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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year ago

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By: Matt Johnson

Published: Jan 27, 2023

“Christopher Hitchens: From socialist to neocon.” It was an irresistible headline because it’s a story that has been told over and over again. The novelist Julian Barnes called this phenomenon the “ritual shuffle to the right.” Richard Seymour, who wrote a book-length attack on Hitchens, says his subject belongs to a “recognisable type: a left-wing defector with a soft spot for empire.” By presenting Hitchens as a tedious archetype, hobbling away from radicalism and toward some inevitable reactionary terminus, his opponents didn’t have to contend with his arguments or confront the potentially destabilizing fact that some of his principles called their own into question.

Hitchens, who died in 2011, didn’t make it easy on the apostate hunters. To many, he was a “coarser version of [conservative commentator] Norman Podhoretz” when he talked about Iraq, and a radical humanist truth-teller when he went on Fox News to lambaste the Christian right: “If you gave Falwell an enema,” he told Sean Hannity the day after Jerry Falwell’s death, “he could be buried in a matchbox.” Then he gave Islam the same treatment, and he was suddenly a drooling neocon again. He defied easy categorization: a socialist who spurned ideology, an internationalist who became a patriot, a man of the left who was reviled by the left.

The left isn’t a single amorphous entity—it’s a vast constellation of (often conflicting) ideas and principles. Hitchens’s style of left-wing radicalism is now out of fashion, but it has a long and venerable history: George Orwell’s unwavering opposition to totalitarianism and censorship, Bayard Rustin’s advocacy for universal civil rights without appealing to tribalism and identity politics, the post-communist anti-totalitarianism that emerged on the European left in the second half of the twentieth century.

Hitchens described himself as a “First Amendment absolutist,” an echo of historic left-wing struggles for free expression—from Eugene V. Debs’s assertion of his right to dissent during World War I to the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Hitchens argued that unfettered free speech and inquiry would always make civil society stronger. When he wrote the introduction to his collection of essays For the Sake of Argument in 1993, he had a specific left-wing tradition in mind: the left of Orwell and Victor Serge and C.L.R. James, which simultaneously opposed Stalinism, fascism, and imperialism in the twentieth century, and which stood for “individual and collective emancipation, self-determination and internationalism.”

Hitchens’ most fundamental political and moral conviction was universalism. He loathed nationalism and argued that the international system should be built around a “common standard for justice and ethics”—a standard that should apply to Henry Kissinger just as it should apply to Slobodan Milošević and Saddam Hussein. He believed in the concept of global citizenship, which is why he firmly supported international institutions like the European Union. He didn’t just despise religion because he regarded it as a form of totalitarianism—he also recognized that it’s an infinitely replenishable wellspring of tribal hatred.

He also opposed identity politics, because he didn’t think our social and civic lives should be reduced to rigid categories based on melanin, X chromosomes, and sexuality. He recognized that the Enlightenment values of individual rights, freedom of expression and conscience, humanism, pluralism, and democracy are universal—they provide the most stable, just, and rational foundation for any civil society, whether they’re observed in America or Europe or Iraq.

And yes, he argued that these values are for export. Hitchens believed in universal human rights. This is why, at a time when his comrades were still manning the barricades against the “imperial” West after the Cold War, he argued that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should intervene to stop a genocidal assault on Bosnia. It’s why he argued that American power could be used to defend human rights and promote democracy. As many on the Western left built their politics around incessant condemnations of their own societies as racist, exploitative, oligarchic, and imperialistic, Hitchens recognized the difference between self-criticism and self-flagellation.

One of the reasons Orwell accumulated many left-wing enemies in his time was the fact that his criticisms of his own “side” were grounded in authentic left-wing principles. When he argued that many socialists had no connection to or understanding of the actual working class in Britain, the observation stung because it was true. Orwell’s arguments continue to sting today. In his 1945 essay “Notes on Nationalism,” he criticized the left-wing intellectuals who enjoy “seeing their own country humiliated” and “follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong.” Among some of these intellectuals, Orwell wrote: “One finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defense of the Western countries.”

Hitchens observed that many on today’s left are motivated by the same principle: “Nothing will make us fight against an evil if that fight forces us to go to the same corner as our own government.” This is a predictable manifestation of what the American political theorist Michael Walzer calls the “default position” of the left: a purportedly “anti-imperialist and anti-militarist” position inclined toward the view that “everything that goes wrong in the world is America’s fault.”

