An argument for racial purity?

[Greg_W]

During a discussion last evening, I good friend of mine of Danish-German descent made the assertion that there was a certain superior quality to the Nordic-Aryan-Teutonic peoples. I had trouble coming up with points to refute her claim; I, personally, found those of such descent much more intellectually and physically stimulating than other, maybe less developed, peoples. Today I started thinking of it in terms of accomplishment and proliferation and realized that so many major feats down through history have been spearheaded by the Nordic-Aryan-Teutonic peoples and their descendents (henceforth, let's call them 'Nordic' for simplicity).

 

Without getting into a huge comparitive discussion of history, let's simply look at our sport of climbing/mountaineering. Arguably, modern mountaineering can be traced to the Swiss, British, and/or Germans. Thusly, the early feats, accomplishments, and stunning advances were pioneered by Nordic peoples. The Brits are descendents from Scandinavian/Viking raiders and the Germans and Swiss are Aryan/Teutons. Edmund Hillary? New Zealand was settled by British colonists. Whymper? Brit. Heckmayr, Harrer, & Messner? Germans.

 

What about the Spanish, you say? The Spaniards are, actually, bastardized descendents of the Moors; an Arabic race. Wait, you say, what about Abruzzi? You've got me there, eh? Well, the Duke of Abruzzi gave new meaning to 'siege tactics', and may well be the exception that proves the rule. Let's look at the contribution of the Slavic peoples. Now, Adolf Hitler believed that the Slavs (Russians, Poles, Czechs, etc.) were untermenschen. However, we cannot discount them without looking at their ancient heritage. Russia was settled by Teutons moving East and Nordic/Scandinavians moving South. So, you see, they fit into the class of peoples we are discussing. Surely, we have had limited information about what mountaineering feats were accomplished under Soviet rule, however, we do have evidence of what their mountaineering academies produced: many hard, high altitude routes have been put up by Czechs, Russians, Khazaks, and others.

 

So, you see there is a definite superiority in what these peoples have contributed and accomplished just in our niche sport alone. The Nordic peoples have made tremendous strides in mathematics, technology, the sciences...and climbing, throughout the years. It seems they are gifted with the drive to push ever harder to succeed, excel, and proliferate. It may be that these peoples should be honored for their achievement and given their rightful place as superior.

 

Feel free to discuss.

 

Greg_W

[Dru]

 

The Inca were climbing to 22,000 feet when the "Nordic" were still trying to figure out how putting plank on feet would help them move on snow.

 

The Australian were free soloing 5.9 and 10a barefoot in 4,000 BC

 

go back to your white trash trolling now

[Blake]

Yeah.. all those "useless" sherpas (Tenzing who?) certainly did nothing to enable the climbing of the Himalayas.

[Dru]

Anasazi: people of the rock.

Africans - were climbing 5.8 1200' towers in prehistoric times free solo in Cameroon according to Synott & Child.

Tibetans, Nepalese - likewise. Living high.

So its pretty obvious climbing has nothing to do with race? Hell even pasty farm boys named Nels from flat places like Saskatchewan can learn to outclimb Chris Sharma, so even geography has nothing to do with climbing ability.

[Greg_W]

Dru said:

go back to your white trash trolling now

 

I find it interesting that you, knowing absolutely nothing about me, automatically insult me and call me white trash. You know nothing of my upbringing, education, life experience, etc. Whatever, nice debate skills.

 

I see your examples refuting the theory, but what have those people done to EXPAND, PROLIFERATE, AND EXCEL? Only European Aryans have seemed to go forth and expand to a great degree.

[Fairweather]

Greg W,

 

I think the entire racial superiority argument is divisive, if not outright dangerous. Are there indeed differences between races, intellectual and physical? Sure. But on the whole they balance out. With the fact that the USA is an amalgam of almost every race on earth, one could make the argument that racial diversity is what makes a nation great and, yes, powerful.

 

West European, and even more so, Scandanavian arrogance is nothing new. Ditto Japanese and Korean. Ditto almost every race on Earth. I believe everyone is a racist. (Especially liberals!) It is measured in degrees, and it is our duty to suppress this natural impulse.

 

 

[murraysovereign]

Greg_W said:

Dru said:

go back to your white trash trolling now

 

I find it interesting that you, knowing absolutely nothing about me, automatically insult me and call me white trash. You know nothing of my upbringing, education, life experience, etc. Whatever, nice debate skills.

 

I see your examples refuting the theory, but what have those people done to EXPAND, PROLIFERATE, AND EXCEL? Only European Aryans have seemed to go forth and expand to a great degree.

