Is "race" a useful marker?

     Recently, I read a blog comment from a reader identified as "blackmamba".  The expression was forthright and lucid. It offered that:

There is only one multi-ethnic multi-colored multi-national, multi-faith, species whose origins trace to Africa 300, 000 years ago. What we call race is an evolutionary fit pigmented response to varying levels of solar radiation at altitudes and latitudes primarily related to the production of Vitamin D adapted to protect genes from damaging mutations. As such, we are all African primate apes driven to crave fat, salt, sugar, habitat, water, sex and kin by any means necessary including conflict and cooperation. 

     The conclusion that "race" is just about "pigment" is counter-productive in societies ongoing effort to achieve "equality of opportunity" across the species.  When we spin gender and race as irrelevant, we just confuse half of the species and piss-off the other half.  Few familiar with the NFL, the PGA, the Spelling Bee,  etc., believe this simplistic assessment, and certainly their complex structures seem to be  "evolutionary fit".

Mean Metaphors

     There seems to be no end to human creativity when it comes to ascribing pejorative names for those we fear.  Hillary's "basket of deplorables" sparked a race for substitute metaphors yielding "halflings" and "catfood coalition", (District Nine Movie),  my personal favorite and many others. If the clever ones were only as skilled at reducing the  class spectrum, we would all be happier.

Alexa is a Dude!

     It's Black Friday and we are awash in "tech promotions", especially this year, "Virtual Assistants".  It may well be the case that your family, both young and old, simply cannot survive without a hovering set of eyes and ears offered up by Silicon Valley Alphas..  Not surprisingly these pre-droid friends have mostly feminine names,  like Siri, Alexa, etc.  The gender evoking names plays both to "me too" and the increasingly ego challenged guys, just happy to still control anyone/anything. 

     There is, however, a subtle but ominous, gender play loaded into this emerging paradigm shift.  We are entering a reality space where humans are no longer what we eat, what we see, what we dream....we are now, in large measure, what our VA's (virtual assistant) have identify/published as the optimum Baysian inferred responses to our precedent states of awareness.  Our consciousness is indeed being assembled by our Apple Watch and other  transmission device on which we rely to provide adverb instructions from the cloud. If this isn't the most absurd strategy for "doing 80 years", I don't know what is.....

    Although few who push the Amazon one-click buy button tomorrow have any idea what/who/it is that emerges from the cloud with all the answers, they would be well cautioned to know that this endlessly expanding "neural networks" orchestrating our lives.......well they,  the NNs (neural networks), had parents, euphemistically speaking. Although increasingly running on "feedback drive", i.e. facebook, the origin scaffolding/algorithms were parented by a small cadre of GenX/GenY Alphas using their own cultural insights to ground what is and will forever be, our God.

     And for the "finale".  The NN parentage cadre is 88% male.  Make of this what you will.... remembering that your assessment is already teed up... up there in the cloud....  just waiting for your VA to awaken you with your "male biased" personal choice! 

It's Not Greek

Alphas tend to compensate when Betas dominate Gammas and Deltas.

Betas tend to fear Alphas and oppress Gammas and Deltas

Gammas tend to be averse to everyone except Gammas

Deltas tend to engage as though everyone is a Delta

The Black Chair Protocol

     The Midterm Election is over, we have had a heavy frost,  the RoseHouse Christmas Lights are up, and  I am settling into a new winter-season lifestyle.  Minimal hygiene, housekeeping, and provisioning withstanding, my days are mostly about a computer, a monitor, and the presumed reality it displays.  It is my emerging eighth decade sense that the phenomena manifest outside my door are only nominally more real than "Fortnite".  As such, my enthusiasm to play "First Life" has subsided. I do however continue to be curious about why there is such human interest in both "First Life" (phenomanal world) and the diversionary art worlds that it spawns. 

     Most days, I watch, listen,  and read  the musing of those who think about  these philosophical questions.  I feel fortunate that I have such remarkable access to this stream of human thought and I am always fascination that there exists consciousness that has the capacity to explore consciousness. 

PS: My, at present, best guess is that brains make minds, there is no freewill, and individual consciousness is a network node on an evolutionary feedback loop...... I will keep searching from my much worn black recliner.