April 28, 2019
To be posted on Nobabies.net
The New York Times Company
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
Sir:
While you are hunkered …
I recently saw a YouTube presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCkqzkyplfk ,
that claims to show a cartoon you published of Trump, blind and wearing a Yakama, being led into hell by a dog with the face of Netanyahu. If they are misrepresenting you, please email me above with “nope.” If it is true and you stand by it, well it’s not what I’d have done, but I do see your angle and, given the amount of horror in the world (It’s worse than you can possibly imagine, but I’ll get to that.) it’s not difficult for me to be non-judgmental. Take no action. But if you are hunkered down thinking, “Wow, who’d a thunk it? This is a difficult matter,” then read on.
The “matter” of course is the tendency of people to be beastly to other people, particularly across lines of identity. Time for some lateral thinking. The raw material is on the enclosed DVD (Word, Windows 10). Briefly, the biology makes a couple who are not related (say 7th cousin or so or closer), have reduced fertility. If this poor choice of mates involves the whole population and persists for a few generations, the whole population will die out. Yes, references on that DVD. Clearly there is great selective pressure to limit rate choice to cousins. (Yeh, we know too much inbreeding is bad, too.)
However, by some process unknown to me, given contact with a different ethnic group (except under controlled conditions designed to promote cooperation) results in terrible prejudice leading to hatred and action motivated by the hatred. Now this hostility to ethnic difference is of no biological benefit … actually there is one way to explain it. Once a population has gone far enough down the road toward oblivion, it represents a threat to the whole species, so nature pitches in with infertility and a perverse (Sorry, I know that’s a dated word. Maybe I should say dysfunctional.) urge to make a bad choice of mate. But how in the world does it get started? The natural barrier is about the 7th cousin distance. Why don’t we all obey that? Then all that bad stuff couldn’t happen.
So I am in a quandary. Do let me know if you have thoughts on it. I’d hate to think (even non-judgmentally) that your silence endorsed that … shall we say rude? … cartoon.
Three files on the DVD; “collection” is relatively short. “Hans” gives a quick and dirty proof taken from gapminder.com and the other is a more extended version; check out the first 32 essays.
Look, we can all get along. … I think. Once we understand the process the better side of our natures should take over, preserving our existence if there is still time for that and understanding that hatred across identities is the quintessence of stupidity.
Sincerely,
M. Linton Herbert MD