 

I didn't read that as calling you white trash, Greg. I read it as trolling for white trash. Tough call, I agree it could be read either way.

 

And as for expanding and excelling and blahblahblah, I suspect it may have something to do with the fact that

 

a) white Europeans can afford the time and resources to go traipsing around the world climbing mountains, while other races are spending their time and resources eking out a living in some of the world's more inhospitable environments.

 

And b) white Europeans care enough about climbing mountains "because they're there" to make it their lifelong pursuit. Other cultures quite sensibly regard the whole business as silly and pointless, so they don't bother.

[Dru]

Hey Murray - what about Yuji Hirayama? Is he a white European? What about Carlos Carsolio? Mi Sun Go? Ed February? These people seem to have made climbing their lifelong pursuit too...

[JayB]

Greg:

 

Just a couple of points here as I'm about to head off to dinner.

 

The relative successes of Northern European peoples vis-a-vis the rest of the world is a relatively recent development, and there are a number of civiliaztions that have laid claim to the mantle of superiority relative to their counterparts - which your claim would have to address. Just think of the Chinese, the Hindus, the Persians, the Egyptians, and more recently the empires centered around the Mediterranean sea and the Arabian Pinensula such as the Romans, the Abbasids, the Umayaads, and the Ottomans . All of these people achieved a level of technical excellence, political organization, and millitary capability beyond the comprehension, let alone the reach, of the Northern Europeans - who were still barbarians in every sense of the world at the time. If they were inherently superior by virtue of their genes, this superiority should have manifested itself as soon as they became genetically distinct from other peoples - how can the theory of their superiority be reconciled with the fact that they were scarcely beyond a stone age existence while all of the other civilizations flourished around them?

 

There are other points that I would like to touch on, especially the importance of the Arabs in preserving and expanding upon the Greco-Roman intellectual heritage during the Middle Ages, the European recovery of which served as the intellectual scaffolding upon which the Renaissance and the Enlightenment were erected.

 

More later...

 

 

[j_b]

how telling that greg_w forgot about other euros i.e. italians, french, etc .. who have had at least as much to do with modern mountaineering advances as northern europeans/germans do. let's not even mention russians, and other eastern euros. to say the least, a serious case of selective amnesia.

 

hey greg_w, don't forget to flush the toilet next time because it's stinking up the joint.

[Metalhead_Mojo]

Fairweather said:

I think the entire racial superiority argument is divisive, if not outright dangerous.

 

of course it is dangerous, someone might get their feelings hurt.

 

not that i support racial superiority or anything of the sort

[Peter_Puget]

Posts like this are simply BS. I think that Greg is just stirring up shit for sport and since I do not believe he is serious I believe this post is an embarassment to the board in general.

 

More climbing please.

 

PP

[klenke]

Peter_Puget said:

Posts like this are simply BS. I think that Greg is just stirring up shit for sport and I do not believe he is serious."

Then I will be serious: there was a time when Muhammed Ali was The Greatest. Now that he's old and suffering from Parkinson's, this means that I am now The Greatest. End of Discussion. Everybody kowtow now.

[marylou]

Yes, Greg is obviously kidding.

 

 

[allthumbs]

I think the Vikings will kick the Packers ass tonight.

[Dr_Flash_Amazing]

trask said:

I think the Vikings will kick the Packers ass tonight.

 

Which raises the far more prescient question: what the fuck is a "packer"?

[Ratboy]

The Vikings (the real ones, not the football team) may have been barbarians, but you have to give them credit -- they were really good at it. They put the fear of God into the British (particularly the monastaries! ) and were the first to sail to North America, 500 years before Columbus "discovered" it.

 

I don't subscribe to any racial superiority ideas, though.

[Billygoat]

Greg_W said:

You know nothing of my upbringing, education, life experience, etc.

 

Only European Aryans have seemed to go forth and expand to a great degree.

 

 

"We gotta chase those crazy baldheads out of the town"

 

Bob Marley

 

 

[Dru]

The first to sail to North America FROM THE EAST.... except maybe for St. Brendan....

 

Lots of people apparently sailed (or paddled) to N & S America from the WEST.... back 20,000 years or so in some cases...

[allthumbs]

Dr_Flash_Amazing said:

trask said:

I think the Vikings will kick the Packers ass tonight.

 

Which raises the far more prescient question: what the fuck is a "packer"?

Well flash, in your case, considering the fact that you're bi, you would be considered a packer...ya know, 'fudge packer...packin the fudge...tonguein the turd...'.

