Byline: Shanghai
I am not the first member of my family to be censored by China. My son's website was censored for several years after he visited China. I also find that China has not made this a personal matter --- other locations at blogs.com are also blocked.
What runs in the family is a highly relevant issue for me and this blog. I have concluded that there are no biological limits on human culture. I wrote a blog on 8/23 called Con-silly-ence which I can't refer you to because I can't see my own blog site from China. I repeat, there are no biological limits on human culture.
There is one fact of biology that bears on human culture and it may be the single most relevant biological fact. Important genetic traits, especially those concerning intelligence, mental talents and disposition are randomly distributed. That is a biological fact, resulting from sexual selection.
The probability that any child randomly chosen from a hospital nursery will have the same or stronger traits for creating a successful business than the biological child of Bill Gates, Larry Ellison or Andy Grove is exactly 50%. This is an inalienable biological fact.
Our own children are no more likely to inherit mental traits and dispositions than any other child. This biological reality is probably the only one that affects culture. It means that in the meritocratic world of industrial commerce, nepotism doesn't work. Hiring members of your family, passing your business on to your child is feudal and futile.
The triumph of democracy may be solely due to this biological fact, since hereditary heirs to power rapidly degenerate to incompetence. Kingship, Singaporian politics, Saudi Arabia, and Syria have no future. Nepotism is always a failure.
The survival of the Japanese monarchy can be simply explained by the fact that the Japanese emperor has no power. The emperor system has survived in Japan for 2,300 years because it provides the continuity to confer power on the real political heirs who climb the political ladder with Darwinian infighting.
The question of nepotism arises because I am in China to find out whether China will ever be a great economic power. Nepotism is a key element because this society, built entirely on family, clan and tong, cannot be an industrial giant if it relies on nepotism.
That will be one of the key subjects when I finish my research on China. I'll report next week.