The alt-right and race
The alt-right spans a variety of overlapping strains of conservatism, such as paleoconservatism, the Dark Enlightenment, and European far-right conservatism. The issues tend to be about nationalism, Christianity, "traditional" values, immigration, abortion, and race. I'm presently reading Nick Land's essay, The Dark Enlightenment, and I want to try to sort though what he's saying about race, and how that intertwines with the views of the larger alt-right community.
In his introduction, Land argues that the alt-right is reaction to a Left that has placed race on an untouchable holy altar. He's saying that the media reinforces a climate in which it's not acceptable to question certain assumptions, such as the existence of systemic racism, and he goes on to say that this intransigence actually created the alt-right.
"The Alt-Right is the Frankenstein monster progressivism has built. It is uniquely adapted to what the people have become in our time. Liberal failure has been succeeded by that of the left, and the Alt-Right has inherited the rotten remains." --Nick Land, the Dark Enlightenment
What's interesting to me about his tone is that the Enlightenment was supposed to be about freedom from the dark grip of religion. It was supposed to be about seeing the truth for the first time, and being able to speak about it: 'we aren't this way because God ordained it, we made it this way!." Land appears to be trying to crawl out from under what he sees as a rotten corpse of Leftism. But what I see when we push this corpse aside is a history of intolerance and nationalist bloodshed. The original Enlightenment didn't have that problem. I supposed I most want comments from @BC if he has time.
In his introduction, Land argues that the alt-right is reaction to a Left that has placed race on an untouchable holy altar. He's saying that the media reinforces a climate in which it's not acceptable to question certain assumptions, such as the existence of systemic racism, and he goes on to say that this intransigence actually created the alt-right.
"The Alt-Right is the Frankenstein monster progressivism has built. It is uniquely adapted to what the people have become in our time. Liberal failure has been succeeded by that of the left, and the Alt-Right has inherited the rotten remains." --Nick Land, the Dark Enlightenment
What's interesting to me about his tone is that the Enlightenment was supposed to be about freedom from the dark grip of religion. It was supposed to be about seeing the truth for the first time, and being able to speak about it: 'we aren't this way because God ordained it, we made it this way!." Land appears to be trying to crawl out from under what he sees as a rotten corpse of Leftism. But what I see when we push this corpse aside is a history of intolerance and nationalist bloodshed. The original Enlightenment didn't have that problem. I supposed I most want comments from @BC if he has time.
Comments (86)
Quoting frank
There certainly are leftists / liberals / progressives (whatever term...) who are focussed on race and marginalized, under-represented, and disadvantaged groups. They have substituted D.E.I for the class and labor issues of the "old left". The alt-right, ultra-conservatives, far right, etc. are quite exercised about D.E.I., but that isn't the big game they are hunting for.
What I think the alt-right and various fellow travelers are after is a retrenchment of mainstream liberal programs, such as the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid which help poor and poorer people; (mostly local) minimum wage laws that give workers something resembling a living wage;; regulatory programs which provide protection from egregiously exploitative businesses; and the like. There is an old core of conservatives who never liked Social Security, Unemployment and Disability Insurance, and Medicare and contested these programs in court -- just as younger conservatives took the ACC to court.
The alt-right isn't screaming about unions because, as important as organizing labor is, it's at low tide in most fields, except maybe public employment.
The primary beneficiaries of alt-right politics are members of the 1% / ruling class. Their rag-tag army of supporters and voters are not material beneficiaries. The riff-raff right wingers may get solace from suppressing various D.E.I. initiatives; they may like seeing food programs for the poor cut back; they may think that Godliness, the Flag, and National Honor will be restored. But in the end, they'll be shafted along with everybody else.
Quoting frank
It's an irritating catch phrase. Negative and positive race consciousness has been part of American culture for it to be anything other than 'part of the system'. After slavery, a civil war, Jim Crow, rampant racial exclusion and deliberate limits on opportunity, just about no body is free of race consciousness. Which is the source of the insight that we have to stop talking about race all the time if we are going to reduce racism.
I have to leave now for a lunch meeting. More later.
Whenever i've pinned down a (at least self-identified) conservative on some particular issue, it turns out mostly they have coherent but, for me, erroneous values. If you truly believe a bare zygote (as such) is a human being worthy of all moral rights a post-birth baby is, that explains that belief without any recourse to some kind of knuckle-dragging 'retrenchment' concept coming into it. This applies to most issues - homelessness, civil rights, etc... as they affect the person and their closest relatives and friends only (in general). Their approach to the moral boundaries of sex is a perfect example of this.
However, there are two areas where I think these sorts of comments (the post posts above(three i guess)) are totally apt: LGBT stuff - I think, in reality, what's happened is what old mate says in book quoted by frank. But what the 'right' see, is something other than what's actually happened and they seem to be willfully pushing a narrative that supports that erroneous basis. The other is drugs. That one is fraught, given that staunch anti-drug sentiments also exist even in harder-left-leaning minds. But it seems obvious that they still want the same thing liberals want with regard to drugs - reduced harm.
Whenever I have pinned down a (at least, self-identified) "leftist" the only thing I can discern from their arguments beyond "yep, that sounds reasonable" is that they truly don't care about the 'facts' or counterintuitive thinking. They want the broadest possible benefit for the the widest number of people - excluding those who do not believe what they do - and often at the expense of their closest family and friends (in general). Luigi Mangioni and the absolutely morally bankrupt response from most leftists exemplify this.
But Race is an area where I cannot get anything reasonable out of a leftist. It's probably hte one issue I think "the right" sort of approaches from the right place but hten just gets caught up in social media-type vying for likes. A shame, really. Conversations should start from "what do you want to achieve" and taken at face value. Inconsistencies would actually help change someone's views if they know, that you know, that they want the same things. No one is immune to 'missing something'.
So, you can see that this is just a vicious cycle of poo-pooing each other's value set. It will, and could, not get anywhere.
Nick Land came from an academic setting, so I think that must be the group of leftists he thinks made race "holy." I guess some of the things you've said in the past made me think you would agree that the progressive stance on race is like doctrine that can't be discussed, it just requires agreement? The picture he paints is of a Leftism that's solidified into doctrine so that reasonable discussion can't be had. Is that totally wrong?
