The Unz Review • An Alternative Media SelectionA Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media TeasersAudacious Epigone Blog Alt-Wrong Paradigms: Contra HBD Email This Page to Someone Remember My Information => • B Next New CommentNext New ReplyRead More These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Thanks, LOL, or Troll with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used three times during any eight hour period. Search Text Case Sensitive Exact Words Include Comments List of Bookmarks [As noted yesterday, the following essay was written by a reader and commenter who requested the opportunity. In the spirit of the open inquiry and free expression UR is renowned for, its contents are neither endorsed nor condemned by this blog or webzine. On account of the essay’s thoughtfulness, though, it has been deemed worthy of a hearing. –AE] Written by Intelligent Dasein 1. Introduction and Scope This piece emerges from roiled beginnings. While the ideas presented herein have long been contemplated by the author and held by him to be provisionally true, the occasion of them taking shape in the present form was not, I am somewhat aggravated to say, the pure contemplative love of truth as such, nor the magnanimous desire to educate my benighted fellows, nor even the vanity born of holding exclusive possession of a novel and exciting conception which, once articulated, figures largely to gain its original representative a measure of historical notoriety; rather, it was exhausted patience with the endless, uncomprehending, unjustified scorn to which the ideas were subjected when they appeared in their fragmentary form, strung unsystematically throughout innumerable comments delivered over several years. A patient man hopes—is commanded to hope—that time will be his vindicator; an exhausted man often providentially finds that the acceptable time of vindication has been placed into his own hands. Many most sincere thanks at the outset for extending this opportunity to set the matter forth in a more comprehensive style. This one small barque, this one hull in which to collect my wares, this one mast from which to fly a flag, is a welcome relief from thrashing about in the troubled waters of the comments section; and for the transport of cargo so rare and easily damaged as new paradigms, it is only fitting that a proper conveyance be brought in to help shield it from the impertinent spray. The antagonism I refer to has long made itself most acutely felt in discussions involving ‘HBD’, that is “human biodiversity,” a term d’art among the Dissident Right community whereby they assert not only their belief that significant behavioral and physiological distinctions prevail among the major divisions of mankind (by itself a less controversial statement), but also emphasize that these distinctions, customarily called racial distinctions, are primarily biological in nature and origin. The word “biological” is not neutral here, for in its present usage it brings with it a vast array of philosophical and ideological baggage that, whether unpacked or not, imparts its own intrinsic complications to the compound idea denoted by HBD, thus rendering the latter somewhat more controversial than the mere existence of differences per se. In the first place, “biology” serves to conceptually locate such differences firmly on the side of “nature” in the Nature/Nurture debate, meaning that they would not be amenable to alteration via the frequently demanded channels of education and social spending. I gather—accurately I believe, and to no slight purpose—that this is one of the chief considerations motivating such rapt adherence to the term on the part of its devotees. HBDers are justifiably upset by the titanic sums of money spent on the welfare of underperforming racial groups, by the constant excuses made for their failure to benefit from such largess, by the importation of mass waves of immigrants from racially diverse countries, and so forth; but most especially by the universalistic cant with which these policies are rationalized and enforced, with insinuations that no racial group is inherently different from any other, and which therefore puts disparity of outcomes down to racism or deprivation. Furthermore, the disgust resulting from long exposure to this general attitude is also what motivates the summarily dismissive posture (to be discussed momentarily) with which I am met whenever I challenge any article within the HBDers’ prevailing orthodoxy. The emotional appeal of the position is maintained by the understanding that since these racial differences are “biological,” it is pointless to try to change them. I have no wish to take issue with any of this right now; my point at present is simply to draw attention to the fact that HBD is clung to with such ardor not because it is “true” but mainly for its sociological implications.  In the second place, however, “biology” also carries with it an air of scientificness from whence HBD draws its claims of objectivity and authority. Biology is supposed to be a science, after all; it is supposed to be founded in empirical observation, subjected to rigorous tests, and entrusted to the keeping and criticism of highly educated professionals. Any idea thus bonded, sealed, and christened with the oils of scientific legitimacy can supposedly be taken as verified truth, which accounts for some of the haughtiness with which HBDers are known to look down upon their disputants. Biology today embraces some of the most deified and self-assured concepts now going. There is, for example, the astounding and almost uncanny esotericism of our medical technique, which has indeed cured many diseases and birthed a sort of modern day mysticism of health and wellness; there are the mighty subdisciplines of genetics and biochemistry and pharmacology, with their ever so exacting analytical methods and their aura of recondite profundity; there is paleontological investigation and its excavations into the perished eons of Earth’s natural history; and most of all there is, standing behind it all, the Saturnian figure of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, which is the language, the logic, and the primum mobile of the whole modern biological worldview. Insofar as HBD drinks from these unsullied waters, it would seem to be naught more than the natural excrescence of all that is most established and least doubted in our day and age. It is precisely here, however, and not on the grounds of any ostensibly distasteful (to me, or so my antagonists say) sociological conclusions, that I make my criticism—not that this has spared me any great deal of misrepresentation and calumny. In criticizing the “science” of HBD I have often been opposed not with calm facts but with some rather emotion-driven vituperations, as if I had grieved the righteous spirit that valiantly resists all the lies and cant. The hurt feelings are certainly forgivable, the issue being as serious as it is; but not so the steadfast refusal, even after many explanations, to understand what it is I am really talking about. Serious matters require serious attention, not glibness or snark or ill-informed polemics. The sort of shallow false dichotomies levelled against me (e.g. if I am not an HBDers then I must be a Bible-thumping creationist, etc.) testify to the fact that the matter has not been thought through. These are not arguments in the philosophical sense; they are rhetorical bombasts used to adorn and flatter the personality of he who makes them, and they that approve them. Such things are fine in lighter matters, but here there are important philosophical, theological, moral, and scientific issues at stake; issues that, I dare say, the HBDers have bungled and refuse to be corrected on; issues which, if left in their current state, would serve only to frustrate the HBDers’ own objectives and to further marginalize their position. It is to these issues that we now turn our attention in this essay. I set it forth here that the science behind HBD is suspect. The general conclusions to which HBDers come regarding the role of race in our society are not (usually) in and of themselves antifactual, but the argumentative superstructure adduced in support of such conclusions is full of metaphysical errors, leaving the conclusions without a firm foundation and vulnerable to unanswerable attacks. I further maintain that HBD in itself, from within its own framework, is powerless to generate any feasible political solutions to the problems it identifies, and serves mainly as an idiomatic in which political frustrations are vented rather than as an organ of tactical response to political realities. There is perhaps no domain beside the political in which men are more disposed to idealism, and there is no domain in which idealism is less assured of success than practical politics. These twin detriments—philosophical confusion and political ineptness—render HBD a uniquely unhelpful liability that it would be better to abandon. On the philosophical front, the problems are deep and intriguing. Our discussion here ranges far, much further indeed than many here were perhaps ever desirous to go. “Biology,” it has been said, means today predominately genetics and Darwinism. But Darwinism has its roots in the materialism and monism of its native 19th century, themselves being the outgrowths of the Lockean empiricism that came to dominate English philosophy in the modern era. The modern era was instigated, as it were, by the disruption brought by Cartesian dualism, which was a deterioration of the high synthesis achieved by St. Thomas and the Scholastics, which itself was the correction and perfection of Neo-Platonic Augustinianism and Aristotelian hylomorphism. We shall see in this essay that race is very much a question of matter and form, that the hylomorphic dualism of Aristotle is the only manner of treating such questions, and that in fact all other proffered solutions amount only to distortions of hylomorphism. Even though the discussion can take place here only in truncated form, what shall emerge will be a good indication, not merely of the “metaphysics of race,” but of the very metaphysical nature of the reality of race. On the political—that is to say, the sociological—front, we will at last arrive at a conclusion that may appear anticlimactic if we were to foreshadow it here, but which, once properly illuminated by a full and clear contextualization, will reveal itself to be the one and only end that can be hoped for with a clear conscience and worked for with every expectation of success. Let it be known, I am writing from what I intend to be, and what I believe to be, a Traditional Catholic perspective. In the nonce, that means that I take Apostolic Christianity (i.e. the Gospel of Christ in its Traditional acceptation) to be the arbiter of all truth. That does not mean that only that which the Gospel explicitly comprises is all the truth there is to be known, or that other truths that exist are at least implicitly contained within the Gospel; it means that any truth, howsoever it is discovered, must harmonize with this Gospel and if it does not then it is not true. My objective here is situated within the larger project of restoring Apostolic Christianity as a light unto the world and working towards a new theonomous synthesis which places our politics and social life on a correct foundation, and which collects up what remains of useful Western science to be conserved and employed appropriately. These are weighty matters; we certainly have our work cut out for us. But as the original topic of this essay was race and HBD, let us make our departure from there, and so begin. 2. Race-Realism I am a race-realist. That is to say, my intuitions as well as my reason, insofar as I can supply it with reliable data from my senses, leads me to believe that race is an essential (rather than an accidental) aspect of one’s concrete personal existence. The words “essence” and “accident” here, and their cognates, are being used in the context of an explicitly metaphysical dialogue; those readers familiar with the basics of Aristotelian metaphysics will be able to apply their regular meaning in what follows, while those readers not so familiar should easily be able to infer from the context what is meant by them. To put it simply, an essential property of something is a property that cannot be changed without changing the definition or identity of that thing, while an accidental property is a property that can be so changed. For reasons we shall examine momentarily, I do not believe one can consistently commit to race-realism without also being a race-essentialist; race-realism just is race-essentialism. However, far from being obscurantist or dilutive, this claim is actually much stronger than the type of race-realism claimed by the HBDers; and, as we shall see, it plunges us into many difficulties from whence it is necessary to extricate ourselves. Thus, the first point I wish to advance is the idea that race-realism entails race-essentialism. But even here a preliminary problem presents itself: If, as I have just said, race-essentialism necessarily involves so many thorny difficulties, then why commit to it in the first place? Why not simply adhere to some milder version of the theory which, like HBD, accommodatingly locates race within the realm of the accidental and thereby avoids the metaphysical problems while still preserving, in a rough-and-ready way, the commonsense realities that accord with practical reason? The answer is that, apart from the truth of these things being worthwhile to seek for its own sake, the fact of the matter is that the alternative to race-essentialism simply cannot be true. It cannot be true that race is any kind of an accident. Therefore, whatever the difficulties may be, they need to be faced and reconciled somehow. The failure to do so is one of the reasons why the politically charged cant surrounding the subject remains with us to this day. To see how race-accidentalism must be wrong, we will consider a question that will serve as our initiation to these murky and troublesome currents. If race is real, what kind of reality does it have? What is its nature? It would seem the simple duty of anyone calling himself a race-realist to able to answer with confidence and clarity just what the nature of that reality is. The HBDers certainly have an answer at the ready: Race is biological. This is often explicitly emphasized with the rhetorical flourish that “race is a biological reality,” the intent of which is to drive home the idea that race is something definite and indisputable, like a sum of numbers. A more explicated version of their claim, which I think does justice to the HBD conception, goes as follows: “The different races of mankind are like extended families which, long separated from each other, were subject to different environmental selective pressures for many thousands of years. These different conditions led to the predominance of different genetic traits among the races that altered them both physiologically and psychologically. The legacy of these genetic differences has produced disparity in the races’ average behavior and civilizational potential that, being biological, are not amenable to deep or rapid alterations through the mechanism of controllable environmental factors such as education or socioeconomic assistance.” Let us not dispute with the terms for a moment. The problem here is not the truth or falsity of the above definition. The problem is that, even if every word of this is true, none of it adds up to race being essential. What we have described here is a series of accidental alterations to some underlying substance, in this case human beings. If race and biology are held to exist in the manner here implied, it is tantamount to saying that biology is something worn by human nature like a skinsuit, as if (with discernable echoes of Cartesianism) human nature is the ghost in the biological machine. Around this core of human nature there has accrued an agglomeration of “biology” that is fluid enough to be changed and imprinted by Darwinian selection pressures, but which changes within do not go deep enough to alter the identity of the underlying substance. Although HBDers tend to be quite vocally opposed to any kind of blank-slatism when it comes to the individual’s IQ, time preference, or general psychological comportment, their own style of thinking leads to the curious result that they themselves have become blank-slatists in a much more fundamental sense, viz. that the racial differences in which they have invested so much importance are but incidental colorations of human nature, mere products of chance and the passage of time, presumably further alterable by more of the same, indefinite, unremarkable, inessential. One could perhaps avoid this difficulty by taking a hard materialist approach and declaring that there is no ghost in the machine, there is only the machine, the biological skinsuit from the example; but upon doing so, one immediately involves oneself in a nominalist dead end. If there is only an evolving assemblage of deterministic billiard balls walking around in human shape, then there is nothing stable enough to qualify as the human nature that can be the bearer of a particular racial nature. At any rate, nominalism is quite opposed to race-realism as a matter of principle. It is difficult to argue that race is essential when nothing else is. There is a controversy here which plunges much deeper than mere racial questions per se and which embroils all of modern biology in an ancient metaphysical problem. If crude materialism is false (we leave aside for the moment nuanced forms of materialism such as panpsychism), then there is an immaterial component to reality. What is the nature of this immaterial component, and how does it interact with the material? In the consideration of living things, the immaterial component rises to the forefront and becomes decisive, for it is rightly intuited by most men that the difference between living and nonliving matter is that the former is “animated” by some special principle which endows it with life, form, and direction. However, while rejecting the existence of the immaterial certainly makes one’s philosophy incorrect, simply admitting it does not automatically make it right. It would be wrong, for example, to hold with Plato that there is an ideal soul-substance which travels from body to body by means of metempsychosis; it would be right to hold with Aristotle and Aquinas that each individual soul is the form of exactly one substance. It is correct when the same Aristotle says that the material body and the immaterial soul must necessarily be conceptually distinct; it is incorrect when his early modern apostate Descartes argues so persuasively that the physical and the spiritual can have nothing to do with one another, and then is forced to propound a bizarre theory about occultic interactions in the pineal gland. Although they are probably unaware of it, HBDers and modern evolutionary biologists are making a very Cartesian sort of error when they locate the “form” of the living creature in the “information” contained in its genetic code. The dubiousness of this idea of genetic information will absorb us later in the essay; we mention it here in order to pronounce a final verdict of insufficiency on HBD’s conception of the matter/form problem. An organism’s DNA is not any less physical than the rest of its body. To say that race is “genetic” is to say nothing more than that race is “biological,” and to say either one is simply to say that race is “material,” i.e. its origins lie entirely on the material side of the organism, the side that is subject to accident and external causality. But race-realism demands that we locate race in the realm of the essential, in the form and not in the matter. Furthermore, race must be located in the form, since it is an integral aspect of creaturely existence, appearing along with it in every moment, and must therefore flow from whatever underlying identity unifies that existence. We are not simply playing word games here; and yet, race is not numbered among the essential and definitional properties of the human being, viz. “rational animal.” What is needed is an intermediate class of properties consisting of things which are not accidents inhering in a substance and also not themselves essential and definitional properties, but which appear along with essence as a necessary condition of essence appearing in existence. We shall examine whether it is legitimate to speak of such properties and also whether, in saying that they exist, we do not say too much; for it would appear that such properties comprise a rather large class of qualities of living things, and that the term “race” actually denotes the broad category of essences that must be stamped with quality as a condition of appearing. We shall see that this is indeed the case, that “race” is universally diffused as physiognomy and mien and style. To further our inquiry into this subject we would do well, then, to adopt in a provisional sense a phenomenological definition of race as “the disposition of that which unfolds in the act of living.” Let us begin there and see where it takes us. 3. Beyond Humanity: Race in the Wider World Adopting a wider view will at the very least help to bring some Apollonian coolness and light to an issue that tends to be overcharged with political contentiousness. Prescinding from the subject of human beings, we will examine for a moment the concept of race—the mysterious disposition of the unfolding—as it appears in the plant and animal worlds. For anyone wishing to delve deeper into this particular aspect of our discussion, I could do no better than to recommend that he read Part A of the second volume of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, The Cosmic and the Microcosm. Now, the idea of “physiognomy”—by which is meant the manner in which the character or qualities of a creature tells upon its features—has received renewed interest in Alt-Right circles. The phrase “physiognomy is real” has become something of a hashtag and a meme unto itself, but is usually employed as means to denigrate the sort of young men who follow liberalism (“soy-boys”) and the sort of young women who follow feminism (“blue-hairs”) as evolutionarily and sexually inadequate. These epithets, crude as they are, do represent at least a lurch in the general direction of real physiognomic understanding, but only of the very basest sort. They relate to the genuine article by way of convention, in the same manner that the folding of paper airplanes and the labors of the Wright brothers can both be considered aeronautical engineering. We must go beyond these crudities to get at the substance of the matter. Physiognomy is indeed real. In fact, it is more than merely real, it is the real (or rather, it grasps what is real)—i.e. it is the perceived actuality within the appearance of the thing; but it is a process more aesthetic than scientific. Physiognomy is a mode of apperception that occupies the borderlands of poetic imagination. It is the deep and sympathetic judgment that is penetrated by the qualities of a thing and, from its ineffable aura, derives its essence. The physiognomist is the judge of men, of individuals, of peoples, races, classes, nations, eras, plants, animals, and human productions. Young children often excel at it; born artists and historians retain it into adulthood, as do the great leaders in some capacity. It is a thing not to be too closely described, for it tends to wither underneath the critical gaze. The crass obtuseness and materialism of the ordinary adult is precisely what remains after the physiognomic flair has been lost, but no one quite loses enough of it that they fail to make judgments at all. Without this talent, the world of perception would consist of nothing but bare, skeletal facts without significance. It is only due to the physiognomic flair that significances exist at all. Beholding living things, one is sometimes impressed by an uncanny quality, an effect or message, something just shy of being verbal, that seems to emanate from their very presence. A grove of pine trees in the afternoon sunlight bespeaks a vastness and timelessness that seems to transport one back to a vanished era of Earth-history when great conifer forests ruled over silent continents whose very shapes are now a mystery. So powerful is the impression that it matters not that the grove is in the middle of a bustling city, a piece of landscaping in an apartment complex or office park. You have but to stare at the pines, and the streets, the traffic, and the buildings all disappear; you behold only their livingness, and suddenly you are back in the Carboniferous. The trees have their own period-specific quality about them which pays no heed to the march of millennia. I get the notion, when I analyze it all, that this feeling is mediated by the muffled glint of waxy needles, by the shadowy interior volume, by the sky-combing branches that seem to stifle every breath of wind. I recall that the tree must thrust itself upward and outward to eat the sunlight that serves as food, and it must cast its pollen upon the fickle winds while also trapping its mate’s pollen therefrom, in order to reproduce. Then the feeling coalesces into the impression of a will—“Light and air! I dominate light and air!” And while science may tell us all about the efficiency of its Fibonacci spirals and the chemistry of its photosynthetic process, these are only physical facts. The perception of a will in the stylized domination of light and air is physiognomy. This type of perception is capable of discerning some quality in the nonmaterial essence of a thing as it manifests itself in existence. It is a talent that can be developed and deepened, but not systematically controlled. As such, it will uncover certain truths for us, but not systematically and only on a case-by-case basis. Physiognomy will not yield ever-reliable and ever-predictable results like arithmetic; but the astonishing fact is that, since it exists at all, it leads directly to the conclusion that everything living can be understood, at least in principle, as the stylized expression of a will. Despite the just-mentioned murkiness of this process, it seems we have now acquired a good prima facie understanding that “race” ought to be included amongst the bevy of will-like facts that are disclosed to us through physiognomic apperception, for what is race but stylized existence? It now falls to us to present some manner of distilling race as a meaningful designation from amidst the swarm of essential and accidental facts that also appear along with the organism. This I intend to do by way of an analogy that I caution at the outset against pressing too far due to a particular shortcoming which I shall highlight later, but one which will furnish us with a serviceable mental architecture for continuing discussion. That analogy will be the components of spoken language. Reflect for a moment how the analysis of the meaning of a sentence tends to resolve itself into two domains. First and foremost, there is the grammar of the language, which is by far the more fundamental of the two. It is the grammar that relates words and ideas to one another. Without this structural element—with its subjects, verbs, objects, cases, prepositions, and other connecting particles—language would not be intelligible and could not be either a means or an expression of thought. In the second place there is the vocabulary of language, the list of words associated with particular things or activities. This is what we might call the arbitrary side of language. As everyone knows when he takes a moment to think about it, the actual words of a language could be replaced with other words, or with some other set of symbols or cyphers, and as long as the speakers took the trouble to acquaint themselves with the new sign-convention, they could go on speaking “their” language just as before without needing to wonder how the words and sounds interrelate. It is the grammatical structure which serves the critical role of relating meanings one to another; the words and word-sounds serve as markers for meanings and can be changed without changing what they refer to. Both the grammar and the vocabulary of a language are facts which are given in immediate experience; together they form the warp and weft of the momentary-actual. In our analogy—which, again, must not be too severely pressed—the grammar stands in for that which is essential in the makeup of an organism. A dog, for example, being a mammal, must be warm-blooded; if its body temperature falls too low it will die. The vocabulary in our analogy stands for that which is accidental in the makeup of an organism. It forms nothing in the definition of a dog whether this particular dog has been well or poorly trained, well-nourished or sadly neglected, even though such facts become quite decisive in the life history of the animal. We are left with the impression that, while both the essential and the accidental are facts of great moment, one is involved in the definition of the thing and the other is not. Following a Spenglerian convention, the essential side we shall sometimes refer to as destiny: A creature conceived as a dog must be at every moment a dog and must follow a doglike existence. The accidental side shall correspondingly sometimes be referred to as incident: Should the poor pup be drowned or eaten shortly after birth, that is a fact for its history but not a fact in its nature, i.e. we do not know it analytically simply by knowing the definition of a dog. Our language analogy suffices so far even if the sentence we are analyzing is simply written down. Another aspect enters into our experience once the sentence is spoken. We can imagine, after a fashion, the grammar being the essence or soul of the sentence, the meaning that is brought to expression in it. The vocabulary comprises the incidents and accidents that embody its particular history and express what is intended either well or poorly. But in every act of speaking there is a third component that breaks forth, a sound quality, a rhythm, cadence, or accent that stamps the expression with a definite color. The accent of an utterance does not form part of its definition, yet there is no such thing as an unaccented spoken word. Accent, therefore, is not in and of itself essential but it is entailed in essence as a condition of its existence. If the meaning of a sentence is an essential form struggling for existence, and the vocabulary of a sentence is the array of incidental facts among which it exists, then the sound and the accent are the material by which it exists. Similarly, it is not essential to a created soul that it exist as an embodied being, but the whole purpose of this soul is to so exist by informing matter. Therefore, the matter it will exist as, and the nature thereof, while not being a part of its essence, are virtually present in essence. Likewise, race as the qualification of embodied existence is virtually present in essence. The limitation in this analogy that I had mentioned earlier results from the fact that, in the actual nature of spoken language, accent can sometimes be thought of as something incidental itself. This is resolved by understanding that, while a particular accent may be incidental to the meaning of a sentence (modulo analogy: It is incidental to the definition of “human being” whether the human in question is Caucasoid or Negroid), there is no such thing as a spoken word without sound quality (every human being has some racial designation which is integral to existence for him). We can therefore say without fear of error that race is something that lies within essence, albeit virtually. It is certainly not something accidental. Here we must pause to treat of a matter which easily causes confusion in inquiries of this sort. It is tempting, all too tempting given the confrontational nature of race relations, to consider races after the manner in which oenophiles are wont to consider vintages. We are speaking here of terroir, which is an important factor in its own right and something that must be understood before we continue. Terroir is understood as the sum of environmental conditions that influence the final character of a wine. Whether the vineyard be on a hillside facing east or one facing south, whether the soil is chalky or flinty, whether the growing season was warm or cool or damp, and so forth, are all terroir considerations. Terroir undoubtedly exists and its influences impact every living thing in every way, all of the time. While it may be expedient for purposes of political rhetoric to sometimes speak of human races after this fashion—as if reds and yellows, blacks and whites were simply grapes of a different hillside—it is for scientific purposes merely sentimental and quite inappropriate. Terroir, as we can readily see by now, lies decidedly on the incident side of life and not on the destiny side. It is incident for a grape whether it is planted in clay or loam; it is destiny that it grows on a vine and not on a bush. When we abstract away all the influences of terroir, we are still left with a certain something-or-other that has a quality all its own, something that would still be brought to expression no matter what sort of soil it was planted in, and it is among these expressions that we locate race. The manifold determinations of essential nature, racial qualification, terroir conditioning, and incidental happenstances form such a complicated collage that no systematic science could hope to separate them in every case; but they remain conceptually quite distinct, and it is according to this that we say that race as expression-quality is precisely what remains when all terroir influences have been removed. Finally, it is necessary to speak about destiny (the disposition of that which unfolds) and incident (the sum of external influences) as they relate to time and causality. They would both seem to involve some sort of process, but these processes run orthogonal to one another and cannot be subsumed into each other. Incident, being in the most general case a mechanistic series of impacts, of physical and chemical forces operating with inevitable results, has the world outside the organism as its theater of operations. Incident means, in very literal truth, all that is not oneself, all that can be enjoyed or endured but never identified with. There is, in its perfectly logical consequences, a sort of timelessness to it. It partakes of the order of space, of causality, of non-particularity. Destiny is that which is inside the organism as its own soul and identity. It is everything proper to it, possessed by it, belonging to it, not to be given up without mortal struggle. Destiny exists nowhere as an arrangement of physical facts but only as the constant, immaterial, ineffable yearning of the soul towards its definite form, overcoming contradictions and chaos and the riot of incident swirling around it. It partakes of the order of time, of direction, of unrepeatability and uniqueness. That which is in destiny is stamped there from the beginning and does not change as incidents do. We have covered a lot of ground in this chapter, but the arguments condense here to this critical point: Race, as the qualification of existence, belongs virtually to essence and therefore to destiny and not to incident. As destiny, it is integral with the total nature of the organism. There are not, then, particular “racial traits” as the term is ordinarily understood. There are not traits at all as the modern geneticist understands them. There is one nature, one destiny, one soul that comes to expression in the organism. It is there from the beginning as that which, by definition, cannot be altered by incident. But only that which incident alters is experienced in space as causality. This leads to the startling conclusion of the impossibility that race is acquired. 4. In the Darkness of Unraised Questions The consequence that race cannot be acquired at all is a result that brooks no qualification. It cannot be acquired over a single lifetime through terroir influences, nor can it be acquired over many lifetimes by a process of Darwinian selection. Race is given as virtually present in essence, appearing along with essence as a condition of existence; it cannot “get into” the organism any other way. This has profound implications that go far beyond the immediate subject of race relations. In what follows we are about to depart sharply from the norms of conventional scientific understanding. This section will present difficulties and obscurities arising from the fact that the questions of which it means to treat are nowadays never asked in an explicitly scientific or philosophical context. It is not that the subject matter or our method of treating it is itself irrational; only that the contemporary scientific worldview has not taken account of it, has in many instances simply ruled it out of court, and has historicized it away as the “ignorance” of a prior, unenlightened era. As a result, we have been left without a language, without a literature, without the well-trodden paths of traditional investigatory or exegetical methods with which to develop it. The subject is very much still in the raw, an unexplored territory in which the discoveries and the dangers have not been laid hold of in any rigorous way. We must remember the novelty of the situation and be charitable with ourselves as we proceed. We have averred already that race is a property of an intermediate kind that is not itself essential but is virtually present within essence, belonging to it as a tendency. We have seen that this situates race on the destiny side of a life course, the side which cannot be affected by that which is merely incidental to that life course. We have spoken quite liberally about race as something that appears along with essence as a condition of existence. Questions about the manner of this appearing and about what it is that appears can no longer be shirked. If race belongs to the immaterial substantial form of the organism, then the question of where race comes from is ultimately the question of where forms come from. But if the form is immaterial, then it cannot be thought of as arising or developing by materially derived notions of causality. The form is not an emergent property of simple matter, suitably organized. It is not any kind of property of matter at all. It is something ontologically prior to matter that is not explainable by mechanical causes and effects. That which is explainable by such causes and effects—i.e. what we ordinarily call the laws of physics—be they never so exhaustive and exact, would, as far as the form is concerned, be nothing but the sum of possible shapes of the incidental. Nothing could, by this means, get back “behind” the form in order to produce a change in its nature. However subtle one tries to be about it, no motions within matter can alter the nature of something which is itself necessarily immaterial. Philosophers, being intuitively aware of this problem, have made many attempts down through the centuries to explain the origin of the forms. The theory of rationes seminales, a Neo-Platonic conception, held that the forms where incorporated into the universal logos from the beginning. Platonism in general, in all its various developments, posited some sort of preexistence. Scholastic Christian theology, developed partially out of the thought of Aristotle, affirmed at the Council of Trent that forms are introduced by the immediate concurrence of God and are multiplied as bodies are multiplied in the act of procreation. These two approaches, while not equivalent, are morphologically similar enough that they point to a common realization. Whether the forms are present in the mind of God, or at least present in the logos which is an emanation from God, or whether they are introduced by God in acts of special concurrence, we cannot avoid speaking of creation in the appearance of the forms. This is the crux of the matter; it is a necessary consequence of the forms’ immateriality that they do not arise “causally,” that is by the Principle of Sufficient Reason. The term “creation” is what puts the scientifically minded on high alert, as if we had just violated the rules of inference and introduced something arbitrary and superstitious. However, we arrived at this conclusion by a flawless process of logic. The correct perception of reality leads inescapably to the conclusion that the forms do not have a material origin. It is important to remember that for the time being we are using the term only in a very loose and philosophical sense. We have not committed ourselves to any particular religious doctrine; we have not even committed ourselves to any particular notion of theism. We have only committed ourselves to acknowledging the priority of the metaphysical over the physical. Howsoever existence in any sense comes into being, so also do the forms come into being. At first blush, this seems to raise obvious difficulties for the theory of Darwinian evolution, which posits a continuous material modification of organisms down through time. Indeed, if any of what we have said is right, then the whole Darwinian substrate of HBD thinking is radically incorrect and any subsequent understanding of race-realism will need to be placed on an entirely different foundation. Thus, it appears that all we have to do along our royal road to understanding races is to casually disprove and replace Darwinism. A tall order but, “fortune favors the bold,” so here we go. 5. The Metaphysical Impossibility of Darwinism Before burying such a monumental theme as Darwinism, it is only fitting to pay brief respect to its historical importance. Darwinism was a grand idea that undergirded the thinking of many educated men for a century and a half, but it was not the kind of idea it purported to be. It was not in fact a scientific idea in the least, nor was it even a “metaphysical” idea except in the cynical sense that a thoroughly unmetaphysical metaphysics was exactly what subsequent thinkers, desirous of that very end, decided to make of it. In itself it is a type of all-encompassing schematism, a means of arranging one’s data so that everything—every species and trait and genetic sequence—receives a dynamic description as an optimized function of time. The result is a Linnaean classification system that is then “temporalized” into a cladogram. Darwinism, divested of any sense-specific elements such as actual living organisms, could be just as consistently presented as a book full of unusual polynomial curves, iteration problems, and Fourier analyses. Its incredible persuasive power results entirely from the fact that it draws one into a whole world of mathematical poetry that seems to simulate natural history, but from first to last asserts nothing that is not analytically true from its initial suppositions. This at least was its original sense. The contemporary Neo-Darwinian synthesis of natural selection and genetic mutation is something else over again upon which its founder’s spirit certainly does not rest. Modern Darwinism has sunk almost to the level of a rhetorical cheap shot by which the speaker means to flout the scruples of his interlocuter or to grandstand before the members of his own party. If this assessment seems harsh, I challenge the reader to scan the internet comments for instances in which the theory is mentioned in any other connection. Like his contemporary Marx, Darwin’s most vociferous friends (and foes) often do not seem very well acquainted with the source material. This is not the place for an exhaustive critique of the Darwinian literature; however, suffice it to say that a survey of the master’s principle works conduces to the impression that the spirit which animated his thinking could be described not so much as natural selection but as maximization. Darwin believed that life quasi-deliberately varied itself so as to exploit every small opportunity that difference in situation afforded. Among stalks of wheat growing together in field, for instance, we see some a little taller and some a little shorter, some leaning this way and some that; but each one striving to avoid competing directly with its neighbor for the identical “such-as-it-is”—a sort of Pauli exclusion principle for living beings, as it were. In this manner life involved itself in a steady, inexorable, almost volition-less tendency towards diversification. Into this process natural selection was introduced as a secondary effect which made an end of those individuals who were not sufficiently divergent so as to avoid being overshadowed by a stronger exemplar of the same type, all those who were “close but no cigar.” Thus, for Darwin the tapestry of life was a Sierpinski carpet with the denser areas being kingdoms and genera and species—the continuous culling of a continuously spreading mat, with great emphasis placed on the empty spaces. It was a quaint idea, gentle, respectable, very English, and now practically gone with the wind. Notice that this stands directly opposed to the “selfish gene” postulates of the modern synthesis, wherein DNA segments engage in a ruthless competition with one another to replicate exact copies of themselves and to be the “last man standing.” The fact that two so distinctly contrary conceptions have long traveled comfortably under the same name does invite initial skepticism as to the value of the propositions, although no particularly deft feats of intellect are required to hammer out sophistical Hegelian compromises. But whether authentic, modern, or mingled, all Darwinisms suffer from the malady that they do not really address what is at issue here. Darwinism obviates the problem of the origin of the forms by the short route of denying them altogether; for in Darwinism there are no forms, no definition, and no species. It is possible to get from anywhere to anywhere else by an incremental process of purely material transformations; that is, by accidental change. But accidents must inhere in a substance, and Darwinism does not furnish us with anything that can be the substrate of all these changes. All we can do is grasp desperately for a sort of universalistic gray fuzz that might at best be considered the materialist bastard child of Spinozism, or even more desperately at Hinduistic sparks of soul-matter that migrate from body to body without being the formal principle of any of them. Since no coherent conception of matter can exist on either one of these views, such ideas are untenable and, metaphysically speaking, quite silly. However impressive the façade of Darwinism may be, it appears to have been built on an unexamined metaphysical foundation that is unable to support the world in existence. An additional problem proceeds from the fact that the Darwinists seem to claim for their theory the somewhat magical property of deriving things of one kind from things of another. Given enough time, they say, it is possible—again, by purely material transformations—to get life from nonliving matter, or reasoning beings from unreasoning beasts. It can only be due to the extreme neglect of metaphysics as a field of study that such preposterous implications were ever accepted by the intelligentsia. If what we call life is a wholly material process, then matter must itself be alive or life does not really exist; it is not possible for both life and nonlife to inhere in the same subject. And reasoning, for its part, cannot be a material process at all. If Darwinism leads us to these straits then Darwinism, be it never so captivating, simply cannot be true. I intend to spend the next several chapters in an attempt to overthrow the Darwinian paradigm. Should this sound overly ambitious, please allow me to delimit my objective. Darwinism has been studied and amplified and ramified for well over a century. It has been incorporated into innumerable discussions of philosophy and biology and natural history. There is no way I can hope to replace all that in a single essay, not even one as long as this is. It is not my intention to write a complete alternative natural history of the Earth in grandiose proportions. All I can do is what philosophers of science must always do and have always done when they bring their metaphysical toolkit to bear upon scientific problems, and say that while I may not know exactly how the matter may be, I know that it cannot be this way. I can thereafter indicate the outlines of where a solution will lie, given what else we know to be true. So much I believe is quite within my powers. 6. Problematic Alternatives A: Young Earth Creationism Having announced my attack, there is no doubt but that now those in the audience who wear the Darwinian livery have set their abundant whiskers at full defensive bristle, and are even now polishing up their blunderbusses for a hearty fusillade against the quixotic creationist sallies they think they have repelled a thousand times before. I have to warn you gentlemen that the arguments I am about to advance are not anything you are familiar with. This is the first of four chapters in which I wish to discuss the problems with various proffered alternatives to Darwinism before arriving at the correct solution. The topic at present is Young Earth creationism, an idea deriving from a very literal reading of the creation story in the Book of Genesis and holding that the Earth and all its lifeforms were directly created by God approximately 4,000 years before the birth of Christ. It is also the primary idea that antievolutionists like me are accused of adhering to, even before the accusers have bothered to find out anything more about our position. As such it is used as a rhetorical strawman, with the implication being that all antievolutionists believe this, and that the idea is far too preposterous for any intelligent person to take seriously. Given its hot-button nature, it is necessary to treat of Young Earth creationism before proceeding any further. This was not exactly to my liking. In the structural sense, if I had set out simply to write a reasoned survey of the range of opinions on the matter and the problems with each one, I should have liked Young Earth creationism to come much later in the discussion after I had dealt with other theories that are historically older and philosophically far more profound. In this I have been frustrated by the infantile state of the conversation, but there is another concern which may yet render the former one a blessing in disguise. Parsing Young Earth creationism will allow us to examine, in a highly relevant and emphatic way, a fundamental idea I like to call “epistemological infinitism,” which is a key concept that needs to be understood and reincorporated into scientific discussions ranging far beyond the present one. But before all that happens, I wish to say a few words in support of the much-maligned creationists, who are wrong but for a good reason. There are many well-meaning people, mostly Evangelical Protestants these days, who hold to Young Earth creationism because they believe their religion obliges them to do so. Since Biblical literalism has been out of fashion with educated opinion for quite some time, these people often develop a siege mentality and feel as if they are the last, slim bastion of defense holding out against a Godless society. Their motives are salutary, perhaps even heroic; but their beliefs—let us not fear the unpretty word—are heretical. It has always been possible, and it always will be possible, for simple and uneducated people to get exactly what they need to know about God’s relation to His creation from a literal reading of the Genesis story. No doubt that is part of the reason why God set the story down precisely as He did. However, once the natural history of the world becomes a conscious problem for more developed intellects—a problem that acquires profound cultural, moral, philosophical, and theological overtones when it presents challenges to the literalist account—then the discussion has reached a level of sophistication whereat the real meaning of the Christian doctrine of creation as it impacts the scientific context must be made clear. The Young Earth creationists are not helping this process along. I do not want them unduly ridiculed, but this needs to stop. As far as Christianity in the modern West is concerned, a naïve literalism simply will not do. Neither, however, will naïve compromises. For example, various types of “God-guided evolution” have been proposed, and they seem to be the preferred solution for those who wish to offend neither the sensibilities of their age nor the claims of their religion, but who for whatever reason do not feel compelled to think either one of them through to their last implications. Half measures such as these are not really philosophical investigations; they are more like word games, like the brain teasers one finds in the back of the newspaper: Break the code, find the key that compiles one message into the language of the other. A real philosopher does busy himself constructing clever syntheses; he just needs to seek the truth, humbly and honestly. Remember, a true explanation will be a true explanation: Whatever is true in Genesis and whatever is true in the natural world will belong to it, properly and unforcedly. It is to this end that we now discuss epistemological infinitism as a metaphysical groundwork for all scientific explanations. By epistemological infinitism I mean the frank acknowledgement of the reality of Aristotle’s potential infinities in matters of scientific observation. Wherever a potential infinity is found, there also is an infinite depth of possible observations. For example, it ought to be taken as axiomatic that there is no such thing as extended matter without parts. Now, matter is nothing but the permanent possibility of causality, and causality is a type of interaction. Therefore matter, in order to interact, must be spatially extended or else it would pass through all other things without leaving any trace of itself. Therefore, all matter is extended, and matter just is, among a few other properties, extension in space. Anything extended is divisible into parts which are themselves extended, and so on ad infinitum; and so, there is no such thing as extended matter without parts, Q.E.D. Notice that this basic result—which is nothing more than analytical influences following upon the blandest common sense—already contradicts quantum mechanics and general relativity, the two central pillars of modern physical orthodoxy, because it means that there cannot be any such strange beasts as fundamental particles or massive singularities. If my contradicting these two towering theories is raised as a reductio against me, I can only say “so much the worse for them,” although it is far outside the scope of the present essay to argue about the subject. Such a breezy dismissal of the reigning physical paradigm is not likely to win me many converts from among its true believers, but perhaps minds of a different sort will be excited by the prospect of discoveries waiting beyond the current intellectual confines, discoveries that will open up once it is realized just how much of our supposedly settled science is in fact founded upon illogic. So it will be with physics, and so I hope it will be with our investigation into evolution. To return to the topic of creationism, the potential infinity we are interested in here involves the temporal duration of the universe. Epistemological infinitism holds that there cannot be any such thing as an observable beginning to existence. Such a thing is quite beyond the epistemological horizon; therefore the universe, for naturalistic purposes, must be regarded as infinite in duration, beginningless, endless, and—at least in terms of its ontic structure if not its phenomenal characteristics—without change. We are in good company when we say this, for it was none other than St. Thomas Aquinas, thinking in accord with the ever-reliable Aristotle, who gave the Church’s imprimatur to this very line of reasoning. The basic syllogism at issue is this: Either the world was created ex nihilo at some point in the past, or it has always existed. There is no way to decide the question, since a world that had been created in its present form would look no different from one that had always been there. Therefore you can, if you will, regard it as permanent. A casual reader might take this as precluding any possibility of a special creation, but in fact this is not the case. Recall that this was said by a Christian, and not just any Christian but the most orthodox of all scholars, by St. Thomas himself, the papally declared Common Doctor of the universal Church. That being the case, it invites us to take a closer and more expansive look at what Christianity really means by its doctrine of creation. The original intent of St. Thomas here was to refute a claim made by St. Bonaventure that creation can be proven to have occurred. Thomas drew upon the arguments of Aristotle in order to defend the Church’s teaching that creation was a free act of God and was not constrained by any necessity, and therefore could not be the logical conclusion of any sound process of natural reason. It was by Revelation alone that the Church proclaimed creation, and not on the strength of any empirical evidence which was not only not wanted but also not possible and not credible. And while St. Thomas’ sympathies may have rested with the need to defend the divine prerogative against a creeping strain of necessitism, it would seem that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander here, and Christianity must certainly not be afraid to take the argument for all it is worth. The crucial phrase here is that the question cannot be decided, i.e. there is no means by which the natural reason can differentiate a created universe from the only possible alternative, an infinitely existing one. Let us put this in the strongest possible terms: There is no test, no experiment, no observation, no discovery, and no argument that ever could or ever will make the created universe appear distinguishable from one that has always existed. This is equivalent to saying that, while a Christian must accept by Revelation that the universe was created ex nihilo by a free act of God, this same Christian, when he wears the hat of the natural investigator, must regard the universe as epistemologically infinite. Thus, a quartet of potentially observable infinities—the infinite extent and divisibility of space, the infinite extent and divisibility of time—are firmly established fundamental truths both for Christianity and for natural investigation. We have here a first handful of that pure product, that simple and unforced truth which is the hallmark of a real philosophy. It would seem now that in their staid attempts to defend creation from the evolutionist’s scythe, the Young Earthers have unfortunately busied themselves in doing a bunch of things that never needed doing in the first place. Evolution never touched creation; the purpose of the creation doctrine is divine omnipotence, divine freedom, divine love—not natural history. However, by no means should this be taken to imply that, so long as the heavenly authority is secured, we may proceed to fill up the natural history of the Earth with whatever explanations happen to suit our fancy. It was beneficial for us to discuss Young Earth creationism first and thereby arrive by the shortest route to the grand notion of epistemological infinitism. We will need it and related principles in defeating several other false alternatives such as “God of the Gaps,” guided naturalistic evolution, and artifactuality. To these we now turn our attention. 7. Problematic Alternatives B: Rationes Seminales We have established now that the universe must appear to be without a beginning. We have also at least adumbrated that the forms of living things are immaterial entities and that living things are not merely bodies that arise by mechanical forces in already existing matter. This still leaves us with the problem of where exactly the forms do come from. Perhaps the strongest and deepest attempt to ever address this problem while still falling short of correctness was put forth by the theory of rationes seminales or “rational seeds.” The meaning of this obscure phrase is somewhat better glimpsed in the Greek formulation than in the Latin, where it appears as spermatikoi logoi or “sperm of the logos.” But whether Latin or Greek, the drift of the idea is that the logos-structure of reality—a sort of ontological order which infuses the world with intelligibility—already contains within it the forms of living things as potencies or possibilities. Therefore, when new life emerges, be it a new individual or a whole new species, it does not represent an entirely de novo creation but is simply a preexisting possibility moving from potency to actuality when the conditions for its development are met. One should not underestimate just how enormously attractive an idea this is. It seems to provide a great deal of explanatory power and creative depth. It appeared in numerous forms throughout the entire Neo-Platonic world, which coincided with the Patristic period of early Christian thought. None other than the great St. Augustine held it. It was sophisticated enough to appeal to intellectuals who thought cult religions superstitious, yet pious enough to preserve the divine glory for even the most religiously minded. The idea is still with us today, albeit subconsciously. Something of the same spirit seems to motivate those who search for extraterrestrial life, which must necessarily assume that life arises on its own whenever conditions are ripe for its appearance. Modern drawing room philosophies of pantheism, panentheism, and panpsychism are at least not averse to it. A common strain of it seems to present just about everywhere one cares to look, as the idea is loose enough to support multiple interpretations. In its most barebones sense, it would seem only to state that living forms are at least preexistent in the mind of God, which would be true on any theory. At first blush there seems to be little here for a Christian to object to: God respired the logos into being and the logos contains the forms of future organisms—that seems to accord well with the basic Christian attitude. However, this was another idea rejected by St. Thomas Aquinas. In order to see why, we will need to be a little more clear about what it means for matter and form to be composited into a substance. Let us begin with the notion of prime matter, i.e. the pure potentiality that serves as the primordial basis for material things. Prime matter cannot exist on its own because it has no qualities of any kind. It is itself a kind of nothing, but a fertile nothing from which a world can be created. It is the “nihilo” in the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. At the opposite pole we have form, which is the entirely immaterial idea or essence of a substance, in this case a living organism. In order to exist they need to combine into the substantial form, which is the coalescence of idea and matter, of potency and act. The substantial form is the “first act” of a substance; that is, its determinate form of being by which it acquires membership in a class. There is no type of actually existing being prior to this. Therefore, the rationes seminales cannot exist because they do not inhere in anything in the only manner in which form can inhere in matter. They cannot inhere in prime matter without informing it, and they cannot inhere in something already existent that has form, because then they would be only accidents and not forms. A key consequence of this argument is that there is only one and exactly one form inhering in every substance. All this talk of form and substance, act and potency, may seem rather opaque to a modern reader who has never been schooled in Aristotelian metaphysics or Scholastic philosophy. Bearing this in mind, I should like to present a whole alternative scenario which will illustrate the main points but will do so in a thoroughly modern idiom. It has the advantage of being very closely related, mutatis mutandis, to the scheme advanced by St. Bonaventure that St. Thomas originally argued against. Readers of Schopenhauer will also recognize it as resembling a long discussion of life as the objectification of the will that the master carried on in The World as Will and Idea. It has the further advantage of being intimately known by me; for this was once my own belief, developed independently by me as a young man after much thinking and independent study of mostly scientific texts, before I became a mature philosopher and before I became a Christian. I parted with it reluctantly, and only on the authority of St. Thomas, so I am well-positioned to appreciate the appeal of it. I call this the Cellularity Theory: It takes the cell as the prime form of all life but understands life panentheistically and monistically as the intensification of a quality ever-present in matter. Effectively, there is no such thing as nonliving matter, only simpler degrees of objectification of the will. Grant that existence is founded upon an ineffable and transcendent first cause who breathes forth a world for his own delight. In the primordial depths of this world we find first a will, a simple and implacable will that is everywhere and always groping towards fulfillment in a crush of pure Eros. We call it gravity, the first longing. Against the dissolving union there arises a protest for independence and freedom, and impenetrability asserts itself as the maintainer of separateness. This impenetrability, mediated by electricity and magnetism and perhaps a few other forces (it doesn’t really matter the number) exists in a dynamic tension with gravity and together they give rise to an ordered material cosmos. The regularity of these interactions and vibrations produces all the substances and elements that go into making up the world. Now a new regularity emerges that becomes the foundation of further order—the crystal. Organized, accretive, and after a fashion reproductive, it is the first attempt at something like life. Mineral crystals grow like exceedingly primitive plants; and the more familiar types of plants, when afterwards they appear, recapitulate their crystalline inheritance. But before even large plants appear, something else happens in the sea and soil that becomes decisive for the future history of life in the universe. The cell appears, and with it the possibility of complex, self-contained organisms. As soon as the crystals have reached a requisite degree of utility, producing things like lipid membranes and proteins and nucleic acids, they are “taken up” into the new form as a living cell. Not in the manner of materialistic Darwinian evolution does this happen, where it is a mere matter of mechanical self-assembly, but because the form of the cell was already present in the logos-structure of reality and could be educed from potentiality to actuality by the appearance of certain conditions. From here it is easy to see the next sequential steps that go into completing the panoply of life as we know it. “Cellularity” spreads over the whole Earth, providing the necessary material for other bodies. The form of the plant takes up cells into itself, building a crystal of a higher order consisting of carbonic atmosphere and light-energy and gelled loam, and founded upon living cells. Animals are a further elaboration of this process: They are a plantlike powerhouse plus a digestive compost pile of soil fermentation, and their crystalline structure is modified for sensation and motion. Life and matter are of a single nature through and through, and the only difference is in the greater or lesser number of prerequisite forms required for a given expression of will. This compounding of form upon form was the basic Bonaventurian vision. It is all extremely attractive, but quite wrong. Saint Thomas showed us why, viz. the forms of the subordinate orders (for example, the form of a single living cell in the human body) would be present only as accidents, not substances. That there is one and only one essence in every substantial form leads to some profound consequences for life and matter that are quite at variance with the modern mindset. We are used to thinking of the material world as consisting solely of the physical and chemical transformations of the basic elements. We think of the matter of our bodies as though it were just the same oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen, albeit in a special arrangement, but the same chemical elements, nonetheless. The hylomorphic view of Aristotle and Aquinas entails that this is not correct, and that, while those elements can be educed out of human flesh when it decomposes, human flesh is human flesh, a genuine thing of its own, not just an arrangement of elements. Water, in other words, is not H2O. The implications for the history of life are perhaps even more foreign to modern minds. The scientists of today have roundly assumed that since all lifeforms seem to consist of at least one cell, therefore some single cell was the common ancestor of all life on Earth. There really is no basis for this assumption. Rather, when the essential form of a living creature enters existence, it “cellularizes,” i.e. it acquires a cellular structure as a consequence as of the material nature it must exist within and its concomitant need for metabolism and gas diffusion and so forth. Likewise heredity itself, which we shall talk about in more detail later, has also been quite seriously misunderstood. DNA sequences themselves are not the vehicles of heredity; they are simply flesh, simply body, simply a consequence of existence under material conditions. Life “geneticizes” in the same manner it “cellularizes,” and this means that DNA sequences, be they never so similar, must be regarded no differently than any other homologous structures, and consequently genetic similarity in no way establishes phylogenetic relationship. Yes, I am aware that this probably comes across as sheer crackpottery; but once again, just as we saw in the previous chapter with epistemological infinitism, it follows with the strictest logic from indubitable metaphysical foundations. Notice also that the contrary was never proven to begin with; it was simply asserted when Watson and Crick elucidated the chemical structure of DNA. From that moment to this, its role as the vehicle of heredity has been an unquestioned assumption. I maintain that not only is DNA not the vehicle of heredity, but that there is no material vehicle of heredity. Common descent is proven neither by cellularity nor by genetics. Many ancillary beliefs such as the Margulis theory of mitochondria are likewise found to be unmotivated. Every form stands on its own. Any such theory of interrelatedness—whether it be materialist-Darwinian or dualist-Bonaventurian or New Age-Gaian—that serves to make all life on Earth into one single historically connected superorganism, is quite incompatible with the doctrine of the forms and is certainly not what we mean by creation or the logos-structure of reality. Neither do we mean mere mathematical information as such, and this leads us to our next chapter. 