Indeed, the tendency to ignore and rationalize even the most egregious violence and authoritarianism abroad in favor of an obsessive emphasis on the crimes and blunders of Western governments has become a reflex. Much of the left has been captured by a strange mix of sectarian and authoritarian impulses: a myopic emphasis on identitarianism and group rights over the individual; an orientation toward subjectivity and tribalism over objectivity and universalism; and demands for political orthodoxy enforced by repressive tactics like the suppression of speech.

These left-wing pathologies are particularly corrosive today because they give right-wing nationalists and populists on both sides of the Atlantic—whose rise over the past several years has been characterized by hostility to democratic norms and institutions, rampant xenophobia, and other forms of illiberalism—an opportunity to claim that those who oppose them are the true authoritarians. Hitchens was prescient about the ascendance of right-wing populism in the West, from the emergence of demagogues who exploit cultural grievances and racial resentments to the bitter parochialism of “America First” nationalism. He understood that the left could only defeat these noxious political forces by rediscovering its best traditions: support for free expression, pluralism, and universalism—the values of the Enlightenment.

Hitchens closes his book Why Orwell Matters with the following observation: “What he [Orwell] illustrates, by his commitment to language as the partner of truth, is that ‘views’ do not really count; that it matters not what you think, but how you think; and that politics are relatively unimportant, while principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.” Despite the pervasive idea that Hitchens exchanged one set of convictions for another by the end of his life, his commitment to his core principles never wavered. They are principles that today’s left must rediscover.

Matt Johnson is a journalist and the author of the forthcoming book, How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment, from which this piece is excerpted.

#Matt Johnson #How Hitchens Can Save the Left #liberalism #liberal ethics #universalism #pluralism #freedom of speech #freedom of expression #free speech #first amendment #identity politics #identarianism #woke authoritarianism #authoritarianism #tribalism #religion is a mental illness

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notafraidofredyellowandblue · 2 years ago

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I am very very late to the party but in the response asking why everyone thinks Richard is naturally blond: for what it’s worth, the fact that Max is blonde means Richard and Margaux both have at least one blonde copy of the hair color gene (it’s recessive so Max had to get one from each parent for it to show up). So we know Richard has a 50/50 chance of being blond, it depends on what the other copy of his gene is.

Originally the haircolor discussion started with anon asking why people thought Richard dyed his hair, if the black wasn't his natural color. I think we can safely say it isn't 🌺 the childhood photo of Richard shows him with light and/or blond hair.

That said, haircolor can changes over time, and the genetics of it is not as straightforward as i was taught in highschool (boy, did i feel let down when i found that out, i used to be pretty good in the biology stuff, but need to relearn 😊)

For those interested see also this link including this paragraph

"Hair color may change over time. Particularly in people of European descent, light hair color may darken as individuals grow older. For example, blond-haired children often have darker hair by the time they are teenagers. Researchers speculate that certain hair-pigment proteins are activated as children grow older, perhaps in response to hormonal changes that occur near puberty. Almost everyone’s hair will begin to turn gray as they age, although when it happens and to what extent is variable. Gray hair is partly hereditary and may vary by ethnic origin; it is also somewhat dependent on external factors such as stress. Hair becomes gray when the hair follicle loses its ability to make melanin, but exactly why that occurs is not clear."

i think whatever Richard's undyed color would be now, it'll be at any rate darker than his hair was as a kid.

But i still think he should let the gray show 🥰

#anon ask #richard's hair

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souurcitrus · 8 months ago

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When I make redesign of certain characters, especially if they're from comics, I really have to put extra effort in giving some of them unique traits (like scars, birth marks, hairstyle, etc) or else I will commit the same mistake Marvel and DC make with their white boys. And I really don't want to do that

Like, why every single character that is a scientist needs to be buffy and strong? You're telling me this little guy who never sees the sun light or leaves his lab will have perfect abs and biceps?

Peter Parker I accept because of the spider bite. But REED RICHARDS?!! Don't know much of him but... why he looks like a slightly thinner Captain American?

Can you stop drawing Jessica Jones the exact same as Jessica Drew or any other brunette?!

And please, give Sunspot and Damian Wayne their melanin back, I'm on my knees begging you writers.

