I guess I don't have any pressing agenda at the moment. When last we met, we were -- just for fun -- seeing what might happen if ideological Darwinism collided head on with the anti-ideological Voegelin, using Henrich's The WEIRDest People in the World as our crash test dummy.
It reminds me of when David Letterman used to drop objects -- from watermelons to TVs -- from a high-rise, just to see what it looks like when they splatter on the ground. Same. We're going to push Henrich's naively reductive scheme off the top floor just to watch it break into pieces.
Before doing so -- or as a prelude -- why in principle is metaphysical Darwinism doomed to failure? Here's one informal way to measure the magnitude of the problem: I do a lot of highlighting when I read a book, and have evolved an array of idiosyncratic symbols, depending upon the importance of the point. This allows me to pull a book from the shelf and immediately identify everything from its One Big Idea to its granular facts and details.
When I come across a really stupid point, I put a ? in the margin. If it's really, really stupid, I might put a ?!. But if it's really, really, really stupid, I put a dismissive or contemptuous HA! Suffice it to say, there are a great many ?s, ?!s, and HA!s in the margins of this book. I cited an example the other day:
And from a scientific [?!] perspective, no "rights" have yet been detected hiding in our DNA or elsewhere. This idea sells because it appeals to a particular psychology."
Was he just trying to be ironic, or funny? Then stick to your day job and leave the gags to us!
Here's another example: do you like living in Western civilization? I do. Well, it's all just a big misunderstanding, an accident of natural selection: "there were many religious groups competing in the Mediterranean and Middle East," and "The Church was just the 'lucky one' that bumbled across an effective recombination of supernatural beliefs and practices."
Okay fine. What's good for the nous is good for the tenured: what is the principle Henrich is defending? That humans habitually confuse what is true with what has merely survived the ordeal of natural selection.
This being the case, it is equally logical to say that "there were many philosophical ideas competing in academia, and sociobiology was just the lucky one that bumbled across an effective recombination of infra-rational beliefs and practices."
Dávila: Reducing another’s thought to his supposed motives prevents us from understanding him. Reducing another's thought to the accidents of biology is just... HA!
Memo to Henrich: all beliefs are supernatural, which is to say, transcendent. Otherwise you're in the absurcular position of arguing that the theory of natural selection was naturally selected. I realize this is basic stuff, but c'mon, man! Stop conflating science and philosophy. Scientism isn't a philosophy, just a quick way to commit intellectual suicide.
Here's another beaut: "The much-heralded ideals of Western civilization, like human rights, liberty, representative democracy, and science, aren't monuments to pure reason, as so many assume."
Rather, they are ultimately traceable to "a peculiar package of incest taboos, marriage prohibitions, and family prescriptions that developed in a radical religious sect -- Western Christianity."
Where to even begin? It's like trying to debate Biden, which cannot overcome Brandolini's Law: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.
Please don't misunderstand me: I'm not saying that it's okay to boink your sister or marry your first cousin. Rather, Henrich is conflating necessary and sufficient conditions. Yes, you shouldn't boink your sister; no, refraining from doing so doesn't automatically result in the U.S. Constitution, natural science, human rights, and the Pieta.
Here's another problem: is there such a thing as an objective human norm? NO!, says the ideological Darwinian. For how can there be an objective norm when anything we call a "norm" is just an accidental consequence of natural selection?
Recall that WEIRD is a cute acronym for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democrat. Me? I rather enjoy being an affluent and educated individual living in a liberal democracy rooted in self-evident truth. I suspect you like it too, trolls excepted.
But if you were born in China or Saudi Arabia, you would have a very different psychology, and there's no way to arbitrate between the two: one is as good or bad as the other. Natural rights? They are fundamentally no different from lactose tolerance. Some people didn't evolve the digestive ability to tolerate milk. Others can't tolerate free speech. Same difference.
No, I'm not exaggerating. For example, I have an Evangelical friend who -- unlike me, the second laziest man in LA county -- is a conspicuously ambitious and hard worker. I wonder what drives him? Well, "research suggests" that
some forms of Protestantism may have stumbled onto an ingenious way to harness men's cravings for forbidden sex to motivate them to work harder, longer, and more creatively. Protestants can boil off their guilt through productive work, by heeding their calling.
It is indeed amazing what a man accomplish by not boinking his sister.
Here in the Christian west we like the idea of an abstract and impersonal rule of law. Or at least we used to. Conservatives are still rather attached to it, while the left is at war with it. Is it because we don't boink our sisters? Pretty much: "who's to even say that two legal decisions stand in contradiction?" For
in many societies, law is about restoring harmony and maintaining the peace, not, as it is for more analytic thinkers, about defending individual rights or making sure that abstract principles of "justice" are served.
Correct: there's no justice, only "justice." And yet, try telling that to some inbred leftist!