8. Problematic Alternatives C: Intelligent Design We need not linger long over the introductory material here. Much has been written both for and against Intelligent Design in historically recent times, and I could think of little that would be less helpful or less to my taste than to attempt another meaningless and dry survey of the state of that debate, which must at the last reveal itself to be either a colossal (dare I say unforgiveable) misunderstanding or a shameful exercise in intellectual autoeroticism. The main objective in this chapter, as in the previous two chapters, will be to show what creation is not. Intelligent Design is an even bigger distortion of the creation doctrine than probably even Young Earthism, but it is far and away the most published about, the most popular, the most philosophically parsed by public pseudointellectuals, the most cruelly attacked by ignorant and wanton bullies, and the least expertly defended by mountebanks. Neither the opponents nor the advocates of this idea deserve any credit for accepting its ludicrous premises. Both strawman and dumb idol, it seems almost deliberately engineered to do nothing except generate pointless controversy, the grist of the academics’ tiresome mill. Intelligent Design refers to a set of theories according to which life is said to exhibit a property called “irreducible complexity,” that is to say, living organisms consist of parts that are so interdependent that the proper functioning of one depends on the proper functioning of all the others, such that the impossibility of them falling into this arrangement by chance is certain or at least prohibitively severe. When a complex system of this nature is in evidence, so the theory goes, it stands to reason that it was placed there by an intelligence who so orchestrated the parts as to function in this mutually dependent manner. The locus classicus of this style of thinking, or at least what is commonly taken to be so, is the watchmaker analogy of William Paley, viz. the idea that if we see a watch, we suppose that there is a watchmaker who manufactured it and who did so for a purpose. This shallow reading is actually quite unfair to Paley, who situated his analogy within an entire book of natural theology and whose main arguments were rather more subtle and profound than that. It had been Paley’s objective to argue for the existence of God based upon the goodness and order to be found in creation, not to argue that organisms are so complex that only God could have made them, and therefore God exists. In this he was much more in line with the Five Ways of St. Thomas Aquinas and much more in line with what I am talking about in this essay; the shallow interpretation is not something that would have occurred to him. It is certainly correct to argue in a Thomistic manner that the fact that there is order and intelligibility in the cosmos at all inevitably leads to the conclusion of an ultimate and transcendent rational cause. However, the complexity of living organisms is meant only as a rather idiosyncratic route into this general principle; it is not, as it were, “the point” of it. Given an intelligible cosmos, one could easily imagine any number of intermediate causes that could have resulted in complex structures like living organisms without direct divine involvement, provided that these structures are conceived mechanistically; but one cannot not imagine God, given an intelligible cosmos. And life is not to be conceived mechanistically. Nothing so perfectly illustrates the dilapidated state of contemporary metaphysical understanding as the fact that even the so-called Intelligent Design camp accepts without question the materialist or Cartesian-dualist presupposition that living beings are merely complex biochemical machines. Under the mad spell of their “irreducible complexity” (which, mechanically speaking, does not even exist—there is no such thing as a machine that is not reducible to simpler functional units, for that is what it means to be a machine), it was forgotten that the question here was never about how the molecules in a living organism got into their current arrangement; it was about how a living thing qua living could come into existence at all. But rather than touch this question, it was if the Intelligent Designers asked themselves, “How complex would a 3D printer need to be to in order to print up a pineapple or a goldfish?” And, having decided that undirected physical forces could not provide a sufficiently likely analogue to such a device, they declared that the pineapple printer could only be an intelligent agent. Thus the stage is set for the Design detractors’ chief counterargument, viz. “Who designed the designer?” At one level this is simply a childish quip, but at another level it points up the very problem with all this foolishness. If the designer is another material, mechanical process, then an infinite regress of such designers is strongly implied; and rather than solving the problem, all we have done is delayed the solution by one or more iterations. On the other hand, if there is a first, foundational designer that is not itself designed, it raises the question of why, if random forces could produce this thing, they could not also produce life as we know it without such an intermediary. In fact, if life is material and its cause is material, then there cannot be anything more in the effect than there is in the cause. Absolutely everything is determined right from the very beginning, and the whole idea of irreducible complexity turns out to be quite nonsensical. If life is material that has been organized by a designer, then either the designer had a designer or it did not; and since neither arm of this disjunct is possible, the true value of “Intelligent Design” consists in that it serves as a reductio proving that life is not material organized by a designer. Before departing from this chapter altogether, it is necessary to say a few words about the experiments into “synthetic life” conducted by J. Craig Venter—e.g. inserting an entirely reconstructed genome into a bacterial cell—because sooner or later they are sure to be brought up in connection with the question of whether life can be synthesized at all. A full discussion of these experiments should be left for another time; what is of interest here is the essence and nature of what they revealed. Suffice it to say here that life was not created artificially. It is only the modern researcher’s unmerited belief in genetic information as the motive power and élan vital of the organism (to be discussed in chapter 13) that causes him to interpret the results that way. What actually transpired here was a radical microsurgery akin to, say, removing a limb and quickly reattaching it again. Once DNA is dethroned from its usurpatious role as élan vital and properly ennobled as an organ of protein synthesis, this will all become clear. We can imagine, at the last, a modern version of Leibniz’s Mill experiment. Let us take an organism, perhaps a housefly, and expand its proportions by a hundred billion such that we can actually walk around amidst its molecules and observe them in their living activity. If life consists entirely in a certain arrangement of parts then it ought to be scale-invariant, and this giant fly should be every bit as alive as its Lilliputian counterpart. Furthermore, since it is only the process, the arrangement, the information that really counts, even a simulation of the fly ought to be just as alive as the real fly, provided it was exact. We ought to be able to program and copy flies to our heart’s content; nay, we can even conjure them into existence through deeply bizarre projections like the following: Somewhere among the thousand-odd Avogadros of air molecules in the room I am writing in, there is a certain subset of them that, given their current positions and trajectories, are about to compute the perfect fly simulation algorithm. All I need to do then is find the right selector, the right “decryption key,” which need not go to the trouble of actually existing, and I can say that the fly is really present in the air around me. And what about transcendental numbers? An infinite, nonrepeating, nonterminating decimal expansion like π must eventually contain every possible bit string, including the fly simulation algorithm. Perhaps there is some mystical sense in which I create whole virtual menageries just by drawing circles in the sand. All this is passing strange and ridiculous, but to such extremes are we driven by mathematical realism and Intelligent Design’s implication that life consists in the information or arrangement of material parts. It is hardly more inane than the multiverse theory which is seriously entertained by many practicing physicists. Schopenhauer expressed something of the same criticism when he said that if life is in the shape of things, then we would find it in clouds in the shapes of beasts. If on such outlandish excursions, physical or mental, we do not find living creatures, we will not find them in the arrangement of their own molecules either. 9. Problematic Alternatives D: Unintelligent Design In this the last of our chapters discussing problematic alternatives to Darwinism, we finally address the class of theories to which Darwinism itself belongs, as well as any variations upon it. This we may style, to use a figure of speech, unintelligent design, by which we mean any theory holding that life is composed solely of matter and compounded by material forces, but these forces act in a random and stochastic manner devoid of purposeful direction. Erstwhile critics of Darwinism have almost universally advanced arguments highlighting the extreme improbability of such a process; however, I do not believe that this is the correct approach. Probability can never afford the basis for a metaphysical argument, and if the universe must be assumed to be indistinguishable from one that is infinitely old in infinite space, then even the least probable events must be assumed to have happened. This does not benefit the Darwinist, however, for the following reason. Recall what was said earlier about the magical thinking engaged in by evolutionists. The idea that “given enough time, anything can happen” does not extend to things that are metaphysically impossible, such as the development of life from nonlife. It is not that this is merely highly improbable, which would not matter; it is that it is metaphysically prohibited, which matters very much. The living organism is not a process occurring in otherwise dead matter. It is alive by virtue of what it is, and this essence is its immaterial form. It is the soul, the “anima,” that makes it alive in the first place. The soul is monadic, immaterial, indivisible, and therefore not changeable in the manner that accidents change. Matter is extended, material, and always in flux. A living soul cannot be made of matter any more than justice can be literally weighed in a balance. Evolutionists are simply making a category mistake when they assert that a timescale of billions of years will square that circle for them. It is common nowadays to hear analogies made (both ways) between the evolutionary process and computation, neural networks, machine learning, and so forth. It has been said to me on occasion that if a computer can learn to play chess better than any human grandmaster, then natural forces can make a biosphere is billions of years. It was not really explained just what exactly these two things have to do with one another, unless we are to believe that the natural world is a giant analog computer running a simulation with living creatures (but what is it simulating?). In any case, it has simply been missed that the real thrust of this argument ought to run in the opposite direction. If the much more intensified and deliberate processes of computation and engineering cannot make life where formerly there was none, then a fortiori random forces should not be able to do so either. It is precisely here where everything hinges, for nobody has any idea how to engineer or compute life. This is not because there are “gaps in our knowledge”—the God of the Gaps hypothesis is both another straw clutched at and another strawman demolished by the respective anti- and pro-evolution factions—but because that which we call knowledge belongs to a different order of being than that which we call life. Life is real and primordial whereas knowledge exists only for an intellect. It does about as much good to say that life can be made with knowledge as it does to say that matter can be made with knowledge. Yet the Darwinians do not even say this much; they say that life was made in the same manner that knowledge would make it in but cannot, only without the knowledge. Truly magical thinking indeed. This is all so much the worse for machine learning and AI, which really do not even exist except as moods in the minds of modern, educated onlookers. Although this essay is not the place to discuss it in depth, we ought to at least foreshadow that it will soon be necessary to put an end to this whole manner of speaking. Machines do not “learn to play chess.” Rather, a group of human beings (the programmers) plays chess against another human being (the grandmaster) using the machine that they designed and built as an intermediary. Machines can neither learn nor play chess because machines cannot do anything; they do not carry within themselves their own principle of activity. The machine is simply the orchestration of incidents. In order to make a machine, physical qualities are abstracted away from the materials in which they inhere, then recombined in different proportions to produce the desired result. No machine, from the most simple to the most complicated, is essentially anything more than a bunch of dominoes set up to fall and cascade in a predictable pattern. If two falling dominoes are not alive, then neither are 200 million. If screws, levers, and inclined planes are not sparking with rudimentary intellect, then neither is a computer intelligent. How was it ever forgotten that machines are simply tools, auxiliaries produced by humans to aid the humans in doing the things that they want done? The whole idea of machine agency is quite frankly, quite literally a mass delusion—a delusion never examined because to do so would be fatal to Western man’s entire self-conception. However, the thing itself being true, it cannot be suppressed forever. It will emerge into the light of day with such profound cultural consequences that few even dare imagine the outcome. If AI falls, so also falls Darwinism, Intelligent Design, unintelligent design, and the entirety of biomolecular genetics conceived as information. There is no God of the Gaps due to missing knowledge, but we are left to confront the God of the one great gap between life and nonlife which is otherwise unbridgeable. In summary, we have seen that life cannot be simply material and that this squelches any idea that it was designed either intelligently or unintelligently, meaning that Darwinism and Intelligent Design are both false. If life is not mere matter, then it must be a compound of matter and form. But we have also seen that forms are not potential in the logos-structure of reality nor are they educed by material causes, which precludes Bonaventurianism and Cellularism. The origin of forms must therefore involve a special act of divine concurrence either originally or in the process of procreation. But we know from epistemological infinitism that Young Earth creationism is also false. Therefore, we are left with the truth of the Tridentine formulation, viz. “The soul [read here the essence or substantial form] is of itself and per se the form of the body and is multiplied as bodies are multiplied.” Thus, having completed our survey of the relevant metaphysics, we move on to the constructive phase of the new and correct paradigm. 10. But What About the Fossil Record? At this point I can practically hear my many Darwinian interlocutors exclaiming, “Oh, come now, we know that evolution occurred because we can observe it happening in the fossil record.” They will go on to assert that the preponderance of paleontological and geological evidence together forms a story that is most impressively consistent, and which includes evolution as an integral component. The Darwinian theory is supported by so much else that we seem to know so thoroughly that we therefore also “know” it. But do we really? What do we actually know from the fossil record? What is it possible to know from the fossil record? And what exactly is the fossil record, anyway? I submit that we know rather less about the fossil record than we pretend to know. For us laymen, among whom I must number myself, it is certainly true that the proportion of our knowledge of the fossil record which derives from direct investigation and experience is practically nonexistent. Almost the entirety of our knowledge is mediated to us by books, scholarly articles, documentaries, classrooms, and the consensus of expert opinion. This does not, in and of itself, throw such knowledge into disrepute, but it does mean that what we are presented with is already situated within the context of a carefully constructed narrative that tends to induce certain global presuppositions that color our interpretation of subsequent facts. Although evolutionists are wont to be very insistent about the value of their “empirical” science, evolution is the kind of science that is accepted almost entirely on authority by the vast majority of its adherents. But furthermore, I maintain that even among the experts, even among the collectivity of experts and firsthand field researchers, much less is known than is generally supposed. The subject matter is by definition quite ancient and incomplete. We have seen again and again in the history of science that inferences from incomplete evidence are wildly off the mark; however, here there can be no final reckoning, no corrective, no great affirmation of indubitable truths, for the answers lie irretrievably lost in the past. The full picture of what life was really like in the kingdom of the dinosaurs or the paleolithic seas is something more remote from us than the surface of Venus. We can and have sent probes to Venus, but we can send no probes backward in time. Yet, I do not mean to rest my criticism on such appeals to ignorance. Rather, I intend to rest it precisely on that which is most widely and definitely and incontrovertibly known about the natural history of life on Earth, viz. that the forms of life have varied over time. The deep past contained some organisms that are no longer with us, and some of today’s organisms seem not to have inhabited the past. The Darwinians have often strangely claimed the mere fact of this change as proof of their own and only their own theory, as if nothing else could explain it. But the type of variations seen are not the ones that would be most obviously compatible with a Darwinian reading. We do not anywhere see a successive refinement of life developing itself on the fitness principle. Instead we find forms appearing suddenly in their complete condition, enduring for long ages practically unaltered, and then fading into obscurity. This disharmony between theory and observation has sometimes sent Darwinians grasping for epicyclic ad hoc hypotheses such as punctuated equilibrium. I have been told by some that this theory is now discredited. Whether it is or not, the problem that prompted it certainly remains. In rejecting both Intelligent and Unintelligent Design, we have already ruled out not only Darwinism but any theory holding that life emerges and develops due to “causality,” due to forces acting upon matter according to the Principle of Sufficient Reason. There is no discernable logic to living forms appearing when and as they do. The essential form is something that originates beyond the epistemological horizon, beyond the domain of causal knowledge. The mystery of matter and form, which was inconsistently amalgamated in Cartesian dualism and soothingly elided in materialistic Darwinism, is here seen to be primary and requires the hylomorphic synthesis. But this opens up again an epistemological problem that particularly afflicts the science minded. What does it mean for a form to come from beyond the epistemological horizon? The immaterial form has to acquire a material existence at some point, so what happens when it does? What would I see if I were standing there? It is this urge to understand the visible side of the process that motivates many an honest skeptic, and it was one of the principle attractions of Darwinism that it seemed (only seemed) to provide an answer. Now that the subject, once thought closed, has been opened up again, it is only fair to ask what transpires in the physical world when a wholly new lifeform (by this we mean one not issuing from a parental exemplar of the same kind) comes into existence. We have stipulated before that the form must inform the matter. It is not a familiar phrase or a familiar process, so we will have to try to imagine what it might look like. Here are four examples. -Natal neogenesis: The first place where we might expect to se the emergence of life of a novel form, is the very place where we typically see the emergence of new life of the same form—in birth. For in very truth, the process of procreation in the same kind is no less astonishing than would be an entirely new creation developing through a similar process, except that we are so habituated to the former that it often ceases to amaze. It could be that new forms are born from existing forms via some sort of gestational process. Whether it is a live birth or a hatching from some kind of egg or a budding off as in the case of many plants and asexually reproducing animals, it is not difficult to see how a new lifeform could arrive into existence by way of the reproductive channels of an existing lifeform. Such an event would not even be too terribly puzzling but might seem more of an extraordinary case of a normal process, a curiosity. -Inorganic neogenesis: Here the matter that the new essence informs does not belong to a single living creature in a parent/child relationship with the new one, but consists in the waters, muds, and rocks of the Earth, or perhaps the fertile soil with its retinue of microorganisms. Very likely in the case of bacteria and protists, and also perhaps fungi, worms, arthropods, and many types of plants. It reminds of the spontaneous generation theories of old, although it is important to remember that it is not “causal” and cannot be induced into occurring at the experimenter’s command. This is why pasteurization works and canned foods remain sterile. The difference between spontaneous generation and inorganic neogenesis is that the latter cannot be assumed to occur just because certain conditions are met but happens only at the discretion of God. This is certainly how the first lifeforms were created, and one cannot say that there is not a continuous stream of them still trickling in unto the present day. -Vegetative neogenesis: Given the remarkable nature of plant growth—of vegetative propagation or the development of a complex arrangement of stems, roots, leaves, flowers, and fruits out of a commonplace looking seed—it should not be impossible to imagine a plant transforming entirely into another plant, or likewise a different plant or even an animal growing on it like a kind of fruit before breaking off and living an independent life. Plants often reproduce by budding and division anyway, so once again the outline of the process itself involves nothing unfamiliar. It is only the emergence of a different kind rather than a similar kind of creature that distinguishes it from procreation. -Animal neogenesis: The wholesale transformation of an animal of one type into an animal of another type. Possible as an economical means of producing predator-types out of prey-types (and vice versa), and also for the subtler differences involved in radiation and allopatric speciation (see next chapter). It is important to remember here that all these different modes of neogenesis are only meant to answer the question “What might it look like?” and not to explain the matter causally after the manner of “this, therefore that.” God does not need an “economical” means of making predators out of prey; He Who made everything out of nothing can surely make something out of anything. However, it may be expedient as a means to keeping an area populated at all times with all the different types of life necessary to make up a functioning ecosystem. 11. The Metamorphosis Any or all of these types of neogenesis might have happened. There is no firm dividing line between them, nor between other types that might possibly be imagined. It is also possible that God simply creates new forms in situ without making use of the preexisting material conditions. That is certainly possible to His power, but then their appearance would seem utterly miraculous to our eyes. Very seldom does God deign to so thoroughly override the laws of nature He has established; He prefers to work within them as much as possible. But the emergence of any new life—be it a new individual or an entirely new species—is a sort of miracle, whether obviously uncanny or camouflaged in the ordinary course of things. Howsoever the transformations occur, the general idea can be subsumed under a single heading that I like to call, with apologies to Franz Kafka, “the metamorphosis.” The essential form informs preexisting matter and the new life emerges, and the appearance of it will be like something after the manner of birth, growth, or miracle. Even though essential forms do not originate within the confines of the nature that we can observe, even though they come from beyond the epistemological horizon and do not develop according to the Principle of Sufficient Reason—even so, this is not unscientific. The metamorphosis is something that could at least in principle be observed if we were very, very lucky. It is the business of scientific hypotheses to predict new phenomena that have not yet been observed. Perhaps one day it will be observed. The metamorphosis is a sort of umbilical cord between essence and existence, between form and matter, between the eternal and the temporal, between Heaven and Earth. That which appears on Earth as life is that which is present in the mind of God as idea. The eternal idea temporalizes by informing matter in a particular time and place, thereby acquiring individuality. New individual souls of the same kind are created by the concurrence of God as bodies are conceived or divided. New souls of a novel kind are created by God and embodied through the process of metamorphosis. It is important to remember here that, even should the new soul first come into existence by informing the already existing body of some other creature, it does so only by immediately and entirely displacing the other soul. The first creature dies so that the second one can be born. There is no amalgamation, development, evolution, or transformation of one soul into another. This is why we belabored the point earlier that there can be one and only one form in every substance. Each one is separated from all others because it is individuated by matter. Finally, that which impacts the body by way of causality does not educe changes in the soul. Souls are “timeful” with respect to destiny (as the symbol of the tree tells us—the tree is the historical plant whose shape is acquired by and through its life history), but they themselves are not causally altered in time. The fossil record, as far as it goes, bears witness to this process. But somebody may yet ask whether this is all just some sort of prestidigitation, whether this soul-doctrine has been superimposed upon a natural history that is in fact merely naturalistic, as a way of dissimulating it. The metaphysical discussion we had in earlier chapters ought to have put that concern to rest, but it is no trouble to address it again from a slightly different angle, for such questions are bound to rise again and again to trouble us in the midst of a paradigm shift. The salient point here is to recognize that the metamorphosis need not involve a radical change. A whole concatenation of forms may follow one upon another in metamorphic succession with each one differing only slightly from its neighbor, such that the chain of them put together might be taken to mimic a gradual Darwinian development. I am not aware of any actually existing examples of this, but we retain it as a possibility as it may shed some light on those phenomena the Darwinian refers to as radiation, allopatric speciation, and colonization. If a certain rare bird is present on only one island in the world, but a similar form is widespread on a nearby continent, it is possible (although not necessary) that the island population originated from the continent. What is not possible is that the island population got into its present condition by way of “transitional forms.” There are no such things as transitional forms since every form must be something entire and complete unto itself. But if Darwinism were true then there would be nothing but transitional forms with no boundaries or definition or species. Every population would simply be a “local variety” of the same generic life-stuff. On the other hand, if a founding and breeding population from the mainland could arrive at the island by chance, it is not unreasonable to ask whether, if such an event be possible at all, it is not sufficiently common so as to keep interbreeding going between the two groups. Chance colonization events are triply unlikely insofar as they have to happen by accident and have to happen only once, and going only one way. If, on the other hand, chance colonizations were actually quite rare indeed, then a formal metamorphosis of the founding population to something more suitable to its involuntary environs would seem to explain observed reality better. It is okay that the metamorphic doctrine would allow for a process that mimics a Darwinian-like result in those rare instances when Darwinism sort of seems to work. After all, the Darwinian idea attracted the attention of so many intelligent people for so many years precisely because it seemed to explain a few things that needed explaining. The fact that it was metaphysically impossible should have been heeded; the search should have continued for a better explanation even as Mr. Darwin was heartily thanked for his contributions. I am endeavoring here to supply that corrective. It is ever the case in science that when a new paradigm supplants an old one, the new arrival must pay the proper respect to its historical predecessor by not only explaining the old facts and explaining them better, but also by graciously understanding the source of the error. Mankind was too precipitous in accepting Darwinism and forgot first principles in the process. With the doctrine of the metamorphosis, we no longer need to make that compromise. 12. Plasticity Within the Form and the Demise of the Border Collie My evolutionist interlocutors, perhaps now gasping in exasperation, may at last decide to deploy their nuclear arsenal in defense of their treasured theory. “But we know evolution is possible because we have done it ourselves. We have been breeding domesticated plants and animals for thousands of years and making all sorts of changes in them. Look at the different breeds of dog. Do you honestly think that this is not evolution? Do you honestly think that this is not a perfect analogy for the differences in human races? Do you honestly think that a chihuahua is no different than a border collie?” My old friend, this Homeric and belletristic border collie, always seems to make an appearance in these discussions. Ever the faithful companion of the Darwinian posse, he never fails to come when called, all bright-eyed and tail a’ wagging, to supposedly settle the matter in favor of the powers of natural selection. This is due, of course, to him being thought the most intelligent of the working dogs, and to his uncanny powers being the result (it is said) of a very vigorous selective breeding process which has stamped them deeply into his blood and behavior. If man can make a border collie out of a wolf, it is thought, then nature acting over unimaginably longer timescales can make all the species in the natural world that we see around us. The argument from selective breeding, which is usually called “microevolution” in these sorts of debates, is the Darwinian’s strongest trump card. It is time that we see exactly what is going on with the border collie, with Holstein cattle, with Cavendish bananas, and with all the other breeds, strains, and cultivars which man has developed for his own use down through the millennia. Of course, referring to all this as microevolution from the beginning is to use a question-begging term, for it presumes the very thing which is to be proven. Critics of evolution have long laid stress on the fact that selective breeding does not produce differences in kind. All breeds of domestic dog are still dogs, for example. The evolutionists have responded that this is really just a question of degree; the bifurcation of life into wholly different species is really just a more protracted and random version of the same process that has developed both chihuahuas and border collies out of some distant domestic dog ancestor. The issue here is whether breeding really is anything like evolution, and if not, what is it exactly. If, as we have established earlier, substantial forms are immediate creations, then unless there is an instance of formal metamorphosis, procreation will be after the same kind. But the formal metamorphosis of a living creature cannot be educed by material causality. Selective breeding by humans is a type of material causality, therefore the development of breeds and strains is reproduction within the same kind. The changes that are wrought, therefore, are not substantial but accidental, even though these changes can be quite pronounced. This is an example of what I like to call plasticity within the form. Plasticity is akin to an intensified terroir influence that has been focused by the mind and hand of man. All organisms are by nature outfitted to respond to terroir influences because they cannot know beforehand what sort of conditions chance will expose them to. This responsive power exists to help them achieve their destiny amidst the range of material circumstances that cannot be part of their formal definition. When that power is pushed to its uttermost limits by deliberate human interference, then we get creatures that produce more milk and more grain and larger fruits than their natural tendency would be to, had they been left alone. We must remember here that this is the very opposite of Darwinian “fitness.” Human-developed cultivars are almost always at an extreme disadvantage compared to their own wild types. They are fragile and do not survive easily outside of their artificial environments. Significantly, the traits imposed upon them by selective breeding are shed or dissipated or their bearers die out completely when the creatures are allowed to go feral, for they are not in the service of destiny. The domestic type is more or less tortured into its present existence by unrelenting pressure under which it strives mightily to survive, thus developing the distortions and exaggerations we refer to as desirable traits. Consider the life of a barnyard plant or animal. From its first moment until its last, it is never allowed to live and to exist for itself. It begins with the ruthless culling of all its brethren who do not possess the sought-after qualities. If it survives that test, it is marched along its life course with heartless efficiency, fertilized and fed a carefully controlled stream of nutrients, measured for benchmarks met and eliminated if it falls behind, caged and corralled in unusual conditions, and finally harvested and slaughtered and converted into raw material for human consumption, which was its end all along. A more unnatural type of selection pressure could hardly be imagined. This is what life looks like under the impact of “causality.” There can be no better proof that microevolution has nothing to do with the natural history of life on Earth than the fact that, in a natural environment, the pressures would come from all sides, at all times, in all ways, leading to no net bias in any direction. The result of this constant barrage would be to keep all forms compact and well-rounded, like pebbles in a stream. Any eccentricities would have been worn away, quite unlike the deliberate eccentricities that are introduced by selective breeding programs. A twisted creature, forced to serve an end totally outside itself, deprived of its natural shape and natural habits, still laboring to survive even under these straitened conditions—this is microevolution. It cannot create forms; it can only force them to exist in a distorted shape and squeeze something out of them in the process. An additional fatal blow to microevolution is how very limited it is. It has been suggested to me before that if the particular plants and animals that man has adapted to his own use, such as Bovidae and cereal grains, had not been domesticated, we could have started with others and achieved much the same result. Actual breeders and agriculturalists know this is not true, however. Almost every useful domestic plant and animal has been with us since prehistory, these forms showing a more pronounced affinity to being adapted and controlled by man. The others either cannot reproduce well in captivity or cannot be coaxed into producing some result we find desirable. This goes to show that adaptability and responsivity to terroir influences varies greatly from form to form, which marks the difference between creatures like cockroaches and coelacanths which remain unaltered for whole geological ages, and domestic dogs which split evasively into a profuse variety of shapes. Many creatures have a fairly narrow range beyond which they simply will not adapt anymore. This relative cohesivity of the form is something given along with it at its inception and which all the mechanisms of causality are powerless to alter. This ought to put a rest to the argumentum ad border collie. He is a fine and helpful chap, but basically a hothouse flower who has been wrenched into his current condition and who could not and would not long maintain it of his own volition. It is usually not very helpful to think of human races along such lines, although terroir influences certainly do affect the human organism. True selective breeding among humans is almost impossible to imagine under real-world conditions, except to the extent that it operates unconsciously based on notions of beauty and class and social importance; even there, however, there is so much noise mixed in with the signal that the term “cultivar” and its synonyms can be applied to human beings only as a very loose analogy. Among peoples, “race” is better understood not as distinguishing physical traits but as character, as an adjective applying to those individuals who possess the prerequisites for greatness as opposed to those who are lacking in some respect. We will touch upon this again at the end of the essay. The argument is now almost done but the evolutionist still has one last arrow in his quiver: The genetic evidence. In the next chapter we will look on in amazement at how a whole subject could have been so thoroughly and completely misunderstood as to strain credibility, and once we see it in a new light it will be impossible to see it any other way ever again. 13. The Mismeasure of DNA I should like to begin this chapter by posing another epistemological problem. The problem is vast in scope and ought to be worthy of a book-length treatise of its own. We cannot let it detain us here, for it would too heavily encumber the present essay; but we ought to at least be aware of its existence so that we can see how the implied response renders moot any sweeping claims made for the specificity of DNA when it comes to either heredity or phenotypic traits. The problem, to wit, is this: Considering an organism and all its manifold attributes, what exactly about it can we really refer to as a “trait”? Given the limited information of our senses and the finite and somewhat arbitrary list of categories into which we can classify its properties, how do we know that anything we are likely to fix upon as a meaningful characteristic is at all something definite as far as the organism itself is concerned? And since we cannot be sure of what constitutes a trait to begin with, how can we further say that such qualities are correlated with, and indeed derive from, certain DNA sequences? Look at the locus classicus of such thinking. Look at Mendel’s pea plants. Is tallness a trait? Are yellow or green peas a trait? What if the salient quality here was not something readily presentable to our senses? What are the chances that all this should be straightforwardly related to certain genetic sequences in a way that we can understand? I ask this in order to highlight the problems involved in assuming that the complete phenomenological picture of an organism is readily decomposable into “traits” that can then be easily and causally assigned to genetic sequences. Empirically this has never been the case; indeed the number of specific “genes” known to result in hereditarily reliable outcomes remains small and sparse and very incomplete. Again, this is due not to the inadequacy of our knowledge but to the essential incorrectness of our conceptual framework. Thinking of DNA as the information or “blueprint” according to which a creature is constructed leads to innumerable blind alleys and false conclusions. Since organisms are essences and holistic wholes, they are not constructed out of material parts to begin with, so it makes no sense to look for their “instruction manual” in DNA or anywhere else. The equivalence between DNA and “genetic information” has indeed never been establish, but then again never was the question seriously asked. As mentioned earlier, it was simply asserted to be the case when Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule, because the notion that there must be some sort of genetic code was already preestablished in the minds of the scientific community. Had anyone been more curious at the time, they might have wondered how very strange it was that a 3-bit codon, which was just what was needed to satisfy their desires, turned out to be present whole and entire within nucleic acid. They might have wondered if this seemingly serendipitous result was not rather an artifact of their own style of perception. It ought to be clear by now that information—in the modern mathematical sense, not the hylomorphic sense of informed matter—is simply the wrong way to understand the life and history of organisms. What DNA really is has so far eluded understanding due to this false role that was forced upon it. Here once again we find the Darwinists guilty of a sort of magical thinking, this time partaking of the fallacy of microscopism. Because DNA is molecular in scale and thus not readily seen and recondite in its operations, it is often taken as a black box out of which miracles can emerge. The scientific community has convinced itself that somewhere out of sight a mysterious process occurs that transforms information into proteins and proteins into life. This is no more possible than the domino analogy we mentioned before; it is only the invisibility of molecular workings that allows the magic spell to continue. If DNA were really blown up to the size of the familiar laboratory stick-and-ball model, nobody would claim that it was actually manufacturing a living thing. They would say rather that it was the result of a living thing or that it adorns a living thing, in the same sense that a growing hair results from and adorns a living mammal. The existence of congenital genetic diseases, which sadly afflict the entire organism in often horrible ways, testifies to this fact. For if DNA really is just a genetic blueprint, then a mutation in DNA would result in noise, static, a sort of sub-organic slop that held not any form. As it is, genetic mutations result in afflictions that the living form tries to carry on in spite of. DNA, among other possible functions that we do not know about, is simply an organ of protein synthesis. It belongs to the organism in the same sense that the rest of the organism’s body belongs to it, for the DNA is also “body”—it is just as physical, just as phenomenal, just as corporeal, and just as material as a hand or a foot. It is not “information.” There really is no such physically existing thing as information in the modern mathematical sense, which is really only a certain semiotic sign-convention embossed upon a material substrate which requires a rational actor to interpret. Physical matter is quite indifferent to that sort of information, so we cannot expect to find it speaking back at us from out of the DNA molecule. Once we accept “DNA as organ,” a lot of other observed facts make sense in context. The polyploidy of high-yielding cereal grains and the polynucleation of muscle cells are rather obvious cases of their need to support more growth than usual. Also, the fragmentary successes achieved by genetic engineering to date make sense only on this model and on no other. The production of Bt corn, of golden rice, and of insulin-making bacteria, to take but a few well-known examples, are comprehensible only if one views DNA as a sort of potent raw material, the way that an ER nurse might view the blood in an IV bag during a blood transfusion. It infuses a definite result—bodily health—without effecting a change in essence; the blood recipient does not transform into the blood donor. Likewise, there can be no better proof of the lack of correspondence between genetic sequences and observed traits than the fact that one and the same genome is present in both the fertilized zygote and the fully grown mammal, the acorn and the oak tree, the larval grub and the adult moth. If a phenotypic change as profound as that between a chicken and an egg can occur with no genotypic change whatsoever (or so it is thought; cf. seq.), then the change between, say, a chicken and a peafowl ought to present no impediments. The main reason for the specificity of DNA seems to be to constrain individuals to breeding only with certain other individuals, thus preserving a living strain within a natural kind—a role that is most powerfully expressed by the symbol of the chromosomal number. For these reasons, we have to conclude that DNA has only a functional and indefinite relationship with heredity. We have said before that when an essential form becomes an existent living being, it “geneticizes” as a means to becoming actual under material conditions. This means that in most cases it simply takes over and proceeds with the genetic material contributed to it by its parents, but there is no reason to expect this to be invariably the case. I predict that as genetic studies progress and are performed by researchers with more integrity who are less tainted by the reigning orthodoxy, we shall find that DNA is not always transmitted with perfect fidelity from parent to child, that it does not remain unaltered throughout the lifespan of the individual, that there are often phenotypic changes without genotypic changes, and likewise genotypic changes without phenotypic changes, that both intraspecies and interspecies chimeras occur with regularity, and that except in certain comparatively rare and obvious cases, the correspondence between genetic patterns and observable phenomenal traits of the organism remains opaque and impossible to determine. Heredity, though quite real, remains an essentially mysterious process that it would be a travesty to reduce to chemical identifiers. With this, the argument against Darwinism and the materialistic conception of life is complete. We have reached the end of the discursive portion of our discussion and proceed with our final three chapters of conclusory remarks by taking up again the problem of human races. 14. Back to Human Races By summing up and assimilating everything we have covered thus far, we are now in a position to make the following remarks about human races. There is but one human essence, that of rational animal. All human beings anywhere, no matter their ethnic background or chronological age or developmental state, partake of this form. It first appeared, as do all forms, in an act of special creation of which the epistemological trace takes the shape of a metamorphosis. Beyond that, the circumstances of its appearance—the when and the whence—we do not know, and we will never know. It would be foolhardy to try to reconstruct a natural history of the human race based on the scant evidence available to us; and, against the hopes of those looking forward to a genetic unraveling of the problem, DNA can tell us nothing. All that we have at our disposal is the physiognomic flair that perceives an ontology of essence underneath the sensible signs, with all the caveats that implies. Accordingly, as I see it, the principal division between human beings is that between black Africans and everybody else, which I would consider to be a metamorphically accented change flowing from essence. The differences between Caucasians, East Asians, South Asians, Amerindians, and Polynesians are probably accidental and result from terroir influences and diet operating over lengthy periods of time. All other ethnicities are capable of better relations and better mutual understanding between each other than any of them are with blacks, and blacks have less capacity than others in civilizational potential. Black people are in general less able to engage fully in distinctively human activities and do so only with difficulty for themselves and aggravation for others, yet they are not essentially anything other than human. This seems to indicate that black people are under some type of curse, the “curse of Ham” as it was classically known, as a punishment long ago stamped upon them. This is neither a cruelty nor a prejudice to state. It agrees with the plain facts, and it is rather less damning than the idea, held by the HBDers, that they are biologically predestined to a substandard fate. A curse can be overcome, but not so a sentence of inferiority based upon race, where race is held to be “biological” and biology is held to be all. Race is real and essential; it is not a social construct. The racial problems that exist in America, however, are entirely social constructs. They exist not in spite of society’s choices but precisely because of them, specifically because of the movements, demonstrations, rulings, and legislation that transpired in the wake of the Civil War and has continued throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Absent the particular history that Western peoples find themselves in and indeed created for themselves, racial problems would not exist in the form of a suffocating atmosphere that stifles truth-telling and redress. Racial realities cannot be obviated within the narrow ranges and scant degrees of freedom which divine providence permits human agencies to affect; however, we need not despair of finding workable solutions on that account. Armed with a true knowledge of men and nature, we are fitted to understand how we may live our lives in peaceableness and freedom apart from the tyranny of racial grievances and racial game-playing. It is important to understand that we cannot do this under the HBD paradigm. For him who considers HBD to be true, there is no possibility of a transcendent hope that society can be organized justly. If biology is absolutely real and determinative, then logically all problems are material problems and require material solutions. Make no mistake, it is the absolute unthinkability of these solutions, both scientifically and morally, which drive the majority of modern people to the vague and wishy-washy declaration (I do not call it belief) that people are all the same “under the skin” and that therefore chronic misbehavior by certain racial groups must be tolerated and ascribed to social conditions. It is, ironically, HBD-style thinking that helps to cement the unworkable and unrealistic modern consensus. Since people know not what else to say and are mortally afraid of bringing condemnation down upon themselves by speaking forbidden truths, they readily resort to a practical compromise that holds race to be an important consideration for dispersing social benefits but an unimportant consideration for assessing moral or cultural worth. This nonsense needs to stop, not only because it is intellectually incoherent but because it is a charade too costly to carry on. The American Century, along with the consequent dollar hegemony and financial repression it enabled, has allowed fraud to operate on a titanic scale, of which the racial grievance industry is just a subset. This will certainly stop when the money runs out, but in the meantime, it would be helpful to have a hermeneutic within which to talk about racial realities in such a way that allows constructive solutions to grow and spread on their own. The hylomorphic conception of essences, specifically the notion of race as a variable property within essence, provides that hermeneutic. Nobody wishes to be biologically classified, but everyone wishes to belong to their own family, tribe, nation, and home. This is what it means to have an identity as a human being, and race is a part of that. Human beings are different, but the differences are not fundamentally biological; there should be no B in HBD. This is not because race is less than biological, it is because race is more than biological, Race is essential, and even the biological differences between people flow from these essential differences, not the other way around. The understanding of race as biological is doubly flaw, both because “biology” has no definite meaning in this context and because race is prior to and deeper than biology. 15. Christian Morality and Race: What Would Jesus Do? Again, I have written this essay from what I hope to be, and believe to be, a Traditional Catholic perspective. To the extent that morality needs to be introduced into racial questions at all, the Church’s teaching is very simple and very clear: Race is irrelevant as to whether or not one’s soul can be saved, as is nationally, sex, age, and social class. “There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is nether bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal III:28) What is often missed by those who cite this scripture in support of the thesis that the Church is in favor of some kind of egalitarianism, is the fact that it is a two-edged sword. There is neither man nor woman in Christ, so sex is irrelevant as to whether someone can be saved; yet the Church has never failed to insist that men and women have different social roles to play, nor has the Church ever advocated for equal representation of women in the workplace or any of the other goals of modern feminism. There is neither bond not free in Christ, but the Church does not seek to overturn the ordering of society and establish a communist paradise. By the same token, the Church really has very little to say specifically about race relations. If this seems to run counter to a great deal of ostensibly “Christian” sermonizing that has occurred since the dawn of the revolutionary age and which picked up steam especially during the great social crusades of the 19th and 20th centuries, it is only because this coincides with the time when real Christianity was being steadily subverted, bastardized, and lost in favor of the “social gospel.” This social gospel is not an outgrowth of Christianity at all but of Western civilization. It is the West in its late, modern, declining form. It is the grandchild not of Christianity but of counterpoint, chamber music, Cartesianism, and the categorical imperative. An erudite grievance studies graduate paper is a derivative product precisely in the same vein as a Schubert sonata, of which it is the contemporary incarnation. And that is why those who speak of “saving” the West from progressivism have no grounds for hope. This progressivism is simply their beloved West in its old age. The philosophical, intellectual, and artistic traditions of every great civilization always conclude themselves in a jejune maze of tiresome social-ethical problems, in universalism and monism and “socialism,” to the delight of millionaire arrivistas and the boredom of everyone else. Modern “racial” problems are creatures in this class; they are pastimes for educated but idiotic elites. Christianity is now something firmly set against the West, which has grown hubristic and demonic. It can salvage what was once good in the West, just like it once salvaged all that was good in the Classical world, only by maintaining its purity, independence, and higher nature. The general topic is far too broad to tackle at the end of a long essay, but we can certainly say a few words specifically pertaining to Christianity and modern racial problems, lest a scrupulous person think that the Church commands adherence to the modern liberal line. In short, by raising race as a moral problem at all, we have already falsified our understanding to an extent that makes hollow and sentimental conclusions inevitable. We ought rather to let the subject benefit from a protracted period of benign neglect. We are not obligated to ensure equality of outcome among racial groups. We are not obligated to ameliorate racial disparities or even to notice them. We are not obligated to elevate certain individuals or groups to a higher social condition than their own talents or fortunes of birth would qualify them, just because they happen to belong to a certain ethnicity, any more than we would be obligated to do so for anyone else. We are not obligated to forcibly redistribute private money from one racial group to another for any reason whatsoever. We are obligated to work for realistic and equitable solutions to political problems within the limits set by time and circumstance. This means that we are obligated to work for social justice according to the true meaning of the term. Justice means equitability, i.e. the apportioning to everyone their due, no more and no less. It is sad, but entirely unsurprising, that the modern understanding comprises almost the exact opposite of what the word and concept of justice really refers to. It is never wrong to love justice, to seek justice, to work for justice, or to delight in justice. The following short list, therefore, consists of laudable goals that any man can work towards in good conscience. Although the powerful of the world are always able to assert their will even when in the wrong, the claims of justice still exercise a subtle force upon the minds of men since they cannot be denied without doing violence to reason. History pays respect to justice done and manfully articulated, and history will recognize us if we: -Stop forced association: It is certainly wrong to mandate of a private individual that he may not exclude from his presence those whose company he does not want, or to tell a private business whom they must employ or serve rather than leaving it to the proprietor’s discretion. -Stop redistribution: The welfare state is dangerous in its current form. It needs to be liquidated, and not just the portions thereof that we find personally upsetting. Social Security and Medicare as well as housing and food aid need to be wound down. Their existence necessitates a gigantic government bureaucracy which exists solely to take money and redistribute it, and will find ever more justifications for doing so as long as it exists. It also contributes to the general attitude that it is okay to appeal to the government for private assistance. This is nothing but an engineered crisis that cannot but result in a tragic fall. -Stop Affirmative Action: Forcibly allocating scarce positions, appointments, and opportunities to people based on their racial or national background, while passing over more qualified candidates, is the very definition of injustice. Unless it were done privately, in which case it would be within the purview of individual liberty, it simply cannot be supported. The force of law must not be involved in making these decisions. In summary, the best, most logical, and most equitable way of dealing with so-called racial problems, which are social constructs, is to stop constructing them. We must fight back against state interference in these matters and then let the results settle out where they may. The answer to what Jesus would do about racial problems is blessedly “not much.” If only we could live in imitation of Him, we would not have these constructions to trouble us. 16. Conclusion: The Darwinian Paradigm Overthrown My objective in this essay has been to argue that what I have called the Alt-Wrong paradigm of HBD rooted in Darwinian principles is metaphysically unsound and leads to unworkable ideas. I believe I have done this in the course of our discussion and I hereby declare the Darwinian paradigm overthrown, at least in fundamentum. That does not mean that there is not much more work to be done. Essays like this one should be elaborated on and reworked; the prose should be made more forceful and more delightful. There is enough material hinted at here for another hundred explanatory essays and several books. This is good, for it will perhaps inspire a new generation of thinkers to take up the challenge of developing the correct hylomorphic paradigm to a respectable degree. If I may cherish one small hope for myself, it is that in the future I shall see less of that needless amplification of verbiage engaged in by the Darwinists who say, “evolved to” when they mean “is.” For that is the true nature of Darwinism—it asserts the existence of a process where there is not any, and then cites the plain facts in support of the unmotivated premise. Darwinism as idea has no umbilical to the world of existence. Only the hylomorphic dualism of Aristotle, St. Thomas, and the Schoolmen is able to grasp with certainty the realities of matter and form. Now begins a great work which will occupy the minds and hands of many and will yield great fruits in the years to come. If this work of mine can provide them with comfort and inspiration, then may God be praised. -Intelligent Dasein • Category: Ideology, Race/Ethnicity, Science • Tags: Creationism, Darwinism, Hbd, Racism Trim Comments? [] 1. iffen says: Why is there no LOL for a blog post? • Disagree: Cloudbuster, V. K. Ovelund • Replies: , , , , , 2. UK says: Yes, HBD as you define it – that is believing that races differ on average and that this cannot be worked around – does doom America. The idea that there’ll be a civil war where half of the population extinguishes the other is stupid and is never going to gain popular support. On the other hand, I sort of feel you defined it as you felt like, by defining it so as to make your race-realist versus HBD dichotomy a thing, and therefore be able to construct both a positive and realistic vision. It seems this makes your dichotomy useful. I suppose you turn the “realist” in “race-realist” onto what you typify as the “HBD” position. Or have I got it all wrong? Perhaps another way of saying the same thing: We are all our souls and we all have entered bodies for this life. Those bodies have limitations that are both genetic and environmental just as they are both mental and physical. Since we are not our bodies, we are all equal in our dignity, though the facts of our bodies remain and need to be considered for how we make society work. HBD, as you define it, says that those facts should be used to limit people, meanwhile race-realism is merely an observation that often those facts do end up limiting people, and that this unfortunate reality of bring limited by our bodies is simply part of temporal existence. • Agree: Eagle Eye 3. anon[120] • Disclaimer says: • Replies: , , 4. AaronB says: Well, I must admit I was caught flat footed by this. I did not realize ID’s beef with HBD was that it was not extreme enough, since it considered race a mere accident of biology and not essential, and thus capable of change, and that his objective was to provide a firmer foundation for “race realism” by grounding it in metaphysical essentialism as he says – i.e, race is fundamental and unalterable, and coded into the metaphysical nature of reality, not a mere accident of biological drift. And blacks are a “cursed” race fundamentally (that is, essentially, beyond the capacity of biological accident to change) cut off from and inferior to everyone else. And that this attitude is grounded in Traditional Catholic doctrine. Well, well, well, the Unz review as always is full of surprises 🙂 I am glad to see the forces of reaction against the current Leftist madness go from strength to strength… 5. First, I haven’t yet finished reading the 20,000 word original post, and probably won’t for at least a day or two. But I do want to respond to this: “HBD, as you define it, says that those facts should be used to limit people” Aside from the fact that there is no canonical gospel scripture of HBD, I don’t know of any serious HBD proponent who says this. Sailer, for instance, never says,”Eskimos should not be allowed to play basketball”. He only says it should not surprise us that there are few Eskimo basketball players, and that it would be a wasted effort to change this. I mean, right? 6. BlackC says: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.” Also, tl:dr. Skimmed, at best. 7. The author doesn’t seem to know what HBD is and isn’t. It isn’t a philosophy. There is no philosophy. Someone can be ‘HBD aware’ and be a philo-semite or an antisemite, an atheist or a Christian. Someone can be ‘HBD aware’ and be a socialist or a capitalist. One ‘HBD aware’ person might see cause for massive intervention while another might find HBD-awareness as a reason to leave things alone. An ‘HBD aware’ person might be a Darwinist or a Creationist or a simulation-ist, An ‘HBD aware’ person could be a hedonist or a monk. It’s just a series of observations. “Horses tend to run fast” and “Ants tend to be communal” are observations. Observing these things doesn’t imply any belief system. “I rebut your tendency to notice things.” What? I think HBD was coined by Steve Sailer. It doesn’t make sense to me to argue against the philosophy of HBD. There isn’t any HBD philosophy although some people may have a philosophy. HBD is merely a collection of observations. One of the most well-known aspects of HBD is observation that average cognitive abilities are different across different racial groups. Here is a bunch of different black rappers exhibiting HBD awareness as they rhapsodize about Jewish lawyers. HBD is really just a collection of patterns that people have noticed. You can’t very well stop people from noticing things. Most people find it is very helpful to notice things. Without noticing things the world is very confusing and one won’t have a very easy time navigating the world. • Agree: Bert • Replies: , 8. ID, I always enjoy your comments and I appreciate someone else who comes from an Aristotelian and Catholic philosophical background. I don’t agree with your conclusions here but you do make a compelling attempt–probably the most compelling I’ve ever read–to push back against the idea of “HBD.” So with that said, here’s a few points of contention or at the very least confusion on my part. But race-realism demands that we locate race in the realm of the essential, in the form and not in the matter. Furthermore, race must be located in the form, since it is an integral aspect of creaturely existence, appearing along with it in every moment, and must therefore flow from whatever underlying identity unifies that existence… Race, as the qualification of existence, belongs virtually to essence and therefore to destiny and not to incident. As destiny, it is integral with the total nature of the organism. I find this pretty doubtful. I do not think race is an “integral aspect” of existence any more than any other physically dependent characteristic. We can certainly imagine a human species without the concept of “race,” and in fact if miscegenation continues at its current pace indefinitely, this would seem to be the case at some point in the future. Race as a concept is implicitly based on distinctions; it is a descriptor used to group a bunch of correlated but otherwise not implicitly related characteristics (skin color, bone structure, certain behaviors, etc.) It is these characteristics which, in certain cases, constitute the “essential” aspects of the human form and “race” is just a convenient term to group them by incidence and, in HBD’s case, by causation. The correct perception of reality leads inescapably to the conclusion that the forms do not have a material origin. Howsoever existence in any sense comes into being, so also do the forms come into being. At first blush, this seems to raise obvious difficulties for the theory of Darwinian evolution, which posits a continuous material modification of organisms down through time. Indeed, if any of what we have said is right, then the whole Darwinian substrate of HBD thinking is radically incorrect and any subsequent understanding of race-realism will need to be placed on an entirely different foundation. My response here is trivially simple: the forms of all potential organisms always exist, but only those which succeed via natural selection come into “material” existence. Yes, this is exactly what you address in Chapter 7. So going to the crux of the argument there… In order to exist they need to combine into the substantial form, which is the coalescence of idea and matter, of potency and act. The substantial form is the “first act” of a substance; that is, its determinate form of being by which it acquires membership in a class. There is no type of actually existing being prior to this. Therefore, the rationes seminales cannot exist because they do not inhere in anything in the only manner in which form can inhere in matter. You explain why matter cannot exist before a form “inheres” in it, and I agree. But I don’t understand why a form cannot exist before inhabiting its constituent matter. I can easily think of a potential thing which does not not yet materially exist; furthermore, I can easily “classify” that thing. An additional problem proceeds from the fact that the Darwinists seem to claim for their theory the somewhat magical property of deriving things of one kind from things of another. Given enough time, they say, it is possible—again, by purely material transformations—to get life from nonliving matter, or reasoning beings from unreasoning beasts. It can only be due to the extreme neglect of metaphysics as a field of study that such preposterous implications were ever accepted by the intelligentsia. You elaborate further on this topic in Chapter 9, but the argument is a more fleshed out version of the above. I agree that these particular transitions are not explainable by Darwinism. However, this does not invalidate Darwinism as a theory. It remains perfectly licit as an explanation for why transformations exist within the category of, e.g., sensitive but not rational life. I’ll finish the essay later, but I thought it would be better to get a comment out while this is still the first page. Sorry if you already addressed something later on. Anyway, I will conclude with the following general argument for natural selection: 1) Particular organisms produce multiple offspring. 2) The offspring’s traits are not identical to their parents’ or to each others’ 3) There is a positive correlation between a parents’ traits and its offsprings’. 4) Certain traits (call these “beneficial”) increase the average expected number of offspring of a particular organism. All of these are obviously true. I would conclude from these premises that organisms with “beneficial” traits will become more common over time compared to organisms without them. So some kind of trait changes seem inevitable in the long run. • Replies: 9. …his objective was to provide a firmer foundation for “race realism” by grounding it in metaphysical essentialism as he says – i.e, race is fundamental and unalterable, and coded into the metaphysical nature of reality, not a mere accident of biological drift. And blacks are a “cursed” race fundamentally (that is, essentially, beyond the capacity of biological accident to change) cut off from and inferior to everyone else. As I say above, I do not ultimately agree with ID’s conclusion, but it’s telling that you put the most negative spin possible on this topic when what he actually says is: it is rather less damning than the idea, held by the HBDers, that they are biologically predestined to a substandard fate. A curse can be overcome, but not so a sentence of inferiority based upon race, where race is held to be “biological” and biology is held to be all. He is clearly pushing against racial determinism in regards to the individual, only arguing for it in regards to the category as a whole. Which is more than can be said of many “HBD” types. Try reading to learn something instead of just to gather dirt. • Replies: 10. AaronB says: To be fair to him, he does say the specific curse blacks suffer from can be overcome, whereas a biological limitation cannot be overcome, at least in the individual. Credit where credit is due. 11. The “you” in this instance referring to Intelligent Dasein. 