The Molding of Minds

Posted by Gregor on August 10, 2010, 04:05 PM | #

Excellent essay Notuswind, but toward the end you asked, “How do we chip away at the social principle that makes propaganda so effective?”

IMO we cannot change this social principle.  It’s embedded in human nature to want social acceptance and to think of themselves and be thought of by others as “good” ... which in this case means going along with the consensus.

No, we cannot change the basic principles embedded in human nature, but we can USE THEM.

Throughout your essay, without using the word, you have been describing how Memes are hitched up to the power of those human-nature “basics”, and used to influence and control people.  It’s been said here many times before that, “our problem” is based in causing change by using those same powers of human nature, but attaching them to Memes which will leverage the power to our benefit.

There are two aspects of this work,  the “negative” and the “positive”.

The “negative” is to use this knowledge to deconstruct and delegitimize the “enemy” by using the power of the “urge for consensus”. 

The “positive” is to re-insert Memes to replace the destructive ones that are trashed.

So, rather than thinking we can “chip away” at what makes propaganda effective,  the course of action is to create memes,  attach them to the social “Power Sources” you so well describe above, and then push those out into general discourse wherever and whenever possible.

Essentially, post-by-post,  discussion-by-discussion, we enlarge OUR “Production of Discourse” industry.  It’s not a magic wand, but a long slog .... yet it works.

In a war of Discourse, the only way to “win” is to occupy the centers of “discourse production”.  And there is a “center” wherever we happen to be, should we have the nerve to DO IT.

Posted by Gregor on August 10, 2010, 04:26 PM | #

The abstract ideas in my post are best illustrated by how I’m personally engaging in “Praxis”.

For a few years I’ve been following Bob Whitaker’s BUGS site, and more recently I’ve been “Following the White Rabbit” with Horus.  The essence of the message is “Consistent Talking Points”. 

The consistent talking points I focus on are “Anti-racism is just a code word for anti-White” and “Multli-culturalism is Genocide”. 

I check daily in the blog/comments section of my city’s daily newspaper online,  on the lookout for any “insertion points” ... which usually end up being about Mexican crime and mayhem in this area.

To make a long story short, as of last night I’ve succeeded in getting at least one other person to REPEAT one of those talking points, and to get “good judgement” from the peanut gallery.  And many others are saying similar things but with different words.

To amplify the effect, I’ve referred links to these discourses to others “on the same page”, who have recently chimed in from all over the world to amplify and extend.  This is how market-share in the production of discourse is increased.  This technique presents onlookers with the opportunity to “be one of the gang” by agreeing.  And since nobody can dole out social punishment in an anonymous community, their “agreement” carries no social penalties.

But I do endeavor to apply social penalties inside the discourse community each thread represents.  It’s a constant effort to 1. Marginalize and stigmatize the “anti-racists” by using their own techniques, and 2. Make positive Pro-White statements which will be powered forward by the desire to be included in a consensus.  And what I NEVER NEVER do is apologize or explain that “I’m not a racist”.  That’s the kiss of death to put yourself on the defensive against the enemies memes.  The key is to use their same memes to put them on the defensive, then ATTACK by providing your REAL audience (not the idiot anti-racist) with a slew of reasons why it’s in their interest to be Pro White.

It’s not only making progress, it’s a helluva lot of fun!

Thanks for more tools Notuswind!

Posted by Notus Wind on August 10, 2010, 04:33 PM | #

Gregor,

Excellent essay Notuswind, but toward the end you asked, “How do we chip away at the social principle that makes propaganda so effective?”

IMO we cannot change this social principle.  It’s embedded in human nature to want social acceptance and to think of themselves and be thought of by others as “good” ... which in this case means going along with the consensus.

Good point, I’ve suitably edited the main entry to get rid of that sentence.

This technique presents onlookers with the opportunity to “be one of the gang” by agreeing.  And since nobody can dole out social punishment in an anonymous community, their “agreement” carries no social penalties.

Exactly!

It’s not only making progress, it’s a helluva lot of fun!

Thanks for more tools Notuswind!

You are more than welcome.

Posted by Gregor on August 10, 2010, 04:36 PM | #

One last thing:  lurking on MR has been instrumental in getting me to the point where I can be an “activist”.  All of the “mere theory” presented here has HUGE POWER once it’s properly understood.  Especially the recent essays oriented towards “Activism”.  I sense a shift in this direction across “our” sites all over the place.

I’d also like to note the huge benefit of having Fred Scrooby post his inimitable commentary here.

It’s not just Fred’s ideas ... it’s the energy he imparts:  like an atomic pile in a reactor ... he generates heat that turns into energy useable by others engaged in “activism”.

Posted by Gregor on August 10, 2010, 05:11 PM | #

In the essay, Notuswind suggested “Eliminating the source of the propaganda” by shielding our own people, especially the children, from the propaganda sources of TV and other degenerate culture sources.

