Wednesday, January 26, 2005
(1:18 PM) | Old - Doug Johnson:
Sadomasochism: Guns, Germs, and Steel
Per recent discussion of Darwin:So I didn't even know that my brother-in-law knew who Foucault was, let alone that he was one of my favorite authors. Thus my surprise at seeing the title Guns, Germs, and Steel when I opened a gift from him last Christmas. And with that cover. Had to be about sex. Endorsed by Bill Gates on the back cover: Puñetas!
Okay, so instead it was an astonishing metanarrative of the last 15,000 years that finally attempted a defense/rescue of Origin of the Species alternate title (The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life). However, while Diamond delivers a knockout blow to hard scientific racism (something we strangely still needed), his account still very much justifies a kinder, gentler racism (hey, whites just are superior, but it is only an accident of geography - and in the new afterword, maybe the yellowman will catch up before too long, there's been a seesaw battle throughout history - everyone else? too bad, so sad, join western civilization or else). Definitely a product of academia in California.
It is no accident that Bill Gates enthusiasm for the book has been enthusiastically recieved. Darwin has been the very real 'big other' of capitalism in America (and elsewhere) at least since Herbert Spencer. As with gay marriage, conservatives only think they are opposed.
