Racial realists , anyone out there?

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*shrug*

It's not really worth arguing about IMO. I'm fairly set in my ways.

That's unfortunate. Once there were people who argued that different subgroups of Caucasians were inferior or superior. It was always politically or culturally motivated. Now that there is more integration of people from different geographic areas naturally the focus is on those with different skin color and bone structure but the motivation is still the same

I'm not arguing about superior or inferior anything, just differences.


If you'd like to put your money on China winning Olympic gold medals in running events, go ahead but I'll be putting my money towards African countries. We can see who walks away richer :p

People from the Middle East and North Africa are considered "White, non-Hispanic" in America. Same Caucasian race. They do not get much love there.

Then you have George Lincoln Rockwell, who was killed (maybe) for believing lighter-skinned whites were superior to ones with darker skin. And that was the American 1960's or somewhere there.

Let the debate begin!



This needs more context because I'm having trouble identifying which judgements are particularly wrong since I do not have enough information to make a conclusion.

Let's play with this though. If were searching for a suspect with only our eyes , we will not judge wrong in these particular cases because one doesn't need knowledge of genetics , heritage nor parentage to identify if one is black or not as we have morphological information.



Not really sure what you mean , please elaborate better.



Physical differences in what sense? Such as physiological functions? Those tell you something but you can't see these "differences". I think what you may mean here is morphology.

This is of particular interest to me because I come from a "racially admixed" tribe with heritages from three continents, and noticeable differences in appearance even from sibling to sibling are common, so that to eyes trained to label "race" based on physical markers, one sibling will look and be judged Race A, another will be judged Race B, another Race C, another some other race.

Right , this doesn't contradict my position at all.



http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/07/ ... 68x593.jpg



Right... Intelligence has nothing to do with skin color? Round 2!



Actually they regress towards the mean ( which is 100 ) of intelligence and not to the mean but this depends on the who inherits which parents level of intelligence.



"Argumentum e silentio" or lack of evidence , next time , explain why.



Consider the following argument:

Assume that A and B are two different sets because we find that they are differentiable by test W

Set A scores a 150 mean on test X and a 200 mean on test Y while Set B scores a 125 mean on test X and a 250 mean on test Y

Since they scored differently on these tests A > B on X and B > A on Y , we can conclude that they are also differentiable by tests X and Y as they give us unique characteristics since they are not the same

Thus X and Y are linked to A and B because they are differentiable



Your forgetting other factors to take into account ( cherry-picking )



You just used multiple inconsistent arguments to support this conclusion , your drawing attention away from the subject of the argument and your even assuming that it there is one, simple cause of an outcome when in reality it may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient causes. ( Kettle Logic & Red Herring [ also see irrelevant conclusion ] & Causal Oversimplification ; respectively )

First off , I do not fit your generalization.
Second , your misinterpreting the stance of racial realism to discredit me.
Third , your as likely to cherry-pick information ( see also confirmation bias ) as their is no consensus by both sides on this issue thus it's meaningless.
Fourth , one is curious and ignorant thus one measures to gain knowledge
Fifth , your falsely attributing me.
Sixth , you have inconsistent and predictably weak data but for some reason you have confident assertions about your prediction , a possible framing bias perhaps?

Again , there is no universal consensus on the definition of race , therefore it is not possible to disagree on whether this is a distinct race or not. However race is still a valued taxonomy , refer to my other posts for more information , in particular to Catlord.

Your hypothesis that race is a social construct used to validate existing inequalities of privilege is not even verified by yourself thus your relationship between these two concepts is illusory.

Oh I'll copy and paste too!

This is a 2009 paper written claiming races are a biological reality -

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 1726a.html

There is a whole tun of similar scientific articles as so forth which have reached the same conclusions.

Its not up to race believers to prove race exists. The same would be to ask someone to prove the world is a globe.

The people who need evidence are the race deniers as they are challenging an orthodox view.

I was very scientific with my use of controls in the example I used that you are saying did not present enough information to judge. Where exactly is this simplification.

I honestly can't believe I'm trying to reason with someone professing blatantly racist views but there you go.

I don't know what you mean "verified." I've been presenting my argument on this all along.

I'd say its significantly more unhealthy to deny the existence of measurable differences because pointing out that there are in fact genetic differences between members of the human species that does make them more suited or less suited for different activities. The problem with the "left" is the fact that "equal" is used as a synonym for "identical" which is more offensive to me because it indicates that there is one universal fit for all of us.

http://run-down.com/guests/je_black_athletes_p2.php

The left approaches the world through the pseudoscience of sociology, whereas some people elect to say, let a real science take a look first.

The second part is half joke, half truth, because if you look at Nobel prize winners you have an over-representation of people with Jewish ancestry.

White liberal race-deniers are people who desperately want certain things to be true for their own comfort and peace of mind.