12. MBlanc46 says: To put perhaps too fine a point on it: Aristotle is simply wrong. “Essences” are not in the things themselves. “Essences” are partitions that we impose on the blooming, buzzing confusion as we try to make sense of the world into which we are thrust. • Agree: Ano4 • Replies: 13. Thank you for your thoughtful responses. A few things: I find this pretty doubtful. I do not think race is an “integral aspect” of existence any more than any other physically dependent characteristic. We can certainly imagine a human species without the concept of “race, Race is an equivocal and almost all-inclusive term. Certain aspects of what we call race are integral insofar as they pertain to character, i.e. the real nature of the person. It is only character which is properly called race, but terroir and other factors introduce a quasi-racial distinction of a subordinate order. The Spenglerian conception that I mentioned would provide very good background reading on this subject if anybody is interested. https://archive.org/details/Decline-Of-The-West-Oswald-Spengler/page/n471/mode/2up You explain why matter cannot exist before a form “inheres” in it, and I agree. But I don’t understand why a form cannot exist before inhabiting its constituent matter. The emboldened “exist” is the critical word here. Forms are of course present in the mind of God “before” existing (with ontological rather than temporal priority), but they don’t have any independent existence there. To exist, as St. Thomas understood it, means something more than merely being present in the mind of God; it means to have one’s own proper actuality. For substantial forms, i.e. those forms that are the essences of living creatures and whose very purpose is to inform matter so that those creatures can be, informing matter is their existence. It is precisely by doing that, that they do exist. All of these are obviously true. I would conclude from these premises that organisms with “beneficial” traits will become more common over time compared to organisms without them. So some kind of trait changes seem inevitable in the long run. That is what’s discussed in chapter 12. Plasticity within the form is an accidental change that can be affected causally, but a formal change cannot be accidental and cannot be affected by material-mechanical means. • Replies: , 14. As I discussed in the essay, this is the nominalist position implied in Darwinism that leads eventually to Spinozism, i.e. all things being modifications of the one single substance. This view is wrong for reasosn that far transcend biology, among them the fact that no intelligible universe could even exist on such a theory. • Replies: , , , 15. Okay, so this was sort of like the over-text, like in “Pale Fire” or “The Debt to Pleasure”. Where’s the subliminal murder confession, though? I kept waiting for that part. 16. Talha says: Congrats in getting your piece front page listing! The first of many…? Peace. • Thanks: Intelligent Dasein • Replies: 17. anon[359] • Disclaimer says: There, are, rules, for, using, commas, and, other, punctuation; a, good, writer, who, wants, to communicate, obeys, them. • Agree: Pheasant, Jus' Sayin'... • Troll: U. Ranus 18. Never believed in evolution (other than some micro)….did Darwin see those Galapagos turtles and finches actually evolve in an empirical manner? Did Gould actually see his “punctuated equilibrium”? As for Dawkins…. As for Creationism or Intelligent Design, did anyone actually see God create anything, intelligently or not? Thus neither one is science, which requires empiricism. My own opinion (which I espouse in my third in the trilogy book here at https://omegabooksnet.com) “I really do not think creationism is science, but neither is evolution if that’s what you mean. Because, well, I’ll put it to you this way. If a motorcycle was one of God’s creatures created on day five or six when He created birds and mammals and other animals and humans, then it would have been called ‘cheetah,’ which can run about 80 kilometers per hour, and, one second later, can rotate its body around, and head off reaching 80 kilometers per hour in about five seconds. And, son, no freaking motorcycle could ever do that without destroying the engine or crashing the bike! Evolution is a construct.” “What’s a construct?” “A construct is a way we express something we have no clue about to justify why we do or believe something so that it makes sense to us. Since no man was around when God created cheetahs, and since man cannot explain how God created cheetahs in truth since they don’t know how God works and most don’t even think He even exists, they have to make up a construct, call it ‘evolution,’ and convince everyone that Darwin knows all there is to know about creation. And of course they can’t prove evolution is fact, so they diss everyone who says creation is a fact! That’s how these so-called ‘rationalists’ work.” —- Well, okay, maybe cheetahs aren’t as fast as that….. And. well, some thing or entity had to put those two atoms together in some “big bang”… When evolutionists actually empirically prove everything was created and evolved out of nothing, let me know… 19. Twinkie says: The first of many…? I hope not. Were he not so in love with a sense of his own brilliance and verbal elegance, each paragraph in this bloated monologue could be replaced by a sentence. Despite his circuitous disavowal, he isn’t interested in communication and elucidation so much as showing off what he thinks of as his own tragically ignored brilliance. I don’t come here for bullshit, even that dressed up with lots of SAT words. I’d have stayed in academia otherwise. 20. Truth says: Telly-Dase and Audie are one and the same? • Replies: 21. Here is a definition of eternity. You can create a bio divers nation from Eskimos and Zulus but it will take an eternity. Also you will have do it on Mars . None of the races are so similar that is possible from them to create bio divers harmonic conflict free nation in couple of generation. Lets just look at US ! Is it harmonic conflict free nation? 22. Vinnie O says: “I further maintain that HBD in itself, from within its own framework, is powerless to generate any feasible political solutions to the problems it identifies…” Well, YES. That’s the WHOLE POINT: there are MANY social problems that CANNOT be fixed for SOME ethnic/racial groups. Haiti and the Dominican Republic occupy 2 halves of the same island. But Haiti is an IRRETRIEVABLE pesthole, whilst the Dominican Republic is pretty much yer typical Latin American country. The difference is that Haiti is full of, well, HAITIANS. The same is true throughout the world, with countries sitting side by side: one modestly successful and the other struggling to keep its streets paved. You don’t SOLVE these problems. You calmly accept the differences and STOP THROWING MONEY at the losers. Note that the Irish battle cry during their struggles for independence from the Germanic English was “sinn fein”, which translates as “ourselves ALONE”. Or as GK Chesterton put it, “Better a BAD government of your OWN than a GOOD government of SOMEONE ELSE’S.” If the Irish had wanted to accept English customs and business practices, they would have done that 300 or 400 years ago. But what they WANTED was, well, IRELAND. But more importantly, I read somewhere a couple years back that the government of Nigeria, and the coastal tribes who run the country, have concluded that 85% ?!! of the population of Nigeria is “excess to current needs”. That is, the bumbling farmers who live upcountry simply suck money out of the oil and mining businesses on the coast and provide NOTHING in return, except occasional butchery of Christians by the majority Moslems. The only real solution is for the coastal folks to give the up-country guys their “freedom.” But even a North Nigerian isn’t stupid enough to accept THAT. • Replies: , 23. HBD by it self is harmless. When utilized by politicians to gain votes, it became a poison that could kill this country. My 2C. • Replies: , , 24. TGGP says: • Website I thought your argument got off to a very wrong start by rather off-handedly asserting that the alternative to racial essentialism “cannot be” and then proceeding to ding any alternative theory for failing to be essentialist. That’s what the phrase “begging the question” originally referred to, but you seem to think your proof-by-assertion overrides that. All that aside, I’d like to ask you a question about one of your other assertions: what is your evidence that the people of Africa have less capacity for civilization than the native inhabitants of Australia or New Guinea? Remember that those people are as distantly related to Africans as anyone else on earth. And don’t ask me to prove some alternative theory, I can point out shortcomings in your argument (which is hardly the default theory of anyone but you) without that. 25. anon[378] • Disclaimer says: Previously on Unz.com, ID called HBD a “daffy banality”, yet now he’s erected a tower of word salad around it. How curious, perhaps he could explain this change of opinion sometime? • Replies: 26. Yeah, it’s hard to take somebody seriously when they’re wearing a bow tie, a mortarboard, AND a monocle. The problem is, Late Henry James is a dead language, just like Etruscan and Middle Akkadian. But if you’re going to try and speak Jamesian, at least speak it correctly. You can’t say things like “from whence” or “in the second place, however…” If you can’t express your point clearly, then odds are you haven’t thought it through clearly. Writing this bad insults and offends its audience. For all I know, Professor Dasein might be making some very interesting points. But I’ll never know, because I couldn’t stop giggling, and you can’t engage someone in seriousness if they’re talking in a Charles Nelson Reilly accent. • LOL: Twinkie • Replies: , , 27. Let it be known, I am writing from what I intend to be, and what I believe to be, a Traditional Catholic perspective. In the nonce, that means that I take Apostolic Christianity (i.e. the Gospel of Christ in its Traditional acceptation) to be the arbiter of all truth My stomach for continuing caved in after this. There was much eloquent – at times meandering, rhetoric at the beginning that whetted the appetite, even aroused curiosity as to what might follow. And when the framework finally emerged, it was time to reach for the nearest bottle of beer. Nothing personal, not against a writer so articulate, so erudite, just my own distaste for religion – any religion, as a basis for discussing matters that even science has not been able to grasp fully and one fraught with political correctness, subjectivity and above all, for its complexity. To throw religion into the mix, well, what can one say? I do however like the commandment of loving thy neighbor. If followed by Bible , Koran or Talmud thumpers, skeptics and heretics alike, it would have saved many millions of lives throughout human history. But religions themselves have been known to regard HBD (especially it’s religious version) with suspicion and hostility the results of which require no repeating here. • Replies: , 28. This article is essentially a simulation of what it would be like to listen to Vox Day have a stroke for 30 minutes. • LOL: Uomiem 29. zard says: America: A Land Without Truth “….a nation with a collective, room-temp IQ” “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public” ~ H.L. Mencken The Whole Truth — George Washington, The Revolution is Not Over Because the Truth Hurts It’s Not About “Left” or “Right”, “Liberal” or “Conservative,” It’s About Divide and Conquer because that has been their long-time modus operandi to steal the fullness of life of citizens of all nations. To Get America Back It’s About All People Coming together to Throw Off Zionism and to Re-install American Independence, Life and Liberty to End the Dark Zionist Tyranny on Her and Upon the Earth. http://www.chuckmaultsby.net/index.html http://citizensamericaparty.org/ The Jewish Conspiracy Behind The 1965 Open Immigration Law! http://www.chuckmaultsby.net/id20.html Click on this text to watch “The Psychopathic Takeover” that will help explain America’s horrid predicament. https://www.winterwatch.net/2014/07/the-psychopathic-takeover-a-russ-winter-tnn-original-video/ Wall Street uses the corona virus as a cover for the brewing real estate bubble—worse than in 2008 http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=1431 30. Can someone summarise so I don’t have to read 22,000 words of pointless rambling (I’m judging by the first two paragraphs)? 31. Dumbo says: A very thought-provoking essay (particularly the parts about Darwinism and DNA, less so the ones about “race” and the “curse of Ham”), which however due to my limited ability of abstract thought and my not so higher than average intelligence and culture I am unable to fully grasp. (Is intelligence part of our “essence” or is it affected by some kind of “nurture”?). Also I haven’t read much Achinas or Aristotle. Also, I don’t think blacks are that different from whites in a fundamental level; their differences are really one of degree. Blacks tend to be more violent, more impulsive, less inhibited, etc, which indeed does make them act in ways that make them less capable to form a “civilization” (but what is “civilization” if not a varnish?), but we can recognize the same impulses in all races, even if in Whites they appear in attenuated (or rather, mutated) form. I don’t think it’s attenuated, actually: Whites are every bit as capable of violence as Blacks, only they tend to act it in a more machiavellic, less impulsive form, but perhaps even more cruel, because it involves more thought. • Replies: 32. Thank you for referencing William Strunk’s concise and pithy, ‘Elements of Style’. It was required reading when I attended journalism school some decades ago. The author of this interesting but pretentiously-written essay would do well to read this enduring instruction manual on how to write clearly and communicate effectively. The prose above (by Intelligent Dasein) is so dense and overblown that I’ve given up reading it (at least for now). • Agree: fatmanscoop 33. thordaddy says: HBD was a fake “racist” movement amongst “nerds” to draw “normies” out into broad daylight for PROFILING by way of “science.” HBD = Having Been Duped 34. Intelligent Daesin, I am not a Darwinist and have no problem with the part of your article I read, but I think your point would be better served by cutting all non essential words and overlong sentences. Every bit of fat dilutes your meaning, and the “big words” strike a pretentious tone. There’s no need to get fancy. Moreover, your writing style might come off as argumentum verbosium to some readers. I wouldn’t doubt that you could have said what you wanted to say by pruning this by about 90%. I don’t think most people who start reading this will finish it. A helpful guide I use now and then is the Gunning Fog Index calculator at the link below. Your first paragraph is an 18.97. That does your intended meaning no favors. For a serious article like this it should be no higher than 14. • Replies: 35. In terms of God and creationism etc, another major view is that of the reincarnationist, Hinduistic type traditions In which the huge collective unfair agony-and-ecstasy mess of the world, is an emanation of all our collective consciousnesses exercising their freedom The flaws and evils being part of the package, which then must be overcome until we are all healed and re-united with the heavenly untroubled divinity from which we sprang But also want to say here Cheesus K Reist, what a difficult to read essay above It needed a damn editor really badly, although perhaps no editor would have thought the task doable … quite surprising AE sponsored this, since AE is so pithy, readable and on-point • Replies: 36. Dumbo says: I did find the writing pretty clear, despite occasional typos and the somewhat pompous language which is typical of Mr. Dasein (the style is the man?) which made me skip some parts. Anyway, whatever the text is, it is not Derrida or academese or obfuscation, its points are usually clear even to lay minds such as mine, and even if one might not agree with them. I think HBD is fundamentally wrong and silly, even if perhaps not for the same reasons as this essays says. It really is meaningless, it is circular reasoning, like most ideas based on the concept of “survival of the fittest” and other simplified Darwinisms. Are races in humans like breeds in dogs? Are blacks pit-bulls and whites border collies? Hmm, maybe, but more in the sense that both are different limitations (reductions) in different directions of a same ideal form, to which we can’t arrive. Blacks will never be whites, just as you can’t breed tiny chihuahas back into pit-bulls, but both are part of the same degenerated human form. (Mutations or breedings are usually limitation of form, not creation of new forms). • Replies: 37. An erudite grievance studies graduate paper is a derivative product precisely in the same vein as a Schubert sonata… I know this is not germane to the point your article, but how is a Schubert sonata derivative? • Replies: 38. Anonymous[189] • Disclaimer says: each paragraph in this bloated monologue could be replaced by a sentence True, unfortunately. This is an interesting subject, and I’m not averse to reading long articles, but the author’s inability to convey information in a more concise manner is almost breathtaking. This is one of the worst cases of long-windedness I’ve seen, ever. • Replies: 39. Menes says: Haiti is an IRRETRIEVABLE pesthole, whilst the Dominican Republic is pretty much yer typical Latin American country. The difference is that Haiti is full of, well, HAITIANS. But the national IQ of Haiti (88.6) is higher than the national IQ of the Dominican Republic (82.1) and every typical Latin American country from Mexico to Argentina to Chile to Brazil. And higher than 6 European countries as well. Haiti’s IQ is more than 25 points higher than such typical Latin American nations as Guatemala (61.3) and Honduras (62.2). • Replies: , 40. Twinkie says: quite surprising AE sponsored this, since AE is so pithy, readable and on-point My thought exactly. There is a very tiny fraction of human beings who can write cogently in the framework of metaphysics or philosophy in general. Unfortunately for both Intelligent Dasein and us, he isn’t in that fraction. • Replies: 41. I didn’t say that, and I don’t even know what it means. My guess is you just clicked the wrong reply button by accident. • Replies: 42. Dumbo says: But AE doesn’t write about metaphysics or philosophy, only very pithy and sometimes not very insightful general comments about statistics. There is something about philosophy that requires a more complex language. Of course, in many cases this propensity also leads to obfuscation, and to people who use language to hide their ignorance, or impress others, more than to convey ideas. Schopenhauer (one of the few philosophers who wrote generally in a more accessible language) wrote about that on his essay”On Writing”. 43. Menes says: Quoting the not-so-Intelligent Dasein: This seems to indicate that black people are under some type of curse, the “curse of Ham” as it was classically known, as a punishment long ago stamped upon them. So mean-spirited, so ignorant. Please show us where in the Bible it says the “curse of Ham” has anything to do with black skin. Go on I dare you. Try look at the Canaanites who were neither African nor black for the recipients of that curse. This curse of Ham canard was used by the Confederacy to justify it’s slave-based economy, and before that by the Russians to justify their serf-based economy. Note that the serfs/slaves of Russia and other parts of Europe were lily white, not even swarthy much less black. If slavery is a curse Europeans have been cursed more than Africans. 44. Lu Taiwan says: • Website Before any black brothers get hurt by this insensitive “black curse“, let it be known that according to Moses’ most correct Ancient History record (Genesis based on at least Hebrew, Sumerian & Egyptian ‘Toledoth Colophon’ sources), it wasn’t (guttural ‘h’) Cham who was cursed by Noah. Cham was punished by Noah who pronounced a curse over his son Kanaan, who was not ‘black’, as recent DNA research showed his Levantine descendants in Lebanon are over 90 % the same as the original skeletons of their Post-Flood inhabitants there. Subsequent history showed many Canaanite sub-tribes were destroyed or subdued into slavery, and not even all of them. Actually the Canaanites-turned-Phoenicians (now Lebanese) were commercially highly successful and their colonists mingled with many other tribes all over the Mediterranean & Atlantic. and so many of you may be descendants of the North African Carthagens, the Spanish Sidonians (named after Sidon one of their eponymous patriarchs possibly Po-S(e)idon himself), of many Venetians (Phoenicians?), Marseilleans, Portuguese, and other tribes up the Atlantic coast in Ireland, Brittan (Welsh), Greeks, Sicilians, and many others, even eponymous ‘Kaninafates’ of North Holland mentioned by Roman historian Tacitus, ALL carried Canaanite DNA. St. Augustine was one blessed descendant of “cursed” Kanaan, and so are we Chinese descendants from Kanaan’s son Sin. May it be known to our dear black brothers – who like the Southern Indians are mostly descended from Cham’s non-cursed son Cush – that they are not under some spurious “Hamite Curse” any more than their fairer skinned original Mizraimite Coptic Egyptians or Naptuhimites (Neptune) nor any other descendants from the 5 sons of Cham. The most Southern children of Cush and Phut (Puntians) most likely turned brown , red, & divers shades of black from the unforgiving Ethiopian solar heat right after the Flood on their sensitive Pre-Flood genes, when the human (as all other creatures & plants) genome was dramatically subjected to a new set of insulting conditions & circumstances, as WE all are now too by the genetic destruction of 5G! To drive my anti ‘racial determinism’ sword through to the hilt, Jesus Himself – in spite of Noah’s unfortunate curse – had a Canaanite disciple called Simon the Canaanite, and also spoke highly of a Greek Syrophenician by nation woman who besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. She humbly identified herself as the “dog” Jesus used as a metaphor elevating His primary service to His Children – not the Judeans!!! – the lost sheep of the House of Israel; he said to her, “For this saying go your way; the devil is gone out of your daughter”. Why, Jesus did not just speak of mere Canaanite “dogs” but of ALL of us un-regenerated Gentile AND Judaean “dogs”, all mere sinful fallen creatures of God who need to be re-conceived spiritually from God by the reception of His Spiritual Seed of David – Jesus – as newborn Children of God! I would say that this verbose intellectualist may be in more dire need of such regeneration himself, as he clearly does not manifest the loving imprimatur of a Spiritual son of God in his erroneous unspoken conclusion and entitled presumption that he himself might not be under our shared true Adamite curse as a deeply depraved fallen creature? ALL of us are actually under that very same divinely pronounced curse by God Himself on Adam and all of his children, whether they be red, black, white or yellow! For that very reason we are all so divisive, accusatory, derogatory, egotistical, wicked, conspiring, satanically inspired, spiritually proud of our verbose intellectual “academic” prowess, yet so terribly wrong in our un-scriptural theology and incorrect exegesis. Knowledge, proud intellectuality {not sex!) was our common temptation & undoing of our human race as Adam partook of the deadly fruit of that damned Tree of the Knowledge of Good & EVIL. And we are still proudly participating in this his sin of disobedience which leads us away from the loving simplicity which is in Christ Jesus who saves and would like us to turn from our pernicious path back into a new Garden of Eden up in his New Heavenly Jerusalem, by his simple recommendation “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” One more thing! The writer deftly endeavors to dodge the dire damning derision of those that do not matter anyhow, in their discourses on the doubtful delusion of Darwinian descendency of Man, by declaring that he is definitely not “one of those dumb doofus-es” that deem Earth to date directly from the descendants of our common primo-patriarch, Noah, NueWa (China), No-ah, Noach, Nun, Nu-ah, Nu-Uh. Nur, MaNu, Noe, and all his other derived names in the over 700 documented accounts & legendary narratives from virtually every tribe, race, nation, and early civilisation, of that devastating 3000 BC Global Inundation of the entire Earth, which’ mechanics are so logically, empirically, & scientifically explained by Dr. Walt Brown’s hydro-plate theory. (SEE: http://www.creationscience.com) By this disingenuous diversion he hopes to evade the collective condemnation & pervasive populair opinion of that media induced thought control over most Western intellectual wannabes and their 3rd World intimidated sycophants of Darwinian induced deceptions that purport to know for certain and are so cocksure that “Earth is surely very very ancient indeed.” Well.. the ancients themselves and their own narrators & historians totally disagree with that delusion, boldly stating that they were the direct descendants of those 8 Flood survivors and their 10 Pre-Flood Kings, as even the Sumerian Kings List testifies. ALL of them declared a recent Creation and/or a recent Global Flood, but of course our dear contemporary “Historians” dare to also declare THEM “doofus-es that didn’t know what they were talking about, but only produced ‘mythology’”. I bet they dare to differ were they allowed to speak from the grave. Lu – Taiwan. 45. It isn’t a question of obfuscation here, it’s a question of intellectual bona fides, and perhaps even one of basic sanity. You only get to write stuff like “Let it be known, I am writing X” when you’re wearing a powdered wig and sending your declaration of war to the King of England — not in a blog post. If you can’t tell the difference between these modes, then your other opinions get called into question, too. Anybody who writes “In the nonce” to a 21st century American audience is basically waving around a wooden sword while wearing a cardboard pirate hat. His judgment is so obviously impaired that we are under no further obligation to sift carefully through what he thinks about Darwin, Aquinas or Aristotle. If you did, well you’re a brave and patient man. Maybe he’s right about something or other, but he should come back when he’s sobered up. • Disagree: V. K. Ovelund • LOL: gay troll • Replies: 46. It’s a shame the Ron Unz didn’t splash out the extra money for the Purple font. • LOL: acementhead 47. eah says: Interesting: since I discovered earlier that there is a gold star commenter on my personal IGNORE list, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised to come across an entire article written by another commenter who’s also on it. Why is there no LOL for a blog post? I’ve asked the same question before; but since I didn’t read the (entire) article (I wonder how many actually did), I can’t say whether I would use it here or not — re “pretentiously-written”, the author does seem bent on proving, more than anything else, that he has an above average vocabulary — but the piece is so long, and the writing so turgid, I doubt I will finish it. It got off to a poor start: I don’t know who’s responsible for the title, but taken literally, what is ‘contra HBD’ supposed to mean? — the author concedes that human biodiversity exists, so what is there to be ‘contra’, i.e. against? 48. Dumbo says: I don’t know. Maybe it’s a question of preference. I, personally, find Ron Unz’s posts, for instance, much more long-winded and harder to read in full. That said, there is something in the electronic media that calls for shorter and simpler texts; I think perhaps we are not meant to read (long) texts on screens, and that’s why blog posts are usually short and direct, but I don’t have anything against a more florid language, per se. Perhaps Dasein’s essay would read better in book form, or even in a medieval manuscript. 😉 • Replies: , 49. Agree. I initially thought it was satire, a play on Mr Unz’s propensity toward the verbose. 50. G. Poulin says: I.D. announced that he was going to make a scientific critique, and then immediately launched into a philosophical critique. Understandable if you regard philosophy as science, but not what most people are expecting from a science article. By the way, Unz : how much profanity is “excessive”? I accidentally read your “Leave a Reply” rules for the first time. We deplorable Profanes need to know, dammit. • Agree: Ano4, gay troll • Replies: 51. Ano4 says: Forms are of course present in the mind of God “before” existing (with ontological rather than temporal priority), but they don’t have any independent existence there. Can we really speak of “mind of God” containing “Forms”? God is ineffable. Anything we say about God is of necessity an allegory. The word God itself is an allegory. 52. Tom Verso says: I have no idea what the title of this article means. So I will pass on reading 22,600 words. • Agree: Kent Nationalist 53. gotmituns says: butchery of Christians by the majority Moslems. ——————————————————— Blacks are not Christians and never can be Christians. 54. Ano4 says: This view is wrong for reasosn that far transcend biology, among them the fact that no intelligible universe could even exist on such a theory. After reading this I understand better what is the root of your misconception. Universe is indeed reducible to Information. Space, time, causality, energy, matter are all different aspects of what we call Information. Information is quantified in bits (simple and undefined) and yet it encompasses everything. This is an example – if need be – demonstrating that complex and intelligible structures can be made of very simple stuff. Another example would be subatomic particles going all the way down to the quantum field. It becomes utterly “simple and undefined” (just like bits in Information Theory) and yet all the structures we observe correlate with some arrangement of these subatomic particles. • Agree: Pater 55. I thought I’d be the first to admit I had to skip some of this long essay to get to the point (but I’ll be back to read the rest). I’m the first, but I’ll just say that after the highfalutin language of the introduction, I was in despair of ever getting through it. That was just the intro., though, and I think some of that type of language IS required in these highly-intellectual arguments, so us about “essence” vs. “accident” and such. It got a lot better, but, even though I am on the side of Intelligent Design vs. the side of the argument that says natural selection explains everything, I don’t understand why this is so important to the point here about HBDers. Perhaps that is because I didn’t read the middle part (yet) and moved down from the beginning of Chapter 4 on “un-raised questions to Chapter 12 on plasticity and Border Collies (LUV those Border Collies). It just seemed that this essay was an argument for Intelligent Design in the middle of an argument that HBDers use the wrong language but are basically right about blacks. “The Gap”, will not be closed (I’m not talking about the store – that needs to be closed.) After all was said, are HBDer and the author ID here both not on the side of nature beating nurture in explaining racial differences? The conclusions near the end on what American society should do about race are wise, obvious, Libertarian ideas, and I agree with each and every one of them. To me, Intelligent Dasein, it seems like this essay is an argument about (in your opinion) flawed science behind HBD, but not at all about the goals of the movement. I do wonder if it is the fact that the article seems at first, to anyone who just skims, to be an article against the goals of the HBD “movement” (I WISH it were a full-out movement) that got Ron Unz to put it at the top*, along with possibly this one small bit: The American Century, along with the consequent dollar hegemony and financial repression it enabled, has allowed fraud to operate on a titanic scale, of which the racial grievance industry is just a subset. That sounds like California-dwelling Ron Unz anti-all-things-America talk, which may have gotten you top billing. I think you don’t mean it that way. The American Century was a good thing – if by the financial repression you mean the FED, and then you see the Socialist welfare state (including that racial grievance industry subset) as the problem, I couldn’t argue with that. That should have been it, but that last part reminded me about this: Regarding the Great Society welfare state experiment that has been conducted for 55 years now, do you think, ID or no ID, that Socialism is dysgenic? (The irresponsible who get free stuff from the hard-working tax-payers breed more than the responsible who understand they have not so much money to breed, after paying for all that.) . * This is not at all to say it doesn’t deserve to be up at the top. • Replies: , 56. I’ve gotten about as profane as this keyboard will allow and had no problem, Mr Poulin. Excessive must mean beyond George Carlin level. You’re good. • Replies: 57. Man, inflation has been worse than I even thought! 2¢ doesn’t get what it used to. • Replies: 58. Perhaps that is because I didn’t read the middle part (yet) and moved down from the beginning of Chapter 4 on “un-raised questions to Chapter 12 on plasticity and Border Collies (LUV those Border Collies). It just seemed that this essay was an argument for Intelligent Design in the middle of an argument that HBDers use the wrong language but are basically right about blacks. The essay is very critical of Intelligent Design for the same reason it is critical of Darwinism: Both of them take a mechanistic view of living organisms which needs to be rejected. It is predominantly an anti-Darwinist article. It uses HBD as a reason to discuss Darwinism, and Darwinism as a reason to discuss essentialism. Then it proceeds back from essentialism, up through scientific concepts again, and concludes with social recommendations. • Replies: 59. “Serious matters require serious attention, not glibness or snark or ill-informed polemics. ” Quite true, but I’m not so sure how useful a screed of this length and so laden with multi-disciplinary esoteric post-graduate studies pedantry is. Perhaps a Readers’ Digest version is in order. On the other hand, I might be less critical if I had some idea of just who was trying to be persuaded or dissuaded and the polemical subjects under consideration. And if any of that would make a difference anyway. • Replies: 60. Although I confess I did not complete the article (mild headache), so cannot critique it, it is very clear where things stand at least in the Political Debate on Diversity (Black Folk): As Hero and Leader of the DNC, Hillary Clinton put her stamp on their views long ago: The “superpredators” line comes from a 1996 speech in New Hampshire, where Clinton spoke in support of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which her husband, Bill Clinton, had signed in to law. “But we also have to have an organized effort against gangs. Just as in a previous generation we had an organized effort against the mob. We need to take these people on. They are often connected to big drug cartels, they are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called superpredators — no conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first, we have to bring them to heel.” Of course today, when speaking to Black audiences, she and other Democrats disavow these words. “I misspoke”, as Nixon also said. Joe Biden claims to have written the 1994 Crime Bill (and the Patriot Act and every important bill since entering the Senate in 1973), which doubled incarceration rates to present day levels (and he infamously demanded a 100-fold longer sentence for crack cocaine, used mostly by Blacks at the time, vs powder cocaine, used by Hunter Biden and the well-heeled). Biden’s views on race are well known from his actions (not so much from what he says). The recent massive MSM/ Obama/ DNC orchestrated move to boot Sanders out of the primary race was a tacit endorsement of the same racist policies which have been a staple of the Democrats forever, where the leaders say one thing, yet do another. Compared to the Republicans who generally rationalize their racism and are constantly attacked for it, the Democrats sprinkle sugar on their racism, deny it, but follow identical policies to the GOP (undermining the Poor, who are mostly white Deplorables but also disproportionately Black.) Despite their talk, the Democrat betrayal of constituents is much worse. As the DNC has noted in private, where else are the Blacks going to go? Blacks always vote as a monolith in Presidential elections; in the last ten Presidential Elections they have voted an average of 79.6% more for Democrats than other parties, while whites have voted 15.4% more for Republicans. As Joe Biden says “The NAACP has endorsed me in every election!” Diversity is just another skin-deep word to divide and politically manipulate. • Replies: 61. I have a great idea, let’s write an article that plays endless semantic games with heretofore well-defined terms, including especially race, HBD, etc. etc. Then Hey! Presto Chango!, we’ve supposedly proved our point, however nebulous and verbose it may be. This absurd overly-long article was written by a gamma male, and/or a typical US marinated-in-feminist-equality-fantasies female. To whomever it may be, just please go away (forever). 62. It’s not that it’s long-winded or florid that is the issue so much as it is simply bad, headache-inducing, writing. Furthermore, as the author makes clear at the beginning, he is not delivering an argument but a sermon. For example: “Terroir is understood as the sum of environmental conditions that influence the final character of a wine.” That is sufficient enough for understanding, yet the author proceeds with further explication. Every paragraph is like this. It’s completely unnecessary. 63. Congrats to the author for the opportunity to state his case here. However the prose was too airy and too lengthy as to be unreadable past a few paragraphs. When trying to present a case like this better to keep it simple than to be Shakespearean. The author makes a mistake by bringing religion into the mix. HBD is based on science, as a previous commenter noted, HBD is not a religion or philosophy. It’s using science to verify what the eye and other senses perceives. That there are differences in the races that go beyond the visual indicators skin color, hair, eyes, physical build, stature etc… Steve Sailor basis his observations on science. Although not a scientist himself, he analyzes and crunches the numbers of the works of scientists. Observation: Blacks on the whole are faster runners than whites… Sailer uses stats and studies to verify this. How many blacks win gold medles in Olympic sprinting events vs whites? Studies; Blacks have more fast twitch muscle fibers than whites, conclusion verified! Observation: whites have higher IQ than blacks…. Test scores, grades, acedemic achievement stats, how many blacks are in STEM courses / fields versus whites, how many patents do blacks hold versus whites etc… Whites are higher IQ than blacks. Observation verified! Science is verifiable, religion is not! The Catholic churches stance on blacks or whatever is not “verifiable”! It’s an opinion! Seems the author is trying to construct a philosophy by jumbling science, religion and philosophical perspectives into one “HBD philosophy”. It’s just muddying the waters. • Agree: acementhead 64. anon[379] • Disclaimer says: Who told this guy to write like this? Does Ron Unz want us to watch him jerk off too? 65. Twinkie says: esoteric post-graduate studies pedantry When I was in grad school, I knew grad students in philosophy who spoke and wrote like this. Very very few of them were brilliant enough get jobs in their chosen field after getting their Ph.D.’s. The rest, if they didn’t go to law school or get teaching certificates, ended up with entry-level service or near-menial jobs. They were heavily infected with ignored genius fantasies and resentments. • Agree: Exile • Thanks: MEH 0910 • Replies: 66. SIMP simp says: I was willing to give this a try but the pretentious writing style makes it unreadable and the content is not worth the pain. AE why did you published this crap? 67. Slimer says: The belief that blacks are incapable of inflicting the kind of cruel, systematic violence that whites are known for, and take such pride in, presupposes that they’re generally interested in exacting pain on others, rather than, say, maintaining a monopoly on victimhood, e.g., by behaving in ways that position them to claim a moral high ground. Look at Mauritania, for example, a country ruled largely by a racist regime of Arabs, whose repeated attempts at expelling the black majority have mostly been met with non-violence and an attitude of reconciliation. The blacks in that country could easily kill the Arabs, considering that latter group is not particularly good in combat, as we’ve seen with the Toyota war, and the video of the black police officer in Saudi Arabia wasting three machine gun wielding Arabs with nothing more than a pistol. Point is, black Mauritanians are interested in more than “getting even,” not unlike blacks in aparthied South Africa. The governments of Kenya and Zimbabwe once made it a priority to protect the white minorities in their countries from anti-colonial forces. Had the governments lost control, you can rest assured it would’ve lead to civil war before any semblance of a white genocide. That’s because having a moral leg to stand on is really that important to blacks, hard as it is for white folks to understand. So yeah, if y’all want to keep bragging about we wuz organized n sheeeit don’t sit around wondering why it’s okay to bash whites but not okay to bash blacks. Learn to take the high road sometimes. Moving on to the author’s boring essay, two things are worth addressing: First is the assertion that the great schism between black and non-black is civilizational, when all evidence points to it being physical. Just look at the uproar over the data showing that many black African populations outperform whites in school, or the data showing that in the next few decades most African countries will have transitioned from 3rd to 2nd world status, thus giving the continent a big role in world affairs. The mere thought of this stirs up hostile emotions within non-black people, who by and large see blacks as physically unattractive and hence, less deserving of success. What is there to gain by pretending that Asians, Jews or Native Americans encounter the same degree of hostility that blacks do? Second, the author is wrong in dismissing intelligent design as a credible alternative to darwinism. Actually the evidence is pretty convincing. • Replies: 68. Vinnie O says: Who said cultural differences can be measured with IQ. Lo! these many years ago (1970 or so), when I did paper on Haiti for a college course, one of my sources pointed out that Haiti was the ONLY country in the Western Hemisphere where the literacy rate had gone DOWN in the 20th century. This is about what different cultures think is important, and rational thought is apparently not high on the Haitians’ list. • Replies: 69. Bravo. From years of dealing with HBDers and evolutionists, I know that they simply refuse to engage any question whose answers would call into question their beliefs. Hauteur they do well, lofty silence, name-calling, but they will not look at their contradictions or admit ignorance. The rigidity, at first frustrating, eventually becomes almost amusing and certainly psychologically intriguing. 70. Vinnie O says: Oh, I would also point out that the ENTIRE point of Mr. Kersey’s many columns and books (of which I’ve read more than a few) right here at Unz Review is the FUNDAMENTAL difference between the reasonably efficient and effective operation of a city (e.g., Detroit, St. Louis, Baltimore, etc.) with a typical run of the mill White government with a typical (they’re the same all over) BRA (Black Run America) government. The suburb of Flint, Michigan, got water with LEAD in it because the Flint city government DECLINED to pay a few pennies a gallon more to get nice clean Detroit water and instead CHOSE to get water from a cheaper source that was KNOWN to contain lead. Now what kind of CULTURAL background gets you political LEADERS like that? Hint: it ain’t European culture… 71. Twinkie says: Perhaps Dasein’s essay would read better in book form, or even in a medieval manuscript. He is not exactly Etienne Gilson, let alone Thomas Aquinas. 72. AaronB says: All the complex verbiage aside, this is an exceedingly simple point. The basic point of this essay can be summarized thus – There are Platonic Forms for each race, which the race is a physical embodiment of. Races did not acquire their traits through an accidental process of trial and error Therefore each race cannot be other than what it is. It did not develop into what it is, and cannot develop into something else. The major division between races is that between blacks and everyone else. Blacks are so far inferior – and just different – to everyone else that they may be regarded as cursed. The biblical curse of Ham. Individuals from any race may partially transcend the limitations of his Platonic Form, but never entirely, and the group can never do so. This is nothing but the “hardest of the hard” HBD, removing what little hope most HBDers have for the advancement of any race. In fact it is merely a restatement of the HBD case in religio-mystico terms – or Platonic terms – and making it harder and bleaker and more despairing. There is a reason Ron Unz put it at the front today. I was unfair to Twinkie when I did not need his warnings about this guy. • Replies: , , 73. … perhaps he could explain this change of opinion sometime? Please no! 74. The Ptolemeic astronomical system could predict observables on planets, but was exceedingly complex, and mechanically no longer matches our expanded scope of observation. Western metaphysics is advanced, but in many ways is still far behind Eastern analogues, due to whatever accidents of history and geography. That reminds me of the metaphysical tooling holding this article’s paradigm together is rickety and not so well-integrated. Race is essential because the embodiment of a man is due to karma, i.e. past-action. In the Indian metaphysical system, a crucial attribute of karma is that it is *temporary*, while a few other very important entities are eternal. The soul is eternal, time is eternal, for example, while karma is always temporary, because every moment contains new action and new suffering. If you can grok this, then no need for thousands of words. Every embodiment is essential and precise, but it’s temporary, and cannot be any basis for exclusion from opportunities for creative growth, autopoetic evolution, etc. This much is pretty simple. Love my Aristotle much as anyone, but you need to step outside a system to understand its true virtues, and for the basics the Indians (& the whole Himalayan vector out to Japan and back) have not been surpassed even by recent contributions from “pure metaphysician”s like Deleuze. Read the Bardo Thodol, no need to believe it, just understand what it means for the precision and essence of embodiment. There are no accidents in it, it’s very precise. Race is every individual is a race by infinitesimal degree. 75. Hi stalker. How are you doing? How is your progress advancing Zionist ideals? 🤣 • Replies: 76. Thanks, I.D. I’ll get to the middle part soon enough. • LOL: Bardon Kaldian 77. anonymous[426] • Disclaimer says: Allow me to save anyone else the time – that whole thing can be completely expressed with the following one sentence: A religiously motivated philosophical dualist does not believe that a solely materialst explanation for an observed phenomenon can be complete. That did not require 20,000 words. It required 20. It is also a point that is completely obvious. • Agree: dc.sunsets 78. Pheasant says: I have not yet read the whole piece but the introduction is pompous, condescending, needlessly verbose, tryhard in the extreme and self absorbed. In other words to borrow Vox day’s terminology pure gamma male. I have the awful feeling that the article will include loads of straw manning and be contray just for the sake of it. I hope I am proven wrong but I doubt it. • Disagree: V. K. Ovelund • Replies: , 79. ariel says: el ensayo es demasiado largo y vago , como para tomarlo en serio, tipico de un graduado en letras, si la oposicion al determinismo biologico fuera hecha de maneras mas concreta y por alguien formado en un campo relevante podria ser una buena lectura. 80. Pheasant says: On second thought I just couldn’t read it its just pure over written tryhard gobbledygook. Using big words does not make you smart and if you want to communicate effectivly it is clarity and judicious use of language that you need not spewing out words to make yourself look smart. • Agree: Kent Nationalist 81. Pheasant says: Agree lord god almighty agree! What a terribly written essay! • Replies: 82. ic1000 says: I.D., Scott Alexander blogs about the useful concept of steelmanning — “rebuilding a stupid position into the nearest intelligent position and then seeing what you can learn from it.” You don’t like or respect HBD ideology. Cool. But I don’t know exactly what that is, because you don’t supply a citation or a link. More exactly, you haven’t related your steelman version of HBD, and proceeded from there to show how your vision is superior. This link could get you started: The Race FAQ, by Steve Sailer. As far as underlying biological facts: prior to about 25 years ago, geneticists knew a great deal about variations in human DNA, but the Big Picture was inferred. They lacked easy-to-understand show ‘n tell pictures that would communicate that vision to lay audiences. That changed with the advent of affordable SNP chips, along with software to interpret the information they can gather. Here is a 2013 Principal Components Analysis that shows how the continental-scale races differ from (and are similar to) each other. [Edit: Link, if the picture doesn’t publish.] Here is a finer-scale view of the relatedness of populations within Europe, from the Wikipedia article “The Genetic History of Europe.” Google images will serve up hundreds of analogous figures from the peer-reviewed literature. As I understand it, the challenge you face is to rebut HBD (however you see it) without engaging in flat-earth denial of these proofs that the genetic structure of human populations is real. • Agree: Ano4 • Thanks: lavoisier 83. AaronB says: Actually, what he is trying to do is establish Hindu style castes that are rooted in the metaphysical. He is using the same arguments Hindus used. Its just a philosophical version of blacks descend from the feet of Vishnu and whites from the head. The blacks are the chandalas – the one group so low as to be cut off from the other castes, who while different in rank, are still all “touchables”. Religious and metaphysical racism to replace biological racism, because the latter allows room for maneuver. If your race is written into the fabric of the universe then you accept your predetermined caste and there is no question of justice. You are a chandala that’s what you are, you are a Brahmin that’s who you are. But we live in a scientific age not a religious age, so the idea of caste has been given biological language. ID perhaps intuits that we are moving back towards a religious age, so he is attempting to recreate biological racism in an emerging religious idiom. To salvage it. And since no classical Western religion believes in caste, he is attempting to lay the foundation for in religious language. Fascinating and tragic in its own way. 84. dfordoom says: • Website I have not yet read the whole piece I’m waiting for the movie version. 85. Neuday says: HBD by it self is harmless. When utilized by politicians to gain votes, it became a poison that could kill this country. What politician has publicly mentioned HBD? Every single one seems to deny its existence. Such denials of reality have already killed the country. We’re just coasting on the fumes of what previous generations of Americans built, building a bonfire of social capital. • Replies: 86. Hacienda says: What a terribly written essay! That’s too generous. It’s stupidly thought out (Sec 5 ends all doubt that this poster is not serious). A man who lives in haunted houses and believes he’s lost his racial inheritance of grand manors and palaces will write crap ike this. • Disagree: Cloudbuster 87. anon has it right. Intelligent Dasein needs some writing lessons or at the very least an extraordinarily patient and ruthless editor. The major problem with this screed is an extreme case of logorrhea, The ratio of coherent ideas to wordage is shockingly low. This suggests a bloated and wholly unjustified case of egoistic self-satisfaction in the writer. • Replies: 88. dfordoom says: • Website -Stop forced association: It is certainly wrong to mandate of a private individual that he may not exclude from his presence those whose company he does not want, or to tell a private business whom they must employ or serve rather than leaving it to the proprietor’s discretion. OK, can you clarify this point? Are you saying it’s OK for an employer to refuse to employ a person because he’s a Christian? Or to refuse service to someone because that person voted for Trump? Or even to refuse to employ someone because the employer considers that person’s views on global warming or race to be offensive? Is it OK to refuse to serve someone because that someone declares that there are only two sexes, male and female? Or because that someone disagrees with homosexual marriage? Or because that person is a traditionalist Catholic? Not long ago a rugby player in Australia had his career destroyed because he based his views on homosexuality on the Bible. Is that OK as well? Because if you leave these things to the proprietor’s discretion these are the things you can expect to happen. I think you’re ignoring the ways in which power relations have shifted. And I think you’re underestimating the ruthlessness of those who would use the ending of forced association to enforce political correctness. The people most likely to be excluded are white heterosexual male Christians. It appears to me that you’re assuming that such a change would benefit your side when in fact it would mostly benefit those who would like to destroy you. • Replies: , 89. Thoughtful and interesting, Intelligent Dasein, and worth some long pondering rather than any quick quip or critique. Thanks. • Agree: V. Hickel • Thanks: Intelligent Dasein 90. It would appear that some here are heroically manning the ramparts of breviloquence when they are actually manifesting their envy of ID’s grandiloquence. The criticisms levied against ID’s prose are generalized, undifferentiated asseverations that he is prolix. In my view, those who level charges that a writer’s work suffers from verbosity, without furnishing specific examples of such verbosity and offering a more succinct exemplar of how the idea could have been conveyed, demonstrate their own intellectual flabbiness. If one lacks reading comprehension stamina, one should not whine about an essayist’s comprehensive treatment of a subject. • Agree: Cloudbuster • Thanks: Intelligent Dasein • Replies: 91. EAweblog says: • Website Friend, I could not possibly read “All That Shit” by “You” even if I wanted to. I did a CTRL+F for “continent”, “variation”, and “cluster” (as in genetic cluster) to see if you and I were even remotely on the same page as to what the definition of “race” is. There is no indication that we are on the same page. I don’t care what your “metaphysical” “ontological” “hylomorphic” definition of race is. This whole page is incoherent babble to me. 92. Anonymous[110] • Disclaimer says: Isn’t it the Jewish position that Black Africans are halfway between monkeys and humans? This is what Isreal Shahak states in his book Jewish History. Jewish Religion. Is this incorrect? The use of moral preening as weapon is immoral and evil, Aaron. It’s getting old. • Replies: 93. dfordoom says: • Website -Stop redistribution: The welfare state is dangerous in its current form. It needs to be liquidated, and not just the portions thereof that we find personally upsetting. Social Security and Medicare as well as housing and food aid need to be wound down. The welfare state was introduced because not having a welfare state was dangerous. The idea was to reduce the risk of social unrest and to reduce the appeal of ideologies like communism and fascism. To scrap the welfare state would be an extreme act of folly. It would be a good idea only if you like the idea of seeing your cities in flames. Their existence necessitates a gigantic government bureaucracy which exists solely to take money and redistribute it, and will find ever more justifications for doing so as long as it exists. Simplifying the system to reduce the need for such a large bureaucracy might have some merit. But to do that you’d have to move to something like a UBI. 94. He agrees that race is real but does not consider it essential. This is not contrary to most proponents of HBD. He also States that proponents of HBD offer no viable political solutions , which is false. Some proponents of HBD believe we need affirmative action for Blacks , such as Steve Sailer , who often advocates for special black privileges, such as granting blacks a monopoly for selling marijuana. Others use HBD to justify ending affirmative action. This is certainly a viable political solution , and our politicians have made discrimination based on race against the law (although the law is rarely upheld today). HBD is also used to explain outcomes without falling back on the racism fallacy as the reason Blacks are less likely to graduate college and more likely to end up in prison. Those who ignore HBD often resort to blaming whites for the failures of Blacks, which has negative consequences for society, because not only does the racism explanation not address the root cause of the differences between the races , it offers no real solution. Even if Racism is eliminated it will not have much effect on the test scores of Blacks. Blaming “racism” or red-lining for the disparate outcomes we observe has resulted in worse pathologies for American Blacks. HBD helps to explain the different outcomes without directing any blame on Blacks or Whites. 95. res says: Steve comments on that here: https://www.unz.com/isteve/is-science-racist/ In 1995 leftist anthropologist Jonathan Marks coined the term “human biodiversity” in his book of that name. I came up with the phrase independently but second in history, as I immediately discovered by entering the phrase into the early Alta Vista search engine. In the later 1990s, Dr. Marks and I agreed to propose to magazines that we debate whether race exists for the edification of their readers. But, it turned out, editors were not as enthusiastic about the idea as he and I were. 96. res says: A helpful guide I use now and then is the Gunning Fog Index calculator at the link below. Your first paragraph is an 18.97. That does your intended meaning no favors. For a serious article like this it should be no higher than 14. That’s nothing. The second paragraph clocks in at 24.51. From the wiki the fog index for college graduate reading level is 17 (each integer below that is a year less of education, so 6 is sixth grade). Anyone have the patience to run all of the paragraphs through the calculator? P.S. Actually that interpretation as years of education provides a humorous take. The prose style is kind of appropriate for the eternal graduate student. • LOL: Dieter Kief • Replies: 97. Everybody loves sex. Also everybody loves to have power and fame. These two factors are common for all races. But other factors of enjoyment are very different and never changing for all races. Maybe those are worth to analyze, because those are the ones that influence cohesion or conflict in societies. 98. Exile says: “Only the hylomorphic dualism of Aristotle, St. Thomas, and the Schoolmen is able to grasp with certainty the realities of matter and form.” …by imposing the pseudo-logic/rhetoric of theological Scholasticism on scientific terms and assigning facile theosophic definitions to “plastic” concepts like “matter” and “form.” Dasein is one way of looking at the world, science is another. As this meandering exercise shows, the two perspectives do not often meaningfully inform one another. Heidegger has little to say to Heisenberg and vice-versa. Dasein as Heidegger conceived it (and as later bowdlerized and repurposed by Dugin) has nothing to say to science or about science except “no – go away!” (which is essentially what this “refutation” of HBD amounts to). This much is clear, although little else about Heidegger is – and if you are not a native German-speaker, you will inevitably lose much in the mere translation. Honest Heidegger scholars will readily admit both. This guest-post is an exercise in meta-metaphysics and semantics, not a scientific critique. There are worthy observations to be gleaned from both dasein and science but juxtaposing them, much less putting them at odds, simply presents the reader with the false-binary of “mysticism or science – choose.” • Replies: , 99. The article cannot be expected to argue every point from first premises. The article presupposes that its reader (a) is willing to take Aristotelian metaphysics seriously, (b) is able to take Aristotelian metaphysics seriously, and (c) has not been gruesomely misled by the sort of introductory college course that dismisses Aristotelian metaphysics by misrepresenting Aristotelian metaphysics. Dismissing Aristotelian metaphysics is a mistake. Misrepresenting it is just wrong, but such misrepresentation is also common. As far as I know, no rudimentary introduction at less than the length of a short book is possible but, for a fair defense of Aristotelian metaphysics, one can nevertheless read Edward Feser’s excellent, engaging The Last Superstition, which is no longer than it needs to be and never bores its reader along the way. (If you are not yet ready to order the book, then you can alternately try Feser’s blog first, though that blog will be better appreciated by readers already acquainted with one or more of Feser’s books.) On the other hand, if one is unprepared to give Aristotelian metaphysics a fair hearing, that’s all right, but then @Intelligent Dasein’s article probably cannot help. I appreciate the article. • Thanks: Intelligent Dasein • Replies: 100. res says: But the national IQ of Haiti (88.6) is higher than the national IQ of the Dominican Republic (82.1) and every typical Latin American country from Mexico to Argentina to Chile to Brazil. And higher than 6 European countries as well. Haiti’s IQ is more than 25 points higher than such typical Latin American nations as Guatemala (61.3) and Honduras (62.2). You might want to take a closer look at the table there. Here are the relevant lines. Country | NIQ | QNW | SAS | L&V02 | L&V12 Dominican Republic | 82.1 | 89.2 | 75.0 | 84.0 | 82.0 Haiti | 88.6 | 88.6 | (no SAS) | 72.0 | 67.0 From the text: NIQ – national IQ, in this case, the average of QNW and SAS (see below); the national IQ of countries without data are estimated as the mean of their neighboring countries (this is a valid method, e.g. see Gelade 2008). This is probably the single best estimate we have. According to Becker: “QNW+SAS is the best, since it combines weighted estimates of psychometric intelligence measurement with results from international school assessment studies. Therefore, it is a kind of self-validation within this variable.“ So the NIQ estimates you give are an average of QNW and SAS. The DR has an oddly low SAS measurement (compared to the other IQ estimates for it), while Haiti has none at all. Meanwhile, the DR outscores Haiti on ALL of the individual measurements which are available for both (both in Karlin’s post and the original Becker data with more fields). Only on composite fields which include SAS (DR 75 and Haiti no value) does Haiti outscore the DR. Basically what you have done (intentionally or not) is looked at countries (all four you mention) with widely varying estimates for their IQ and picked the extremes which make your point. For anyone who doubts this please take a look at all of the different IQ measurements in David Becker’s spreadsheet (the source of the data in AK’s post, which provided a subset of the data). https://www.researchgate.net/project/Worlds-IQ • Thanks: bomag • Replies: 101. G. Poulin says: Thanks. I was starting to get pretty friggin’ steamed about it, but now I feel better. Ah, George Carlin. Back in high school, a teacher named Ed Curtin (who I think is now a contributor to Lew Rockwell’s site) got fired for playing Carlin’s record about the things you couldn’t say on TV. Those were the days. 102. AaronB says: It is an attempt to restate biological racism in metaphysical terms. To ‘upgrade’ racism, so to speak. Its been done before, in the Laws of Manu. Metaphysical racism is superior because it establishes Dharmic castes and thus roots racial inferiority in an order that is not only permanent but just. Biology only establishes accidental inferiority – which can be seen as requiring social efforts to alleviate as there is no justice in an accident. Biological racism appeals to the amoral mindset. Metaphysical racism adds a dimension of morality, as well as order and design. Your inferiority is not an accident in a random world, but a necessary piece of an ordered whole, and your position is an expression of justice. A society that organizes itself this way can indeed achieve social stability, but cannot dispense with the institution of the Chandala – the untouchable which is the logical corollary of the Brahmin, and who eventually must be made to ritually humiliate himself. In this system its going to be the blacks. (It was in ancient India too). Such societies have also always needed escape valves from the granite social rigidity and petrifying immobility – and that was the institution of the Sanyasin, who breaks all the social bonds and wanders the forests and mountains in a religious quest. Because extreme social rigidity breeds its opposite, the need for freedom. • Replies: 103. The author here has a serious case of furor scribendi. One upside is that it teaches informed skipping through expository prose. Lots of pretentious culturemongering: Aristotle’s hylomorphism indeed. If the term means anything, it means that Aristotle believed that stuff existed in the sublunary world in various shapes. And yes Aristotle did not not buy Plato’s idealism, the notion that there existed transcendental entities above or beyond the phenomenal world. Which notion was co-opted by the Christians. To say that one writes from the perspective of a faithful Roman Catholic is a kind of provocation. Why should we care? Not that human biodiversity is not to dress up a commonsensical insight with pretentious language. Inside the talented one tenth of American blacks (the phrase is from the Negro intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois) is the soul or mind of a man. His skin may be coal black, but his mind has an inherited commonality with the minds of Caucasians. His soul and mind needs to be nourished by education and that is an externality. There is much potential usefulness in the other 9/10’s of American blacks. 104. ‘Ce que l’on concoit bien s’enonce clairement” Nicolas BOILEAU (1636-1711), foremost stylist. Literally: What is well conceived is enuciated clearly. What is thought clearly is spoken, and written, clearly. Conversely confused writing denotes confused thought. Where are Mark Twain, Gore Vidal, Voltaire, to tear this glorious imbecile to pieces? The advocates of obfuscation (quite a few in the comments) resort to calling you stoopid for not being willing to suffer this insulting foolishness. The writer is a pretentious, pompous and pedantic fool. No, he is just ridiculous. What else to expect from someone who chooses to refer to himself as ‘intellectual’ and ‘dasein’. Dasein! I don’t care about the pun. People introducing themselves with: ‘I am an honest person’ should always be run away from as fast as possible. This must be Ron Unz mischevious way of allowing this grandiosely deluded maniac self-destruct publicly, exposing a magnificent case of morbid intellectual FLATULENCE. Punishment: ONE year of tweets only. 105. gay troll says: Apologies to the author, because I could only slog through half of that opus, which is so embellished with arcane adjectives and adverbs, that Faulkner is rolling in his grave. A thesis that cannot be articulated within 10,000 words is poor indeed, or else well hidden. It seems the point of this essay is for the author to argue that he is neither a racist nor creationist, although he is clearly both. Moreover he is a sophist who claims great powers of insight despite his admitted assumption that the Gospels are historical. They are simply not, neither the life of Jesus, his apostles, nor Paul being attested to by any historian of the age, except in the anonymous fan fiction pamphlets culled by the popes. Philosophy does not in an way define reality; reality defines philosophy and in each age anew. My dog understands reality primarily through its nose, am I the lesser for lacking his conception of being? Or am I lesser that I lack the vision of the eagle? If a black man has different abilities or a different appearance than mine does it also make one of us the “other”? What does the author know about physiognomy if he does not know that there are beautiful and ugly people in all races, or that our face is ultimately what we make it? He is right that the cell is the unit of life, but dismisses Darwin in favor of Plato as a biological thesis? Why must matter and mechanism not also be divine? The FACT is that ALL of existence is God’s will. It does not need to be so tortuously defined. 106. Coming from a Buddhist perspective, I agree – HBD removes volitional action away from Man – being with access to reason, and places it into genes (like clever rocks imo). What affects individual volitional action, is faith – the belief system the person is subject to. Whether someone believe ‘no God’, ‘God’, ‘neither’, ‘both’, ‘whatever’, etc, and all of the modern popular movements that exist within this space. Find a black person who is a devout Christian, and they will act and behave in a way similar to a devout white Christian, a devout Asiatic Christian. Same for Muslims – white female Muslim converts accept the rulings on awrah, and dress themselves accordingly. They don’t even shake the hands of males, because that is what their faith teaches them. HBD is within the realm of the faith of nihilism/absurdism, that the fall to materialism entails. This is where modern Western society finds itself in. The scientific method, for all its good, has made the world look deterministic in nature again. We had a determinism brought on by something indescribable before (God), now we have a determinism that is brought on by something describable. A materialist engages in whatever behaviour that their body/mind pulls them towards. Sex, money, drugs, sport – you name it, it is all dependent on craving, and the craving of a white person is no lower than the craving of a black person. We all have unlimited wants without the quenching influence of a faith that has religion – that which tames the individual (I used to say improves the individual, but I will now use the term the Buddha used!). Destiny exists nowhere as an arrangement of physical facts but only as the constant, immaterial, ineffable yearning of the soul towards its definite form. Yes, but the ignorant one searches for the ineffable through the material. At its limit, this is where the essentialism of God becomes a problem, because in the end God is an objectification, rationalisation, of all – the final materialism, however it be removed from reasoned debate through the impenetrable cover of the metaphysical realm. ‘1’, or ‘0’, if it is beyond experience, it is beyond understanding. This brings in absurdism, and individuals fall away from the religious element because they can’t justify the philosophical one. There is one nature, one destiny, one soul that comes to expression in the organism. Look at Ashoka – he was a murderer for the first half of his life, he saw a killing field during the Kalinga war, which he himself instigated he himself instigated, and he changed his belief system, becoming as close to a philosopher king, or a wheel turning monarch, as we have seen in history. Is that one nature? Then it is almost as if 1=2. Race is a starting position, IQ is a starting position, human differences are a starting position, but it is up to the individual, their volitional action to act for the benefit of themselves and others, or against. The problem with the world of the educated today – more in the west, less in the parts of the world where the scientific method has yet to pervade, is that the scientific method lifts the veil of metaphysics from the individual. However almost all faiths – even most of Buddhism, and most of ‘Science’, for all the value that their religious element brings, maintain unjustifiable metaphysical speculations – eristic distractions from the hard work of the taming of the human, living condition. It is easy to rebel against a difficult path like religion for the individual, by simply saying ‘look – they build their training on the quicksand of metaphysical speculation’. My brother does this, my uncle does this, even my father – as intelligent a person as I have ever met, does this to a large extent. And then of course there is the flip-side – the speculative element of faiths with metaphysics leaves a much easier path for the believer. Propound the metaphysics, don’t tame yourself, don’t improve your action. This is my mother. Although this side is better off I must say, she still works on her self, as does her circle of friends, even if 50% of the time she is lost in some unverifiable discussion on essence, or soul, or whatever is unknowable (as Plato’s Parmenides dialogue shows logically). The philosophical underpinning of the scientific method is Dhamma, and anatta, not-self. That things do not have any intrinsic nature independent of direct observation. Three readings for evidence from the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics (relational – only for the realm of ‘things’, mind you, not ‘no thing’). https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609002 (Rovelli’s QM interpretation) https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604064 (how it deals with EPR) https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080 (https://www.newscientist.com/article/2194747-quantum-experiment-suggests-there-really-are-alternative-facts/ – a recent experiment that is hard to justify along almost any other interpretation) For the path without metaphysics, there is only physics: action-result of action. This is Newton’s third law for inanimate objects, and the law of kamma-vipaka for animate objects. There is a nice sutta where Buddha delineates action according to intention, not birth, or status. https://suttacentral.net/mn93/en/sujato Doing so, however, instantly requires a propounding of religion – some path to make the individual less harmful, more beneficial to themselves and others. HBD does not allow for this path, even though HBD seems to come more from the conservative side of debate. This is strange to me. Justice means equitability, i.e. the apportioning to everyone their due, no more and no less. This is fairness. But aren’t we all equal under God? How do you square fairness and equality? You say end the welfare state because it implies bureaucracy. It doesn’t. Progressive taxation and means tested welfare (upside down capitalism – competition towards the floor) imply bureaucracy. Flat, equal marginal taxes, and targeted UBIs for necessities, doesn’t. Ok, a little – but only a comptroller that takes a % from each individual, and then gives back a nominal \ value back to each individual.

