You're a Mutant

Really....

Special Article Excerpt (Draft)

This is an excerpt from my special article. It is still in draft stage. So, it will change a lot after this - just as the previous draft ended up doing. It is also missing a lot of links. This Special Article is at least 4 times longer than my early ones. It covers a lot of things to do with genetics and evolution that you will find nowhere else!

You will probably find LOTS of typos! Yes, I am a genuine dyslexic — I’m a mutant. But at least I am not blue .

Are your genes messed up?

Of course, you are. Genetic mutations occur constantly. Check the mirror for blue.

This is true of cultures, too. In cultures, epigenetic change is a result of external events – the environment being most important Human agency matters. But it must come in unexpected forms, usually as an expression of extra-cultural challenges.

When the USSR collapsed, that could have been the end of Russia.

But in cultural terms you had the equivalent of genetic mutation in the form of institutional anomalies that allowed Vladimir Putin to come to power in a situation which required his rather special abilities. Under ordinary circumstances that would have been impossible. Putin was the expression of epigenetic change. As different as non-coding microRNA turning on some genes and turning off others.

China seemed to be collapsing during the Cultural Revolution, but it survived thanks to the same kind of cultural mutations — under Deng and Xi and others. Again, human agency matter—but as the expression of larger changes.

Why isn’t that kind of thing happening in the Western cultures?

Because we haven’t broken yet. People like Obama or Biden or Trump cannot change anything—only make it worse as the expressions of genetic deficiency, culturally- speaking.

At a time when the world is entering a new phase, with a radically different natural and technological ecosystem, the West looks backwards, imaging a world that never existed and glory that never was.

It must collapse and then start again as Russia and China did.

Russia and China are children of the future. The West is the idiot child of the Past.

Maybe evolution can go backwards….

Culture Wars

Today, everyone talks about WWIII – Armageddon. Armageddon is indeed happening but it is not nuclear, nor ever will be. The Four Horsemen have been replaced by thousands of MBAs, and stock traders, and a few billionaires. Evolution, y’ see.

WWIII started years ago when the US realized that Russia and China were rising, offering real alternatives to the American Dream, which had been just false advertising for decades, a cover for the greatest international con in history—which the US had gotten away with.

When Francis Fukuyama declared the “End of History”, he was right. But it was the beginning of the end of American history.

The USSR and Mao’s China were not real competition for Western imperialism – just, in historical terms, temporary obstacles. With Glasnost and the Cultural Revolution, the West thought it had “won”.

But, in fact, it lost because out of the ashes rose new states, driven by existential necessity requiring new ideas, and creative solutions.

Now the West faces real competition.

No empire with hegemonic ambitions can allow competition, which by its very existence contradicts hegemony. Hegemons must win the race before it is run.,

Keep in mind that the US is just a wannabe global ruler. The world is too big, and too diverse for its ambitions. In fact, we have never had a single civilization that dominated the whole world.

This is the lesson of history. But as empires grow, most aspire to hegemony and must destroy all who resist.

For Rome, once a tiny city state, tribal in its views, there could only be one civilization – its own. As it grew, it’s competition was Carthage, which it destroyed, Cato the Elder called for genocide.

Why did Rome hate Carthage so much? Because Carthage was in most respects a more successful society. It had an efficient government and bureaucracy and dominated trade in the Mediterranean. Carthage was to Rome what China is to the US.

Click on image for video: “Why Rome Hated Carthage”

After Carthage, Rome went on to destroy Corinth. Why? Because much of Roman culture was based on Greek culture and its art, literature and philosophy. The world could have only one civilization – that was Rome, so Rome had to demonstrate it superiority.

There are many similarities between the US and Rome.

For example, the clear divide between the common people and their rules. The common people, who at first were the backbone of the army were given bread and circuses. Today, in the US we have McDonalds and Netflix.

The Coliseum was Rome’s Hollywood—it celebrated feats of strength and military prowess. Bu it got harder and harder to recruit soldiers for the legions, who mostly came from the countryside or were recruited from the Germans.