Many white liberal race-deniers on the other hand are people cannot bear the idea of belonging to a team that they were born into, because that might imply that there is some sort of competition going on, and they would then be expected to pull their weight as part of that team, and they would then be shown up for the weaklings that they are. White liberals are like the scrawny kids who get picked last for games and then take a pleasure in every setback their own team suffers. They comfort themselves by talking about all humanity, and convincing themselves that all humanity is progressing as surely as night follows day. If they display any partisan tendencies, they display them towards things like political parties - then they can just change their minds when the going gets tough.



In addition to the subset of white liberal race-deniers who are self-centred weaklings, there is an overlapping subset who consist of people who stick their fingers in the air, find out which way the wind is blowing, and then follow. If the wind changed, they would change with it, but they declare that anyone who moves against the wind is ignorant, needs to be educated, and is standing in the way of progress.

The fact that the professed racial views among so many in, say, the United States, have turned around 180 degrees within 50 years simply is a testament to the fact that the masses do not think for themselves, regardless of whether you believe the majority today are right or whether you believe the majority 50 years ago were right. That's just the way it is - the obedience of the masses is something that helps keep society cohesive and civilized ... under the right conditions.



We should send Declension off to Sri Lanka or Kashmir or Sudan. He could tell the people there how "sad" they are to care whether or not their own team prevails. I'm sure with his great wisdom he could solve their problems within weeks.



If this is true, it is because in most non-western countries, race-realism comes so naturally to non-whites that it does not even warrant a name, whereas in western countries, non-whites have little incentive to promote race-realism and every incentive to promote race-denial. Of course, race-denial does not stop non-whites forming their own advocacy groups (so that those socially constructed blacks who don't really exist can protect themselves against those socially constructed whites who don't really exist - or something).



With their squeamishness about this subject, race-deniers show themselves to be place greater importance on IQ than the race-realists they complain about. Person A could have a higher IQ than person B and still be inferior according to a whole host of other criteria.

What on earth is so sick about believing that your own group scores more highly on some criteria than some other groups? You just need to apply this logic at the individual level to see how ridiculous it is.

For example, do you Declension believe yourself to have a higher IQ than at least some other people on this planet? Do you think there are some other things that you also do better than at least some other people? Do you think you have certain unique characteristics as an individual? Do you have value to yourself because you are you and not someone else? And can I call you sick if you answered yes to any of these questions?

And what would make asians and jews "more intelligent"? Their physical difference? It's funny how some people make that simplistic and flawed relation, likely they are not that intelligent.

Funny thing about racialists is that they claim the science is in favor of their ideology, their stance is not that much different from creationists. Pretty much they seem to rely on a conspiracy theory, what other choice would they have anyway?

I will address two responses here:

lulz

I like how you think this is new and unrelevant, as if I haven’t seen exactly this sort of thing before. The comparison of variation “within groups” versus variation “among groups” is generally known as “Lewontin’s fallacy” (because to the extent that the claim is meaningful, it’s false).

I can refute the “non-existence” of genetic race in four pictures:

1. Genetic variation worldwide : http://unamusementpark.com/wp-content/u ... _world.png

2. Genetic variation in Africa : http://unamusementpark.com/wp-content/u ... Africa.png

3. Genetic distances between populations : http://unamusementpark.com/wp-content/u ... c_tree.jpg

4. Genetic map of the world : http://unamusementpark.com/wp-content/u ... _world.jpg

The first three are from Tishkoff et al. (2009), the third is from Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza’s “The History and Geography of Human Genes” (1994) : http://unamusementpark.com/2011/04/debu ... li-sforza/
As the author puts it: “The [genetic] color map of the world [see below] shows very distinctly the differences that we know exist among the continents: Africans (yellow), Caucasoids (green), Mongoloids… (purple), and Australian Aborigines (red).”

In “Genetic structure of human populations” (2002), N. A. Rosenberg et al. showed that people cluster genetically according to major geographic regions — in other words, races (Science 298(5602): 2381–2385).

In “Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies” (2005), H. Tang et al. demonstrated that genetic clusters match self-reported race (White, Black, Hispanic, or East Asian) 99.9 percent of the time (American Journal of Human Genetics 76(2): 268–275).

Cavalli-Sforza found, among other things, that the genetic distance between the English and the Italians is about 2.5 times as large as the distance between the English and the Danish. The Iranians are 9 times farther away, genetically speaking, from the English than the Danes are from the English. The Japanese are 59 times farther away. The distance from the English to the Bantus of sub-Saharan Africa is 109 times as big as the English-Danish distance.

Why the discrepancy with the race denialists’ claims? Lewontin’s fallacy is addressed quite thoroughly in “Race: A Social Destruction of a Biological Concept” (2001) by Neven Sesardic (Biology and Philosophy 25(2): 143-162): http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/Race.pdf
In brief, two people of the same race are always more similar genetically than two people of different races (pp. 150–154). The main problem is that Lewontin measured genetic variation by looking at each genetic indicator separately, thereby failing to account for genetic clustering.

