Saturday 16 October 2010

Why do Western elites disbelieve in culture (as well as genetics)?

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Who could ever have imagined that any society, such as the modern West, would deny that genetics makes a significant difference to human society, and also deny that culture makes a significant difference to human society.

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It is - surely? - very obvious that people from different nations or societies behave differently. And that such differences are enduring, multi-generational - are, for example, carried with migrant populations and reproduced all round the world.

That is not a matter for debate, that is what needs to be explained. 

The most obvious explanation (a matter of common observation throughout history) is that many differences in personality and intelligence are inherited from parents and run in families; they are present from early life and stable through many changes; and rationally we would now regard these differences as substantially genetic.

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Of course this obvious and common sensical interpretation is flatly denied by the politically correct elites, and indeed regarded as extremely dangerous.

But that still leaves the phenomena to be explained - the default explanation being culture. 

A serious cultural explanation would be along the lines of that argued-for by Thomas Sowell - that culture is much stronger than realized, much harder to influence or change, and endures through many generations even when populations migrate or are displaced halfway round the world.

So (Sowell argues) Chinese adopt middle-man economic positions in all the places where they have migrated, Germans are good at crafts wherever they have migrated etc.

Sowell, rejecting genetic explanations (wrongly in my opinion) does take the observations seriously, does not dispute the basic phenomena that need explaining - but argues that the reason must be that culture runs deep and is tough.

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For all the PC talk of cultural influences, for all the assumptions that everything which is taken as evidence for the substantially genetic, inherited nature of intelligence and personality can be better explained by culture; it is clear that the politically correct elites do not really believe in culture as the really powerful force it would need to be to explain the magnitude of cultural differences, and their stubborness to displacement, and resistance to policies designed to eradicate them.

Western elites indeed assume the opposite - they assume (in the teeth of massive contrary evidence) that all cultures will inevitably 'get along', and that unwanted cultural aspects like violence, corruption, cruelty will simply be melted-away by...

...well, melted-away by politically correct public discourse, by the policies of kind bureaucrats.

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This is a pure, unadulterated form of wishful thinking; a political version of the kind of naive personal recklessness that would invite a known serial murderer to share in a quiet, private meal.

It is a refusal to generalize or predict; a denial of relevance of the past for the future, a denial that knowledge of the group allows any probabilistic inferences of the individual.

It is - in short - the behaviour of a solipsistic social incompetent.

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However, although naive, political correctness is not innocent, because innocence is humble.

PC by contrast is vastly arrogant and prideful - indeed it is motivated by pride that is not merely unrestrained, but by the moral inversion whereby bad becomes good, pride becomes a virtue instead of the worst of vices.

It is the pride that everybody has always gotten things wrong about everything important until *now* (or very recently) when the PC elite saw through the errors of the world.

Why was everyone in the past so wrong, and why are most people still wrong about the fundamentals of human existence? - well, because they were and are wicked. Why are people wicked? - well, because they were predisposed to wickedness by wicked public discourse (not by genetics, and not by culture).

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Political correctness therefore rejects *both* genetic and cultural explanations for national and ethnic difference, and denies the power of national and ethnic differences - but not by direct denial rather by restructuring evidence, evaluation and knowledge such that national and ethnic differences are trivialized. 

To PC, unwanted (conflictual, aggressive) national and ethnic differences are merely like bad manners, something learned that is readily correctable by enlightened public discourse.

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At a psychological level political correctness is implicitly a wholesale rejection of the past, indeed a wholesale rejection of human knowledge and experience as it applies to human interactions. This is why I regard PC as insane, literally.

Yet PC is not a benign form of insanity; it is manic, aggressive, irritable, impatient; its delusions are grandiose, self-glorifying. PC wants to monopolize discourse; wants power and glory, wants to be listened to: wants everyone else to shut-up and be forced to listen.

And PC believes that if only it got what it wanted, then national and ethnic differences would (like bad manners) simply melt-away.

In the mean time, PC behaves as if national and ethnic differences were utterly trivial, just an amusing bit of 'vibrant' colour; and it feels free to ignore their obvious power.

And protects this ignorance, by force if necessary.

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No, PC is not really nice.

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