Civilization Takedown: E. O. Wilson’s Moral Failure of Eusociality

Posted by James Bowery on Friday, 20 April 2012 20:54.

E. O. Wilson’s much anticipated new book, “The Social Conquest of Earth”, focuses on the human dimension of his highly controversial 2010 paper “The Evolution of Eusociality” which begins with the sentence:

Eusociality, in which some individuals reduce their own lifetime reproductive potential to raise the offspring of others,
underlies the most advanced forms of social organization and the ecologically dominant role of social insects and humans.

Since E. O. Wilson has recently stated that preserving Earth’s biodiversity against human encroachment is his “religion”, the juxtaposition of the first sentence of his paper on human eusociality’s “ecological dominance”, with his claimed “religion” of protecting biodiversity from that same “ecological dominance”, indicates that his new book on human eusociality would be an epic clash of thesis and antithesis. One would have every reason to expect an equally epic synthesis and consilience as a fitting magnum opus to E. O. Wilson’s illustrious career.

I had particular reason to be interested in his book, since I am convinced that eusociality is not an essential, nor even desirable aspect of the human condition, and share Wilson’s strong “biophilia”. This commitment is the product of a lifelong character development, as the study of eusociality and biodiversity has been to E. O. Wilson. This development is worth recounting, as it bears directly on the exceptionally relevant context I bring to my reading of “The Social Conquest of Earth”:

Growing out of my youthful membership in Zero Population Growth in 1969, I wrote the world’s first massively multiplayer virtual world game—which is significant here only because it was also the first attempt to simulate application of nonterrestrial resources to terrestrial limits to growth. A little over a decade later, as a member of the San Diego Sierra Club, I hosted annual conferences in the Laguna Mountains lodge on the topic, “What Good Are Humans?” and, as a result, was quoted by OMNI magazine as an advocate of space development because of my unusual commitment to protecting terrestrial biodiversity. During this period a book titled “Bringing Life to the Stars” by cognitive psychologist David Duemler was dedicated to me despite the fact that, as described in that book, I differed with his promotion of utilitarianism over biodiversity. Following on that, I embarked on a series of public policy initiatives with the aim of expanding the resources available to civilization. This included leading a grassroots coalition to pass legislation at the Federal level requiring NASA to procure launch services from the private sector. This, in turn led to the sincerest flattery by a rival space activist who is about to announce the first asteroid mining company backed by prominent adventure capitalists.

One might expect, given my background, that my primary interest would be in Wilson’s expansion of his often-stated objection to space development as a supposed panacea for protection of biodiversity from the encroachment by human eusociality.

That is not the case.

My primary interest was in how, given his “religious” commitment to protect biodiversity, Wilson could reconcile limiting humanity to the biosphere with his own prominent statement about human eusociality’s ecological dominance of other species. There is absolutely no evidence that the presence of human eusociality in the biosphere is compatible with biodiversity. Indeed, all indications point the opposite direction as we are in the midst of one of the largest extinction events in the geologic record and it is directly caused by human eusociality. With this in mind, my own struggle has been with the practicalities of excluding technological civilization from the biosphere—most probably as part of the transition to a heliocentric resource base. These practicalities are formidable since any residual human presence on Earth would present a clear and present danger that, simply by force of habit, a resurgent biospheric civilization would again threaten biodiversity.

How would E. O. Wilson, this towering genius of eusociality and leading light for biodivesity preservation address the practicalities of excluding technological civilization from the biosphere—given his opinion that a transition to a heliocentric resource base is not possible?

I received “The Social Conquest of Earth” in the mail and turned immediately to the table of contents.

Nothing.

I turned to the index.

No entry for “biodiversity”, “extinction” nor anything of the sort.

I paged through the chapters scanning for anything that might indicate a great mind was taking on the profound practical difficulties of reconciling human eusociality with biodiversity preservation.

Here, from chapter “A New Enlightenment”—the last chapter of the book—is the totality of what E. O. Wilson has to say about his “religion” and its fundamental conflict with the subject of the book in conclusion:

Also evident upon even casual inspection is the rapid disappearance of tropical forests and grasslands and other habitats where most of the diversity of life exists. If global changes caused by HIPPO (Habitat destruction, Invasive species, Pollution, Overpopulation, and Overharvesting, in that order of importance) are not abated, half the species of plants and animals could be extinct or at least among the “living dead”—about to become extinct—by the end of the century. We are needlessly turning the gold we inherited from our forebears into straw, and for that we will be despised by our descendants.

The obliteration of biodiversity in the living world has received much less attention than climate changes, depletion of irreplaceable resources, and other transformations of the physical environment. It would be wise to observe the following principle: if we save the living world, we will also automatically save the physical world, because in order to achieve the first we must also achieve the second. But if we save only the physical world, which appears our present inclination, we will ultimately lose them both. Until recently there existed many kinds of birds we will never again see fly. Gone are frogs we will never again hear calling on warm rainy nights. Gone are fish flashing silver in our impoverished lakes and streams.

This content-free gesture of moralizing rhetoric is what E. O. Wilson provides us on what should have been the central topic of his magnum opus.