I suggest you read the posts categorized under “Nature of Race.” : http://unamusementpark.com/category/hum ... e-of-race/ As I explained in this post: http://unamusementpark.com/2011/11/welc ... go-part-4/ for example, human races could be considered subspecies by Mayr’s 1963 criterion for systematic zoology: we can assign people to their correct major racial group with near-perfect accuracy, while Mayr was willing to accept a 75% success rate for non-human species.

By the way, can you tell the difference between Blacks, Whites, and East Asians? And when you know the race of the parents, is there ever any doubt what race the child will be? Doubt you can answer either of those questions without contradicting yourself or lying.

“Haha” indeed.

--

By the way, the main point is that race hustlers like Blakey don’t want anyone to do any sort of research into biological differences between the races, because they need a continuous supply of White guilt to keep the “reparations” flowing.

He wants to bash Whites for the benefit of Blacks, thereby stirring up Black resentment, rage, and racial hatred toward Whites, and he won’t let a few inconvenient facts stand in the way.

--

Oh, and read this refutation as well (in particular, “F_ST Follies”).

http://www.goodrumj.com/RFaqHTML.html

They have been shown to be intelligent over years and years of research , the gap is still their between Jews and Asians.
Read this book

Creationist's don't use science , if they did they would already be converted after the reason that it's just unjustified pseudobabble therefore your comparison is inconsistent.

I'm pretty sure that science is conspiracy theory ( sarcasm ) - read the scientific method

Last edited by DuneyBlues on 15 Apr 2012, 1:21 pm, edited 3 times in total.

The Psychology of Modern Leftism

10. By "feelings of inferiority" we mean not only inferiority feelings in the strictest sense but a whole spectrum of related traits: low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend to have such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism.

11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is pronounced among minority rights advocates, whether or not they belong to the minority groups whose rights they defend. They are hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities. The terms "negro," "oriental," "handicapped" or "chick" for an African, an Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory connotation. "Broad" and "chick" were merely the feminine equivalents of "guy," "dude" or "fellow." The negative connotations have been attached to these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal rights advocates have gone so far as to reject the word "pet" and insist on its replacement by "animal companion." Leftist anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid saying anything about primitive peoples that could conceivably be interpreted as negative. They want to replace the word "primitive" by "nonliterate." They seem almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive culture is inferior to our own. (We do not mean to imply that primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours. We merely point out the hypersensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)

12. Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect" terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group but come from privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold among university professors, who have secure employment with comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom are heterosexual, white males from middle-class families.

13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American Indians), repellent (homosexuals), or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit it to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with their problems. (We do not suggest that women, Indians, etc., ARE inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology).

14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.

15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist's real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful.

16. Words like "self-confidence," "self-reliance," "initiative", "enterprise," "optimism," etc. play little role in the liberal and leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti-individualistic, pro-collectivist. He wants society to solve everyone's needs for them, take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense of confidence in his own ability to solve his own problems and satisfy his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.

17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftist intellectuals tend to focus on sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an orgiastic tone, throwing off rational control as if there were no hope of accomplishing anything through rational calculation and all that was left was to immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment.

18. Modern leftist philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science, objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally relative. It is true that one can ask serious questions about the foundations of scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the concept of objective reality can be defined. But it is obvious that modern leftist philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack these concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e. failed, inferior). The leftist's feelings of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an individual's ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is "inferior" it is not his fault, but society's, because he has not been brought up properly.

19. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter, a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith in himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but he can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong, and his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant behavior. [1] But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings of inferiority are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the leftist. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass movement with which he identifies himself.

20. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Leftists protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke police or racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to an end but because they PREFER masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist trait.

21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion or by moral principle, and moral principle does play a role for the leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power. Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help. For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs. Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black people, because the activists' hostile attitude toward the white majority tends to intensify race hatred.

22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would have to INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse for making a fuss.

23. We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate description of everyone who might be considered a leftist. It is only a rough indication of a general tendency of leftism.

OVERSOCIALIZATION

24. Psychologists use the term "socialization" to designate the process by which children are trained to think and act as society demands. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning part of that society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists are over-socialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel. Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are not such rebels as they seem.

25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a non-moral origin. We use the term "oversocialized" to describe such people. [2]

26. Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a sense of powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of the most important means by which our society socializes children is by making them feel ashamed of behavior or speech that is contrary to society's expectations. If this is overdone, or if a particular child is especially susceptible to such feelings, he ends by feeling ashamed of HIMSELF. Moreover the thought and the behavior of the oversocialized person are more restricted by society's expectations than are those of the lightly socialized person. The majority of people engage in a significant amount of naughty behavior. They lie, they commit petty thefts, they break traffic laws, they goof off at work, they hate someone, they say spiteful things or they use some underhanded trick to get ahead of the other guy. The oversocialized person cannot do these things, or if he does do them he generates in himself a sense of shame and self-hatred. The oversocialized person cannot even experience, without guilt, thoughts or feelings that are contrary to the accepted morality; he cannot think "unclean" thoughts. And socialization is not just a matter of morality; we are socialized to confirm to many norms of behavior that do not fall under the heading of morality. Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down for him. In many oversocialized people this results in a sense of constraint and powerlessness that can be a severe hardship. We suggest that oversocialization is among the more serious cruelties that human beings inflict on one another.

