In a message dated 6/6/99 11:47:50 AM, [log in to unmask] writes:
>If human being =
>member of species Homo sapiens, then there are no other humans in the
>universe,
Perhaps there are no other humans in the universe. Who knows? Not me.
>and you will be forced to face the issue of defining what it
>means to be human sometime in the future, assuming, of course, it is
>possible to be human on other planets.
Sounds like a book project, but really I was saying that people are people.
They have been moving about for thousands of years. Basically we are all
related. I need not except the arbitrary mental constructs of nation, or
race. Telling the descendents of people who migrated to Australia more
recently than their aboriginal brothers and sisters to get out, hardly makes
any sense. A much more useful suggestion might be a call for solidarity,
direct democratic control of industry by all the people there, abolishing the
wage system, and other fun stuff along those lines.
>Help me out here.
Folkloric would be arbitrarily defined in contrast with scientifically
defined. Race is a case in point. Attempts to assign racial divisions to the
human species scientifically haven't had much success. The American
Anthropological Association, for instance, suggests the eventual elimination
of racial category questions on US government forms. They consider racial
groupings harmful, and arbitrarily defined with no basis in scientific fact.
There has always been a considerable lag between what is known in science and
what the general public has knocking around in their heads. Give it fifty or
a hundred years.
"those who would keep us fighting
>with each other."
That would be the members of one of two social classes in my world view.
Capitalists, in this case, as opposed to labor. Labor solidarity is a threat
to them. You (ndustry should be run, for what purposes, and then how our
produce should be distributed?
Here's a plug: http://www.iww.org
Sincerely,
johnk
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