I didn't intend this post to descend into pure insultainment. Here's one last example. Henrich, in his eagerness to attack Christianity, writes on p. 145 that the Greek and Roman gods were "upholders of public morality," and that unflattering depictions of them are merely a result of "Christian spin doctors" making them look bad.
Twenty pages later he discusses this fine Roman morality, writing, for example, that "It was within the father's power to kill his slaves or children."
Does this imply that Christian morality is somehow superior to Roman morality? Can't be. Our genes permit and perhaps even necessitate moralizing, but there is in principle no objective way to arbitrate between diverse moralities, any more than the genes permit us to distinguish between Darwinism and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
But what if 2 + 2 really is 4? In other words, what if truth exists and man may know it? That changes everything.
The natural sciences, where the process of falsification prevails, take only errors out of circulation; the social sciences, where fashion prevails, also take their achievements out of circulation. --Dávila.
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Many a wife has gnashed her teeth over the air compressor gathering dust in the garage after having been lovingly bought for the husband for Christmas. But I have good news! Air powered garden pruning shears have arrived! Zippity snip ladies!
Speaking of Christmas, BlockCon will be done virtually this year. That’s not the Christmas part. You’ll have to be patient. My favorite construction at last years convention was the nativity scene built entirely of Legos. I’m going to build one depicting Davila studying in his library workshop during the Holiday season. He’ll be wearing an elf cap.
I humbly offer these convalescing ideas (and many more!) to our president who needn’t lay in bed all day. Speaking of debates, my dreams of watching a slap happy slap down slapticuffs between two senile old power hungry men may not be happening after all. High hopes dashed yet again. Would a compressor snipoff or Lego build competition still be possible? Stay tuned my brothers and sisters.
I realize this is basic stuff, but c'mon, man! Stop conflating science and philosophy. Scientism isn't a philosophy, just a quick way to commit intellectual suicide.
I was just reading a link re. RBG, Sanger, and abortion, discussing Sanger's & Ginsberg's stated belief that it is important to limit the reproduction of certain undesirable sorts of people, because otherwise they breed too much. Ironically, the people deemed most suitable for reproducing and thus building a more perfect society are also the least likely to have enough children to usher in such a future, whereas those deemed most unfit are also most likely to go for the gusto. Any true ideological Darwinian would have to conclude that those most undesirable traits are the very characteristics that are in fact the fittest.
For example, I have an Evangelical friend who -- unlike me, the second laziest man in LA county -- is a conspicuously ambitious and hard worker. I wonder what drives him?
It's a mystery. Thank God for such people, because they do make the lives of their neighbors far better.
Henrich, in his eagerness to attack Christianity, writes on p. 145 that the Greek and Roman gods were "upholders of public morality," and that unflattering depictions of them are merely a result of "Christian spin doctors" making them look bad.
So we can just ignore what the Hesiod had to say about it, then?
Finally got around to reading Suicide of the Liberals. The repetition of this pathological pattern in 21st century America demands an explanation. It certainly seems to be an inverted and perverted parody of Christian truth.
It's mystifying, isn't it? A hundred years ago, it was not surprising that people were so susceptible to this mentality, since very few seemed to understand where it would lead, and they didn't have a lot of large-scale examples to draw from. After a century of repeated experiments it should be obvious especially to the idiots funding this nonsense that literally nothing good ever comes of it, and they never come out as winners in the end.
Today, there is really no excuse for being so ignorant, and yet, here we are, watching this same lunatic pattern being rolled out in America. I don't like to think that it will succeed here, but who knows?
Here in this place, it was said that evil is less driven to acquire power, than it is that power unleashes the evil already inherent. One can read Morson from each perspective, and arrive to two completely different conclusions. Maybe we need to discern a science of evil (which isn’t “scientism” of course).
Personally, I'd start with gathering up all the powerful and submitting them to batteries of psychological tests.
What is capable of being measured is minor.
Charles Manson (psychopathic killer) will measure quit differently from Hugh Jackman (the "nicest man in Hollywood").
One philosophy implies that power is the problem. Getting rid of the guns (of power) eliminates the crimes.
The other philosophy implies that evil is the problem. Getting rid of the evil people, lessens the crimes, (with the guns of power no longer used for evil).
The truth is obviously more complicated than that, but for the sake of argument, one implicates the quality of the people, while the other implicates the power itself. Morson seems to believe the latter.
No paradise will arise within the framework of time. Because good and evil are not threads twisted together by history, but fibers of the single thread that sin has spun for us.
As a spectator of this blog I admire the artistry of the writing, it is great stuff. But the subject matter of this post needs seems like a digression into juvenalia.
You have selected the book by Heinrich and then taken potshots at the ridiculous assertions found within. Easy targets, like fish in a barrel.