27. We argue that a very important and influential segment of the modern left is oversocialized and that their oversocialization is of great importance in determining the direction of modern leftism. Leftists of the oversocialized type tend to be intellectuals or members of the upper-middle class. Notice that university intellectuals [3] constitute the most highly socialized segment of our society and also the most left-wing segment.

28. The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to get off his psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually he is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of society. Generally speaking, the goals of today's leftists are NOT in conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses mainstream society of violating that principle. Examples: racial equality, equality of the sexes, helping poor people, peace as opposed to war, nonviolence generally, freedom of expression, kindness to animals. More fundamentally, the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty of society to take care of the individual. All these have been deeply rooted values of our society (or at least of its middle and upper classes (4) for a long time. These values are explicitly or implicitly expressed or presupposed in most of the material presented to us by the mainstream communications media and the educational system. Leftists, especially those of the oversocialized type, usually do not rebel against these principles but justify their hostility to society by claiming (with some degree of truth) that society is not living up to these principles.

29. Here is an illustration of the way in which the oversocialized leftist shows his real attachment to the conventional attitudes of our society while pretending to be in rebellion against it. Many leftists push for affirmative action, for moving black people into high-prestige jobs, for improved education in black schools and more money for such schools; the way of life of the black "underclass" they regard as a social disgrace. They want to integrate the black man into the system, make him a business executive, a lawyer, a scientist just like upper-middle-class white people. The leftists will reply that the last thing they want is to make the black man into a copy of the white man; instead, they want to preserve African American culture. But in what does this preservation of African American culture consist? It can hardly consist in anything more than eating black-style food, listening to black-style music, wearing black-style clothing and going to a black-style church or mosque. In other words, it can express itself only in superficial matters. In all ESSENTIAL respects more leftists of the oversocialized type want to make the black man conform to white, middle-class ideals. They want to make him study technical subjects, become an executive or a scientist, spend his life climbing the status ladder to prove that black people are as good as white. They want to make black fathers "responsible." they want black gangs to become nonviolent, etc. But these are exactly the values of the industrial-technological system. The system couldn't care less what kind of music a man listens to, what kind of clothes he wears or what religion he believes in as long as he studies in school, holds a respectable job, climbs the status ladder, is a "responsible" parent, is nonviolent and so forth. In effect, however much he may deny it, the oversocialized leftist wants to integrate the black man into the system and make him adopt its values.

30. We certainly do not claim that leftists, even of the oversocialized type, NEVER rebel against the fundamental values of our society. Clearly they sometimes do. Some oversocialized leftists have gone so far as to rebel against one of modern society's most important principles by engaging in physical violence. By their own account, violence is for them a form of "liberation." In other words, by committing violence they break through the psychological restraints that have been trained into them. Because they are oversocialized these restraints have been more confining for them than for others; hence their need to break free of them. But they usually justify their rebellion in terms of mainstream values. If they engage in violence they claim to be fighting against racism or the like.

31. We realize that many objections could be raised to the foregoing thumb-nail sketch of leftist psychology. The real situation is complex, and anything like a complete description of it would take several volumes even if the necessary data were available. We claim only to have indicated very roughly the two most important tendencies in the psychology of modern leftism.

32. The problems of the leftist are indicative of the problems of our society as a whole. Low self-esteem, depressive tendencies and defeatism are not restricted to the left. Though they are especially noticeable in the left, they are widespread in our society. And today's society tries to socialize us to a greater extent than any previous society. We are even told by experts how to eat, how to exercise, how to make love, how to raise our kids and so forth.

THE POWER PROCESS

33. Human beings have a need (probably based in biology) for something that we will call the "power process." This is closely related to the need for power (which is widely recognized) but is not quite the same thing. The power process has four elements. The three most clear-cut of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. (Everyone needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals.) The fourth element is more difficult to define and may not be necessary for everyone. We call it autonomy and will discuss it later (paragraphs 42-44).

34. Consider the hypothetical case of a man who can have anything he wants just by wishing for it. Such a man has power, but he will develop serious psychological problems. At first he will have a lot of fun, but by and by he will become acutely bored and demoralized. Eventually he may become clinically depressed. History shows that leisured aristocracies tend to become decadent. This is not true of fighting aristocracies that have to struggle to maintain their power. But leisured, secure aristocracies that have no need to exert themselves usually become bored, hedonistic and demoralized, even though they have power. This shows that power is not enough. One must have goals toward which to exercise one's power.

35. Everyone has goals; if nothing else, to obtain the physical necessities of life: food, water and whatever clothing and shelter are made necessary by the climate. But the leisured aristocrat obtains these things without effort. Hence his boredom and demoralization.

36. Nonattainment of important goals results in death if the goals are physical necessities, and in frustration if nonattainment of the goals is compatible with survival. Consistent failure to attain goals throughout life results in defeatism, low self-esteem or depression.

