RSS
As America increasingly concedes moral dominance to blacks, it’s time for a “1618 Project” to study where our new sub-Saharan overlords are coming from. Racial differences are not just nature but also nurture. African-Americans have some ways of thinking that go back to Africa.
A huge amount of anthropological research into Africa has been conducted over the generations, but almost nobody in America is aware of it. Further, the notion that there can be cultural connections between the way African tribespeople and America’s leading intellectuals, such Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ibram X Kendi, think seems subversive (and we definitely wouldn’t want to be suspected of being subversive about black people).
For example, an anthropologist named Van Rooy studying the Venda people of South Africa (from whom RSA president Cyril Ramaphosa comes) coined the term “limited cosmic good” to describe their basic worldview:
There is only a limited amount of good (that is: life force, good luck, prestige, influence, children, possessions) in the cosmos. Each person is allotted a fixed quantity of this good. It can only be increased at the expense of someone else, by way of black magic, ritual murder or theft.
It’s basically an extension of zero-sum thinking (“Limited Good” in George M. Foster’s 1965 coinage) from economics to the cosmos as a whole.
Although coined by an anthropologist studying the Venda, a friend from South Africa writes, “but talking with Africans the concept is held among most of the less educated africans and many educated (less so among those who are Christians and who are born again).” He goes on:
If I am doing well and you are doing poorly, its not because I am more intelligent, or hard working or even have some natural resource , or just luck, it is because I have stolen your goodness.
There is limited goodness that must be shared among the tribe equally and if I am doing better than the tribe its because I have gained excessive goodness by enchantment.
The remedy is go to the witchdoctor (sangoma) and ask him for an enchantment to hurt me, so that the cosmic equilibrium can be restored and that the ancestors will be pleased.
The witch doctor must first do his mumbo jumbo by throwing the bones or if in a group by sniffing out the culprits to see who is causing this wickedness.
That enchantment can be an occult spell but it can be something like poison to kill me or they could come and burn me and my household.
It’s a common fear among africans that they will be poisoned by other members of the tribe or even their wives. (Zuma accused one of his wives of poisoning him).
Its something W.E.I.R.D. people simply don’t understand, but people like Kendi are still into the idea even though they may never have heard of it. I.e. he believes Whites do well because of enchantment eg systemic racism.
As I pointed out in 2018, the late anthropologist Henry Harpending had been thinking about how fear of systemic racism sounds like an offshoot of African fear of witchcraft:
… a big difference between traditional European and contemporary African conceptions of witchcraft is that in Africa intent is not required to hex victims, just bad feelings toward them.
Emotions get projected over vast distances, so beware.
Indeed, the current concepts of “systemic racism” and “implicit bias,” as promulgated on campuses by African-American Studies departments, sound an awful lot like African tribal notions of witchcraft. In Africa, for example, white privilege protects whites from racism witchcraft. Educated Herero in Namibia explained to Harpending:
Even more interesting to us was the universal understanding that white people were not vulnerable to witchcraft and could neither feel it nor understand it. White people literally lack a crucial sense, or part of the brain. An upside, I was told, was that we did not face the dangers that locals faced. On the other hand our bad feelings could be projected so as good citizens we had to monitor carefully our own “hearts.”
Henry concluded:
A colleague pointed out a few weeks ago, after hearing this story, that if [this conception of witchcraft] is nearly pan-African then perhaps some of it came to the New World. Prominent and not so prominent talkers from the American Black population come out with similar theories of vague and invisible forces that are oppressing people, like “institutional racism” and “white privilege.”
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
We’re all tribal now.
“… America’s leading intellectuals, such Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ibram X Kendi …”
Are you being ironic, or sadly reporting of what society-at-large thinks? Or both?
Extreme literalism seems to be a tendency amongst some iSteve commenters.
The “limited cosmic good” theory does do a damn-fine job of summing up the world view of so many blacks and the whole BLM movement, if not as well the ongoing affirmative action campaign. The thinking goes that there’s only a limited amount of good jobs out there and only the lucky or evil get them (merit DEFINITELY has nothing to do with it). If it is in fact only luck or evil that gets you a nice job, then black folks have been cheated out of so many high-paying jobs. Since apparently blacks have been cheated for so damn long, society needs to pay!!!
And here we are in 2021 . . .
You can see in that the rationale for describing the 1922 Tulsa race riots as the desire of the white community to destroy the successful black community. From the black perspective, though not from the white, the destruction of a successful black community made perfect sense. It freed up more benefits for the whites.
When you share a community with people having that outlook, you damn well better not let them gain power.Replies: @PaceLaw
The only problem with that, Steve, is that ‘institutional racism’ and ‘white privilege’ were ‘concepts’ dreamt up by whites.
These white ideas were developed to explain the failures of civil rights legislation, affirmative action and the trillions of dollars given to blacks via government programs failed to close the gaps. Whites developed the idea of systemic racism when actual evidence of racism could not be found.
Whites will continue to use their intellect to create new theories to explain how whites are the cause of black pathologies. Any other explanations are deemed racist.Replies: @Buffalo Joe
1. Not really. Most of the theorists of Critical Race Theory (CRT) are AA, or more precisely mixed race. With some exception (Delgado and his wife Stefancic).
2. Also intellectuals dream up a lot of theories, and these theories go into the market of ideas. Some catch up, and those that catch up are those that are palatable to the intended audience. CRT is the ideal theory for a specific audience.
3. It is interesting to note that early theorists forerunning CRT (such as Frantz Fanon) which grew up in the tradition of western philosophy had a very different view, and advocated separation from the colonizers.
4. The realization that, when the game allows gains from cooperation, you can actually do that and realize the gains is sophisticated. It takes ... cognitive skills to realize this. Modern experimental research in game theory finds precisely this. Which brings us to a potentially different explanation of why a zero-sum view of the world may be more popular in some groups.Replies: @Anonymous, @Bizarro World Observer
Friday, got the golf bug so I headed out to my regular course in Sonoma County, and surprise! They’re having a black golf tournament. So I sat down on a bench for some people watching with the iPad for camouflage and man, did those brothas look happy. Lotsa laughing’ and jivin’ and slick cars and it was all quite upscale. One guy who looked like Uncle Ben even played in a starched long-sleeve shirt like he was Walter Hagen or something. But really, underneath it all I knew they were suffering their lived experience.
It used to be that north of the Golden Gate was a zone where nary a diaspora african could be found. It's still very white in the beautiful coastal counties of Marin, Sonoma, and Mendocino. Elimination of golf tournaments would be a positive step.