At this stage in the game prophylaxis is possible only within a family setting, and even then difficult.  Too many “discourse factories” are in enemy hands to be able to physically shield our people from their effects, unless we all want to live like Trappist monks.

At this stage in the game, the only way to “Eliminate the Propaganda” is not to “eliminate” it, but to piggy-back on the energy flows the enemy uses to distribute its discourse weapons,  and make them pay for the servers that serve up their undoing.

Discourse is produced through electronic media these days.  The enemy uses this to distribute their propaganda.  They cannot keep CAREFULLY CRAFTED memes out of their “energy beam” without damaging their own credibility.  By allowing on-line comments to their propaganda streams they have sealed their fate by providing a platform for their own undoing.

The key thing is to cease bitching and moaning about “they own the media” ... and USE their media against them. 

“We don’t own the movie studios, so we can’t put out pro-white propaganda in movies”. 

True, but every movie is reviewed somewhere, by some pundit, in a local blog with comments allowed.  Go there and cause damage!  Tackle the credibility of the reviewer if his “take” on the movie supports an anti-White message.  Tackle the message of the movie itself.  Tackle the credibility of the newspaper for allowing such an anti-White racist dufus to harm the minds of young White People.

“We don’t own the newspapers so we can’t put out pro-white propaganda in the ‘news’.”

True, but you CAN use the newsblogs of your local paper to do serious damage and “wakeup” work.  They key is a CAREFULLY CRAFTED consistent message that begins to resonate across the audience. 

All “activists” should take advantage of the “consistent messages” provided by both “BUGS” and “Follow the White Rabbit”.  We don’t need to keep making new massages, we need to APPLY MERCILESSLY the tools we already have available.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on August 10, 2010, 05:12 PM | #

Thanks, Gregor.

Posted by Wandrin on August 14, 2010, 11:14 PM | #

Good essay. I agree with Gregor about where possible trying to piggy-back on and subvert their propaganda rather than block it. For example i never tried to shield my kids from the multicult propaganda about slavery but when it came up i told them about the arab slave raids against Europe and african involvement in the black slave trade and all the rest of the stuff that was left out of the multicult version they were taught at school to show them their teachers couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth. Use their propaganda against them (where possible).

My current analogy is Galileo.

Imagine Galileo and the local Archbishop gathering a random hundred medieval Italians together to have a vote on whether the sun goes round the earth or the earth round the sun.

The Archbishop says the sun goes round the earth. Galileo proves the earth goes round the sun. The vote is still 70:30 against Galileo. Why?

There’s one group who accept what Galileo says and vote for him. There’s another group who didn’t listen to a word he said simply because he was going against the archbishop and so they spent the entire time looking at him like they wanted to burn him at the stake. The third and largest group accepted Galileo was right but voted to conform with the accepted moral authority. Galileo’s hypothetical potential maximum vote is not based on his powers of persuasion but on the strength of the moral authority of the archbishop. Only how many of that fixed number of potential votes he could get would be down to his efforts.

I think the same applies to white survival politics except the modern equivalent of the archbishop is television.

@Gregor
Spot on in all points. I do exactly the same and it’s a great buzz when after a while when you get previously mainstream people starting to repeat your talking points.

Posted by Guessedworker on August 21, 2010, 04:58 PM | #

From the writers point of view, the only drawback of writing something as unassailably true as this is that the comment thread tends to brevity, and so we find here.  However, I’ll try and breathe a little life into it.

Notus,

I am not entirely happy with the rather pat conclusion that people ordinarily accept lies in order to conform to the group for whatever reason, be it because we are social animals or because the costs of saliency are too high.  That would leave a situation where the most profound effects can be produced by the thinnest and most artificial forms of peer pressure, and that seems like only half a story to me.  For one thing, I go back to the insights of the Libet tests and ask whether the decision to accept an obvious lie is really decision or rationalisation after the fact.

And how about the suicide cluster?  What’s happening there?  The effect is total and final for people who often appear to those around them to be doing fine and to have no reason to end their lives:

http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/suggestibility_and_not_being_in_modernity/

... and the “cause”, though diligently searched for by the professionals, is never quite found:

http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/the_suicides_of_bridgend/

Might we have to look for some condition of psychological exposure in which subject suggestibility is at its peak?  Might a condition of self-doubt allied, perhaps, to a certain stunned passivity be sufficient for decision to be taken in the Libetian sense?

I’d welcome your thoughts (I confess that I’ve a certain amount of investment in “suggestibility”, but don’t let that put you off).

Posted by Wandrin on August 21, 2010, 05:44 PM | #

From the writers point of view, the only drawback of writing something as unassailably true as this is that the comment thread tends to brevity, and so we find here.

Good linkage material however.

A suggestion. A recurring post every few weeks or so which just contains links to previous MR posts of particular use as linkage material i.e where the OP says something that can be thrown into many different arguments in many different venues.

Posted by Notus Wind on August 21, 2010, 07:00 PM | #

GW,

From the writers point of view, the only drawback of writing something as unassailably true as this is that the comment thread tends to brevity, and so we find here.  However, I’ll try and breathe a little life into it.

