Human species 'may split in two'

Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years' time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said.

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said - before a decline due to dependence on technology.

People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added.

The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

Race 'ironed out'

But in the nearer future, humans will evolve in 1,000 years into giants between 6ft and 7ft tall, he predicts, while life-spans will have extended to 120 years, Dr Curry claims.

Physical appearance, driven by indicators of health, youth and fertility, will improve, he says, while men will exhibit symmetrical facial features, look athletic, and have squarer jaws, deeper voices and bigger penises.

Women, on the other hand, will develop lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, and even features, he adds. Racial differences will be ironed out by interbreeding, producing a uniform race of coffee-coloured people.

However, Dr Curry warns, in 10,000 years time humans may have paid a genetic price for relying on technology.

Spoiled by gadgets designed to meet their every need, they could come to resemble domesticated animals.

Receding chins

Social skills, such as communicating and interacting with others, could be lost, along with emotions such as love, sympathy, trust and respect. People would become less able to care for others, or perform in teams.

Physically, they would start to appear more juvenile. Chins would recede, as a result of having to chew less on processed food.

There could also be health problems caused by reliance on medicine, resulting in weak immune systems. Preventing deaths would also help to preserve the genetic defects that cause cancer.

Further into the future, sexual selection - being choosy about one's partner - was likely to create more and more genetic inequality, said Dr Curry.

The logical outcome would be two sub-species, "gracile" and "robust" humans similar to the Eloi and Morlocks foretold by HG Wells in his 1895 novel The Time Machine.

"While science and technology have the potential to create an ideal habitat for humanity over the next millennium, there is a possibility of a monumental genetic hangover over the subsequent millennia due to an over-reliance on technology reducing our natural capacity to resist disease, or our evolved ability to get along with each other, said Dr Curry.

He carried out the report for men's satellite TV channel Bravo.

Culture: Captain America Saves Absurdia from Absurdistanis

Captain America socks it to the Nazis - c. 1941






Captain America shows the subhuman 'Other' what's what - c. ?






Captain America, Commie Smasher! - c. 1950s






Captain America kills 'Al-Tariq' (sic) - c. post 9/11




References:

1. Medved, M. 2003. Captain America, traitor? The comicbook hero goes anti-American. The National Review, 4 April. Link

2. Dittmer, J. 2005. Captain America’s Empire: Reflections on Identity, Popular Culture, and Post-9/11 Geopolitics. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95(3), 2005, pp. 626–643 (pdf available on request)

3. Lewis, D. 2005. The Redemption of Captain America - Part I,II. BrokenFrontier.com, Sept 13/Oct. 13, 2005. Link #1, Link #2

4. Slemmons, S. 2003. A Response to Michael Medved's "Captain America, Traitor?" Column . Link

Politics: Response to Prof. Mahmood Mamdani

Response? Not as if he's reading this.

This was a comment I posted elsewhere (almost two years ago) in response to Dr Mamdani's Web Interview on the muslim social site Naseeb.com: Link. It may be useful to read the original interview before reading the following.

"Dr Mamdani makes for an interesting interview candidate because of his forceful opinions on the issue of 'root cause' analysis of Islamic terrorism which has become such a cottage industry among academics since 9-11 (and so useful in winning tenured Chairs). However, some of his assertions are logically inconsistent and do not track the historical record.

Two of his points strike me as most salient and must be repeated at least for clarity:

a) He is against 'culture talk' which tries to find the root of radical Islamic militancy in the intrinsic nature of Islamic society/values/religion. It seems to me - and I have not read his book, so must go by the interview - that Dr Mamdani thinks the root causes of 'violent' Islamic militancy lie in the alliance of convenience against Soviet Afghanistan between the Reagan Admn. and the mujahideen.

b) Dr Mamdani believes that 'Islamic terror' is a fendbild (enemy image) created by the Western media under the instigation of neo-conservative American intellectuals who were born in the same womb as the Reagan-era 'violent jihadists'. It seems he is also implying that the real 'terror' is the continuation of previous imperialism by new means ['genocide' in Afghanistan, and certainly Iraq], and the raising of the fear of 'Islamic terror' obfuscates and screens the New Imperialist designs on the world, and probably reduces the guilt which the West might feel about its own Colonialist past, of which, in Dr Mamdani's words, we are all victims.

The interviewer correctly suggested that this was another form of intellectualized blame on the West. The problems I have with Dr Mamdani's views are:

1) A logical fallacy: If the violent jihadist movement is primarily of mujahideen-Afghan origin which drew CIA support, why has it now turned so virulently against the USA? Dr Mamdani's version of the root cause does not have much intellectual rigor unless we believe the story that jihadist leaders are entrepreneurs (which story I have heard) and jump at the next available target, even when it differs so much from their last great enemy - as the US differs from the Soviet Union. The only plausible way here in which former covert allies can become such bitter enemies is if A) jihadists are completely irrational -or- B) there were really deep 'culture talk' reasons why radical Islam hates America, American values and culture, and those were only cached away till the USSR was defeated in Kabul - or - C) and most likely, the Afghan war was something else, and the violent Al-Qaeda led International Islamic Front today is a qualitatively different beast. Dr Mamdani does not show awareness of these implications.