Clearly, E. O. Wilson has another “religion” than the one he touts. This sort of abject neurological failure might be chalked up to age-related cognitive decline if it weren’t for the fact that it is clear that, in other areas of the book where he elaborately argues that eusociality is the epitome of virtue, he is far from brain-dead. His religion is Civilization, not biodiversity, and the elaborate presentation of his case for human eusociality’s virtue paints a rosey picture of human mass organisms, the antedote for which may be the mirror image bias of the viscerally revolting (consider yourself warned) horror movie “The Human Centipede”.

Civilization über alles.

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Comments:

Posted by uh on Fri, 20 Apr 2012 23:06 | #

my own struggle has been with the practicalities of excluding technological civilization from the biosphere

Dis make Silver vewy :(

Also evident upon even casual inspection is the rapid disappearance of tropical forests and grasslands and other habitats where most of the diversity of life exists.

Make way for the Food Courts!!!!! lzozlzlzlzlz

Civilization über alles.

In five years you’ll be touting the virtues of flint spearheads, James.

Posted by Graham_Lister on Sat, 21 Apr 2012 02:11 | #

...my own struggle has been with the practicalities of excluding technological civilization from the biosphere

Can I ask what the boundaries of technological civilization are? The Gutenberg-style printing press was once revolutionary technology - in or out? I’d rather like to save the best of European civilization and high culture - included in that many great books etc., and the technologies that facilitated their widespread production.

I’m really not with down with the whole uber antediluvian ‘extreme survivalist’ thing - with or without added one on one chats with Jesus.

Posted by James Bowery on Sat, 21 Apr 2012 10:38 | #

Graham lister asks: “what the boundaries of technological civilization are?”

Actually, “technological civilization” is redundant since civilization is dependent on technology.

So the answer to your question is: Technological civilization ends where human eusociality ends.

Human eusociality ends where the only technologies in use are those that an individual can apply to natural resources available to him via those technologies—including the fabrication of tools and weapons he uses.

From this perspective, the function of Natural Duel is to prevent the formation of any groups within which specialization becomes an established biological dependency for individual survival (as opposed to reproduction which is given a dependency on sex)..

Posted by Graham_Lister on Sat, 21 Apr 2012 12:12 | #

@James Bowery

OK thanks for that answer I think it get what you are driving at. I disagree on many levels - both on practical grounds and political grounds for the cogency (or not) of your vision and analysis so let’s leave it there.

Of course in my thoughts on the birth of the ‘New Man’ under liberalism - particularly the possible impact of the technologies of medical science/gene therapy etc., might be a very mixed blessing.

Freed from physical labours, protected from ancient maladies, enhanced by novel additives, extended to longer durations, the reinvented body detaches itself from traditional obligations and constraints, as a machine for individual pleasure that is an end to itself. With this change, marriage as once understood “an institution that had nothing to do with desire, pleasure, the couple, and everything to do with the child, the prolongation of the line and its patrimony” makes little sense. If, as experts point out, sexually speaking:

the number of performances is closely tied to the number of partners, is not conjugal commitment contrary to our moral duty of well-being? It would seem the French have got the message. In urban society, more than one marriage in two ends in divorce or separation…the average Frenchman is more faithful to his bank than his wife - he puts up with it longer, an average of sixteen years for love, and twenty-two for money.

As for children, the lengthening of the life of one generation reduces its interest in producing another.

An important part of the biological capital of each individual is spent when it reproduces itself. In the current choice not to reproduce, or do so only seldom, or parsimoniously, may be seen a preference for the prolongation of life. At the limit, a generation that lived forever would have no need to reproduce itself at all.

The consequences of this thinning of the threads binding one generation to the next are likely to be drastic for those born into the new order. They arrive, separated not only from parents more and more absorbed in themselves, but from any of the forms of culture or relations with nature that once gave continuity of experience between the generations. Instead, they increasingly inhabit a virtual universe of digitalization, erasing the boundaries between the real and the simulacrum.

Furthermore

...only the narrative of the body, of its satisfactions and pleasures, and the search for new modes of sensibility, experience and emotion, still hold our attention. Me, myself and I in an ever expanding hedonistic calculus.

What is the upshot? Juvin’s central message is a sinister paradox: what communism set out to do, and disastrously failed to achieve, free-markets and liberalism is in the process of realizing. The wildest of all the utopian dreams of revolutions gone by is now taking shape, unseen, before our eyes.

The project abandoned by a defunct political ideology, the transformation of the human condition, has become the object of the unexpected couple of science and the market.

For the discredited messianic conception of an anthropological transfiguration of humanity is at length coming to pass.

The economy of free enterprise has succeeded in delivering, and more, what the various socialisms promised and what they pursued with all the means at the disposal of a virtually unlimited power, in China as in the USSR: it has given birth to the New Man.

Hence, if true, we have a terrible set of prospects

Neo-liberalism is indispensable, yet insupportable. The book is a contribution to a literature with a future: bitter-sweet reflections - distinctly more bitter than sweet - on the surprises of the complete victory of the Western liberal tradition over all of its historic rivals.

The German poet and polymath Goethe saw clearly the potential dark side of the Enlightenment. Freed from constraint, tradition, and communal boundaries, modern man faced instead existential despair and self-destruction. Men use reason, Mephistopheles tells God in the prologue to Goethe’s great drama Faust, to be beastlier than any beast. Unconstrained and unbounded liberal rationality is not enough to ground life, unless we wish only to be Voltaire’s bastards; unlovable and unloved, solipsistic and narcissistic.