I appreciate the thought.  In this entry I was essentially making three claims:

(1) People are influenced through external media to reject nationalist politics [obvious]
(2) The mechanism of influence can be found in the dynamics of social conformity [unknown]
(3) This is why nationalist politics has largely failed in the West [controversial]

To be honest, I am only certain of the third claim’s truth in the context of American politics, which I know something about.

One of the more controversial corollaries of (3) is that it is pointless to engage in “boots on the ground” nationalist politics until the propaganda feedback loop that enslaves the minds of our people (via conformity) is broken.  This was always my problem with what HW was trying to do at OD in that he was trying to engage in a form of politics here in the U.S. that I believe to be impossible under the current set of circumstances.  It is also my response to the likes of Selous Scout who think that all we need to do is get off our duffs and “hit the streets”, which is a recipe for failure because it involves directly confronting our people with exactly the kind of message that they have been programmed to reject.

I am not entirely happy with the rather pat conclusion that people ordinarily accept lies in order to conform to the group for whatever reason, be it because we are social animals or because the costs of saliency are too high.

Granted, the answer I am providing here is a little simplistic but I think it works.

What we need to identify is a principle(s) so powerful that it can make the great mass of people, from the dumbest to the most brilliant, reject the plain evidence of their own eyes for a falsehood.  To wit, how can Americans look at the degradation of our great cities and maintain a belief in the myth of equality and a commitment to the politics of anti-racism?

This is why the videos of the Asch conformity experiments knocked me out of my chair, as they show how individual minds can be made to affirm obviously wrong statements even though they know the truth.  The test subjects of the Asch experiment literally shake their heads as they yield to the group!

Moreover, this also explains why I’ll isolate myself from others when engaging in research activity.  I’ve always felt that when I’m around other people that my thoughts will become greatly influenced by them to such a degree that whatever mistakes they make I’ll most likely repeat.  Hence the reason for why mathematicians always work alone.

Anyway, the principle of social conformity is the only principle I am aware of - and have experienced personally - that has the potential of greatly distorting judgment on a mass scale.  If I knew of any other such principles then I would consider them as well.

That would leave a situation where the most profound effects can be produced by the thinnest and most artificial forms of peer pressure, and that seems like only half a story to me.

Not really, because as the second embedded video demonstrates, the principle of social conformity only becomes effective when there is social unanimity.  In the absence of something like modern forms of propaganda it is very difficult to imagine how you could go about manufacturing a sense of social unanimity for an entire race of people that spans multiple countries and continents, or even the many diverse communities of the White American peoples from the West coast to the East coast.

A more typical situation would be what we see in high schools where various cliques form that can separately reinforce themselves through conformity but no one clique can dominate the entire high school.  It’s only when you enter into the equation the current state of social isolation and the power of modern forms of propaganda that one can begin to imagine how such a principle could be scaled up to the phenomenon that we struggle against today.

Lastly, this also explains why there are so many of us on the web.  The second embedded video makes clear the principle of social conformity also breaks down when decision-making becomes private.  This also explains why White Americans have been willing to move to far flung suburbs and exurbs for reasons that are inherently racial even though they would never say so explicitly (because they would meet social disapproval).  Jared Taylor is fond of pointing out that White people commonly make decisions in their private lives as if they believed the sorts of controversial things about race that he says publicly.

Whenever you can marry the theoretical with the empirical the conclusion becomes irresistible.

Posted by Notus Wind on August 21, 2010, 07:22 PM | #

GW,

Might we have to look for some condition of psychological exposure in which subject suggestibility is at its peak?  Might a condition of self-doubt allied, perhaps, to a certain stunned passivity be sufficient for decision to be taken in the Libetian sense?

I’d welcome your thoughts (I confess that I’ve a certain amount of investment in “suggestibility”, but don’t let that put you off).

I followed the links you provided and it seemed as if you were developing a model of suggestibility for the different general types of mind and then tried to connect that theory with bits of reporting in news articles.

I have no doubt that principles of suggestibility could explain a great deal of what we see around us but I am not sure that they can scale up to the degree of countries and continents because they rely on specific psychological conditions (following your treatment of the subject).  My suspicion is that whatever principle(s) can account for the mass delusion around us it must be of an essentially formulaic character so that it can be scaled up to the great mass of people, any explanation that depends upon a specific collection of psychological circumstances won’t meet this criterion.

Many thanks for drawing me out on these matters.

Posted by Wandrin on August 21, 2010, 08:05 PM | #

it is pointless to engage in “boots on the ground” nationalist politics until the propaganda feedback loop that enslaves the minds of our people (via conformity) is broken

It may be pointless doing it just for the sake of doing *something*. However the videos show the effect of someone standing against the consensus. I think activism directed consciously at attacking the dominant culture’s weak points could act in the same way e.g anything related to a double standard like anti-white bullying being ignored at a local school or one of the things in Hoosier nation relating to a cop being sacrificed to multicult street politics.