2) Another logical fallacy: America has no imperial guilt to assuage, compared to the British and the French (or the Spanish, the Portuguese) - so the enterprise of creating the 'Islamic terror' fear complex is not aimed at convincing anti-Imperialists to hold off protests within the US before the assault on muslim countries - it has other aims, as discussed below. Its only imperial past was a brief stint (though violent in the end) in the Philippines. So the wars which were foisted on Afghanistan and Iraq have no necessarily 'colonial' tinge to them except the fact that they are being waged by a predominantly white, Western nation in a far-off locale, and of course the obvious fact that the wars are selfish and motivated by venal reasons, just as colonial wars in China or Africa were. So the 'victims' of European colonialism (which all Arab and Asian people once were) are not necessarily angry at America - nor does colonialism give a just cause for modern rage or even go towards explaining radical Islam in Iran, which was never colonized.

The point is that there *are* similarities between colonial exploitation and what modern western nationstates are doing in the Middle-East, no less the support to anti-democratic regimes like in Saudi Arabia or even Saddam Hussein in the 1980s when he was fighting America's wars. Nation states always act in their interests; this is the basic lesson of realist International Relations theory. It would be naive to think there would only be just Kantian wars, and that pre-emptive war would never occur. Before the League of Nations and the Cold War, the preemptive strike was the order of the day!

The difference from colonialism is that the 'New Imperialism' is indirect, the Americans choose to act through their agents in the region - the -Al-Sauds, the Qatari emirate, etc. who have mismanaged their economies to the extent of creating an unemployable yet angry male population that has looked for viable targets of their rage. Why this happened is because the protection of oil supply is of paramount interest to the West bar none - for exmaple, the elimination of Mossadegh (the original Iranian democratic demagogue) in the 1950s by a CIA coup can only be pointed to as evidence of a nation (the US) protecting its interest (preventing nationalization and termination of oil supplies from Iran). The fact that this led to the installation of the unpopular Shah and the Iranian Islamic Revolution are well-known. [NB: This also shows that not all violent Islamic radicalism has the argued-for 'Reaganite' origins, nor is it even in a former Imperialist dominion].

Writers who have been discussing the roots of muslim anger in the Middle-East - and so much radical Islamic militancy seems Middle Eastern in origin, even if it has spread now - such as Fouad Ajami and Bernard Lewis wrote about the danger of democratic discontent and thwarted development long before 9-11. Dr Mamdani has ignored this entire literature in trying to create the kind of abstract apologia which he claims he does not actually profess [viz. 'I am no apologist' for terrorism]. I think Dr Mamdani is being clever - what he does not apologize for is what he thinks is US state-sponsored terrorism - which does exist: look at Panama, Guantanamo Bay, Grenada, Nicaragua and its death squads, etc. But he should at least be a bit more open about the double-talk.

It seems to me Dr Mamdani has not understood either the roots of US behavior or that of the jihadists. The 'anti-Imperialist' and 'anti-Huntington (which is the same as anti-Culture-Talk) arguments used by Dr Mamdani are too simplistic. He has confused all Islamic radicalism to be of Afghan-mujahideen origin, while his original insight was better, that there is something similar between a Marxist state and Islamic/theocratic regime formation [though who would think so, considering one is apostate and areligious, the other pious]. The Baa'athists began as left-leaning Pan-Arabists. They eventually Islamicized, as in Baghdad if not in Damascus. The color of banners on the day the Shah fled Teheran was as much red (workers) as black (radical Shi'ite). There is more than one type of Islamic warrior, and more than one cause he fights for - even if the US is the main enemy.

So why do some Islamic radicals hate the US so? Some more subtle and erudite academics believe that the organizers of Islamic radicalism are of two types: those like Abu Nidal - secular, but against the US because it supports Israel and equally local despots [though Abu Nidal was happy to take the shelter of some of them] - and then you have the really different but similar Khomeinis and Bin-Ladens, who see in the growing modernization (read Americanization) of their societies, the freedom of women, the alleged impiety of modern youth - the destruction of all that they stand for and hope remains true.

On the flip side, why does the US make such a big deal out of Islamic terror? As I have written elsewhere, the Cold War is to blame, but not in the way Dr Mamdani thinks. Since the implosion of the USSR, the US has lost a formidable source of 'soft power' - that ability to bend others to your will because they agree with you, or are the enemy of your enemy. Its ability to affect European and capitalist countries which feared the Soviet Union vanished in an instant; and it was left with the need to create a new common enemy for the new stage of 'Collective Security' via the recreated Atlantic Alliance. So far it has failed - Old Europe rejects the 'Islamic threat' construct, and pooh-poohs Huntington and his clash of civilization. New Europe, some of which had Ottoman armies on its shores or the UK (for various reasons) have signed on to the American alliance, raising its soft power, which again feeds into domestic legitimacy [a real problem for the current administration].

I hope this long 'essay' in lieu of a comment helps the debate on what Islamic radicalism really is, and the complex responses it evokes in fellow muslims as well as the non-muslim world.

If you made it so far, please read these short interviews as well (linkage is not = endorsement):
Samuel Huntington (Clash of Civilizations?) propounds Islamophobia (what Dr Mamdani would call Culture Talk) http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2002_winter/huntington.html

Francis Fukuyama (who I once accosted and told that your 'End of History' has no end!) talks about soft power. http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2004_summer/fukuyama.html"