One may criticize our “overlords” for being evil, but by and large they are not fools. Early on they recognized this propensity in the negro worldview. More to the point, they figured out how to capitalize on it.
There may be some truth to these theories, though I wouldn’t know, having never studied it.
Two thoughts about this have always lurked in the back of my head about it: they don’t come from scholarship or study, but rather from plain observation and applying a sort of chess-logic, so they’re really just speculation…
1. From my observation, a large part of the embarrassing shallowness and plain idiocy of black political discourse stems from certain habits of mind which were developed over decades (centuries?) in the black Church, which for a very long time was the only place where blacks had access to sustained public discourse (there weren’t a lot of black college grads until fairly recently).
So in other words their habits of mind stem from preaching rather than from genuine discourse, from assertion and emotionalism rather than from genuine thought. The “Argument by assertion” Fallacy is a major feature of black public discourse, and it gets carried to rather childish levels. Of course it’s easy to see where this came from, and to forgive its origins: after all, human beings should not have to PROVE they are human beings, and PROVE they should be treated as such — the simple assertion ought to suffice. But having won that victory, they really ought to be moving on to the grownups’ table, and they never do.
2. Europeans slowly invented and created Modernity, or the Modern consciousness, over many centuries. Then, for better or worse, they spread it to all sorts of other civilizations who had no experience with it, or with its development. IOW Modernity was painstakingly created by people who understood it, and then dumped in the laps of many other peoples who were understandably baffled by it. Consider the different approaches to adapting to Modernity by the Japanese (Meiji, hyper-militarism, imperialist warfare, defeat, then confinement to commercial and technological excellence); the Chinese (total chaos for decade after decade, followed at last by a sort of mercantile entente); the Arab world (mostly just sheer hostility and brick-wall head-banging).
The African-American population has only had a very short and recent chance to come to terms with Modernity in their own fashion. For centuries they were confined to plantations and had almost no contact with Modernity except for the crueler aspects; then after Emancipation came decades of Jim Crow and ghetto segregation, which kept them in only minimal contact with Modernity, and still on the receiving end of its hostile parts. Only recently (I’d argue with the rise of hip-hop) have A-A’s had a chance to construct a response to Modernity on their own terms.
One would like to think that intellectual temper-tantrums like CRT are just a species of teething or growing pains, but given the near-zero intellectual achievements of earlier generations, I don’t know how optimistic one can be.
The transition to modernity is almost everywhere painful and bloody. And yes some adapt to it better than others.
It's not entirely a black thing.
The Roman Catholic church maintained high levels of intellectualism, logic, argumentation, etc., even drawing on Jewish and Islamic sources; BUT of course with the proviso of never questioning dogma.
The early Protestant churches (Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican) continued this, extending it to the examination of scripture itself (Luther's "grammatico-critical" method was really the ancestor of the Higher Criticism). Apart from leading to innumerable denominations (which Catholics would have just counted as "heresies") it lead to two opposite reactions: one keeping reason and, on that basis, rejecting scripture ("The Epistles have no authority because ultimately they have no author" -- Robert Price), the other keeping scripture and rejecting reason: Fundamentalism.
The black churches and the foot-washing, snake-handling, end-is-nigh Baptists etc. are all just one big ball of dumbness. Notice that usually, as with Bro. Stair, an apocalyptic radio preacher I've studied for years, they often will point out their distance from "White Nationalists" and "Supreem-acists" (as Bro. Stair mocks them) and laud their "black brothers and sisters" (Neither Jew nor Gentile and all that in Christ). Some critics have suggested that Bro. Stair's preference for black congregations came from belief that the women were more easily abused. Since his recent death, his group has been taken over by a black pastor.
https://counter-currents.com/2021/07/the-passing-over-of-the-overcomer/
Albion's Seed catalogued how modern US Whites echo their ancestors from 400 years ago, and how they in turn echoed their ancestors even earlier.
So today you can stand in a wealthy, technologically advanced society yet your folkways might reflect East Anglia 1,400 years ago.
Why wouldn't modern US Blacks echo their ancestral folkways, too, from long long ago?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82cdnAUvsw8Replies: @JimDandy
I’ll say this, a white person couldn’t have created this work of art.
https://youtu.be/KYtpi9Z--QQ
Albeit the man who wrote the tune, Baden Powell (and not A. C. Jobim, seen here on keyboard) was a mulatto.Translation of “Canto de Ossanha”, by Baden Powell and Vinicius de Moraes
They are Venetian Kangz.
Are you being ironic, or sadly reporting of what society-at-large thinks? Or both?Replies: @Boomthorkell, @SunBakedSuburb, @loren
There isn’t much a difference these days, is there?
That aside, the witchcraft-resistance point the Herero made is actually pretty on point. People who do not believe in local magical cosmologies, or any at all, tend to be very resistant to their effects (metaphysical or induced through imagination).
I’ve never been bothered by a haunted house or someone’s own thought-form creations, because I too am protected by my powerful, Celto-Aryan King-tier belief that their petty magics and spirits won’t bother with me.
It’s signature.
So it’s time for us Whites to go do that voodoo we do so well, and make certain black intellectual voices go silent?
Good point. The theory of systemic racism was created by whites to explain why Blacks continue to under-perform whites financially and to explain the persistent testing gaps.
These white ideas were developed to explain the failures of civil rights legislation, affirmative action and the trillions of dollars given to blacks via government programs failed to close the gaps. Whites developed the idea of systemic racism when actual evidence of racism could not be found.
Whites will continue to use their intellect to create new theories to explain how whites are the cause of black pathologies. Any other explanations are deemed racist.
The execution is a unique work of art.
Agreed. I love it. There's an interesting story behind it.Replies: @JimDandy, @The Germ Theory of Disease, @TexJ
To what extent were west Africans engaged in agriculture before contact with Europeans?
Three years ago from The Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/11/black-millennials-african-witchcraft-christianity/574393/
The Witches of Baltimore: Young black women are leaving Christianity and embracing African witchcraft in digital covens
This sounds sort of like a fake trend story from the New York Times, but still …
In other words, I’m making this up to get my $25 from The Atlantic.
So the writer is implying a sort of epigenetic transfer of African religion to the present day.
This really sounds more like black girls culturally appropriating white girl Young Adult novel culture.
*When pop/mainstream culture was devoted to Boomers in the 1970's and 80's, goofy crap was everywhere (much of it produced by the weirdos and con-men of older generations who preyed on Boomer gullibility). Now that we're well past catering to Boomers, anything the least bit mystical/supernatural/religious is largely on the backburner, just as it was before Boomers took over (religious institutions were culturally important in the 1950's, but open and highly public discussion and analysis of essentially mystical and intangible things regarding religion and the supernatural was generally frowned upon. Talk to your pastor or close friends about it, but leave others out.)