I find the talk on socialism very essentialist. The needs of food, clothing, housing, health, defence, cost over 100% of GDP not even 100 years ago. Now they are 35%ish. With automation, they fall away to 1%- of GDP. Currently, individuals donate 1,2,3% of their earnings to charity. If a socialist provision of needs (not wants) begins to cost less than the sum of all charitable donations within a society – should we then limit charity? The appeal is not to government, but a social contract, with government as the middle man that manages it (badly in our societies).. cryptotech could even remove this middle man, and allow society to agree directly-democratically on such security from materialistic destitution.

Now if you argue that a socially agreed universal protection from destitution limits human potential, then you are directly arguing for a cold, competitive, Darwinian, natural selection. I don’t agree with that – life cooperates, as well as competes. The socialist (cooperative) and the capitalist (competitive) elements, must find balance within society. For me, this balance is found by applying socialism to needs, and capitalism to wants. Really, wants should be addressed by faith, that quenches desire, but I admit that not all of life with access to reason is at the point of wishing to give up the world of things.

107. Anon[262] • Disclaimer says: • Website

Let me begin by saying that I am no materialist. That I do not accept Darwinism (classical or neo) as a sufficient explanation for the diversification of life. That I have sympathy for Aristotelian metaphysics and Thomism in particular. And that I am a species of Christian. To appearances, a sympathetic audience for your essay. But from what I could stand to read, you have written a great mass of learned shit.

The really unforgivable aspect of your twaddle is that you clothed it in archaic rhetorical language. You have doomed your efforts to serve as no more than an example of Catholic esoteric naval gazing. No one is going to take this seriously.

On the other hand, it is good to see the fundamental questions behind HBD brought up for discussion, and it clearly was much work. So, paradoxically, I say: good job. And thank you to Mr. Epigone for agreeing to host this heterodox view.

108. Anon[425] • Disclaimer says:

Why is there no LOL for a blog post?

Maybe someone with more time and patience than me could try to do a cliff notes version of this manifesto. I can’t get through it. But looking at snippets of the post, like the one below, doesn’t make me optimistic.

Rather, when the essential form of a living creature enters existence, it “cellularizes,” i.e. it acquires a cellular structure as a consequence as of the material nature it must exist within and its concomitant need for metabolism and gas diffusion and so forth. Likewise heredity itself, which we shall talk about in more detail later, has also been quite seriously misunderstood. DNA sequences themselves are not the vehicles of heredity; they are simply flesh, simply body, simply a consequence of existence under material conditions. Life “geneticizes” in the same manner it “cellularizes,” and this means that DNA sequences, be they never so similar, must be regarded no differently than any other homologous structures, and consequently genetic similarity in no way establishes phylogenetic relationship.

109. “This view is wrong for reasons that far transcend biology, among them the fact that no intelligible universe could even exist on such a theory.”

“Intelligible” huh? Though possibly working toward our herd immunity to metaphysical discourses, today’s tome is but a mightily striven dose of mutual nebulae. (vigor A+)

Sic semper evello mortem paedogogus !

110. It just seemed that this essay was an argument for Intelligent Design in the middle of an argument that HBDers use the wrong language but are basically right about blacks.

So someone intelligently designed certain people to be less intelligent. Is that the gist of the essay?

• Replies:
111. Haha! I don’t think so, Hypno, as I hadn’t read that part yet when I wrote that comment. I’m still in the middle of it (beginning of Chapter 8) right now. Now that you’ve interrupted me, it’s gonna be a while …

;-}

112. Lu Taiwan says:

Why do you hold up my comment?

113. Lu Taiwan says:

Comment 44 is still on hold while we are at no 87.

114. This is way too long an article. It should be better published in, say, 3 parts. I’ve just glanced over it, so I can’t comment on it fairly.

Just, it seems to me the author has crammed too diverse material in it: philosophy of biology, Neo-Platonism in Christian garb & Catholic philosophy, Darwinian evolutionary biology & some of its weak points, “race realism”, old Aristotelian philosophy of nature, physiognomy & creationist arguments, …

That’s too much. It covers aspects of religion, metaphysics, sociology, political philosophy, evolutionary biology & more.

Simply two-three observations:

1. why should anyone accept the author’s position? For instance, non-Catholic Christians (let alone others)? One cannot prove a world-view. Only, some world-views may be more palatable for a modern mind, while others- not so. This all depends on one’s education, intelligence, temperament, culture, logical consistency, emotional attachment etc. For instance, Christians don’t see much sense in Jewish & Islamic insistence on shrimp, lobster & pork food taboos, while religious Muslims & Jews are ready to defend, even if it means death, their sacred duty not to eat shrimps & lobsters. The same goes for foreskin dogma.

Needless to say, for modern mind, this all (foreskin, lobsters, or most of Christian Eucharist) seems to be either bizarre or incomprehensible. Or a matter of choice.

These particular contentions may be of paramount importance to an individual or culture- yet, to most “other” people, they’re alien or outdated.

2. Darwin all the way. Only, this, originally 19th C science could be attacked from other positions, not only Western religious metaphysics rooted in ancient Greek philosophy. For instance, fundamental physics in past 100 years has mostly dismissed the world-view of 19th C heroic materialism. I am not saying that modern evolutionary biology is outdated or wrong; it simply is not as authoritative as it seemed to be in 1900. It smacks of old-fashioned materialism suffused with images of railroads & Martini-Henry rifle. As a state of mind or a metaphor for a world-view, it is hopelessly dated.

3. regards race realism- I don’t see how this can be defended from a religious position. Virtually all major religions’ drive is towards universalism. Of course, it can be said that in this world of appearances, of empirical-material world, races are real & one should not confuse the future unity of raceless beings in some supra-physical worlds (depends on one’s metaphysics) with reality of naturally compartmentalized life on the earth. What will be “up there” in eternity does not reflect on human condition “down here” in spatio-temporally circumscribed life.

Just, I don’t see that we need any wider world-view, either transcendent religious or materialist/physicalist. Or other variants of religion, including diabolic violence & life as projection of a sadistic, Aztec-like God of war. HBD bunch is, with regard to desired race policy, as subjective as are all versions of religion, both living & extinct.

Race question should be better approached with more common sense & realist honesty for what most people want from life.

• Replies: ,
115. I know that Haiti gets a bad rep all around but just for the record, once upon a time, a free and independent black ruled Haiti showed solidarity and offered help to white nationalists fighting to free themselves from Muslim enslavers and oppressors. At least there was the will if not a way. Read on …

[MORE]

LIBERTE (The Flag) EGALITE
JEAN PIERRE BOYER
President of Haiti
To the citizens of Greece A. Korais, K. Polychroniades,
A. Bogorides and Ch. Klonaris
In Paris
Before I received your letter from Paris, dated last August 20, the news
we learned that Hellas was finally forced to take up arms in order to gain
her freedom and the position that she once held among the nations of the
world.
Such a beautiful and just case and, most importantly, the first successes
which have accompanied it, cannot leave Haitians indifferent, for we, like
the Hellenes, were for a long time subjected to a dishonorable slavery and
finally, with our own chains, broke the head of tyranny.
Wishing to Heavens to protect the descendants of Leonidas, we thought
to assist these brave warriors, if not with military forces and ammunition,
at least with money, which will be useful for acquisition of guns, which
you need. But events that have occurred and imposed financial restrictions
onto our country absorbed the entire budget, including the part that could be
disposed by our administration. Moreover, at present, the revolution which
triumphs on the eastern portion of our island is creating a new obstacle in
carrying out our aim; in fact, this portion, which was incorporated into the
Republic I preside over, is in extreme poverty and thus justifies immense
expenditures of our budget. If the circumstances, as we wish, improve
again, then we shall honorably assist you, the sons of Hellas, to the best
of our abilities.
Citizens! Convey to your co-patriots the warm wishes that the people
of Haiti send on behalf of your liberation. The descendants of ancient
Hellenes look forward, in the reawakening of their history, to trophies
worthy of Salamis. May they prove to be like their ancestors and guided by
the commands of Miltiades, and be able, in the fields of the new Marathon,
to achieve the triumph of the holy affair that they have undertaken on behalf
of their rights, religion and motherland. May it be, at last, through their
wise decisions, that they will be commemorated by history as the heirs of
the endurance and virtues of their ancestors.

In the 15th of January 1822 and the 19th year of Independence
BOYER

116. I know that Haiti gets a bad rap all around but just for the record, once upon a time, a free and independent black ruled Haiti showed solidarity and offered help to white nationalists fighting to free themselves from Muslim enslavers and oppressors. At least there was the will if not a way. Read on …

[MORE]

LIBERTE (The Flag) EGALITE
JEAN PIERRE BOYER
President of Haiti
To the citizens of Greece A. Korais, K. Polychroniades,
A. Bogorides and Ch. Klonaris
In Paris
Before I received your letter from Paris, dated last August 20, the news
we learned that Hellas was finally forced to take up arms in order to gain
her freedom and the position that she once held among the nations of the
world.
Such a beautiful and just case and, most importantly, the first successes
which have accompanied it, cannot leave Haitians indifferent, for we, like
the Hellenes, were for a long time subjected to a dishonorable slavery and
finally, with our own chains, broke the head of tyranny.
Wishing to Heavens to protect the descendants of Leonidas, we thought
to assist these brave warriors, if not with military forces and ammunition,
at least with money, which will be useful for acquisition of guns, which
you need. But events that have occurred and imposed financial restrictions
onto our country absorbed the entire budget, including the part that could be
disposed by our administration. Moreover, at present, the revolution which
triumphs on the eastern portion of our island is creating a new obstacle in
carrying out our aim; in fact, this portion, which was incorporated into the
Republic I preside over, is in extreme poverty and thus justifies immense
expenditures of our budget. If the circumstances, as we wish, improve
again, then we shall honorably assist you, the sons of Hellas, to the best
of our abilities.
Citizens! Convey to your co-patriots the warm wishes that the people
of Haiti send on behalf of your liberation. The descendants of ancient
Hellenes look forward, in the reawakening of their history, to trophies
worthy of Salamis. May they prove to be like their ancestors and guided by
the commands of Miltiades, and be able, in the fields of the new Marathon,
to achieve the triumph of the holy affair that they have undertaken on behalf
of their rights, religion and motherland. May it be, at last, through their
wise decisions, that they will be commemorated by history as the heirs of
the endurance and virtues of their ancestors.

In the 15th of January 1822 and the 19th year of Independence
BOYER

• Replies:
117. Fertility is dysgenic. Socialism exacerbates the problem.

• Replies:
118. The writing is turgid!

Also, the arguments appear sloppy. For example:

Although HBDers tend to be quite vocally opposed to any kind of blank-slatism when it comes to the individual’s IQ, time preference, or general psychological comportment, their own style of thinking leads to the curious result that they themselves have become blank-slatists in a much more fundamental sense, viz. that the racial differences in which they have invested so much importance are but incidental colorations of human nature, mere products of chance and the passage of time, presumably further alterable by more of the same, indefinite, unremarkable, inessential.

This confuses the notion of the ‘blank slate of the individual mind,’ ie that each individual is born with a blank slate that the current culture stamps its mark upon and fills up with all sorts of culture-dependent knowledge with a different notion that the genetically determined character of a group can change over time and is therefor some sort of blank slate that the environment writes upon.

I am not sure I will have to time to wade through the rest given the turgidity of the writing and such an egregious mistake.

119. jamie b. says:

This was just the second sentence…

While the ideas presented herein have long been contemplated by the author and held by him to be provisionally true, the occasion of them taking shape in the present form was not, I am somewhat aggravated to say, the pure contemplative love of truth as such, nor the magnanimous desire to educate my benighted fellows, nor even the vanity born of holding exclusive possession of a novel and exciting conception which, once articulated, figures largely to gain its original representative a measure of historical notoriety; rather, it was exhausted patience with the endless, uncomprehending, unjustified scorn to which the ideas were subjected when they appeared in their fragmentary form, strung unsystematically throughout innumerable comments delivered over several years.

IOW: “Allow me to defend and expand on various comments I’ve made elsewhere.”

• Agree: Twinkie
• Replies:
120. AaronB says:

regards race realism- I don’t see how this can be defended from a religious position. Virtually all major religions’ drive is towards universalism. Of course, it can be said that in this world of appearances, of empirical-material world, races are real & one should not confuse the future unity of raceless beings in some supra-physical worlds (depends on one’s metaphysics) with reality of naturally compartmentalized life on the earth. What will be “up there” in eternity does not reflect on human condition “down here” in spatio-temporally circumscribed life.

This is obviously correct, but he is making a heroic effort to establish a new religious and metaphysical foundation for racism the likes of which the world has not seen before.

It actually goes even deeper than the ancient Hindu caste system I described in a previous comment.

In Hindu metaphysics the world is an illusion and all appearances are ultimately manifestations of the Divine.

So race is not metaphysically real, and belongs to the world of appearances.

ID is positing the most terrifyingly thoroughgoing, absolute, final, and no exit racism the world has ever seen – it goes beyond biological racism with its accidents and possibility of future development, and beyond the Hindu caste system which relegated castes to the world of illusion only.

Darwin all the way. Only, this, originally 19th C science could be attacked from other positions, not only Western religious metaphysics rooted in ancient Greek philosophy. For instance, fundamental physics in past 100 years has mostly dismissed the world-view of 19th C heroic materialism. I am not saying that modern evolutionary biology is outdated or wrong; it simply is not as authoritative as it seemed to be in 1900. It smacks of old-fashioned materialism suffused with images of railroads & Martini-Henry rifle. As a state of mind or a metaphor for a world-view, it is hopelessly dated.

This needs to be emphasized. But it takes time for society to catch up.

• Replies:
121. jamie b. says:

Cod philosophy masquerading as a (creationist’s conception of) science. And just who exactly was this written for? Easily one of the worst things that I’ve read here.

122. An additional observation is necessary.

It seems likely that selection will select for a belief in god(s) in those societies where gods have been important in the past.

Moreover, where there has been a transition to a single god, it seems likely there would be strong selection pressure for monotheism, while where that transition has not occurred (eg, India) there would likely be strong selection for polytheism.

123. Peter Frost says: • Website

You say you are writing from a traditional Catholic perspective. “In the nonce, that means that I take Apostolic Christianity (i.e. the Gospel of Christ in its Traditional acceptation) to be the arbiter of all truth.”

Actually, that’s a Protestant perspective. Catholics believe that God continued to reveal His truth through post-biblical writers, like the Church Fathers and through medieval theologians like Saint Thomas Aquinas.

As a Protestant, I must say I have more sympathy for that position than for the Protestant one. Revelation must be a continuing process because we’re now confronted with issues that simply didn’t exist in Biblical times or even later. The world today is a very different place from what existed scarcely a half-century ago.

But let’s go back to theologians of earlier times. Did they downplay the importance of heritable differences in mind, character, and behavior? Let’s read what Saint Thomas Aquinas had to say:

Children are like their parents because they are begotten by their parents. And they are like their parents not only in dispositions of the body but also in those of the soul. Therefore as bodies derive from bodies, so do souls derive from souls.

https://isidore.co/aquinas/QDdePotentia3.htm#3:9

For some are disposed from their own bodily temperament to chastity or meekness or such like.

those things that concern the nature of the species, are transmitted by parents to their children, unless there be a defect of nature: thus a man with eyes begets a son having eyes, unless nature fails. And if nature be strong, even certain accidents of the individual pertaining to natural disposition, are transmitted to the children, e.g. fleetness of body, acuteness of intellect, and so forth

https://ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.FS_Q81_A2.html

You could counter that this isn’t “essentialism.” I agree. But neither is HBD. Perhaps more convincingly you could argue that the Church acknowledged such heritable differences only between individuals, and not between human populations.

Perhaps. Saint Thomas Aquinas lived in a different time when people mostly interacted with other people of the same origin or with people of related origins. How do you think he would react today? Would he be prostrating himself before African migrants and kissing their feet? I suspect his reaction would be closer to that of the Dalai Lama: “Europe belongs to the Europeans.”

But I don’t know. This is why revelation is ongoing. It is not solely biblical or medieval.

124. Fred777 says:

Thank you again ID for editing this down to a more manageable level.

• LOL: TelfoedJohn
125. Twinkie says:

and if you are not a native German-speaker, you will inevitably lose much in the mere translation. Honest Heidegger scholars will readily admit both.

High priests of Clausewitz said exactly the same thing about Vom Kriege.

• Replies:
126. Twinkie says:

That’s nothing. The second paragraph clocks in at 24.51. From the wiki the fog index for college graduate reading level is 17 (each integer below that is a year less of education, so 6 is sixth grade).

He rejects your mechanistic evaluation of his paragraphs! They have an immeasurable essence!

127. Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar

128. botazefa says:

ID god bless you and I really enjoy your commentary, but I bailed halfway through your interminable first sentence. I just don’t have the energy for it.

• Replies:
129. Twinkie says:

Moreover, the Church acknowledges no such thing as “Traditional Catholicism” with a capital T. I have called myself a ‘Trad Catholic” on occasion and that is, if I’m honest about it, a tribal marker more than anything else. A more accurate description would be an orthodox or obedient Catholic, for whom Sola Scriptura is a heresy.

If any reader here were interested in medieval Catholic philosophy, I’d urge him to read Etienne Gilson’s Magnum Opus, “The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy” instead of wasting time on this pretentious drivel.

130. Ruckus says:

“Having announced my attack, there is no doubt but that now those in the audience who wear the Darwinian livery have set their abundant whiskers at full defensive bristle, and are even now polishing up their blunderbusses for a hearty fusillade against the quixotic creationist sallies they think they have repelled a thousand times before.”

This is not an attack, this is a salad. As they say – roughage builds bulk.

131. Dumbo says:

Actually, I am pretty sure I saw someone somewhere quoting Aquinas and mentioning that he was against (or critical) of at least certain forms of immigration, but I cannot find it now.

132. Dumbo says:

Most commenters seem to be people who didn’t fully read the article and didn’t like the prose style. I’ve read… well, large parts of it… and I enjoyed the author’s views on things such as essentialism, DNA and Darwinism. Granted, I know very little about such matters, so for me it was interesting to see a contrary perspective. I didn’t find the prose difficult or dull, just a bit… Well, he likes big words, but who doesn’t? And I liked the reasoning behind it.

The only weak part for me was the one about blacks and the “curse of Ham”. I mean, all that discussion about races being “essential” and not “accidental”, and then, the conclusion is that, hmm, there’s not really much difference between Whites and other races, except for Blacks, who are dumber and more violent because they were “cursed”. Is that it? Or maybe I didn’t understand it well… I *did* skip some parts.

133. . . . what HBD is and isn’t. It isn’t a philosophy. There is no philosophy. Someone can be ‘HBD aware’ and be a philo-semite or an antisemite, an atheist or a Christian. Someone can be ‘HBD aware’ and be a socialist or a capitalist. One ‘HBD aware’ person might see cause for massive intervention while another might find HBD-awareness as a reason to leave things alone. An ‘HBD aware’ person might be a Darwinist or a Creationist or a simulation-ist, An ‘HBD aware’ person could be a hedonist or a monk.

It’s just a series of observations. “Horses tend to run fast” and “Ants tend to be communal” are observations. Observing these things doesn’t imply any belief system. “I rebut your tendency to notice things.” What?

This is an excellent summation of HBD. However, as it’s all about noticing and observing reality, I’d perhaps add that your definition implicitly requires that all HBDers must, at a minimum, qualify as “Empiricists.”

I’d also argue that the “Bio” part of HBD generally means that we recognize that some part of the empirically noticeable race differences are caused by biology. An alternative view, I suppose, is that it is sufficient to merely recognize that different “bio” lineages exist, but that HBD is still perfectly compatible with assigning any observed differences to culture or “social constructs.”

In the end, though, these two views are not incompatible. Heredity vs. Environment is not an all-or-nothing proposition, and HBDers will follow the empirical evidence where it leads in terms of ascribing causation between the two.

The thing that defines the HBD “movement,” however, is that its adherents are simply willing to follow the empirical evidence to politically incorrect conclusions, when that is what the evidence compels. Members of the Officially Sanctioned Consensus, have to remain behind on the shore waving their fists and chanting epithets of heresy.

• Replies:
134. Is God going to reveal new truths on an ongoing basis or does he require that we figure it out for ourselves? Have I excluded a middle?

What Would A Just God Do?

135. Ha! Yes, I did indeed. Sorry about that.

136. What a brilliant essay. What a brilliant proof of God. (I deliberately did NOT day “existence” of God). Thank you.

137. That sentence requires a flow chart.

138. How much did that one cost us?

• Replies:
139. Thomm says:

Telly-Dase and Audie are one and the same?

No, certainly not. Audie Baby posted a guest article.

In a related point, Intelligent Dasein is the one who correctly called out Ron Unz for being the ‘Imelda Marcos of Sockpuppets’.

I then added that his ‘Important Software Work’ is really ‘Important Sockpuppet Work’. That is what RUnzie Baby does during business hours, to sustain the true purpose of this website.

In the first link, you will see that I can still get 20+ replies to a comment posted a third or fourth time. Now that is training the hamsters, man.

140. Talha says:

Muslims & Jews are ready to defend, even if it means death, their sacred duty not to eat shrimps & lobsters

You guys seriously, seriously need to do more research before making these kinds of statements. Only one of the schools (Hanafi) has a problem with shrimps and lobsters – and even in that one there is a difference of opinion on the matter. Why would any Muslim give their life over something most scholars have zero problems with?

foreskin dogma

Sure, we will continue to circumcise our sons in Muslim lands. Anyone that wants to stop us is free to come and do so.

raceless beings in some supra-physical worlds

“I wanna be a white guy with an afro in heaven!!!”

Peace.

141. baythoven says:

Thank you for the book recommendation. I find it available at a local library. That is, once it reopens, hopefully soon.

I appreciated the article, too. I found it fascinating not because I’m well grounded in theological-philosophical issues, but just the opposite — because I usually don’t think that way, and yet I believe it is an area in which I should educate myself more.

And all this griping about his writing… Longer sentences and paragraphs are nothing to be disdainful of, as long as the writing flows, and his does.

• Thanks: V. K. Ovelund
142. Catholics believe that God continued to reveal His truth through post-biblical writers, like the Church Fathers and through medieval theologians like Saint Thomas Aquinas.

That’s actually just plain wrong. It is a matter of de fide teaching that the deposit of faith was completed and sealed with the death of the last Apostle. There is no public revelation after that. All else is exposition and exegesis.

Children are like their parents because they are begotten by their parents. And they are like their parents not only in dispositions of the body but also in those of the soul. Therefore as bodies derive from bodies, so do souls derive from souls.

Are your serious? If you would bother to consult your own source, you would see that St. Thomas was not “saying” that. He was mentioning that proposition only to refute it. Further down the page he quite emphatically defends the Church’s teaching that the rational soul is not educed out of matter and is not transmitted with the semen, which is exactly what I was saying in the essay (which I’m sure you also did not bother to read).

• Replies: , ,
143. Bill P says:

However, I did notice one important inconsistency that could put the conclusion in some doubt:

This is what life looks like under the impact of “causality.” There can be no better proof that microevolution has nothing to do with the natural history of life on Earth than the fact that, in a natural environment, the pressures would come from all sides, at all times, in all ways, leading to no net bias in any direction. The result of this constant barrage would be to keep all forms compact and well-rounded, like pebbles in a stream. Any eccentricities would have been worn away, quite unlike the deliberate eccentricities that are introduced by selective breeding programs.

This is actually making a determinist assumption. It is true that in a deterministic universe all distinctions would dissipate due to entropy, but when you allow for chance complex systems can develop out of simpler ones. In other words, order can emerge from chaos, but only if free will exists.

That’s one of the fundamental problems with the contemporary, determinist understanding of evolution. However, it is not an argument against evolution itself, but rather it purports to support the theory through an explanation that actually contradicts it.

Here, if I’m not mistaken, you seem to be taking that explanation for granted. I believe, if you put some more thought into the implications of the faulty logic employed by the determinist faction, it might give you a new and more favorable perspective on evolution itself.

144. Dumbo says:

There’s very little “scientific” or “empirical”, or even very interesting, about HBD. It really seems to consist in pretty mundane observations, i.e., “blacks run faster but don’t excel at math”, “asians tend to study a lot and be more conformist”. Really pretty much common discussions (some would say stereotypes) even just a few decades ago, it just seems “new” or “original” now because there is a prohibition to discuss such things. But there is nothing really original or great about it. The major proponents are people like Steve Sailer, who was a journalist and a marketing researcher, i.e. zero scientific background, and whose recent articles seem to be about “great insights” on how telephoto lens are used to make crowds look bigger and more compact… I mean, I like Steve, but, it’s not as if he’s discovered gravity, or something.

• Replies:
145. Neuday says:

Intelligent Dasein needs some writing lessons or at the very least an extraordinarily patient and ruthless editor. The major problem with this screed is an extreme case of logorrhea, The ratio of coherent ideas to wordage is shockingly low. This suggests a bloated and wholly unjustified case of egoistic self-satisfaction in the writer.

I’m pretty familiar with ID’s comments, and while I think I might largely agree with his points, his writing style is frustratingly self-indulgent. I don’t mind working to comprehend subtleties and nuances but ID seems to write for himself, mistaking obscurantism for depth.

146. Now, that criticism of Intelligent Design didn’t make sense to me, though your criticism of its detractors made more sense. Your writing about either side didn’t prove or disprove a thing.

As for the former, you say:

Under the mad spell of their “irreducible complexity” (which, mechanically speaking, does not even exist—there is no such thing as a machine that is not reducible to simpler functional units, for that is what it means to be a machine), it was forgotten that the question here was never about how the molecules in a living organism got into their current arrangement; it was about how a living thing qua living could come into existence at all.

I’ve never read any ID proponents ignore or deny the latter, more basic question, too. They just find it hard to prove a negative, that life can’t arise out of non-life. Therefore, they concentrate on the second issue, how can the most complicated features on animal/plant life evolve, when often, it would take odds that are beyond the time-scale of life on this planet?

The thing about ID is, a good geneticist/biologist type, with some good knowledge of stats/probability could probably make a good effort at some basic models that would try to prove the ID side or anti-ID side. A commenter under a Fred Reed post pointed me to a paper one time, but it was not clear enough to me whether the guy was really doing this right.

Anyway, back to my excerpt of your article above, how does your comparison to machine parts prove anything? It’s not about how organisms ARE so complex, it’s about how organisms could GET so complex via natural selection over the time scale of life on Earth.

Chapter 9 is not sitting so well with me either, but that might be something from lunch.

• Replies:
147. AaronB says:

Well, why did Israel mount a risky and expensive operation to bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel, using intelligence assets and special forces troops far from home, if Judaism considers blacks inferior?

The Jewish state may be the only non-black nation in the world that brought blacks to its territory not as slaves, not even as traders, but simply as brothers – out of a sense of kinship. And at risk and cost to itself.

It is quite literally unprecedented.

There is also an African-American ex-rapper who converted to Judaism and is now a Hasid – complete with hat and sidelocks – and lives in Israel. He now records Jewish music in Hebrew and is quite popular in the orthodox world. My friends kids were listening to him.

• Replies:
148. True, Dumbo, HBD seems to be common sense, but, as you write, that common sense has been made into a big PIC no-no. I think what iSteve (and I guess the rest of that crowd) is trying to do is to analyze and publish analysis of actual scientists who want to prove some of this out statistically, without getting fired, that is.

They want to compare observation (say Steve’s favorite ones about sprinters and other sports) to theory. The theory would be based on the DNA analysis that can now be known to some accuracy. Steve eats that stuff up.

I don’t really care about any of the science of it, but just that people not be afraid to talk about it, and more importantly, that our society finally get straight that nurture does not fix everything.

149. In very simple terms, Intelligent Design is wrong because living organisms are not machines and therefore could not have been designed or built. Just like the Young Earthers, the Intelligent Designers are trying to fight the good fight but they have swallowed an incorrect premise that pulls all their efforts down.

• Replies: ,
150. This sort of thing is why intelligent adolescents should be kept away from Heidegger until they develop a critical capacity to see him in context and with his limitations.

To be more concrete, think of Game of Life simulations – the little shapes that emerge from following very simple rules in the computer simulation of that name. Of course we could characterize these shapes and their behaviors as having ‘personality’ or ‘race’ or ‘destiny’, or whatever, based on their style of movement or their way of ‘eating’ other shapes, etc. But that would be a pragmatic anthropomorphization not a description of ‘essences’.

Now, perhaps one buys into a theory of ’emergence’. In other words top down causality of emergent higher level properties. I sometimes do. But that is not the same as what this author is giving us and I don’t see how emergence could be applied to a general group characteristic like ‘race’, which couldn’t possibly be a concrete ‘being’ capable of downward causation like a human mind.

151. Please could you summarise the article’s criticisms of HBD, just to prove you actually read it.

152. “Diversity is just another skin-deep word to divide and politically manipulate.”

There’s nothing “skin-deep” (i.e. superficial) about diversity. It is serious business that serves to destroy societies.

153. Touche, my criticism does not apply to you.

However, my contention stands: most people who bitch about circumlocution have attention deficit and / or reading comprehension issues. To be fair, some may just have an unhealthy obsession with Hemingway or film noire scripts.

154. In very simple terms, Intelligent Design is wrong because living organisms are not machines and therefore could not have been designed or built

Unfortunately for your PoV, they are machines. When it comes to humans they are really complicated machines, but machines none the less.

How is that for an assertion that opposes your assertion?

The real question is: Could we distinguish, in principal, a machine created by God vs God setting up an environment that leads to intelligent machines?

• Agree: jamie b.
• Replies: , ,
155. “Are you saying it’s OK….?“

Back in the good ol’ days, one used to see signs on the wall behind cash registers of small businesses which read “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason.”

And life went on, more amicably than today. Why? Because few small businesses could afford to turn away cash customers for any of the reasons you cited above.

By the same token, customers were put on notice that forcing their extreme views on other customers, the help or the owner would jeopardize their completing their purchase and this made them more circumspect and less likely to act out and be obnoxious.

So you see, manners were self regulating and required no interfering dictates from a central authority*. So, while I can’t answer for ID, I would answer, “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

*This dictatorial interference from an all-knowing, central authority is characteristic of Jewish social reform schemes. Historically, it results in mass murder because humanity invariably fails to live up to the ideals expected of them. We are witness to the ramping up of this genocide today as whites are being systematically murdered through various Jewish inspired and run social programs. As outsiders, Jewish neurotic, circular behavior is obvious to we white gentiles even as it is opaque to Jack D, Lot, Aaron and the like.

• Replies:
156. DRA says:

This reminder me of why I find the 5,000 words of Lao Tse attractive.

157. It does not terrify me. Why does it terrify you?

158. nsa says:

Twinkie has it exactly right. Anyone wading more than 500 words into this stilted pompous word salad should immediately seek psychiatric help…….or at least another 24 ouncer.

• Agree: Lot
159. And yet this is the case against HBD.

I have argued with you in the past about this. To the extent that HBD is a materialistic and darwinian explanation of race, it absolutely must be mutable and cannot be some kind of fixed platonic ideal since the dawn of time. The traits of the races becomes temporal and circumstantial (which this manifesto is claiming amounts to blank slatism via environment over millennia).

Not to say that view is correct, but to humor it for the sake of argument, if anyone believes human beings originated from mutant fish they surely must believe that humanity is a blank slate in that way at least – to the environment, through selective pressure, over aeons. Otherwise people just make for a very messed up failure of a type of freak fish.

But you still attribute his anti-HBD views to HBD, calling it HBD with mysticism. I can kind of see where you’re coming from but for the fact that the implications are all contrary. HBD is much more darwinian and materialist, but whatever you may think of that, a belief in platonic ideal forms of race is actually a lot closer to Nazi racial beliefs, something like Platonic Nordicism, or German Idealistic Eugenics. But that’s something HBD theories (to the extent they’re being espoused or represented by people who actually understand HBD) are basically fundamentally incompatible with and implicitly reject.

Even if one does not accept the ‘Origin of the Species’ hard form of darwinism, the soft form of micro-evolution, adaptation of basic forms like dogs which can be changed into different types of dogs but not into something completely different like fish, implicitly rejects the idea of immutability and paints these adaptations as temporal and circumstantial.

This is something we have been stuck disagreeing on and I have not seen you grapple with it directly. Put aside whether or not you like the materialism. It’s kind of funny to see you recoiling from the mysticism for the same reason you argue against materialistic HBD, but here there is substance and with HBD you are mainly inferring it incorrectly. This is not a mystical version of HBD, it is actually antithetical and incompatible with HBD.

Is HBD not heavily darwinian influenced? Where do you keep getting this idea that an evolutionary explanation for divergence between organisms insists those diverged organisms are unchanging and their differences baked into the metaphysical fabric of nature at creation? It’s quite oxymoronic when put this way.

HBD’s retort to Platonic Nordicists is basically: dolphins. They came out of the water and then they went back into the water.