Quoting BC
Right. But both tariffs and migration control have the potential to shore up the power of American labor. I'm not trying to be naive here, it's just that for real, it's the first substantial movement I've seen in my lifetime toward protecting American labor. It may well be that it's the bone thrown to the dogs to make them think things are getting better, but still, it's the truth. And that's what Nick Land's views leave me thinking about: telling the truth.
Quoting BC
I've been looking for whether people like Land and Vance understand the population they're cozying up to. Do they understand that the alt-right is where Neo-Nazis go? Or are they just not afraid of that?
Whatever I said in the past, this is what I think is true about Americans [other people have their own problems]:
Discrimination by the dominant group against people who are considered subordinate varies in form, intensity, duration, severity, and pervasiveness. There have been on-going efforts from the late 18th century going forward to ameliorate, soften, moderate, or eliminate discrimination. Battles have been won against most forms of discrimination--abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, labor organization, gay rights, and laws against religious and ethnic discrimination, and so on. Despite significant victories, discrimination continues.
There is a master-narrative that makes it difficult for Americans to see the various systems of discrimination: The master narrative holds that there is opportunity for any hard working American to a) get ahead b) be a success c) get rich. If you don't a) get ahead b) become a success c) get rich, that is a result of your own personal failure. You, individually, were evidently too lazy or too stupid to even get ahead, much less become a success or get rich.
As a result of very long periods of symbolic and material discrimination, some groups are less likely to "get ahead". Their collective experience is counted as personal deficiency. "It's your own fault."
It is not only Donald Trump who, per Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is living in a bubble of misrepresentation.
a fairly large majority of Americans are in such a bubble, where the reality of current symbolic and material discrimination, severe maldistribution of wealth, prejudicial policy and law, and so on isn't registered as something that can and should be eliminated.
The master-fact of the matter is that 10% of Americans are wealthier than the remaining 90%. Most Americans (the 90%+) are wage earners (aka wage slaves) who will not do better than "get ahead" to some degree. They won't be a success and they won't become rich despite their best efforts.
All workers -- White, Black, Asian, Aboriginal; men, and women; gay and straight; Catholic and Hindu are the victims of exploitation and systemic discrimination by the very wealthy ruling class.
White workers bear the double burden of recognizing how they themselves are the victims of discrimination (as wage slaves) and how they may discriminate against other workers. Don't feel guilty about it; just recognize reality and do better in the future. Blacks are not your #1 enemy: it's the 1%, the rich man who is your enemy and the black man's enemy alike. Unite in solidarity.
That's a very good question.
I suspect that few of the conservatives who are doing the cozying up have thought through to the conclusion that they are flirting with ideas which are not part of the conservative tradition. If they did they would either take their warm blanket and cozy up with somebody else, or they would be in bed with the Neo-nazis.
Some have probably found Neo-nazis to be good in bed, and like it. I spend as little time as possible contemplating the far right, let alone Neo-nazis, so I don't know who's in and who's not.
That final note cannot be achieved by the prior imperative.
Quoting BC
:100:
Everything about the right-wing resurgence seems to me some way or another of shouting, "if you're going to do it, so shall we!" And in this sense they're right. If power is all that matters, how can you complain when the people you trample use it to trample you? Left wingers trample right wing beliefs, values, and ideas daily like it or not. Right wingers trample in the reverse direction.
How do all power disputes begin? Mind, not brawn. During times of peace, brawn says 'because of this or that, I will harm you, or don't care if I harm you, to get what is or should be mine.' Then when the defender fights back or resists the change, the instigator appears to think that they are now in defence and this goes on and on recursively. Brute force is in control. Thing is, this is all well and good, because when the other side is in control one can sit back and say 'It's not me, I'm not responsible.' But if it's power that you want, isn't it also the impotence that you desire? Someone to rule over you in a paternalistic sort of way; in a Hobbesian sort of way. Safe and secure while the foil runs around doing all the dirty work.
Question is really, are you serious that these discussions are only tossing and turnings over power, or is there something more? If not, everyone might as well just keep playing the game and expect it to stay the way it is.
Quoting frank
Typical right-wing tactic of blaming the Left for creating their own ideology. Regardless, I'm not at all convinced that the "alt-right" view of race is a novel conviction distinguishable from prior conservative views, some of which stem hundreds of years ago and echoed by prominent Enlightenment philosophers.
Reactionary Mind from Corey Robin?
"Trample" is the key word there, each side viewing the other as a stampeding herd. No nuance allowed, no variation.
The Left does contain braindead zombies, and if you lean left, you're going to be lumped together with them. Land complains that the same is happening to the right. No conversation is possible about the nature of systemic racism. If you ask, you're racist.
Quoting kudos
Land's claim is that Libertarians are not sitting still. They're "exiting" regular politics, although I'm still working on understanding what that implies.
Quoting kudos
In the background, authoritarianism looms, so not just more status quo.
So it's more surprising that Land was influenced by Marx and Deleuze in his academic youth. Now he's a libertarian going on about how democracy doesn't work.
When it comes down to it, I couldn't care less if someone individually throws around the word 'racist' carelessly. I find it more disturbing is when this happens publicly, or some ridiculous change of policy is introduced, and everyone just stands around silently like it's OK just to save their own skin. None performs their duty to defend the common understanding. It's like this person is now some sort of human sacrifice for the cause, the unlucky few that it's not even worth the small effort of speaking in the defence of, just crushed under the weight of a gigantic mass of apathy. On top of that, it is a good cause this is happening for, as in stopping real racism, so this cashing out on principle turns something good into something wrong. I've seen this happen so many times now that I'm sure each time some of the people watching change their viewpoint from left-leaning to right.
That sounds reasonable.
Quoting AmadeusD
In practice, it's worse than that. What often gets poo-pooed is a caricature of the other side's position.
This is the 'leftist corpse' Land complains about. All posturing, no anchor to reality.
I agree wholeheartedly.
We are too quick to ignore the individual we engage with on the issue of race, and too afraid to be the individuals we are when talking about race, and instead hide ourselves in the rightness of our side of history (as if we actually know the truth of where we are and where we are headed) and force individuals back into their ugly groups - facists, haters, leftists, rightists, sub- humans unworthy of being heard.