Yes it's true that modern SJW anti-racism is a sort of religion, but it also is intensely focused on the outside realm and real world. Whereas Boomer New Agism was concentrated on highly personal issues in a narcissistic make-believe world (well before Millennials were savagely attacked for immaturity, Boomers were often accused of preferring childish fantasy and destiny as opposed to cold empiricism).Replies: @SunBakedSuburb
Trying to culturally appropriate the White trope of "one of my ancestors was a Navaho shaman."
For several thousand years. The Bantu Expansion was based on agriculture and iron-smelting, for hoes.
Q: What did he deal?Replies: @reactionry
Keep your noticin’ hand strong Steve.
What blacks think & do is well known, but this is too speculative & wrong.
Actually, most archaic peoples did have that notion of “allotted portion”. For instance. among Greeks, it was common (Pindar, I think Herodotus etc.). A very refined & influential Aristotle’s “the golden mean” has its roots in this primitive idea.
One could argue that it is not the same because African blacks’ ideas seem to stem from the notion of scarcity. I don’t know, but the result is the same: you get your share of life, and if you try to cross boundaries, you’ll be punished.
US blacks don’t have these ideas. They see that other races have it better- I mean accomplishment etc., they resent it & rationalize it by inventing fictions they’ve been robbed of the plenitude of (material) life because of evil schemes of, essentially- whites.
Supporting your point, there's the image from Homer of the two urns on Zuse's doorstep, from which he doles out to each new soul a portion of bad luck and, usually -- but not always, a portion of good luck, too.
It should be noted that sub-Saharan Africa was the last place to develop agriculture.
He who smelt it, dealt it.
Q: What did he deal?
Subsaharan Africa developed agriculture in BC times, long before several other places, such as Australia and perhaps North America.
The following link (unfortunately limited by JSTOR) is from 1928, but I suspect without searching further that some of its observations have been made by Europeans for hundreds of years.https://www.jstor.org/stable/1155633This might be worth looking into for its coverage of iron tools, matriarchy, archeobotany and much more. It utilizes tables, photos, figures and maps.http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~tcrndfu/IWAA/Blench.pdf
(some attention should be paid to Map 3. Distribution of the iler spade)Replies: @Buffalo Joe
It was brought here by British settlers in 1788.
You know, there was a reason for those white sheets.
In the UK the Princess Royal (Anne) usually hands out “Children of Courage” awards just before Christmas to kids who have been suffering from chronic conditions. Maybe Princess Meghan could be persuaded to do the same for those heroic golfas?
totally different class of society?*
She answered, *Oh, I'd have been a long-distance lorry (truck) driver.*
Q: What did he deal?Replies: @reactionry
– sorry – comment ill-suited for this thread
In various forms of Prestige Olympics the amount of cosmic good is intentionally limited. eg. Harvard’s undergrad population hasn’t changed in 30 years even though the US population has increased 30% over that time.
“As America increasingly concedes moral dominance to blacks, it’s time for a “1618 Project” to study where our new sub-Saharan overlords are coming from.”
1485 might be a better kickoff date. 1485 is when the Portuguese showed up at the Empire of Benin and discovered African slavery (which the Africans already knew about). The British show up in 1553 so that might be more relevant for Americans. Oddly enough there was no attempt to colonize them at this point.
The first European travelers to reach Benin were Portuguese explorers under João Afonso de Aveiro in about 1485. A strong mercantile relationship developed, with the Edo trading slaves and tropical products such as ivory, pepper and palm oil for European goods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Benin#European_contact
An interesting character in all this is Queen Idia who is the person most responsible for propelling Benin into a regional power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idia
Benin’s dark past of slavery
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/5321484.stm
Two thoughts about this have always lurked in the back of my head about it: they don't come from scholarship or study, but rather from plain observation and applying a sort of chess-logic, so they're really just speculation...
1. From my observation, a large part of the embarrassing shallowness and plain idiocy of black political discourse stems from certain habits of mind which were developed over decades (centuries?) in the black Church, which for a very long time was the only place where blacks had access to sustained public discourse (there weren't a lot of black college grads until fairly recently).
So in other words their habits of mind stem from preaching rather than from genuine discourse, from assertion and emotionalism rather than from genuine thought. The "Argument by assertion" Fallacy is a major feature of black public discourse, and it gets carried to rather childish levels. Of course it's easy to see where this came from, and to forgive its origins: after all, human beings should not have to PROVE they are human beings, and PROVE they should be treated as such -- the simple assertion ought to suffice. But having won that victory, they really ought to be moving on to the grownups' table, and they never do.
2. Europeans slowly invented and created Modernity, or the Modern consciousness, over many centuries. Then, for better or worse, they spread it to all sorts of other civilizations who had no experience with it, or with its development. IOW Modernity was painstakingly created by people who understood it, and then dumped in the laps of many other peoples who were understandably baffled by it. Consider the different approaches to adapting to Modernity by the Japanese (Meiji, hyper-militarism, imperialist warfare, defeat, then confinement to commercial and technological excellence); the Chinese (total chaos for decade after decade, followed at last by a sort of mercantile entente); the Arab world (mostly just sheer hostility and brick-wall head-banging).
The African-American population has only had a very short and recent chance to come to terms with Modernity in their own fashion. For centuries they were confined to plantations and had almost no contact with Modernity except for the crueler aspects; then after Emancipation came decades of Jim Crow and ghetto segregation, which kept them in only minimal contact with Modernity, and still on the receiving end of its hostile parts. Only recently (I'd argue with the rise of hip-hop) have A-A's had a chance to construct a response to Modernity on their own terms.
One would like to think that intellectual temper-tantrums like CRT are just a species of teething or growing pains, but given the near-zero intellectual achievements of earlier generations, I don't know how optimistic one can be.Replies: @Old Prude, @Stebbing Heuer, @James J O'Meara, @anon, @Mr. Grey
Hope springs eternal.
Mr. Sailer commented fairly recently on the roles of women and hoes in West African agriculture.
The following link (unfortunately limited by JSTOR) is from 1928, but I suspect without searching further that some of its observations have been made by Europeans for hundreds of years.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1155633
This might be worth looking into for its coverage of iron tools, matriarchy, archeobotany and much more. It utilizes tables, photos, figures and maps.
http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~tcrndfu/IWAA/Blench.pdf
(some attention should be paid to Map 3. Distribution of the iler spade)
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/11/black-millennials-african-witchcraft-christianity/574393/
The Witches of Baltimore: Young black women are leaving Christianity and embracing African witchcraft in digital covens
This sounds sort of like a fake trend story from the New York Times, but still ...In other words, I'm making this up to get my $25 from The Atlantic.So the writer is implying a sort of epigenetic transfer of African religion to the present day.