Now getting to the crux of the matter I think your version of ‘sovereign individualism’ is simply another manifestation of liberal ontology which fails to even be interestingly wrong and therefore is not of any interest. (Our very origins in evolutionary terms was in small hunter-gather groups with somewhat different roles for different individuals.) Of course some people will disagree with my take on your ideas etc. The problems of technology, culture, society under super-modernity and hyper-liberalism run very deep indeed - E.O. Wilson wouldn’t even know where to begin in understanding them frankly.

Posted by Leon Haller on Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:07 | #

I have no clue as to the meaning of Bowery’s penultimate sentence (or most of the review, for that matter - though the creation of SPASIM sounds like an impressive achievement).

But I can’t believe I’ve never even heard of The Human Centipede. How many fiction films get made in the Western world per year? Anyone?

And an anatomical question. Can someone be kept alive eating shit (esp someone else’s)? The trailer did not suggest an impressive concept. Sew someone’s face to an asshole - how does that create a single digestive system?

There was actually the germ of a VERY disturbing, very scary movie in this. But I think I would find this one more funny than frightening.

Posted by Leon Haller on Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:21 | #

@Lister

Can you summarize Bowery’s argument for me in the OP? I didn’t read it as I do Aquinas, but I’d still like to grasp the basic thesis (without having to put too much work into it).

Posted by Robert in Arabia on Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:51 | #

A BBC investigation in Britain several years ago revealed that at least 55% of the Pakistani community in Britain was married to a first cousin. The Times of India affirmed that “this is thought to be linked to the probability that a British Pakistani family is at least 13 times more likely than the general population to have children with recessive genetic disorders.” The BBC’s research also discovered that while British Pakistanis accounted for just 3.4% of all births in Britain, they accounted for 30% of all British children with recessive disorders and a higher rate of infant mortality. It is not a surprise, therefore, that, in response to this evidence, a Labour Party MP has called for a ban on first-cousin marriage.

It is estimated that one third of all handicapped people in Copenhagen have a foreign background. Sixty four percent of school children in Denmark with Arabic parents are illiterate after 10 years in the Danish school system. The same study concludes that in reading ability, mathematics, and science, the pattern is the same: “The bilingual (largely Muslim) immigrants’ skills are exceedingly poor compared to their Danish classmates.” These problems within Islam bring many detriments to Western countries. Expenses related to mentally and physically handicapped Muslim immigrants, for instance, severely drain the budgets and resources of our societies. Look at Denmark, for example: one third of the budget for the country’s schools is spent on children with special needs. Muslim children are grossly overrepresented among these children. More than half of all children in schools for children with mental and physical handicaps in Copenhagen are foreigners — of whom Muslims are by far the largest group. One study concludes that “foreigners inbreeding costs our municipalities millions” because of the many handicapped children and adults.
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2012/04/more-handicapable-more-better.html#comment-form
SarahsDaughter April 21, 2012 9:19 AM 1st cousin marriage with handicable children would mean more jobs and the latest ways school districts make money in this country. An IEP child, in this town at least, can choose which school he wants to go to (no school choice for the sound minds), gets bused to that school, and if the child is mainstreamed, gets a full time aid (one aid to one child) that attends class with him. If not mainstreamed because of severe mental issues, they get a special room, a ratio of 4 students to 1 teacher with her masters (and 2 aids).

Posted by Leon Haller on Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:56 | #

@Lister

Another point I’ve been meaning to ask about.

How useful or accurate do you find the WN propensity towards trying to ‘biologize’ political problems? Obviously, man is an evolved creature, and so we are not simply instinctless ‘blank slates’, as Marx seems to have fantasized.

But I can’t help being skeptical when non-scientists (I’m not specifically referring to Bowery here, btw) routinely throw around technical terms from the life sciences as though they were immediately applicable to human affairs. It seems like it’s one thing to use evolutionary theory to establish a GENERAL PRINCIPLE that man is not infinitely malleable in his ability to adapt to different modes of social organization, but quite another to try to draw direct lessons about human systems from the conduct of bees, ants, chimps, etc.

And none of this changes my general belief that the most important discipline for WNs is not biology (or any social science) but ethics.

Posted by Graham_Lister on Sat, 21 Apr 2012 17:16 | #

@Leon

I agree - inclusive-fitness theory is a heuristic guide to human actions in general (under certain important background conditions) not some iron law of genes - the problems of political life are not going to be solved by an equation with a relatedness coefficient in it. There is not some ‘killer’ scientific fact that trumps all other considerations.

Reality is heterogeneous - differentiated, stratified, hierarchical - life is very much more complex than the ‘physics plus stamp collecting’ view - or in this context ‘kin selection plus stamp collecting’ idea - I actually sent to GW (a while ago) a basic review of inclusive-fitness theory (kin selection fact and fiction as it were) from a peer-reviewed journal. The only reason was to show that under the right ecological circumstances the direct fitness benefits of winning a competition for resources totally trumps the indirect fitness benefits of kin selection - it is well know that fatal sibling rivalry is observed in many taxa - birds and insects in particular.

This is not an evolutionary aberration but is absolutely predicted by Hamilton’s equations. The effects of relatedness very much operate in a wider context of a cost/benefit analysis and the cost/benefit analysis can completely nullify the indirect fitness derived from ‘helping’ relatives when compared to maximising an individuals direct fitness. Relatedness is only one factor in the evolutionary cost/benefit analysis. The precise details of the ecology, environmental conditions (the scale and intensity of competition) etc., do also matter.