[specialed]

This is by FAR the stupidest fucking thread ever.

[E-rock]

Metalhead_Mojo said:

Fairweather said:

I think the entire racial superiority argument is divisive, if not outright dangerous.

 

of course it is dangerous, someone might get their feelings hurt.

 

not that i support racial superiority or anything of the sort

 

Metalhead, you have just secured your postion as one of the most supreme idiots who has ever posted on this board.

 

As for this thread.

[Figger_Eight]

specialed said:

This is by FAR the stupidest fucking thread ever.

 

Word.

[Dru]

why is a policeman arresting this man if he is part of a race of superior alpinists?

 

[scrambler]

This is touchy subject but is interesting in some ways and I doubt my response will be understood correctly. I don’t take exception to Greg’s comments and I tried to approach it seriously.

 

The idea of ‘racial purity’ is today nearly always associated with genocide and eugenics. Personally, I believe ‘racial purity’ is a myth. One way to achieve anything remotely like racial purity is to isolate a population. The closest thing analogous to that in biology is the development of an endemic species through allopatric speciation. Typically, one sees that happen when a population is divided by a rising mountain range or drifting landmasses and this process takes a very long time (geological time). However, geographic phenotypes did develop in response to environmental differences but all humans are the same genotype, i.e., we are one species capable of interbreeding to produce viable offspring. With today’s modern transportation, immigration, breakdown of cultural taboos prohibiting intermarriage, etc., I don’t believe ‘racial purity’ is possible. It’s a myth of the distant past and people uncertain of their future cling to this image of a former golden age.

 

Besides what’s an Aryan? Blue eyes and blond hair? As I understand it, the Aryans originated somewhere near the region of Turkey or the Iranian Plateau then spread in two broad migrations, one eastward into India and the other north and westward into Europe. The Aryans forced the Dravidian inhabitants of India southward and established a caste system. The word, Aryan, itself is derived from the Sanskrit word, Arya, meaning ‘noble’. So you have Aryans in India, Persia (Iran), and other parts of the Near East as groups such as the Kurds. Note that Aryans do not include Semitic peoples. The other group of Aryans migrated northward and displaced the Bronze Age people such as the Celts, the ancestors of the Welsh, Irish, and others such as the Basque, etc. The Greco-Roman civilization is Aryan.

 

According to Nigel Calder, the Aryans had a genetic advantage by having a gene that allowed digestion of cow milk. Many Asians, for instance, are known to be lactose intolerant because they do not have the gene. So this genetically advantageous mutation and their social adaptation to stock animals such as the horse and cattle allowed their rapid population growth, migration, and displacement of other inhabitants. Of course, the Aryans were not the only people to have relied on horses for rapid migration. The Mongols spread over large areas of land through this means. This is somewhat speculative, however, other unknown genetic differences may have accounted for selective advantageous effects, e.g., some people of European background are said to be immune to the AIDS virus. One can also see the genetic differences affecting health in non-advantageous ways such as Tay-Sachs Disease, sickle cell anemia, etc.

 

As far as intelligence, I have read and heard that some differences are due to testosterone levels. That’s about as far as I want to take that. I do know that cultural development, in itself, is not a sign of higher social evolution. Barbarism exists just beneath our thin veneer of civilization and is expressed as massacres, genocide, and oppression. Civilizations rise and fall. What one might call the Western European ideal is no exception. A changeover might come through gradual assimilation of alien influences or by abrupt means.

 

I believe the perceived dominance of the mountaineering arena by Europeans and European-Americans is not genetic but is socio-political. By that, I mean, political and economic developments allowed the establishment and growth of the middle class and the subsequent rise of leisure time. As these developments take place in other parts of the world then you will see these people in increasing numbers strive to replicate or surpass the recent achievements of peoples of European heritage. I believe that Europeans were especially fortunate in a confluence of a number of factors in their cultural development to place them at this point in history. However, it’s amusing to think that the most hubris-minded of these people would believe that God was on their side, i.e., God favors Aryans. Maybe it’s this hubris that impels the true believers, the challenge of the mountains is a higher calling seeking to re-identify yourself with the Godhead.

 

So yeah, I wouldn’t put it into racial terms because there are no pure races (but maybe when cloning is perfected…). I would ascribe the dominance to a mindset of superiority that is not confined to a particular set of body characteristics (phenotype) but rather to the human spirit, which all of us share. Today, it appears to be largely culture-bound but tomorrow, it will be loosened.

 

Disclaimer: These opinions were hastily constructed and are subject to change and misinterpretation. Feel free to modify and develop further synthesis.