Group recognition in social animals

     Race and social recognition 

     Robert  Henderson 

   The general reason why racial and ethnic differences result in hostility between different groups is simple: homo sapiens is a social animal.  

Being a social animal requires members of the social group to use signals, both physical differences such as smell or  physical  differences and/or behavioural changes  such as the use of calls to allow other members of the group to identify who is and who is not within the social group. 

 Human beings require such signals, and especially behavioural ones,  to allow  other humans to identify  a group member. Of course humans are better at the recognition game than any other animal.  David Hume put forward the idea that a human would identify with other humans up to a point. For example, an  Englishman travelling in China would welcome the company of another Englishman first, then the company of  a Frenchman,  then the company of a or German more than he would a Chinaman . 

 Finally, however much liberals claim physical race is of no consequence humans give the lie to this in racially mixed societies   by disproportionately take taking as sexual partners those of the same general  racial types. This is unsurprising because there is such huge   physical differences, for example, between  the Nordic type and African pygmies. 

What did the British ever do for India and the rest of the Raj? ?

In the Monty Python film Life of Brian there is a a scene known to Python fans as the ” What have the Romans ever done for us” . This involved John Cleese asking repeatedly “What have the Romans ever done for us ?” with various members of the cast coming up with things such as Roman roads, clean drinking water, education, medicine. All of this was done for comic effect but it had a serious message because the British Empire like the Roman one brought a great number of useful things to the subcontinent .Hence we can play What did the British ever do for us?, viz

What did the British do for India (and the rest of the subcontinent) ?

Created an entity called India from an amalgam of warring states

Stamped out many vile practices such as thugee and Sati.

Gave India the largest railway system in the world

Gave India modern roads

Gave India introduction to western Science

Gave India a modern education system

Gave India a modern system of law

Gave India a modern police force

Gave India a modern civil service
Gave India a modern Army

Gave India a modern navy

Gave India an air force

Gave India a modern civil service

Gave India an inside track to modern medicine

Gave India an inside track to industrialisation

Rescued much of the subcontinent’s history

Stopped serious Muslim/Hindu massacres of one another

Gave India a form of representative government

Built New Delhi

Introduced cricket to the subcontinent

The what did the British do for us? can be employed when judging the British Empire generally .

British official colonial policy from around 1900 was (1) to eventually raise the culture of the indigenous peoples in those colonies to a state where they could rule themselves .and (2) until those people were fit to rule themselves to act as guardians to those people.

As to the specific things the British brought to the colonies in general, those I listed for India were brought in part to to the colonies widely the most widespread being schools and universities, medical facilities and the idea of representative government.

More generally the exercise can be employed for any country. Why not have a go?