So yes I find crude attempts to read politics, culture, philosophy etc., from what often seems to be a superficial understanding of biology to be very unfortunate. And most scientists are extremely narrow specialists and it shows - for example Wilson’s “Consilience” would be an embarrassing effort at the height of logical positivism let alone today. He understands, more or less, his specialist area of science but his knowledge of science as a system, in toto, and the philosophy of science (as such) is appalling.

Posted by Praxis on Sat, 21 Apr 2012 17:52 | #

His religion is Civilization, not biodiversity, and the elaborate presentation of his case for human eusociality’s virtue paints a rosey picture of human mass organisms, the antedote for which may be the mirror image bias of the viscerally revolting (consider yourself warned) horror movie “The Human Centipede”. - Bowery

Incentive abetted by uncertainty toward the future is necessary to minimize the defection of those inherently selfish, but cooperating segments (or components) within “The Human Centipede.” This must happen before the “point of no return” is achieved in the development of the eusocial human superorganism.

Posted by Leon Haller on Sat, 21 Apr 2012 21:23 | #

Dr. Lister,

Thank you. I wouldn’t mind your providing a link to the “basic review of inclusive-fitness theory” you refer to above.

Posted by Tim on Sat, 21 Apr 2012 23:26 | #

What is Wilson’s argument against space development? Why would space development be bad for biodiversity on Earth? Is it because Wilson thinks that space development will be used to fuel civilization on Earth? Wouldn’t space development be good for biodiversity if it means space settlement and large scale human populations and most importantly, population growth, being placed in outer space?

Is that new asteroid mining company aimed at fueling development on Earth (e.g. “add trillions of dollars to the global GDP”)? Is that why it’s problematic? Even if it is, it might not be that bad ultimately if it leads to development of technologies to enable human settlement of space.

Posted by Lurker on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 01:06 | #

A BBC investigation in Britain several years ago revealed that at least 55% of the Pakistani community in Britain was married to a first cousin. - Robert in Arabia

And yet we are regularly informed that we are equally related to each other, race is a social construct etc etc. Such a contradiction is clearly subjective, my weak powers of reasoning and all that.

Posted by Leon Haller on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 01:33 | #

Praxis,

Well, your ‘translation’ is clearer than Bowery’s original.

Tim,

Humans are not going to settle space for many centuries, if ever. The technology is not remotely there. Space colonies at present need huge resource inputs from Earth. The West needs a space presence for military purposes, to keep ahead of our Asiatic world competitors. Space investment is therefore a valid use of public monies. I’m not sure what E.O. Wilson’s point is re space, but it might be precisely my observation that space exploration is so Earth-resource intensive that the ensuing ‘carbon-footprint’ or other ecologically deleterious ramifications arising from such ‘heavy-tech’ activities would not be worth the cost in biodiversity impacts. He’s speaking as a naturalist, of course, so perhaps his opinion is unsurprising.

Posted by Tim on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 02:40 | #

Leon,

That’s not true. Space settlement could have started decades ago. There was a physicist named Gerard O’Neill who wrote a book called The High Frontier and some other books and papers back in the 70s how it could be done back then, using old technology from back then. He ran the numbers and everything. You don’t need huge resource inputs from Earth because most of the stuff you can get from space like solar energy, the moon, and asteroids. It’s also easier to build in space because there’s no gravity.

Here’s an interview with O’Neill talking about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfkEV5Sq0pk

And there are space companies around today making progress to show us that the idea it would have to take centuries is just plain wrong.

Posted by Leon Haller on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 04:39 | #

Tim,

I’m not a scientist, so maybe others can weigh in. I only know what I read in the popular press wrt issues like this. It is enormously expensive just to get into space. I recall reading some abominable number a few years ago re just traveling to Mars. I think it was above $500 billion. Thanks to socialist Obama, the real federal deficit (ie, in the absence of Fed QE debasement) is approx $1.5 trillion - and set to go automatically higher without spending cuts or tax increases. We have no money for this type of adventure.

I watched the video you linked. He said nothing wrt the actual mechanics of space colonization, only some vague remarks about its need or value. My understanding is that space colonization is not remotely in the cards, and that Earth will be humanity’s graveyard for centuries to come. People labor under a false belief that science expands by great leaps, continuously. That’s not really true.

Nothing is going to save the white man, or mankind itself, except hard moral choices and political decisions.

Posted by Tim on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 05:04 | #

Read his books and papers. He crunched the numbers. He showed it could be done back then. This isn’t about science expanding by great leaps continuously because he was basing his analysis on technology from the 70s. So whether or not it’s “in the cards” has nothing to do with it being impossible.

Posted by Watson on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 05:35 | #

Wilson is on a tour promoting his new book. I saw him speak earlier this week at a sold-out venue holding 900. His speech basically recapitulated selected passages from the book.

During the question and answer session following the speech, someone asked how he reconciled his view that man has an unsuppressable propensity to form groups and violently compete with other groups with Pinker’s view that man is becoming ever less violent. He said he hadn’t read Pinker’s book, asked whether Pinker was familiar with the stats and literature, and expressed dismissive skepticism of his thesis.

As a long-time lurker, let me voice sincere appreciation for Bowery’s invaluable contributions to this and other sites. To me, his postings are far more worthwhile than the studiously intellectual, ivory-tower objections of his nay-sayers.