In short tailoring activism to the underlying psychology.

(Also activism as a social activity and group-bonding but that is a separate thing.)

That would leave a situation where the most profound effects can be produced by the thinnest and most artificial forms of peer pressure, and that seems like only half a story to me.

People are more likely to give in to conformity over blatant lies if conforming doesn’t carry a risk i.e agreeing over the length of a piece of string. Obviously conformity is more likely if there is a risk to not conforming i.e losing your job. Hence fear as a tactic i.e South Africa as the model for the final destination for their grand-children.

Lots of fear.

In the absence of something like modern forms of propaganda it is very difficult to imagine how you could go about manufacturing a sense of social unanimity for an entire race of people

To me the invention of cinema and television were critical. People talk about tradition vs enlightenment and this and that but i don’t think any culture could stand up to television falling completely into the hands of a hostile elite. The Serbia attack is a good example. The entire MSM presented the public with a single consistent message of “Serbs are bad peoples” and everyone went along with it because the overwhelming majority trust the MSM.

Posted by Notus Wind on August 21, 2010, 08:22 PM | #

Wandrin,

However the videos show the effect of someone standing against the consensus.

Yes, but here’s the difference.  When the sense of unanimity is punctured the power of social conformity is greatly lessened; however, when you talk to people “on the street” it’s always after the fact.  The average person has yielded to group influence on issues that we care about a long time ago and has already integrated that knowledge into how they view the world.  People can be very stubborn once they’ve made their mind up and especially once they’re also convinced that you’re an evil person for suggesting that they’re wrong.

Breaking the sense of social unanimity on matters of concern is most useful when you’re trying to prevent someone from yielding to group influence in the first place.

Posted by Guessedworker on August 21, 2010, 08:40 PM | #

Notus, it’s an existential thing.  You will be aware of Durkheim’s findings on suicide and social instability.  What is the medium that history is working upon here?  Well, obviously it’s human personality - a suitably general occurrence to meet your requirement, I think.  I am moving gently toward a theory of the role of being and authenticity at the collective level as a virtuous regulating influence in human personality formation:

http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/announcing_a_new_series_the_ontology_of_mind/#c97675

... an influence that is weakened as instability increases, duly increasing the absence, mechanicity and suggestibility which mark us as men in the historical context.  The sources of instability are real-world and also historical: industrialisation and urbanisation, religious substitution, mass violent episodes, culture war, mass immigration, etc ... in a word, modernity.  The more disassociated from our being we become, the more our life suffers, and the more cycles of lightness and estrangement follow.

This is not to say that at some point in the organic, tribal past of European Man he was not suggestible and would not lie for conformity’s sake.  But he would do so less.  In our time these things are at a high point, and are only going to get higher without a revolution on many levels in our way of living.

Posted by Wandrin on August 21, 2010, 09:07 PM | #

Notus,

Fair points. I still think this leads to an activism (of whatever form) specifically designed to hammer the pressure points of the psychology. Figuring out what those psychological pressure points might be would be useful.

Posted by Notus Wind on August 21, 2010, 09:31 PM | #

GW,

I am moving gently toward a theory of the role of being and authenticity at the collective level as a virtuous regulating influence in human personality formation an influence that is weakened as instability increases, duly increasing the absence, mechanicity and suggestibility which mark us as men in the historical context.

Yes, I can see that now.  You are definitely moving in a sufficiently general direction to satisfy my criterion.

But new problems arise, even if you can make this model go through you are still just halfway there because…

The sources of instability are real-world and also historical: industrialisation and urbanisation, religious substitution, mass violent episodes, culture war, mass immigration, etc ... in a word, modernity.

You will still need to show that modernity qua modernity is responsible for the same phenomenon that I am trying to explain with my conformity thesis.

I can see at least two problems with this direction:

(1) It would seem that the myth of equality (along with other myths) is not introduced until after the external sense of self is already developed and equipped with its own powers of discrimination.  Whence the relevance of your model?

(2) It would also seem that we have a counterexample in Japan.  Although Japan belongs to the East its population has been marked by many of the same kinds of modern influences as any other Western society.  However, the kinds of farcical beliefs that I am trying to explain with my conformity thesis don’t seem present in Japaneses society.

This is not to say that at some point in the organic, tribal past of European Man he was not suggestible and would not lie for conformity’s sake.  But he would do so less.

Why?  I would imagine that as our society has increased in complexity so have our social needs and requirements.

Posted by Notus Wind on August 21, 2010, 09:57 PM | #

Wandrin,

Fair points. I still think this leads to an activism (of whatever form) specifically designed to hammer the pressure points of the psychology. Figuring out what those psychological pressure points might be would be useful.

Exactly, we should attack the weak points of the enemy and not bash our heads against his strongholds.  Perhaps I will write more specifically about what I think will work best for us Americans later.

