One Blood – One Tribe – One Love
One Blood – One Tribe – One Love
Winter – Wk 3: Coughs Across America | There's Only One Race: The Human Race | Purusha and the Injun Aryans | Robots Do the Mashed Potato | Plato's Antfarm
PUBLICUS
My latest: "Coughs Across America" – in ColdType – Issue 218 – January 2021
"Real people are rarely as cool as the ones in the movies, but without a doubt, they're almost never as shitty as those held up by the media. I've met a thousand fantastic Americans, and as many fine foreigners. Wherever I've looked—from ghettos to mansions to bleak wilderness—I found worlds brimming with life."
PDF here (pg 22-26)
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MYTHOS – There's Only One Race: The Human Race
Despite our differences, we're all brothers and sisters of one blood. This is a concept with ancient roots. According to the Hebrews' story in Genesis 1, humankind descends from the same man and woman: Adam and Eve.
Geneticists offer a similar mythos.
Using modern DNA sequencing, diverse bloodlines can be traced back to a small theoretical population of a few thousand Homo sapiens. Experts say this mythical tribe emerged from south of the Sahara some 50,000 or so years ago. Today, we're all heirs to their fortune.
Which one's yer daddy?
That’s easy. Every man's paternal line can be traced back to, say, his most recent continent of origin, or possibly further. It’s done by comparing mutations on his Y-chromosome to those of other men around the world. (A woman can learn the same from her father's DNA.)
Because the Y-chromosome doesn't mix, its genetic code endures across generations. True to its masculine nature, the Y remains stubbornly fixed in its ways—as opposed to our other 22 chromosomes (or even two X-chromosomes after cocktails), which readily co-mingle during the fusion of sperm and egg.
Using global DNA databases and sophisticated software, our species’ branching lineage can be mapped across the planet. It can also be traced backward in time. Theoretically, all male bloodlines converge on a techno-mythic man known as "Y-chromosomal Adam." That rolling stone hails out of Africa.
What about yo mama, tho?
Her secrets lay hidden in the mitochondria's genome. Mitochondria are a breed of benevolent bacteria who consume oxygen to charge the world's cellular batteries. Your cells are full of them. Everyone’s are.
Billions of years ago, in the primordial sea, these little workhorses were sworn to a symbiotic relationship with every multicellular lifeform that would come to be—from hummingbirds to the sea sponge (with one or two exceptions).
In humans, these mojo-pumping organelles are passed down through the mother's ovum. Because mitochondria are independent organisms, reproducing asexually, their genome is never altered by their host's sexual recombination at conception. Therefore, every person's maternal line (both men and women) can be tracked by mutations in the mitochondrial DNA.
Global gene mapping has traced all maternal bloodlines back to a techno-mythic woman known as "mitochondrial Eve"—also out of Africa.
All of us descend from the same African parents. Over the millennia, geographic and ancestral distance has led to different skin tones, bone structures, and metabolic processes, but our shared essence is overwhelming. Beneath Nature's diversity is a deep genetic unity. That means different things, depending on your perspective.
Whether it's a muscle cell or a neuron, every DNA strand in your body's 30 trillion endemic cells is 100% identical to the others. The outward difference is the result of gene expression.
Across the whole human population, each individual's genome is between 99 and 99.9% identical to that of the 7.8 billion other people on this planet. Many lives, many faces—but one blood pumps through our veins.
This genetic relationship extends out to every organism on land and sea. It may offend Bible-thumpers, but the entire human genome is nearly 99% identical to a chimpanzee's!
Looking only at those regions that actively code for proteins (around 2% of the whole genome), you find shared genes all over the animal and plant kingdoms. Some 85% of human genes are shared in common with a mouse's. Around 60% are homologous with a fruit fly's.
We share about half of our genes with bananas! And really, who doesn't love a good banana?
ETHNOS – Purusha and the Injun Aryans
India has a long tradition of linking spiritual qualities to bloodline. As with many cultures the world over, privileged blood is said to have innate nobility.