• Agree: iffen
• Replies:
160. So, while I can’t answer for ID, I would answer, “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Yes, I agree. Traditionalists like me are not Classical Liberals. We do believe in an established Church, for example. We do not believe in perfect freedom of speech when it comes to things like heresy and lèse-majesté. We think there are certain things you should not be allowed to say or do, but outside of that we advocate a very broad measure of individual liberty rooted in the principle of subsidiarity. If it can be at all regulated at a lower level, then the state should not regulate it.

I’m all for businesses being able to hire and serve whomever they wish. If I get denied because I am a white male and Catholic, so be it. Let the big multinationals and their HR departments virtue-signal by hiring blacks if they wish. They can pay for it themselves.

161. So a black person, who takes up the rules of Judaism, is always below some other race, that takes up the laws of Judaism? Even if both never murder, never thieve, never lie, follow all the laws- one would be below the other?

Or is it that that a black person, honestly submitting themselves to a faith, would simply not be able follow the rules – not be willing to tame themselves?

What does the black person want above and beyond that, that forces them away from religion? Excess material desire? Is this really evidenced by experience? Rap talks about cribs, bitches, and money, but isn’t this an underlying aspect of Western, amoral, a-religious, materialistic society as a whole?

• Replies:
162. Birds of a feather flock together … except for the self-loathing white ones, who want to be hip.

• LOL: iffen
163. The real question is: Could we distinguish, in principal, a machine created by God vs God setting up an environment that leads to intelligent machines?

It’s interesting that, on the one hand, people are complaining that the essay is too long, but, on the other hand, they keep asking the same questions that I addressed in the essay, which is what required it to be so long.

164. Twinkie says:

That’s actually just plain wrong. It is a matter of de fide teaching that the deposit of faith was completed and sealed with the death of the last Apostle. There is no public revelation after that. All else is exposition and exegesis.

But who has the Authority to engage in the said “exposition and exegesis”? Who indeed had the Authority to determine what belonged in the Gospels and what did not?

You, despite the verbosity, left the original formulation imprecise and left an impression that you, as an individual, have the capacity to interpret the Gospels as you see them. Mr. Frost went too far in using the word “reveal,” but your formulation left a strong whiff of sola scriptura. That’s what happens when you fixate on using what another commenter called “florid language,” and not on unadorned clarity.

165. 1. It was at least five years after I saw the first Moldbug composition before I decided there was some substance there worth enduring the hideous style. Probably closer to ten.

2. There are various racial and sex types represented in the article illustration but the thing that I noticed is there were No Fat People. Not exactly current to the now millennium is that? The one salient point of 2020 is we have got a big ass number of big asses.

166. Haha, for you, always free, lol.

• Thanks: Achmed E. Newman
167. Mefobills says:

Do homogeneous countries like China or Japan worry about HBD? HBD is only necessary because liberalism created multi culti clown world.

It is liberal thought constructs like libertarianism, neo-liberalism, free markets, and free movement of capital and labor, which brings about clown world false reality.

Real countries are concentric waves of kinship. No kinship linkages, no shared history or borders = not a real country.

In other words, it is all about the money – where certain types of people want to make money from money. Only there is no such thing as making money from money. Labor and Machines convert the earth to make things; things (and services) become prices, and prices fetch money from the money supply.

Clown world requires lies, to then import cheap labor, and hence HBD is a knock on effect.

It is corporate banking money that funds ne0-liberalism. To undo clown world will require some sort of sovereign money. To solve a problem, you have to identify it first.

A truly sovereign people would never allow themselves to be de-racinated, have their laws and borders over-run, and their history removed and uprooted.

It is simple enough to pay hostile in-groups to leave, providing the nation’s money power is sovereign. Take the gold or lead to the head. Most would take the gold.

I do not believe one can consistently commit to race-realism without also being a race-essentialist; race-realism just is race-essentialism.

A race realist knows that there are significant overlaps in the races, something like a Venn diagram. A race realist looks at the data and infers patterns. There is no such thing as race essentialism, as any one “exception” will destroy the rule. There are always exceptions and exceptional people of every race.

So no. Race realism is not just race-essentialism.

HBD arguments are annoying after-effects of liberalism as we are essentially arguing about how many angels dance on the head of a pin. Race realism vs race essentialism. Really? This is where we are?

Take the gold or the lead, would be a kindness to the future, as like people like to live among their own kind.

After Putnam’s work on “Bowling Alone” it is done. There can be no high trust society with “liberal” multiculturalism. HBD data/theory only confirms Putnam’s data.

• Replies:
168. iffen says:

He went with your suggestion of no facts.

• LOL: AaronB
169. Sophists are gonna soph.

170. Hegar says:

“I set it forth here that the science behind HBD is suspect.”

“the argumentative superstructure adduced in support of such conclusions is full of metaphysical errors”

Someone is impressed by his college literature! All those advanced words.

“In the nonce, that means that I take Apostolic Christianity (i.e. the Gospel of Christ in its Traditional acceptation) to be the arbiter of all truth.”

“it means that any truth, howsoever it is discovered, must harmonize with this Gospel and if it does not then it is not true.”

A mountain of scientific evidence is false because it isn’t in the Bible.

Is the Earth flat or round? Since the Bible says it’s flat and standing on seven pillars, with the sun, stars and moon attached to a dome above, that must be true, right?

The guy is a religionut. Moving on.

171. I’ve reached my limit on “Thanks,” but thank you for stopping by. This was an Isaiah’s Job, and you were specifically among the remnant I had in mind.

172. One thing he said that none have addressed is that evolutionists, Darwinists, in claiming that change takes place at the genetic level, have simply pushed the issue one layer deeper. ID points out that genes themselves are physical, are subject to physical laws. How then can they be the vehicle through which profound transformations which transcend mere mechanical replication take place? And this depends upon the following…..

The key to his argument is another Greek observation which goes, “Like generates like.” Matter can only come from matter. Form from form, Spirit from spirit etc. Matter cannot generate novel matter, only the same matter. So, where does change come from? How can matter be the source from which new, novel forms of matter are generated?

It’s funny though, when ID was talking about essence and accident, I was reminded of basic chemistry. What the Scholastics would have deemed “essence”, a chemist would call an “element”. You cannot alter it’s basic structure without changing it into something new. And what the Scholastics would have called “accident”, a chemist would call the distributions of electrons around the nucleus. The fundamental definition of an element is its atomic number, i.e., the number of protons in the nucleus and indeed, if these are changed, then a new element arises. However, the same element may have a multitude of electron configurations and while this will give it different properties, its fundamental essence is unchanged. For what it’s worth.

• Replies: ,
173. The USA (and UK and Europe) is ruled by a Theocracy.

The MSM houses the scribes for the Theocracy.
Universities are stuffed with theologians.
Government is stuffed with priests and inquisitors.

1. Many (most?) interesting questions cannot be answered empirically.
2. There are several systems in place to give people the “answers” to those questions.
3. ONE of those systems is the Leftist cult of Human Homogeneity under which we all suffer.
4. Sacraments of that cult are, unlike Christian sacraments, readily falsified by simply looking around.
5. HBD offends those who prefer to keep their original slate of unaswerable questions (incl. I.D.)

We are different from each other. Heterogeneous populations will get along with each other under some conditions, not under others. Differences in dialect, religion or culture have often formed the conflict point for wars of incredible violence. Shuffling people of different RACES together during a long period of rising social mood was akin to stacking high explosives around your rooftop antenna prior to a period of intense electrical storms.

Our Western society was ruled by Jim Jones’ People’s Temple. When this long boom ends, so will peace.

• Agree: mark green
174. Who would you want to work for (or live next to)?

You cannot have a nation-state of 300 million diverse people (most of whom who would loathe living next to each other) governed under the same system, unless that system allows incredible levels of discrimination.

My Utopian vision is a world of small communities, each of which having a different set of rules governing it. One might be dry, another allow kids to sip martini’s. One would be for people who prefer rap music and be okay with playing it loud throughout the night. Etc., etc., etc. Only those who explicitly pledge to abide by the rules get to stay. Break a rule, we don’t cage you…we EXILE you. What happens to those who cannot abide rules that yield civilization? Exile to the wasteland…and an almost certain death (which is the usual result for those who live in full savagery.)

My point: Those who would tell me that I must employ a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Hari Krishna, or a homosexual, or a white, a black, a yellow, a red, a commie, etc., are my enemy. It’s MY capital. My refusal to associate (or hire) someone is not an assault on them.

No, my friend. Bring back discrimination. It’s coming back anyway…just wait a little longer.

• Agree: Monotonous Languor
• Replies: ,
175. Twinkie says:

So, where does change come from? How can matter be the source from which new, novel forms of matter are generated?

Selection, drift, mutation… read a basic genetics text book, man.

• Replies: ,
176. … discrimination. It’s coming back anyway … just wait a little longer.

Interesting. Would you elaborate?

• Replies:
177. Miro23 says:

Despite his circuitous disavowal, he isn’t interested in communication and elucidation so much as showing off what he thinks of as his own tragically ignored brilliance.

Possibly. The article is 1/5 the length of Darwin’s, “On the Origin of Species” but Darwin’s book is a much easier read.

178. Talha says:

Minorities will no longer be allowed in spaces of white religious/spiritual experience in the West…? 🤔

Peace.

179. I too stumbled over the first third of the essay but persisted and I believe the writing and clarity improved. One reason for the flowery language is that he is speaking a language that is, as others have pointed out, for all intents and purposes, dead.

But unlike many other readers here, I had studied much of this in college and consequently was and am familiar with the fundamental concepts, the writers and thinkers and above all, the WeltGeist.

If one spends a fair amount of time immersed in Plato, Aristotle, the Neo-Platonists, Augustine and Aquinas, one begins to take on or absorb a new perspective. They thought (verb) the world differently than we do today. To see the world through their eyes is to see the world from the perspective of humans just as they solidified their ability to express the world in mathematic terms. Plato said again and again that knowledge of the Forms was akin to knowledge of mathematic relations and Laws. Think what a revolution in human affairs this was! And, as Plato and Aristotle were in the vanguard, it was incumbent upon them to formulate a new language that could describe and transmit the new universe they were exploring. So if all you critics were to suspend your disbelief and try to imagine this as a bit of intellectual archaeology, then maybe you could begin to feel the magic of what ID is trying to convey.

• Agree: V. K. Ovelund
180. Eagle Eye says:

Is there an English version of this piece?

The current offering appears to be an excellent translation from 19th century academic German, or possibly neo-Latin. As such, it is an excellent effort, faithfully preserving the tediousness of the original.

181. I wasn’t asking for me. I was trying to make the way the Greeks saw the world a little clearer. It was they who believed that logical categories were distinctions in Being.

182. Talk about “getting into the weeds”. Whew!

183. Art says:

The blank slate and the stone face predetermined biological automaton are both in part wrong. The correct notion is a golden mean between the two. Both nature and nurture matter in a person’s life.

Clearly a newly born child, knows nothing intellectually – but a child is also born with a personality, that has likes, dislikes, and different natural emotional and excitement levels.

Geographic tribes have children that are biologically suited to their physical and cultural tribal environment. Children are intellectually nurtured by their family and culture. Children will find their own levels of activity. They can be advantaged or harmed and stunted by their elders.

Both the blank slate and biological automaton have some merit, but are not individually the total answer.

• Replies:
184. No, human beings are not machines- if we want the word “machine” to retain any ordinary & useful meaning at all.

And here most of evolutionary theory falls flat- no only are human beings not machines; more, there is abyss between humans & all other forms of life on earth. To put it in conventional manner: human beings are not just quantitatively different from all animals (including chimps); they’re qualitatively simply another form of being.

No animal possesses a sense of humor; no animal is creative; no animal has any need to create any work which we could term to be “art” (let alone to dabble in science); no animal has ever, as we can ascertain, imagined “gods”; no animal has ever committed suicide out of spiritual despair or sense of honor; no …

Even the best evolutionary theory is insufficient re embarrassment of human emotional, cognitive, creative & destructive riches. Hard as they may try, any combination of evolutionary pressures & mutations remains deeply unsatisfactory.

Even the best works on the topic (most popular being by various Sagans etc.) are just longish expatiations on growth of brain & density of neurons’ wiring, not explaining much.

Who wants to see for himself very good & unsatisfactory works on the topic (plus some different drummers), may consult the following:

[MORE]

• Replies:
185. utu says:

When it comes to humans they are really complicated machines, but machines none the less.

There is no solution the problem consciousness and free will. Materialists can’t handle consciousness; it is the greatest challenge to their world view. So they must kill it, render it irrelevant, just an illusion, an epiphenomenon that plays no role what so ever in the objective reality. And they say it with a straight face knowing perfectly well that the “I” that is speaking and the “I” that is identifying with what is spoken is the same consciousness that they casted aside as an illusion. So who is really speaking? An automaton that knows the truth? They hear voices in their heads like schizophrenics and listen to them and follow them while at the same time saying the voices are just an epiphenomenon. So why do they listen to the voices – because they have no choice, they have no free will.

Darwinians and all materialists are like little children who when caught with a hand in the cookie jar can say with a straight face that the hand is no their hand. It is amazing that they are engaged in building a huge superstructure just to escape the little contradiction they dare not to explore. When I think about it in Christian metaphors it is like a diabolic possession of people who fear God so much that they will do anything and everything to deny not just his existence but a mere possibility of it.

• Agree: V. K. Ovelund
186. A. Don’t say “roiled.”

B. It’s “I daresay.”

187. Is this one of those essays that when you put the secret template on it most words are blocked out and a secret message is revealed in the unblocked words?

188. Okay, I’m sure I’ve plenty of the time it will take to read this absurdly prolix post.

189. I believe the late and lamented Warren Gamaliel Harding said it best when he said “bloviating.”

• Agree: Hegar
190. AaronB says:

A black man who takes up the Jewish faith is 100% equal to any other Jew – in fact, as a convert he is to be treated with special respect.

Human nature being what it is, there will be Jews who will not be not so nice to him – but the vast majority will welcome with gladness and joy, and fully accept him, and the Rabbis and authorities will defend and protect him.

There are many African-Americans who have converted – and their stories bear this out.

Seriously, Ilya, I feel you’re approaching us with pre-formed prejudices….we are not what you think we are..

• Replies: , ,
191. Anonymous[873] • Disclaimer says:

The writer should get a prison sentence commensurate with the length of this tldr monstrosity.

192. IvyMike says:

The author used a lifetime’s worth of semi-colons in the 1st paragraph so I skipped the rest of the article. It’s as if he/she were trying to translate Dostoyevsky’s Russian to English without being particularly fluent in either language.

193. Jeshurun Tsarfat [AKA "JT"] says: • Website

Extremely useful to point out flaws of HBD, which together with trans-humanism, has a hold on the intellectual imagination. Add libertarians, and you get the odd horsemen of the childish apocalypse.

What’s the next step?

Politics is real-world.

Transcending childishness means duking it out in the real world.

The joggers fight for everyone of theirs…Whitey?

laugh.

Because an article contending that humans are destined cognitiely by their biology and then ending on the praise of the God of Abraham is in every way contradicting itself. Because the God in reference makes it very clear that human beings have say in the choices they make. Hence accountability to each other and to the everlasting. More or less a kick of sand in the face of a definitive deterministic biological lock dynamic.

I am afraid the very God one wishes to praise blows HBD as presented out of the water.

I would note that dog breeding is not evolution at work . . . it is intelligent(?) design.

And there is no fossil record for evolution. There is one for adaptation and that barely. But a development from one species to another — it doesn’t exist.

———————————————————–

“Clearly a newly born child, knows nothing intellectually – but a child is also born with a personality, that has likes, dislikes, and different natural emotional and excitement levels.”

You have chosen a cognitive trait set to explain biology —- personalty and intellect reside on similar plains of cognition.

195. We usually agree, Mr. Smith, but I’m not sure we see this the same way. I see Socialism as an artificial selection that selects for irresponsibility. With greater fertility in general, the situation gets worse, but Socialism itself encourages fertility in the irresponsible and dampens fertility in the responsible (since they are sucked dry by Big Gov).* It takes a few generations for this nature half, but the nurture half, as anyone can see in the ghetto, works much more quickly.

.

* That’s not even including debt forgiveness and other moral hazards that simply cause the responsible among us to throw up our hands and say “f__ it!”

• Replies:
196. No animal possesses a sense of humor; no animal is creative;

no animal has ever committed suicide out of spiritual despair or sense of honor

BS. It’s not true.

The hippies like to say “no animal goes to war” but I want to know why the nature loving hippies can’t watch a goddamn nature documentary or read Jane Goodall.

no animal has ever, as we can ascertain,

To put it in conventional manner: human beings are not just quantitatively different from all animals (including chimps); they’re qualitatively simply another form of being.

To put it in context: according to their own estimation. We are definitely full of ourselves. I’d like an outside opinion for some more context, but as far as I know no animal has ever been as pleased with us as we are with ourselves. Certainly they do not sing our praises like we do.

Would it be shocking to us if we discovered groundhogs were as full of themselves as we are of ourselves? They would be wrong of course, according to us, and quite ridiculous, but it would hardly be shocking.

• Replies:
197. StephenT says:

Gotta say I gave up reading after a few pages. I’m literate, but this essay is a bit over the top.

198. … which is exactly what I was saying in the essay (which I’m sure you also did not bother to read).

There are only so many hours in the day. It’s not reasonable to expect somebody to go all-in on a 20,000 word (!) first article by an unknown writer, unless that writer’s work is unusually compelling.

That said, I think a lot of the griping is from habitual commenters who are envious that you got to play an inning in the majors.

• Replies: ,
199. Lars Porsena: “Would it be shocking to us if we discovered groundhogs were as full of themselves as we are of ourselves? They would be wrong of course, according to us, and quite ridiculous, but it would hardly be shocking.”

Right. This recalls the pre-Socratic Xenophanes:

But if cattle and horses and lions had hands
or could paint with their hands and create works such as men do,
horses like horses and cattle like cattle
also would depict the gods’ shapes and make their bodies
of such a sort as the form they themselves have.

Further, when Kaldian says “And here most of evolutionary theory falls flat- no only are human beings not machines; more, there is abyss between humans & all other forms of life on earth.” I think you’d be right to rubbish this claim too. If human beings are not biological machines, then are apes? How about dogs? Or plants? Perhaps in Kaldian’s view no life is mechanistic, although I think that position would be hard to defend. But placing man in a separate category of “creation” is a Christian way of looking at things. Adopting this view is to abandon a scientific/materialistic view of reality. If you want to do that, and go back to superstition, fine. But at least admit it, or propose a better theory than scientific materialism; one with more explanatory power.

• Replies:
200. Uomiem says:

HBD by it self is harmless. When utilized by politicians to gain votes, it became a poison that could kill this country.

My 2C.

It was worth the price.
Lack of applied HBD is a poison that is killing this country.

201. Well, why did Israel mount a risky and expensive operation to bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel, using intelligence assets and special forces troops far from home, …

I doubt that Israel did. Sounds like fake news to me. And even if Israel did what you say, I doubt that the matter is what it seems.

Far too much of the praise one hears for Israel and Jews turns out to be propaganda. Jews so tirelessly generate propaganda that one lacks the energy to investigate or refute it all. By default, a growing number of us just don’t believe such things any more.

If you are Jewish and your name is not Ron Unz, I disbelieve you until proven otherwise.

Incidentally, that Israel would expect praise, rather than censure, for (putatively) importing an unassimilable population of Ethiopians is a sign of the times.

• Replies:
202. I appreciate the simple terms, first of all, I.D. I’m not really sure if any non-sentient animal like an amoeba, or a stalk of celery, is anything more than a chemically-powered machine, if you want to look at it this way. The difference with humans is the soul, something that is not part of the body (machine) at all. You wrote about the soul in your criticism of Evolutionists. Are you saying that every living thing has a soul, and that’s what can’t be created?

You segue into AI in Chapter 9, but I don’t get this part either. Not many intelligent people think that AI machines are actually intelligent and do any thinking, hence the term “artificial”. What do you mean about AI “failing”? Do you mean failing to explain something? AI machines may indeed be the ruin of us, as in SciFi stories, but we all know they are not living.

Really, this is too esoteric for me, but I appreciate your work in writing it. There are probably some drugs that would help me understand this a lot better, but unfortunately, I don’t live in California.

• Replies: ,
203. AaronB says:

I do not expect or desire praise from you or anyone. I could care less.

As Jews, we fulfill our own morality. You can research it – and believe or disbelieve what you wish.

I will respond to other replies to me tomorrow, when I have a bit more time. Thanks.

204. Are you saying that every living thing has a soul, and that’s what can’t be created?

Yes, every living thing has a soul and that’s why it cannot be educed from nonliving matter. “Soul” is just the theological word for “substantial form.” The Catholic Church made it quite clear in the person of St. Thomas, and again at the Council of Trent, that the de anima of Aristotle and the term “soul” as it is used in explicitly theological contexts, are one and the same thing. Let me quote again the Tridentine formulation, of which every word is important:

“The soul is of itself and per se the form of the body and is multiplied as bodies are multiplied.”

I would wager that 99 out of 100 modern Christians do not know this and have only the flimsiest idea of what a soul actually is. For some reason I thought that the readers here would know better, but I’m finding out that’s not the case either.

De Anima is perfectly free to read online if you would like to get more acquainted with the subject.

• Thanks: Achmed E. Newman
• Replies: , ,
205. Anon[375] • Disclaimer says:

“Love thy neighbor” is such a brilliant teaching. If we just tell people to do it, I’m sure they will.

You should become a marriage counselor. When couples come in to your office, you should tell them to just love each other. They will listen to the order, flip the love switch in their brains, and all of their problems will be solved.

If only society would just follow the command of “love thy neighbor!” Why, oh why, does it not happen? It is such a good idea, such a good command!

206. Certain aspects of what we call race are integral insofar as they pertain to character, i.e. the real nature of the person. It is only character which is properly called race, but terroir and other factors introduce a quasi-racial distinction of a subordinate order.

If this is true, then there are certain character traits which are due (and exclusively due) to race, and all individuals of a particular race would exhibit those traits. In reality, though, there are no races which necessarily imply any traits; we see correlations between some character traits and race, but they are not absolute. There are Africans with high impulse control and plenty of Europeans without it. The averages are just different, and moreover, vary from trait to trait. This for me actually constitutes an extremely strong argument race is incidental and not integral.

Of course, you might believe in a different conception of race than I do; perhaps you believe that Africans with high impulse control or other “Eurasian” character traits really aren’t part of the “black race” at all. In that case I think we’re just talking past each other other, and you should probably come up with a different, more specific term for what you consider “true” race, since 99%+ of the term’s actual usage refers to what you call a “quasi-racial distinction of a subordinate order,” which is clearly incidental.

That is what’s discussed in chapter 12. Plasticity within the form is an accidental change that can be affected causally, but a formal change cannot be accidental and cannot be affected by material-mechanical means.

The microevolution vs macroevolution distinction is a pretty common argument among Young-Earth creationists (not to say I’m grouping you with them, just to say I’ve seen the argument before.) The problem is that macroevolution is a logical consequence of microevolution. You even talk about allopatric speciation yourself; extending the argument I give above, we can add one more premise:
5) What constitutes a “beneficial” trait may be different in different locations or circumstances.
And from that we can conclude that hereditary traits have the potential to drift indefinitely, or at least until the difference between the old and new environment is bridged. Intuitively there is no reason to doubt this. And the observational evidence also supports this conclusion–many species’ do not have a discrete “dividing characteristic” from their closest relative. Do wolves and coyotes, who can sometimes interbreed, share a form? What about ring species (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species)?

The only real objection to the microevolution to macroevolution transition is given here:

There are no such things as transitional forms since every form must be something entire and complete unto itself. But if Darwinism were true then there would be nothing but transitional forms with no boundaries or definition or species. Every population would simply be a “local variety” of the same generic life-stuff.

As I allude to above, even attempting to define a unique form within the clade of, say, animals, is a futile endeavor. Does the form only refer to domestic dogs? Or do dogs, wolves, and coyotes share one? What about all canidae? It’s pretty clear where I’m going with this: I object to the conclusion that “that there is only one and exactly one form inhering in every substance.”

Your rationale for this idea is in chapter 7:

… and they [forms] cannot inhere in something already existent that has form, because then they would be only accidents and not forms.

A form can be integral in regards to a particular example of a different form, but not to itself. A clock has a form, and a quartz crystal has a form. Not all clocks run by quartz crystals (hence, the crystal is accidental to the general form of a clock) but it is integral to some particular clocks because upon losing its timekeeping capability, it would cease to be a clock. Yes, the quartz is included in the greater whole of the object “clock,” when it is part of it; but that doesn’t mean a form for just quartz doesn’t exist (it clearly does.) Similarly, there are many forms integral to a particular person, but which also exist separately from him.

So its pretty clear how I think this all plays out: discarding the “one body, one form” requirement means the metaphysical objections to “transitional” forms are also gone (in fact, the distinction between “transitional” and “permanent” is completely false, since all forms are metaphysically permanent but materially transient by definition). Natural selection provides the matter necessary to make material various organisms which were conceptualized in the mind of God, and the metaphysical arguments align with observational evidence as they always ultimately should.

• Agree: Twinkie
• Replies: , , ,
207. Mgb says:

Stylistically, one thing I can say is that Eric Hotter did not write this.

208. While you think you are being impressive, you are actually coming across as annoying and lacking in substance. It’s as if you’re actually trying to complicate, rather than explain things. The only info that I obtained from the article actually came from your voluntary editors and translators in the comments.

And this was my favorite line, also not yours, but in the comments:

“Despite his circuitous disavowal, he isn’t interested in communication and elucidation so much as showing off what he thinks of as his own tragically ignored brilliance.”

This is demonstrated VERY clearly when one compares the writing of the article/book to the writing of the author’s responses. The responses are much clearer, and to the point.

I will admit that you didn’t use quite as many semi-colons per page on average as the 12 year old Anne Frank did in “her” diary, but that’s setting the bar pretty low.

209. scg16121 says:

I suspect the reason why some people don’t just get to the point and say what they want to say is that they secretly believe that it won’t be good enough or seem smart enough or impressive enough. So they meander and throw a storm of words at the subject, trying to seem smart and erudite and thoughtful and deep.

210. Menes says:

I suspect his reaction would be closer to that of the Dalai Lama: “Europe belongs to the Europeans.”

Did he say that with a twinkle in his eyes? If so, he was slyly promoting the thesis that Europeans should go back to Europe. In other words they should leave the American Continent to its aboriginal peoples who are racially related to North Asians, including Tibetans such as himself: America belongs to the Native Americans….

211. Twinkie says:

You should have written this essay. It’d be 20% of the length, cogent, and contained actual scientific arguments.

• Replies:
212. MBlanc46 says:

It’s pretty much the view of all empiricists and most philosophers of the Anglo-American tradition. Few such folks could be considered Spinozists by any stretch of the imagination. (I tend to prefer Leibniz, but for reasons not pertinent to this point.) The complete failure of rationalists to give any sort of operational definition of “essence” after 2500 years points to the bankruptcy of the view. You can’t get away with that sort of thing in mathematics. If one want to assert the existence of an entity in a proof, you have to provide an existence proof. Still waiting on the existence proof for “essences”. As far as constructing nature out of sensation, Kant pretty much nailed it in 1781.

213. Menes says:

once upon a time, a free and independent black ruled Haiti showed solidarity and offered help to white nationalists fighting to free themselves from Muslim enslavers and oppressors

They were Greek nationalists not ‘white nationalist’. Many ‘white nationalists’ don’t even see greeks as white.

https://neoskosmos.com/en/29226/haiti-and-the-greek-revolution/

contrary to common belief, which generally holds that it was the Great Powers of the day that first recognised Greece’s independence, guaranteed it and thus gave themselves the right to meddle in its internal affairs, it was in fact the recently liberated Haiti that has this honour.

Rather than being a failed state, Haiti in the early nineteenth century was widely considered to be an innovative state of great promise. After a long and bloody conflict, African slaves had managed to overthrow their French overlords in 1804 and established a state where, its founders believed, equality and justice would reign.

It is worthwhile observing at this point that revolutionary Haiti, like its neighbour Cuba over a century and a half later, was devoted to exporting its revolution, its first president, Petion, lending support to South American liberator Bolivar and the liberators of Venezuela and Colombia, and we could possibly view Boyer’s letter in this context: as an attempt to at least claim some sort of moral ‘ownership’ over the Greek revolution, in the hope of the future establishment mutually beneficial ties.

• Replies:
214. Twinkie says:

Here’s a comic book version:

(This is not real, but made up.)

• LOL: The Alarmist, Bert
215. Menes says:

So the NIQ estimates you give are an average of QNW and SAS. The DR has an oddly low SAS measurement (compared to the other IQ estimates for it), while Haiti has none at all.

What’s odd is your petty nitpicking. You got a problem with the latest and greatest IQ ranking? Take it up with HBD icons Lynn and Becker. I used National IQ (NIQ) because that’s what the table uses. It is silly of you to question that.

I would have preferred to disregard SAS because it is not technically an IQ test, and used QNW alone instead because it is. Which would have actually made my point even better because it ranks Bermuda and Barbados above Italy and Ireland; and Haiti above Greece:

Bermuda (93.2)
Russia (93.2)
Spain (92.3)
Italy (91.5)
Ireland (90.0)
Haiti (88.6)
Ukraine (88.6)
Serbia (87.9)
Greece (86.4)

On the other hand using QNW instead of NIQ would have made Dominican Republic’s IQ 0.6 points higher than Haiti’s, instead of 6.5 points lower.

• Replies:
216. I do not think that you are being fully honest about your faith, identity as well as prevailing Jewish attitudes concerning gentiles.

As for racial matters, Israel famously ‘rescued’ black Jews from Ethiopia via two separate airlifts; one in the 80’s and another in the early 90’s. Many observers however believe that this widely-publicized mission was done in part for political purposes since the UN had, one decade earlier, ‘infamously’ (but appropriately) equated Zionism with racism. The resounding, 1975, UN vote about Zionism put Israel in the same league as ‘white, Apartheid’ South Africa, which was later dismantled.

What’s an ambitious, needy (and very Jewish) ‘liberal democracy’ to do?

Answer: Cook up a spectacular crusade that would repudiate the widespread and accurate (but dangerous) belief that Jewishness-supremacy-Israel are three peas in an ethnocentric pod.

Solution: ‘Rescue’ Ethiopia’s black Jews from anti-Semitic black Africans!

Well, it looked good on paper (newspaper, that is.)

Indeed, since this glorious, Israeli ‘rescue mission’, the prized, black, sub-Saharan Jews from Ethiopia have ended up being more impoverished, more unemployed, and more invisible in Israel than blacks in America’s racist, deep south. How could this possibly be?

Might dominant Jewish/Israeli attitudes about race/ancestry have more than a little to do with this unhappy situation?

Or does Israel really love its schvartzes?

Evidence suggests that Jewish/Israeli racism runs deep. As every Israeli Arab has come to realize, segregation is a core Zionist value. This cannot be denied (not honestly anyway.) The ‘black Jewish’ experience (not to mention the Arab/Israeli experience) inside the glorious, Jewish state provides all the evidence. Israel is still eating away at historic Palestine. For decades. Is the suffering not horrific? Is the injustice not grave? Is America’s (mainstream) silence not deafening?

As for black Jews in Israel, why are there are still no ‘affirmative action’ programs in place to alleviate their social isolation and economic misery?

After all, aren’t Jews the ‘most liberal’ people in the world? This is what they advertise about themselves.

Yet an Israeli hospital was caught dumping the blood of (black) Israeli Jews rather than use it to save (white) Jewish lives.

Later, black Jewish women were sterilized without their consent.

Curious, no?

Is there no deeper meaning in all this?

Or are Jews blameless?

Here’s a penetrating review of a seminal book on the subject of deceptive, Jewish-lead intellectual movements and their unhappy impact on non-Jews.

Finally, it’s worth noting that, despite the Jewish community’s alleged embrace of progressive, ‘democratic values’, there are no Israeli films/TV which glamorize black/white Jewish miscegenation, nor are there any Israeli films that celebrate Arab/Jewish romance–even though Hollywood Jews churn out this sort of race propaganda (targeting the goyim) here in the US each and every day.

Do I smell Jewish hypocrisy?

Dishonesty?

• Replies: ,
217. The basic point of this essay

Oops, didn’t see that bit! :p I thought that would be a bit unlike you to go HBD! Apologies 🙂

What about Maimonides claiming blacks and Asiatics as being incapable of spiritual progress? That seems fairly close hitting, at least for a millennium ago..

• Replies:
218. utu says:

Do I smell Jewish hypocrisy? – Now even a hypocrisy. To be hypocritical you have to have some standards that you have difficulty to uphold so you cover it up and pay lip service to the standard and only then the saying “hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue” applies. Judaism had no such standard. As you correctly observed everything was made belief: Their feigning the adoption of the standard I n order to deceive, then acting on it in order to deceive. Even their hypocrisy is a sham. They used falashas Jews strictly instrumentally to deceive the world.

Why Ethiopian Jews Face Increasing Discrimination and Police Brutality in Israel
https://www.newsweek.com/2016/10/07/why-ethiopian-jews-israel-face-discrimination-racism-police-brutality-502697.html

The plight of Ethiopian Jews in Israel
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32813056

• Agree: V. K. Ovelund
219. No logical cohesive theory was put forth by the author! HBD is science not religion or philosophy! Religion and philosophy are not VERIFIABLE! Your comment is as meaningless and pointless as the article! If you are not going to deal with HBD in strictly scientific terms you are not to be taken seriously!

220. dfordoom says: • Website

No, my friend. Bring back discrimination. It’s coming back anyway…just wait a little longer.

My point is that this time it’s whites and Christians who are going to be on the receiving end. Which is why I think it’s a poor strategy.

221. When whites, or yellas for that matter, get drunk, do they lose their inhibitions and impulse control and hence become blacks? Or are blacks just the equivalent of white drunks?

222. Anonymous[293] • Disclaimer says:

And at 22,600 words it should have a one-paragraph precis at the beginning. This reminds me of the old remark by an author to a harried editor: “I didn’t have time to write 1,000 words so I wrote 10,000.” AE should have returned it to ID and told him to cut it down to 700 words, standard newspaper column length.

• Replies:
223. mikemikev says:

Race and other taxonomies refer to relationships between entities and don’t have an existence or essence.

224. Twinkie says:

There are probably some drugs that would help me understand this a lot better

Ritalin?

Just kidding.

For those of you who don’t get it, Ritalin is sometimes used to treat narcolepsy (and ADHD).

225. Malenfant says:

As good old Schopenhauer once said:

There is nothing an author should guard against more than the apparent endeavor to show more intellect than he has; because this rouses the suspicion in the reader that he has very little, since a man always affects something, be its nature what it may, that he does not really possess. And this is why it is praise to an author to call him naïve, for it signifies that he may show himself as he is. In general, naïveté attracts, while anything that is unnatural everywhere repels. We also find that every true thinker endeavors to express his thoughts as purely, clearly, definitely, and concisely as ever possible. This is why simplicity has always been looked upon as a token, not only of truth, but also of genius. Style receives its beauty from the thought expressed, while with those writers who only pretend to think it is their thoughts that are said to be fine because of their style. Style is merely the silhouette of thought; and to write in a vague or bad style means a stupid or confused mind.

If nothing else, “Intelligent Dasein” (hah!) sure writes in a vague and bad style. (And turgid, overwrought, archaic, pretentious, and so forth.)

ID: Trim those 22,000 words down to 2,000, and aim for clarity.

226. Twinkie says:

That said, I think a lot of the griping is from habitual commenters who are envious that you got to play an inning in the majors.

I really enjoy A.E.’s blog and I appreciate Unz for this site, but this is hardly “the majors.” And if anyone was griping, it was I.D. who grumbled about other commenters getting a star before their names.

I will give I.D. this – the opinions in the comment section are usually quite cantankerously heterodox, but he seems to have united most of the commenters… into nearly universally panning his pretentiously archaic-sounding, self-absorbed, and interminably verbose philosophical manifesto.

Modern P.R. professionals seem to say there is no such thing as bad publicity, so perhaps Unz should give I.D. a blog of his own.

• Replies:
227. This is not an argument. Just a rhetorical excess.

• Replies:
228. This is written in the style that confused the West for millennia. Using abstractions built on other abstracts and a base of references to other conceptions of other authors (as if their work and themes could be neatly packaged in a simple sentence or two), this article provides zero in value. It is fluff, puffery, verbose chiffon. It is useless, and therefore a waste of time.

The West got derailed a long time ago by its pretentious and abstract philosophers who spilled much ink and attempted to penetrate reality and expose it by spending total time hunched over a desk.

Contrast this nonsense with the Buddha,the ONE who observed the world as a photo-scientist through INDUCTION AND THE SPECIFIC, tying them together with analogy and parallels in the mult-faceted and multi-layered world. The One sought the truth, this Other intends to impose and confuse.

This piece is a marvel of circular motion, dead end thought alleys, and as attractive as an abstract painting with splashes of color, iridescent, but devoid of form and concrete, empirical roots.

I’ll take Rushton and direct observation, thank you. As well as MY OWN observations and correlations.

• Replies:
229. Twinkie says:

What about Maimonides claiming blacks and Asiatics as being incapable of spiritual progress? That seems fairly close hitting, at least for a millennium ago..

Well, I.D. did write in a comment some time ago that nonwhites (lumping Africans with Koreans of all people) don’t have the evangelical preparation to receive and understand genuine Christianity (instead of, say, witch doctor Christianity), so Catholic evangelizing efforts should stop.

This should make very clear for everyone that he does not speak for Catholicism, “Trad” or otherwise.

230. Hegar says:

“One thing he said that none have addressed is that evolutionists, Darwinists, in claiming that change takes place at the genetic level, have simply pushed the issue one layer deeper. ID points out that genes themselves are physical, are subject to physical laws. How then can they be the vehicle through which profound transformations which transcend mere mechanical replication take place?”

“simply pushed the issue one layer deeper”

Nice try.

Genes exist in the physical world, therefore they can’t change! Fantastic deduction. Just what I would expect from a religious fanatic who will lie as much as needed to deny evolution. But please, go ahead. Tell us how the world was created by magic a few thousand years ago, and will soon end by more magic that will reward you while torturing the people you don’t like. That claim surely has more proof to support it! After all, it’s what a bunch of fanatic Jews wrote to each other when they had zero knowledge of science or what the world looked like, so it must be true.

Sad to be you and ignore the science that underpins our medical research. Which you know nothing about.

• Replies: ,
231. Hegar says:

A black man who takes up the Jewish faith is 100% equal to any other Jew – in fact, as a convert he is to be treated with special respect.

You are lying to present your Judaism in a better light. Judaism is about the Jewish race being “chosen” by God. It is not “anyone who claims to be chosen by God is also chosen by God!”

You write these things for the cattle to read, and then say another thing in private. Jewish magazines that non-Jews are not supposed to read are clear on how they are “chosen” to control the world because your tribal god Yahweh said so. While for most Jews today this is just a feel-good story you use to flatter yourselves, Orthodox Jews are the fanatics who actually still believe this to be literally true, and Jew magazines don’t condemn them for it. The Orthodox fanatics are instead catered to, as they uphold the supremacist thinking in its purest form.

232. Peter Frost says: • Website

It is a matter of de fide teaching that the deposit of faith was completed and sealed with the death of the last Apostle. There is no public revelation after that.

In Catholicism, the Bible is only one source of authority. The other two are the magisterium and “private” revelations that have been recognized by the authority of the Church.

Protestants claim the Bible is the only rule of faith, meaning that it contains all of the material one needs for theology and that this material is sufficiently clear that one does not need apostolic tradition or the Church’s magisterium (teaching authority) to help one understand it. In the Protestant view, the whole of Christian truth is found within the Bible’s pages. Anything extraneous to the Bible is simply non-authoritative, unnecessary, or wrong—and may well hinder one in coming to God.

Catholics, on the other hand, recognize that the Bible does not endorse this view and that, in fact, it is repudiated in Scripture. The true “rule of faith”—as expressed in the Bible itself—is Scripture plus apostolic tradition, as manifested in the living teaching authority of the Catholic Church, to which were entrusted the oral teachings of Jesus and the apostles, along with the authority to interpret Scripture correctly.

In the Second Vatican Council’s document on divine revelation, Dei Verbum (Latin: “The Word of God”), the relationship between Tradition and Scripture is explained: “Hence there exists a close connection and communication between sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit. To the successors of the apostles, sacred Tradition hands on in its full purity God’s word, which was entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit.

“Thus, by the light of the Spirit of truth, these successors can in their preaching preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known. Consequently it is not from sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same devotion and reverence.”

Keep in mind my original point. Circumstances change, and the Bible is not a sufficient source of authority to deal with new circumstances. This is a point on which Catholics and Protestants differ.

If you would bother to consult your own source, you would see that St. Thomas was not “saying” that. He was mentioning that proposition only to refute it.

The same point is made in the two other quotes from Saint Thomas Aquinas. Were those, too, taken out of context?

In the quote from Sum. Th. I, Q. cxviii, Aquinas is not refuting the heritability of mental characteristics. He is simply arguing over the mechanism of this heritability.

• Agree: Bardon Kaldian
• Replies:
233. You are a liar and a fraud. Get out of here.

• Agree: Zarathustra
• Replies: ,
234. Talha says:

Well…that certainly escalated quickly!

Peace.

• LOL: Bardon Kaldian
235. I’ll wager that you didn’t bother to read his entire essay, else you would have addressed his criticism of the very points you raise. And if you have (read it), then critique it! Right now! Put up your dukes.

He’s saying (among other things) that an assemblage of chemicals (DNA) cannot contain the actual process of development from acorn to oak, from egg to chicken; subjects which while differing dramatically in phenotype, are genetically identical.

• Replies:
236. mikemikev says:

Obviously. So what?

237. utu says:

“Polygenism was heavily criticized in the early 20th century Roman Catholic Church, and especially by Pope Pius XII in the encyclical Humani generis (1950), on the grounds that polygenism is incompatible with the doctrine of Original Sin.” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygenism

“Pre-Adamism claims there were already races of humans living before the creation of Adam. It traces back to Isaac La Peyrère in the 17th century.” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_La_Peyrère

Isaac La Peyrère: La Peyrère met with Menasseh Ben Israel, who was later invited by Oliver Cromwell’s government to England to negotiate the readmission of Jews to that country. Menasseh became a convert to La Peyrère’s belief that the coming of the Jewish Messiah was imminent. La Peyrère also argued that the Messiah would join with the king of France (that is, the Prince of Condé, not Louis XIV of France) to liberate the Holy Land, rebuild the Temple and set up a world government of the Messiah with the king of France acting as regent. It has since emerged that, in fact: “Condé, Cromwell and Christina were negotiating to create a theological-political world state, involving overthrowing the Catholic king of France, among other things”

238. You are right that it is not an argument. I’m just questioning the perspective.

If spider monkeys thought spider monkeys were special among all animals, we wouldn’t take their high self opinion for granted.

Do you have an outside opinion? Obviously not. Humans think they are special among all the animals because humans are impressed with the human things humans do. But do you think aardvarks are impressed by human things, or are they more concerned with aardvark things?

It’s an observation not an argument. You cannot escape implicit bias here. Of course humans think humans are god’s gift to the universe, what else would they think? Whether or not it were true?

If a journalist thinks the free press is the foundation of republican governance, well of course, what else would journalists think? If scientists think science is a candle in a demon haunted world, what else would they think?

I just don’t think it amounts to logical proof that humans are better than everything else just because they think they are. Of course they do. Lacks outside perspective. They may or may not be, but I am not taking their word for it.

• Replies:
239. I really enjoy A.E.’s blog and I appreciate Unz for this site, but this is hardly “the majors.”

Unz.com is the majors for those of us who read and comment here daily. I don’t spend as much time on any other blog or site as I do here. Maybe you’re different.

240. AaronB says:

Well, Israel was already an extremely brown country well before the rescue of the Ethiopians.

Around 60% of the Jewish population are from Arab lands, many of them extremely dark like the Yemenis. And there are Circassians, Druze, Christians, and other minorities who serve in the Army and are well integrated and loyal.

Even Israeli Arabs, who have generally been less than loyal, have many people who volunteer to serve in the Army despite not being required to – there are entire Army units made of Arab Muslims who guard Jewish villages in Judea and Samaria. And Israel’s Arabs fiercely objected to being included in the proposed Palestinian state – I guess they really love their apartheid.

This why despite your best efforts, labels like apartheid never stuck. It is simply so obviously preposterous if you spend one minute in Israel. It is one of the most multi-racial places in the world, where Jews from India, China, Ethiopia, Europe, and the Arab lands mix. And that is why the ridiculous charge that Jews favor multi-racial societies for others but not themselves is similarly absurd. Judaism quite simply does not discriminate based on race.

So there was zero need to bring Ethiopians into Israel. Plus, uf Israelis were truly racist, then bringing in blacks as fig leaf would have seemed like a horrific idea, not worth it – true racists who hate blacks do not think that way.

And again, it is simply a fact that authoritatively Judaism welcomes black converts and there have been many such.

Now, obviously and of course there have been incidents of racism in Israel, not just against blacks but even again at Jews from Arab lands. There has even been institutional racism in the early years of the state. Thank God this is changing and getting better. Human beings are human beings.

Ethiopians are far from invisible in Israel. They often serve in elite units in the Army and you will see them everywhere. On the Conan O’brien show when he visits the Tel Aviv HQ of Waze, there is a very nice black Israeli there who he interacts with.

There are tons of affirmative action programs in Israel! Interestingly, many of them benefit Israeli Arabs (because Israel is such an apartheid state). Israel in general is a welfare state.

As for movies or books that feature racially mixed couples, there are tons. Its just s non issue – the brown population has been mixing with the European population for decades. A brown Jew from Arab lands together with a blond European Jew is extremely common in Israel. Go watch some Israeli shoes on Netflix or Amazon – you will see it everywhere.

As for Ethiopian girls, have you seen them? They are beautiful! I am sure any European Jew would be happy to be with one.

Yes, there is racism in Israel, and yes, there is no anti-white attitudes like there are now in the West – but that cones from Enlightenment European culture, and is a European white pathology that developed partially as a Romantic reaction to the perceived soullessness of European technological society.

Judaism does not have these particular pathologies – although ordinary human racism of course does exist.

• Replies:
241. I think you would agree than an E.T. from Alpha Centauri, who might, by chance, visit the earth for some purpose (sex tourism with lizards?) in her spaceship, would- never mind her sexual fetish for lizard males- find humans to be more advanced technologically, mentally, socially, …

Any intelligent species would find humans to be, say- “more abundant in everything that gives power & freedom, more complex & capable of creating more rich life not already found in the nature”. Animals are, more or less, “mechanical”; their lives are narrow & dreary routine by our standards.

And we are those who set the standards.

And any intelligent being would come to the conclusion we are the “highest” beings on this planet- never mind how we came into being. One may have religious or scientistic approach, but to aver, seriously, that lobsters, crocs, dolphins, lions or chimps are in any way comparable to us is simply ludicrous.

It is not even worth discussing.

• Disagree: AaronB
• Replies: ,
242. jamie b. says:

…every living thing has a soul…

At what grades of complexity? Bacteria? Semi-autonomous organelles? Ribosomes? Viral particles? Prions?

…that’s why it cannot be educed from nonliving matter.

What happens when a researcher disassembles and then reassembles a bacterium? Does the bacterial soul disappear and then reappear? At what point in the reassembly would this happen, and how would we ‘know’?

How about we disassemble four bacteria, and use those same macromolecules to assemble three bacteria? Have their souls been merged or jumbled in some way?

How about we disassemble four bacteria, and use those same macromolecules to assemble five bacteria? Have we created a new soul, or would one of these be a zombie bacterium? Which one, and how would we ‘know’?

• Replies:
243. AaronB says:

Well, compared to what is being offered here I definitely find HBD more palatable.

Platonic Racism, or Platonic Nordicism, is an extreme level of racism that simply has not occurred to me as possible until now. I think ID is offering something genuinely new – the line of development towards racism culminates here. It can go no further.

The most extreme form of racism the world has known so far, the Hindu caste system, only pertained to the world of illusory appearances – ultimately, all is One, and race is unreal. We are all the One, Brahmin and untouchable alike.

So metaphysically, there was no race – race was a feature of the physical world, which wasn’t real.

In general, you can plot one’s position on race on a line with two extreme poles, from blank statism to Platonic Racism, based on how immutable and hard wired you think racial traits are.

I don’t think Platonic Racism is anti-HBD on this plot – it is just further along on the immutable line. At the end of the line, actually.

HBD is somewhere towards one extreme, but there are “soft” forms of HBD which I think very few non-ideologues would object to.

My objection has always been to “hard” HBD. I always accepted that there are inherited differences in races to some degree. I only insisted that 1) a huge amount of behavior and what we call “ability” is environmental and subject to things like motivation and history 2) races change character with relative frequency.

The “apathetic” Oriental of yesterday becomes the hard driven school kid of today, in response to environment. The literary anti-technology culture of China yesterday morphs into the Chinese focus on STEM today in response to environment. The dreamy and poetic German become the brutal warrior within a generation later. The weak ghetto Jew become the Israeli soldier within a generation. The Briton who ruled the world with a steely gaze becomes the weak man afraid to assert himself.

And so on and so forth.

So there are versions of HBD I can accept – but in practice , whatever they say, most people who believe in HBD believe in “hard” HBD, and will explain today’s racial behavior as being forershadowed thousands of years ago – whereas I think the evidence indicates a race or ethnic group can change dramatically in a few hundred years.

And they think manifested ability and behavior are almost entirely innate and not affected by motivation or environment etc – a position absurd on the face of it.

• Replies: ,
244. res says:

In reality, though, there are no races which necessarily imply any traits; we see correlations between some character traits and race, but they are not absolute. There are Africans with high impulse control and plenty of Europeans without it. The averages are just different, and moreover, vary from trait to trait. This for me actually constitutes an extremely strong argument race is incidental and not integral.

By this argument race might not be integral to the individual, but do you disagree that is integral to the respective groups and the societies they build?

Those trait averages matter in the real world.

• Replies:
245. jamie b. says:

…dolphins…

The issue of cetacean intelligence, language, and culture is not settled.

