I had what I think was a fascinating conversation with a client today, that ranged over many topics that might seem a little taboo, as it was about race. You wouldn't know it by looking at them, but based on a DNA test, my client is 1% black.
But this isn't where the conversation started.
It started when my client was talking about how beautiful Scandinavian women are, which is something I have a plausible (in my head) theory on. My hypothesis is that due to the activities of the culture, they have selectively bred for particular traits, which has led them generation after generation into having better looking people on average. What is perhaps interesting to note though, is that Scandinavians are considered about the whitest people on earth and a fine example of white purity.
But they were Vikings.
We might associate Viking raids as a European thing, but that is not actually the case, because the Vikings were raiding Northern Africa as early as the 9th century. They also went as far as Constantinople, Baghdad and the Byzantine Empire. And as you can imagine, the strongest and fittest of the raping and pillaging Vikings, also took their spoils of war, including people - most likely, the more attractive women that they would take back to Scandinavia and have children with. This happened for hundreds of years, with the children of foreigners in turn becoming Vikings that would go abroad and bring back their own prize women.
Diddy would have loved it.
So, my theory is that the reason that the Scandinavians look the way they do on average still today, is that they have had a lot of genetic selection taking place much earlier. It probably wasn't quite as inclusionary as Scandinavia tends to be today (for better and worse), but it is likely there was a lot of mixing going on.
But, pretty Scandinavians aside, on the back of the Viking discussion, the conversation led into talk of war, but not of the fighting itself, but rather the resources required. I recently listened to a hypothesis about how the shape of land has affected culture, because it affects the ease of growth, and the ability to spread. Long lands like North America have a very diverse range of conditions for growth, so what is possible in the south soon becomes impossible the more northward of the equator. However, Europe has much the same climate width ways, where the same kinds of crops can be grown all the way through from the east of China, to the western coast of Europe.
More resources, more people, more ability to build an army.
But, I think there is more to it than that, because there is also a heavy cultural shift, because once the resource production is established and reliable enough, people don't have to move. This opens up a new market of employment, that shifts away from providing for the body, to providing for secondary needs. Essentially, different kinds of jobs, means different kinds of innovations. But this has implications too.
Because once we don't have to worry too much about physical survival - food, water, sex, security - motivation moves from physical survival, to cultural survival. The secondary needs become more important, where the base needs and feelings get applied to the secondary needs for cultural protection, land ownership expansion for additional resources to keep growing, and of course, population expansion. And unlike the tribal cultures that would fight amongst themselves with relatively small populations, the stationary cultures that didn't move much but had plenty of resources, could scale up their conflicts, which in turn drives more innovation to better compete against whatever enemy is blocking the way for expansion.
Now, you might say that 1% black isn't much, but if you do some basic calculations, it is only 7-8 generations ago, which is about 200 years. That is not quite in living memory, but it really isn't that long ago and it would be interesting to see from which path it came into the genetic conversation for my client in Finland. Because of the church, Finland has very good family tree records, so maybe it could be tracked back to a likely point of entry.
There is a lot of conversation around race these days, but from my own observational experience and likely my preferences, I think that the most beautiful people tend to be a mix of something. It doesn't really matter what kind of mix, or color of skin, eyes, hair etc, but there is something softer in some way. Perhaps it is like with each generation of mix, some genetic corners are knocked off, like a square that slowly gets fashioned into a multifaceted sphere.
It is a refinement process.
But, it is also an innovative process, isn't it? Because essentially, mixing genetics will on average bring about stronger following generations, as there is more chance of the naturally selected strengths from each parent, being present in a single offspring. This creates a new version, a new iteration, and possible, can facilitate new solutions in the future.
A few search-engine highlights:
A study estimates that immigrants are responsible for around 36% of innovation in the United States, outshining their U.S.-born counterparts (August 12, 2024).
Another study finds that more than one-third of U.S. innovators are born outside the U.S. (March 17, 2016).
Additionally, foreign-born STEM workers are likely to continue playing a key role in U.S. productivity and innovation, with 44% of Fortune 500 companies founded by an immigrant or the child of an immigrant (October 08, 2024).
And something I found interesting from one of the reports:
Minorities born in the United States are significantly underrepresented:
U.S.-born minorities (including Asians, African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and other ethnicities) make up just 8 percent of U.S.-born innovators. These groups constitute 32 percent of the total U.S.-born population.
So, it isn't being in a minority that makes diversity valuable for innovation, it is from being outside the US. An immigrant, or child of immigrants. There is likely a few reasons for this, with selection bias on who is able to emigrate from their country successfully to another, and a different cultural environment once in the country for what it takes to succeed.
The differences might be small if looking at individual pieces, but 1% across all of those areas compound and can make an enormous difference over long stretches of time. When a country has a little more resources than they need, they will grow to consume them. If a country has a little less, they will contract to survive. This is disrupted in many ways, so it isn't quite this black and white, but it is interesting to consider what the actual value of diversity is, and what kinds of diversity is valuable to improve the situation, or degrade it.
Unfortunately, we are a highly skilled, but not a very intelligent species, so rather than actually exploring what we could be doing to make the conditions of the world of the type that help us thrive, we use our resources to build tools to protect ourselves from those who are different to us.
Innovation takes more than thinking differently.
It also requires behaving differently.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]