Reality based?

Reviewing a philosophy book about whether nations have a right to exclude others...

If I were to attempt my own analysis of what Profs. Wellman and Cole are pleased to call “racism,” I would begin by pointing out that Homo sapiens evolved for many thousands of years in small kinship-based hunter-gatherer bands. Survival under such circumstances depended on cooperation within the group, even extending to a willingness of individuals to sacrifice themselves for the group. 

On the other hand, survival also depended on success in competition with other hunter-gatherer bands. Relations between such bands, therefore, fluctuated between deep suspicion and murderous hatred. Any mistake in one’s perception of group boundaries was likely to be punished with death. 

Over the ages, humans became adapted to this state of affairs through natural selection. They developed a deep sense of the distinction between “our people” and “outsiders.” A dual pattern of behavior developed, involving cooperation and altruism within the group and suspicion or hostility toward those outside. This evolutionary adaptation is still visible in its rawest form among man’s nearest evolutionary relatives, African chimpanzees, which unhesitatingly kill intruders found within the territory of their troop. 

We have inherited all of this. But because of our higher cognitive development, the raw tribal instinct is flexible and educable to some extent: men genetically programmed for loyalty to a band of not more than a hundred kinsmen can be taught loyalty to a larger nation. Such education, however, is an entirely different matter from the eradication of all sense of group distinctions recommended by “antiracists” such as Prof. Cole. Group loyalties of some sort are as natural to man as economic self-interest, and attempting to abolish them through exhortation and punishment is about as likely to succeed as the Soviet attempt to make people selfless through enforced collectivization. 

A vast scientific literature exists to back up the extremely brief sketch I have just given. It has been produced by students of genetics, animal behavior, childhood development, evolutionary psychology, and even sociology. None of it was produced by philosophy departments. A quick look at our authors’ references makes clear that most of their reading is devoted to the work of other contemporary academic philosophers. Most of this seems to consist of armchair speculation as to what a perfectly fair world of universal love would look like. The work under review is, therefore, likely to reinforce the very worst prejudices against the authors’ own discipline. Political and moral philosophy would find a firmer basis in the careful study of human nature.

Ben Franklin

was a pretty upbeat guy. But his words at the Constitutional convention resonate with the story of his reply to the woman.

In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, — if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people, if well administered; and I believe, farther, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.

Speech to the Constitutional Convention (1787-06-28)

My own private enantiodromia

Working with progressive dykes and socialist homos, etc. back in the AIDS days, I was subjected to the unholy trinity of race-sex-class analysis of everything. I used to think that it was very lopsided because it reduced individuals to their group.

Although I still make at least notional space for individuals and subgroups, I have to say that the lefty lesboz have finally succeeded with at least a part of my mind, which now sees in terms of groups, and the ideologies of race-sex-class.

Thanks, ladies.

Except that, of course, despite my homo-eros, true to my pathological male and middle-class and melanin-deprived condition, I have become a partisan of patriarchy, white dominance and wealth-creators. I am now your conscious enemy.

Unintended outcome, I'm sure.

IV July MMXII

Mixed feelings today about this day.

Reminding myself of the biases of my age and character and hoping that my gloomier assessments are wrong.

Thinking of that old story of the woman who met Ben Franklin outside the State House in Philadelphia after they had cobbled together a Constitution, more than a decade after the Declaration of Independence.

So, Mr Franklin, what kind of government have you given us?

A republic, madam, if you can keep it.

This stuff still makes my hair stand on end and brings tears to my eyes.





______________

Swinging

Privilege. A bad thing, of course. We all know that, don't we? It's unfair. It means that individuals get to benefit from membership in a group when they, as individuals, have not earned these benefits. White privilege and male privilege are burned over territory in that regard.

Thanks to jpnill, I have now discovered the evils of Christian privilege. And that particular moral horror is explained to us by one Dr. Lewis Z. Schlosser. His profile at Roman Catholic Seton Hall University tell us that he does work in dismantling it.

Breathe, Ex Cathedra. Breathe.

Dr. Schlosser is a Jew. Being paid by a Catholic school to dismantle Christian privilege.

I don't know who to want to hang first, him or the ball-less administrators who support his efforts at bringing them down.

Another exhibit in the Whites As The Most Foolish People On Earth trend.

Could I support a fund drive to set up a program for dismantling Jewish privilege at the University of Tel-Aviv?

Does this provoke my Chomsky-Zinn reaction?

Ex Cathedra is a fan of privilege. It's an unavoidable and essential part of any healthy society and culture. Individuals benefit from their membership in a group which, as a group, has secured these privileges*. And privilege, if dismantled for any group, does not disappear. It migrates to another group.
I am not going to write more because, after starting out contemplating a group hanging, my mind and mood are not improving and this post would only get worse.


*Think of it as reverse reparations. A lot of Blacks who have never experienced slavery think that they are owed monetary and other kinds of reparations for their membership in a group which, as a group, has this complaint.

Meaning is use

Unfortunately, sometimes.