…an E.T. from Alpha Centauri …in her spaceship…

IOW a being that already resembles us in important technological/cultural ways. A different sort of being might admire cetaceans for their poetry, or ants for their selfless social organization, or wheat and rice for their ability to domesticate apes, or something even far weirder.

And we are those who set the standards.

Exactly. Humans are indeed (probably) the smartest beings on this planet. All the other standards by which you prefer to judge humans result from this one fact. All these unique traits result from our big brains. And that in turn is a quantitative difference.

• Replies:
246. Nice metaphysical critique of HBD. Another question to explore: Does God/Darwin/nature favor uniformity or diversity? Both neo-Darwinians and (ironically) HBDers err on the side of uniformity. Taking Dawkins to an extreme, the fittest selfish gene should have exterminated all its competitors long ago, so there should be only one gene left in all of existence. Obviously it doesn’t work that way, not even close. Why not? Multilevel selection/group selection seem to be “selecting” for ever-more-intricate diversity, at every level. Individual selection is only a minuscule fraction of the larger story. Here is a good introduction to the concept: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018E6TUIO/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i2

An HBD advocate who longs for the uniformity, of say, an all-white America, might claim this would somehow advance the cause of biological diversity. But great human diversity can symbiotically coexist within a very limited geographical space. We don’t need to eradicate human diversity from whole continents to save human diversity! The American “melting pot” like European nationalism is an outlier. Throughout much of history, in many places (notably in the Islamic world) people have maintained their own genetic and linguistic identity, right next door to their wildly different neighbors, in side-by-side neighborhoods of cities, or contiguous cantons of countryside. This human diversity reaches its extreme in places like the mountains of the Maghreb, the Levant, the Caucasus, etc. But even Ottoman cities were mozaics of neighborhoods that preserved their inhabitants’ genetic/linguistic/cultural identities.

Voluntary association in service to ethnic diversity trumps the “melting pot,” just as voluntary group segregation through making ones own language difficult for outsiders to understand fuels linguistic diversity, as Steiner explains in After Babel. So HBD advocates should stop dreaming of continental ethnic cleansings, and relax and enjoy and encourage the diversity that seems to be an inexorable law of God/nature.

247. You seem confused.

All you are pointing out is that a child’s genes ensure that the child is well suited to it’s environment.

Some of what it needs is inbuilt but some of it has to be learned.

The genome is constantly being tuned around what can be inbuilt and what must be learned.

And different races have largely settled on different choices around where the line is drawn.

• Replies:
248. res says:

What’s odd is your petty nitpicking.

My argument was clear. And it was not petty nitpicking. Please take your selective and misleading use of data elsewhere.

Look at the totality of the IQ results in Becker’s spreadsheet and don’t just pick the one with the results you like.

You have looked at Becker’s spreadsheet, right? That is kind of the price of admission for me to take you seriously in a conversation about national IQs.

Let’s take Barbados as an example. You quote 91.7 which is an accurate representation of what Becker himself found, but is very much at odds with all of the other measurements (both L&V values as well as Rinderman) which are between 78 and 80.

Haiti is another good example. Becker himself gave values from 78.42 – 88.6 (he would probably consider the 88.60 the best because of the sample size and data quality weighting of QNW) while the L&V and Rindermann numbers vary from 63.22 (!) to 72.

Bermuda, on the other hand, is a good example for your case given the consistency of the values (89.47 to 93.37).

On the other hand using QNW instead of NIQ would have made Dominican Republic’s IQ 0.6 points higher than Haiti’s, instead of 6.5 points lower.

Exactly. Which would make the leadoff statement in your comment: “But the national IQ of Haiti (88.6) is higher than the national IQ of the Dominican Republic (82.1)” wrong. Which was my point.

P.S. In Becker’s spreadsheet the FAV sheet gives all of the estimates for each country. But for a deeper look it is good to check the REC sheet which contains the individual study results used in Becker’s estimates. What we see there is that there are only two studies given for Haiti
– A 1975 study in French of an experimental bilingual program which found an IQ of 96.85
– A 1985 study in English which found an IQ of 60.

Quite the difference. Perhaps we should take a closer look at the studies? Or would that also be nitpicking? Here are links to the two studies:
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED111211

I’ll focus on the former (the study in French). Some things jump out at me. The two studies have almost identical corrected raw scores (column AF). The difference between the IQs is almost entirely from the test score conversion used (CPM for 1985, SPM for 1975, from column S).

Looking at the 1975 abstract we see that the study was done on 6 year old children. The Raven’s CPM is specifically designed for 5-11 year old children and other low ability groups. The SPM is not even normed down to age 6. See the NORM sheet; the SPM goes down to age 6.5 while the CPM covers 4.5 to 11.5.

So my bet is one of two things (probably 2) is going on with that study entry in Becker’s spreadsheet.
1. The bilingual program was extremely selective.
2. The test used really was the CPM and should be interpreted as such.

Where things get even more interesting is to note that the 1.3.3 spreadsheet corrected errors in the entry for the 1985 study. Also notice the estimates of 67 and 68 for Haiti IQ further down in the page (search for Haiti).
https://viewoniq.org/

If I am right, Becker’s estimate of Haiti’s IQ is a gross overestimate.

P.P.S. Does anyone know why Becker does not include estimates from Malloy (2013-2014) in his spreadsheet? He mentions them at the link just above.
https://humanvarieties.org/?s=HVGIQ

• Replies: ,
249. I think we are closer to agreement than it may seem.

The irresponsible will be irresponsible. The irresponsible and less intelligent, on average, start breeding much younger and breed more often. This fact persists with or without socialism. Socialism however does make the problem dramatically worse.

The forms of socialism you mention encourage and effectively subsidize irresponsibility at the expense of those who are more conscientious and prudent. As you say “socialism itself encourages fertility in the irresponsible and dampens fertility in the responsible” .

This is a matter of bad policy, something at which “government” increasingly excels.

I see Socialism as an artificial selection that selects for irresponsibility. With greater fertility in general, the situation gets worse

I couldn’t agree more. Having large numbers of irresponsible unintelligent people breeding recklessly does compound the problem geometrically.

Your comment reminds me of this passage from Darwin’s Descent of Man…

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. The aid we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.

No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.

At this time I really see no practical solution to the problem as there is no political or social will to change the course society has apparently chosen. The children of the future will enjoy lower IQ’s, less health and ever greater dependence on “government” from cradle to grave. We’ve already reached a point where 20% of American school age children are learning disabled. By some estimates half the kids in America will be born “on the spectrum” by 2025 or 2030.

There is nothing new about the most intelligent being held back by the rest of society…

https://www.unz.com/akarlin/stupid-people/

http://polymatharchives.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-inappropriately-excluded.html

But in an overcrowded, dysgenic world of 7.8 billion the numerous problems caused by this dynamic become more substantial. Things will get very interesting when the oceans run out of seafood. Fortunately locusts are an abundant source of protein.

It is understandable that the responsible among us will throw up their hands and say “fuck it!”

And why wouldn’t they. No one like being penalized for responsible behavior.

The only option I see at this time is to do our best to keep Big Gov’s filthy hands out of our pockets. Do what you can to be independent. Collect gold, silver, platinum, brass and lead. Buy agricultural land away from the large urban centers. Get your garden planted and save seeds. Grow some chickens, goats or cows if that’s your thing. Gather up the tools and infrastructure you’ll need for the future. Stay healthy and well rested. Have as much fun as you can.

May you and your family forever have the best of luck kind sir.

I wish I had better solutions to the formidable problems I anticipate and that we both seem powerless to change.

I hope you have a great day Achmed.

• Replies:
250. It’s pretty clear where I’m going with this: I object to the conclusion that “that there is only one and exactly one form inhering in every substance.”

Before I say anything else, I just want to thank you for reading, thank you for being charitable in your responses, and thank you for putting all the effort you did into this reply.

However, I cannot follow you where you are going. We (or at least I) cannot object to there being only one form adhering in a substance. I’m afraid that St. Thomas was most insistent upon this being the case. That is why I belabored point. As a Catholic I have to accept what follows from that, even though in doing so I was required to discard the Bonaventurian/Schopenhaurian vision, which was otherwise most congenial to my tastes.

• Replies:
251. Art says:

You seem confused.

I simply said that the “blank slate” advocates and the “biological automaton” advocates are extremes that do not ring true to humanity. A golden mean combination of the two is reality.

252. Wow . . .

There is revelation today. However, no revelation is going to contradict the Gospels and the the Apostles who never contradict the Christ in gospels.

The differences between being Catholic rests on the authority placed on scripture in as one made to an individual directly. The relationship is not in the Church, or any hierarchy other than Father son and Holy spirit. In otherwords, absolution for sin and from — comes directly from Christ as a personal one on one relationship.

The Holy spirit and alive and indwelling does reveal, does prophecize . . perform miracles

1 Corinthians 12:8-10

“1 Corinthians 12:8-10 8For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; 9To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; 10To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues:”

That the Holy Spirit is operates among the faithful fully as individuals within the order of the Church as understood in scripture.
———————————–

Another key difference is the established structure — Neither Christ nor the Apostles ever, ever acknowledge a papacy and certainly nothing under the headship of Peter. The Peter headship is a misinterpretation of Peter’s confession,. In that confession there are two terms for Rock. And excuse I always get these incorrect.

Petra and petros

Christ says and I tell you, you are Petros (small stone, stone that rolls, stone of rock that shifts) and it is upon this petras (sold rock, large rock or stone, foundation of a mountain, etc) that I will build my church.

And that foundation or petras is Peter’s confession; “You are the Christ, son of the living God” Without in any manner diminishing the value of Peter the Apostle — the Church was built on Peter’s confession — Christ Son of the living God.

Now I am very fond of the papacy and it value as a symbolic stand of faith. I can certainly accept the Pope as head pastor — but nothing can contradict Christ and I have yet to see anything that challenges the authority of the Apostles over the papacy.

However as a beacon stand against the onslot of immorality — the Catholic faith has been and will continue to be a a bulwark barrier — unless her leaders abandon the core of faith — Christ and the Apostles.

253. These questions, one and all, have been addressed in the essay, which apparently you have not read.

• Replies:
254. Please read Chapter 6 of the essay, which discusses Young Earth creationism.

255. Menes says:

Which would make the leadoff statement in your comment: “But the national IQ of Haiti (88.6) is higher than the national IQ of the Dominican Republic (82.1)” wrong. Which was my point.

Are you freaking retarded or what? That is exactly the conclusion of this latest HBD sanctioned table of national IQs whose data I used. How could I be wrong when I correctly quoted the data from that table? Get outta here and go argue with the authorities on IQ, they are on your side.

If I am right, Becker’s estimate of Haiti’s IQ is a gross overestimate.

You can’t even think logically, how could you possibly be right?

Becker’s IQ table is better than the previous estimates of Lynn that are outdated. Why do you still take those older estimates at face value and reject the latest ones which are backed by Lynn himself? The answer is obvious: you are an irrational intellectually dishonest person.

• Replies:
256. Wherever he got to play, he lost

257. Then you would not have the ridiculously contrived maritime metaphor in the first paragraph:

This one small barque, this one hull in which to collect my wares, this one mast from which to fly a flag, is a welcome relief from thrashing about in the troubled waters of the comments section; and for the transport of cargo so rare and easily damaged as new paradigms, it is only fitting that a proper conveyance be brought in to help shield it from the impertinent spray.

Cicero is turning in his grave.

Whoever thinks something so egotistic and bloated can have value has too much time to spend with charlatans.

This piece does a disservice to this site and occupies space that could be alloted to better thinkoing and writing.

• Replies:
258. Dude, nice try, but no one believes you, except maybe some Mossad sockpuppet lurking on the site. That’s the price you pay for ceaseless decades of Holocaust propaganda and other propaganda by the legion of Jews who precede you. The remorseless Jewish deconstruction of Western nations does not inspire trust. No one believes you now.

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging? But no, you won’t stop, will you? Because according to Jews, goyisch antipathy toward Jews must always, by definition, be some Gentile’s fault.

• Replies:
259. I’ve got no problem with any of that, of course, Adam, and agree wholeheartedly. Your Darwin quote is basically saying that civilization itself is dysgenic, in that it keeps people from getting stronger and stronger against nature. We don’t want to live as savage, so we are stuck getting naturally weaker with respect to nature, but generally stronger artificially against it.

Thank you for the anti-government and prepper talk. I walk some of that walk now, but the getting “off the grid” part is something that is hard to get the family behind.

Have a good evening, Adam- see you on PS.

260. Human consciousness is not completely the product of an evolved brain. Brain just refracts real human being’s consciousness which naturally exists, in much expanded manner, independently of human brain which works, metaphorically, as a sort of prism, during human life in the 3+1 dimensional world.

In short- normal human self is just a fraction of the essential self.

But, this is beyond the topic….

• Replies:
261. By this argument race might not be integral to the individual, but do you disagree that is integral to the respective groups and the societies they build?

No. Caucasians are clearly integral to Western Civilization, and Asians integral to Chinese Civilization.

However, since particular civilizations are not integral to the existence of the human soul (e.g., China could hypothetically not exist, and there would still humans), this doesn’t imply that race is integral to humanity.

• Replies:
262. Thanks for the kind words. But in ID’s defense, writing about abstract metaphysics is hard. His intro is pretty excessive and unnecessarily long, but in later chapters he’s just trying to be super careful.

Unz probably isn’t the place for it unfortunately.

• Replies:
263. AaronB says:

You’re barking up the wrong tree.

I have no problem with white Western nations and am an admirer of Western culture. I have no antipathy to goyim.

The project to deconstruct Western nations was created by white people – its twin roots are the Enlightenment, which opposes emotional-based identity in favor of action based entirely on rational considerations, and the Romantic Reaction, which sees the West as having pioneered a materialist, mechanistic civilization that is soulless, and thus needs to be destroyed.

Even Intelligent Dasein, a reactionary Romantic, said in a comment on another thread that the West is killing white people.

The Jews who joined this project of deconstructing the West were assimilated Jews who had assimilated the cultural attitudes of progressive whites.

Judaism believes each nation has its place and is legitimate. Israelis like Europe and travel there extensively.

264. vinteuil says:

OK, for the first couple of paragraphs, I thought this might be worth the reading & the replying – but then things started going pretty crazy, so I scrolled down & soon came across this:

If this seems to run counter to a great deal of ostensibly “Christian” sermonizing that has occurred since the dawn of the revolutionary age and which picked up steam especially during the great social crusades of the 19th and 20th centuries, it is only because this coincides with the time when real Christianity was being steadily subverted, bastardized, and lost in favor of the “social gospel.” This social gospel is not an outgrowth of Christianity at all but of Western civilization. It is the West in its late, modern, declining form. It is the grandchild not of Christianity but of counterpoint, chamber music, Cartesianism, and the categorical imperative. An erudite grievance studies graduate paper is a derivative product precisely in the same vein as a Schubert sonata, of which it is the contemporary incarnation.

Parody doesn’t get much more obvious than this.

265. We (or at least I) cannot object to there being only one form adhering in a substance. I’m afraid that St. Thomas was most insistent upon this being the case.

First off, there are many valid non-Thomistic strains of Catholic philosophy, and also many Thomistic strains that modify his conclusions slightly. The man was brilliant but, like Aristotle, it is possible to build off his work without accepting absolutely everything he says.

In this case, though, I think you misunderstood me (understandably so because, rereading that paragraph, it was kinda botched). I’m not claiming there are multiple forms within a single material body but rather, that such a body can contain constituent parts which, when existing independently, would have their own forms. So going back to my previous example, a quartz crystal inside of a clock would constitute a part of the greater body (the clock). But that doesn’t imply a quartz crystal on its own wouldn’t also have a form (it obviously would).

And even if all quartz crystals in existence were part of clocks, the form of quartz would still “really” exist, despite not inhering in any substance at that time. It is wrong to classify it as an “accident” when it is clear to everyone that they can exist in a capacity separate from clocks.

Going back to the original point: the soul of a wolf (or any living thing) can be divided into the things which he shares with all wolves plus the things which make him unique. These don’t exist independently within that wolf–they are united as his particular soul– but they both do exist. Once a group of wolves has gained enough additional traits to be considered separately, their form gains an additional constituent part. They are no longer just wolves (although they properly considered should still fall in that category) but also dogs; they can be divided into wolf traits+dog traits+unique traits.

As I say above, the alternative–classifying all living creatures forms’ as totally separate from each other, based on blurry concepts such as “species–” is completely arbitrary and not reflected in observed reality.

• Agree: Twinkie
• Replies:
266. AiYiYi.

In the first place, I’m asking people like you to respond to what HE wrote. My opinions, beliefs and knowledge don’t enter it, so your insinuations and slander simply don’t apply to me.

What I’m doing is poking guys like you so that you get off your dead asses and do some honest work before commenting. You–and many others–are like the reviewers of products on Amazon who write, “This is the first X that I have ever owned and I just got the product today and it seems to be okay so I’m giving it five stars.” Or “This product arrived with one corner of the package crushed and the item was dinged so I’m giving it one star.”

267. Bardon Kaldian: “Human consciousness is not completely the product of an evolved brain. Brain just refracts real human being’s consciousness which naturally exists, in much expanded manner, independently of human brain which works, metaphorically, as a sort of prism, during human life in the 3+1 dimensional world.

In short- normal human self is just a fraction of the essential self. ”

Is there any evidence of “human consciousness” existing apart from the brain, or do we just take your word for it?

• Replies:
268. Although I have not yet read the whole of this rather impressive text, please permit me in the meantime to congratulate its author on a higher style than Milton’s, and a purer Latin style than Cicero’s.

• Replies:
269. Though I admittedly didn’t complete the piece, I also find the writing acumen of Mr. ID quite impressive.

It’s a philosophical treatise. The style comes with the terrain.

270. Exile says:

More groundless pseudo-metaphysical arglebargle.

Making high-toned pronouncements that something is more “superior, permanent, or just” than observable, measurable biology is not a refutation or an argument – it’s just saying “no” to science – as I said in my original comment.

You are simply stating value-judgments as axioms – so let it be written, so let it be done. Pseudo-mystical-intellectual intimidation and appeal to (some unseen) authority.

Proving my original point. I respect the mystic – I’ve had an NDE and remained self-aware. But the supernatural is too ephemeral and ambiguous to our material perception and everyday existence to permit its overreach and misuse in the manner both you and the author advocate.

• Replies:
271. AaronB says:

Its not my position.

I was describing ID’s position.

272. Richard B says:

Our discussion here ranges far, much further indeed than many here were perhaps ever desirous to go.

If it ranges so far why are limiting yourself to an antiquated dualism?

But Darwinism has its roots in the materialism and monism of its native 19th century, themselves being the outgrowths of the Lockean empiricism that came to dominate English philosophy in the modern era.

Inaccurate (and pretentious).

The modern era was instigated, as it were, by the disruption brought by Cartesian dualism, which was a deterioration of the high synthesis achieved by St. Thomas and the Scholastics, which itself was the correction and perfection of Neo-Platonic Augustinianism and Aristotelian hylomorphism.

Really inaccurate.

race is very much a question of matter and form

So is a cathedral, a minnow, and a bowling ball.

I am writing from a Traditional Catholic perspective.

No shit?

It’s sad to see anyone still clinging to the same Either/Or dualism that the advanced, cutting edge of Western European thought has been struggling to free itself from for the last two hundred years.

But at least the writer of this essay knows that that’s what he’s doing.

Ironically, many on the Left and Right are even more lost inside of the same antiquated mental model than he is. But don’t know it.

Either way, and once again, we see Dunning-Kruger causing lots of problems.

• Replies:
273. dfordoom says: • Website

Platonic Racism, or Platonic Nordicism, is an extreme level of racism that simply has not occurred to me as possible until now. I think ID is offering something genuinely new – the line of development towards racism culminates here. It can go no further.

Yep. It’s weirdly impressive.

My objection has always been to “hard” HBD. I always accepted that there are inherited differences in races to some degree. I only insisted that 1) a huge amount of behavior and what we call “ability” is environmental and subject to things like motivation and history 2) races change character with relative frequency.

Yes, I’d agree with that.

So there are versions of HBD I can accept – but in practice , whatever they say, most people who believe in HBD believe in “hard” HBD, and will explain today’s racial behavior as being forershadowed thousands of years ago – whereas I think the evidence indicates a race or ethnic group can change dramatically in a few hundred years.

Whatever they say, most people who believe in HBD simply hate blacks (they usually hate other groups as well but it’s the hatred of blacks that is the biggest motivation). They’re hoping to find a vaguely scientific-sounding justification for their feelings. They think this will protect them. They think they will be able to say that science proves their feelings to be valid. They’re living in a dream world, thinking that yet another variety of scientific racism is going to become socially acceptable.

• Agree: AaronB
274. Twinkie says:

But in ID’s defense, writing about abstract metaphysics is hard.

Which is why I wrote this earlier: https://www.unz.com/anepigone/alt-wrong-paradigms/#comment-3920831

There is a very tiny fraction of human beings who can write cogently in the framework of metaphysics or philosophy in general. Unfortunately for both Intelligent Dasein and us, he isn’t in that fraction.

275. Twinkie says:

First off, there are many valid non-Thomistic strains of Catholic philosophy, and also many Thomistic strains that modify his conclusions slightly. The man was brilliant but, like Aristotle, it is possible to build off his work without accepting absolutely everything he says.

Aside from the now very obvious and misplaced self-regard Intelligent Dasein has about, well, just about everything, what really grates me (as an orthodox Catholic) about him is his constant self-reference as the ultimate guardian of Catholic orthodoxy.

In a past thread, I made a light, joke-y comment agreeing with him about being a fellow distributist (which he called “distributionist,” an error which he never acknowledged, because he is “right about everything”). Not only did he not get that I was on his side about it, he then lectured me and told me I should read the relevant encyclicals like he was the only one who knew about Catholic distributism. I think I am older than he is by at least a decade, so it’s highly likely that I read (in college) the two encyclicals as well as Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton long before he did – unless he read them as a 7 or 8 year old.

I believe another commenter (“res,” perhaps?) once wrote that Intelligent Dasein sounds like a guy who’s never been in the company of someone smarter than he, something even most highly intelligent people experience when they go to college and grad school (esp. elite ones) and run into real geniuses. So he often starts off with the presumption that he knows best and his interlocutors are ignoramuses. I think that’s why he is getting much of the blowback he has on this thread. That and the fact that his writing is really horrendously verbose and pompous.

I mean, come on, his sentences are longer than most people’s paragraphs – what sane human being who wants to be understood by others writes like that?

• Replies:
276. Menes says:

the de anima of Aristotle and the term “soul” as it is used in explicitly theological contexts, are one and the same thing.

The Catholic Church borrowed a lot from the pagan Aristotle, imitating the example set by the muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes). Yet both Aristotle and Averroes will burn in Hell forever according to their doctrine. Ridiculous.

Let me quote again the Tridentine formulation, of which every word is important:

“The soul is of itself and per se the form of the body and is multiplied as bodies are multiplied.”

The soul is Spirit, it is immaterial. It doesn’t have a form. Just like God who is also Spirit. Only matter has form. The material body changes form throughout life, the soul remains the same. Like all material objects animate or inanimate, the body has a lifespan. The soul does not. It is eternal, like God. It is God.

• Replies:
277. “Is there any evidence of “human consciousness” existing apart from the brain, or do we just take your word for it?”

It’s called

awareness, thought, or to paraphrase Descarte — “I think therefore i m”

One could spin and was several volumes on what constitutes a soul, awareness, etc. And none of it would get you closer to to whether God has selected by virtue of dna a human biodiversity model that subjects one set of humans to a lower rung of the ladder merely dna. Afterall that is the point here. The premise is played out that the reason x is were x is is the direct result of design by God or by nature. Having utterly upended tat premise by introducing God of the Bible, who makes it clear — human choices are at play ion relationship ti himself and his purposes — in a fall world which includes some manner of unexpected consequences in the mind of man over events as they impact his being.

By the record God has not set up whites or blacks to be the ruler of anything. And while God deeply cares about our physical well being — the primary purpose of his son — is about spiritual redemption. For the purpose of academic acumen and intellectual investigation, rhetoric and thought expressed from Plotinus to Watkins won’t get you there. And in these discussions the link is vague and tenuous that human awareness has anything to do with IQ and HBD and human standing. Because as Both Plato and the Apostle agree on is this, that our corporeal selves see but dimly reality as expressed in scripture and what the simple allegory of the cave is humans looking at the wall comprehending shadows for reality. It still fails the the very pragmatic test of evidence indicating that human biodiversity leads us to conclude that blacks by definition are inferior, such that are destined to sere the rest of humanity as fifth class entities.

The reason this discussion is important is because there are serious strains in the power dynamics of the color code social structure — at least in the US. And those strains are revealing some deep faultlines in the societal grant that whites are superior. Thereby justifying several hundred years of rationales for the treatment of the same. That the founders established an ideal ingrained with intentions that undermined their philosophical and moral understanding of absolute truths. And that gradually, the promise denied to some by deliberate choice to said consequence has people scrambling for justifications the most helpful of which are evidences that the plight of x is not by virtue of leadership owner (whites) failure but it lies in the brains, moral coding, failures of the those fifth rung blacks by ordination of God or by nature.

And nothing either in the treatise itself nor the subsequent discussion makes the case that whiteness alone signifies intellectual or moral authority. And in the end that is the crux. Authority and its grant from whence does it come and what happens when it breaks down. It’s the evidence to the issue and how that evidence is gathered and constructed. And then are the subsequent conclusions absolute at all times or are they conditional.

The rationale for white leadership by the virtue of whiteness is under strain, some faultlines – pre-existing are tremoring the faults wider still.

And unfortunately some of the most destructive practitioners have wedged their agendas into those fault-lines exacerbating matters — that do not address the central questions but they attempted to upend even biological determined realities.

278. Menes says:

You have to show he lied first before calling him a liar. He refuted your refutation. The ball was in your court. Instead of refuting his refutation in your turn you throw a tantrum like a spoilt brat. That makes you look like the defeated liar or ignoramus.

You also lied about the curse of Ham.

> “This recalls the pre-Socratic Xenophanes…”

Do you think Xenophanes was a Jew? He was mocking the anthropomorphic gods of the Aryans – what is the alternative? 100% a Jew sowing the seeds for the coming of Yahweh and Jesus.

280. Talha says:

The soul does not. It is eternal, like God. It is God.

A sincere question; is this normative Christian belief?

Peace.

• Replies:
281. A sincere question; is this normative Christian belief?

Most definitely not. The soul is not God.

The human soul is the substantial form of the human body. It is not “eternal” because it did not preexist that body; there is nothing eternal save God Himself. But the human soul is immortal once created, because like an angel it has a rational nature.

• Thanks: Talha
• Replies:
282. There are different shades of white. Greeks are white and their struggle was nationalist. But OK at the time “white nationalism” was not an issue or even a concept. I just wanted to show that there was a case of nationalists of different races supporting each other’s struggle.

283. res says:

Are you freaking retarded or what? That is exactly the conclusion of this latest HBD sanctioned table of national IQs whose data I used. How could I be wrong when I correctly quoted the data from that table? Get outta here and go argue with the authorities on IQ, they are on your side.

I gave a detailed analysis of the source of the simplified table you quoted from Anatoly Karlin’s article. In that analysis I presented exactly why I think there may be a problem with Becker’s analysis of the Haiti papers. But I guess you aren’t able to understand that so just feel the need to lash out in anger.

You can’t even think logically, how could you possibly be right?

LOL! Projection is a terrible thing. Any evidence for my lack of logical thinking? You have supplied plenty for yours.

Becker’s IQ table is better than the previous estimates of Lynn that are outdated. Why do you still take those older estimates at face value and reject the latest ones which are backed by Lynn himself?

Becker’s IQ table is a work in progress. It is a monumental effort and I am grateful to him for putting it together, but it is by no means free of errors (if you look at his version history he just fixed a different problem with the Haiti data in his most recent version 1.3.3).

I suppose you failed to notice (after I pointed it out) that Becker’s estimate for Haiti also differs from Heiner Rindermann’s estimate of 63.22. When Becker
1. Disagrees with all of the other estimates I see.
2. Uses two wildly divergent source estimates (the higher of which is questionable for reasons I described in my early comment).
Then I think it is reasonable to question his estimate.

If you want to get an idea of how much uncertainty there is in some of this data read
A Corrigendum to V1.3.2 and a Comment to V1.3.3
https://viewoniq.org/?p=134
It is important to understand the data you are relying on and not just blindly read numbers out of a table.

Jason Malloy took a more detailed look at Haiti and supplied PDFs for all of the references:
https://humanvarietiesdotorg.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/hvgiq-haiti/

Simple question, do you think the estimate of IQ 95-98 which Becker is using from that 1975 study is a plausible number for the average 6 year old in Haiti then?

The answer is obvious: you are an irrational intellectually dishonest person.

LOL! Projection really is a terrible thing.

Do you have any response other than ad hominems? At least you have made clear you don’t have any real knowledge of this topic.

• Replies:
284. res says:

So civilizations aren’t integral to humanity either?

I’m beginning to think this “integral to humanity” notion is:
1. Contrived.
2. Weak.

I think race being integral to the respective civilizations built (as you have agreed) is more than sufficient to establish its importance.

285. There is no definite proof of it. However, there are numerous instances showing that current-let’s call it modern materialist/physicalist position – is untenable, or, better, is just a fragment of a wider reality (and also cannot be reduced to drug-induced hallucinations).

In sum, there are verified instances of, say:

a) precognition

b) retrocognition

c) synchronicity or, as someone calls it, cosmic jokes

d) out of body experiences that cannot be explained away as hallucinations common in some types of mental illnesses or injured brain

….

The final nail in the materialist/physicalist coffin is I Ching, which has nothing to do with “altered states” of consciousness or anything similar. This is one of those things that leave scientistic popularizers like Skeptic Dictionary etc.- speechless.

Just, for this one should have both open and critical mind.

286. So civilizations aren’t integral to humanity either?

Social order is integral to humanity. Man is the rational animal and his normal mode of life is the polis. If that cashes out the meaning of ‘civilization’ in your book (and it may not), then civilization is integral.

• Replies: ,
287. Platonic Nordicism, is an extreme level of racism that simply has not occurred to me as possible until now. I think ID is offering something genuinely new – the line of development towards racism culminates here. It can go no further.

I think that’s quite false. It has been around at least since Plato’s time.

Something like it motivated the most xenophobic faction of the Nazi’s racial science paradigm.

It is actually quite simple, it’s easier to derive the shorter your time frame is. It is basically taking everything for granted, that as things are now, they have always been and always will be. So if your race is on top now, you take it for granted they always have been and always will be. Very typical honestly, particularly when a race has been on top for a long while. They start to think they are on top because they are special and the universe loves them, Top People is just who they are. Which is taking it for granted, and then they usually stop doing the things that put them on top and start doing crazy stupid shit which eventually knocks them back down.

The most extreme form of racism the world has known so far, the Hindu caste system,

What about the Spartan caste system, where Spartans are demi-gods literally descended from deities and the helots are basically livestock?

Maybe that one wouldn’t count because someone might suggest their caste system was actually tribal, being 2 tribes of the same race.

I only insisted that 1) a huge amount of behavior and what we call “ability” is environmental and subject to things like motivation and history

Honestly nature vs nurture debates are mostly 6 of one vs. half dozen of the other to me. Either way, they both come from the same place and they both feedback into each other. I’m less concerned with the theoretical causes than the reality of the phenomenon. It’s far more complicated than people give it credit for, environment shapes genetics and genetics shapes environments.

But the end product, both racial and cultural, is real differences not interchangeable blank slates (at least not on a human time scale rather than an evolutionary or cultural time scale). This stuff is not immutable, but it is hardly mutable in human time scales.

HBD, and will explain today’s racial behavior as being forershadowed thousands of years ago – whereas I think the evidence indicates a race or ethnic group can change dramatically in a few hundred years.

Both are true. My time scales are probably longer than yours. But yes, groups can change dramatically in a few hundred years and at the same time things that happened thousands of years ago still effect us today and were instrumental in bringing us where we are. Stuff that happened thousands of years ago is not irrelevant to us becoming who we are. Stuff like the Hajnal line, I’ve never taken it to explain everything but I think there are real factors involved there in shaping both our culture and genetics.

And they think manifested ability and behavior are almost entirely innate and not affected by motivation or environment etc – a position absurd on the face of it.

Nature vs. nurture, the extreme factions on either side are completely absurd in trying to deny the existence of the other. Neither extreme end can pass the reductio ad absurdem test.

In modern western English speaking cultures, I think the nurture extremist nuts are way more powerful, currently dangerous, and way more plentiful than nature extremist nuts which is why I tend to see the HBD perspective as a healthy and important contribution to these discussions that brings some important truth to the table that needs to be heeded, at least somewhat.

• Replies:
288. Twinkie says:

Social order is integral to humanity. Man is the rational animal and his normal mode of life is the polis.

Should be, not is.

289. mikemikev says:

Social order is integral to humanity.

It’s irrelevant to a taxonomic definition.

290. Bardon Kaldian: “There is no definite proof of [“human consciousness” existing apart from the brain]. However, there are numerous instances showing that current-let’s call it modern materialist/physicalist position – is untenable, or, better, is just a fragment of a wider reality (and also cannot be reduced to drug-induced hallucinations).”

What you wrote above about this article, that one cannot prove a worldview, applies here too, so at least you are consistent. On the one hand, we have the modern materialist/physicalist position, as you term it (one worldview), and on the other hand, we have the religious worldview, which includes paranormal variants of the “New Age” type such as you describe. The hallmark of the the religious worldview is that it rejects the necessity for empirical proof, and in many cases asserts belief even in the face of massive evidence to the contrary.

You appear to want to hybridize the two, but that’s not really possible, since science is based on the hope and confidence that the world is a rational place reducible to the operation of natural laws. If there are events, such as paranormal activities, that can’t be readily explained on the basis of its existing theories, then you are free to come up with new theories within the materialist/physicalist worldview that better explain things. Have you, or anyone else, done so? If so, I’m not aware of it. Despite much interest spread over many centuries, and lots of effort and money expended, nobody has ever proved any of it. The existence of God, the soul, free will, telekinesis, ghosts, life after death, the power of prayer, miracles — all of this stuff and more appears to be pure bunk, and the persistent urge to believe in such absurdities is more easily explainable in materialist/physicalist terms than as descriptions of things that really exist. They all appear to be illusions, but perhaps some of them are necessary illusions; illusions in which a disposition to believe has been built into our cognitive apparatus by evolution.

Your other choice is to reject the materialist/physicalist worldview altogether, and assert your belief that these supernatural things and forces exist regardless of science’s inability to demonstrate them, and that indeed, that you will continue to believe in them despite the fact that it may never be able to demonstrate them. But you have to choose one or the other. Either embrace superstition, or stick with science. If you stick with science, maybe you’ll be able to come up with a device to enable you to communicate with the vast Overmind you appear to imagine exists; maybe you can set up a link to the ghost of Nikola Tesla, or something else that will revolutionize the world’s understanding by bringing the paranormal into the realm of mainstream science. In that case, you’d deservedly achieve renown as one of the greatest geniuses in all history. But if it’s as I suspect, and such things are only illusions, all your efforts will come to nothing.

• Replies: ,
291. And if Blacks were to, through genetic alteration of one sort or another, cast off the curse and become more like the rest of humanity, i.e. assimilable, then they would no longer be “Black”. Get it?

Insofar as they are “black”, they are black to the core. What is changeable about them are superfluous qualities, called “accidental” and non-essential qualities, and blackness is not one of those. Blackness is not merely skin deep. This is how the Greeks thought.

In the Republic, Socrates and Thrasymachus are arguing over the nature of what and who a proper shepherd was. A shepherd, Socrates maintained, saw to the welfare of his flock, placed himself in their service. Thrasymachus laughed. His view was that a shepherd cared not a whit about the welfare of the sheep beyond his interest in getting the best price for them at the market when it came time to butcher them.

But, Socrates argued, if his concern for them only extends so far as his self interest then he is not acting as a shepherd but as something else, namely, a merchant. Only in so far as he stuck to his duties of protecting and feeding the flock was he a shepherd. (Christ as the Good Shepherd has the interest of his flock foremost is how this came down to Christians)

Now, this may seem to be merely semantics, but for Socrates and Plato, it was REAL. It was important to cleave to the original meaning of words because, once we give in to using the secondary, derived, cynical, ironic meaning, then well, we are all Antifa and meaningful conversation becomes impossible. All that is left is confrontation and violence because the second, ironic meaning is generally laden with overtones of oppressor/oppressed.

So Confucius with his “First, clarify the language” and Orwell with his insights into double-speak and crime-stop etc. both agreed that without a firm grasp on the literal meaning of important words, clear thinking becomes an impossibility. If we have no clear ideal with which to compare current usage, we lose our bearings.

Ideal, Form, Substance, Essence; see the trend here? A word was supposed to capture, pin down, highlight, point to some pure, enduring quality of existence. Today, it’s fashionable to snicker at the earnestness of these claims, to snort at them, as Thrasymachus did. Don’t these fools know that everything is relative? random? accident?

But ID is trying to prove that a worldview that enthrones “accidental” qualities is simply hogwash. It has no logical leg to stand on. It is groundless. It is the product of a shallow, uninquiring mind, one that is too lazy or incompetent to think matters all the way through. A collection of accidental qualities without an underlying unity lacks any Gestalt to bind them together. It’s an agglomeration of rocks which haven’t been squeezed hard enough for them to fuse together into one coherent compound. There is no center to which they are all related, no ruling Sun in their universe. In short, it’s noise, static.

• Agree: V. K. Ovelund
• Replies: , ,
292. 22,600 words ? Really ?

And nothing new ?

REALLY ?

The first lesson I ever learned at Oxford – via a formal ten-minute handshake / hello meeting with the Master of the College – even BEFORE matriculation:

Master (glancing at sheet and frowning sternly, over spectacles) : “Your Tutor tells me that you have a tendencv to prolixity. Do you know what that is ?”

Self (panicked, horror-stricken): * shakes head like idiot *

Master: “Well, I do. So DON’T”.

• LOL: Twinkie
• Replies:
293. Menes says:

Most definitely not. The soul is not God.

Your God is not the God of Jesus:

God is Spirit. (John 4:24)

God is within you. (Luke 17:21)

I am in God and you are in me and I am in you (John 14:20)

God is all and in all. (Colossians 3:11)

294. Znzn says:

How about white people have an inherent right to their own homeland, or nature preserve, just like the giant pandas, because like the giant pandas, they are their own unique biological entity, which is why giant pandas have their own natural habitats and breeding stations where they can exclusively breed with their own kind (and no, this is not a plug your mass artificial wombs).

• Replies:
295. What you say I said:

Civilizations aren’t integral to humanity

What I actually said:

Particular civilizations are not integral to humanity

Massive difference. As an analogy, particular types of food are not integral to humanity either.

I’m beginning to think this “integral to humanity” notion is:
1. Contrived.
2. Weak.

You’re welcome to think that, but it actually makes my argument stronger, not weaker. If nothing is integral to humanity, then race certainly isn’t. ID’s argument is based on the idea that race is integral, not merely “important.”

• Replies:
296. mikemikev says:

It’s defined by shared ancestry.

• Replies:
297. Menes says:

The hallmark of the the religious worldview is that it rejects the necessity for empirical proof

You just don’t get it. Empirical proof only applies to the objective world of matter-energy. But matter-energy isn’t all that exists. It is not even the primary aspect of the world. There is the subjective world of Consciousness which is immaterial, unobservable and beyond the purview of science and empirical proofs. You can’t deny that you are conscious, can you? Yet you can’t prove it empirically. Because you can never observe consciousness, it is the observer itself.

298. Peter Frost says: • Website

You are a liar and a fraud. Get out of here.

I sincerely hope God will help you grow and mature. And I say this as someone who has looked to God for growth and maturity.

Social order is integral to humanity.

Integral? No. There was very little social order until 10,000 years ago. Traditionally, the Inuit of northern Canada didn’t even have chiefs. Authority was vested in the father and the mother. Families could cooperate with each other, but no one outside your family could tell you what to do — as a matter of right. All of that came later.

• Agree: Twinkie
• Replies:
299. AaronB says:

But if a person, who was once black, can develop beyond his blackness, then blackness is an acccidental quality of humans, not an essential one.

An accidental quality is one which is not essential to the object – the object can still be the same object if it loses that quality. If a human being can go from being black to non black while remaining the same human being blackness is an accidental quality.

So race is accidental, not essential.

And to say that blackness as a quality (using whatever traits to define it) is what is unchanging, is merely a tautology – an accidental quality may be unchanging, but the being possessing that quality as an accident, changes.

• Replies: ,
300. You’ve understood all this uncommonly well and shown that it can be done. I really appreciate having such an all-too-rare reader. Thank you.

301. The modern era was instigated, as it were, by the disruption brought by Cartesian dualism, which was a deterioration of the high synthesis achieved by St. Thomas and the Scholastics, which itself was the correction and perfection of Neo-Platonic Augustinianism and Aristotelian hylomorphism.

Really inaccurate.

Is it?

Offhand, I can think of no other instigation intellectually more immediately responsible for the modern era? Can you?

• Replies:
302. Saxon says:

As it turns out, our ancestors had it right when they didn’t allow racially alien immigration. Everyone knows these things are true but some cynically claim that any difference in outcome means you, the natives of western countries, are wicked evil bad people who must be plundered and squeezed and trampled on forever until you disappear. Show me a single country which has survived multiracialism and is somehow coherent and productive. You can’t. All late stage multiracial countries are absolute hellholes, especially the ones that abide miscegenation.

What happened is that previously homogeneous countries were effectively invaded perforce and made into multiracial countries, with no consent. So bloody conflict is already baked into the cake at some point. It’s only a question of how bad it’s going to be.

• Agree: V. K. Ovelund
• Replies: , ,
303. V. Hickel says:

that was actually my favorite part

304. dfordoom says: • Website

How about white people have an inherent right to their own homeland

The problem is that most white people (especially younger white people) simply don’t care about such things.

And if white people have a homeland to which they have an inherent right, that would be Europe. Not North America, or Australia.

So I don’t think the “white people have an inherent right to a homeland” argument is going to get anywhere. I’m not saying I disagree with it, but it’s not going to get anywhere.

• Replies:
305. Menes: “There is the subjective world of Consciousness which is immaterial, unobservable and beyond the purview of science and empirical proofs. You can’t deny that you are conscious, can you? Yet you can’t prove it empirically. ”

I disagree. Here, you define consciousness as necessarily subjective , so it’s not surprising you come to the conclusion that consciousness is beyond empirical proof. But I believe that you are conscious too, which strictly speaking, using your standard of proof, I can’t prove either, since I don’t experience it subjectively. You might want to check into something called the Turing test.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

Scientific explanations of subjective phenomena are attempts to illuminate and expose their physiological, psychological, or sociological basis.

• Replies:
306. But if a person, who was once black, can develop beyond his blackness, then blackness is an acccidental quality of humans, not an essential one.

Your real target is not, of course, scholasticism, but white identity. You do not fool me.

You started out in this thread claiming to be terrified by @Intelligent Dasein’s thesis. Now you are calmly quibbling over technical points. Why? Answer: because you believe your audience to be subhuman Gentile cattle. You do not care a fig about @Intelligent Dasein’s thesis. You are only worried that we might care. Your words are cattle prods, intended not to convey ideas but to achieve a desired effect.

I have no problem with white Western nations and am an admirer of Western culture. I have no antipathy to goyim.

Typical Jewish deflection. Words are cheap.

You ought to be ashamed. What you are doing is wrong.

307. res says:

Fair point about particular. But having some civilizations is integral to humanity by that definition, right? And race will be integral to whichever civilizations are present, right?

You might be able to say a particular race is not integral to humanity, but I don’t see how you can maintain the following.

1. Race is integral to civilizations.
2. Civilizations are integral to humanity.
3. Race is not integral to humanity.

Is “integral” not transitive?

P.S. Your “integral” vs. “important” statement reminds me why I dislike so much philosophical reasoning I encounter. Fuzzy words interpreted as desired.

• Replies:
308. Menes says:

Any evidence for my lack of logical thinking?

It was stupid and illogical of you to accuse me of being ‘wrong’ for using the National IQ (NIQ) category when that was the category presented as the best estimate by the author of the Table himself, who is also an HBD advocate like you.

It was stupid and illogical of you to present outdated estimates by Lynn as superior to the current one by Becker even though Lynn himself backs Becker’s work.

• Replies:
309. jamie b. says:

…which apparently you have not read.

Was it actually meant to be read? By whom?

These questions, one and all, have been addressed in the essay…

I really don’t think so, but maybe you could show me where? A search for key words didn’t yield much. This is what I got from skimming…

Suffice it to say here that life was not created artificially.

This was WRT replacing microbial DNA, rather than a complete reassembly. The ‘soul’ is presumably preserved here because the entire organism wasn’t assembled, correct?

“The soul [read here the essence or substantial form] is of itself and per se the form of the body and is multiplied as bodies are multiplied.”

…and…

The essential form informs preexisting matter and the new life emerges

So reassembling four bacteria into five is okay, since a new soul is created. Okay. But you still want to claim that they can’t in principle be assembled at all, correct? And I still don’t see what happens when you merge bacteria.

…even should the new soul first come into existence by informing the already existing body of some other creature, it does so only by immediately and entirely displacing the other soul.

But per the question, there would be no new soul, and the bodies in question would not exactly be already existing.

There was also some stuff about ‘the metamorphosis’ that might or might not have been pertinent.

AAR, the main issue is really about (re)assembling life. You insist that life can’t be assembled. But there is nothing in principle that would prevent picking a bacterium apart and reassembling the macromolecules into a new organism. So would that be a zombie bacterium? Or would you insist that it comes back to life not as a result of reassembly, but due to (a now entirely non-empirical) ‘soul’ being returned or newly minted?

And I really don’t see where you at all touch on where the dividing line is between life and non-life. You talk about about crystals becoming en-celled or some such. Are you saying that eg. a plasma membrane is what’s required for ensoulment?

310. jamie b. says:

I honestly can’t tell if you’re being serious.

• Agree: V. K. Ovelund
311. And what is shared ancestry?

A people? Maggie Thatcher denied the existence of such an entity. Englishness, according to her, was merely an accidental property.

So what creates a shared ancestry? I would say that the answer lies in my two examples, one of an agglomeration of rock like stuff vs. a rock that has been fused by compression and heat and two, the Sun. Here’s what I mean.

Consider a soap bubble. It is filled with gas and surrounded by gas. The molecules within the bubble are in constant motion, colliding with each other and with the wall of the bubble. Likewise the molecules of atmospheric gas that surround the bubble. The number of collisions against the wall of the bubble is a measure of pressure. The pressure outside and inside are balanced. It is due to the equilibrium of forces that the entity of the soap bubble exists. The pressure inside pushing out is in equilibrium with the pressure outside pushing in. At the boundary of their equilibrium a skin forms. This is what constitutes an entity.

The same happens with reference to the forces of expansion due to energy released by the thermonuclear reaction of the Sun, which is held in check by the countervailing force of gravitation attraction due to the Sun’s mass. A dynamic, pulsing equilibrium results from first one prevailing and then the other, the Sun’s heartbeat.

So to create any entity we must have an outward pressure bearing in and an inward pressure pushing out. And this applies not merely to physical phenomenon but to social as well. A collection of people become a coherent group when they face pressure from without. They band together. A species exhibits the urge to propagate and spread and is held in check by availability of resources. Note, a species doesn’t merely fill a niche. It actively seeks to expand. It is filled with what Intelligent Dasein quoted from Schopenhauer, the Will to Power. On this point, when evolutionists use the passive “fill a niche”, they are being too timid.

Genetic adaption is not accidental or random. It is directed by a super intelligence acting within the organism. It cannot be seen as such because it is not something smaller, within the organism, like the little man within the machine. No, it is larger, the Gestalt Whole, analogous to the the coherent wave functions I mentioned earlier when discussing quantum states of atoms. It is the larger whole withing which all possible variations come into being and as such it limits the potential configurations which are viable. Only certain combinations are allowed and those are those within which the parts inhere as moments of a coherent whole.

Today, with life so easy, there is far less outside pressure to cause people to band together in groups. The wealthier a country becomes, the weaker the ties that bind its people together. Lacking any outward pressure, society disintegrates. People go their own way and do their own thing. So, when you say, “shared ancestry” you are actually specifying certain conditions of existence and not simply some mathematically neutral statistical ground state.

• Replies:

> “They all appear to be illusions, but perhaps some of them are necessary illusions; illusions in which a disposition to believe has been built into our cognitive apparatus by evolution.”

A decent video on the topic by Ryan Faulk / The Alternative Hypothesis / The People’s Veto. Implicit knowledge cannot be built upon, but explicit knowledge may be incomplete and thus inferior. I also liked the part about how logical contradictions are not contradictions when successful groups gobble them up.

This is such a fascinating issue. Americans have never been to the Moon because America never existed, it was a stillborn abortion. The nukes do not exist because they are not used (at the same time, they are used by Russia and Israel). And so on.

We must go deeper! Is this some new kind of logic? 2+2=5 when the Party says so and the Party is successful for at least 100 years. Better than that cucked logic of the (((Vienna Circle))).

313. Menes says:

if white people have a homeland to which they have an inherent right, that would be Europe. Not North America, or Australia.

True dat. Unfortunately few if any WNs really want to go back to the land of their ancestors. Perhaps its their subconscious knowledge that Europe was a hellhole for their forefathers, who were its dregs, that prevents them from entertaining that thought.

• Replies: ,
314. You seem to have missed the point completely. How can a black person “develop beyond his blackness” and still be a black person? Then he would be something other.

Let’s look at you. You’re Jewish. A fair percentage of Jewish men today marry gentile women. Are their children Jews? Really Jews? Or have they lost a bit of their Jewishness? I don’t think I need to belabor the point but obviously, if this goes on “unto the third generation” then there ain’t much Jewishness left to “develop beyond” (especially since if you’re Ashkenazi you’re already 50% Italian to begin with).

• Replies:
315. Twinkie says:

He doesn’t seem to know that human beings existed as hunter-gatherers for much longer than as denizens of a polis, and that agriculture brought about significant changes to human existence.