Why not de-bunk Flat Earther beliefs? Why not toss a watermelon from a tall building to see it splat? Or a TV?
Memo: No one believes everything is in our selfish genes. There are no materialists. Darwinism is fully out of vogue, it is a ghost town. There are no communists left anywhere.
Only extremists and crackpots are left spinning these ideas.
The rest of the world has gathered under various banners of God.
Not that your services as a thinker aren't needed, but you could step up your game. Jus sayin'
Unless what we write seems obsolete to modern man, immature to the adult, and trivial to the serious man, we have to start over.
"It's like trying to debate Biden, which cannot overcome Brandolini's Law: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.":
You may want to look at some fact checking before you accept the position that Biden is a bigger bullshitter than Trump.
https://metro.co.uk/2020/09/30/all-of-donald-trumps-lies-during-first-presidential-debate-with-joe-biden-13351330/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/first-2020-presidential-debate-fact-checking-biden-trump-n1241403
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/29/politics/fact-check-biden-trump-first-presidential-debate/index.html
I am not pro Biden, but very anti-Trump as I feel that he is a threat to our democracy as a primary reason (although I have many other reasons). This is a significant lesser of evils decision for me. I also problems with Biden. I can find a few stated positions of Trump that I do support. I can understand someone not agreeing with my position. However, I have never seen you criticize Trump. Curious: Can you find nothing about Trump that you don't like?
Conservatism should not be a political party but the normal attitude of every decent man.
Comrade, I haven't heard you make the ritual disavowal. You do agree that orange man bad, don't you?
anon@ 10/03/2020 08:13:00 AM,
Conservatism should be respected as a position from which viable ethical solutions can be found. But so should social responsibility movements. Ideally, we'd then have honest debates to divine best fit solutions for increasingly complex social problems.
As it is, we get reasoning at the level of somebody who proclaims that all Norwegians are evil because they have a tendency to build these little pirate boats which pillage monasteries and kill all the monks. These people can't even get to step #2, the “why” part, except to rationalize the perversions of aphorisms or scripture.
As for the Suicide of the Liberals essay, its failure was in missing the forest for the trees. No cause of any kind should ever justify evil within its ranks. The reason why should be painfully obvious. Evil in methodology will become even worse evil in power.
When the progressive condemns, every intelligent man must feel alluded to.
Comrade, I haven't heard you make the ritual disavowal. You do agree that orange man bad, don't you?
No. Failed NPD businessmen should never become populist demagogues. But then, IMHO, so shouldn't mindless neoliberals who finished near the bottom of their class. The reasons why we get such poor choices should be obvious.
But maybe with decades of cognitive bias this can be overcome?
To be a conservative is to understand that man is a problem without a human solution.
The 10/03/2020 09:18:00 AM comment was nonsensical, provided with no thought of any kind.
Anon @9:15, so you're saying, if only the right people were in charge, we can in fact bring about utopia!
Political wisdom is the art of invigorating society and weakening the State.
“To have faith in man” does not reach the level of blasphemy; it is just one more bit of nonsense.
Anon @9:15, so you're saying, if only the right people were in charge, we can in fact bring about utopia!
Not really. Since I see individuals as residing on a good-evil continuum, not-dystopia may be the best we can do. I see individuals the way Bob does, as having various innate talents and deficits which vary by the individual. Except, he doesn't seem to believe that there are varying talents for evil. Nor does he seem to believe that true concentrated evil cares nothing whatsoever about whatever cause they proclaim to be a part of - that's all a ruse to gain power, and nothing more.
My point is that promoting those who do evil in the name of good into positions of power, virtually guarantees far worse evil to come. My argument aligns with the 2nd Amendment gun freedom types. Taking away guns would be far less beneficial than limiting the evil people. It shouldn't be much of a trick to determine who the evil people are. But the prevalence of virtue signaling tribalism turns it into a trick.
In history it is sensible to hope for miracles and absurd to trust in plans.
That's how I became a homeowner. I answered my apartment door one day and there stood St. Peter holding a set of keys.
Which begs the question: would a German have considered it a miracle if St. Peter had been in front of his apartment holding a set of Jewish keys?
No miracle seems to be a miracle to those for whom it was not intended.
Anonymous 8:13 wrote, presumably addressed to the blog author - "However, I have never seen you criticize Trump. Curious: Can you find nothing about Trump that you don't like?"
I too have not seen any criticism of Trump here on this blog. I reason this is because it would serve no purpose. The author is supportive of Trump and therefore would have no motive to discuss flaws.
But it is funny. There most likely exists a conservative version of the much derided left wing "political correctness."
What would happen if Dr. Godwin asked "What is the orange stuff POTUS puts on his face? Is it to make him appear tan? Why does he want to look tan?"
