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With yet another IQ-related heresy hunt in the news, I am linking to a couple of earlier posts which arose from my own experience of a mini-IQ-related heresy hunt almost exactly 5 years ago as a result of this:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2008/05/social-class-iq-differences-and.html
which I later reflected upon here:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/social-class-and-iq-some-facts-and.html
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What the experience caused me to realize was that the Left CANNOT be honest about group differences in hereditary IQ, because almost the whole Leftist project since the mid-1960s has been based on lies; and especially the lie of the equality of all groups in terms of ability and attributes - since, with this lie in place, all inequalities of outcome can be blamed on prejudice and evil repression.
This is the lie which justifies almost everything about the Left and what the Left does.
So the Left can not give up the IQ lie without losing everything.
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(I mean 'everything' in worldly terms. Things look different from a Christian perspective.)
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I've explained this a bit more in the Thought Prison book -
http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk
and also here:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/primary-delusional-nature-of-pc-holding.html
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/what-about-christian-socialism-does-it.html
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An even deeper lie than that is the notion that equality can be a value in the first place, so that we'd want people to be equal.
ReplyDelete(There is no centralized Leftist catechism, but if there was, "a commitment to equality" would be on it; everyone is in fact catechized into affirming it in public.)
Obviously, when we compare two people, or two groups, they will not be identical. We will see that one has some advantages the other does not and likewise the other has some other advantages the one does not. Applying a "critical eye" never tells us that the advantages balance each other out perfectly; we would always find a reason, however slight, to prefer the situation of one over the situation of the other.
Thus any relation whatsoever between two people can be portrayed as unequal; and thus we have a perpetual motion machine for generating grievances.
(It doesn't matter that different people prefer different things; as long as we can get all of them angry about some kind of inequality. Indeed, making different people angry about diametrically opposed things is a perfect recipe for conflict.)
(There is no way to solve Rawls' Veil of Ignorance conundrum without inventing some reality whose laws are completely unrelated to the one we live in.)
That said, not all unequal relations are the same. Some are nevertheless worthwhile for everyone involved, some are intolerable. But hardly anyone talks about the problem in these terms, do they?
FROM THURSDAY - "Yes, this would be a huge step down for left liberals.
ReplyDelete"However, I'm not sure that a reversal on this will help traditionalists all that much. People would still have broadly liberal moral intuitions, so the principal beneficiaries would probably be the libertarians(...)"
Conservatives don't have their commitment to fraternal solidarity with their fellow man or the idea of equality before the law threatened by IQ studies, because conservatives have a religious basis for their commitment to these. Leftists don't. So Richwine must be shouted down as a threat to law and society.
ReplyDeleteFurther, leftists are more likely to feel that 'smart' people should run things and that running things should entail a lot of paternalism and finicky bossiness to the less intelligent. So they instinctively feel that someone like Richwine is making a claim that whites should rule blacks. He reminds them way too much of their suppressed ties to the Late Imperial progressives of the last age of colonization.
"A perpetual motion machine for generating grievances" is a great turn of phrase, especially in this context. I'm gonna steal it.
ReplyDelete