Bowery and the dude sometimes known as PF Potential Frolic are excellent posters with excellent ideas, and I’d really like to see more from them both.

Intellectualism for intellectualism’s sake is a waste of time.

Posted by uh on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 14:04 | #

As a long-time lurker, let me voice sincere appreciation for Bowery’s invaluable contributions to this and other sites. To me, his postings are far more worthwhile than the studiously intellectual, ivory-tower objections of his nay-sayers.

I second that. Haven’t been to able to formulate a proper response as I’d like due to travel but Bowery is a man actually “onto something” unlike the daniel’s who merely tell themselves they are. Science is more relevant than intellectualism, who might have guessed.

the dude sometimes known as PF Potential Frolic are excellent posters with excellent ideas, and I’d really like to see more from them both

Well I killed PF, so don’t expect anything from him.

Posted by Graham_Lister on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 14:47 | #

@uh

The problem is that Bowery’s ideas with all this pair-wise duels, ‘sovereign individuals’ etc., fears over ‘eusociality’ and groupishness is not really science now is it?

It’s a degraded version of liberal ‘individualistic’ ontology with a patina of scientism provided by Wilson (who seems not to understand hierarchical selection theory - basically inclusive-fitness theory is a sub-section thereof - under the right conditions predicts ‘group selection’ - read W.D. Hamilton or Steven Frank).

Anyway I think why Bowery has developed this line of thought - something along the notion that inter-group competition is the ultimate evil is because he thinks the J-lizards are ‘unbeatable’ under such conditions - therefore groupish tendencies, in toto, are the highest evil. Also thrown in are some frankly silly religious ideas (hyper-Protestant ‘inner light’ stuff), ‘deep green’ environmentalism etc., to make up his witches brew.

By the sounds of it ancient Athens at it’s height would be too ‘technological’ and the involve too much specialization/division of labour…OK it’s a view but not my view.

Mr. Renner seems to know what Mr. Bowery’s vision ‘means’ perhaps he could expand upon such topics if we plebs have misunderstood?

Posted by James Bowery on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 16:42 | #

Graham Lister echos E. O. Wilson’s argument: “Our very origins in evolutionary terms was in small hunter-gather groups with somewhat different roles for different individuals.”

“Our very origins in evolutionary terms” is an enormous subject going back billions of years.

However, to cut to the chase, when we left Africa, we entered a region of much lower insolation. This put us in touch with a much deeper evolutionary heritage than the African hunter bands touted as “human nature” by Afrocentrists—the much deeper evolutionary heritage of sexual reproduction going back 600 million years.

E. O. Wilson’s argument, like yours, is the old saw that “we’re all the same under the skin”. He goes to some lengths to interpret the anthropological archeology of Europe in the way Afrocentrists would approve.

Your fallacy then proceeds to proclaim my motivation in recognizing the virtue of individual selection over group selection is primarily a strategic response to Jewish “superiority” as a group entity.

No.

I’m recognizing that Euroman’s particular evolution is an awakening from an eons-long African nightmare:

That in those situations where eusociality evolves, the natural integrity of the individual—the product of 600 million years of sexual evolution—is sacrificed in a futile attempt to recapture the, already embodied, glory of “the body” as teaming billions of living beings in intimate and joyful cooperating specialization that is the individual.

The recognition of group selection as this nightmare—this Hell that is War—is the beginning of recognizing what we must do to free ourselves.

Posted by James Bowery on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 17:14 | #

Tim, E. O. Wilson’s argument against space development appears to be little more than an article of faith. He presents nothing that could be considered rational arguments that I can see, other than to point out the quite valid reality of most “space enthusiasts” being irrationally devoted to things like “The Space Shuttle” and “terraforming” etc. These straw-men have immunized him against any deeper thought.

Posted by James Bowery on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 17:22 | #

Praxis, “the point of no return” is, in terms of evolutionary dynamics (the discipline used in “The Evolution of Eusociality”) simply an end-state to evolutionary advance:

Where evolutionary state is so stabilized that it effectively puts an end to the power of sex to advance evolution.

One can observe this in microcosm, as it were, when a mass manipulator is able to take the mass he has manipulated and use it to overpower an individual. It is clear that the individual is, except in Hollywood movies and distortions of history embodied in mythology, essentially powerless against such a mass manipulator and the mass manipulator will be always on the look out for individuals who are independent, as the mortal danger to the manipulator they are.

In these situations, the most viable route of escape for the individual is exile—“white flight” to Nature. Space development might provide such an escape, which is one of my primary motivations.

Posted by Classic Sparkle on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 17:23 | #

Tim, E. O. Wilson’s argument against space development appears to be little more than an article of faith.

I have no faith that it will actually happen, but I think the number of technological innovations that would develop as side effects of the program would justify the expense. Just like NASA’s first incarnation, it would require a whole bunch of homogeneity.

Posted by James Bowery on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 17:35 | #

Watson, it is clear that Pinker’s Jewish heritage is coming to the fore in the way he defines “violence”. The war that is group selection doesn’t stop simply because one group has captured the organs of government. It continues until the enemy group is no longer viable. If the group is individualistic, however, it does make it far easier for war to be waged under color of law as each individual is singled out for some sort of “legal” action.