This really sounds more like black girls culturally appropriating white girl Young Adult novel culture.Replies: @Feryl, @James J O'Meara
Millennials are incrediblly irreligious. Not just in the sense of not following organized religion, but in any sense at all. This they aren’t really into supernatural stuff either* They aren’t like Boomers who often became kooky devotees of weird crap some of which they never fully rejected even as they aged decades beyond the 60’s and 70’s.
*When pop/mainstream culture was devoted to Boomers in the 1970’s and 80’s, goofy crap was everywhere (much of it produced by the weirdos and con-men of older generations who preyed on Boomer gullibility). Now that we’re well past catering to Boomers, anything the least bit mystical/supernatural/religious is largely on the backburner, just as it was before Boomers took over (religious institutions were culturally important in the 1950’s, but open and highly public discussion and analysis of essentially mystical and intangible things regarding religion and the supernatural was generally frowned upon. Talk to your pastor or close friends about it, but leave others out.)
Yes it’s true that modern SJW anti-racism is a sort of religion, but it also is intensely focused on the outside realm and real world. Whereas Boomer New Agism was concentrated on highly personal issues in a narcissistic make-believe world (well before Millennials were savagely attacked for immaturity, Boomers were often accused of preferring childish fantasy and destiny as opposed to cold empiricism).
Present day elite activity portends a regime of Scientism and materialism. So you will be happy living in your human compartment, under 24/7 bio-medical surveillance. Don't be surprised if your vanquishing of superstition leads to the rise of another annihilationist leader who promises a return to the gods and imagination because that's what the vast majority of humans crave. Personally, I prefer the middle ground between the two extremes. But that's too reasonable.Replies: @Feryl
Of course, none of these other things are arguments against a Limited Cosmic Good worldview. Nor does such a worldview prevent somebody operating within its framework from understanding the efficacy of these other things. It just means that intelligence, hard work, resources, and luck are are themselves goods which are also limited and also distributed unevenly.
At bottom, Limited Cosmic Good seems to depend upon counterfactual reasoning. “If such-and-such circumstances had been different, the person who has all the good stuff now might have less of it and I might have more.” In response to this cosmic shortchanging, the person who feels slighted will demand not only some redistribution of goods but also some affect compensation. The person with more must be made to suffer.
This type of thinking is pretty universally human. It is certainly not unique to black Africans, nor is it even necessarily wrong. Goods are scarce, after all; and human societies must settle the question of how good are to be distributed. It is a complex problem that involves many opportunities for unfairness to creep in. Punishing people who have unfairly appropriated goods to themselves, and compensating the victims of fraud, is a big part of what justice is all about.
The problem is not that blacks think this way (everybody thinks this way). The problem is that African-American blacks have already been the recipients of a great deal of stolen goods, and the bad juju is on them, and they know it.
Hesiod talks about good strife and bad strife. Bad is folks fighting each other over possessions, and good strife is when folks compete for status and wealth by improving their personal property — keeping up with the Joneses. The Greeks didn’t like work, usually referring to is as drudgery, but they knew what it was good for: “a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with his neighbour as he hurries after wealth.”
Supporting your point, there’s the image from Homer of the two urns on Zuse’s doorstep, from which he doles out to each new soul a portion of bad luck and, usually — but not always, a portion of good luck, too.
Reading Negroes in Negroland helps explain a lot of modern black behaviors.
Let’s just call it “agriculture for hoes”.
I actually kind of agree with the Africans. It is much more important to them how they are thought of than it is to the people in the West. Even in the West, most people would prefer to be thought of well, rather than have some small improvement in their material situation.
As for their theory of limited “cosmic good”, or, as I prefer it, limited light. This is also true, in a way. If your main sense of value is in how people think of you, then it matters also how they think of you relative to others. This makes that light a limited resource.
The solution is to value how well you know yourself, and can bathe in your own light. This reduces your need to shield yourself from the bad thoughts of others and your need to insist that they think good thoughts of you; in exactly the proportion to how much you succeed in your endeavour.
It is an unfortunate label, but theirs is a primitive psychology. It lacks critical consciousness and therefore borders psychosis. You can see it in the way that they cannot conceive of their own responsibility. You can also see it in how emotional outbursts and extravagant expressions of pain are held up as proof that someone is hurting them, not just that they are hurt. Little children do the same thing.
Obviously, there are many black people who are not like this and obviously there are some who even transcend critical consciousness; but it is impossible to not to see the reality of the situation.
It isn’t that others are thinking bad thoughts of them, though they may, it is that they think bad thoughts of themselves, and have not even begun to explore this yet.
Condescendingly treating such people as if they are in special, irredeemable need, is not going to help them. It actually does the opposite and enables this limited way of thinking.
Schopenhauer, "The Wisdom of Life" which he admits is mostly from Horace and the Stoics.
Very much like the oddball psychology of Frederick Rolfe, aka "Baron Corvo." Once, when he had a toothache, he muttered "Someone shall pay for this." He tells that story himself (the protagonist of every book is himself in some historical disguise, including an modern English Pope).
He considered himself a genius, and therefore entitled to support; hence, no gratitude for any handouts. Also therefore, he ought to have been a renowned author, and since he never was, he attributed it to a plot among publishers and authors. In fact, being paranoid, he eventually turned on anyone who helped him, and spent most of his time writing insulting letters to previous benefactors.
Sounds like your typical African American.
Sociologist Jeff Salaz worked undercover as a casino dealer in Las Vegas and South Africa. He found that Vegas players would accept random chance as the deciding factor when they lost, whereas South African players would look around the table for someone to blame. Mere luck was not an adequate explanation for them.
The book is called “Labor of Luck”: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520259492/the-labor-of-luck
Two thoughts about this have always lurked in the back of my head about it: they don't come from scholarship or study, but rather from plain observation and applying a sort of chess-logic, so they're really just speculation...
1. From my observation, a large part of the embarrassing shallowness and plain idiocy of black political discourse stems from certain habits of mind which were developed over decades (centuries?) in the black Church, which for a very long time was the only place where blacks had access to sustained public discourse (there weren't a lot of black college grads until fairly recently).
So in other words their habits of mind stem from preaching rather than from genuine discourse, from assertion and emotionalism rather than from genuine thought. The "Argument by assertion" Fallacy is a major feature of black public discourse, and it gets carried to rather childish levels. Of course it's easy to see where this came from, and to forgive its origins: after all, human beings should not have to PROVE they are human beings, and PROVE they should be treated as such -- the simple assertion ought to suffice. But having won that victory, they really ought to be moving on to the grownups' table, and they never do.