37. Thus, in order to avoid serious psychological problems, a human being needs goals whose attainment requires effort, and he must have a reasonable rate of success in attaining his goals.

SOURCES OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS

45. Any of the foregoing symptoms can occur in any society, but in modern industrial society they are present on a massive scale. We aren't the first to mention that the world today seems to be going crazy. This sort of thing is not normal for human societies. There is good reason to believe that primitive man suffered from less stress and frustration and was better satisfied with his way of life than modern man is. It is true that not all was sweetness and light in primitive societies. Abuse of women and children was common among the Australian aborigines, transsexuality was fairly common among some of the American Indian tribes. But it does appear that GENERALLY SPEAKING the kinds of problems that we have listed in the preceding paragraph were far less common among primitive peoples than they are in modern society.

46. We attribute the social and psychological problems of modern society to the fact that that society requires people to live under conditions radically different from those under which the human race evolved and to behave in ways that conflict with the patterns of behavior that the human race developed while living under the earlier conditions. It is clear from what we have already written that we consider lack of opportunity to properly experience the power process as the most important of the abnormal conditions to which modern society subjects people. But it is not the only one. Before dealing with disruption of the power process as a source of social problems we will discuss some of the other sources.

47. Among the abnormal conditions present in modern industrial society are excessive density of population, isolation of man from nature, excessive rapidity of social change and the break-down of natural small-scale communities such as the extended family, the village or the tribe.

48. It is well known that crowding increases stress and aggression. The degree of crowding that exists today and the isolation of man from nature are consequences of technological progress. All pre-industrial societies were predominantly rural. The industrial Revolution vastly increased the size of cities and the proportion of the population that lives in them, and modern agricultural technology has made it possible for the Earth to support a far denser population than it ever did before. (Also, technology exacerbates the effects of crowding because it puts increased disruptive powers in people's hands. For example, a variety of noise-making devices: power mowers, radios, motorcycles, etc. If the use of these devices is unrestricted, people who want peace and quiet are frustrated by the noise. If their use is restricted, people who use the devices are frustrated by the regulations... But if these machines had never been invented there would have been no conflict and no frustration generated by them.)

49. For primitive societies the natural world (which usually changes only slowly) provided a stable framework and therefore a sense of security. In the modern world it is human society that dominates nature rather than the other way around, and modern society changes very rapidly owing to technological change. Thus there is no stable framework.

50. The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society with out causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.

51. The breakdown of traditional values to some extent implies the breakdown of the bonds that hold together traditional small-scale social groups. The disintegration of small-scale social groups is also promoted by the fact that modern conditions often require or tempt individuals to move to new locations, separating themselves from their communities. Beyond that, a technological society HAS TO weaken family ties and local communities if it is to function efficiently. In modern society an individual's loyalty must be first to the system and only secondarily to a small-scale community, because if the internal loyalties of small-scale communities were stronger than loyalty to the system, such communities would pursue their own advantage at the expense of the system.

52. Suppose that a public official or a corporation executive appoints his cousin, his friend or his co-religionist to a position rather than appointing the person best qualified for the job. He has permitted personal loyalty to supersede his loyalty to the system, and that is "nepotism" or "discrimination," both of which are terrible sins in modern society. Would-be industrial societies that have done a poor job of subordinating personal or local loyalties to loyalty to the system are usually very inefficient. (Look at Latin America.) Thus an advanced industrial society can tolerate only those small-scale communities that are emasculated, tamed and made into tools of the system. [7]

53. Crowding, rapid change and the breakdown of communities have been widely recognized as sources of social problems. but we do not believe they are enough to account for the extent of the problems that are seen today.

54. A few pre-industrial cities were very large and crowded, yet their inhabitants do not seem to have suffered from psychological problems to the same extent as modern man. In America today there still are uncrowded rural areas, and we find there the same problems as in urban areas, though the problems tend to be less acute in the rural areas. Thus crowding does not seem to be the decisive factor.

55. On the growing edge of the American frontier during the 19th century, the mobility of the population probably broke down extended families and small-scale social groups to at least the same extent as these are broken down today. In fact, many nuclear families lived by choice in such isolation, having no neighbors within several miles, that they belonged to no community at all, yet they do not seem to have developed problems as a result.

56. Furthermore, change in American frontier society was very rapid and deep. A man might be born and raised in a log cabin, outside the reach of law and order and fed largely on wild meat; and by the time he arrived at old age he might be working at a regular job and living in an ordered community with effective law enforcement. This was a deeper change than that which typically occurs in the life of a modern individual, yet it does not seem to have led to psychological problems. In fact, 19th century American society had an optimistic and self-confident tone, quite unlike that of today's society. [8]

57. The difference, we argue, is that modern man has the sense (largely justified) that change is IMPOSED on him, whereas the 19th century frontiersman had the sense (also largely justified) that he created change himself, by his own choice. Thus a pioneer settled on a piece of land of his own choosing and made it into a farm through his own effort. In those days an entire county might have only a couple of hundred inhabitants and was a far more isolated and autonomous entity than a modern county is. Hence the pioneer farmer participated as a member of a relatively small group in the creation of a new, ordered community. One may well question whether the creation of this community was an improvement, but at any rate it satisfied the pioneer's need for the power process.

