Here is a brilliant piece by Scott Alexander on what we mean by ‘racism’. It’s long, but you should read it all.
It also includes this gem, right at the end:
I don’t want civil war. I want this country to survive long enough to be killed by something awesome, like AI or some kind of genetically engineered superplague. Right now I think going out in a neat way, being killed by a product of our own genius and intellectual progress ”“ rather than a product of our pettiness and mutual hatreds ”“ is the best we can hope for. And I think this is attainable! I think that we, as a nation and as a species, can make it happen.
I think he’s too optimistic, of course. But don’t let that stop you from reading this really excellent work of cultural analysis.
3 Comments
“Liberalism is a technology for preventing civil war. It was forged in the fires of Hell — the horrors of the endless seventeenth century religious wars.”
It was a system that was forged for Europeans, but Europeans, whose success was predicated on the biological proximity of Europeans to one another. The further one strays from the European cohort, the more alien and incompatible it becomes.
Rarely can I take issue with Scott’s train of thought, but he suffers the same failing of the common lefty in his premises. Social values don’t appear out of thin air. Human Biodiversity is well established. Liberalism can’t maintain itself while most liberals hold on to the delusional belief that blank slates can be filled with a symphony of universal affectations.
Reform is needed. Not through a rejection of criticizing those who defy normative social behavior, but by bringing socially normative behavior in line with biological reality. It’s simply not enough that liberals stop braying “Racist!” at the top of their lungs. They have to become “racists,” of a sort themselves.
Incidentally, whether or not that actually happens is immaterial. Liberals have very low reproductive rates. The future belongs to those who show up.
Issac,
I agree with this.
Alexander’s piece, though, is about the word ‘racism’ itself, and focuses on usage, meaning, shallowness, tokenism, and signaling. It is not really about the HBD debate itself, but seeks only to clarify what we are doing when we wield this socially encumbered word.
Malcolm,
Apologies for the typo there. It should have been: “…for Europeans, by Europeans…” how embarrassing.
I do see what you’ve pointed out. I did make a point to commend Scott’s line of deduction. He certainly makes a prescient point of analyzing how the mission-creep of anti-racism has foisted no end of problems on the left. What I think he’s attempting to head-off is further purity spiraling and that seems to be something that the more elite left has fully lost control over with the sheer scale of academic “studies,” of social phenomena.
That being said, I stick by the intended point of my critique. There is, without a doubt, no way to extract the left from this errand of philosophical tail-spin when one considers the nature of their premises. By virtue of the closed comment section, I glean that a goodly sum of his readers would naturally balk at the fact he took on this topic, to say nothing of the fact he cast a white separatist opinion as anything but oozing with condemnation.
In any event, I appreciate your linking to SSC as it’s been a good long time since I had the fortitude to wade through the morass to find his occasional gems of critical-reflection. One can only hope that the continued run of failures on the part of the political left will further fuel his fire.