Posted by Armor on August 22, 2010, 12:53 AM | #

“why does this propaganda work so well” / “The social principle that makes propaganda work is the principle of group conformity.”

I don’t think it works so well, and I don’t think the instinct of conformity is to blame. The Asch experiment is about peer-pressure, not about conformity enforced from the top down by an autocratic government. Most people are anti-immigration, and I think most of them know that most of their peers are anti-immigration as well.

To me, it looks more like a case of Diffusion of Responsibility (wiki) :

Diffusion of responsibility can manifest itself :

  * in a group of people who, through action or inaction, allow events to occur which they would never allow if they were alone. Examples include groupthink and the bystander effect.

I think white people are waiting for other whites to take action. In fact, the alleged conformity is largely induced by intimidation from government and the media.

Also, it is said that white people have lost the ability to riot in the streets. I don’t know why that is. Maybe conformity has something to do with it, but it is not the sole explanation.

The media propaganda only works for a minority of people, but maybe its real aim is to be an alibi for government. Thanks to the media propaganda, it becomes less obvious that government ignores popular opinion. It can be claimed that it is buckling under pressure from the media. It’s an effort to create fake plurality. Government and the media really obey the same masters, but it is useful to pretend that there is some diversity.

Posted by Guessedworker on August 22, 2010, 12:04 PM | #

Notus,

It would seem that the myth of equality (along with other myths) is not introduced until after the external sense of self is already developed and equipped with its own powers of discrimination.  Whence the relevance of your model?

If you will pardon me for saying so, this is a typical psychologist’s question.  The metaphysician will ask “What self is this?”  It’s the one, of course, that is assumed by all psychologists to exist.  It doesn’t.  What we truly have is not self but absence of self, and not consciousness but the habituated workings of the three cognitive systems in an overall form that constitutes Personality.  The formative influences of Personality are sociobiological (for example, racial discrimination based on genetic distance) and socio-cultural (for example, discrimination or, indeed, anti-discrimination based on cultural reinforcement).  It is the latter influences that are so highly favoured by the age in which we live, and which we must change at the most fundamental levels - not simply politically - to effect, over time, a change in the human product, so to speak.  This is the true chage that we want and must have if we are to survive and also to live lives natural to us as Europeans.

In very simple terms, the dynamic of change looks like this:

personality (or, in the collective, sociality) ? absence ? inattention/attention ? presence ? being

It would also seem that we have a counter example in Japan.  Although Japan belongs to the East its population has been marked by many of the same kinds of modern influences as any other Western society.  However, the kinds of farcical beliefs that I am trying to explain with my conformity thesis don’t seem present in Japaneses society.

It does not follow that the Japanese experience must mirror our own, since the sociocultural influences are not necessarily the same or of the same toxicity.  And even if they were, it doesn’t follow that decay must be produced on the same timescale.  What is their starting point?

I would imagine that as our society has increased in complexity so have our social needs and requirements.

I am not sure that “complexity” is incompatible with what we truly are, or that “social needs and requirements” are any part of the problem.  The motive factor in my scheme is the on-going development in modernity of estrangement and disassociation from our Truth as European Man.  The result is Homo postmodernis, a product of artifice and instability and lightness.

Posted by Notus Wind on August 22, 2010, 03:17 PM | #

GW,

If you will pardon me for saying so, this is a typical psychologist’s question.  The metaphysician will ask “What self is this?” It’s the one, of course, that is assumed by all psychologists to exist.  It doesn’t.

Of course, there are plenty of metaphysical issues lurking in the background and you can be sure that they have not escaped my notice, but for the moment I am content to assume your model as true and resort to descriptive language as necessary (i.e. “sense of self”).  But even if I am lapsing into the role of psychologist wouldn’t that be apropos in a thread such as this?

The formative influences of Personality are sociobiological…and socio-cultural…It is the latter influences that are so highly favoured by the age in which we live, and which we must change at the most fundamental levels - not simply politically - to effect, over time, a change in the human product, so to speak.

What an ironic twist to our discussions, you are now the surveyor speaking in terms of broad categories and I am now the mountain climber looking for a path in the dirt.  Relish the moment!

Clearly, the myth of equality (or egalitarian morality if you wish) has been sustained through multiple generations by a mixture of sociocultural and sociobiological forces.  It is a remarkable phenomenon because it makes claims about flesh and blood reality that are obviously wrong and is naturally resisted by sociobiological forces that are central to man’s development.  So what mechanism can sustain a doctrine that is both abjectly false and unnatural?

For the sake of ramming the point home about how remarkable this all seems to me, I can’t even think of a good analogy for our situation in this regard.  While there are many metaphysical beliefs that are in retrospect obviously wrong - such as the story about Thor making a star out of a frozen toe - these are usually origin stories and/or statements about an otherworldly realm that can’t be directly tested.  Nations of people can believe these sorts of things in earnest but in whatever context their belief arises they are usually not confronted with their absurdity in quite the same way as we moderns are with our egalitarian beliefs.

