Genetic Determinism for Fun and Profit (and Mass Oppression)

[ymetca]

Fascinating article; worthy read!

Excerpts:

Genetic determinism is the idea that genes have a privileged level of causation and thus a special status in biology. ... Causation in biology can take many forms and genetics is just one of them, but the robber barons who bought biology did so specifically in order to impose a genetic determinist paradigm.

Students unversed in the history of thought and stewed in unsupported or unverifiable genetic explanations have become the intellectual core of a miseducated and compliant society. One that creatively participates in its own delusion by self-describing illnesses as “genetic”, even in cases where the only clear evidence of causation is environmental. A genetically determinist society is therefore one not capable of understanding itself as directly at risk from irresponsible corporate activities and government indifference. It is fundamentally defenceless against polluters, junk food marketers, community dislocation, and other threats to human integrity.

... ever since genetic determinism became established in the public mind, ... Western societies have become locked into a downward spiral of authoritarian politics and genetic determinist thought. This spiral is already imperiling the functioning of democracy. Unhalted, it may extinguish democratic values entirely. ... all organisms are systems and not dictatorships. It becomes necessary, for the very survival of democratic society, to confront these habits of genetic determinist thinking which, after all, have no basis in reality.

Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/22/the-meaning-of-life/