We remain fearful cavemen, which is the irony of the racist. The racist must view all of us as animals first because it is the animal, the physical, alone, which grounds a category like race. Superior race? How is that even possible?
And the immense contradictions of setting one race apart from others only follow.
We need to venture out of the cave and realize we are as different from our own parents as we are from the farthest race of person who might exist in Asia, or Canada, or the Ukraine, or Qatar, or 10,000 years ago.
There are no races of human beings. Once human, we have the cake, and the deepest description of racial realities only adds color to the icing. And what would life be like without color? Such a shame.
The whole conversation about race, to me, should be why are you afraid of your brother?
Because he stood on my neck in the middle of the street until I was dead? It's a complicated issue.
So matters involving people are complicated?
Helpful tip.
Then maybe the first question should be, do we really want to take the time to have this conversation? Cause its a slog.
We need a diagram.
No. We need a supercomputer. :razz:
And maybe some non-culturally appropriated refreshments.
You should check out Land's concept and advocacy of "hyperracism." In general, Land tends to at least tacitly support the conclusions of some sort of "race realism" (their term). Such views conclude that cognitive and behavioral differences grounded in genetic variation across races is such that it makes DEI efforts counterproductive for society as a whole, and makes equality (in terms of sector participation, income, etc.) an unrealistic and unhelpful goal (a similar sex realism often goes along with this).
However, Land, being something of an elitist who also tends to conflate sci-fi and reality, also thinks that racial categories are not the most relevant dividing line here. He thinks that a sort of "cognitive sorting" in mate selection (of the sort Charles Murray discusses in the Bell Curve) is creating a new class of cognitive elites.
Basically:
Land adds to this his tendency to think sci-fi technology is closer than it probably is. So:
The result is an elite that holds all the cards and is superior to the lower classes (with genetic engineering and other enhancements, plus a much better environment they would in theory be smarter, stronger, healthier, faster, etc.)
A more general point is that liberalism, particularly a commitment to equality, preferences the desires of the lower cognitive classes at the expense of the highest achievers (recalling Nietzsche a bit). But at a certain point enforcing equality must become draconian. Yet most of the gains in our standard of living, life expectancy, ability to defend ourselves, etc. come, at least on some tellings, from this small group at the top (creating new technology , etc.). Not allowing them freedom to "push the envelope" is in some ways the greatest restriction on freedom imaginable, since it is a restriction of the capacity of mankind as a whole in order to serve the needs of the current many (arguably to the detriment of future generations who will miss out on innovation and advancement).
He sees the collapse of liberalism as inevitable. Hence, accelerationism simply tries to accelerate the process by which liberalism destroys itself.
A related point I don't recall Land ever speaking to is that AI and automation are also making it so that mass mobilization and "the people" are increasingly irrelevant to winning wars. The shift might be every bit as relevant as the stirrup (which ushered in feudalism) in that both prioritize small, elite, highly skilled and expensively equiped cadres of soldiers over mass mobilization. This has obvious follow on effects because the rights of commoners and the growth of the welfare state itself can be seen as largely an outgrowth of the need for states and elites to court "the people" to win wars, and to head off revolts. Changes in military and surveillance technology might allow far smaller groups to have an effective monopoly on force in terms of both inter and intra state conflict.
His views on race seem to be that conventional racists are "more right" than "race deniers" (who say race has nothing to do with things like career success, etc.), but that their view is still deficient (they are essentially racial plebians). They fail to see that existing racial categories are not the categories that will come to define the future elite, and so not particularly relevant, nor that the "superior stock" is likely to come from a diverse background.
There are all sorts of questions one might have about this sort of speculation. It's based on a quite loose and speculative extrapolation of empirical data, and unfortunately, since argument is rarely taught, mounding up citations is taken as the gold standard of argument, and someone like Charles Murray can mound up citations quite well. Since the generic response to this sort of thing has been to simply shout "racist" at it, the more substantial critiques that could be offered up against it never get off the ground. After all, why even engage with what is obviously evil? Stephen Pinker makes this point in a few places, including The Blank Slate. Liberal discomfort with racism is such that they essentially cede the ground on whether the racists' conclusions about public policy and ethics would hold up even if their empirical case had merit. So, unfortunately, the people who find themselves swayed by this sort of thinking never see the "even if they are right about x, y, and z, they would still not be justified in asserting p, q, and r" sorts of rebuttals.
Just for one example, it seems like one could have easily made this sort of case for the superiority of the aristocracy prior to the end of noble privileges given their existence as a discrete, inbreeding class. Wasn't becoming a noble a sort of difficult to pass "genetic filter?" And yet the nobility did not tend to fare well with meritocratic reforms. Second, the most famous subgroup in intergroup intelligence research are Ashkenazim Jews, who tend to score about .75-2 standard deviations higher in verbal-logical IQ metrics than the general European population (and about the same on visio-spatial IQ).
This finding is fairly robust, showing up even countries where Jews tend to be a marginalized, lower income group. There are a number of hypotheses about how this might have occured. The big one is that, since Jews were often excluded from owning land (and thus the main occupation back then, farmer) and from trade guilds, they tended to work in more cognitively demanding fields (e.g. medicine, banking, as merchants, etc.). Those who lacked the abilities to succeed in these environments could always convert, and leave the community. These pressures, combined with quite strict restrictions on mixed relationships, and perhaps some other factors (e.g. a long-term status preference for scholarship) is at least one hypothesis for this divergence.
Yet this difference is still not that wide, and, even if this hypothesis was right (it is still quite speculative), the effect plausibly took around 1,500+ years to emerge, despite vastly stricter "sorting" in terms of relationships than what we see today. Land, Murray, and co. extrapolate from single generation studies taking place largely in ceteris paribus contexts (twin studies have some minor variability in social class, although impoverished families do not tend to adopt, and are almost always within the context of developed countries). However, genetics is not the sort of thing where we would expect to see perfectly linear relations, where this sort of "sorting" would necessarily produce effect sizes that carry over from generation to generation. Indeed, the general trend has been the opposite, natives across social classes in developed countries are becoming [I]less[/I] intelligent. I have not heard of the wealthy or well-educated bucking this trend, which is what Murray, Land, etc.'s theses would suggest. Maybe researchers have just missed this (although it seems unlikely since this sort of hypothesis is quite old and well known), so it would seem that even if the hypothesis was correct it is being outweighed by environmental effects and perhaps the skyrocketing age of high SES mothers and fathers.