In this vein I am offering one mechanism but so far as I can tell you have yet to offer yours.  Let me get at this point by quoting your words as follows:

“He was, he said, never told what to do if it wasn’t there, never told to discriminate for it.  There was meant to be nothing to discriminate against.  He just had to stick like glue to whoever was in the neighbourhood.  From his point of view it’s all just a case of mistaken identity.”

Was the myth of equality just one of those sociocultural things that stuck like glue before discriminative powers were obtained?  Somehow I doubt that this is the explanation you have in mind.  But if it wasn’t obtained through this process then how was it obtained, what mechanism are you bringing to the table that I do not see?

It does not follow that the Japanese experience must mirror our own, since the sociocultural influences are not necessarily the same or of the same toxicity.  And even if they were, it doesn’t follow that decay must be produced on the same timescale.  What is their starting point?

Good point, we can consider the matter settled.

The result is Homo postmodernis, a product of artifice and instability and lightness.

A minor bone of contention, I don’t think we live in anything like a postmodern age.  The age that we do inhabit makes definite truth claims and when they are challenged the knives come out; modernity has not left us, it has only mutated.  All this relativistic talk that we see around us is just a cultural pose and not sincere.

Posted by Wandrin on August 22, 2010, 05:04 PM | #

So what mechanism can sustain a doctrine that is both abjectly false and unnatural?

If it is so abjectly false and unnatural then the reason for it must be a particularly good one.

A couple of suggestions

1. There’s a lot more people in the bottom 90% than in the top 10%. So elitist ideologies can only work if they’re stealthed or if they can be imposed by force. Either way they’re inherently unstable because appeals to the 90% will always have an appeal.

One way of looking at the advance of democracy in the west is the elite trying to retreat just far enough to get a stable plurality. If you have some capital worth 100 coins and a return on that capital of ten coins a year but the peasantry burn it down every ten years because they’re fed up then you might as well not bother. If however spending 4 of those coins a year keeps the peasants happy then you end up further ahead. Political stability has a value to the elite.

2. Humans are a social animal. Reciprocity. What’s the reciprocity of elitism compared with egalitarianism?

At what point does a man want the rules based on who is the toughest man in the village?
- when they’re small and weak?
- when they’re half-grown?
- when they’re almost in their prime and the second toughest man in the village?
- when they’re in their prime and the toughest man in the village?
- when they’re past their prime and weak again?

If western man has an urge towards egalitarianism then there is a good reason for it and i’d guess it is logically provable somehow using game theory with reciprocity as the mechanism.

It does however need to be constrained within biological reality. It goes wrong when it breaks out of those constraints.

It seems to me the optimum is some combination of elitism and egalitarianism. If you’re going into a battle it is in everyone’s interests that the general is the best man for the job - that’s the elitist bit.

Selecting the best general solely from among a small restricted social elite is likely to miss the best available general - that’s the egalitarian bit.

Posted by Guessedworker on August 22, 2010, 08:00 PM | #

Notus

even if I am lapsing into the role of psychologist wouldn’t that be apropos in a thread such as this?

Granted.  But every thread seems fair game to a man with one idea, and I am he.  If I can’t tip every tributary of significance out into the Metaphysical Sea then the universality of my truths is cracked!

Clearly, the myth of equality (or egalitarian morality if you wish) has been sustained through multiple generations by a mixture of sociocultural and sociobiological forces.  It is a remarkable phenomenon because it makes claims about flesh and blood reality that are obviously wrong and is naturally resisted by sociobiological forces that are central to man’s development.  So what mechanism can sustain a doctrine that is both abjectly false and unnatural?

Am I being unfair if I say that wherever possible you are looking for the single piece of psychological machinery, the single vulnerability, whose flawed action consigns us to perdition, and outside of such mechanisms you take all that is going on as reasonably normal and OK, or at least certainly serviceable for present purposes?  Well, in respect to group conformity you have a candidate, even a good one.  So I have to respect your method.  But it really isn’t my way.  I love to look at the quality of human experience - such as it is - and how it comes to be as it is.  Single vulnerabilities are interesting, sure, and if true must be accorded their place.  But, to me, the entirety is more convenient to grasp and hold up to the light, and more plausible as explication, too.  It shows that, far from being “normal and OK”, our lives as they are lived are the ineluctable creators of the, in the vulgar sense, reality of which we dissidents all complain - all of us, traditionalists, conservatives and nationalists.  And this we can parse metaphysically.  We can do it in ways not divorced from science by the native propositionalism of philosophy.  Asch, if you wish, and Libet, or Salter and Rushton ... all that is true can and must be recruited to the cause.

In this vein I am offering one mechanism but so far as I can tell you have yet to offer yours.

I’m in no hurry.  It isn’t necessarily going to be my voice that will speak or my fingers that will type the words.  I am not the best equipped person to be doing this sort of work.  I see some things and talk about them, and I hope someone will make something of that.

