Stephen Jay Gould on racism, 1984: "My visceral perception of brotherhood harmonizes with our best modern biological knowledge. Such union of feeling and fact

Stephen Jay Gould on racism, 1984: "My visceral perception of brotherhood harmonizes with our best modern biological knowledge. Such union of feeling and fact may be rare indeed, for one offers no guide to the other (more romantic twaddle aside). Many people think (or fear) that equality of human races is a hope of liberal sentimentality probably squashed by the hard realities of history. They are wrong. This column can be summarized in a single phrase, a motto if you will: Human equality is a contingent fact of history. Equality is not given a priori; it is neither an ethical principle (though equal treatment may be) nor a statement about norms of social action. It just worked out that way. A hundred different and plausible scenarios for human history would have yielded other results (and moral dilemmas of enormous magnitude). They didn't happen." [http://www.sjgarchive.org/library/text/b16/p0425.htm http://www.sjgarchive.org/library/text/b16/p0425.htm] Surely it's a good thing that the Ruby on Rails community doesn't face any "moral dilemmas of enormous magnitude." Object-relational mapping is hard enough!