Posted by Praxis on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 17:37 | #

Well, your ‘translation’ is clearer than Bowery’s original.

The movie Avatar provides an even clearer translation. The planet Pandora’s biological neural network represents Wilson’s eusocial specialists in competition with Earth’s cooperative generalists, with somebody very much like you starring as Administrator Parker Selfridge as the “human centipede’s” head. That is precisely why I wrote,

Incentive abetted by uncertainty toward the future is necessary to minimize the defection of those inherently selfish, but cooperating segments (or components) within “The Human Centipede.

The Marine Jake Sully, once part of the centipede, could no longer stand to eat Selfridge’s shit and defected.

Posted by Praxis on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 17:57 | #

In these situations, the most viable route of escape for the individual is exile—“white flight” to Nature. Space development might provide such an escape, which is one of my primary motivations.

I understand and sympathize, but am afraid space is not an option.

Posted by Classic Sparkle on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 18:07 | #

I understand and sympathize, but am afraid space is not an option.

Space is the only option. We’re just quibbling about where it is.

Posted by uh on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 18:36 | #

In these situations, the most viable route of escape for the individual is exile—“white flight” to Nature.

I know someone who has been touting that idea at MajorityRights for years ...

I understand and sympathize, but am afraid space is not an option.

Agreed. Nature is still an option, albeit circumscribed as never before. One must desire it over society, the ever-widening “eusocial complex” where symbols rule. This at the risk of being called names by the Silvers and Hallers.

It’s a degraded version of liberal ‘individualistic’ ontology with a patina of scientism provided by Wilson

Not meaning to be a total cunt as I say this, but you’re the last person to accuse anyone of peddling a “patina of scientism”. You don’t demonstrate nearly the familiarity with concepts, the product of real learning and thinking over decades, that Bowery does ... even if he comes up short and exaggerates in some areas. The duels and so on ought to be taken as symbolic of Bowery’s value system; obviously it is all impossible, no less than interplanetary white exile. When a thinker takes the step from descriptive to prescriptive, it is nearly always an occasion for eye-rolling, often for raucous laughter. I give this one an eye-roll and respect his intentions based as they are in sound understanding.

therefore groupish tendencies, in toto, are the highest evil

They’re certainly ‘evil’ insomuch as we come from, are informed by, and identify with a subspecies or kind which leans strongly to individualism at the expense of more eusocial or “hive-like” kinds. I haven’t read the book under discussion and suspect it wouldn’t carry me through chapter one but I wonder if inbreeding coefficient and so on appears in the index, being the mechanism of successful eusociality. This is exactly what I, in defiance of Euroman’s evolution, prescribe for his salvation.

Also thrown in are some frankly silly religious ideas (hyper-Protestant ‘inner light’ stuff), ‘deep green’ environmentalism etc., to make up his witches brew.

No worse than Papa Luigi’s “Cosmotheism” or whatever it was, and definitely not meriting the sinister phrase “witches’ brew”.

By the sounds of it ancient Athens at it’s height would be too ‘technological’ and the involve too much specialization/division of labour…OK it’s a view but not my view.

Unfortunately true. (Perhaps you have in mind V.D. Hanson’s The Other Greeks?) This is usually where Silver chimes in with his question, “How far back?” Well, agriculture is the problem. The yoke and the millstone are proverbial tortures for good reason.

The Afrocentrists (the Paleo diet / lifestyle community among them) are wrong to elide the periodicity of human evolution, as Bowery notes above, but as I see it the nightmare really begins in Europe—if you’ve ever spent a winter on the Continent you know why. In other words Euroman’s existence arose from tumultuous weather. Before anyone accuse me of being simple-minded, please recall that Guessedworker has relied on this idea himself on several occasions.

The fact is that people are too dependent on agriculture. What enables you, “Graham Lister”, to watch television and read lame pomo crit IS the problem—the root and the sum. Politically, as a group, there is no solution; hence the need to carry one’s individuation to the mountains, to “Nature”. To the extent that one is unwilling to detach from society (the eusocial agricultural complex) one will defend it in some fashion, sublimating comfort and dependence as philosophical opposition. And again this is, as far as dueling etc., where Bowery goes slightly wrong, crossing into prescriptive ideology. To be exact he passes off an individualistic mode of behavior as a general, political, group-level “solution”.

I don’t know, Graham, you might have a better handle on evolutionary biology. I certainly haven’t. Bowery isn’t a biologist after all.

Posted by Graham_Lister on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 22:45 | #

@uh

I did start to jot down a longer response to you critique of my efforts but got bored so for now let’s go with this.

Yes I do rather like V.D. Hanson’s books on the ancient world – but can’t stand his boring boilerplate Republican cheer-leading.

OK so with regard to philosophy, culture, politics I’m an amateur – even if I have been more or less a ‘political animal’ all of my adult life (especially at university as an undergraduate, in retrospect somewhat amusingly dreaming of a political career!). But take my front-page article on communitarian political philosophy – the only real response it generated was silly sneering about how post-modern it was (it wasn’t in the slightest way POMO). Sure maybe I get things wrong – who doesn’t? – but it would be good for people to precisely point out the how and why if they think so in something like an intelligent manner.

