A perfect example is this article in the Telegraph reporting on a new paper that says the oldest humanoid fossils may now indicate that Europeans are the oldest branch of Humanity. Yes, that's right, the Out Of Africa theory may have just been blown out of the water.
The problem with basing entire social movements on science is that science is never settled. At any moment, new data can appear that simply sweep everything that preceded it into the trash bin.
Once upon a time, we were taught the Darwinist line that there were three basic races of Humans: Mongoloid, Negroid and Caucasoid. Then, along came research in genetics and blood-type groups that completely blew all that away. Quietly, science textbooks just dropped the narrative without any real public discourse on what followed.
We now know that Europeans inter-bred with Neanderthals, which used to be considered impossible, but right there in the gene pool is proof. Then we discovered Denisovians and the Flores Hobbits who, it turns out, were likely completely different forms of humanoid creatures that co-existed with Homo Sapiens-sapiens, at least for a time.
There are volumes of books and studies that show both quantifiable and qualifiable differences between racial groups. This is not a racist statement, it is observation of objective and subjective facts that can be verified independently by other observers.
What is most intriguing and curious about the honest facts is that the quaint little story we have built for ourselves about our origins is, at best, a fairy tale. It makes us feel comfortable and can be used to justify all sorts of draconian social manipulations, but it is not true in the strictest sense of the word.
For instance, we refer to Native Americans when the data support a non-native origin for the original inhabitants there. There are certain groups of Indonesians who refer to themselves as pribumi, or native inhabitants, but recent studies say it isn't so.
For the most part, people don't want to know the truth. They establish for themselves cute little narratives that make them feel important and like they have a grasp on the world and the Universe. They pick and choose the details that fit their self-image, and toss the rest. They certainly don't want to put in the effort to really understand the world. That would require constant reading and learning. They don't want that - not when there's lots of time to waste brow-beating others into accepting their little fairy tales.
There's this topic called "Alternative History". That's where people take new, fresh, updated facts and try to weave new, fresh, updated narratives. Some folks join in and construct new fairy tales and then get stuck in them. Others get involved and realize that there are almost no such things as "facts". As fast as we nail down a "fact", it moves away. New data comes in, replaces old data, and now the old stories don't fit. For the aware mind, this happens practically daily.
The only fact I have come to rely on is randomness. Why does one highly talented person get crapped on their whole life, while another talentless hack gets all the toys? Random grouping. The talentless hack will construct a fairy tale that seems to explain why he has all the toys, while at the same time, the talented one will do the same to explain why he has been screwed. Both will live out their lives believing in their fairy tales and acting upon them, never realizing that their fairy tales were complete illusions, as were all the toys they both thought they wanted.
Here's where it gets fun.
The Social Marxists/Post-Modernists/SJWs have constructed a fairy tale that certain groups are crapped on, while others are privileged. They turn to "leaders" to change this situation. Ironically, the "leaders" are the ones who created the fairy tale to keep the numbnuts busy and thinking that in a completely random Universe, there is such a thing as justice. The "leaders" happily take the numbnuts' money and transference of power, thinking they really are better, because their own fairy tale says they deserve to be "leaders" because they have randomly been placed at a temporal whirlpool that could evaporate tomorrow.
They are all wrong. We have all been randomly placed in arbitrary positions that we have woven complex fairy tales around to explain and justify the happenstance. In reality, we know nothing for sure, except that we individually exist and that our situation this moment is such a ways. That's it.
The upshot is that we have all woven a fairy tale that we billions of people need a handful of "leaders" to tell us what to believe and how to act. We are born with that information, and if we took more than a hair's breadth of time to think about it, we would understand that fact.
There is no system of justice. There is no law. There are no "leaders". There are only human beings who are scared and lonely and unsure of what the hell all this Life stuff is about. We organize ourselves around fairy tales so as to feel like the Universe has meaning, when it doesn't. It simply is.
Let go of the fairy tales. They will change tomorrow when some new discovery comes along. We don't need leaders and no one is better than another - luckier maybe, but not better.
Lately, some friends of mine have been all into gambling systems. They think that they can identify patterns in randomness, rather than whirlpools of time. They try their systems and if they (randomly) work, it confirms their fairy tale. If they (randomly) don't work, they toss it and move on to another. These guys are like a microcosm of Humanity.
We try out our fairy tale. If it works, we call it religion, if it doesn't we call it evil.
In the end, the only difference between the two systems is our accidentally standing in the right place at the right time.
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