From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.med
Subject: Re: Is Japanese smarter than white race?
Date: 11 May 2000 05:48:20 GMT

In <bXpS4.95$v3.1328@uchinews> meron@cars3.uchicago.edu writes:
>
>One should never underestimate human readiness and desire to exercise
>force over fellow human beings while feeling righteous about it ("it
>is for their own good, the poor wretches").  Of all unpleasant human
>characteristics this one is among the worst.


   I think some of it has to do with the mental circuits that are
active in parenthood, which seem to spill over into wanting to treat
other adults like your children.  This kind of meddling is not so bad
in teens and young adults, but you can practically see the narrow
minded conservativism emerge generally in people after 35.  In women it
is apt to turn into a horrid sort of gossipy social activism, and in
men it becomes a lock em up old-fart kind of conservativism.  As the
Woodstock generation's hair fell out and their hips widened, they not
only didn't want their kids to use drugs, but they decided they didn't
want anybody at all to. Gads, were these people ever young? They make
me puke and I'm a 43 yo boomer myself.

   I think of this as social osteoporosis, after another set of genes
with pleiotropic [differently acting] effects. A nursing mother
normally has her hormones hit bottom, and in response her skeleton
disolves to provide calcium for milk production. That's fine and
adaptive if it only lasts a year or even two, since afterwards the
skeleton can rebuild somewhat (such is the power of this, that a woman
can't rebuild during nursing, no matter how much calcium she takes).
But when the woman hits menopause at 50, NOW her youthful programing is
maladaptive. Moreover, she lacks for new programing for the aged state,
since evolution hasn't had much selective pressure to give her any. So
when her hormones bottom out for good, her skeleton goes into nursing
mode for 20 solid years, until she breaks a hip. Type II osteoporosis.
That's life in a state of nature.

  So also with mental processes. Whenever I see Nanny-government and
Mommy-government, I often think that it's too bad we gave women the
vote. And when I see stern Daddy-goverment, wars and prisons and all, I
reflect that it's too bad we gave anyone over 40 the vote. In a society
where people live far past their natural mental programing, democracy
on a large scale is PARTICULARLY unnatural. Entire countries aren't
meant to be run like extended families, but here we are.  Your toilet
stops up and somebody nowadays will naturally be asking what
Washington's going to do about it. And Washington will say they're
working on it.  And the horror is that they ARE working on it.