Or "Trump was overly cavalier about the hazards of the COVID virus."
A conservative reader might think "hmmmmm....why would GDB bring those things up? Sounds un-patriotic. Is this guy really one of us? Let's hope he's not one of those Pinkos."
And that could go for any conservative. They are rightfully concerned peers might turn on them if there was any mention of flaws in POTUS. You must remember what happened in the McCarthy era; any sign of sympathy for communists would result in the loss of your job and reputation, and this dynamic is by no means extinct. This easily explains why conservatives remain silent despite glaring mistakes presented right up in their faces. Their love for the president will not allow them to speak of it.
The leftist enemy is very much feared by conservatives and and they take care to present a unified front. It is a wise choice.
-Perverted Entomologist seeks other into Thrips, chains, and Great Danes.
The great man’s errors are so painful for us because they give a fool the chance to correct them.
The leftist enemy is very much feared by conservatives and and they take care to present a unified front. It is a wise choice.
A great man once said: "The only thing we need to fear, is fear itself!" But some say that man was a leftist. I say: Wicked. Tricksy. False. And I was not so far from a Hobbit once.
My Precious.
With the generosity of his program does the liberal console himself for the magnitude of the catastrophes it produces.
I think Utopia is achievable, if only we put the correct regulations and processes in place and people obey them.
We work towards that end. We will try not to harm those who stand in the path; if there unavoidable harm the end justifies this; we must bring the Utopia into being.
A large, pervasive government is the means by which great social changes can be brought about in the population. A government should regulate every aspect of the citizen's life. Each citizen should report any deviations from government edicts that they see, within and outside of the home.
The State comes before all; it is the most important thing.
That is all. Dismissed.
I've just completed my study of uncontacted / barely contacted tribes.
The unfriendly tribes were murderous and cannibalistic. I barely escaped with my life, having to distract them with my belongings thrown onto the ground from my backpack as I ran away.
But the friendly tribes welcomed me. They fed me tropical gruel and held a dance party in my honor. The were also mostly naked.
Might there be lessons to be gleaned from my adventures?
The noble one is not the one who thinks he has inferiors, but the one who knows he has superiors.
Believe you me, if in that world you aren't well armed, you're the inferior. And I just had the clothes on my backpack. They were the ones with the spears. And in great numbers.
The realistic one is the one who knows where he lies in the grand food chain of things. The disnoble one, cheats. Or maybe perhaps, also lies to himself hoping nobody will notice.
Some say nobility should include value. But to whom? The degree the noble one is of service to his superiors, is usually dependent on the superiors. But to what degree is the noble one of service to his inferiors? Maybe the Bible has answers.
Just back from NG and a stint with the Korowai. I lost 50 lbs. It was the diet and also the constant stress of not being sure you weren't going to be shot full of arrows at any random time. Or raped. Or eaten. Or all three.
Nevertheless, a noble tribe. We could stand to emulate some of their practices.
The well-born soul allows for the existence of inferiors so as not to equate them with the superiors he admires.
Which leads me to the story of the pet frog.
Once upon a time, there was a pet frog. The pet frog lived in Texas, in a place with many capped spent oil wells. One day, the pet frog fell down inside one of the spent oil wells, which had been left uncapped. It was 10 feet down to the water inside, too far for the children to reach. The children lamented.
Upon seeing the lamenting children the parents (but mostly the superior men) gathered together and devised many ideas with the hopes of getting the frog out of the well. Nooses, graboid contraptions, magnetic devices, dynamite... so many ideas but none really worth pursuing.
Finally, the youngest (and most inferior) of the children was allowed to speak. He suggested filling the hole up with water until the frog floated out. So the men tried this and the small child's idea worked! The pet frog was floated out and the superior men celebrated. They invited the youngest child to be an equal amongst them, declaring that he was now superior enough to be able to drink beer and smoke cigarettes in their celebration.
The other children lamented once again.
As you can see, superiority and inferiority can be a tricky thing. I think we must be careful about how we define such things.
Without a certain religious childishness, a certain intellectual profundity is unattainable.
I don't know if the frog rescue prodigy was religious, but it was rural Texas so it's probably a safe bet.
Many years later the frog rescue miracle child, fully grown, smokes and drinks prodigously and professes to enjoy these vices above all else. Go figure.
Now, the NFAC. Now we're talking. Check it out.
Trust me: just say No to psychedelic toad venom.
I never got the race of these people. If they're black it'd be Old English 800 and cracky hooch. If they're younger whites then meth most likely. Older whites prefer opiates.
Since people wearing black are usually evil, I trust the militant coalitions which carry the American flag. Plus when they also carry the Confederate flag it's twice the credibility, twice the fun.
As for the undecided fanboys, a prospective groups actions of today is indicative of their style of rule of tomorrow. So choose wisely.
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