Not to mention there are all sorts of other problems here. Height is correlated with basketball success; almost all NBA players a huge outliers. Height is quite heritable. The Netherlands, Denmark, and Estonia are the tallest countries on Earth. Yet, you'd hardly select these populations as the ideal places to recruit a superstar basketball team if you knew anything about basketball, nor would you want some random 6'11 Dane on your team over 5'9 Isaiah Thomas. Land and Murray would probably allow for this sort of idea, that the best way to screen job candidates is never wide population metrics; I take it their point is more about the relative worthwhileness of various DEI efforts. However, in general the "race realists" [I]do[/I] try to argue that racial (and often sex) discrimination is actually a good heuristic for things like employee selection, which it quite obviously is not.
Not only are there actually more African-Americans than there are people in Netherlands, Denmark and Estonia, but one should also notice how much more popular basketball is in the US as in these countries. The popularity of a sport among the youth is extremely important.
But this naturally is a side issue, you can obviously note the difference in track and field and athletics. China is a country that really puts large effort in winning medals in the Olympics and got the second most medals after the US, but they aren't at all dominating in athletics (running, jumping and so on). In fact, in all Athletics competitions last time in the Paris Olympics, China got just one gold medal, in women's 20km race walk. And I think two other medals and that's it, from over 40 different competitions.
The denial of racial differences is one thing, but then the racist extrapolation from this is the real problem and it's effects on social cohesion. And what makes the whole discussion even worse is that we hear dog whistles everywhere. Discussions quickly transform into lithurgies. And people shun away from any discussion, as they fear to be marked.
What I think will be very damaging is when Trump is now firing from the US military black and female generals even without giving any reason (other than Hegseth saying they are fighting DEI). Well, the US armed forces has actually been a success story in combating real structural racism in the US, and hope it's not to backtrack here with the quite nonsensical and ludicrous "anti-DEI" policies.
What I think this comes down to is a 'Blood and soil'-type of reasoning. Historically different cultures arose from various peoples living over the world in different circumstances. Values are not reasoned out by some dialectical process, but evolve out of communities of people living in a certain place, tied to the land as it where.
The enlightenment as an outgrowth of universalist Christianity (and platonism before) sees morality rather as something objective and universal springing from (pure) reason or something like that.
If reason or ideal forms is the presumed origin of morality, then there is no apparent link to place or particular events anymore, and notions of seperate traditions of peoples connected to their land suddenly don't make a whole lot of sense.
If you believe however that any culture or morality worth its salt comes not from abstract universals, but from real historical traditions of people living their lives in certain places, then it starts to make more sense why you wouldn't want to much immigration.
Dark enlightenment seems something like the realisation that ideal forms or 'reason' is merely another justification for a people that has forgotten that its beliefs are really only the particular beliefs of a certain tribe from a certain place in time.
This is maybe overly generous, but I think there's way to read this as being about culture and ethnicity rather than race ultimately.
And of course it leads to conflict and bloodshed if you have various peoples with diverging interests and values. If you are to have a defined 'we', a group of people uniting to work together for a common goal, then you also have an 'other', otherwise the 'we' isn't delineating anything.
The question is what do you lose if you try to do away with the other? An all-inclusive 'we' that doesn't really mean anything anymore and nobody really cares for? Atomised individuals feeling like they don't belong to anything? Nihilism?
Very good point. Steel-manning is a practice few can actually carry out. I have a hard time, so i usually dont engage in those arguments.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Yes, and it's possible this is the reason for the pushback. Stupid people will see the hypocrisy in this, but not notice their own.
My question is actually for the guy with the boot, not the guy with the boot on his neck. The guy who persecutes other people based on race is the chickenshit afraid of his own shadow, and ignorantly looking to his own brothers to blame for his insecurity. Its a complicated question.
You're knowledge of this is pretty in depth. I didn't realize they were thinking along eugenics lines when they condemned DEI. I thought it was just racism. Plus eugenics had it's day. Wasn't the science behind it debunked?
And if we add in the part about eugenics, it's about genetic fragmentation of Homo Sapiens into different subspecies, and maybe eventually different species.
Imagine we're at a crossroads where we could remain fairly closely related, or we could start splitting apart as in HG Wells' Time Machine. The philosophy of staying together is liberalism and egalitarianism. The philosophy of splitting is what Land is talking about.
Purely in evolutionary terms diversity is more adaptive because you have a wider range of attributes that can fit changing circumstances.
We used to be a lot more genetically and culturally diverse in the past, but we generally went in the other direction the past 12.000 years culminating in the globalised world we have now.
The general arc historically has been towards more integration. But I don't think this is necessarily the direction we should expect the future to go.
For splitting apart of a species you need seperation and evolutionary bottlenecks. Maybe we will get seperation and evolutionary bottlenecks.
I wish I could come back in 10,000 years and see what happened. :grin:
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Maybe from climate change?
This strikes me as totally incoherent. They aren't related(on my first reading.. This isn't an impugning). the "philosophy of staying together" as a species? What thinker has broached this outside of sci fi? Real question, and not one I think is a gotcha. I'd like to know who to read on that, because its clearly a prima facie conservative line of thinking.
I think it's pretty confusing when people speak about 'liberal' values when referring to directly conservative actions. Is it that there's something more to the story of the dichotomy? I think so, and that conversation is rarely had prior to the kind of us v them utterings all throughout the forum on these sorts of threads.
What two things aren't related?
I don't think they relate, let alone align (again, on first reading. I'm just beginning thoughts on it).
The idea is that some people opposed DEI because they think it forces stupid people to the top, where they contaminate the elite with their stupid genes. Chattering Monkey and I were adding in some futurism.
Remember, when you go to make sense of history, you inevitably narrate it according to some presuppositions or biases. Same thing with trying to understand the present moment.
