- By Dr. Graham Lister

Look, I don’t have the time or inclination to point-out the half-baked thinking of MR’s commentators or interviewed guests (if I think them to be in error). Kevin MacDonald can defend himself can he not? After all, if his ideas are completely robust how can he be subject to a ‘humiliation’? All ideas, political, philosophical and scientific, have to be stress-tested in order to investigate their validity. Why anyone is so much of a ‘special snowflake’ that they get an apriori exemption from this process is beyond me.

Now, no-one that’s sane thinks the individual per se can or should be ‘abolished’, but people have very odd and damaging ideas about what ‘the individual’ is and what it represents - such that over the longer term the ideology of ‘individualism’ has extremely deleterious effects as its model of reality is not in alignment with the true social ontology. Human beings, including Europeans, evolved in small, highly social/group orientated bands. It’s really not rocket science to understand that variation in fitness is partitioned into a group element and an individual element (whilst obviously selecting for or against specific alleles and associated phenotypic traits). In fact, such an observation mathematically and logically flows from basic population genetics, which Hamilton went on to describe as ‘inclusive fitness’ and the importance of relatedness to the evolution of behaviour and life history traits (like female biased sex-ratios in the Hymenoptera etc). Price simplified inclusive fitness theory with his work. And it’s developed since. Steven Frank’s book on social evolution is still the best starting point for anyone seriously interested in the topic.

Returning to the politics and philosophy parts of the discussion, Aristotle is my favourite thinker in these areas. First of all, he would suggest that a proper balance between the ‘parts’ and the ‘whole’ (individuals and the group) is necessary for both to fully flourish. There is a mutual interdependence and reciprocity between the two levels of social reality. Secondly, Aristotle would suggest that there may be many ways to live (like being a Lockean liberal perhaps), but many ways to live are ultimately sub- optimal with the goal of full and genuine human flourishing. And this is true at both the individual level and the group level. And yes the interests of a given individual and a given group can be conflict (again this flows from very basic evolutionary biology and the game-theoretic issue of ‘free-riders’). Thus there must be mechanisms for maintaining the health of both individuals and the collective. It starts by the recognition of the fact that the individual is social and utterly dependent upon the collective in numerous ways that liberal ‘individualistic’ ideology willfully ignores.

Ultimately, I reject liberalism as a set of false ideas about the human world - it has the ontology of humans both as individuals and as communities wrong. Bad ideas eventually result in bad consequences and one hopes vice versa. Thus, I am broadly an Aristotelian communitarian. And I think that must incorporate the realities of human nature (groupishness) and our bio-cultural differential status regarding different groups of human beings. Note, it’s a political axis of differences (bio-cultural) that ultimately ends up in the Schmittian friend-enemy distinction, not some bullshit about equality vs inequalities except that I very naturally value my own well being and life more highly than a random stranger’s and I also value the life of my extended community both today and tomorrow (the idea of an intergenerational ‘moral economy’).

Being a non-liberal, I am against cheap all-encompassing forms of universalism or the moral plateau as philosophers call it. Rather I believe in a nested hierarchy of moral responsibility. I have much more moral duties to my own children than my next door neighbour’s kids, let alone some family in China (that of course does not imply I, by default, hate people in China or wish them harm just that I feel I have minimal moral responsibilities towards them). But I do have some properly warranted moral responsibilities to my neighbourhood and my community. Moral responsibility varies with proximity (properly understood).

Roger Scruton writes about a hierarchy of moral responsibility often. Here he speaks about in the context of the absurd (and liberal) idea of ‘animal rights.’

OK, I have previously attempted on many occasions to write about and explain my thoughts on topics such as societal homogeneity and social capital etc. I will not endlessly repeat myself.

As for the idiotic, paranoid reaction by some to my reappearance, it was simply a function of me taking a quick look at MR in a quite moment and seeing folks speculation about my death! And I posted some chucks from an essay I had been reading. I am starting to get to grips with using a tablet and MR as a site isn’t the easiest to use; so out of laziness I didn’t put the comments in quotation marks. Only when someone posted them to the front page as my own did I feel duty-bound to privately point out that fact. But they’re still good points that I agree with about 90%

No coordination with Danny or GW etc. Seeing a conspiracy at every turn is how Jews think - they project onto others their own deeply ingrained mindset. It’s both pathetic and undignified to follow that way of thinking quite so slavishly.

Speaking of slaves, can anyone seriously doubt the USA is a vassal state of Israel? The best superpower money can buy? And yet Americans still persist in their hurbris that they are the model Europeans ‘must’ follow? Look, if KM or indeed anyone else is pushing that as some sort of ‘idea’ they can go fuck themselves. Savvy?

If Mr. Bowery wishes to contribute to MR go for it. Who the fuck cares either way?