2. Europeans slowly invented and created Modernity, or the Modern consciousness, over many centuries. Then, for better or worse, they spread it to all sorts of other civilizations who had no experience with it, or with its development. IOW Modernity was painstakingly created by people who understood it, and then dumped in the laps of many other peoples who were understandably baffled by it. Consider the different approaches to adapting to Modernity by the Japanese (Meiji, hyper-militarism, imperialist warfare, defeat, then confinement to commercial and technological excellence); the Chinese (total chaos for decade after decade, followed at last by a sort of mercantile entente); the Arab world (mostly just sheer hostility and brick-wall head-banging).
The African-American population has only had a very short and recent chance to come to terms with Modernity in their own fashion. For centuries they were confined to plantations and had almost no contact with Modernity except for the crueler aspects; then after Emancipation came decades of Jim Crow and ghetto segregation, which kept them in only minimal contact with Modernity, and still on the receiving end of its hostile parts. Only recently (I'd argue with the rise of hip-hop) have A-A's had a chance to construct a response to Modernity on their own terms.
One would like to think that intellectual temper-tantrums like CRT are just a species of teething or growing pains, but given the near-zero intellectual achievements of earlier generations, I don't know how optimistic one can be.Replies: @Old Prude, @Stebbing Heuer, @James J O'Meara, @anon, @Mr. Grey
Thanks for this.
The transition to modernity is almost everywhere painful and bloody. And yes some adapt to it better than others.
I’m going to go ahead and say that this analogy – or corollary? or something? whatever it may be called – is something I haven’t thought of, but that I find to be brilliant.
“All this bad stuff that happens to me is beyond my control and is the fault of
bad magicracism andbad magicracism never happens to white people because they don’t think it’s real.”That’s our 2021 society in a nutshell. Kudos.
Also, as further evidence, I remember many years ago in the more innocent days of the internet, before Facebook, there was a viral email that went around with polling data about the common fears of white people versus those of black people.
Quoting from memory, whites were scared of mundane “bad luck” type stuff (i.e. a terminal illness) and blacks were more scared of dogs and, quite germane to this topic, ghosts.
The only problem with that, Steve, is that ‘institutional racism’ and ‘white privilege’ were ‘concepts’ dreamt up by whites.
1. Not really. Most of the theorists of Critical Race Theory (CRT) are AA, or more precisely mixed race. With some exception (Delgado and his wife Stefancic).
2. Also intellectuals dream up a lot of theories, and these theories go into the market of ideas. Some catch up, and those that catch up are those that are palatable to the intended audience. CRT is the ideal theory for a specific audience.
3. It is interesting to note that early theorists forerunning CRT (such as Frantz Fanon) which grew up in the tradition of western philosophy had a very different view, and advocated separation from the colonizers.
4. The realization that, when the game allows gains from cooperation, you can actually do that and realize the gains is sophisticated. It takes … cognitive skills to realize this. Modern experimental research in game theory finds precisely this. Which brings us to a potentially different explanation of why a zero-sum view of the world may be more popular in some groups.
I'd be surprised if most people didn't believe they're poorer than they should be because somebody else has more than his fair share. It's part of human nature.
Also, black slaves in America didn't come from southern Africa. Africa is a big continent.
And many a Bantu farmer complained “The hoes better have my money!”
Keep your noticin’ hand strong Steve.
https://twitter.com/akothari/status/1416311114011348993?s=20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae9RLvFXChQ
The great Edward Banfield, in 1958’s The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, said that the “idea of limited good” was the cause of the backwardness of southern Italy as compared to northern Italy. People couldn’t co-operate because they couldn’t trust one another. His wife was from there and he spent a good deal of time there.
In his 1970 The Unheavenly City: The Nature and Future of Our Urban Crisis, he went against the conventional wisdom of the time, most famously in the chapter titled, “Rioting (Mainly) for Fun and Profit” (largely a reprint of a previously published article).
This ties in with Mircea Eliade in The Myth of the Eternal Return.
So, the modern should believe that bad stuff just happens? Like Climate Change?
Oh wait. Climate Change issues from the malevolence of fossil fuel producers and consumers.
Monsters from the Id and the Krell Machine.
Obviously the similarities between wokism and religion have been noted by many at this point, with white supremacy permeating our society like The Force in Star Wars. I am not sure though how much of black demands for supremacy can be attributed to mysticism rather than a straightforward desire for vengeance and punishment, which white allies are also keen to participate in because they look down on whites that don’t share their cultural/political preferences.
The relevant concept is evil eye.
Go ahead and make your 40, 50, 60 million but just lay low in your 2BR house and drive a honda accord and stay away from just about everybody and you should be fine. It’s a cruel world and it is really a pity that after we grow up we adopt a default attitude of I’ve got mine and the other people can fend for themselves but if somebody has a better idea they sure don’t have any presentation skills.
The African big man blooms for a season and then he will be ritually sacrificed. See Henderson the Rain King. See Richard Sherman.
Well, there is a limited number of “good jobs” out there. If you want one, you have to compete with others for them—- by studying and doing your homework, being polite and dressing decently at job interviews, etc. Fortunately for those desiring these jobs, a vast number of their contemporaries are not competing. They’re kvetching.
This is very thought-provoking. This notion of a vague tendency behind exploitation pisses me off. The problem is not racism. The problem is racial discrimination. World-standard law reflects this, and it is the supreme law of the land. So why is the government dicking around with the global war on attribution error? Pigs don’t shoot blacks cause they’re racist, pigs shoot blacks cause they can.
This kind of obscurantism is a common pattern in predatory states. In the days of yore big shots would lump together all the varied traps and pitfalls set up by the worst most money-grubbing assholes and call it “God’s will. Now big shots lump together all the varied traps and pitfalls set by the worst most money-grubbing assholes and call it “the economy.” Either way it fools the peasants when you want to fuck them over.
That’s a very interesting remark, that limited good is zero-sum thinking transferred from economics. Zero-sum competition is one very special case of economic or social interaction (It’s a linear program with a maximin or minimax objective function and a specified range of positive constraints.) But in the USA that’s all you hear because statist economics fixates on budgets and not resources. It’s constantly, reflexively applied to economic rights. But it’s never applied to repressive capacity, guns or bombs or cops or tanks, that’s just more more more. So zero-sum is clearly not all there is. It’s just a way to keep you from getting what you actually want, the means of life. It seems perfectly characteristic and natural that US statist doctrine would take indigenous zero-sum thinking from African culture and run with it.
