Motus Mentis

4 Comments

1. Whitewall says

   Excellent discussion Malcolm among you, BV and Joe O. As a result here lately I feel like a lucky college student, way back in my day, who gets to audit-as we used to call it- a course in political philosophy for free. If only my aged mind wasn’t so tired all the time.

   Posted August 21, 2023 at 10:50 am | Permalink
2. Malcolm says

   Thanks, Robert!

   Posted August 21, 2023 at 2:09 pm | Permalink
3. Locust Post says

   Lyon’s essay was worth reading and it is a graduate level course in political and power mechanics. No doubt much of it is true. I doubt the nasty people behind these anti human schemes will accomplish what the are seeking for a few reasons. One big one is the enormous amount of high end skills required to maintain such a system. To my eyeballs talent of this sort is being depleted in America through an ethnic spoils system (diversity, equal outcomes and affirmative action) that rewards something other than intelligence merit. The best people aren’t being selected to run things and this problem is compounded by very low fertility of smart people if you believe that intelligence is partially determined by genetics. Lots of very high IQs are needed to run this system and the various competing groups don’t like each other and this also undermines. In my opinion America is more likely headed for a fracture of some form. I used to think the movie Idiocracy was a comedy now I think it is a documentary.

   Posted August 22, 2023 at 5:49 pm | Permalink
4. Malcolm says

   LP,

   … The best people aren’t being selected to run things and this problem is compounded by very low fertility of smart people…

   Quite so. Here’s an excerpt from a response I gave to a commenter here, twelve years ago:

   The dwindling birthrate among educated and productive people in all modern societies is simply a fact — inherent, it seems, in human nature itself. And when the government first assumed responsibility for the suffering of the sick and elderly, there were still enough young and prospectively successful people in the pipeline to shoulder the burden. But if the qualities that engender success — in particular, intelligence and conscientiousness — are highly heritable (and it is very clear now that they are), then a dwindling birthrate among those who have them will thin their ranks in each generation. This process is accelerated in societies that, like ours, have high levels of social mobility, because those from the lower, more fecund economic ranks who have the innate qualities needed to do well move up and away, taking their genes with them, and thereby further impoverishing the human stock of the underclass they have risen out of. Once they arrive in any of the upper strata, they can generally be counted on to have few children of their own.

   In a high civilization, the sheer volume of knowledge and culture that must be carried forward by each succeeding generation always increases. Given that all societies depend for their prosperity upon their most productive members, and given that being productive in an advancing society requires an ever-greater capacity in each generation for lifting and carrying forward what has been passed to it from its parents, such a civilization becomes more top-heavy over time, as the ranks of those innately capable of such an effort dwindles in each generation. It is like a tree whose crown expands, and becomes heavier with fruit, even as its roots contract. In the aging West, the tree’s roots have become so weak, and the soil so eroded, that a stiff gust of wind, such as the recent economic crisis, will soon be enough to topple it altogether.

   See also here.

   Posted August 23, 2023 at 5:06 pm | Permalink