316. Menes says:

I disagree. Here, you define consciousness as necessarily subjective , so it’s not surprising you come to the conclusion that consciousness is beyond empirical proof. But I believe that you are conscious too, which strictly speaking, using your standard of proof, I can’t prove either, since I don’t experience it subjectively.

You can “believe” I am conscious all you want but by your own standard of “empirical proof” this is not a rational scientific belief, instead it is akin to faith.

The reason you can’t prove I am conscious is because consciousness is not observable, it is not an object. Yet it is the one thing we are absolutely sure of. Why? Because it is our subjective experience.

317. Manes: “The reason you can’t prove I am conscious is because consciousness is not observable, it is not an object. Yet it is the one thing we are absolutely sure of. Why? Because it is our subjective experience.”

Of course consciousness is observable. And not only humans, but animals are conscious too. Even insects are aware of their surroundings, seek food, defend their nests, etc. They possess every property of conscious activity. Our subjective experience of our own awareness is only one aspect of it.

Again, you’re just defining consciousness in such a way to make it impossible to be empirically demonstrated. But, I don’t buy into your dualism. That may be your worldview, but I admit there’s probably no way I can prove to you that the solipsism it commits you to is ridiculous. If you want to believe that you’re the only conscious being in the world, I won’t stop you.

In any case, the materialist worldview of science is monist, not dualist. You can accept science’s monism, or reject it and be a mystic. That’s up to you.

• Replies: ,
318. UK says:

Show me a single country which has survived multiracialism and is somehow coherent and productive. You can’t. All late stage multiracial countries are absolute hellholes, especially the ones that abide miscegenation.

While I don’t see the point in most successful countries granting masses of foreigners the privilege of immigrating to them, one look around the world will show a lot of very successful countries that have granted that privilege to very many and are absolutely not hellholes.

It may be confusing cause and effect to point out that immigration-inundated Sweden, Switzerland, Britain, France, Germany, the US and many others are actually quite easily among the best countries to live in, but it is a fact nonetheless.

Your need to see the world as worse than it is in order to make your political/racialist ideology more certain to you is unlikely to be serving you in any deeper way.

It is also going to sound very unpersuasive to those who haven’t chosen to rest their self-value on the success of a shared political ideology with you.

A more reasonable argument may be that, with diversity in human beings, diversity in outcomes is inevitable. This means that patterns will emerge which will be reflected in things as obvious and divisive as colour. Those patterns, noticeable to everyone, will then be used as a reason for perpetual envy, fear and conflict. Inevitably, this hurts all manner of innocent people and may spiral out of control until institutional forces act by taking away keys freedom of society members (speech, association etc) in order to ensure social peace. And of course, all of this is avoidable if a country, like Japan, simply forgoes the benefits of mass immigration.

• Replies:
319. 128 says:

You know that the Sioux and the Lakota also took over somebody’s land right?

• Replies:
320. 128 says:

Did the Uyghurs just grow up from the ground, or did they also take over somebody else’s land?

321. Menes says:

Of course consciousness is observable.

What does it look like?

It is proof of your hopeless stupidity that you can’t even see how absurd that is.

322. Menes says:

Blackness is not merely skin deep. This is how the Greeks thought.

Show us where you learned that the ancient Greeks thought that “blackness is not merely skin deep”. Or admit you are a liar like Dasein.

The Greeks had a very high opinion of the far older civilization of the black and brown Egyptians, and acknowledged their civilizational debt to them.

• Replies:
323. AaronB says:

You seem to have missed the point completely. How can a black person “develop beyond his blackness” and still be a black person?

He is not still a black person. But he is still a person.

If he can still be the same person but no longer black, then blackness is accidental and not essential. If the race that was once black is no longer, if a people can change race, then race is not an essential quality.

Which is fine, because that’s what I believe 🙂

Makes sense?

In the Jewish case, we are talking about mixing genes, so the offspring is the result of something new being introduced.

Look if you want to claim that blackness or Jewishness comprises a Platonic Form, and any physical being that embodies these qualities is an embodiment of that Platonic Form – that’s all very well and fine. I have no problem with that.

But if you claim that the physical being which embodies a Platonic Form cannot change, because the Platonic Form he embodies is essential to him, that’s a different thing.

If you claim he can change and no longer embody that Form, then you have really said nothing – you have merely said there exist qualities that one may or may not embody, and those qualities don’t change in the abstract (obviously).

324. In any case, the materialist worldview of science is monist, not dualist. You can accept science’s monism, or reject it and be a mystic. That’s up to you.

The debate between you and @Menes is interesting. I am unsure which of you has the better point, though I am admittedly predisposed toward @Menes’ perspective.

I am also unsure that you have quite the right definition of the term science. Most top scientists today do appear to be monists (I like this word of yours), but top mathematicians like Leibnitz, Gödel and Weyl aren’t; and I gather that part of @Menes’ point is that modern science defines itself in such a way as to exclude the very possibility of comment regarding dualism. That modern science is functionally monist, I will grant; but essentially monist? I do not think so.

Incidentally, those readers who seem to disapprove of @Intelligent Dasein’s prose style can see here the difficulty in the matter. Consider the very comment you are reading. Hard to understand, isn’t it? Yet I am not trying to be obscure. Quite the opposite. But, you know. Dualism. Monism. Hylomorphism. These are not words one encounters in everyday speech, yet what alternate words should one use?

• Replies:
325. jamie b. says:

These are not words one encounters in everyday speech, yet what alternate words should one use?

Nobody has criticized him for using terminology. He’s been criticized for pompousness…

“Let it be known, that I am writing…”

…and baroque fluff…

“While the ideas presented herein have long been contemplated by the author and held by him to be provisionally true, the occasion of them taking shape in the present form was not, I am somewhat aggravated to say, the pure contemplative love of truth as such, nor the magnanimous desire to educate my benighted fellows, nor even the vanity born of holding exclusive possession of a novel and exciting conception which, once articulated, figures largely to gain its original representative a measure of historical notoriety; rather, it was exhausted patience with the endless, uncomprehending, unjustified scorn to which the ideas were subjected when they appeared in their fragmentary form, strung unsystematically throughout innumerable comments delivered over several years.”

326. Boy, what a carnival this thread has turned into. You go away for a week, and the crabgrass just takes over.

At the end of the day, all HBD really is about, is finding actually realistic policy solutions to societal problems which are observable and ready to hand. If you turn on your TV or look out your window, you will see the largest HBD problem in American history working itself out, right now. This stuff isn’t about some all-night stoned college dorm discussion about “essences” or precious bodily fluids or whatever.

LEFTISTS: We must spend ourselves into bankruptcy, and run the country into the ground, in order to close the Achievement Gap!

HBDers: In reality, there is no “achievement gap.” Everybody just achieves what they’re able to in the aggregate: some people build skyscrapers, and some people just throw a rubber ball through a hoop. There are many conflicting explanations as to why this is — maybe none of them are right, and we haven’t found the best one yet. All we know is that the fact is observable, and we have to make policy based on reality, not fantasy.

LEFTISTS: B-b-but muh reparationerinos! Muh institutional structural racism! Muh legacy of slabery! Muh critical theory!

HBDers: Shut up and go wash the dishes.

There is so much nonsense floating around this thread, AE is gonna need a firehose to wash the place out.

• Agree: Lars Porsena
• LOL: mark green
327. “So I don’t think the “white people have an inherent right to a homeland” argument is going to get anywhere. I’m not saying I disagree with it, but it’s not going to get anywhere.”

I remain unclear who is preventing a homeland based on color as long as the claim to homeland has substance.

328. AaronB says:

Show me a single country which has survived multiracialism and is somehow coherent and productive.

Israel.

A country needs unity. Race can be a source of unity (although Civil Wars show that it is not enough). But there are other sources of unity.

A group of mixed blacks and whites united by religion, culture, and history will be more coherent and productive than a single race group composed of different races and religions.

Class divisions are also an issue. A society that is fair and balanced will be more united than one in which elites rape everyone else.

Israel is a multiracial society united by religion, culture, and history and generates significantly more loyalty and dedication among its members than the local Arab society. The local Arab society is composed of one single race yet is riven by faction, class division, disloyalty, backstabbing, lack of trust – despite also being united by religion and culture. This is why Israeli intelligence finds it do easy to fund assets among the Arabs – an extremely large number of people do not feel loyalty to a corrupt society.

So being single race is no panacea – the most vicious Civil Wars are fought among same race people.

Race can only be a unifying factor as an idea – history shows there there is no natural spontaneous loyalty to one’s race. If there were, blond Vikings would not have sacked, raped, and looted blond English people. Civil Wars wouldn’t happen.

All wars would be interracial, when most are not.

The fact is humans will fight over anything. Race is just one thing. If you don’t have a racial underclass, you’ll still have an underclass, and it isn’t fair and equal outcomes are more important than equal opportunity. That’s why we had the Russian Revolution.

Now, none of this means any country should import large numbers of foreigners without assimilating them, for any reason.

The big problem we have now is the sheer number of immigrants, plus the collapse of the ideal of assimilation to one unifying national idea and the encouragement of dis-unity, as well as a culture that is hostile to European culture and whites.

It is not primarily a race issue.

• Replies:
329. res says:

Thanks for at least trying.

It was stupid and illogical of you to accuse me of being ‘wrong’ for using the National IQ (NIQ) category when that was the category presented as the best estimate by the author of the Table himself, who is also an HBD advocate like you.

Let’s give the full context of my saying “wrong.”

On the other hand using QNW instead of NIQ would have made Dominican Republic’s IQ 0.6 points higher than Haiti’s, instead of 6.5 points lower.

Exactly. Which would make the leadoff statement in your comment: “But the national IQ of Haiti (88.6) is higher than the national IQ of the Dominican Republic (82.1)” wrong. Which was my point.

The wrong was conditional. If you allow your counterfactual then your statement would have been wrong. My original point was that we have conflicting (and suspect) data which only supported your interpretation if read in a single specific way. Read in any of a number of other different ways a different conclusion was indicated.

Your point about Becker considering the NIQ estimate to be the best is your single good point in all of this. But I have gone into the flaws of that estimate in this particular case (Haiti) in sufficient detail above. And I should also note that you referring to NIQ as the best estimate just indicates you have not looked at the Becker spreadsheet. There the column heading is QNW+SAS+GEO

It was stupid and illogical of you to present outdated estimates by Lynn as superior to the current one by Becker even though Lynn himself backs Becker’s work.

First a question. Have you ever looked at Becker’s spreadsheet to evaluate my arguments yourself? If not, you are being ignorant and unwilling to educate yourself. Here is the link again.
https://www.researchgate.net/project/Worlds-IQ

Looking deeper at the evidence is not stupid and illogical. Rather the opposite in fact. Which is why I keep accusing you of projection.

I did not say the L&V estimates were superior. I said they conflicted. As did the Rindermann estimate (but that was based on L&V). As did the Becker UW estimate (78.42).

As I said before, the DR outscored Haiti on every single point estimate (including all of the Becker estimates). The only cases where Haiti outscored the DR were composites including the SAS field (present for the DR but not Haiti).

Any response to my earlier question: “Simple question, do you think the estimate of IQ 95-98 which Becker is using from that 1975 study is a plausible number for the average 6 year old in Haiti then?”

Because the validity of the study results Becker is using there is the key question in all of this.

P.S. Have you looked at ANY of the evidence I have presented? Because arguing with people who refuse to consider any evidence I give and fail to present any (additional) evidence of their own tends to be a waste of time.

P.P.S. The first scatterplot at this link gives an idea of how much of an outlier Haiti (HTI at the lower right) is in terms of differences between the Lynn and Vanhanen 2012 and Lynn and Becker 2019 estimates. I think discrepancies that large (in either direction!) provide good reason to take a closer look at the data involved.
https://rpubs.com/EmilOWK/intell_nations_2019

Lynn and Becker’s 2019 book is available at https://www.ulsterinstitute.org/ebook/THE%20INTELLIGENCE%20OF%20NATIONS%20-%20Richard%20Lynn,%20David%20Becker.pdf
Page 87 has the discussion of Haiti.

2.3.46. Haiti (HAI)
Cotten (1985, Tab.IV) administered the CPM on a national sample of Children with a mean age of 10.00y from Haiti. A rural and an urban sample scored on average 55.00, which is described as the “percentage of the mean score obtained by children of a given age in a reference population” (p.48). The used reference population was not named, however, the CPM-manual of 1965 (Raven, 1965) was cited, which refers to the British standardization in Dumfries of 1947 (Flynn, 2009), in which 10.00y olds obtained a mean raw score of 28.15 (Green & Ewert, 1955, Table 1). So, 55.00% would be equivalent to a raw score of 15.48. This is at the 0.81st GBR-P and equivalent to an uncor. IQ of 63.91, on which 5.46 had to be added for FE-correction to 69.37.
De Ronceray and Petit-Frere (1975, Tab.II) compared an experimental sample instructed in Creole compared to two control samples, one instructed in French and one which was independent from the study. No significant differences could be found between the three groups in SPM-performance, therefore all were used in this dataset. The mean age was 6.00y and the mean raw score was
15.02, therefore at the 38.97th GBR-P and equivalent to an uncor. IQ of 95.80. Adding 1.05 for FE-correction resulted in 96.85. Both samples together gave Haiti an unweighted national IQ of 83.11 and a final national IQ of 82.10 after weightings. School assessment data were not available.

Interesting that the published value (82.10) is a full 6.5 IQ points lower than the current (1.3.3) Becker spreadsheet value you used (88.6). Does that help you see why it might not be wise to treat these numbers as absolute truth from on high?

I still want to know what kind of researcher would administer Raven’s SPM to 6 year old Haitians rather than the CPM. Notice that the later study used the CPM (more suitable for younger subjects) for 10 year olds.

• Replies:
330. res says:

It’s mean to let facts interfere with his simplistic narrative.

331. dfordoom says: • Website

It may be confusing cause and effect to point out that immigration-inundated Sweden, Switzerland, Britain, France, Germany, the US and many others are actually quite easily among the best countries to live in, but it is a fact nonetheless.

And Australia is not exactly a hell-hole. It’s a peaceful, prosperous country and a very pleasant place in which to live.

Your need to see the world as worse than it is in order to make your political/racialist ideology more certain to you is unlikely to be serving you in any deeper way.

I agree very strongly with that.

• Thanks: UK
332. You write:

Show me a single country which has survived multiracialism and is somehow coherent and productive.

@AaronB writes:

Israel.

Why did I know that @AaronB would say that?

Israel has survived multiracialism by building a border wall (photo here) to keep the multiracials out.

Inasmuch as @AaronB, who momentarily pretends not to hate you, seems intent on propagandizing untethered from truth and good faith, here for reference is a photo of the 120 members of Israel’s Knesset (or parliament).

I see one Ethiopian. How many do you see?

The Knesset does not seem very diverse, otherwise. This suggests to me that Israel is smart and @AaronB is dissimulating.

I am really, really sick of Jews getting away with @AaronB’s kind of nonsense.

• Replies: , ,
333. Talha says:

Israel is a bunker state built by a bunch of European Jewish settlers and basically flooded with more Jews after massive losses in WW2 that kicked them out of places like Germany and Poland. The local Jews in Arab lands wanted little to do with it until the surrounding Arab nationalists either forced or pressured them to leave. It is kept together by having a highly militarized society of a few millions and the need to survive in a small area of land surrounded by tens of millions of hostile Muslims. You could use that formula for literally any populace under those circumstances; you could build a cohesive state populated and run by LGBT on it – not rocket science.

And even then, a good number of them are looking for greener pastures:
“A third of Jewish Israelis would leave the country if they could, according to a poll conducted by Masa Israeli, a group looking at the divisions of Jewish society in Israel.”
https://forward.com/fast-forward/366561/why-do-a-third-of-israelis-want-to-leave-the-country/

Peace.

• Thanks: mark green
• Replies:
334. Show us where you learned that the ancient Greeks thought that “blackness is not merely skin deep”. Or admit you are a liar like Dasein

Me ? But… but…

I am Honoured, Sir, to have been mistaken in your anger, hubris and rush to insulting arrogance, for my learned colleague – the very great and humblingly-intelligent Three Cranes. Please refer directly to his measured and perfect response to the odious and distressingly-dishonest AaronB in comment no. 298 as above.

335. AaronB says:

Israel is a bunker state

Lol, every country in that region is a bunker state, even Muslim countries. That’s what living around Muslims means – living in a bunker state, even if you’re Muslim.

Its also nice to see how “proud” you are that your aggression makes Israel a bunker state, very typical for a Muslim, but last I checked the aggressive tendencies of your culture was leaving ruin, death, poverty, and slavery across the entire Muslim world, so you might want to get those tendencies under control. Just sayin’.

Meanwhile, in sunny and beautiful Tel Aviv, with one of the highest living standards in the world, people sip coffee in trendy cafes and enjoy great restaurants and some of the world’s best beaches. Not to mention the beautiful girls.

One third of Israelis claim they want to emigrate, you say, because economic competition can be tough? Tell me, how many Syrians want to immigrate 🙂 How many Pakistanis want to immigrate 🙂

Judging from the armies of Muslims flooding Europe, seems like the entire Muslim.world wants to immigrate.

Which reminds me – aren’t you an immigrant to the US from Pakistan?

Lol.

Nice to see you once again being chummy with racists – I guess its tough to keep up that facade of being such a wonderfully “moral” person all time.

• Replies:
336. I am really, really sick of Jews getting away with @AaronB’s kind of nonsense

Fear not. Whatever else he chooses to pretend, mis-understand or falsify elsewhere, most certainly, he does not “get away with it” here.

• Agree: AnonStarter
337. AaronB says:

Actually, if you look at those photos, you will see that half or more of the people are darker and from Arab lands. There are even several pure Arab parties in the Knesset.

I do think race is important. I am happy there are Ethiopians in Israel. They are cool and they add to the richness of an already very interesting and mixed culture. But if you told me tomorrow that 10 million black Nigerians are immigrating, I wouldn’t be happy.

And I am against Europe having a flood of refugees, especially Muslims as they are clearly incompatible and extremely aggressive. There is no reason Europe should be taking in so many foreigners. Nor am I even against countries being entirely or largely of one race.

What I am saying is that a certain amount of racial diversity is perfectly compatible with having a unified and productive country, provided there is an overall unifying culture and religion.

So we don’t have to be extremists about this, and I’m sure the ideal mix varies between countries and peoples. Israel seems to be doing great with a Jewish population that’s about evenly mixed between mixed between European Jews and Jews from Arab lands, with some blacks thrown in. Europe may have a different ideal mix. Its also fine for any European country to remain one race.

And my main point is that race alone isn’t enough of a unifying factor for a country. History shows clearly that people of the same race do fight. So while race is an important factor, I am opposed to the fantasy that a racially unified society will be a peaceful paradise.

Which means that the big problem the West has is not having a unifying culture or religion, since the Enlightenment deconstructed the inherited culture and substituted reason in its stead. The second big problem the West has is the anti-white sentiment that is a Romantic Reaction against a culture dominated by technology.

None of this means that race is not an issue and that it isn’t a problem that Europe us being flooded with immigrants.

338. Having read @ID’s essay twice, and the comments once, let me first address those commenting first.

Most of you need to review Monty Python’s sketch, “I’m here for an argument”. You need to be reminded that neither contradiction nor abuse equals argument.

Most of the rest of you need to address the argument which @ID raises, instead of the one you have constructed. Can we say ‘straw man’, children? I knew you could.

And in passing, while I prefer epigrammatic to periodic sentences, I appreciate @ID’s grand style, which was the general way that educated men (and occasionally women) addressed one another, and their topics, until about the middle of the last century. Permit me to point out to those complaining that if ‘g’ is indistinguishable from the facility at holding a number of items in immediate memory, then the present essay amounts to a test of ‘g’, one in which the complainers have largely failed.

That said, permit me to construct a precis of @ID’s argument (in bold), which I will then address:

The present discussion on this website re HBD and race is limited by the use of terms and concepts from modern biology. More particularly, the dogmas of Darwin and of molecular biology contain a number of flaws and circular reasonings, which prevent us from a better understanding of the phenomena of living beings in general, and human beings in particular. @ID recommends a more philosophical approach, in which living beings in general, and the races of humankind in particular, would be treated as phenomena in a new natural philosophy, instead of objects within a fragmented, overspecialized, and reductionist system of sciences.

On the whole, I would agree with @ID, both in this oversimplified version of his thought, and in his essay itself. While various data from the several sciences are of value, they need to be integrated into a broader philosophical schema, if only to be better understood by human beings. Present Darwinian theory, as well as the central dogmata of molecular biology, while they have helped reveal certain processes in living cells and beings, remain inadequate to our understanding of such matters as complex processes, such as ecological systems, or of such matters as human consciousness. At this point, we need not only specialized scientists, but generalist natural philosophers.

On the other hand, any number of examples which @ID has adduced to prove his several points have done no such thing. For but one example, he brings out the old Aristotelian chestnut of the infinity and infinite divisibility of space and time. Unfortunately, modern cosmology and quantum physics at the present time have put the lie to all of these ‘four noble truths’. I also have my doubts as to the efficacy or even the possibility of a neo-neo-Scholasticism. While Gilson and Garrigou-Lagrange both tried, I fear that, in the words of that eminent philosopher, Rocket J. Squirrel, “That trick never works!”

In short, I think we would do well to attempt to integrate the findings of modern science into a broader and deeper philosophical system of thought. I doubt that Scholasticism of any stripe is up to the task. I think, however, that a philosophia perennis, making use of a synchronic understanding of philosophy, and INCLUDING Scholasticism would do a better job at that task.

• Replies:
339. Talha says:

every country in that region is a bunker state, even Muslim countries.

Mostly. Since the break up of the Ottoman empire the place is basically full of statelets pointing guns at each other.

Its also nice to see how “proud” you are that your aggression makes Israel a bunker state

Uh hunh…those are your words (yet again putting words into my mouth), not mine. I was simply describing the situation as it is. But I am very glad that the Muslim world is quite capable of keeping Israel contained within her current borders, the land invasions of places like Lebanon are hopefully things of the past.

the aggressive tendencies of your culture was leaving ruin, death, poverty, and slavery across the entire Muslim world, so you might want to get those tendencies under control.

The region was actually not doing too bad before the war in Iraq; things weren’t great, but they were stable. But some people sold everyone on the bright idea of invasion:

And being that Muslim countries are sitting on massive amounts of oil and have to deal with occasional invasions supported and rooted for by Neocons, I see no need for Muslims to start going soft, that will simply encourage people to think it’s not going to cost them anything to send armed young men rolling into the Middle East.

I think everyone notices the words he used were “if YOU take out Saddam”, meaning “let’s you and him fight”. Which is basically the Neocon mantra since, of course, he is certainly not willing to offer up tens of thousands of dead Israelis for “enormous positive reverberations” across the Middle East.

Tell me, how many Syrians want to immigrate

Well, everyone wants to escape a war zone, but it’s probably better to ask a more stable country in the region, like Jordan, in the same time frame:
“Nearly 20 per cent of Jordanian population wish to migrate to another country — Gallup report”
https://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/nearly-20-cent-jordanian-population-wish-migrate-another-country-%E2%80%94-gallup-report

So…yeah.

aren’t you an immigrant to the US from Pakistan?

Yeah.

Nice to see you once again being chummy with racists

I’m friendly and civil with anyone who is such towards me.

such a wonderfully “moral” person all time.

Uh hunh, I’ll let you know when I start looking for moral approval from Zionists.

Which reminds me…it’s pretty amazing how you’ve turned full-blown Zionist Neocon within just a couple of years. Not too long ago you were chiding that “Tyrion2” guy.

You were saying things like:

This reply is an excellent sample of Jewish social technique – not because you are especially skillful but because you employ several very basic, but classic, tactics that are beginning to lose their effectiveness.

Right down to attempting to stigmatize any analysis of Jewish culture as “creepy”, when entire departments of anthropology exist to study cultures from around the world.

Tyrion, I don’t think you are consciously trying to manipulate – you simply suffer from drastic “perspective loss” that is one of the products of a Jewish upbringing – long years of habit have narrowed your focus in ways you are literally unconscious of.

What people don’t understand is that Jewish manipulation would be amateurish and ineffective if it was “conscious” – the conscious mind is a rather clumsy and slow organ, and any skill must become automatic of it is have any serious effectiveness….Trust me Tyrion, I know – I myself was a product of this Jewish upbringing – I too used to passionately defend Jewish causes in autopilot mode without any real larger awareness. I literally could not see myself, as you cannot now.

It took years of travel and experience of other cultures, reading, and life experiences to break the hardened shell of the Jewish carapace that enclosed me.

Compared to judaism??? Lol.

Judaism has no art or poetry or architecture – Islam excels in all three. Jews are slovenly and rude and unaestnetic. Charm – lol.

Call Islam violent, backwards, etc – but less charming than judaism? Islam has managed to entice refined and sophisticated Europeans, while only low level white weirdos convert to judaism, unless it’s for money like Ivanka – I know several.

Can’t we just get our insults straight? Part of Jewish success is because they neglect all charm and beauty in order to pursue money – some people admire this, and there’s a lesson to be learned.

And then, when I told you my daughter volunteered to help a local religious Jewish all-girls group put on a play and was not treated well by the organizers, you actually consoled me and said:

Im sorry your daughter had to experience that. Bad manners, rudeness, and harshness is a big problem in the Jewish community. Many Jews complain about it too – it’s partly a product of the lack of culture, joy, and beauty that comes from specializing in money acquisition, and partly the bad moods engendered by the constant ego competition and put downs that are a defining feature of Jewish social life, and partly a cultivated attitude – harshness and rudeness make sense if you are trying to “conquer”.

Working with a group of Jews I would have gone in expecting harshness, rudeness, competition, and put downs and insults.

I’d be pleasantly surprised if it didn’t happen, which sometimes is the case.

You shouldn’t be surprised about the condescending tones – the whole point of Judaism, it’s raison d’etre, is condescension, so to speak

Also, regarding Tel Aviv “with one of the highest living standards in the world”, you stated:

As Shamir has shown, and I have seen, life in the West Bank isn’t much worse. Believe it or not, Israel doesn’t look first world at all, however rich it may be on paper. Aside from squeaky new developements, Israel isn’t really better materially than the West Bank.

It’s just propaganda.

It’s probably best you put me on your ignore list since, I’m about to do the same with you (feel free to respond, but don’t expect one back). Have a good life figuring out who you are. Others here can decide if they want to buy your boiler-plate Necon/Zionist arguments – I’ve heard them all before so it’s pretty boring to me.

I’ll plod along being the same me I’ve been since I landed here.

Peace.

• Replies: , ,
340. I’ll plod along being the same me I’ve been since I landed here.

You really think so, Talha?

Regularly reading Unz can change dramatically one’s world view.

The Allegory of the Cave offers no good outcomes: one can stay chained in the dark, thinking shadows are reality; or one can step out of the cave and confront a much larger world of real reality. Only a few choose, or have the opportunity to choose the latter, and their journey out of the cave is seldom met with acclaim but rather with hatred and marginalization — witness Socrates (and FB shadow-banning (!) Unz).
But for such a one, there’s no going back.

• Replies: ,
341. Which reminds me…it’s pretty amazing how you’ve turned full-blown Zionist Neocon within just a couple of years.

Lord Almighty!

Yes, I see none of his currently trademark characteristics evident in those contributions. The contrast is really quite baffling.

Such a shame.

Rumi would be quite upset with him.

was-salaam.

• Replies:
342. AaronB says:

Sorry for late response, didn’t see this.

It is actually quite simple, it’s easier to derive the shorter your time frame is. It is basically taking everything for granted, that as things are now, they have always been and always will be. So if your race is on top now, you take it for granted they always have been and always will be. Very typical honestly, particularly when a race has been on top for a long while.

This is a very good insight, actually.

One thing I particularly dislike about the HBDers is this kind of thinking, that things always were this way and always will be.

To me, its very despair inducing. It is so obviously against history, but I think it goes beyond just wanting to be on top.

The HBD people would regularly say that Asians were always better at STEM than whites, rather than just hugely more motivated now and trying to catch up, and that whites were always weak and unassertive compared to blacks, etc.

So I always saw HBD as another form of white decline and despair. The fatalism of a demotivated people.

But the end product, both racial and cultural, is real differences not interchangeable blank slates (at least not on a human time scale rather than an evolutionary or cultural time scale). This stuff is not immutable, but it is hardly mutable in human time scales.

Well, I’d agree there are some things not mutable on a reasonable time scale, but a 100 or 150 years, a few generations, can do dramatic things. But typically our societies don’t plan 150 years ahead.

But I’d say it’s extremely hard to say what is and is not immutable. Even IQ scores can to a large degree represent increased motivation.

Now, there not be anything simple we can do to increase motivation in a short time. Civilizations become exhausted for complex reasons. It may not even be possible to motivate an exhausted civilization. It may not even be desirable.

But lets correctly characterize what’s going on, what we do and don’t know.

In modern western English speaking cultures, I think the nurture extremist nuts are way more powerful, currently dangerous, and way more plentiful than nature extremist nuts which is why I tend to see the HBD perspective as a healthy and important contribution to these discussions that brings some important truth to the table that needs to be heeded, at least somewhat.

I think that’s fine, but introducing an extreme HBD position in reactive fashion to balance out an extreme blank slate position doesnt lead unfortunately to balance.

An extreme HBD position is not only obviously contradictory to history, it is deeply unappealing – so it discredits all versions of HBD and provokes a defensive doubling down.

The people who like extreme HBD are playing the”grim” game – they like the world to be grim and hopeless because it makes them “realistic” to accept it, and thus superior to the poor sentimental fools who don’t.

Its s kind of masochism, they get off on. But there aren’t too many people like that.

Our culture has a problem with swinging to extremes – I think we need to develop towards a healthy synthesis of opposing trends. Hegel needs to make a comeback, just without the notion of progress.

• Replies:
343. V. K. Ovelund: “The debate between you and @Menes is interesting. I am unsure which of you has the better point, though I am admittedly predisposed toward @Menes’ perspective. ”

One hardly knows what to say to people who believe that they are not “really” their bodies, but instead are immaterial “souls” trapped inside their bodies. They even have the insolence to claim it’s obvious, and undeniable! It’s a remarkable delusion, very widespread, and it undergirds a religious view of reality, a belief in personal immortality, life after death, and so forth, which may have at one time provided evolutionary advantages. It unquestionably provides them with a great deal of emotional comfort. These two motivations could explain its prevalence and the seeming conviction with which its adherents believe it.

The scientific view, on the other hand, is that mind (i.e., consciousness) does exist in the world, and that the mind (or “soul”) is nothing but a term for the brain and the set of behaviors emanating from it. Without that brain and those behaviors, it ceases to exist. The subjective appearance of the mind is interesting, but that appearance doesn’t necessarily define it. Unlike the religious view, a scientific view doesn’t set up an entirely separate reality in support of non-material entities.

V. K. Ovelund: “… I gather that part of @Menes’ point is that modern science defines itself in such a way as to exclude the very possibility of comment regarding dualism. ”

Insofar as they are considered to be non-material, consisting of neither matter nor energy, “souls” are not a fit subject for scientific analysis. There I agree with him. But it would seem that those who believe such things exist could certainly use the tools of science to establish exactly how these “souls” interact with the material world. That they’ve never been able to do so should tell you something. Some objective proof that such entities actually exist would also be nice. Failing that, the existence of non-material “souls” is just a superfluous hypothesis.

• Agree: commandor
344. AaronB says:

That’s true, I was once one of the biggest anti-Semites here. See, there is hope for everyone, even you, Talha.

I was one of them most pro-Islam commenters on this site, and I want you to know that you’ve been instrumental in changing that.

You like to present yourself as this really decent nice guy who is friends with everyone, but you’re a phony.

I’ve repeatedly defended Islam on this site, and tried to introduce more nuance when Islam was attacked, and you’ve never reciprocated. You are chummy with and high five and support the most rabid anti-Semites here, and repeatedly make slimy insinuations about Jews and Israel of the lowest kind You’ve never tried to introduce nuance or moral complexity to the issue.

And small wonder. Your good buddy AnonS candidly says Jews are liars whose religion is illegitimate. You never rebuked him – and why should you. This is Muslim orthodoxy.

So I understand that now. I was a fool for extending the hand of friendship to you Muslims here for so long – it was slapped away in scorn.

Well ok then, if that’s how it must be that’s how it must be. You want war then that’s how it must be. How long did you think I was going to continue promoting and defending Islam and Muslims? Lol, even you must have been laughing at my stupidity.

I’m like a naive Liberal mugged by reality.

So then this article basically makes the case that blacks are an irredeemably inferior race – and all you can is offer congratulations, and hope to see more essays. But you’re such a moral person lol! Muslim morality! Give us some sermons with copious quotes, Talha! Which Sufi worthy says you should congratulate racist authors on their essays? I’m sure you have all the quotes.

All of this fine – be friends with racists all you want. But then forgive me when I consider your painstaking efforts to portray your self as this high minded moral person a fraud.

As for Israel, yup, I stand by those remarks. Israel is not markedly better than most of the West Bank in terms modern looking cities. Both have a crumbly old world charm. However, parts of Tel Aviv are an exception. They are very different.

But the real difference is in quality of life – Israel has amazing hip cafes, restaurants, beaches and the like, often set amid a crumbly old world charm, and a high standard of living, if a bit expensive. And the West Bank is quite prosperous for an Arab region.

Peace.

345. You might be able to say a particular race is not integral to humanity, but I don’t see how you can maintain the following.

1. Race is integral to civilizations.
2. Civilizations are integral to humanity.
3. Race is not integral to humanity.

Well as Peter Frost helpfully pointed out above, civilization is not integral to humanity. So the point is moot because premise number 2 is obviously wrong.

But premise number 1 is also wrong. If you’ll refer to the comments above, I said that “races are integral to the respective societies that they build.” Hence, if a civilization was built by a specific race, then that race is integral to it. But it is certainly possible to imagine a civilization built by all races, or (in the case of extensive miscegenation) by no races. Perhaps not likely, but possible. Race, then, while integral to some particular civilizations, is clearly not integral to “civilization” in the abstract.

P.S. Your “integral” vs. “important” statement reminds me why I dislike so much philosophical reasoning I encounter. Fuzzy words interpreted as desired.

Philosophical reasoning is precisely how we avoid “fuzzy words interpreted as desired.” The word “important” is a perfect example– it’s totally subjective in nature. “Integral” is much better because, while we can obviously disagree on what is integral, it at least has a non-subjective meaning.

• Disagree: res
346. “And if Blacks were to, through genetic alteration of one sort or another, cast off the curse and become more like the rest of humanity, i.e. assimilable, then they would no longer be “Black”. Get it?”

You have got to be kidding. Socrates was not talking about black skin. Nice try . . . . And he certainly was not talking about Christ. He was talking merely about what constitutes a “good man” in relation to worth to community. As such, it doesn’t take a third grader to pint to history and make note that entire black societies – engaged in a process of high context social structure in which the society over the individual. In fact by the time Europe arrived on the continent of Africa the close nit communities were well established having long past the period of mass warfare — careful, warfare existed, but not on the scale as Europens practiced. What kind if storybook has one read that masks rhetorical misapplication in this manner.

At the end of the civil war, it was the free blacks who sacrificed in their attempt to sere newly freed blacks . . these were the people who were educated, well schooled in social structure and politics and yet were prevented from assimilating.

But what to expect from someone who seriously attempted to argue that the sale owner had a tougher labor than the slave. Blacks served in the armed forces in causes of the US knowing that their value as citizens would be denied at home. That means millions of blacks sacrificed to demonstrate their value as citizens while being denied the very benefit of the same — good grief.

Of course your thinking here is not entirely your fault — but clearly the evidence on the record demonstrates that black skin does not prevent one from a “good man” or a good person” Socrates would look at you askance as he would readily tell that the the foundations of Greek philosophy were laid by people darker than himself and their sacrifice of sharing knowledge is exemplar of goodness — as character. Now let’s skip the Egyptians were not black and admit that they were not white. Blinded by your nonsensical hold ion the their that whiteness alone i a carrier of goodness — i suggest you take a look at history of what a band of marauding, thieving , murderous bastion of self centered naves whites were —

whether marauding Vikings killing priests, or noble Romans grasping territory for glory, prestige and survival.

——————————-

“But ID is trying to prove that a worldview that enthrones “accidental” qualities is simply hogwash. It has no logical leg to stand on. It is groundless.”

I would like to know what this super intelligence in the gene that produced these supper intelligent beings that resides in whiteness. What nonsense, nothing supports this fantasy. In fact the what the creator says is “man is fallen” period. He is estranged from God. A condition he inherited from Adam and Eve, not by their biology, but by their choice. For the mind of man — there is chaos. And God has not seen fit to unravel the truth – so chaos remains. In the meantime, since Christ, Eurpoeans were constantly engaged in battles in which it was not uncommon for fie thousand or ten thousand men would disappear in a day over who should be king, queen, bishop . . etc. Pray do tell the self sacrifice for the good of all these battles that plagued every European nation. And since you invoke the good shepherd — support these events with New testament scripture.

——————

The claim that skin color is the mark of Cain is absolutely unsupportable. But I will address this notion later.
——————————————–

“Children are like their parents because they are begotten by their parents. And they are like their parents not only in dispositions of the body but also in those of the soul. Therefore as bodies derive from bodies, so do souls derive from souls.”

Leaning the philosophy of classical ancients is helpful in comprehending human meaning and existence. However, sometimes there are just plain wrong, lacking in information, or lacking another viable perspective. For example, the above reference to children being like their parents .

1. except when they are not at all like their parents what then.
2. Thomas’s press here is contradicted by scripture which states that each one to his own person. There’s no evidence nor reason that one’s soul is derived from one’s parents — making room for how one defines soul — but the point of act, that each soul held to account for its own sake’
3. If you are least bit familiar with blood typing, tissue sampling then you are familiar that there is no guarantee that tissue/blood is at all compatible with one’s parents — body from body not so much , to not all — Fr. Thomas Aquinas — wrong by the evidence. Sure there traits — but what is meant by the sins being passed on to child – is not uniquely understood as biology — but that the child learns and develops from what he or she experiences/learns, mimics from their parent. And even then there are children who develop only certain aspects as they develop into their own.

Hence the expression from scripture

“Train a child in the way that he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” That’s clearly weighted to experience – not biology. So Fr. Aquinas loses by virtue of not accounting for environment to similarity or difference for that matter.

Fr. Aquinas’s comprehension of soul as rational ability simply misses the vast amounts of research regarding other animals behavior studies that indicate that animals actually do engage in rational thought at various level and by Fr. Thomas’s definition/explication of soul — they would in fact therefore have souls. Nor would his explication be applicable to those humans by virtue of disability cannot express rational concepts. As I say, it’s great to have the academic acumen to discuss matters from referential points of classical education — as indication that one has endured or engaged in such study — but applying that knowledge today requires that compared to what we know today — the ancients from many perspectives were utter dolts.

• Replies:
347. Menes says:

you referring to NIQ as the best estimate just indicates you have not looked at the Becker spreadsheet. There the column heading is QNW+SAS+GEO

It is Becker, not me, who refers to NIQ as the best estimate. Surely he must have looked at his own spreadsheet before concluding that. :0

I did not say the L&V estimates were superior. I said they conflicted.

If you didn’t think those outdated estimates were superior why would you use them to discredit Becker’s estimate?

Because the validity of the study results Becker is using there is the key question in all of this.

Then go argue with Becker. And Lynn. And all the rest of the priesthood of IQism.

Now let us look at how the 3 highest ranked nations of the Caribbean, all black African majority, look when compared to some prominent “white caucasian” nations of West Asia and North Africa:

Bermuda 93,2
Iraq 89.4
Haiti 88.6
Turkey 87.0
Lebanon 81.7
Iran 80.0
Saudi Arabia 76.5
Algeria 76.0
Morocco 67.0

The National IQ difference between black Haiti and white Morocco is a whopping 22.4 points. What does that tell you?

• Replies: ,
348. Bert says:

“If you can’t dazzle them with data, then baffle them with bullshit.”

There is no science in this post at all. Yet the question of how life on Earth came to be can only be answered with data of all sorts. That deficiency alone makes the post ludicrous. It is no accident that the author’s initials are “ID.” This is Intelligent Design on a mission to discredit evolutionary science. If that could be accomplished, then God would subsequently be brought back in as the designer.

To demonstrate ID’s inability to handle the simplest of evolutionary phenomena, let’s ask Mr. ID how he explains the biogeographic evidence for trans-specific evolution. Look at a typical case. There is a genus of turtles named Graptemys. Members of this genus inhabit rivers, but only in eastern North America. Adjacent rivers (e.g. Pearl, Pascagoula, Alabama, Escambia, Chipola) have morphologically and biochemically different forms of the Graptemys body plan. But in a Principal Components analysis these forms cluster together (the basis of classifying them in the same genus) and away from other clusters of emydine turtles. The mechanistic explanation for the facts of Graptemys distributions in space is transfer of populations from one drainage to another by stream capture; and by the joining of adjacent rivers when sea levels were 300 feet lower during glacial periods of the Pleistocene, and subsequent separation by inter-glacial sea level rise; and once isolated, then divergence. This pattern of geographically localized but closely similar species is the most conspicuous fact of the distribution of life on Earth. The only logical explanation is that offered by evolutionary biology: an initial origin followed by dispersal and differentiation.

As the post shows, Intelligent Design is intellectually vacuous because it tries to substitute Scholastic argumentation for data. That would not be a popular approach for medical science. If the post author were intellectually consistent, he would go to a faith healer rather than an M.D.

As for Audacious sponsoring this dreck, that doesn’t surprise me.

• Agree: jamie b.
• Replies:
349. Bert says:

You characterized this post perfectly. It was intended to confuse. In that most fundamental sense, it is identical to the rhetoric of politicians and charlatans.

• Replies:
350. dfordoom says: • Website

Regularly reading Unz can change dramatically one’s world view.

It certainly can. Regularly reading Unz has convinced me that the far right is a dead end. When I started reading Unz I was pretty much an alt-right True Believer. I now believe that while the far right is often correct in identifying the problems it offers no viable solutions.

I’ve also lost all sympathy for the “let’s burn it all down” brigade.

• Replies: ,
351. Saxon says:

Israel is a country busily engaged in ethnically cleansing itself of its non-Jewish populations. You went into that territory and took it. Our case is the opposite. We had homogeneous functioning countries which were IMMEASURABLY better, and we are having our foreigners foisted on us by YOUR people.

• Agree: V. K. Ovelund
352. Talha says:

(Sigh)…

Just to clarify for others that may be reading and to make my positions clear…to commence…

You’ve never tried to introduce nuance or moral complexity to the issue.

Complete nonsense that should be clear to anyone who has ever read my posts. Even when my daughter complained about her treatment by those Jewish ladies, I made this comment:
“I simply told her; look, just like some Muslims do stupid stuff, they’ve got idiots in their own community too.”

I used to have very nuanced exchanges with “Sam Shama” (who was a Jewish guy that visited Israel often) on Israel and moving forward. We didn’t agree, but they were friendly and civil:

Others would criticize me for being on friendly terms with him, but it did not deter me. He was what I would consider a moderate Zionist.

In fact, I stated this in a recent exchange:

Let’s try this, just for the sake of exploring…how about items that seem to have been floated by various others as a relatively reasonable (to me) solution:
-Internationalization (and demilitarization) of Jerusalem (as I’ve mentioned to be shared between members [of all three religions] equitably as a unique and independent city)
-Israel goes back to its 1967 borders
-Israel ends occupation of WB – halt to all settlements (1/4 settlers get to stay/rest have to go back)
-Division of WB by Israeli/Palestinian sovereignty based on the above resettlement of settlers so that population transfers make for an easy transition for 1/4 of the WB as Israel proper and the rest goes to Palestinians
-In return, Israel gets full security guarantees and diplomatic relations

No response.

But again, it’s not all that surprising that Neocon Zionist types will distort the record and play the victim. To be expected honestly.

You want war then that’s how it must be.

Uh hunh…declaring war but in a way that you can try to play the victim. Victim card…declined.

I was a fool for extending the hand of friendship to you Muslims here for so long – it was slapped away in scorn.

Hardly. Homeboy changed and became Neocon-Zionist and then complains Muslims may not want to be friends. Victim card…declined.

Which Sufi worthy says you should congratulate racist authors on their essays?

The only thing I did was congratulate ID on being published. That’s all. I didn’t even read the entire essay because, once it became clear he was arguing from initial epistemic foundations and axioms I didn’t agree with, it makes no sense to debate or discuss details when one doesn’t agree with the foundation. This is an internal discussion for Christians to have (which seems to be ongoing in the thread); those that will actually agree that the Bible is a viable starting point for truth claims or interpretation of reality. What’s my position?

Anyway, this is really for others that may be paying attention, and no further clarification or response is needed as far as I’m concerned.

Others can decide if I’m a racist who hates Jews or something inane like that.

As far as the principle of being friendly to people who are racist or hate you or those you disagree with, I came across this example last year (for anyone interested*).

Whew…now that I’ve had a chance to clear the air – sorry folks – we now return to our regularly scheduled program…my last post on this subject since I don’t want to detract this thread any further by off topic discussions on Israel.

Peace.

[MORE]

*

• Replies:
353. Talha says:

I’ve changed my mind on a few things, to be sure, but not a whole lot.

Biggest things:
1. I was a full 100% blank slate guy, but I’ve been convinced that there is a genetic component that has to be accounted for (how much is still up for grabs)
2. I knew materialism was detrimental to a society – I had no clue how much I underestimated that negative influence
3. I knew liberalism was detrimental to a society – I had no clue how much I underestimated that negative influence
4. I’ve come to understand and empathize with some of the very legitimate concerns whites have about immigration and other subjects that negatively impact their specific community – I was not exposed to this perspective until I came here

Peace.

354. Talha says:

The contrast is really quite baffling.

Is he telling the truth now or was he telling it then? Or is he simply returning to his initial programming as he himself outlined and cannot detect:
“I myself was a product of this Jewish upbringing – I too used to passionately defend Jewish causes in autopilot mode without any real larger awareness. I literally could not see myself, as you cannot now.

It took years of travel and experience of other cultures, reading, and life experiences to break the hardened shell of the Jewish carapace that enclosed me.”

He also once said:
“The Jews are the most power-hungry and wealth and status obsessed people on the planet – they are also the worlds most insecure and fearful. Their position in society is always on thin ice, their culture fosters pathological fear and a sense of persecution, and Jews are famously neurotic and anxiety-ridden…People like to say its crazy for the Jews, who have such power and wealth, to be so afraid, that they should relax, why are they so neurotic – such people don’t understand the causal relationship between neuroticism and power and wealth. Take away that fear, and you take away the intense psychological pressure that drives so much of Jewish behavior. If the Jews ever lose their neuroticism and anxiety, they will lose their position as “top dog”.”
https://www.unz.com/article/interviewing-moshe-feiglin/#comment-1743823

His words, not mine. So I have no clue what kind of underlying psychological issues are at play here.

Don’t know and frankly, I’m just moving on (as my ignore list steadily creeps to double digits). As an imam, that I keep up with, once said; a person at war with themselves will inevitably cause collateral damage to anyone around them.

Wa salaam.

• Replies:
355. This author is very similar to the one who writes in the same blowsy, foamy style as one “Pierre de Crion at The Occidental Observer. Same Catholic Church concentric and chaff.

Regarding the wholeness of evolutionary theory and wholeness, It will take issue with your stance on Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design does not EXPLAIN changes in life forms, it is the alternative to the inadequacy of purely mechanistic molecular changes that “naturally”-in the Natural World-arrange themselves in ever more complex and systemic forms. James Tour and others do not use religious arguments or Biblical justifications directly. Their main point is that any variants and offshoots of evolution theory are inadequate and mathematically impossible.

I am a retired mechanical engineer.

356. Twinkie says:

I appreciate @ID’s grand style, which was the general way that educated men (and occasionally women) addressed one another, and their topics, until about the middle of the last century.

Nonsense. I happen to be very partial to Edmund Burke’s writings and his writings, while polished, contain none of the superfluous pomposity of ID’s drivel. Burke wrote in the 18th century.

ID recommends a more philosophical approach, in which living beings in general, and the races of humankind in particular, would be treated as phenomena in a new natural philosophy, instead of objects within a fragmented, overspecialized, and reductionist system of sciences.

Said every theistic philosopher ever. You don’t need a 20,000 word salad to state this.

On the other hand, any number of examples which @ID has adduced to prove his several points have done no such thing.

On this you are correct. He has a poor (straw man) knowledge of modern evolutionary biology. He would really benefit from reading Razib Khan’s blog for some time.

I think we would do well to attempt to integrate the findings of modern science into a broader and deeper philosophical system of thought.

Who but extreme materialists would disagree with this?

357. JackOH says:

“Regularly reading Unz has convinced me that the far right is a dead end. When I started reading Unz I was pretty much an alt-right True Believer. I now believe that while the far right is often correct in identifying the problems it offers no viable solutions.” (emphasis mine)

I agree 100%.

I don’t understand how so many excellent analyses can result politically in nothing at all.

• Agree: iffen
• Replies:
358. “it is the alternative to the inadequacy of purely mechanistic molecular changes…”

Bingo. The operative word being merely “inadequacy,” not “eureka.”

The truth is that sciences like biology or ev-psych are simply still in their infancy, as is so much human knowledge. There is no shame in this, we’re only getting started. Geez, we’re only a few short centuries out of using Appeal to Authority fallacies to explain practically everything.

Whenever I reluctantly get sucked into these evolution/I.D. quarrels, I just say, OK, complete this analogy. Kepler is to Heisenberg, as Darwin is to WHO…?

The answer of course is, We don’t know yet. Darwin maybe has a bit more explanatory power than Kepler, but we’re not even at Newton yet in biology, let alone Heisenberg. Who knows what we will find out about life and its origins? There may be forces in play that we have not yet begun to imagine or conceptualize, things we don’t yet have a vocabulary for.

Which doesn’t mean we should stop exploring or investigating. But a little less bluster and overconfidence and overeagerness to resort to logic would be in order. One of the most dangerous things in the world is the misuse of the word “therefore”.