This inspires me to look at all the significant viewpoints on the scene and place them as if on a chessboard where I can move them around and let them interact. Do I escape bias this way? Probably not entirely, but it's maybe a little more sophisticated than the rooting-for-my-team approach, which is just blind bs.
Nick Land influenced a lot of MAGA ideology. They want closed borders, de-globalisation, multi-polar world, protectionism, less immigration etc etc.... as opposed to liberal democrats wanting open borders, globalisation, uni-polar world, free trade, more immigration. It's not necessarily about the stated goals of said ideologies, but about the policies they tend to support and the implications of those.
Yes that would be one of the main ones.
Every stance in these discussions is precarious.
I see a tension between inclusion of diversity (yielding adaptability, other goods, etc) and exclusion (yielding the lines that frame the diverse) when it comes to race. You dont get diverse things if you dont keep things exclusive of each other. You dont get the authentically Asian or Pacific Islander without exclusivity. Should we want all the races to blend into one, or all people to realize we single people are a single people of many different races?
The equity-inclusion crowds then, in practice, build an anti-diversity world; inclusion is at odds with diversity. The racist crowds are anti-human, so self-defeating, and much worse, but inclusiveness has to be grounded in a respect for exclusivity, or it may also tend away from the better world we seek.
So the first thing to settle in the discussion of race, to me, from all sides, has to be whether people, as people, are already homogeneous, with no significant diversity yet to speak of, as people. We shouldnt start the conversation by grappling with diversity versus inclusion. We need to first address who must be included in the conversation about different races (namely, all people, which is redundant with all races of people) before we can really have that conversation.
If someone cant accept that, they need to explain themselves before the conversation can move anywhere.
It should be as good that there are many different personalities at one table in one family, as it is good that the Asian and the African and the European, etc are so different as one people, in the one human race. Its obvious who the people are (in all races) and only a racist could be confused about that.
The real problem isnt people accepting all the differences, its people accepting they are no different than other people, and no matter what the race, were all at bottom only people, and as people, there really isnt a such thing as white people or black people or green people. We need to accept all the samenesses, not the differences first.
The only real surface dividing people, is between this particular individual, and that one, and when seeing the differences between individuals, in their uniqueness, skin color tells us so little it should barely make the discussion.
I don't think it matters how we treat them. They're still Filipino. That's not something we're creating with our hiring practices.
I see. I may be ignorant to how well-subscribed that view is. My understanding is even the duller coterie among that sort of group aren't seriously suggesting that stupid people will become another race. I see you're adding in some futurism. Fair enough - I guess my response is just to that then LOL. I don't really see the connection. But thank you for that clarification.
Quoting frank
Definitely true. I think the risk here is taht its going to still result in various, conflicting views. For instance, I feel I also do this to the degree that I am able, psychologically and in terms of my knowledge of history and the present - but my conclusiosn would be much different I'd think. View from nowhere rears its head i guess.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
This seems to leapfrog the issues in the prior suggestions. What's wrong with less immigration? Or at least, and this is the general MAGA line, less illegal immigration? Those are, for this context, rhetorical. If you want to skip to the next paragraph, the one below it responds directly to the above quote..
I understand it's likely what you're pushing at is that the motivator for them is actually just "less wogs, pls" or some nonsense like that. But that's only going to cover a, probably somewhat small, proportion of that group. Many will just be plain ignorant, and then there will be varying degrees of reasonable argument (one being extremely sensitive, because it's allowable and in fact considered morally 'right' when applied to any ethnicity that isn't white. Which is patently racist - another discussion). This goes to what I was initially suggesting:
What's your goal? Reducing harm? Ok. Good goal. Lets discuss how to get there and hash-out the theoretics of X or Y course of action/policy.... This base-line is almost never set down and so the arguments proceed from one another's bias about how the motiviations (even though unknown) are somehow evil. There is no point talking about policies and actions unless you can hold them up to a stated goal and point out that either A. the goal is unwarranted, or B. the policies/actions wont achieve the goal. Even if this is purely practical, and its just that no ones going to listen to you when you can't even stop yourself from pretending to know their mind, that's totally valid imo. Don't do that.
It also seems patently clear that, over the years, many 'liberal' policies with both 'pleasant' stated goals, and apparently good reason to believe the policy will get there, have resulted in something else (unforeseen, unwanted etc..). So, that doesn't seem a great benchmark for either 'side' to critique the other.
Very good. I think not only is it self-defeating in that sense (which admittedly, might just come down to the linguistics of hte bumper-stickers) but is exactly opposite to what anyone truly wants - which is for things like racialised thinking to disappear. It is explicitly encouraging racialised and sexualised policies (most other aspects of DEI are reasonable, such as having ramps for disabled employees or whatever so that there's no barrier to hiring them).
Quoting Fire Ologist
Yes. This seems particularly important for sex, imo. The conversation is so intensely stupid around sex/gender because this obvious starting point is ignored (or, misused to suggest something ridiculous). For race, its a bit less ridiculous because you can't miss that someone is black, or South Asian or ebony (here referring to mid-Africans with truly dark, sun-kissed tones and is not meant to be derogatory or anything).
One that's sorted, the differences become obvious, and the response should be similar to Shaun Murphys about 'being a boy'. THe question is ridiculous. You are the race you are, and you have the attributes you have. Its not a moral question, and has nothing to do with right or wrong. It is the case that we have all these races with (relatively) distinct genetic profiles which we can trace back thousands of years.
I think, though, we're missing hte point. the Alt-Right (and indeed, the intensely DEI crowd) pigeon hole people by observing behaviour, and tying it race. And both sides of that are woefully inept, and inconsistent. Statistics, basically. Which is what everyone does preconsciously, constantly, all the time, about everything. But couple that with 'ideology' and you have a timebomb.
:100: although Id say we need to remove the word indeed and pull that parenthetical out of the parentheses in line with the rest of the statement.
And if we changed pigeon hole (a putting down) to set equal persons on a pedestal (a respect for the uniqueness of individuals and peoples), we have our statement of an honorable goal for this conversation.
The alt right and the intensely DEI crowd pigeon hole people by observing behavior and tying it to race.
