Introduction

Yeah, I'm way slower than everyone else (read: Matt Lyke). But I was just reading my way through the introduction and stumbled across a paragraph that struck me, mostly because, in comparison to my enthusiam about Israel's Praise or The Omnivore's Dilemma, I wasn't too into reading this book, or at least wasn't sure that it was something I was interested in knowing about for the sake of being a better person or making the world a better place.

I know you've all read it, but I'm going to post it anyways.

"It seems logical to suppose that history's pattern reflects innate differences among people themselves. Of course, we're taught that it's not polite to say so in public. We read of technical studies claiming to demonstrate inborn differences, and we also read rebuttals claiming that those studies suffer from technical flaws. We see in our daily lives that some of the conquered peoples continue to form an underclass, centuries after the conquests or slave imports took place. We're told that this too is to be attributed not to any biological shortcomings but to social disadvantages and limited opportunities.

"Nevertheless, we have to wonder. We keeps seeing all those glaring, persistent differences in peoples' status. We're assured that the seemingly transparent biological explanation for the world's inequalities as of A.D. 1500 is wrong, but we're not told what the correct explanation is. Until we have some convincing, detailed, agreed-upon explanations for the broad pattern of history, most people will continue to suspect that the racist biological explanation is correct after all. That seems to me the strongest argument for writing this book."

It also seems to me to be the strongest argument for reading it. Just in going through the introduction, I've been trying to place myself within hypothetical situations and remind myself of situations that I am or have been in (i.e. imagine myself visiting an Aboriginal Australian tribe and wondering how I would perceive them), and I've realized that my perceptions may very well be derived from the racist biological explanation, since it has been deviously lurking behind most of what I've been taught since birth about the world and my social status.

It's also interesting for me to think about some of the "non-racist" things I've been taught since I became a "liberal," and wondering how much things like white guilt may not be as detached from this racist biological explanation, either.

Anyways, who really knows what is at the source of my perceptions, but regardless, it will be very interesting to see how Diamond's argument plays out. I feel pretty confident that he's going to refute the racist biological explanation, but I'm unsure about how he will allow historical reality interact with apparent moral obligation, i.e. if he proves that European economic/militaristic/technological superiority was the product of enviromental conditions and not genetic superiority, does that mean that history played out as it should or that, had the roles been reversed, sub-Saharan Africans, American Indians, etc. would have done the same thing? I know he addressed that a bit in the intro, but I'm not sure he made any promises. My guess is that he won't really touch that subject at all, but we could get lucky.

Oh, also, I saw this on BBC when I opened Firefox, and thought it was superficially interesting and applicable to what I was thinking about at the time. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6419473.stm