58. It would be possible to give other examples of societies in which there has been rapid change and/or lack of close community ties without he kind of massive behavioral aberration that is seen in today's industrial society. We contend that the most important cause of social and psychological problems in modern society is the fact that people have insufficient opportunity to go through the power process in a normal way. We don't mean to say that modern society is the only one in which the power process has been disrupted. Probably most if not all civilized societies have interfered with the power process to a greater or lesser extent. But in modern industrial society the problem has become particularly acute. Leftism, at least in its recent (mid-to-late -20th century) form, is in part a symptom of deprivation with respect to the power process.

DISRUPTION OF THE POWER PROCESS IN MODERN SOCIETY

59. We divide human drives into three groups: (1) those drives that can be satisfied with minimal effort; (2) those that can be satisfied but only at the cost of serious effort; (3) those that cannot be adequately satisfied no matter how much effort one makes. The power process is the process of satisfying the drives of the second group. The more drives there are in the third group, the more there is frustration, anger, eventually defeatism, depression, etc.

60. In modern industrial society natural human drives tend to be pushed into the first and third groups, and the second group tends to consist increasingly of artificially created drives.

61. In primitive societies, physical necessities generally fall into group 2: They can be obtained, but only at the cost of serious effort. But modern society tends to guaranty the physical necessities to everyone [9] in exchange for only minimal effort, hence physical needs are pushed into group 1. (There may be disagreement about whether the effort needed to hold a job is "minimal"; but usually, in lower- to middle-level jobs, whatever effort is required is merely that of obedience. You sit or stand where you are told to sit or stand and do what you are told to do in the way you are told to do it. Seldom do you have to exert yourself seriously, and in any case you have hardly any autonomy in work, so that the need for the power process is not well served.)

62. Social needs, such as sex, love and status, often remain in group 2 in modern society, depending on the situation of the individual. [10] But, except for people who have a particularly strong drive for status, the effort required to fulfill the social drives is insufficient to satisfy adequately the need for the power process.

63. So certain artificial needs have been created that fall into group 2, hence serve the need for the power process. Advertising and marketing techniques have been developed that make many people feel they need things that their grandparents never desired or even dreamed of. It requires serious effort to earn enough money to satisfy these artificial needs, hence they fall into group 2. (But see paragraphs 80-82.) Modern man must satisfy his need for the power process largely through pursuit of the artificial needs created by the advertising and marketing industry [11], and through surrogate activities.

64. It seems that for many people, maybe the majority, these artificial forms of the power process are insufficient. A theme that appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts many people in modern society. (This purposelessness is often called by other names such as "anomic" or "middle-class vacuity.") We suggest that the so-called "identity crisis" is actually a search for a sense of purpose, often for commitment to a suitable surrogate activity. It may be that existentialism is in large part a response to the purposelessness of modern life. [12] Very widespread in modern society is the search for "fulfillment." But we think that for the majority of people an activity whose main goal is fulfillment (that is, a surrogate activity) does not bring completely satisfactory fulfillment. In other words, it does not fully satisfy the need for the power process. (See paragraph 41.) That need can be fully satisfied only through activities that have some external goal, such as physical necessities, sex, love, status, revenge, etc.

65. Moreover, where goals are pursued through earning money, climbing the status ladder or functioning as part of the system in some other way, most people are not in a position to pursue their goals AUTONOMOUSLY. Most workers are someone else's employee as, as we pointed out in paragraph 61, must spend their days doing what they are told to do in the way they are told to do it. Even most people who are in business for themselves have only limited autonomy. It is a chronic complaint of small-business persons and entrepreneurs that their hands are tied by excessive government regulation. Some of these regulations are doubtless unnecessary, but for the most part government regulations are essential and inevitable parts of our extremely complex society. A large portion of small business today operates on the franchise system. It was reported in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago that many of the franchise-granting companies require applicants for franchises to take a personality test that is designed to EXCLUDE those who have creativity and initiative, because such persons are not sufficiently docile to go along obediently with the franchise system. This excludes from small business many of the people who most need autonomy.

66. Today people live more by virtue of what the system does FOR them or TO them than by virtue of what they do for themselves. And what they do for themselves is done more and more along channels laid down by the system. Opportunities tend to be those that the system provides, the opportunities must be exploited in accord with the rules and regulations [13], and techniques prescribed by experts must be followed if there is to be a chance of success.