Every civilization that seeks to dominate others follows the same pattern. It repudiates its predecessors while imitating them. It must completely destroy those cultures that do not submit to its will—or threaten the narrative that articulates its supremacy—which means especially peer-level competitors. The Carthaginians’ genocide was nothing exceptional, nor the razing of Corinth. In the future, it would happen again and again, a recurring lesson for humankind, that we always ignore—and today more obvious than ever in the case of Russia and China.

Why do we never learn?

Mimetic Theory

“Mimetic theory” assumes that imitation is a fundamental asset for all social animals. We learn from others and coordinate our behaviors to maximize cooperation and improve survival.

Pretty much commonsense. But how does it work?

Human beings have what are called “mirror neurons”.

Mirror neurons respond to actions that we observe in others. The interesting part is that mirror neurons fire in the same way when we actually recreate that action ourselves. Apart from imitation, they are responsible for myriad of other sophisticated human behavior and thought processes.

Some people have more of these neurons than others. People with ADHD, for example, for highly sensitive neurodiverse people. The genetic mutations that make us “behaviorally modern” are responsible for such neurological capabilities, which allow us to learn faster through observation, while enhancing both empathy and altruism,

So “mimetic” is something of a simplification. This variation of classical theory was the invention of Rene Girard whose writings cover literary criticism, psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, biblical hermeneutics and theology. Girard was clearly influenced by Christian values, especially the Seven Deadly sins, which include envy:

Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.

You want something because other people around you want it – it’s a social idea—derivative, conformist — not something individual or unique to you. It is not a biological need or instinctive. It is….envy. Which leads to competition and what Girard would call “rivalry”.

If you have it, you must fear someone taking it from you. And since you don’t necessarily need it in any fundamental way, you want more of it, which is why every millionaire wants to be a billionaire.

If another person has this thing that you covet, you must try to take what you have.

Fundamental to Girard’s thought is envy and greed, which leads to injustice and exploitation at odds with most moral codes. How to avoid blame?

Scapegoating – the blame game on the one hand and scapegoating on the other.

Girard saw this in the lynching of black people in the 30s in the US. A black person would be singled out for some imagined transgression, with the entire community participating in his or her torture and murder. It was a public holiday with parents packing box luncheons for their kids.

Everyone believed he was guilty without evidence, of course. He or she could not defend himself or herself. The solidarity of the white community prevented reprisals. And the community thought it had somehow improved itself.

Lynchings got rid of social tension and hidden anger, mainly from white people exploiting other white people. There is physiology to it. It’s in the body as much as in the mind.

But they also necessitated dehumanizing black people and seeing them as morally vacant and therefore unworthy of life.

So, Girard’s theory is useful when dealing with exploitative hierarchies, and toxic conformity and show how human instincts and capabilities can be redirected destructively by the mass cultures that came into being in the Neolithic when competition replaced cooperation.

Turning back to Rome and Carthage, growing in military power and exploiting its own people, Rome was envious of Carthage. It not only wanted to have what Carthage had, it wanted to be Carthage 2.0.

To do that it destroyed the entire civilization, killed many of its people and enslaved the others. Sort of like America becoming the British Empire 2.0, except that we didn’t rape London. Not yet anyway.

The Roman people, now worse off than ever, applauded the illusion of progress. Latter-day artists were enthusiastic.

Keep in mind, the distinction between Giscard’s concept of “desire”, as imagination and that of human need as a reality. When you are in the desert, water tastes better than champagne.

In consumer societies you are taught to want all sorts of things because others have them. A super smartphone you use to check your email, a digital camera to take photos of breakfast for Facebook, in the case of women, expensive lingerie that your lover just wants to take off as fast as possible. What actually makes you happy?

Rome gave its people, as we’ve said, shows of people and animals, getting slaughtered or tortured, blood and guts, a kind of perverse catharsis, rather like we get from widescreens today.