In traditional Hinduism, a proper society is divided into four castes, ranked from the noblest to the least. Even in modern India, caste continues to define one's vocation on the basis of heredity. It's a common arrangement throughout history:
Brahmins – the priests
Kshatriyas – the rulers and warriors
Vaishyas – the craftsmen and merchant class
Shudras – the servants, field-hands, and manual labor
The ancient Vedic poets envisioned a cohesive social organism: the gods dream, the priests speak, warriors apply the muscle, producers churn out the goods, servants till the soil, and the gods keep on dreaming.
At the very bottom of this pecking order—or in some sense, just outside of it—are the candalas, or "untouchables". These are the people Mother Teresa called "the poorest of the poor". To the extent they've been included in Indian society at all, they're traditionally employed as garbage men, sewer-crawlers, and corpse-handlers. In the old days, untouchables were viewed as so polluting, they were forbidden to cast their shadow on a brahmin's foot.
There’s only one fate worse than being called an "Injun" by some marginal American redneck. That's being born an "untouchable" in India.
In ancient Sanskrit, the upper castes were called Aryans, or "Noble Ones". During India's Axial Age, (~800-200 BC), the priesthood’s hereditary concept of nobility was reformulated by the Buddha’s “Four Noble Truths”, or catvāri-ārya-satyāni. The term appears to have a linguistic relationship to the classical Greek arete, the root of our modern "aristocrat". It's also related to the Persian "Iran". Obviously, the Germans took the whole "Aryan" concept and ran with it.
From a traditional Hindu perspective, birth is a hard fact you can't get around. If you're born into a noble family, what can anybody say? Nice work in your past lives!
If you come out a natural born shit-kicker? Well, karma's a bitch. Just pull your soul up by its bootstraps, and one day you might get promoted to, say, ritual assistant—after enough lifetimes, anyway. Now get to work.
This basic social model is as old as the first ant colony. The origins of this particular version lie in an old Sanskrit story about the First Man, the archetypal human, called Purusha. It's remarkable that at the core of the Hindu tradition—known for its groovy messages of peace and harmony—we see a human sacrifice as the opening act of Creation. The sacrificial victim is the First Man.
When Purusha's charred corpse is cut apart, the priestly caste is formed from his mouth, the warrior caste from his arms, the producer caste from his loins, and the servant caste from his feet. A complex social structure emerges from primitive violence.
According to the Rig Veda:
A thousand heads hath Purusha, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet.
On every side pervading Earth he fills a space ten fingers wide.This Purusha is all that yet hath been and all that is to be. …
All creatures are one-fourth of him, three-fourths [of him are] eternal life in heaven. …
From him [the Cosmic Egg] was born; again, Purusha from [the Cosmic Egg] was born. …
Gods prepared the sacrifice with Purusha as their offering...
They balmed their victim on the grass, torched him, and gathered the dripping fat. From that "general sacrifice" came all the creatures of the air and sea, and all the holy texts and magic spells. Then human society was carved from Purusha's body:
The Brahmin was his mouth, of both his arms was the [Kshatriya] made,
His thighs became the Vaishya, from his feet the Shudra was produced.The Moon was gendered from his mind, and from his eye the Sun had birth;
[The Storm god] and [Fire god] from his mouth were born, and [Wind god] from his breath.
From Purusha's skull came the celestial Heavens, from his navel came the shifting atmosphere, and from his feet came the Earth. In essence, then, the cosmos and human society are made of the same being.
Thus they formed the worlds. … When the Gods, offering sacrifice, bound as their victim, Purusha. …
These were the earliest holy ordinances.
The Mighty Ones attained the height of Heaven, there where the Sādhyas, Gods of old, are dwelling.
This hymn was probably composed in the southern shadow of the Himalayas around 3,300 years ago, somewhere on the way to the Ganges River. You have to wonder if the Vedic poets spent their time kicking up anthills and poking around beehives.
Or did the hierarchical vision just come naturally to them?
MACHINA – Robots Do the Mashed Potato
We share exactly 0% of our DNA in common with robots, at least for now. And yet, if they mimic our race's ceremonial movements, we may just learn to love them.
Not bad. But these boogie bots are still a long way from out-dancing their human predecessors. Right?
