Monday, December 6, 2010

Breeding with Neanderthals

As we continue thinking / hoping that somehow our current democracy will save us, we send along videos of senators begging for sanity and think how good this is. I'm referring to the pleas of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. I found myself composing what appears below and was surprised to see the comment about breeding with Neanderthals. Note that our relationships with Homo neanderthalensis was recently discovered (see paragraph below) and has provoked my imagination beyond where many will comfortably go ("We're such prudes you know." - Alice Cooper). Although I must confess that at first I could only envision drunken Homo sapiens sitting around the fire and someone suggesting they go and rape the Neanderthals. But since it's the Neanderthal gene found in the Homo sapiens, it might have been the other way around. Or maybe, instead of rape, it was love. Doesn't this have all the makings for a great song?

In the statement above, I'm referring to recent publication of the Neanderthal genome and the observation that parts of the Neanderthal genome are found in Homo sapiens. This suggests that not only were Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis on the planet at the same time (which had already been established), but that they were definitely interacting. And since the neanderthals were stronger, the Homo sapiens men might have been overpowered.

It is wondered why neanderthals went extinct. Isn't it obvious? Although the neanderthals were stronger, they weren't smarter. Their demise could have been the result of messing with the Homo sapiens males who, angered by the neanderthals brutality, planned a mortal trap, possibly with the use of the women as bait. Yes, this had to be it. The Achilles Heel of the neanderthal men was their compulsion for sapiens women. Could this have led to the eventual subjugation of Homo sapiens women which is taking so long to unravel?

Anyway here is my justification for how dysfunctional we are:

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But isn't this a broken record? This isn't anything new, this has gone on for a long time. Although I appreciate the senator's efforts to remind us of our predicament, I'd prefer hearing what we should do about it. The process this man is engaged in is broken (the Senate is nothing more than a joke) and his cries of despair should be alarms for revolution, not topics for the next cocktail party. But the voices of revolution cannot be those of pure idealists, like Jim Scott from yesterday's UU service. They need to be from people who know and can present rationally all sides of these tricky issues that confront the human species. Communism doesn't work. Socialism leads us to serfdom (Hayek's term). Capitalism leads us to polarization of wealth, abuses of power and imperialism. What we need is an effective democracy that can serve as a container for the capitalistic machine. But this container must be able to govern the engine so that it will serve us all - not just the powerful (corrupted).

I need to study some political philosophy that embraces these problems. Or maybe we just haven't solved this problem yet. It's that Neanderthal gene we're all carrying around. If Homo sapiens just could have stayed away from that call of the wild that led them into that sexy world of breeding with Neanderthals ... ...

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I will post a video of the song once I get it going ...

heh ...

2 comments:

  1. I am having trouble following the correlation between Neanderthals and the Bush tax cuts. In keeping with spirit though this is clearly a case of the Neanderthal gene of the middle class being conned into thinking that the rich getting richer will some how help them. We keep waiting to be trickled down upon but it's just not happening.

    I also disagree with your statement that Bernie Sanders isn't saying what to do. He is saying let's rollback these ridiculous tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% and halt our continued march towards Banana Republic economy. We have a long history of success in our progressive tax system, let's get back to some remote resemblance of what it has been historically.

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  2. Yeah right - Obama can't even stick to his own game plan and has caved on this issue. Please offer an explanation ...

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