The execution is a unique work of art.
Agreed. I love it. There’s an interesting story behind it.
As for their theory of limited "cosmic good", or, as I prefer it, limited light. This is also true, in a way. If your main sense of value is in how people think of you, then it matters also how they think of you relative to others. This makes that light a limited resource.
The solution is to value how well you know yourself, and can bathe in your own light. This reduces your need to shield yourself from the bad thoughts of others and your need to insist that they think good thoughts of you; in exactly the proportion to how much you succeed in your endeavour.
It is an unfortunate label, but theirs is a primitive psychology. It lacks critical consciousness and therefore borders psychosis. You can see it in the way that they cannot conceive of their own responsibility. You can also see it in how emotional outbursts and extravagant expressions of pain are held up as proof that someone is hurting them, not just that they are hurt. Little children do the same thing.
Obviously, there are many black people who are not like this and obviously there are some who even transcend critical consciousness; but it is impossible to not to see the reality of the situation.
It isn't that others are thinking bad thoughts of them, though they may, it is that they think bad thoughts of themselves, and have not even begun to explore this yet.
Condescendingly treating such people as if they are in special, irredeemable need, is not going to help them. It actually does the opposite and enables this limited way of thinking.Replies: @Harry Baldwin, @James J. O'Meara, @James J. O'Meara
Great comment. (I used up my allotted reactions.)
Sounds like a system in which low IQ people who keep failing try to justify their envy of others. These people are too stupid to know that they’re stupid, so it must be magic if others succeed and they themselves don’t.
Anyone who has been around blacks for a time knows they are tribal.
It’s the secret everyone knows.
I am an 8th level wizard. I am bothered by this
Agreed. I love it. There's an interesting story behind it.Replies: @JimDandy, @The Germ Theory of Disease, @TexJ
Thanks very much for this. This fits in with a pattern I’ve noticed when reading about artists’ development–an epiphinal moment when they realize they have to stop trying to create other people’s art, and come at it more organically. This story about Hawkins is like the flipside of Iggy Pop’s experience–as a young man, white Michigander Pop was trying very hard to become an authentic black blues drummer. He was paying his dues playing at black Chicago blues clubs when he sat down by the city’s river one night, smoked a joint, and realized he had to create his own version of blues that came from his own, authentic experience and sensibility. In a sense, “I Wanna Be Your Dog” was his “Baby Please Don’t Go.”
Agreed. I love it. There's an interesting story behind it.Replies: @JimDandy, @The Germ Theory of Disease, @TexJ
Odd little tidbit: when I was a kid, one of my weird little parlor tricks was singing “I Put a Spell On You” in the voice of Daffy Duck. They go together surprisingly well.
Are you being ironic, or sadly reporting of what society-at-large thinks? Or both?Replies: @Boomthorkell, @SunBakedSuburb, @loren
“Are you being ironic”
Extreme literalism seems to be a tendency amongst some iSteve commenters.
Yes, you’ve got the right species. That’s the default behavior. We’ve had a patch for ca. 2000 yrs that’s served us well but the more we neglect it the more we’ll fall prey to those with more practice with base behavior.
*When pop/mainstream culture was devoted to Boomers in the 1970's and 80's, goofy crap was everywhere (much of it produced by the weirdos and con-men of older generations who preyed on Boomer gullibility). Now that we're well past catering to Boomers, anything the least bit mystical/supernatural/religious is largely on the backburner, just as it was before Boomers took over (religious institutions were culturally important in the 1950's, but open and highly public discussion and analysis of essentially mystical and intangible things regarding religion and the supernatural was generally frowned upon. Talk to your pastor or close friends about it, but leave others out.)
Yes it's true that modern SJW anti-racism is a sort of religion, but it also is intensely focused on the outside realm and real world. Whereas Boomer New Agism was concentrated on highly personal issues in a narcissistic make-believe world (well before Millennials were savagely attacked for immaturity, Boomers were often accused of preferring childish fantasy and destiny as opposed to cold empiricism).Replies: @SunBakedSuburb
“Now that we’re well past catering to Boomers, anything the least bit mystical/supernatural/religious is largely on the backburner”
Present day elite activity portends a regime of Scientism and materialism. So you will be happy living in your human compartment, under 24/7 bio-medical surveillance. Don’t be surprised if your vanquishing of superstition leads to the rise of another annihilationist leader who promises a return to the gods and imagination because that’s what the vast majority of humans crave. Personally, I prefer the middle ground between the two extremes. But that’s too reasonable.
Two thoughts about this have always lurked in the back of my head about it: they don't come from scholarship or study, but rather from plain observation and applying a sort of chess-logic, so they're really just speculation...
1. From my observation, a large part of the embarrassing shallowness and plain idiocy of black political discourse stems from certain habits of mind which were developed over decades (centuries?) in the black Church, which for a very long time was the only place where blacks had access to sustained public discourse (there weren't a lot of black college grads until fairly recently).
So in other words their habits of mind stem from preaching rather than from genuine discourse, from assertion and emotionalism rather than from genuine thought. The "Argument by assertion" Fallacy is a major feature of black public discourse, and it gets carried to rather childish levels. Of course it's easy to see where this came from, and to forgive its origins: after all, human beings should not have to PROVE they are human beings, and PROVE they should be treated as such -- the simple assertion ought to suffice. But having won that victory, they really ought to be moving on to the grownups' table, and they never do.
2. Europeans slowly invented and created Modernity, or the Modern consciousness, over many centuries. Then, for better or worse, they spread it to all sorts of other civilizations who had no experience with it, or with its development. IOW Modernity was painstakingly created by people who understood it, and then dumped in the laps of many other peoples who were understandably baffled by it. Consider the different approaches to adapting to Modernity by the Japanese (Meiji, hyper-militarism, imperialist warfare, defeat, then confinement to commercial and technological excellence); the Chinese (total chaos for decade after decade, followed at last by a sort of mercantile entente); the Arab world (mostly just sheer hostility and brick-wall head-banging).
The African-American population has only had a very short and recent chance to come to terms with Modernity in their own fashion. For centuries they were confined to plantations and had almost no contact with Modernity except for the crueler aspects; then after Emancipation came decades of Jim Crow and ghetto segregation, which kept them in only minimal contact with Modernity, and still on the receiving end of its hostile parts. Only recently (I'd argue with the rise of hip-hop) have A-A's had a chance to construct a response to Modernity on their own terms.