• Thanks: V. K. Ovelund
359. JoeMommy says:

“the data showing that many black African populations outperform whites in school, or the data showing that in the next few decades most African countries will have transitioned from 3rd to 2nd world status, thus giving the continent a big role in world affairs.”

360. … the vast amounts of research regarding other animals behavior studies that indicate that animals actually do engage in rational thought at various levels …

Unfamiliar. Care to elaborate?

• Replies:
361. The National IQ difference between black Haiti and white Morocco is a whopping 22.4 points. What does that tell you?

I have wondered the same.

Becker has done useful work. His work refutes some conceptions of mine. Am unsure what to make of that, but am glad to have Becker’s data.

I remain an HBD proponent but Becker’s data warns me to take care not to jump to too many conclusions too fast.

362. An extreme HBD position is not only obviously contradictory to history, …

Straw man.

… it is deeply unappealing.

Propaganda.

363. jamie b. says:

…talking in a Charles Nelson Reilly accent.

Seemed more like this to me…

364. jamie b. says:

…heavily infected with ignored genius fantasies and resentments.

While skimming his stuff, I couldn’t help but think of this…

• Replies:
365. iffen says:

I’ve also lost all sympathy for the “let’s burn it all down” brigade.

I’ve always disagreed with the accelerations, but I’m not sure anymore.

• Replies:
366. iffen says:

many excellent analyses can result politically in nothing at all.

Some, even those who seem to be above average approach it as a personal behavior/change the culture solution.

How do you change the culture?

It’s clear to me that it would be possible to seize political power and make changes, given political organization of course.

• Replies: ,
367. Is he telling the truth now or was he telling it then?

I doubt he’s ever been who he says he is. My experience with him has shown me that it’s not ignorance he betrays; it’s a deliberate effort to incite conflict.

Seen it too many times to think otherwise. Don’t be surprised if that was the intention from go.

Don’t know and frankly, I’m just moving on (as my ignore list steadily creeps to double digits). As an imam, that I keep up with, once said; a person at war with themselves will inevitably cause collateral damage to anyone around them.

Ameen.

Take care, brother. See you around, Lord willing.

was-salaam.

368. Mefobills: I like your naming our liberal mamby pamby society “clown world”. The name fits. It sounds better than fake world or fake reality.
Ron Unz is a strong, highly intelligent male. The likes of Bill Maher and Anderson Cooper, and all the cloned talking heads of the leftist media fit very well in “clown world”.

369. Hold on …

Did I miss something?

Is there anyone here who actually believes a word of what Aaron says about you?

He lies likes he breathes, akhi. Anybody familiar with his contributions knows this. No, he’s not unequivocally full of it. He can’t be if he wants to maintain even the thinnest veneer of credibility. But in characterizing you and me and so many others, he’s proven himself thoroughly dishonest and disingenuous.

Take, for example, his accusation that I’ve said Judaism is an “illegitimate religion.” For as many times as I’ve corrected him on this, he returns to the same old lie like a dog to vomit. If I were so inclined, I could pore through his posting history and find a mountain of the same. I’ve even invited him to scrutinize my own history to substantiate his claims. Crickets.

ID is a talented writer, and like numerous individuals here, quite intelligent. Agree or disagree with him, he’s got serious skills which deserve recognition. You want to know who Aaron is chummy with? A123, the prolific paranoid who sees jihadis in his breakfast cereal and routinely trash talks commenters, and Fran Taubman, whose reputation for anti-Muslim rhetoric is complemented by a penchant for profanity that would make a drunk sailor blush.

You don’t need to explain yourself, Talha. Even those who adamantly oppose Islam cannot impugn your composure and integrity in presenting yourself.

was-salaam.

370. “Unfamiliar. Care to elaborate?”

Here’s one reference . . .

“When Elephants Weep”

Excuse the delay.

The current demarcation between humans and other animals is not a debate about their soulness, but instead on the concept of minding, and existence and the ability to communicate about the very same.

Does a cow contemplate its existence in time and space and if so — how would one know and then if that — the does or can the cow do anything about it ————-

The above is not a question.

However, one doesn’t have to scour the compendium of book sellers and libraries —

• Thanks: V. K. Ovelund
371. Poupon Marx: The James Tour videos were a lot of fun. I have a science background and retired from medicine when I was exhausted. Tour is very interesting. Thanks for presenting him.

372. https://phys.org/news/2017-11-animals-rationally-rational-decision-making-doesnt.html

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-risky-is-it-really/201508/whos-more-rational-human-animals-or-non-human-animals

I think some animals perhaps all have the ability to engage in reflection of self. The ability to consider themselves in time and space. And been to project the same. Humans consider themselves in past present and future tenses. It had been thought that animals don’t consider themselves save in present and past – if that. But anyone who has ever played with a dog or cat knows that animals do have that ability to project self to a time not yet in existence. Chasing a dog around the yard makes this clear —

The dog will aim itself in one direction and then dart another. That dog has fooled the purser. The ability to suggest to the pursuer, I am going with way , but deliberate go another — is key evidence of a reflected self.

Animals do the inexplicable, a child falls into a zoo cage — and are not attacked though the animals can clearly see the child or in some cases move to protect said child. Elephants rescuing other species from mud pits . . . .

Dolphins rescuing humans . . . the evidence is fairly substantial that animals engage in critical thought and make distinctions between themselves and other beings — that we have a more complex system does not deny that the existence of something similar.

————————————

373. res says:

It is Becker, not me, who refers to NIQ as the best estimate. Surely he must have looked at his own spreadsheet before concluding that. :0

Here is how he refers to the variables in the manual for his spreadsheet. Notice how he uses NIQ as a general term (national IQ-scores) then refers to specific versions. Can you show me where Becker has referred to NIQ as the best estimate, or are you referring to someone else’s sloppy use of terminology?

For users who want quick access to IQ lists the table “FAV” (favorites) is recommended.
It contains the final estimated national IQ-scores (NIQ) and descriptive statistics at the bottom but without additional information.
Ten variables for mean national IQ-scores are given here:

NIQ-UW (col. C): Simple mean NIQs calculated from all samples for each nation included in the THE NIQ-DATASET (V1.3)

NIQ-NW (col. D): Mean NIQs calculated from all samples for each nation included in the THE NIQ-DATASET (V1.3) weighted by N of individuals of each sample

NIQ-QNW (col. E): Mean NIQs calculated from all samples for each nation included in the THE NIQ-DATASET (V1.3) weighted by dataquality and N of individuals of each sample

NIQ-SAS (col. F): Mean NIQs calculated from school assessment studies (PISA; TIMSS; PIRLS) included in the THE NIQ-DATASET (V1.3)

NIQ-QNF+SAS (col. G): Means of NIQ-QNW (col. E) and NIQ-SAS (col. F)

NIQ-QNF+SAS+GEO (col. H): Means of NIQ-QNW (col. E) and NIQ-SAS (col. F), and supplemented for missing nations by geographic means of neighboring countries

NIQ-L&V02 (col. I): National IQ-scores from Lynn & Vanhanen (2002) estimated from psychometric tests only

NIQ-L&V02+GEO (col. J): National IQ-scores from Lynn & Vanhanen (2002) supplemented for missing nations by geographic means of neighboring countries

NIQ-L&V12 (col. K): National IQ-scores from Lynn & Vanhanen (2012) estimated from psychometric tests only

NIQ-L&V12+GEO (col. L): National IQ-scores from Lynn & Vanhanen (2012) supplemented for missing nations by geographic means of neighboring countries

IQ(L&V12)-NIQ: Differences between NIQ-QNF+SAS+GEO (col. H) and NIQ-L&V12+GEO (col. L)

NIQ-R (col. N): National IQ-scores from Prof. Dr. Heiner Rindermann, calculated from L&V02 and school assessment studies (PISA; TIMSS; PIRLS)
– See “Appendix I Data” in Becker & Rindermann (2016).

Back to you.

If you didn’t think those outdated estimates were superior why would you use them to discredit Becker’s estimate?

I was not trying to discredit Becker’s estimate by comparing it to the others (though I was using them to question it). I was trying to discredit your selective interpretation of Becker’s data.

Because the validity of the study results Becker is using there is the key question in all of this.

Then go argue with Becker. And Lynn. And all the rest of the priesthood of IQism.

I am way ahead of you. It is interesting that Becker himself seems to take my concerns more seriously than you do. See his response to me here:

It does seem that even if I am right about the SPM/CPM issue the difference is small.

The National IQ difference between black Haiti and white Morocco is a whopping 22.4 points. What does that tell you?

It tells me that your priority is finding examples that cast black IQ in the best possible light. With no concern for the validity of those estimates. Perhaps you can explain to me why Haiti has such a high average IQ, but is unable to handle standardized testing of its students? (even though its scores are terrible, Morocco seems to have managed that as indicated by the SAS field) See the discussion at the link above. Even more interesting is to see a Stanford researcher lament the low standardized test scores in Haiti which I am completely unable to find more information about.

My priority is getting the best estimates possible so we can use those to reason with. When I see cases which conflict with other data and/or attributes of the respective societies then I ask questions and look deeper.

• Replies:
374. res says:

Thank you for the interesting specific example (Graptemys). I found some more on this at
https://markgelbart.wordpress.com/2018/03/15/an-extinct-map-turtle-graptemys-kerneri-and-pleistocene-sea-level-fluctuations/
Are there any other references you would recommend?

375. what sane human being who wants to be understood by others writes like that?

I think it’s some form of penance, like self-flaggelation or wearing a hair shirt.

376. Richard B says:

Offhand, I can think of no other instigation intellectually more immediately responsible for the modern era? Can you?

Yes, of course.

Francis Bacon.

He was the one who first announced to the modern world that “Knowledge Is Power.”

He dismissed most of the great body of learning at that time as pseudo-knowledge because it did not give power over natural forces in the common interest of man. It wasn’t operative.

He classified the learning of his day under three heads, delicate, fantastic and contentious.

Delicate – a form of learning that didn’t contribute to power because it was ornamental and ostentatious

Fantastic – referred to the quasi-magical learning of alchemy. Fantastic learning aped the form of true knowledge. Bacon saw that as a corruption of the good, which is the worst of evils.

Contentious – traditional science from antiquity to scholasticism, which he saw as scanty and distorted, because of its logical method and the ends to which it was put.

But he was especially critical of Aristotelian method. Because it aimed at demonstration and persuasion. Both of which aim at the conquest of the mind, not of nature.

Above all, the Aristotelian method assumes that one is already in possession of a truth or a belief.

Whereas Bacon was more interested in the importance of truths still to be obtained.

It was this break with antiquity that represents the West’s entry into the modern world.

• Thanks: V. K. Ovelund
377. So let’s see. Negroes, communists, etc. burn down all the blue cities, while we struggle through that essay.

378. dfordoom says: • Website

I’ve always disagreed with the accelerations, but I’m not sure anymore.

The trouble with accelerating is that you’re likely to accelerate right over the cliff and end up as a mass of twisted wreckage on the rocks below. And then the gas tank explodes. It looks great in a movie. Not so good if you happen to be a passenger in the car.

A lot of the alt-right accelerationists seem to think that would be better than what we have now. Because somehow, magically, we’ll then end up with a society that will be just like one long episode of Leave It to Beaver, with happy smiling white families with lots of kids and no nasty non-whites and the kids out in the yard kicking a football around. And women will all turn into dutiful wives and mothers.

And alt-righters will be able to get girlfriends.

It’s a sign of the growing hysteria and the growing tendency towards magical thinking on the far right.

Increasingly the alt-right seems totally uninterested in the idea of viable solutions. They have the same mindset as the antifa crowd. The revolution is going to be awesome. And like the antifa crowd, alt-righters assume that they will be the ones running things when society magically reassembles itself in accordance with their fantasies.

379. dfordoom says: • Website

It’s clear to me that it would be possible to seize political power and make changes, given political organization of course.

If you have the organisational skills and the discipline and the willingness to die for the cause and the kind of coherent program that the Bolsheviks had, sure. And a leader with the intelligence, charisma and ruthlessness of Lenin.

The far right is clearly incapable of even the smallest degree of political organisation. And they have zero discipline.

I’m not disagreeing that seizing political power is possible, but it’s not going to be the far right that does it.

The alt-right doesn’t even have the level of organisational ability to stage a coup to take over the local tennis club, much less take over the government.

And when you look at some of the people who make up the dissident right, would you even want crazies like that to succeed?

• Replies:
380. iffen says:

You don’t seem to have a middle ground. You view everything at the extreme. I wasn’t talking about violent revolution. I was talking about sane people in the US seizing electoral control from the SJW mobs. And as for acceleration, I was thinking in limited terms. A few riots might be a wake-up call for some that are asleep at the wheel.

Your other points are valid. There is no organization. If you take TUR to be a part of the alt-right then it is clear enough that writers and commenters think that there are serious problems afoot, but the agreement ends there. There is no agreement as to what the problems are and there is certainly no agreement as to what should be done. And, as I previously commented, many seem focused on culture rather than politics.

I am becoming reconciled to the idea that “muh freedoms” are gone. We have 5 Supreme Court Justices that can’t find anything in the constitution that distinguishes between religion and the local convenience store. The NYT has gone full and openly Orwell and the social media giants are executing censorship on behalf of the SJW mob. The fat lady has begun to sing and her name is Stacy Abrams.

• Replies: ,
381. Yahya K. says:

Don’t worry. Living under an authoritarian regime isn’t as bad as you might expect. Just avoid criticizing the rulers, and you’ll be fine.

• Replies: ,
382. Talha says:

I hate to say it, but that is generally sound advice. However, I believe it is very important to consider whether the regime in question is more along the lines of a traditional/right/conservative spectrum versus a radical/left/progressive one.

Compare, say, Pinochet to, say, Pol Pot.

Peace.

• Replies:
383. Yahya K. says:

I guess if you are living under an ideological nut like Mao or Pol Pot then it’s more dangerous. They’ll want to do crazy things in the name of their ideology.

In Saudi and Egypt the rulers have no ideology to speak. So you just coast along and go with the flow. I suspect its the same with Putin’s Russia. Avoid criticizing them, and you can live a normal life. The authorities won’t bother you.

• Replies:
384. Talha says:

In Saudi and Egypt the rulers have no ideology to speak.

Egypt has a long history of some of its best administration and most flourishing under basically what would be considered military dictatorships/regimes. The (slave-soldier) Mamluks being one (I’m talking about the Turkic ones, the Circassian ones were more incompetent). Like you said, it was stable and you could live well there, but if you spoke out against them, you risked getting cut in half and your top half screaming out its last breaths on a slab of lime. But otherwise…good times.

And under someone like Muhammad Ali – who bumped off the Mamluk nobles in a scene out of the Godfather:
“He organised a grand ceremonial procession in Cairo to which he invited some 500 Mameluke notables. Assembled in the citadel, they were warmly welcomed and treated to coffee, sweetmeats and polite conversation, but when the time came for the procession they had to go down a narrow, winding passageway between high walls in single file. Suddenly the gates at each end were slammed shut and the Wali’s soldiers appeared on top of the walls and opened a murderous fire with muskets. All or possibly all but one of the Mamelukes were killed. More Mamelukes were swiftly hunted down and killed in Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt, to a total of perhaps 3,000.”
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/mamelukes-are-massacred-egypt

Wa salaam.

• Replies:
385. Yahya K. says:

Egypt has a long history of some of its best administration and most flourishing under basically what would be considered military dictatorships/regimes. The (slave-soldier) Mamluks being one (I’m talking about the Turkic ones, the Circassian ones were more incompetent).

Interesting. Do you happen to know any good books on this?

This seems embarrassing for an Egyptian to ask, but the history I was taught in school was propaganda. I’m going to have to learn this stuff myself.

And under someone like Muhammad Ali – who bumped off the Mamluk nobles in a scene out of the Godfather:

Incidentally, they recently made an Egyptian TV show copy of the Godfather (Lol). It’s the cringiest thing i’ve ever seen.

• Thanks: V. K. Ovelund
• Replies: ,
386. Talha says:

Here is a good read about the historical Islamization of Egypt over the many centuries. Basically the Mamluk take over represents the turning point for various reasons:
http://mamluk.uchicago.edu/MSR_X-2_2006-OSullivan.pdf

And since this is mostly off-topic, see rest under the MORE tag.

Wa salaam.

[MORE]

An absolute treasure trove of Maluk-related readings on various subjects can be found at the site for “Mamluk Studies” at the University of Chicago – go wild:

Also, really stupid not to base a state on merit:
“There is universal agreement among historians that the Mamluk state reached its height under the Turkish sultans and then fell into a prolonged phase of decline under the Circassians…But the historians of the era date the beginning of the dynasty’s decline from the accession of the first Circassian sultan (Barquq) in 1382, claiming that thereafter, advancement in the state and the army was dependent on race (i.e., Circassian descent) rather than on proved skill in the art of war, which had served as the chief criterion for promotion during the Turkish period.”
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mamluk

From a military history perspective try the authoritative book by Prof. David Nicole:
“Their state was an essentially military one but was for centuries also the Protector of the Holy Places, which gave it supreme prestige within the later medieval Islamic world.The mamluk troops (askaris) of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt and Syria were probably the ultimate professional soldiers of the medieval period.”

As far as Muhammad Ali, I’ve done some readign about him and his relationship to the Copts in Egypt, but it should be fairly easy to find good material on him online – he is not a marginal figure.

• Thanks: Yahya K.
387. Talha says:

Incidentally, they recently made an Egyptian TV show copy of the Godfather (Lol). It’s the cringiest thing i’ve ever seen.

Yuck. Egyptians in bow ties??!! Barf!

Man, they’ve got plenty in their on history to do a medieval-gangster style show set in the various eras rather than some cheap knock-off from American cinema. They should think about how Turkey is leveraging its own history to make shows that are very popular across the Muslim world.

Wa salaam.

• Replies:
388. dfordoom says: • Website

And as for acceleration, I was thinking in limited terms. A few riots might be a wake-up call for some that are asleep at the wheel.

A month from now the riots will be forgotten. There’ll be some new media sensation. As I’ve said before the general public has the attention span of a six-week-old kitten.

389. On September 17th last year you, ID, wrote the following:

The phrase “physiognomy is real” is almost a tautology. If you read it as an affirmation, as if physiognomy were some hypothesized thing that may or may not exist but does, then you miss the whole sense of it. It needs to be read as an equivalence; the “is” is the equality symbol between two related descriptions. Physiognomy is real….Physiognomy is the real….Physignomy is what’s real.

Everything that is “real” has physiognomy. That is to say, it discloses its qualities in its acts of existence. This is what it means to be real. It should not be surprising, nor even controversial, that what a man is, is reflected in his manner of being. If it were not, then where would it be? It would not be an “is”; it would not exist. For there is no existence in general. To exist as this man means that the qualities of this man must be brought into being. Therefore physiognomy appears along with existence as its complement, materia signata quantitate.

Understanding all this is crucial to any comprehension of race realism. The lack of such understanding is what has forced biology (the drag queen of the sciences) into the role as a crude substitute.

That same day I responded:

Ah, now I finally begin to see why you are against the HBD approach.
Now that I see it, I see too that you are correct, at least insofar as your approach must come first; it is after all what we all see immediately, if we can see with any understanding at all. Physiognomy is being indeed.

The soul is in the face, and in the whole stance; the racial soul first, and only then the individual.

Thus our disgust with the African, and our relative ease in the face of the Oriental: the first is close to wholly other, the second recognisably our own kind.

And you responded that I indeed understood you; that I had expressed what you had been trying to say.

I will leave it at that then, expect to add that you are an aphorist, someone whose native genius is best revealed in short flashes of illumination rather than in Spenglerian tomes.
Stick to the first, and ignore the scoffers.

390. JackOH says:

iffen, Unz Review and its commentariat are a national treasure of strong contrarian thought. Springboard for action, no. I think much of that comes from the well-settled and successful members of the commentariat, others are politically inexperienced and don’t seem to recognize the mainstreamability of some of the positions here. It’s a great read.

• Replies:
391. iffen says:

Springboard for action, no.

Right.

The point that I wanted to make was that if you take TUR as an exceptional slice, if you accept that we are red-pilled and that we are at least as half as smart and knowledgeable as we make ourselves out to be then all is lost. It’s like the old high school cheer: if we can’t do it, who can?

• Thanks: JackOH
• Replies: ,
392. Menes says:

Can you show me where Becker has referred to NIQ as the best estimate,

Stupid and illogical of you to think that Becker would put NIQ (National IQ) at the head of his table if he didn’t think it was his best estimate of National IQs. Just the name ‘National IQ’ should tell you that, if you weren’t so stupid and illogical.

Stupid and illogical of you to think Becker used his 2nd best or worse estimates to present his conclusions on National IQ. Show us where you learned this absurdity.

I was not trying to discredit Becker’s estimate by comparing it to the others (though I was using them to question it).

Such a liar. You know you are not just questioning Becker’s estimate, you think you are debunking it. You don’t even think Becker is using his best estimates in his own findings on National IQ!

It tells me that your priority is finding examples that cast black IQ in the best possible light

Thats funny coming from you. You and your racist pals in the HBD cabal are all about doing the exact opposite. You have been getting off on discredited IQ estimates of african countries for decades. How come you never ever questioned the validity of those outdated, outrageous IQ estimates? Because you and your gang are intellectually dishonest and morally corrupt.

Now let us compare those Caribbean IQs to the IQs os the nations of South Asia:

Bermuda 93.2
Haiti 88.6
Sri Lanka 86.6
Pakistan 80.1
India 76.2
Nepal 60.0

So, the National IQ of 90% west african Barbados is 31.7 points higher than 0% african Nepal! That more than 2 times the SD. What does that tell?

• Replies:
393. dfordoom says: • Website

The point that I wanted to make was that if you take TUR as an exceptional slice, if you accept that we are red-pilled and that we are at least as half as smart and knowledgeable as we make ourselves out to be then all is lost.

An alternative view would be that many people here are too pessimistic, too convinced that things are really really terrible and that a complete cultural/political revolution (or counter-revolution) involving the total destruction of the current order is necessary. That leads to blackpilling because such a revolution (or counter-revolution) is unlikely to happen.

Maybe we need to consider that things aren’t so disastrously terrible. The way some people here carry on you’d think that white people were being loaded into cattle cars and shipped off to the death camps, or that the streets were running in blood, or that we’re living in Orwell’s 1984.

Society will never be ideal, there will always be intractable social problems, politicians will always be corrupt, there will always be criminals and degenerates, popular taste will always tend towards the trashy, the media will always be politicised, bureaucracies will always behave like bureaucracies, people will always cheat on their taxes, some marriages will always break up, some married men will have affairs, some women will sleep around, and your kids will never understand you and you’ll never understand them.

But life goes on, and it could be a hell of a lot worse. Maybe we don’t need to burn it all down.

• Thanks: V. K. Ovelund
394. RSDB says:

The Tamil “Godfather”, Nayagan, was pretty well regarded and I thought it was pretty good personally.

There was also a Hindi film that (unlike Nayagan which took only a loose inspiration) was practically a copy of the Godfather but I don’t remember what it was called and I don’t think I saw it. It used to be fairly common for Tamil and other subcontinental filmmakers to remake Western films with an Indian setting and whatever changes of theme were appropriate.

Occasionally, as with the Sinhala film Anantha Rathriya which was a reworking of Tolstoy’s The Resurrection, these translations of Western themes to local culture were very well done as works of art.

• Replies:
395. JackOH says:

” [I]f we can’t do it, who can?”

Good point. Years ago I worked with some folks of ordinary ability on a political initiative. Working from weak canned literature, they’d gathered the low-hanging fruit–petitions from like-minded folks, city council endorsements, etc.–then evaporated. The challenge of working through or around a dead end stopped them.

I’d like to think the very bright people at UR would cultivate the tools to take any initiative they chose to victory. But, I’m not seeing activist genes getting triggered, UR still makes for great reading.

• Replies:
396. res says:

Stupid and illogical of you to think that Becker would put NIQ (National IQ) at the head of his table if he didn’t think it was his best estimate of National IQs. Just the name ‘National IQ’ should tell you that, if you weren’t so stupid and illogical.

You really are stupid. Sorry it took me this long to figure that out. I even gave you the manual excerpt which explained the variables.

At least now I know to stop wasting my time. I think my earlier comments have covered my points adequately..

• Replies: ,
397. Talha says:

There was also a Hindi film

Was it Sarkar*?

Peace.

[MORE]

It used to be fairly common for Tamil and other subcontinental filmmakers to remake Western films with an Indian setting and whatever changes of theme were appropriate.

I can appreciate this if you take a good story line and adapt it to local culture and theme. Dressing up Egyptians like Italian mobsters is just stupid.

One of the masters of this kind of thing was Korusawa. He was able to take Shakespearean plays and adopt them to feudal Japan – it was absolutely brilliant. “Ran” (an adaptation of King Lear) remains one of my favorite movies of all time.

Likewise, Westerners adopted some of his work; like the cowboy classic “Magnificent Seven” which is the adaptation of “Seven Samurai” or “Last Man Standing” which is the Western version of his “Yojimbo”.

Even Lucas gave Korusawa credit for inspiring him to do the narrative from the two droids in Star Wars – they remain the staple characters of all the films and the pegs that hold the entire narrative together. He explains this in the below video as well as the theory that all stories basically revolve around 32 plots which are rehashed across times and cultures:

So that is the kind of thing I think is fascinating; taking something from a Samurai story and expressing it in a science fiction backdrop. The cringe factor Yahya points to is when one culture tries way too hard to ape another one except for language and slight details and fails miserably at it. Especially in this day and age when the people in Egypt have Western cinema accessible to them at their fingertips.

• Replies:
398. This essay reminded me of a Peanuts comic strip. Lucy is lying on a mound with Linus and Charlie Brown and asks them what they see in the clouds. Linus describes the immaculate visions of his hyperactive imagination. Next, Charlie Brown says he was gonna say he saw a ducky and a horsie.

Well, I can only offer a Charlie Browny version of what Race Talk is really about. I don’t get metaphysics and other sophisticated stuff Intelligent Dasein wrote about at length. Such intellectual stuff goes over my head. I don’t know if it’s highbrow or highfalutin.
Professor Dasein or Doctor Dasein gave us a Linusy version of HBD(or against HBD), but most people will better understand a stripped down Browny Version, or Race Talk in horsie-and-ducky pictures.

First off, we need to pare down Race Talk to a particular perspective and interest. The problem with the concept of HBD is it sounds disinterested. It sounds like an objective scientific query into the diversity of mankind, especially along racial and ethnic lines. It gives the impression that it’s interested in humans the way botany is with plants or frogology with various species of frogs. In truth, HBD is an ideology and agenda of White Racial Consciousness, especially for pride and preservation. To that extent, there is a kernel of truth among those who accuse HBD of being a form of crypto-‘white supremacism’ or ‘white nationalism’ with scientific window-dressing. HBD isn’t merely about science or a cold/dry research into diverse genetics of human groups. It is concentrated among those on the White Right, and its core purpose is to argue for white survival, white autonomy, and white pride(though a few might even envision white supremacy, as with Richard Spencer and the like). Of course, HBD-ers say they appreciate human diversity all around the world and would like ALL races and ethnic groups to survive. And most HBD-ers are no doubt sincere in their claim. But ideology or agenda is essentially defined and driven by passion, not neutrality of principles. The fact is HBD is mostly a white phenomenon, and the core passion among HBD-ers is WHITE survival, WHITE pride, and WHITE power. In other words, while most HBD-ers would consider the decline and demise of the German people as a horrific tragedy, they wouldn’t much care if some obscure tribe in the African jungle or Amazonian forest vanished from the face of the Earth. While HBD-ers may wish the best for Eskimos in Alaska and Siberia, I highly doubt if any of them will lose sleep if Eskimo culture faded from the world and there were no more igloos, kayaks made of seal skin, and ear-lifting contests.

So, ‘human bio-diversity’ is kind of disingenuous as a term given that most people in the HBD movement(and it is a movement than a study) aren’t objective or neutral but passionately committed to serving a particular race, the white race. Also, even when it involves non-whites, HBD-ers tend to prefer certain peoples over others. HBD-ers tend to be partial to Japan as a homogeneous nation that is ethnically conscious(though this is increasingly becoming an illusion as Japan is becoming super-‘pozzed’). In contrast, few HBD-ers much care about Gypsies, Hindus(not least because so many Hindus in the West work with Jews against the white race), Chinese(who boil cats and dogs alive), the ghastly Negroes(the most potent force is destroying white manhood and unity of white men & white women), and Jews(who are financially, intellectually, ‘spiritually’, and ‘idologically’ the main force against the white race).
That said, there is a good number of HBD-ers who pray for the conversion of smart, rich, and powerful Jews to the White Side. Jared Taylor is a leading light in pro-Jewish HBD. Essentially, a craven character like Senator Geary in THE GODFATHER PART 2, he’s too enamored with Jewish Power to speak the whole truth about it. While he acknowledges the Jewish Problem(and even the JQ on occasion), his dream of Hu-Whites is that they form the Jew-White Alliance. Like Charles Murray, he’s so awed by the Jews that he’s even willing to settle for an alliance where whites cuck to Jews AS LONG AS Jews drop their anti-white agenda. His shtick is, “I will suck your dic* if you don’t tell my daughter to marry a Negro.” Taylor is a HBD version of Bill Buckley the Cuckley. Buckley and others like him were so awed by the rapid rise of Jewish Power that they were willing to sacrifice EVERYTHING in the hope that Jews may identify as fellow whites and work with whites than against them. This explains why the Buckleyite wing gave Neocons everything they wanted.
Of course, Neocons exploited such cuckery to make whites serve Jews without ever doing anything for whites in return. Your average Jewish Neocon is like Jennifer Rubin. Whites like Buckley and Taylor are okay with whites playing sidekick to Jews as long as Jews aren’t anti-white, but Jews, Neocons included, have only kept insisted upon whites sucking up to Jews even as Jews go on kicking white ass(and telling white girls to marry Negroes). Maybe, at one time, the hopes of Buckley and Taylor seemed half-plausible, but in our time, it should be obvious that a good-faith alliance with Jews is impossible. Neocons have proven themselves to be loathsome Jewish Supremacists who demand total servility on the part of whites. To Jews, whites are like Otis in SUPERMAN, and even little ‘Otisberg’ or OK-to-be-white-berg isn’t acceptable. With Jewish Power at the helm, you can’t even have Otisberg or OKberg, just like Palestinians can’t even have West Bank. Indeed, what Jews have done to Palestinians is a sure sign of how they feel about goyim. Whites, in their foolishness, thought Jews would be grateful and reciprocate IF whites aided and abetted the Jewish ‘genocide’ of Palestine, but if anything, such cuckery to Jewish supremacist arrogance only whetted Jewish appetite for the Nakba-ization of whites as well. A rabbit that feeds rabbits to a wolf will not be spared.

Anyway, because HBD is a white-created and white-centric or Euro-centric worldview, it should be honest and candid about what its true mission. It should be called WRS: White Racial Survival or White Racial Shamelessness. Or WRSS or White Racial Survival & Shamelessness.

Now, what has shamelessness to do with survival? Because so much could have been different for the better IF whites had been more shameless in spelling out their agenda of survival. Imagine how racial history could have been different after Jack Johnson beat up all those white guys IF white men spoke out honestly about their fear of the ghastly Negro. Imagine if white guys, elites and masses, all across America were saying, “Wow, those Negroes sure are tough. Us white guys are just putty next to them. They can kick our ass in the boxing ring. That means racial integration will lead to tougher blacks beating up white kids. It will mean white women losing respect for white men as losers and going with black men who are not only tougher but got bigger dongs.” In other words, if white men talked like Howard Stern, history would have been different. They could have made an effective and morally justifiable case for racial separation. And back then, it would have been possible because most whites, in North and South, believed in racial identity and solidarity of one kind or another. Even relatively liberal cities in the North were more-or-less racially conscious and proud to be white. But whites didn’t talk like Howard Stern due to the cult of pride and dignity. The cult of the Big White Man couldn’t admit to the fear of the Negro. There was the John Wayne Cult. In MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, Woody Strode is a servile and shuffling servant to Wayne’s character who’s supposed to be the toughest man in that part of the West. But that was fantasy. In reality, Strode would have kicked Wayne’s butt in less than a minute and hollered, “Where da white women at?”. Indeed, that was what Jack Johnson was doing. Not only beating up white guys but humping white women, and that was 100 yrs ago. Now, D.W. Griffith did make a somewhat refreshingly shameless movie with BIRTH OF A NATION, which was still honored in 1980 when Lillian Gish announced the Best Picture for 1980.

But even Griffith didn’t go all the way because his shamelessness was countered by the Anglo cult of dignity. So, even as BIRTH OF A NATION is very racy about race, it also strives to be very respectable and honorable. On the one hand, it hollers, “Look, there are ghastly Negroes attacking our town to kill white folks and rape white women”, but then it strains to be a noble epic about the American Pageant. It’s like a movie made by Howard Stern and Luchino Visconti. (To be sure,that can be said for certain Cecil B. DeMille movies like SAMSON AND DELILAH.) Now, I don’t say this in admiration of Howard Stern who is a cretin in so many ways. Overall, Stern has been a bad influence on the US. Still, his vulgar shamelessness has sometimes served to offer an uninhibited and uncensored assessment of recent US history, as when he recounted his youth in a blackening school.
The problem with HBD is that the residue of the cult of pride and dignity prevents too many from speaking candidly about what is really happening. It is too hurtful to white male pride and too vulgar for one’s sense of dignity. This is especially true of older members of HBD like Jared Taylor. It may be changing with younger members… though not always in the best way. Some yrs back, I was on an alt right email newsletter list and received a good deal of messages with porn lingo and references, e.g. referring to Sarah Palin as a ‘MILF’, something I had to look up then. And even the term ‘cuck’ in its current usage seems to be derived from the sexual phenomenon of white men(usually urban ‘liberal’ types) inviting black men to hump their women. Among the so-called ‘zoomers’, there are terms like ‘e-thots’, and the like. Still, that’s not the kind of shameless vulgarity that is necessary. After all, one can be vulgar and trashy without speaking the truth. Pop stars like madonna and rappers are plenty vulgar but spout nothing but lies. Quentin Tarantino was vulgar with stuff like DJANGO UNCHAINED but didn’t offer much truth. Trash can be used against Truth.
But one cannot get at the truth without touching the trash, just like you can’t find gold without going through lots of dirt. And you can’t do surgery without cutting the flesh and facing lots of blood and goo. So, even though whites should NOT emulate Howard Stern, let alone Jerry Springer, there is something to learn and take from Stern-ism. The same can be said for Camille Paglia. Even though neither Stern nor Paglia is a total truth-teller, it’s revealing that we live in a world where some radio jock and a professor at some third-rate university has spoken more truth on certain matters than 99% of the more dignified and esteemed members of respectable media and elite academia. This is not because Stern and Paglia are smarter or more erudite than their peers but because their shameless candor have sometimes spelled out the obvious truths that most people dare not touch with a ten foot pole out of shame, anxiety, fear, or taboo. (Pauline Kael also made a difference because she was shameless in admitting what Movie Love was really about.)

In a way, Jewish rise to Power cannot be separated from their shamelessness. Of course, it had much to do with IQ, identity-consciousness, tribal networking, and power of will, but it also owed to shamelessness. This shamelessness had two advantages. It was a potent way to blow away the repressions or hypocrisies of the respectable/dignified goyim. A way to lift up the skirt or unzip the fly of the Enemy. After all, while the shameless have no dignity to lose, the shameful have much to lose. As dignity requires repression of certain animal urges, the shameless can easily bait the shameful as ‘repressed’, like what Cusack’s character does in THE SURE THING. The other advantage of shamelessness is it can make one’s aggressiveness funny, even endearing. We see this in the scene with Mel Brooks as the French king in HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART I. At once, he exposes and ridicules the repression & hypocrisy of the shikse of dignity while also making his loathsome behavior seem funny, charming, and ‘liberating’.

At this point, Western culture is so decrepit, degenerate, trashy, porny, puerile, and vulgar that the cult of dignity is impossible. The only way to fight trashy shamelessness is with truthful shamelessness. This doesn’t mean those in HBD movement should get ass-tattoos, green hair, nose rings, wear trashy clothes; it doesn’t mean they should become gangsta-rappers, work in porn or strip clubs, go on tinder & have orgies, and etc. Rather, it means there needs to be a no-holds-barred discussion of real racial differences and why the white race must choose another path. It means HBD should focus less on sports and more on real world outcomes of racial differences. It means HBD must go vulgar-Freudian and speak candidly about the new sexual dynamics. In a way, Camille Paglia’s star rose because she dared to broach topics in ways that most feminists did not. She wasn’t part of the herd, though, given the nature of Jewish media control and certain powerful taboos, she chose NOT to mention certain things. As for Howard Stern, his worldview is essentially Judeo-centric, so his un-PC statements ultimately go to serve Jewish, not white, interests.

Because shamelessness can easily get out of hand, it has to be controlled and directed. The last thing we need is HBD people turning into a bunch of Sam Kinisons. Still, there is a reason why comedy has been one of the few areas where people on occasion speak the unspeakable. Humor and satire generally get more leeway in speech, and besides, the comic can always claim to have been ‘just joking’. Not for nothing has Sam Hyde been one of the more effective purveyors of HBD or the Dissident Right though he’s not officially of the movement. Vulgarity and shamelessness can easily degrade into cynicism, nihilism, or even infantilism, but they also have a way of making scales fall from one’s eyes. No wonder the character in YOJIMBO and SANJURO has a clearer sense of what-is-what as opposed to other characters who are hung up no faux-respectability.

Just as HBD isn’t truly concerned with the well-being and survival of all races and all human groups, it mustn’t waste its energy on matters and problems that don’t impact the white race. Now, if non-whites were to take up HBD consciousness of their own, they would have their own ethno-centric perspectives. HBD is use of science for a particular racial interest or cause. Currently, one might say it’s a mild form of White Zionism. Just like Zionists study genetics and use blood lineage to determine who is and isn’t Jewish and to design policies good for Jews, HBD’s main purpose is to bolster white consciousness/identity and formulate what is best for the white race.

For that reason, HBD or WRSS(white racial survival & shamelessness) should focus on human groups whose impacts on the white race are bound to be most grave, profound, and consequential. The two groups that obviously matter most are Jews and blacks. And this owes to the particular kinds of superiority that they have over whites. If Jews had average IQ of 90, had weak/servile personalities, and no interest in their identity/culture/heritage, they would hardly be a threat to whites. But Jews have higher IQ, stronger personalities, and an obsession with identity/heritage. Their diaspora also means they got tremendous tribal networking. Perhaps, if most Jews were in ONE goy nation, they could have developed a national allegiance to it. Suppose 95% of Jews live in Russia or Turkey. But there are Jews in Russia, European nations, Latin America, the US, Israel, and etc. As such, the main allegiance of Jews is to World Jewry, not to any particular goy nation. Also, if Jews were lower in IQ and weaker in personality, they might have come to respect the higher IQ goyim and tried to fit in.
It’s the combination of IQ and personality that matters. Consider the Gypsies and the Japanese. Gypsies are lower IQ but strong personality. So, even though they remain at the lower rungs of society, they’ve survived as a minority all across non-Gypsy lands. In contrast, Japanese in US are higher IQ but weak personality. In a way, Japanese personality is weaker than that of the Chinese because Japanese are obsessed with proper form, something Chinese are less of. Because Japanese sense of worth comes from adherence to form, they are more mindful to FIT IN to the dominant form of the host society. As such, Japanese Americans have become Very Good and Proper Americans. And that means little that is Japanese has remained. Gypsies achieved so little economically but they continue to survive as a people and culture. Japanese-Americans achieved much professionally but have dissolved into Americanism. The fate of Episcopalians also illustrates the problem of higher IQ without the strong personality to match it. With an ethos centered around an increasingly bland and spineless religion, Episcopalians have done well as individuals but faded as a Power Bloc. Jews, in contrast, have higher IQ and stronger personality.
To best understand(or visualize) this in the most elementary way, one merely need to think of Ron Jeremy, to whom I and other kids were introduced to by a Jewish classmate long ago. It was the era of the big heavy clunky VCR, which cost an arm-and-a-leg back then. The kid just had to show us something and led us to his parents bedroom and put in a tape that showed Ron Jeremy sitting on a garden chair sucking his own dic*. I could swear the kid was beaming with pride, either due to the possession of the tape or Jeremy’s standing as some kind of Jewish stud. But that image stuck in my mind as young minds are impressionable, especially when seeing something the likes of which you hadn’t seen before. The pervy character of the image aside, it said something about the Jewish Personality. It’s one thing to be Portnoic but to show off sucking one’s own dic*? Fast Forward to today, and think of Harvey Weinstein ejaculating into a potted plant. The problems of Anthony Weiner. And the big kahuna, Jeffrey Epstein. Now, those Portnoys eventually ended up badly, but they had a long good run. Weinstein was once called ‘god’ by none other than Meryl Streep. And think of for how long Epstein got away with his stuff before he was finally brought down. Now clearly, not all Jewish men are so pervy, but what many of them have in common with Ron Jeremy is the chutzpah, the power of personality, to pull out the metaphorical pud and suck on it for all the world to see. So, Ron Jeremy is useful as a metaphor for Jewish Personality. To understand Jewish Power, one must always think of the personality along with the ideas. If you want to better understand what Milton Friedman was really about, it can’t hurt to visually imagine him sucking his own dic*. Not that he ever did such(or even led a pervy lifestyle), but he wasn’t just about ideas but the Big Idea, one that he had to pull out and swing at the whole world.

Of course, certain branches of HBD have been seriously into JQ(even as the Jared Taylor wing and others do their best to suppress or ignore it), and this is why the conceit of neutrality or objectivity must be dropped from HBD. It is really a Eurocentric or white-centered perspective on the threat to white survival and well-being from non-white forces. One could argue Jews are white because they are at least half-white(and Semites are Caucasians) in the way that the half-Lebanese Steve Jobs was white. And if most Jews happily identified as whites, whites would have a very powerful ally. But it doesn’t matter what whites think or wish as long as most Jews are unwilling to play the game. As far as Jews are concerned, they are Ju-whites than whites, which is to say they are white only to the extent that it benefits them as Jews; otherwise, they’re virtually non-white in the role of the biggest victims of whites.
Jews, like elephants, have deep memory, and this makes them unwilling to side 100% with whites. After all, the big kahuna of Jewish tragedies, the Shoah, happened at the hands of whites. And the Jewish Narrative is filled with stories of Russian/Cossack pogroms, French collaboration, Anglo snobbery, and Big Dumb Polac*s stealing lunch money from Jewish students. Jews remember all this. Japanese, in contrast, have shallow memory that is utterly dependent on the ruling power. When Japan lost WWII and the new government said, “US is our great boss and friend”, the Japanese became servile dogs of the US. Browns of Latin America are much the same. Though called ‘Hispanics’, they had a history and culture long before whites arrived, so they should be called something else, like ‘Tacoans'(which isn’t meant as an insult as tacos are good food). Tacoans have had a long history and culture before the Conquistadors arrived, and they were defeated, ‘genocided’, and raped by the newcomers, but most of them just go along with the ruling system still dominated by whites. And they don’t object to their lands being called ‘Latin America’ or them being called ‘Hispanic’ or ‘Latino'(now Latinx). If Jews had such shallow memories, they might just become good whites and get along. But they have deep and autonomous memory of who they are. They write their own history and remember their own narratives. So, Jews can’t just become another bunch of happy whites.
But even if Jewish-White relations hadn’t been so troubled throughout Western history, Jews would have had problems surrendering to whiteness. First, the pride of Covenant means Jews must maintain some degree of separateness and uniqueness. If Jews just become a bunch of whites, they are no longer Jews. Secondly, the West became Christian, and Jews have long regarded Christianity as a case of heretical Jews and goyim stealing the Jewish God. Third, the superior don’t want to surrender to the inferior. Jews have long felt themselves to be smarter, wiser, and deeper. If most peoples have elites and masses, Jews in entirety felt as an elite people. It’s a general rule that the superior don’t want to yield to the inferior. It’s like Chinese in Southeast Asia are far less likely to fully assimilate than Chinese in Europe or America. While Chinese see Western Civilization as superior to the Chinese one(though this attitude may change as the West turns into globo-homo Afro-boogie land), they look upon Southeast Asians as inferior bumpkins. Jewish Covenantism is intrinsically superiorist, but if Jews were inferior in IQ and weaker in personality, they might have yielded to white power and identity. But Jewish Covenantism in combination with higher Jewish IQ and stronger personality has led to a resilient apartheid-of-the-heart among Jews. Even when so many Jews today mate with non-Jews, they insist that Jewish Identity take precedence over the Other identity among the Mischlings, and this is often the case because non-Jews relatively have weaker identities and personalities.

Superioritism also matters with blacks in relation to whites. If Jews are superior to whites in brains and personality, blacks are superior to whites in brawn and stronger in egotism. And this affects the attitude not only of Jews/blacks but of whites as well, especially as the US and Modern West pride themselves on meritocratism. The Anglo Cult of Rule of Law and May-the-Best-Man-Win has led to the elitism of winners over losers, no matter who the winners may be. In the past, such meritocratism was balanced by race-ism that favored intra-meritocracy than inter-meritocracy, i.e. May the Best White Man Win. But naively well-meaning Anglo idealists, goaded by devious Jews, pushed meritocratism much further at the expense of white race-ism. Now, if all races are indeed equal(or if all races are just social constructs) or if whites were innately superior in all attributes over other races, the rise of inter-meritocracy wouldn’t have mattered. If all races are equal, black athletes would beat whites sometimes but whites would beat blacks just as often. So, black boys would have black heroes, and white boys would have white heroes. Jewish genius would do wonders for Jews, but the far more widespread white genius(because there are more whites than Jews) would balance it all out and then some. But as it turned out, nature is ‘racist’. Nature didn’t create races to be equal but to be different so that every race would be superior in some respects while inferior in others. Also, different cultures favored certain traits over others. Blacks who lived in savagery surrounded by dangerous animals favored the traits of hunters and warriors. Such types are well-suited for the jungles and steppes of Sub-Saharan Africa but ill-suited for civilization. Most non-blacks developed more advanced societies that weeded out traits that were most aggressive and thug-like. In the game of breed-and-weed, blacks bred the thugs and weeded out the dweebs who couldn’t chuck a spear. In contrast, non-black societies generally bred the dweebs and weeded out the thugs. The result is quite stark in the scene in TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN between Woody Allen and a huge Negro who wants to go see Miss Eliza. Jewish merchant/scholar societies bred their own to be smart and witty, black hunter/warrior societies bred their own to tough and aggressive.

The problem is people blame people for ‘racism’ when it is nature(and culture’s role in genetic selection) that created differences in races. If people hate ‘racism’, they should blame nature(and cultural selection over thousands of years). If people hate the idea of races being different in ability, they need to rag on nature(and culture’s role in selection). The notion of ‘racism’-as-evil suggests that all races are innately the same in all abilities — or race isn’t even a valid concept — and that some races have been discriminated against because of bigotry and prejudice. But this is only a half-truth. Yes, it’s true that smart Jews weren’t allowed in many institutions and professions in past Europe. And it’s true that talented black athletes were effectively banned from mainstream sports. But ending those social policies didn’t lead to end of different outcomes among the races but emergence of new ones. Letting blacks enter sports didn’t lead to equality of whites and blacks but black superiority over whites. Letting Jews enter brainy institutions and industries led to Jewish domination of key industries such as finance. (The fact that PC seems unperturbed by black dominance in sports and Jewish dominance in finance suggests that it is fine with racial differences AS LONG AS they favor certain groups. ‘Racism’ is bad when whites to better than blacks, but it’s no problem when blacks do better than whites.) Also, the reason why blacks lag in the brainy fields is the same as to why they dominate in brawny fields: Nature. And the reason why East Asians do better in math than in running also owes to nature. Not just in terms of intelligence but personality, as one needs patience and diligence to be good at math. Blacks, being more restless by nature, have tougher time with school work even when they’re smart. When people complain about ‘racism’, just remind them nature is race-ist because evolution is about creating divergences. Before a species can diverge into different species, it must first split into different races. If they say nature is not race-ist, then evolution must not be true. Modern folks believe in evolution, so if they say evolution cannot produce divergences and differences among human groups, they can’t possibly believe in evolution and science.

Now, there are visible superiorities and invisible superiorities. While every group has some superior quality — Tibetans and Bolivian Indians are better adapted to higher elevation — , their advantage isn’t striking, flashy, noticeable(away from their extreme habitats), or consequential in the modern world. And whatever biological advantage Hindus have, it doesn’t seem to be noticeable to the naked eye. Some Hindus have very high IQ and are quite capable, but Asian Indians as a people don’t seem to be all that striking in anything. Eskimos and Lapps surely have traits better adapted to extreme cold, but whatever such may be, they are of no consequence to the modern world.
{"extraction_info": {"found_math": true, "script_math_tex": 0, "script_math_asciimath": 0, "math_annotations": 0, "math_alttext": 0, "mathml": 0, "mathjax_tag": 0, "mathjax_inline_tex": 1, "mathjax_display_tex": 0, "mathjax_asciimath": 0, "img_math": 0, "codecogs_latex": 0, "wp_latex": 0, "mimetex.cgi": 0, "/images/math/codecogs": 0, "mathtex.cgi": 0, "katex": 0, "math-container": 0, "wp-katex-eq": 0, "align": 0, "equation": 0, "x-ck12": 0, "texerror": 0, "math_score": 0.39558273553848267, "perplexity": 2677.599630904284}, "config": {"markdown_headings": true, "markdown_code": true, "boilerplate_config": {"ratio_threshold": 0.18, "absolute_threshold": 10, "end_threshold": 15, "enable": true}, "remove_buttons": true, "remove_image_figures": true, "remove_link_clusters": true, "table_config": {"min_rows": 2, "min_cols": 3, "format": "plain"}, "remove_chinese": true, "remove_edit_buttons": true, "extract_latex": true}, "warc_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-27/segments/1656104141372.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20220702131941-20220702161941-00204.warc.gz"}