And forgive me if I am a wee bit sceptical about a pre-agricultural lifestyle being possible let alone desirable, or the various reformulations of quasi-Millenarian tropes masquerading as political thought (it’s not rather it is political theology of the worst sort), or indeed the practicality of building ‘white Zion’ in outer space (would these colonies exist under the law of pair-wise duels?). Just on that topic uh what precisely are the values expressed in such an idea? You suggested they are indicative of something wider. I’m still not quite sure what though.

As for the ‘deep greens’ well how far to you take it – to the reductio ad absurdum that humans are so damaging to the environment that we shouldn’t exist? On the absurdities of various ‘ideas’ and themes arising out of popular American religiosity please don’t get me started on that whole crock of shite. Look the infinite regression (Hegel’s bad infinity) is not an attractive idea to me, so something is properly brute – no-one has any real clue as to what that is – everyone who claims to have a definitive answer goes way beyond the available evidence as far as I’m concerned (hence my agnosticism). The earnest mid-Western Mr. Average reading his King James Bible, finding his ‘inner light’ and having chats with his Jesus bobble-head completely and utterly bores me at anything other than the sociological/cultural anthropological level; i.e. “why do these people behave in this way?”.

That said religious people are very thin on the ground in the UK and in America I did encounter people I judged to be well-educated and very intelligent who were also theists for the first time in my life. Now it’s part of my parochial ‘cultural blind-spots’ that I was utterly shocked that such people existed. I did become very interested in how and why they came to hold and maintain their world-views (I still am). But as I said vulgar religion, especially the banal ‘hyper-Protestant’ varieties typically on offer in the American theological market-place at your local Mega-church, to be balls-achingly dull. Feuerbach re-imagined as a Tony Robbins seminar: who cares?

I don’t know what my apparent lack of living in harsh winter conditions has to do with anything? But the winters in the upper-Midwest seemed damn cold to me (-40F with wind-chill on some nights!)

I think I’ll leave it there for now. Perhaps sometimes people have to agree to disagree.

Posted by Classic Sparkle on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 23:06 | #

You’re being disingenuous. It appears to me (and probably most of the commentariat) that you are more familiar with Communitarian political theory than you are with biology.

Responding to your earlier question, that is the direction I’d like to see MR head in. More political theory and political economy.

But take my front-page article on communitarian political philosophy – the only real response it generated was silly sneering about how post-modern it was (it wasn’t in the slightest way POMO). Sure maybe I get things wrong – who doesn’t? – but it would be good for people to precisely point out the how and why if they think so in something like an intelligent manner.

Things don’t always generate proper commentary. It could be “re-posted” and rediscussed or reworked and rediscussed.

As for the ‘deep greens’ well how far to you take it – to the reductio ad absurdum that humans are so damaging to the environment that we shouldn’t exist?

I think that is the wrong approach to the subject. The more important question with regard to the environment, is the existential one of whether or not we are fundamentally at home in the cosmos, or on the earth or what have you and not about whether or not we war on Gaia or sacrifice to her.

This was the funny thing about all the talk about Heidegger. I don’t remember the issue coming up. Maybe it did. I’ll have to reread.

so something is properly brute – no-one has any real clue as to what that is – everyone who claims to have a definitive answer goes way beyond the available evidence as far as I’m concerned (hence my agnosticism).

Well. You have one thing right. Brute facts are mute facts. They don’t really exist though. Even your agnosticism is a pose; it is a position that must be defended. I mean who are you to declare that nobody has a definitive answer based upon the evidence? That’s a definitive answer itself.

Posted by webelos on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 23:40 | #

Also thrown in are some frankly silly religious ideas (hyper-Protestant ‘inner light’ stuff), ‘deep green’ environmentalism etc., to make up his witches brew.

The ‘inner light’ stuff is a Quaker thing. I think Bowery has mentioned before that he’s from Quaker stock.

Posted by Pffft on Mon, 23 Apr 2012 04:32 | #

The earnest mid-Western Mr. Average reading his King James Bible, finding his ‘inner light’ and having chats with his Jesus bobble-head completely and utterly bores me at anything other than the sociological/cultural anthropological level; i.e. “why do these people behave in this way?”.

For the reason you behave in your way: Social status. For the mid-Western Mr. Average social status = money/a nice obit column and well-attended funeral. Surely you’ve overheard old women’s talk? Jeeboo is probably the West’s oldest equal opportunity status symbol. But you know that already, if you’re truly familiar with those mid-Western winters. That is why it’s difficult to believe that what “the earnest mid-Western Mr. Average” American believes is of any interest to you. The smart money says it’s merely another opportunity for you to effortlessly “define” yourself at someone else’ expense.

Posted by Graham_Lister on Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:27 | #

@Pfff

Yes it’s a status thing for many - public piety as a signal of being nice, normal and respectable - of course social status is a very big reason why 90% or so o Americans say they are Christians - I was more concerned with the ones that really do sincerely believe.

Identity always has a double meaning - the positive assertion of X, Y, Z qualities/properties/features in contrast to the negative assertion of not being or having the qualities etc., of A, B, C etc.

Posted by Leon Haller on Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:52 | #

I find Bowery’s prose (and to a lesser extent, “uh’s”) virtually unintelligible. I have come to think most persons at MR are full of shiite, adopting poses (and ‘proses’?) the purpose of which is to imply possession of far greater knowledge than they in fact possess. Lots of name-dropping, not always germane (and often not done quite correctly, and least wrt those with whom I happen to be particularly familiar).