Tolerance used to mean putting up with something you'd rather not put up with, sufferance, forebearance.

The primary meaning in dictionaries nowadays is more akin to what used to be called acceptance and even embrace:

1. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one's own; freedom from bigotry.

2. a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward opinions and practices that differ from one's own.

3. interest in and concern for ideas, opinions, practices, etc., foreign to one's own; a liberal, undogmatic viewpoint.

Uberliberal supergay Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson prayed thusly, in the space between the old and new meanings, before the Obama inauguration:

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

I am still thinking of the Orwellian atmosphere of my gay YouTube visit yesterday, where refusal to embrace and celebrate gaydom, where polite disagreement about it or admission of discomfort about it, was framed as poisonous evil that must be unmasked and punished.

Just the same attitude that these folks would project onto the Inquisition, they themselves embody, with exactly the same sense of unfettered entitlement.

Every victim is a tyrant in training.

PS. My problems with Christian morality --as opposed to Christian dogma-- are well known. All this endless forgiving is one of them. But here, if you change the language, it might mean being conscious enough and distanced enough from your own resentment to try to avoid becoming an exact replica of what you supposedly cannot stand, all the while denying what you are doing.

I made the mistake

of wandering through gay YouTube land.

The video title btw is his, not mine.

Now my stomach feels queasy.

My impressions: airlessly claustrophobic, same old same old same old, queens for days, and add to that an invincible sense of victimist privilege.

They work themselves into a froth of righteousness; any withholding of approval, approbation or agreement is condemned as "bigotry, ignorance and hate" and held to be indefensible and intolerable.

And the more civilly expressed, the more demonic is the difference considered to be. Gone underground. Hatred masked as "tolerance."

When I joked that in my post-American thought experiment, the LGBTQ city-state would turn out to be "Stalinism with wheelchair access", I was right.

Where's my Maalox?

Geometry

was the only form of higher mathematics I ever enjoyed.

Enantiodromia again

Anti-racism. Sounds very ethical. High-minded. Not just "not-racist" but "anti-racist." Moral passion. Ultrasensitivity. The less evidence for racism there is, the more does the anti-racist find it. Malleus racistificarum.

White supremacy. The embodiment of evil. Same as Nazi. Unthinkable. Beyond the pale...as it were.

Thing is, when anti-racism is the value, the outcome of any racial conflict is already decided...just as with White supremacy. When anti-racism is the stance, the peeps of color can never be negatively judged, not really. In the end, the White side must be in the wrong.

So if White supremacist implies racism against non-Whites, how can anti-racist not imply racism against Whites?

Take the latest info from the Detroit schools, which are 98% Black. Educational disaster. Only 6% passed the math exam, 3% science. 1.8% are college ready. A cause for "concern". But if we are to avoid racism, we cannot think that the disaster has anything to do with the demographic.

State officials are concerned that the results show the gap between white and minority students either remaining flat or widening – at a time when they’re pushing to see those gaps close. 

“We have shameful* gaps in achievement for various student populations not only in test scores, but also in graduation, college access and success, and student suspensions and expulsions,” State Superintendent Mike Flanagan said. “We cannot simply accept these as how things are. We need to end this disparity in education and we need to do this together as a state.” 

The widening of the gaps mean Michigan must maintain its rigorous high school standards and invest more in helping teachers improve their practice through a stronger statewide teacher evaluation system...

It has to be lack of money, or some kind of pedagogical flaw, or not trying hard enough or some kind of legacy of racism...We...society, or America, or leukophores...must be responsible. Like the 90% Black city itself, which has become the Mogadishu of North America. It cannot be about the people who live there. We must have failed. It can't be them. It has to be us.

Doesn't it?


PS. Interesting word choice. Shameful. Who is supposed to be ashamed? What's your guess? 

[Nei] Negli occhi tuoi

One of the great songs of the 80s.

"In Your Eyes"

love I get so lost, sometimes

days pass and this emptiness fills my heart

when I want to run away

I drive off in my car

but whichever way I go

I come back to the place you are

all my instincts, they return

and the grand facade, so soon will burn

without a noise, without my pride

I reach out from the inside

in your eyes

the light the heat

in your eyes

I am complete

in your eyes

I see the doorway to a thousand churches

in your eyes

the resolution of all the fruitless searches

in your eyes

I see the light and the heat

in your eyes

oh, I want to be that complete

I want to touch the light

the heat I see in your eyes

love, I don't like to see so much pain

so much wasted and this moment keeps slipping away

I get so tired of working so hard for our survival

I look to the time with you to keep me awake and alive

and all my instincts, they return

and the grand facade, so soon will burn

without a noise, without my pride

I reach out from the inside

in your eyes

the light the heat

in your eyes

I am complete

in your eyes

I see the doorway to a thousand churches

in your eyes

the resolution of all the fruitless searches

in your eyes

I see the light and the heat

in your eyes

oh, I want to be that complete

I want to touch the light,

the heat I see in your eyes

in your eyes in your eyes

in your eyes in your eyes

in your eyes in your eyes