It’s easy to notice that we humans are becoming more progressive by the day. Increasingly, people believe that no one should be discriminated based on colour, race, gender and the like. Breakthroughs in science and widespread education taught us that there is nothing stopping anyone from becoming the person they want to be: that an African American can be President of arguably the most powerful country or that an ALS patient can become one of the most renowned contemporary scientists. But this scientific-liberal movement is yet to reach its zenith: recognising that it doesn’t and shouldn’t matter who one is.
To begin with, scientists and those who believe in science are increasingly confident that humans are essentially lumps of biochemical reactions. You and I are mere complex biological systems interacting with the external world using two features: extension and mental structures. But how did we get each of our unique physical and mental attributes?
Biology influences every single physical and mental aspect of a person before he is born. After birth, the personal philosophy one picks up, and consequently, his actions are influenced by the socio-economic community he is born into. The degree to which one may infuse his own set of values into popular ideas is again dependant on his mental tendency, which is biologically determined since a person has only two types of influences: biological, i.e. the internal world and the external world. Because both these influences are outside anyone’s control, nobody chooses to be anything. Therefore, no one can be judged for what one is/was/will be.
If that’s the case then, allowing only the so-called bright and hard-working students into college is akin to discriminating against a person’s skin colour or gender. People born blind and those born with mental structures that foster criminal tendencies are siblings of the same tragedy: the genetic lottery.
Because a person determines nothing, he should not be discriminated against anything — from IQ to EQ and morality. Hence, nobody must be commended or vilified for anything that they are or have become. True justice is absolute equality. Because everyone is equal, every way of living is equally valid as it is ultimately a function of what a person is.
If that’s the case, what do we do? After all, in the modern era, humans are driven by an urge to progress. However, having something desirable is a necessary prerequisite for progress as progress is essentially movement towards some better ideals or improved material affluence. But having anything desirable will also necessarily deem everything else inferior. Hence, true justice renders any value system vile.
Even moving towards a better world with greater material wealth and technology in the current capitalistic system is evil because it feeds off a hierarchy of intellect which causes immediate losses to those who happen to be less competent in the existing system which incentivises a particular strain of characteristics. Maybe we could choose to condone this temporarily and continue this tyranny until we are technologically capable of ensuring that every child is born the same. But then, we must select a set of characteristics for the common progeny of humans, but unfortunately, a person cannot be both white and black, and we must choose — which is evil. We cannot stagnate in our current system because inaction is also a conscious decision to continue the tyranny of the lucky against the unlucky people in the present system.
In that case, we must exist only to survive sans any concept of justice. Essentially evolve backwards to cancel out all our differences. But how far? Chimpanzees have hierarchies built on physical and mental abilities, and even bower birds have beauty standards. Ideally, we must be reduced to the most basic, non-consciousness entities — to single-celled beings — which seems a little impractical. If that's the case, is there any rationale for humans to exist? Perhaps the solution is not to alter the problem but to purge it — to let Sapiens end.