Was the myth of equality just one of those sociocultural things that stuck like glue before discriminative powers were obtained?

You’ve taken that quote out of context, and its meaning is lost.  It is about the automatic nature of the ascription of self-hood, and the mistargeting that occasions in ordinary waking consciousness.  In other words, why we think we are the contents of our personalities.  So it isn’t the myth of equality that sticks like glue.

The myth, which is at least part sociobiological in its arising, is just another data-set impacting our emotional and mentational systems.  In this condition of ours of self-estrangement and/or disassociation from Being, our emotional judgement - the ascription of due value - is, at the very least, underperforming.  This is how the Asch Test finding comes to pass.  If we want to improve this situation we have to understand that a movement away from artifice and towards authenticity is the only vivifying option.  When that point is taken, the question of what it means in terms of action in the world can perhaps be addressed.

A minor bone of contention, I don’t think we live in anything like a postmodern age.

Agreed.  The age is modernity, imo, because the scale on which I am casting the causes of our collective self-estrangement are centuries old in most cases and millenia in one.  The Man, however, is a moving feast, and Homo postmodernis is as good a name as any for his current manifestation.  Tomorrow he may have another, and another the next day until, if the so-patient hunters of the Age of Messiac finally prevail, it will be Homo deracinatus.

Posted by Guessedworker on August 22, 2010, 08:20 PM | #

Wandrin,

Your commentary gets better and better.  And this:

It does however need to be constrained within biological reality. It goes wrong when it breaks out of those constraints.

... contains the sun and all the planets too.

I will say to you what I’ve said to many others down the years, and that is that if you are interested in writing main articles, either occasionally as guest posts or as a fully-fledged MR contributor, I am sure we could use you.  Contact me through the button under the header anytime if the idea is at all interesting to you.

Posted by Notus Wind on August 22, 2010, 11:49 PM | #

GW,

Am I being unfair if I say that…you are looking for the single piece of psychological machinery…whose flawed action consigns us to perdition, and outside of such mechanisms you take all that is going on as reasonably normal and OK

No, you are certainly not being unfair as the main entry to this thread is about getting as much mileage as I can out of a single psychological insight.  But you would be wrong in that my complaints with the present age are most profound.  My feeling is that even if we were able to shutdown this little propaganda-feedback-loop a great deal of work would still be necessary, almost all of it in fact.

I have been told that we Americans are transparent in a way that others are not.  Perhaps this is a good moment to live up to type.

My initial interest in this result of Asch was that it might provide a means for explaining how brilliant individuals who have been gifted with discerning minds of the highest caliber could be made to spout such lies.  That I found myself able to go so much farther with this little insight was of great surprise to me and was certainly not what I set out to do in the first place.

On a more personal note, it is hard for me to communicate just how deeply I have rejected this era.  I was born into an American subculture that comes equipped with its own narrative of dispossession and, as a consequence, have always been off the reservation.  The war that I wage is not particular but total.

So I have to respect your method.

I am not sure I have one.

I love to look at the quality of human experience - such as it is - and how it comes to be as it is.
...
I’m in no hurry.  It isn’t necessarily going to be my voice that will speak or my fingers that will type the words…I see some things and talk about them, and I hope someone will make something of that.

I respect this mindset.  After all, the desire to start from something fundamental and build from there is that of my profession.  Perhaps the kind of mechanism that I am asking for is not yet in reach but who knows what time will reveal.

You’ve taken that quote out of context…It is about the automatic nature of the ascription of self-hood…In other words, why we think we are the contents of our personalities.  So it isn’t the myth of equality that sticks like glue.

That’s more or less what I suspected but I wanted to double-check this point.

The Man, however, is a moving feast, and Homo postmodernis is as good a name as any for his current manifestation.

Fair enough.

Posted by Guessedworker on August 23, 2010, 10:00 AM | #

Notus,

But you would be wrong in that my complaints with the present age are most profound.  My feeling is that even if we were able to shutdown this little propaganda-feedback-loop a great deal of work would still be necessary, almost all of it in fact.

If we can agree that work on “the age” is work on mind, then there is little beyond interpretation that separates us.  Method, of course, if we develop the conversation that far, may prove to be a point a departure.

I have been told that we Americans are transparent in a way that others are not.

I am trying to get at what “transparency” really means, and I am wondering whether it corresponds to the phenomenon I have often noticed in Americans of a social honesty that the working-class in Europe tend to express, but the middle-class tend to withhold.  Tales of English middle-class sang froid particularly abound in the military, and one sees it still in the officer class serving today.  Perhaps it survived the journey across the Atlantic in the 18th and 19th centuries and took root in the Old South aristocracy.  But the mercantilist-egalitarian north appears to have stamped it out pretty effectively and, in this respect at least, a behavioural egalitarianism seems to apply.