Thats bad, so lets talk with the goal that the right and the left only seek to set equal persons on a pedestal by observing behavior and tying it to race (or culture, or sex, or class, or intelligence, or physical beauty, etc, etc..)
I think their goal is to overthrow the liberal democratic world order we have had the past 75 years. This is not about some policy change left or right, but about a total system change based on core values that are not the same.
If this is indeed their goal, then what they are doing kindof makes sense.
Exactly.
Would it be a bad thing is the liberal world order ended Frank?
Land (and Moldbug) have a narrow view of how tolerance works in public life:
Quoting Nick Land, The Dark Enlightenment, Part 3
The expectation that people are to be respected as persons happens more in some places than others. It is a way of life that is not sustainable if enough people stop operating with that respect. The equality of civil rights and equal treatment under the law are important but are meaningless if that respect is absent from the commons.
The tolerance for the ghettos that Land applauds is encoded in the U.S. Constitution with the Establishment of Religion clause of the First Amendment. It provides a safe place for intolerance and discrimination within their members' way of life. As regards to the education of children, it gives each American the right to screw up their kids.
By that measure, the alt-right does not want to have control of the commons but to force everybody else to live in their ghetto.
If you mean should America's global influence end. Yes. It should.
Libertarians truly want freedom and they think democracy has failed in its mission to provide that. They have joined hands with Neo-Nazis in order to make their sentiments known. To what extent do they realize that there's a looming disaster in that? I honestly don't think they care. They're useless dust for history's bin.
As a lefty, I largely agree with this and I've been saying similar things for years. The left shoots themselves in the foot by becoming extreme caricatures of themselves.
The term "libertarian" applies to many forms of expression which support starkly different political agendas. Take Hayek, for instance, who advocated for a completely free market but did not support the deletion of civic governance.
What Land describes as 'conservative' may be more accurately described as nativist. Genealogically speaking, that makes the alt-right closer to the overt racism and cultural hegemony of Pat Buchanan than to various flavors of anarchy.
Land explicitly welcomes the benefits of enlightened despotism. What shall be called libertarian in that environment?
Hayek favored dictatorship as the best way to preserve the freedom of the market. He's an ideological grandfather of Land and his friends.
Quoting Paine
What did he describe as conservative? He isn't conservative in any meaningful sense. He's post-Leftism.
I also get what he's saying. There's a little bit of zombie-ness in progressivism.
On what basis do you say that? What do you make of Hayek's book The Road to Serfdom, where the intervention of government into private transactions is deemed the source of all tyranny?
Quoting frank
I don't understand what post-Leftism means. Land quotes Moldbug in the paragraph preceding my previous quote:
Whatever is the opposite of that is what Land said had died when Bush said:
I read a book about him? He praised the Chilean dictator and commented that a dictator is the best solution to threats to freedom. I'm not going to look it up and provide a quote though. I just don't care enough. Sorry.
No reflection. Just outrage.
Agreed.
Some, but not many. These kind of racist fears are not what many had in mind when opposing the overreactions or excesses of DEI or anti-racism. And that's what they were: workplace excesses that usually showed just how easily especially one can lose a job in the US.
Yet then to go on with the current administration going full word-nazi and erasing "incorrect" words? JD Vance stating that these kinds of minor issues to be a far higher level of threats to Europe than the Russia military aggression and real war? Talk about an overreaction on a monumental scale out of proportions, which indeed makes everybody question just how sinister the real objective is.
Let's remember that Jordan Peterson got his fame and publicity by going against a Canadian law could be interpreted as setting rules for language. That kind of "word policing", which likely didn't have much effect in Canada, gave rise to Peterson. And now you have the Trump administration erasing words like equity from government documents and websites and people going through personal mails of government employees to fire them if they have been against the administration.
I remember one Democrat openly admitting that the party went too far in the DEI / anti-racism narrative thinking that it's the next step after the civil rights movement. That was an honest statement, but then, as typically happens, the counter reaction from the MAGA crowd wipes absolutely everything aside.
You did not address the role of government as highlighted by Land.
The left uses the phrase "systemic racism". I'm not fond of the term "systemic". I prefer the idea that racism has been "structured" -- meaning built. Slavery, of course, then decades of Jim Crow law, the Klan and all that.
The modern structuring of racial segregation began during the 1930s --1950s when the Federal government resolved to expand its long-term housing renewal program. Federal backed loans, zoning rules, location of cheap land, covenants, transportation patterns, and yes, racial prejudice, resulted in a major serration of urban / suburban space, with blacks being kept out of suburbs. What blacks received out of these programs were public rental housing. In time the public rental housing became extremely problematic (for the residents, certainly) because administration and maintenance went to hell. The quality of the public housing buildings were really fairly good, but renters do not accumulate equity in their apartments.
So, segregation of urban spaces led to segregation of school systems, since schools have been funded locally out of city / school district property taxes. Increasingly poorer cities could not provide the same level of quality which the increasingly prosperous suburbs could afford. Not initially, but over time some percentage of employment opportunities became distributed into the suburbs. Again. limited transportation options made it difficult for urban residents to conveniently (or even inconveniently) reach these locations.
All this resulted in physically excluding racial minorities from the means to advancement through quality education, equity in property, and improved employment--all factors that can lead to an upward spiral, or in their absence either a downward spiral or flatlining of income growth.
The downward spiral has, in turn, led to a reduction of 'cultural capital' in minority neighborhoods which makes it more difficult to progress economically and socially.
So, to make a long story short, that many people who are minorities are disadvantaged is true. What to do about it? Two approaches: "pull in" and "push in". 'Pull in' is the DEI EO approach: The agency or firm sets a goal for minority presence, and then goes out to find and pull in enough minorities (however defined) to meet the goals. The other approach is to wait for minority group members to agencies or firms they want to work for, and present their credentials, whatever they might be. If there are DEI / EO targets, they might or might not be met.
There are two things people on the job tend to dislike about DEI / EO programs: One is the reality or the suspicion that 'pull in' efforts hired less trained / less capable people. The other disliked feature is the training of existing employees to acquire the "proper attitudes" about minorities. The training programs can be overbearing, heavy handed, tediously obvious, and so on.