One would like to think that intellectual temper-tantrums like CRT are just a species of teething or growing pains, but given the near-zero intellectual achievements of earlier generations, I don't know how optimistic one can be.Replies: @Old Prude, @Stebbing Heuer, @James J O'Meara, @anon, @Mr. Grey
” From my observation, a large part of the embarrassing shallowness and plain idiocy of black political discourse stems from certain habits of mind which were developed over decades (centuries?) in the black Church, which for a very long time was the only place where blacks had access to sustained public discourse (there weren’t a lot of black college grads until fairly recently). So in other words their habits of mind stem from preaching rather than from genuine discourse, from assertion and emotionalism rather than from genuine thought. ”
It’s not entirely a black thing.
The Roman Catholic church maintained high levels of intellectualism, logic, argumentation, etc., even drawing on Jewish and Islamic sources; BUT of course with the proviso of never questioning dogma.
The early Protestant churches (Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican) continued this, extending it to the examination of scripture itself (Luther’s “grammatico-critical” method was really the ancestor of the Higher Criticism). Apart from leading to innumerable denominations (which Catholics would have just counted as “heresies”) it lead to two opposite reactions: one keeping reason and, on that basis, rejecting scripture (“The Epistles have no authority because ultimately they have no author” — Robert Price), the other keeping scripture and rejecting reason: Fundamentalism.
The black churches and the foot-washing, snake-handling, end-is-nigh Baptists etc. are all just one big ball of dumbness. Notice that usually, as with Bro. Stair, an apocalyptic radio preacher I’ve studied for years, they often will point out their distance from “White Nationalists” and “Supreem-acists” (as Bro. Stair mocks them) and laud their “black brothers and sisters” (Neither Jew nor Gentile and all that in Christ). Some critics have suggested that Bro. Stair’s preference for black congregations came from belief that the women were more easily abused. Since his recent death, his group has been taken over by a black pastor.
https://counter-currents.com/2021/07/the-passing-over-of-the-overcomer/
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/11/black-millennials-african-witchcraft-christianity/574393/
The Witches of Baltimore: Young black women are leaving Christianity and embracing African witchcraft in digital covens
This sounds sort of like a fake trend story from the New York Times, but still ...In other words, I'm making this up to get my $25 from The Atlantic.So the writer is implying a sort of epigenetic transfer of African religion to the present day.
This really sounds more like black girls culturally appropriating white girl Young Adult novel culture.Replies: @Feryl, @James J O'Meara
“their parents had long hid their grandmothers’ or great-grandmothers’ involvement with witchcraft—”
Trying to culturally appropriate the White trope of “one of my ancestors was a Navaho shaman.”
Incoming Bantu: “Weh de hoes at?”
“Sonoma County … Lotsa laughing and jivin’ ”
It used to be that north of the Golden Gate was a zone where nary a diaspora african could be found. It’s still very white in the beautiful coastal counties of Marin, Sonoma, and Mendocino. Elimination of golf tournaments would be a positive step.
Are you being ironic, or sadly reporting of what society-at-large thinks? Or both?Replies: @Boomthorkell, @SunBakedSuburb, @loren
he is joking
Don’t know how it’s just Blacks and BLM. The (((elite))) have been playing a zero-sum game since the dawn of time.
As for their theory of limited "cosmic good", or, as I prefer it, limited light. This is also true, in a way. If your main sense of value is in how people think of you, then it matters also how they think of you relative to others. This makes that light a limited resource.
The solution is to value how well you know yourself, and can bathe in your own light. This reduces your need to shield yourself from the bad thoughts of others and your need to insist that they think good thoughts of you; in exactly the proportion to how much you succeed in your endeavour.
It is an unfortunate label, but theirs is a primitive psychology. It lacks critical consciousness and therefore borders psychosis. You can see it in the way that they cannot conceive of their own responsibility. You can also see it in how emotional outbursts and extravagant expressions of pain are held up as proof that someone is hurting them, not just that they are hurt. Little children do the same thing.
Obviously, there are many black people who are not like this and obviously there are some who even transcend critical consciousness; but it is impossible to not to see the reality of the situation.
It isn't that others are thinking bad thoughts of them, though they may, it is that they think bad thoughts of themselves, and have not even begun to explore this yet.
Condescendingly treating such people as if they are in special, irredeemable need, is not going to help them. It actually does the opposite and enables this limited way of thinking.Replies: @Harry Baldwin, @James J. O'Meara, @James J. O'Meara
“The solution is to value how well you know yourself, and can bathe in your own light. This reduces your need to shield yourself from the bad thoughts of others and your need to insist that they think good thoughts of you; in exactly the proportion to how much you succeed in your endeavour.”
Schopenhauer, “The Wisdom of Life” which he admits is mostly from Horace and the Stoics.
As for their theory of limited "cosmic good", or, as I prefer it, limited light. This is also true, in a way. If your main sense of value is in how people think of you, then it matters also how they think of you relative to others. This makes that light a limited resource.
The solution is to value how well you know yourself, and can bathe in your own light. This reduces your need to shield yourself from the bad thoughts of others and your need to insist that they think good thoughts of you; in exactly the proportion to how much you succeed in your endeavour.
It is an unfortunate label, but theirs is a primitive psychology. It lacks critical consciousness and therefore borders psychosis. You can see it in the way that they cannot conceive of their own responsibility. You can also see it in how emotional outbursts and extravagant expressions of pain are held up as proof that someone is hurting them, not just that they are hurt. Little children do the same thing.
Obviously, there are many black people who are not like this and obviously there are some who even transcend critical consciousness; but it is impossible to not to see the reality of the situation.
It isn't that others are thinking bad thoughts of them, though they may, it is that they think bad thoughts of themselves, and have not even begun to explore this yet.
Condescendingly treating such people as if they are in special, irredeemable need, is not going to help them. It actually does the opposite and enables this limited way of thinking.Replies: @Harry Baldwin, @James J. O'Meara, @James J. O'Meara
“You can also see it in how emotional outbursts and extravagant expressions of pain are held up as proof that someone is hurting them, not just that they are hurt. Little children do the same thing.”
Very much like the oddball psychology of Frederick Rolfe, aka “Baron Corvo.” Once, when he had a toothache, he muttered “Someone shall pay for this.” He tells that story himself (the protagonist of every book is himself in some historical disguise, including an modern English Pope).
He considered himself a genius, and therefore entitled to support; hence, no gratitude for any handouts. Also therefore, he ought to have been a renowned author, and since he never was, he attributed it to a plot among publishers and authors. In fact, being paranoid, he eventually turned on anyone who helped him, and spent most of his time writing insulting letters to previous benefactors.
Sounds like your typical African American.