My initial interest in this result of Asch was that it might provide a means for explaining how brilliant individuals who have been gifted with discerning minds of the highest caliber could be made to spout such lies

It shows the how, not the why, or the whole of it anyway.  The question remains, why is the uncertainty so strong?  What should fill that space?  What are we meant to demand of fellow Europeans, continual strivers against the odds that we are?  What really belongs to us that is missing here?

The war that I wage is not particular but total.

There would surely be no war more total than the war for being.

Posted by Notus Wind on August 23, 2010, 11:31 AM | #

GW,

If we can agree that work on “the age” is work on mind, then there is little beyond interpretation that separates us.  Method, of course, if we develop the conversation that far, may prove to be a point a departure.

The mind is the battlefield, win this and everything else follows.  So I think we’re in agreement here.

I am sure that there are points of departure for all of us on matters of concern, but I think that creates a sort of healthy tension for MR.  If we all agreed on everything then that would be rather boring.

I am trying to get at what “transparency” really means, and I am wondering whether it corresponds to the phenomenon I have often noticed in Americans of a social honesty that the working-class in Europe tend to express, but the middle-class tend to withhold…

There are a lot of good qualities out here, I have faith that we’ll get through this difficult time in some form or fashion.

It shows the how, not the why, or the whole of it anyway.  The question remains, why is the uncertainty so strong?  What should fill that space?  What are we meant to demand of fellow Europeans, continual strivers against the odds that we are?  What really belongs to us that is missing here?

You are exactly correct, I have not tried to answer any of these more fundamental questions in this space.  It is only the how that concerns me here.

But I would hasten to add that the problems are related.  To know the why (or what) is to separate it from the how and thereby identify both.  Furthermore, to identify the how is to know what to avoid when trying to understand the more important why.  Frequently, these questions get tangled together in a confusing mishmash when people try to wrestle with them.

Posted by Guessedworker on August 23, 2010, 12:12 PM | #

Frequently, these questions get tangled together in a confusing mishmash when people try to wrestle with them.

But not us, Notus.

Posted by Notus Wind on August 23, 2010, 12:45 PM | #

GW: But not us, Notus.

[laughs]

I am just as guilty as anyone else.  Anyone can look at some of my older comments on related websites and see that I’ve made a mishmash of things on more than one occasion.  I’ll frequently confuse myself with my own pedantry and express contradictory ideas before working out a coherent synthesis.

Posted by Wandrin on August 23, 2010, 05:56 PM | #

interested in writing main articles

I will eventually. Currently i’m still in the mode of trying out ideas online first and then disappearing offline for a while testing them out. When i’m done with that i will.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on August 26, 2010, 11:54 PM | #

The Third Annual Conference of the HL Mencken Club is announced, this year with the conference theme “PC — the Future of an Illusion”:

http://www.hlmenckenclub.org/HL_Mencken_Club/2010_Conference.html .

It will be held in Baltimore, Friday & Saturday, October 22-23.  Register for the conference here:

http://www.hlmenckenclub.org/HL_Mencken_Club/Registration.html .

The speakers’ roster:

2010 Speakers:

Peter Brimelow is the editor of VDARE.COM, a columnist for MarketWatch, and the author of Alien Nation:  Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster and The Worm in the Apple:  How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education.

John Derbyshire is a contributing editor at National Review.  He lives with his wife and children on Long Island.

Paul E. Gottfried is the president of the HL Mencken Club.  His most recent work is his autobiography, Encounters, and he is currently preparing a long study of Leo Strauss and his disciples.  He is Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, PA.

Henry Harpending is an anthropologist at the University of Utah and the co-author, with Gregory Cochran, of The 10,000 Year Explosion:  How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution.  His recent work has focused on genetic diversity within and between human populations. 

Grant Havers is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Political Studies at Trinity Western University in Canada.  He is the author of, most recently, Lincoln and the Politics of Christian Love. 

James Kalb is a lawyer and writer who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.  He recently came out with his first book, The Tyranny of Liberalism.  His online home is jimkalb.com.

E. Christian Kopff is Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.  He is the author of The Devil Knows Latin:  Why America Needs the Classical Tradition and has recently translated Josef Pieper’s Tradition:  Concept and Claim into English for ISI Books.

Ilana Mercer writes a weekly column, “Return to Reason,” for WorldNetDaily.com.  She is a frequent contributor to VDARE.com and is the author of the forthcoming volume Into the Cannibal’s Pot:  Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.

James Russell is the author of The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity:  A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation as well as Breach of Faith:  American Churches and the Immigration Crisis. 

Steve Sailer is a journalist, movie critic, VDARE.com columnist, and founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute, which runs the invitation-only Human Biodiversity discussion group for top scientists and public intellectuals.  His first book is America’s Half-Blood Prince:  Barack Obama’s “Story of Race and Inheritance.”

Richard Spencer is a former Assistant Editor at The American Conservative and Executive Editor at Taki’s Magazine.  He is the Founder and Executive Editor of AlternativeRight.com.

Robert Weissberg is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana.  He currently resides in New York City and recently published a volume on education, Bad Students, Not Bad Schools.