#x men #marvel #dc #im talking about batman kids #and every single white character with dark hair and blue eyes in the industry of comic books #character design #avengers #fantastic four #also stop drawing POC like that #im looking at you Evan Sabahnur

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thepastisalreadywritten · 2 years ago

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By Sharon Guynup | 21 January 2023

On the screen and on the street, strawberry blonds and those with auburn tresses attract attention, and always have.

That is, in part, because red hair is an exotic trait, occurring in just one or two out of every 100 people.

While the gene variants that endow flaming locks are rare, redheads are not destined to vanish from the population, despite recurring claims to that effect.

“Redheads are not going extinct,” says Katerina Zorina-Lichtenwalter, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics at University of Colorado, Boulder.

To understand why this is so, it’s necessary first to understand why there are redheads in the first place.

As it turns out, it’s not only tabloids that are interested in flame-haired people. Scientists are too.

There’s more research on the variations in human hair color than you might expect, and the science makes it clear that crimson locks are not becoming increasingly rare, nor will they disappear any time soon. It’s a trait that dates to prehistory.

Analysis of 50,000-year-old DNA revealed that some Neanderthals were pale-complected redheads.

A famous 3,800-year-old Bronze Age mummy, known as the Beauty of Loulan, was unearthed from a desert cemetery in northwestern China with intact sepia-colored hair.

From the fifth century on, in what is now southeast Europe and Turkey, the mythological King Rhesus of the ancient Thracians was depicted on Greek pottery with carrot-colored hair and beard.

The gene variants involved are recessive, meaning two copies—one from the mother and one from the father—are required to produce a red-haired child.

"Only if both parents are redheads can they be almost certain their baby will have fiery hair," Zorina-Lichtenwalter says.

In her book Red: A History of the Redhead, author Jacky Colliss Harvey characterizes the odds of having a crimson-haired baby this way:

“In the great genetic card game, red hair is the two of clubs. It is trumped by every other card in the pack.”

The genetics of red

Ginger coloring in people—as well as horses, dogs, pigs, and other mammals—is conferred by just a handful of genetic mutations that both parents must carry.

The “redhead gene” was discovered in 1995 by a team including Ian Jackson, now a professor emeritus at Scotland’s University of Edinburgh.

This melanocortin 1 receptor gene, or MC1R, plays a key role in producing melanin, the tan pigment that protects skin from ultraviolet radiation (sunlight) and also colors eyes and skin.

One type, eumelanin, endows brown or black hair.

Pheomelanin creates red or blonde locks and confers light skin and freckles.

In people who have red hair, the skin cells (melanocytes) that produce pigment have a variant receptor on the cell surface.

When exposed to UV light, this variant fails to trigger a switch that changes melanin pigment from yellow/red to the protective brown/black.

“MC1R is one of several genes that work together to produce dark melanin, and without that switch, you’re going to have light skin,” says Zorina-Lichtenwalter—and easily burn when out in the sun.

In their 1995 research, Jackson and his colleagues compared 30 Irish and British redheads with the same number of brunettes.

More than 80 percent of rosy-haired and/or fair-skinned people carried variations in the MC1R gene; but just 20 percent of the brown-haired individuals did.

When they published the study, geneticist Richard Spritz told the media “this is the first time in humans that a specific gene for any common visible characteristic has been identified.”

Genetic advantage—and peril

Pale coloration bestowed a key advantage to cultures migrating from sunnier regions into northern Europe with its gray skies and short winter days.

“There was evolutionary pressure to lose skin pigmentation,” Zorina-Lichtenwalter explains, because lighter skin absorbs more UV, which produces more vitamin D from the limited amount of sunlight in northern regions.

Vitamin D helps the body absorb and retain calcium, build stronger bones, and protect against inflammation.

These health benefits increased the likelihood that women would survive pregnancy and birth, successfully passing on genes for light skin and red or blonde hair to their offspring.

The trait flourished in the United Kingdom and Ireland, where there are, by far, more fair-skinned redheads than anywhere else on Earth.

Some unofficial estimates peg the number at around 10 percent.

Much of the research into redhead genetics stems from their elevated skin cancer risk.

The MC1R gene mutations linked to crimson hair, light skin, and freckles also allows more UV to reach DNA and damage it.

One study found that people carrying a so-called R variant of the MC1R gene had a 42 percent higher incidence of melanoma, one of the most aggressive forms of cancer.

Melanoma is 20 times more prevalent in Caucasians than in African Americans.

However, the average age for melanoma diagnosis is 65. Therefore, Zorina-Lichtenwalter says, “it doesn’t threaten reproductive fitness.”