67. Thus the power process is disrupted in our society through a deficiency of real goals and a deficiency of autonomy in pursuit of goals. But it is also disrupted because of those human drives that fall into group 3: the drives that one cannot adequately satisfy no matter how much effort one makes. One of these drives is the need for security. Our lives depend on decisions made by other people; we have no control over these decisions and usually we do not even know the people who make them. ("We live in a world in which relatively few people - maybe 500 or 1,000 - make the important decisions" - Philip B. Heymann of Harvard Law School, quoted by Anthony Lewis, New York Times, April 21, 1995.) Our lives depend on whether safety standards at a nuclear power plant are properly maintained; on how much pesticide is allowed to get into our food or how much pollution into our air; on how skillful (or incompetent) our doctor is; whether we lose or get a job may depend on decisions made by government economists or corporation executives; and so forth. Most individuals are not in a position to secure themselves against these threats to more [than] a very limited extent. The individual's search for security is therefore frustrated, which leads to a sense of powerlessness.

68. It may be objected that primitive man is physically less secure than modern man, as is shown by his shorter life expectancy; hence modern man suffers from less, not more than the amount of insecurity that is normal for human beings. But psychological security does not closely correspond with physical security. What makes us FEEL secure is not so much objective security as a sense of confidence in our ability to take care of ourselves. Primitive man, threatened by a fierce animal or by hunger, can fight in self-defense or travel in search of food. He has no certainty of success in these efforts, but he is by no means helpless against the things that threaten him. The modern individual on the other hand is threatened by many things against which he is helpless; nuclear accidents, carcinogens in food, environmental pollution, war, increasing taxes, invasion of his privacy by large organizations, nation-wide social or economic phenomena that may disrupt his way of life.

69. It is true that primitive man is powerless against some of the things that threaten him; disease for example. But he can accept the risk of disease stoically. It is part of the nature of things, it is no one's fault, unless it is the fault of some imaginary, impersonal demon. But threats to the modern individual tend to be MAN-MADE. They are not the results of chance but are IMPOSED on him by other persons whose decisions he, as an individual, is unable to influence. Consequently he feels frustrated, humiliated and angry.

70. Thus primitive man for the most part has his security in his own hands (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) whereas the security of modern man is in the hands of persons or organizations that are too remote or too large for him to be able personally to influence them. So modern man's drive for security tends to fall into groups 1 and 3; in some areas (food, shelter, etc.) his security is assured at the cost of only trivial effort, whereas in other areas he CANNOT attain security. (The foregoing greatly simplifies the real situation, but it does indicate in a rough, general way how the condition of modern man differs from that of primitive man.)

71. People have many transitory drives or impulses that are necessary frustrated in modern life, hence fall into group 3. One may become angry, but modern society cannot permit fighting. In many situations it does not even permit verbal aggression. When going somewhere one may be in a hurry, or one may be in a mood to travel slowly, but one generally has no choice but to move with the flow of traffic and obey the traffic signals. One may want to do one's work in a different way, but usually one can work only according to the rules laid down by one's employer. In many other ways as well, modern man is strapped down by a network of rules and regulations (explicit or implicit) that frustrate many of his impulses and thus interfere with the power process. Most of these regulations cannot be disposed with, because the are necessary for the functioning of industrial society.

72. Modern society is in certain respects extremely permissive. In matters that are irrelevant to the functioning of the system we can generally do what we please. We can believe in any religion we like (as long as it does not encourage behavior that is dangerous to the system). We can go to bed with anyone we like (as long as we practice "safe sex"). We can do anything we like as long as it is UNIMPORTANT. But in all IMPORTANT matters the system tends increasingly to regulate our behavior.

73. Behavior is regulated not only through explicit rules and not only by the government. Control is often exercised through indirect coercion or through psychological pressure or manipulation, and by organizations other than the government, or by the system as a whole. Most large organizations use some form of propaganda [14] to manipulate public attitudes or behavior. Propaganda is not limited to "commercials" and advertisements, and sometimes it is not even consciously intended as propaganda by the people who make it. For instance, the content of entertainment programming is a powerful form of propaganda. An example of indirect coercion: There is no law that says we have to go to work every day and follow our employer's orders. Legally there is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild like primitive people or from going into business for ourselves. But in practice there is very little wild country left, and there is room in the economy for only a limited number of small business owners. Hence most of us can survive only as someone else's employee.

74. We suggest that modern man's obsession with longevity, and with maintaining physical vigor and sexual attractiveness to an advanced age, is a symptom of unfulfillment resulting from deprivation with respect to the power process. The "mid-life crisis" also is such a symptom. So is the lack of interest in having children that is fairly common in modern society but almost unheard-of in primitive societies.

