Random Thoughts

Matthew Kneale's English Passengers  qualifies to be the last book I read without reading glasses. While reading the book, I kept feeling the urge to hold the book farther away than I used to, but I was in denial. The book was interesting enough for me to stick with the denial till the end. It was when I got to the epilogue that I finally realized "Man, I must need glasses" and I bought my first pair of glasses. Well, I think giving in finally was the right move! The epilogue was as interesting as the book itself. Here is an excerpt :- 

In 1850 a disgraced surgeon named Robert Knox The Races of Men, a fragment. This was in many ways a precursor of Hitler's Mein Kampf, insisting that all history was nothing more than a process of racial conflicts (rather as Karl Marx, in his Communist Manifesto of three years earlier, had declared all history was merely a struggle between economic classes). Knox was among the first writers to claim that the various races of mankind were actually different species. He proposed that the Saxon, of England, was among the most exalted. His book was an immediate best-seller. For the first time, it even became fashionable to see the world in these terms. Though such ideas were strongly opposed in some quarters, they continued to gain influence, forming a kind of ugly background background music to the latter part of the century. We are still living with the impact of those ideas.

Even if we recognize that various races are indeed different species, how does one decide which is the most exalted? If I set out to make that grouping, I am certain that there will always be a tendency to try and prove that the species that I belong to is the most exalted. Racism may qualify as the worst curse from the past that we are forced to live with. Racism doesn't just limit itself to color of skin or geographic separation. It also extends itself into things like religious & political beliefs. We have this born inclination to group ourselves based on anything that we can think of. And, we inadvertently (or not) pass that on to our children.