At that age, women have already passed their genes to the next generation. This is why, she says, redheads are unlikely to disappear from the gene pool.

More ginger genes

When he was working on that 1995 genetic analysis, Jackson knew there was more to understand about the factors conferring red hair.

“It seemed logical that there were other genes involved,” he says, but deeper exploration was not yet possible: Genetic research was extremely slow and costly.

While rapid advances in genetic technologies and computing had launched the Human Genome Project, the first draft of the genetic map would not be complete until 2001.

Now, a quarter-century later, quick, inexpensive genetic research is the norm.

Jackson and his colleagues recently revisited their inquiry with resources unthinkable in 1995.

They analyzed DNA from the UK Biobank, which contains genetic and health information on a half million residents of the United Kingdom.

They discovered eight previously unknown genetic variants that affect red hair and skin pigmentation.

“To go through and find those genes using the Biobank was very, very satisfying,” Jackson says.

This research, published in 2022, identified most of the genetic variation contributing to differences in hair color.

Most redheads have two MC1R variants, according to Jackson, one from each parent. But several other genes also affect whether your hair will be red.

“It's a particular combination that gives rise to red hair,” he says.

Researchers assigned each of the implicated genes a “genetic risk score”: with some variants exerting higher probability of red locks.

Others had much less clout but were still associated. You don’t need all of them to have red hair, Jackson says.

“MC1R is king when it comes to red headedness,” Zorina-Lichtenwalter says.

“It has a tremendous amount of say in whether we'll have dark pigmentation or light pigmentation.”

More than four-fifths of redheads carry MC1R; whereas the remaining reds are caused by other genes.

Geography and ancestry

A recent U.K. genetic study correlated the incidence of burnished tresses with place of birth, with more redheads in the country’s north and west.

“In the Biobank, you've got the latitude and longitude of birthplace of every individual,” Jackson says.

“The further north you were born, the higher the likelihood of having red hair.”

Red-haired, light-skinned genetics thrived in remote regions, closed communities, and islands––such as Scotland (estimates of redheads there range from Jackson’s 6 percent up to 12 or 14 percent); Ireland (10 percent); and Britain (6 percent).

While the populations of these countries are no longer cut off from the rest of the world, “when you have an insular population, isolated from others reproductively, then whatever alleles, they rise in frequency from generation to generation,” Zorina-Lichtenwalter says.

However, redheads are not only Celts or Caucasians. Their distribution is a testament to the global movement of DNA across societies and landscapes.

Although most common in Northern Europe, parts of Russia, and among European descendants in Australia, there are redheads from all ethnicities and races.

For example, both Morocco and Jamaica have higher-than-average numbers.

The reason, Zorina-Lichtenwalter says, is that several genes are responsible for triggering dark eumelanin production to protect skin.

But for hair color, she says “MC1R does appear to dominate, which is why variants in MC1R can still produce red hair in Jamaicans and other dark-skinned people.”

We are not amidst a redhead extinction event

"Claims that redheads are a dying breed are not new, and some of them were clearly linked to financial gain," Jackson says.

One headline that started an uproar blared, “Redheads May Soon Join Polar Bears As Casualties Of Climate Change,” which is a serious stretch.

"Climate change is creating more extreme temperature, drought, and flood; but the possibility that it will impact UV radiation enough to alter Northern Hemisphere genetics––within the predicted few hundred years––is slim," says Zorina-Lichtenwalter.

The source of this claim was Alistair Moffat, CEO of the now-defunct genetic testing company ScotlandsDNA.

Prior to that, the Oxford Hair Foundation (also dissolved) predicted that redheads would be extinct by 2100, with the gene variant that confers flaming hair slowly disappearing.

“[The institute] was a front, funded by a hair dye and cosmetics company to generate interest in hair color,” Jackson says.

While recessive genes can become rare, they don't utterly disappear unless every person who carries that gene either perishes—or does not bear children.

And clearly that’s not going to happen.

Wherever they live, redheads garner outsized attention, sometimes stigmatized, sometimes admired.

As testament to their continued presence in the world, they celebrate themselves in yearly “red pride” events in the U.K., France, and Italy, as well as the U.S.

The largest may be an event in August, when thousands of gingers from across the world convene in the Netherlands for “Redhead Days.”

#melanocortin 1 receptor gene #MC1R #redhead gene #UK Biobank #redheads

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harrelltut · 1 year ago

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