75. In primitive societies life is a succession of stages. The needs and purposes of one stage having been fulfilled, there is no particular reluctance about passing on to the next stage. A young man goes through the power process by becoming a hunter, hunting not for sport or for fulfillment but to get meat that is necessary for food. (In young women the process is more complex, with greater emphasis on social power; we won't discuss that here.) This phase having been successfully passed through, the young man has no reluctance about settling down to the responsibilities of raising a family. (In contrast, some modern people indefinitely postpone having children because they are too busy seeking some kind of "fulfillment." We suggest that the fulfillment they need is adequate experience of the power process -- with real goals instead of the artificial goals of surrogate activities.) Again, having successfully raised his children, going through the power process by providing them with the physical necessities, the primitive man feels that his work is done and he is prepared to accept old age (if he survives that long) and death. Many modern people, on the other hand, are disturbed by the prospect of death, as is shown by the amount of effort they expend trying to maintain their physical condition, appearance and health. We argue that this is due to unfulfillment resulting from the fact that they have never put their physical powers to any use, have never gone through the power process using their bodies in a serious way. It is not the primitive man, who has used his body daily for practical purposes, who fears the deterioration of age, but the modern man, who has never had a practical use for his body beyond walking from his car to his house. It is the man whose need for the power process has been satisfied during his life who is best prepared to accept the end of that life.

76. In response to the arguments of this section someone will say, "Society must find a way to give people the opportunity to go through the power process." For such people the value of the opportunity is destroyed by the very fact that society gives it to them. What they need is to find or make their own opportunities. As long as the system GIVES them their opportunities it still has them on a leash. To attain autonomy they must get off that leash.

FINAL NOTE

231. Throughout this article we've made imprecise statements and statements that ought to have had all sorts of qualifications and reservations attached to them; and some of our statements may be flatly false. Lack of sufficient information and the need for brevity made it impossible for us to formulate our assertions more precisely or add all the necessary qualifications. And of course in a discussion of this kind one must rely heavily on intuitive judgment, and that can sometimes be wrong. So we don't claim that this article expresses more than a crude approximation to the truth.

232. All the same we are reasonably confident that the general outlines of the picture we have painted here are roughly correct. We have portrayed leftism in its modern form as a phenomenon peculiar to our time and as a symptom of the disruption of the power process. But we might possibly be wrong about this. Oversocialized types who try to satisfy their drive for power by imposing their morality on everyone have certainly been around for a long time. But we THINK that the decisive role played by feelings of inferiority, low self-esteem, powerlessness, identification with victims by people who are not themselves victims, is a peculiarity of modern leftism. Identification with victims by people not themselves victims can be seen to some extent in 19th century leftism and early Christianity but as far as we can make out, symptoms of low self-esteem, etc., were not nearly so evident in these movements, or in any other movements, as they are in modern leftism. But we are not in a position to assert confidently that no such movements have existed prior to modern leftism. This is a significant question to which historians ought to give their attention.

Comments on sanity:

On criticism of "leftism"

His views on leftism are sound and insightful, and nowadays shared by many who oppose political correctness. Those opponents typically do not reject large-scale technology as the Unabomber does though, on the contrary. This paradox is resolved by assuming the Unabomber's rejection of technology is irrational and related to a mental illness.

Less convincing are the Unabomber's attempts to connect his criticism of leftism to his criticism of technology, for instance by claiming people become leftists because their power process is disrupted by technological society. There, he is trying to artificially connect two types of criticism that are really independent; he his trying to artificially connect a sound criticism (leftism) to a largely unsound one (technology).

Paradoxical are also the Unabomber's "green" views on environmental issues; such views are common for leftists, so he is siding with the enemy there. This has to do with his preference for primitive life, which in turn results from his rejection of technology. So again, the paradox is resolved by assuming this rejection is irrational.

Another paradox, solvable in the same way, is leftism's association with the "soft" alpha sciences. Leftists are no fans of the "hard" beta sciences that constitute technology. So again, in this respect the Unabomber sides with the enemy through his probably unsound rejection of technology.

There are more such paradoxes in the manifesto; generally put, his rejection of technology now and then leads him to viewpoints or conclusions that are leftist, in other words, that are in contradiction with his own criticsm of leftism.
On "the power process"

The concept of "the power process" is reminiscent of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Remarkable is that the Unabomber only qualifies a very limited set of goals to truly serve the power process. From paragraph 64:

"That need can be fully satisfied only through activities that have some external goal, such as physical necessities, sex, love, status, revenge, etc."

Most goals striven for in modern society he dismisses as "surrogate activity" and "fulfillment". Interestingly he mentions status and revenge as genuine goals; I assume he includes those because he experienced his own strivings for status and revenge (the Unabomb activities and other revenge actions) as satisfying his power process.
On feelings of inferiority

A very interesting remark in paragraph 11, about leftists:

"When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him [...] we conclude that he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem."

The psychiatric report actually says about exactly the same about the Unabomber himself, but concludes something different, to wit that he is over-sensitive and paranoid.

“Anti-racism” is just a euphemism for anti-White racism.

First my other posts prove that we are fundamentally different subgroups of the homo sapiens , read those.

Read these posts that address your claim that supposed racism by science is unscientific:

http://unamusementpark.com/2011/04/scie ... ce-part-1/
http://unamusementpark.com/2011/04/scie ... ce-part-2/

Again , another ignorant Strawman argument "acknowledging there are differences caused by genetic drift and geography does not make one a racial realist".

Sigh , Here's the definition of Racial Realism:

- Wikipedia

Last edited by DuneyBlues on 15 Apr 2012, 1:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.