Whatever. I wish the conversations could be steered towards developing fundamental nationalist political philosophy, on the one (metapolitical) hand, and practical activist strategies, on the other.

I don’t feel the need to resolve all philosophical questions, all the way up to God, at a nationalist website, or in order to prevent white extinction. Frankly, if the West could just stop the demographic invasions, I might lose all interest in politics, and devote my intellectual time to philosophy, theology, history and literature (and the bulk of my time to making money).

Posted by daniel on Mon, 07 May 2012 20:19 | #

Uh, to say that I am on to something was wrong. I have arrived. My ideas are coherent, they make sense and are useful.

Posted by uh on Tue, 08 May 2012 02:13 | #

Uh, to say that I am on to something was wrong. I have arrived. My ideas are coherent, they make sense and are useful.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the onto-somethingest one of all??

Your writing is entirely derivative, and it sucks. You are needlessly verbose and utterly boring. Your ideas are commonplace. You are not original. You are not a thinker. All you have to offer is pomo-derived word vomit.

You also betray a lack of confident in these glib assurances that you are coherent and useful.

Posted by daniel on Tue, 08 May 2012 05:34 | #

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the onto-somethingest one of all??

You also betray a lack of confident in these glib assurances that you are coherent and useful.

As I have said, I am not onto something - I have arrived. I say that because my ideas make consistent sense and will be useful for some. Perhaps not for you since you know everything even without having read what you are talking about.

You have admitted that you have not read my essays. I am satisfied with that. But all you do is attack anyway. You find whatever weak points you might possibly latch onto, focus on that and and you go for it with buck shot hoping for whatever might stick. Of course I am not interested in your mud-slinging.

I write because I have things to say.

I was asked to write. That is why I have written, not because I am in love with words - all of my words are there because they were the most useful I could find to say what I meant. And I can discuss the reason for anything I’ve written - that is, I know what I am talking about.

Some of my essays can use some re-editing. Where I have re-edited them, as in the case of the leftism as a code word essay part one (not on line), I am satisfied that even the writing itself is fine.

If some of my ideas are commonplace, that is fine. To communicate is to make things common to some extent. Not all ideas should be arcane and sophisticated.

Yes, there are original ideas there. That is the part of your smearing which has bothered me enough to respond. Because what you say is not true and it is a disservice.

You continually mischaractarize my motives.

I am not competing against anyone. In particular, I am concerned that the struggle have some consensus on the best theoretical premises.

When people do things well, that is fine.

I look upon someone like Bowery as a brother. Where he does things well for the race, that is great.

I understand his and E.O. Wilson’s concern for eusociality. The individualism of some European people puts them on an incommensurate paradigm and therefore in difficult conflict with more collectivist, eusocial types. This type of concern is dealt with in one of my essays. It is in contrast to Hamilton’s notion of sociobiology which would treat all humans as if they were interchangeable - a universalistic idea as opposed to incommensurate paradigms where people have important qualitative differences.

More, there is genuine humanitarian in concern in Bowery trying to stave off the desexing, the a-sexualizing of “worker bees” - one can see this happen to White men. etc.

I appreciate Bowery’s work very much (have done what I can to promote it and still do) and if he wanted to have a society which reflected his values that is fine and good with me. I don’t see myself antagonistic at all (even if he could gather a consensus about dueling, fine). However, I am inclined to agree with Graham, for my tastes, that it is a bit too liberal and individualistic.

I am not convinced that such vigilance for individualism is the crucial matter. It strikes me as an overstated premise to say that all our problems center around collectivism and individualism to the point that the more individual we are the more godly we are. Individualism is not only innate, but rule based as well. Its valuation can and should be suspended to some extent while we organize and defend ourselves as a group, as a class.

The focus on individualism is surely not the only thing that we need in order to survive; not even what we need in order to secure a future for individualism. Variation is a natural part of natural selection.

I’d add there is a bit too much empiricism and veering off into speculative god talk for my tastes as well.

But that is fine. It takes all kinds.

I am not competing against people in the struggle (as you seem to be).

I am concerned to get premises and ideas correct.

I would feel the same about you (a brother) but it seems you are too into being vicious.

There are different kinds of thinkers.

You speak of post modernism as if it is necessarily a bad thing, as if we should return to modernity. There is some indication of that in your preferences on this very thread.

The kind of smear and incitement that you use is a difficult thing because one can wind up putting forth their best for one who is disposed to treat one the worst. You are not likely to change and I am not your battered wife. I do not expect you to drop my case but I wish that you would.

Your attacks are based on the idea that I am competing with people in the struggle. I am not.

You make sweeping assertions about what I’ve said while admitting that you have not read the essays. Fine, don’t read them and then please (do not comment about them or the motives you attribute to me).

I was asked to write and so I did. I am satisfied that I make sense, have some new and useful things to say.

I don’t insist that you or anybody else read what I have written.

There is nothing that you’ve said in these threads that I find important, but I am not going to go on a smear campaign against you. I just go onto more interesting comments. I wish that you could be that way instead of launching attacks on essays you’ve neither read nor bothered to understand.

Posted by James Hanley on Wed, 20 Feb 2013 14:52 | #

I think the author is confusing Wilson’s normative preferences (biophilia and diversity) with his <em>objective</i> analysis of the world (eusociality). There is no conflict between having a particular normative value and recognizing an empirical reality that undermines that value.

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