sell his townhome because he was moving back to London. On the other hand a scientific theory isn’t an opinion it is thoroughly explored with multiple groups of researchers conducting trials to see if they can replicate the experiment the proves the idea.
In the scientific categorization system that defines virtually everything, every human on earth is a member of the same family, genus and species as every other human on the planet. The differences that we see are cosmetic – the shape of the nose, the texture of the hair, the color tone of the skin, etc., doesn’t mean that each of these groups are a difference races.
Some ask, why don’t they call it a fact then? Well, that’s not the way science works or has been constructed. Scientists say that they can prove that something happened or will happen, like in an experiment arriving at an output of something, but they can never prove that something won’t happen.
Let’s return to the subject of one human family. Science tells us, and has told us for quite some time now, that no matter whether you are a Caucasian European, an Oglala Sioux Native American, a Polynesian, a Vietnamese, a Guatemalan or a Black African we all share the same DNA.
Although we are actually one human family there are many millions of people who want there to be multiple races because it serves their purposes. To believe that they are better than those folks over the hill or on the other side of the river or on one of the other continents empowers them. They want to believe these other folks are different because they want to believe that those folks aren’t really human, they’re somehow different, somehow less. That belief allows the first group to take actions that favor themselves to the detriment of the second group. For instance, to enslave another people and force them to work, often times to their death, and abuse them along the way to the grave, demands that the abuser is able to sublimate any feelings of shame or guilt.
So, allow me to put this question to rest. There are no multiple races there is only one race, the human race. There is only one human family and that family has been squabbling and fighting for millennia, but according to the scientific principle that doesn’t mean that we are doomed to eternal fighting. Science can’t prove the negative. Science, using history as evidence can’t prove that humanity must continue to fight.
Let’s look the benefits of believing that all peoples on earth are equal in their creation and are in fact all humans. Such a believe establishes a firm foundation for treating people equally. It makes it easier to treat my different neighbor the same as I treat those who are like me. It makes it easier to write legislation for equal rights, or the destruction of policies that limit people’s rights such as redlining, or limiting club membership to only certain types of people, or jerrymandering, or voter suppression actions such as closing polling stations in minority neighborhoods. It also makes it easier to reinvigorate funding for public schools, etc.
Some people might ask what does it matter whether there is one race or many? We know the results of believing in multiple races but allow me to state it again. If there are multiple races it allows human emotions to believe that some of these races are better, stronger, more intelligent or more beautiful than others. It segments us, it divides us, it excludes us. If we are excluded we feel bad and harsh feelings occur which can lead to harsher feelings, feelings of retribution.
Believing in the oneness of humanity, or one human family, robs divisive beliefs and actions from people and empowers inclusive beliefs and actions. It creates opportunities to repatriate refugees or move them to fresh regions thus making the life of millions of refugee people better, reducing the tensions between nations who have to deal with logistical problems of having hundreds of thousands of people packed into temporary camps with little personal space, little physical security, insufficient food security, and unsatisfactory medical capabilities, within their borders or just over a border line. Easing this misery, energizing the economy of involved nations, improving the health of these people, changing the dynamics of food production and distribution gather together to ease the risk of war and further misery.
Finally, believing in the truth of one human family and taking actions that support and confirm our belief in this philosophy will bring unseen change – change that we can’t even begin to see or understand.
Some people that believe in one human race also believe in an alternate evolutionary concept. This alternate theory teaches that humans are not confined to Homo sapiens alone. Instead, what we think of a humans stretches back past the appearance of Homo sapien, and includes older physical forms including forms such as Homo luzonensis, the Homo just prior to Homo sapien, Homo floresiensis, etc. all the way back to Homo erectus (the human who walks erect).
Accepting this belief would mean that humans have existed for millions, not thousands, of years. Universal belief in one human family would be the greatest human philosophical advancement in over a million years. We can only imagine how this sea change will change the course of humanity. However, let’s imagine for a moment. Imagine a world in which all people are guaranteed a quality education equal to the quality of every other person. Imagine a world in which health care is available to all people, either free or at an affordable cost. Imagine a world in which justice is guaranteed to all people and that justice is the same for everyone. A world in which the various police forces truly are the servants of the people and not a force used by governments to suppress and control the people.
Further, imagine a world in which every nation is guaranteed its right to exist, but not at the cost of other nations or of its own citizens. If this sounds compulsory to you, its not.
Imagine the United States of America as a potential model. Each nation, like each state, guaranteed the right to make its own laws as long as those laws don’t invade the rights of its neighbor states. We can have a federal planetary government that isn’t modeled after fascism, socialism or communism, but a government that is a republic or a democracy.
Our options are not limited to either the status quo of violence among the nations or a world dictatorship. We are capable of more than just those two options.
If we can achieve this level of unity, what, we might ask, is the next great change? Humans will expand out from our home, planet earth, first to the moon and to Mars.
When we will have several generations on the moon and the planets, will these people be viewed as Martians and Moonites, will they have the same rights as Earthers? Will we have to go through this division and subsequent unification once more? Time will only tell, however, what I know is that I would rather attempt to envision this future than to believe that humanity will only continue as it is, without any new variations, without new imagination without the unity we so badly need to advance to the next phase of our spiritual, organizational and possibly physical evolution.
