Hi Fred,

Thanks for the backhanded compliments.

You know, I recognize that I'm a very dialectical thinker, and that style of reasoning can very annoying or even seem threatending to people who aren't. I often feel similarly about people who are much more either/or in their thinking even though I truly do appreciate the value in formal logic. It has nothing whatsoever to do with political correctness, in fact honestly my gut instinct is to accuse you of conservative poltical correctness for your racial beliefs. However, I don't think it would be fair or accurate upon reflection, nor is it fair to accuse me of such muddled thinking.

I recognized the significance of this when I was reading the debates between Steve Gould and his various opponents. I couldn't imagine why they kept saying the horrible things about him that they were saying, about how "confused" he supposedly was, when I found him very thoughtful and clear. Then I realized how different his way of thinking was from theirs. Yours and mine is also fundamentally different in some ways.

It came together better for me when I was reading Richard Nisbett's book, "The Geography of Thought." He shows how different ways of life and patterns in childraising affect what we pay attention to and how this gets carried through to our perceptions, values, and beliefs and maintained in culture over time. He uses very sharp laboratory examples comparing people in East Asian and Western cultures, but his principles often apply to different Western cultures as well.

One of the reasons I don't think these pervasive differences in thinking are genetic is that people with the same ancestry often have very different ways
of reasoning, similar to the East/West differences. For example, secular and orthodox Jews are nearly as different in their thinking as East Asians and Westerners.

As for the significance of identity vs. race, I have trouble comprehending that someone wouldn't recognize it at least to some degree. You seem to have the same trouble seeing how I can deny that race is the same thing as identity(?)

For example, how could anyone possibly attribute the shared sense of unity of Christians to "race" when they span so many races? How could American be a nation united in its principles if our unity and national identity relied on race, when we are a "melting pot?" How could people who are biologically the same race or nearly so commit genocide against each other if identity was not more important fundmentally than race?

The only way I can make sense of your point of view is to suppose that you don't think Christians share a sense of identity or that Americans share a sense of identity.

If you are open to the possibility and interested in why it is important to many people, read Samuel Huntingdon's "Clash of Civilizations," which shows among other things fairly clearly how cultural patterns of identity have divided the world far beyond the initial lines of race. Identity-in-general may have come from racial-identity in some way, but it importantly extends far beyond it.

kind regards,

Todd