So if that doesn't work, what should be done? What should be done is the very difficult job of long-term economic development among disadvantaged people (minority or majority) to enable them (and future generations) to compete in the open markets of society. This is not an easy, quick, or cheap approach, and it is much more complex than just handing out money to people that don't have much of it. It addresses material conditions, not symbolic issues.
I've always been opposition, distinction, and separateness, chosen and otherwise. I was an early conscientious objector in response to the Vietnam draft; I'm gay; I've never had very high material aspirations; I'm a socialist (covers a lot of territory); I have difficulties with authority figures; now I'm old, on top of everything else.
I quote this, because I haven't read Rawls (shame shame); just wanted to know if we're on the same page.
Yes, the well-being of the least advantaged. I've spent quite a few years working with this group. The advantaged sector of the population, let's say 20%, are perfectly capable of providing for their own well-being, whatever happens to them (within limits, of course). The bottom 20% has difficulty providing for their basic needs, never mind more expansive 'well-being'. The 60% in between the top and bottom have progressively more difficulty providing for their well-being, as they descend the income ladder.
Part of the problem here is that the pressure to consume stuff is constant and the rewards are often minimal. Not talking about consuming healthy food or basic clothing here, but more buying the glittering plastic schlock which is on offer everywhere all the time.
One of the features of Trump's MAGA (Make America Grotesque Again) is that he is slashing a lot of government programs that aim to assist the least advantaged to achieve--not well-being, but something more than the flat-out minimum. Landing an apartment in public housing, for instance, is a huge step up from living on the street, even if it is a but spartan, The minimal welfare payment for single, childless adults is painfully low, but if one can qualify for other programs (like Medicaid, public housing, and food assistance) it doesn't lead to lavish well-being, but it's better than untended disease, living in a box, and eating from garbage cans.
We CAN do better than this, without having a revolution. It requires a redistribution of wealth -- something the United States has actually done in the past. The main tool is taxation. The wealthy have been taxed at much lower rates in the last 45 years than what they were paying in the 40 years before 1985. Indeed, it is a low tax rate that is partly responsible for the top 20% being as rich as they are.
Wealth can be redistributed downward, and to be honest, there isn't quite enough wealth to satisfy the needs and wants of everyone. One can live a quite decent life on a relatively low income, but it requires a focus on the basics and discipline. The least advantaged people in the United Stats are not suffering because of a lack of focus and sloppy indiscipline -- they are suffering because they do not have anywhere close to enough money to make ends meet.
At some point in the past, all these things have been normal, so it would be absurd for anyone to complain here, of all places, about those things. But why do they make opposition, distinction, and separation necessary? Perhaps one must define onesself before becoming systematically defined by another, another that does not have your best interests at heart.
Often, I think many Americans hold the view that accomplishments are the path towards virtue. However, in some senses it isnt accomplishing the thing that is problematic, but that it is being accomplished for an end that makes one succeed at anothers expense. One says it is right that x should be doing y because they are the best at y, and thus the person most fit to do it. But x doing y also means that z doesnt do y, or maybe y means that z inherits a loss q.
It seems like you have a lot of individuals chasing a teleological notion that strength deserves power. I think this way of thinking gained popularity amongst modern intellectuals above all else, and points to a reductiveness in the following of reason. Do you think it is virtuous?
Some of the findings supporting eugenics turned out to be wrong. Others are quite robust. For instance, some mental illnesses are indeed quite heritable. The question of whether eugenics is a good public policy is quite different from "are some conditions/behavior patterns heritable," which was the key idea motivating eugenics.
Eugenics has, in some sense, always been a thing. Some people have decided who to have children with, at least in part, based on a folk understanding of heritability from time immemorial. Plato is talking about a state-led program of intentional breeding back millennia ago. Similarly, today people who know they have recessive genes for serious disorders often do consider this sort of thing. The whole burgeoning field of genetic counseling gets at precisely this concern.
The most obvious place where this plays out is with disorders like Down Syndrome, which are now screened for early in most pregnancies in some countries. People terminate these pregnancies at vastly higher rates, leading to very stark declines in prevalence in some countries (e.g. Iceland).
So, in a sense, eugenics is alive and well and a big industry. However, the term is now largely associated with state mandated programs that involved extremely invasive state action, such as forced sterilization for criminals. It's also often associated with a racial component, although in many cases the focus was on health (which I suppose is where it also still thrives today). Where people advocate for state programs today (which is rare given the history) it is normally instead in terms of incentives to, or not to have more children.
However, we are now at a point where it is possible to screen embryos for not only disease, but for sex, genes associated with intelligence, height, eye color, etc. This is where the sorts of things you see in films like Gatica are a bit more plausible in the short term. Many embryos are fertilized, and then the "best" is selected. Although, sex and disease is, from what I understand, overwhelmingly what is selected for when this sort of thing is done.
Anyhow, the Alt-Right is fairly broad and in some sense the idea of "race realism" is more tangential than I think a lot of coverage suggests. Since immigration is such a huge focus, one might think these sorts of heavily racialized ideas play a huge role here, but I don't think this is quite accurate. Rather, it's the most obviously objectionable thing for critics to focus on, but many of the Alt-Rights arguments against migration have nothing to do with "race realism" or anything that seem particularly explicitly racist.
You can see this with alarmism over "Replacement Theory." There are indeed people who say that there is a vast Jewish conspiracy to replace White populations across the globe. However, there are also think tanks and government agencies, for instance the UN that have put out memos on "replacement migration" as a solution to aging populations, and some liberal parties have explicitly pointed out in their internal strategizing that this could be a windfall win for their long term electoral prospects (assuming demographics continue to dictate party alignment in the same ways, which seems increasingly to have been a bad assumption).
For instance, the New York Times just had a (fairly unconvincing) op-ed claiming that the solution to Germany's Far-Right problem was in fact more migration of this sort. But the political response from critics was to conflate any mention of replacement with the extreme, fringe Neo-Nazi theories, and I would at least agree with some of the targets of these charges that they are in bad faith. The fact that many of Europe's largest countries will be minority European by the time today's children are in middle age is a historically huge shift, and it hardly seems that all concerns about the pace of change can be dismissed as racism of conspiracy theory fever dreams. But there is a political incentive for both left-wing critics and far right racists to both try to pivot discussion towards things like "race realism."