But many Romans were happiest when not in Rome. The ones with money, that is.

Scapegoating Russia and China

When I began this article, I asked some fundamental questions.

How is it that an entire culture has been created in the West, to lynch Russia and China?

That includes most of the organs of the civilizational body – schools, universities, the media, including entertainment, the military, many religious institutions, groups of all kinds, not to mention elected officials and the bureaucracy. Of course, not everyone. Credibility is ensured by neutered dissent.

Our “brightest and best” – like Scheer, and Sachs and Mearsheimer and many others stand on the sidelines like critics of a lynch mob who blame the local police first, excuse the community for its violence indirectly by blaming it all on “racial tension”.

The answer comes down to the social and moral pathology that Girard identified as acceptance of injustice, anger, envy, and greed—things that make you less than human.

As American society becomes more and more unequal, people are less and less able to afford the things they are taught to want.

The frustration and anger is difficult to express directly.

There have to be scapegoats. Someone has to be punished.

In 1945, the American Dream promised a lot. Much of the world was in ruins but America was rich and Europe and Japan were envious. Only the US had nukes. But both the USSR and China recovered from their respective wars, albeit slowly. There was a certain balance.

But then the Cultural Revolution turned China upside down until 1976, followed by Glasnost in Russia. And the sudden deflation of the Japanese “bubble”. Suddenly, America as the only super power. The future was to be America’s.

But each of the countries that appeared to have failed had things that the US wanted. It wanted Russian resources. It wanted cheap Chinese labor. It wanted Japanese technology.

Did it need them? No, actually not. Most of what it wanted it had already. It wanted these things because of greed and simply because somebody else had them. This was what Girard means by amoral “desire”. But we all have to some extent.

Click on graphic for video.

But China recovered and grew making huge progress in the 21^st century. Putin ushered in a new age for Russia from 2000 onwards. Europe, especially Germany, were powerhouses. Japan still dominated some areas of technology.

US dominance was threatened.

Europe and Japan were vassal states, so the US focused on Russia and China, demonizing both, but especially Russia under Putin. Russia had resources that the US wanted. In the 90s, it had counted on the Russian Federation breaking down into separate republics which it could colonize and it had invested in the Russian oligarchy. But one of Putin’s first actions were to purge the oligarchy and reverse privatization, while defeating the US proxy war in Chechnya.

That led to a massive campaign to discredit Putin and his reforms—and therefore the entire modern Russian state. Another equally dishonest program was launched against China.

This was classic Girardian “scapegoating”.

But the American empire is as doomed as Rome’s.

Desperation

Russia and China are scapegoats for what is wrong with the US. Their success threatens the American narrative. They refuse to imitate what they see as wrong in American values and beliefs –they do things their own way.

Every year, the West becomes more desperate, conjuring up stories of the evil represented by the East – that because every culture or civilization depends on the compliance of its people – and “willing suspension of disbelief”. They must believe in the dreams that their culture generates for them, virally infecting the imagination. They must follow, conform, imitate.

The Romans cooked up stories about the Carthaginians sacrificing children, which horrified the Romans who believed the only fathers should be able to kill children. Centuries later people still believe the Roman sources, just as we believe Western sources about the “Holodomor” and “The Terror” and Putin’s murders and megalomania.

Recent excavations of children’s cemeteries in Hammon (Carthage) show only the bones of children with gross deformities or miscarriages or childhood diseases.

Support us in finishing this article.

As you can see, a lot of scholarship and research was involved in creating this article —and a lot more is needed — but I have tried to make it easy to read, rather than the using the academic style I was trained in .

If we are to survive the challenges of the times, I believe we have to understand basic questions about what we face, how it happened, where it is all leading. I have no answers. I am not smart enough to supply the answers you need. But I can still ask questions. That’s what “mutants” do,

You can support Chappy and Ichi and me in this effort by buying us coffee! I have almost no income and live always a bit on the edge. So, please click here!

Below, a heartwarming video.