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RELIGARE – Plato's Antfarm
Some 2,400 years ago, during the Greek Axial Age—just as the Buddha's Noble Truths were taking hold in the Indian mind—the Athenian philosopher Plato dreamt up the perfect city-state. This society would function like a cohesive organism, he decided, ruled by fruity philosopher-kings, protected by tough warriors, and served by toiling farmer-slaves. But they would need a shared mythos to seal the deal.
In Book III of The Republic, Plato writes:
Socrates said: "Could we somehow contrive one of those lies that come into being in case of need...some one Noble Lie to persuade, in the best case, even the rulers, but if not them, the rest of the city?"
Glaucon said: "What sort of a thing?"
Socrates suggests creating a simulation for the people to inhabit—where everyone believes they're really subterranean androids, related by synthetic blood—as a way to motivate citizens to risk their own lives in defense of the city-state:
Socrates said: "I'll attempt to persuade first the rulers and the soldiers, then the rest of the city, that the rearing and education we gave them were like dreams...[that] in truth, at that time they were under the Earth within, being fashioned and reared themselves, and their arms and other tools being crafted. ...
"[T]hen the Earth, which is their mother, sent them up. And now, as though the land they are in were a mother and nurse, they must plan for and defend it, if anyone attacks, and they must think of the other citizens as brothers and born of the Earth."
Glaucon said: "It wasn't for nothing that you were for so long ashamed to tell the lie."
Socrates said: "All the same, hear out the rest of the tale."
He then lays out a plan for eugenic meritocracy. Socrates also urges the propagation of a Noble Lie—his Myth of the Heavy Metal Bloodlines—to explain the accidents of birth and unequal social roles:
"'All of you in the city are certainly brothers,' we shall say to them in telling the tale, 'but the God, in fashioning those of you who are competent to rule, mixed gold in at their birth; this is why they are most honored, in [warriors] silver, and iron and bronze in the farmers and other craftsmen.'"
Using the language of his era, Socrates anticipates ideas of mutation, sexual recombination, and artificial selection:
"'So, because you're all related, although for the most part you'll produce offspring like yourselves, it sometimes happens that a silver child will be born from a golden parent, a golden child from a silver parent, and similarly, all the others from each other. Hence the God commands the rulers…to keep over nothing so careful a watch as the children, seeing which of these metals is mixed in their souls.'"
Unlike the Hindu philosophers, Socrates values individual ability over nepotism within the city-state. But like the Hindus, he believes the lowest born should be subject to the rulers:
"'And, if a child of [the gold bloodline] should be born with an admixture of bronze or iron, by no manner of means are they to take pity on it, but shall assign the proper value to its nature and thrust it out among the craftsmen or the farmers.
"'And, again, if from these men one should naturally grow who has an admixture of gold or silver, they will honor such ones and lead them up, some to [the philosopher-kings], others to [the warriors], believing that there is an oracle that the city will be destroyed when an iron or bronze man is its guardian.'
"So," Socrates concluded, "have you some device for persuading them of this tale?"
Glaucon said: "None at all."
That’s because the TV hadn’t been invented yet. Today, philosopher-kings write code, warriors deploy drones, servants compete against robots, and everyone’s absorbed in their own virtual reality.
A big idea is like a queen ant. It takes time for her brood to mature.
Strange flashback whilst reading this dense piece. In grades 12/13 my homeroom teacher was an Anglican minister, without a parish. He taught Classics/Latin. In nightschool format he taught Death&Dying, World Religions, etc. I wanted to take both, my father agreed, only if he enrolled too. I was mortified but agreed. Growing up, we never discussed religion/politics/sex. His authority was absolute, and enough. Mum, as a convert, deferred to him on everything. I loved both classes, even with Dad in the back corner pocket of the room. He never uttered a word, no interruption, no question, no criticism. He only wanted to hear what I heard. The teacher's bar was raised to its absolute height, I believe, not by intimidation, but because he knew this man, in a white shirt and tie, could choose to be elsewhere. I learned more from what these two men didn't say, than by what they did. Reading this article, I felt Rev. Roger McCombe in front of me and my dad listening off to the side. Thanks for that. They've both been gone many years, but not very far away, obviously.