Downs isn't passed down genetically, though. It's a malfunction that takes place early during gestation. There wouldn't be any eugenics benefit from ending a Downs pregnancy.
I understand the motivation behind eugenics, but I don't think we know enough to engage in it large scale. Knowing how genetic manipulation will effect a handful of people doesn't tell us anything about the wider implications for the whole population. Diseases sometimes come in pairs where having one condition gives immunity to some other. A broad eugenics program might show us the benefit behind some conditions that we now think of as noxious.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Nick Land's sentiments are central to the contemporary alt-right and the opening lines of Dark Enlightenment are about race. That's why I brought it up. I wasn't looking for low hanging fruit. That would be disingenuous.
Sounds like an interesting read. Do you know of a free copy of the essay, or did you buy it? Ill read it then comment.
I couldn't find it on line. You can buy it from Amazon.com. It comes as a little paperback.
Thanks
It's not the poorest and the unemployed that make a revolution, it's those that do have work and do own a home.
Unemployment or homelessness is a personal stigma. People in the most dire situation aren't going to make a revolution. I remember so well once in my youth when my country was hit with one of it's histories hardest economic depressions visiting the Central Bank and an economist saying bluntly to us students the reality: "The unemployed won't revolt." And he was right. The highest unemployment, higher than during the Great Depression, and they didn't revolt. The administration went on through the worst economic crisis and the growth path was worse. No revolt from the masses of unemployed.
This is not hte way to do things. This leapfrogs everythign I think is important in that discussion/post.
THe methodology I'm using would expressly ignore policy at the first stage of discussion, and only focus on getting on the same ground about goals. You cannot speak about policy unless you're clear on what your goals are. And you cannot speak about all policies. This is the fatal flaw in modern politic discourse, as far as i'm concerned, and why discussions like the (overwhelmingly, anyway) political threads here - they're trying to make meta-political points by way of specific policies or outcomes. Doesn't work like that, plainly.
Unless your goal is to ignore your opposition, not make any effort to understnad them, and not make any effort to actually achieve some kind of unity or peace, then sure, that's the way to go. IF you are wanting that, understanding people's aims and how their values inform them has to be prior to policy. You're literally grasping around in the dark (usually in anger) otherwise.
I don't think the US government has any clear goal at the moment.
One of the main goals will allways be, to be the ones in power, so they have diametrically opposed goals from the start, no?
Ideologies are designed to give simple answers to complex questions in an appealing narrative, to get as much people to vote for you. What gets parroted arround is usually some form of that, that's right.
But then you have these ideologies in peoples heads - that weren't really meant as real solutions but more as propaganda - creating expectations that you have to take into account when choosing policies, because it's on these created expectations that you get evaluated as a politician in elections.
The space for alignment of goals and policies is already resticted by ideologies and the political proces, is what i'm getting at.
That argument does not touch the common "enlightenment" value of seeking a less cruel environment. The invitation to abnegate the commons for the sake of preventing cruelty is being measured by what the thesis proposes does not exist.
It is a brilliant bit of sophistry.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I don't think this is a fair, or reasonable thing to say, no matter what comes next.
I don't think you'll get this answer from anyone having this discussion. That, again, would make it very clear when their actions align with this goal rather than others that they might profess.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
But again, this absolutely ignores what I'm saying: Sure, to stop it. Start by having this discussion. It is not possible for ideology to get in the way of this. All it can do is leave someone bereft of answers, and egg on their face. Not that this works in all cases, but it has almost universally allowed me to find common ground and understanding with people who's chosen polices are in the negative column, for me.
If you disagree with that statement, I think we'll have to agree to disagree.
Quoting AmadeusD
Look this was just not why I was posting in this thread. And furthermore I don't see why we would need to find common ground to begin with, I'm in Europe and you're in New Zealand, we are not the ones that need to see eye to eye.
Please leave me out of this. :grin:
Noting that if that wasn't your reason for posting, I may have inadvertently mislead you, I find your conclusion there bizarre. We should be positive about any instances of finding common ground and understanding, I think.
We may not need to see eye-to-eye, but that's true of literally any two individuals. Policies cannot be adequately discussed without assessing goals first. Point blank period. Ignoring this will ensure you cannot have a reasonable conversation about policy.
How do you see this observation in the context of Land's essay?
Weirdly, I think republicans are better at starting this conversation - but being widely religious and/or impervious to reason in the specific context of arguing their views with dissidents who see them in a bad light they fail to follow through with finding the common ground I want to find.
Democrats (card carrying, lets say) shouldn't read the media either, because they tend to not accept that the conversation is legitimate, and that all those opposed are moral monsters. The media confirms this. Neither position is helpful, and largely is just the narrative media spins about each group, to each group - I.e almost wholly inaccurate.
I think his point on Oligarchy per se (buying power) in light of democracy is far more apt that probably anyone wants to accept for their own side too - if people could speak about avoiding things like this, we'd have a better conversation about what policies to implement.
"drain the swamp" wouldn't have been a joke to Democrats if they accepted tehir party is incredibly corrupt too but republicans wouldn't have made it a joke if they'd accept it about theirs. Without the cross-party (socially speaking, not politically speaking) conversations about shared goals are essential to avoid constantly talking to bumper stickers instead of arguments.
But sure let's play, suppose we agree on the goal that we should do something about the enormous public debt. Don't you think you will get wildly different policy answers depending on which side one is on, or what position one has in society? People do have different interests.
Yes, i've scored off this ball earlier. I don't fault you for not seeing it.
This is where a truly rational person cannot escape their faulty thinking once the entailments are laid out (i.e "lets explore where your policy goes" and then, jointly, move down that path discussing any conflicts of fact at each stage). At the very least, you would get a point of 'agree on the goal, disagree on the method' which is totally amicable, and what happens in smaller scales every goddamn day. Why this isn't the case with politics escapes me (well, no, but why rational people haven't pushed the point im pushing here harder).
Yes, you will get different answers, and if you're aiming at the same bulleyes, you can assess any given answer of its actually ability to achieve the goal. If people are paying attention, and they be if they're having that conversation, this is exactly how to bridge the psychological divide.