As black people take over the West, this will be enshrined in law. Bad juju and mojo will be punishable in all sorts of ways. I am sure the Supreme Court will rule this way.
We are living through surreal circumstances here with our Black and elite puppet masters. Steve has provided one of the most insightful explanations for this horror that I’ve seen.
Western civilization is increasingly worshiping a population composed of individuals with an average IQ of 70, whose life view is actually based on the idea of limited cosmic good. To be fair, Biden’s world view seems just as based on a belief of limited cosmic good.
It’s all just so horrible.
The idea that economics is a zero sum game, that when one person gains another loses, is not unique to African tribal views or to black intellectuals.
The belief that the economy is a zero-sum game is implicit in Marxist thinking.
Marxism is wholly European in origin.
To the related and larger question: are freely entered economic and social interactions a zero sum game? My answer is no.
Showing their neighbors who’s boss!
See Dunning-Kruger Effect for details.
Whatever Africans ‘profess’ to believe their real world behavior seems to be summed up in their own phrase “Get Rich or Die Trying”. While liberal whites attribute to negroes some deep spirituality or morality observing their real world behavior suggest they have neither but merely exhibit the former when age age and circumstance has rendered them unable to change what life has dealt them.
Prior to that the negro is engaged in a headlong race to take what he can get and hell with anyone else.
Consider African governance. There is no ‘socialist or communist ideology’ exhibited by African states within their borders though they do play heavily on the world stage for ‘debt forgiveness’ and foreign aid. An African leader would be thought a fool if he did not line his own pockets and those of his clan with the revenues a government receives. Nelson Mandela may have been too old when he assumed power in South Africa to concern himself with becoming personally rich but his wife, Winnie, sure wasn’t and neither were the other ANC leaders he brought to power.
Not a lot different in the US either except for the scale of the theft ( designer sneakers e.g.) reflects the low expectations and circumstances of the thieves.
Despite her ancestry, she detested whites and people of mixed race.
Fanon and a great many politicized "blacks" in the past, and present, have been / are people of mixed race.
Agreed. I love it. There's an interesting story behind it.Replies: @JimDandy, @The Germ Theory of Disease, @TexJ
The CCR version is outstanding in my opinion.
1. Not really. Most of the theorists of Critical Race Theory (CRT) are AA, or more precisely mixed race. With some exception (Delgado and his wife Stefancic).
2. Also intellectuals dream up a lot of theories, and these theories go into the market of ideas. Some catch up, and those that catch up are those that are palatable to the intended audience. CRT is the ideal theory for a specific audience.
3. It is interesting to note that early theorists forerunning CRT (such as Frantz Fanon) which grew up in the tradition of western philosophy had a very different view, and advocated separation from the colonizers.
4. The realization that, when the game allows gains from cooperation, you can actually do that and realize the gains is sophisticated. It takes ... cognitive skills to realize this. Modern experimental research in game theory finds precisely this. Which brings us to a potentially different explanation of why a zero-sum view of the world may be more popular in some groups.Replies: @Anonymous, @Bizarro World Observer
And what is that explanation?
I think the “Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande” analysis found witchcraft to be hereditary-behavioral and practical, in opposition to what WEIRD-o’s call “magic,” i.e. Harry Potter firing some lightshow out of a wand or whatever. My analogy for African magic would be a protocol for confronting someone who’s harshing everyone else’s buzz; routinely settled by a magistrate/priest or somebody brought in and paid for expertise in curse mitigation.
Caribbean ideas of witchcraft were more out there than old-school practices. Grabbing someone to turn into a zombie was a method to handle a troublemaker, generator of bad debts, etc. via village conspiracy. You kidnap and inject him with puffer-fish poison which, most likely scenario, simply kills him, problem solved. Yet if he survives you’ve scared the crap out of him, so the zombie-master gets a personal slave for a while.
Anyway, beyond the family/clan patterns I’m not sure how useful it is to apply this stuff stateside.
I dunno, though, maybe the solution to the ADL/SPLC is to say we’re protesting “bad juju.”
These white ideas were developed to explain the failures of civil rights legislation, affirmative action and the trillions of dollars given to blacks via government programs failed to close the gaps. Whites developed the idea of systemic racism when actual evidence of racism could not be found.
Whites will continue to use their intellect to create new theories to explain how whites are the cause of black pathologies. Any other explanations are deemed racist.Replies: @Buffalo Joe
Hern, interesting take.
The following link (unfortunately limited by JSTOR) is from 1928, but I suspect without searching further that some of its observations have been made by Europeans for hundreds of years.https://www.jstor.org/stable/1155633This might be worth looking into for its coverage of iron tools, matriarchy, archeobotany and much more. It utilizes tables, photos, figures and maps.http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~tcrndfu/IWAA/Blench.pdf
(some attention should be paid to Map 3. Distribution of the iler spade)Replies: @Buffalo Joe
reactionary, I always marvel at the fact that some cultures use tools, such a hoe, but have the shortest, back breaking handle attached to them. Same with brooms.
This “limited good” idea is not limited to tribesmen. The book “Envy” by Helmut Schoeck describes how this fault has limited development in many societies including Russia.
Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour, Helmut Schoeck, Liberty Press (Indianapolis, 1969) first published in German, 1966,
The greatest African mumbo-jumbo poet of all time was a white Brazilian, Vinicius de Moraes. He was called the blackest white man in the land. (As were both Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen in our land.) Of course, it was highly unlikely he believed an iota of it.
“That Old Black Magic”, “Old Devil Moon”, and “You Do Something To Me” are great songs, but this may be the best white voodoo song ever:
Albeit the man who wrote the tune, Baden Powell (and not A. C. Jobim, seen here on keyboard) was a mulatto.
Translation of “Canto de Ossanha”, by Baden Powell and Vinicius de Moraes
It’s the mirror image of the invisible hand.
The white radical abolitionists started this trend in the early 1800’s. They talked about blacks as if blacks were white people being unfairly excluded from their own civilization. The fact that the backs were from Africa and had their own culture was largely ignored.
At the risk of being pedantic, agriculture was never developed in Australia.
It was brought here by British settlers in 1788.
Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour, Helmut Schoeck, Liberty Press (Indianapolis, 1969) first published in German, 1966,Replies: @scrivener3, @Wizard of Oz
the poor Russian who is envious of his neighbor with a cow, prays “make my neighbor’s cow sick and die”.
Two thoughts about this have always lurked in the back of my head about it: they don't come from scholarship or study, but rather from plain observation and applying a sort of chess-logic, so they're really just speculation...
1. From my observation, a large part of the embarrassing shallowness and plain idiocy of black political discourse stems from certain habits of mind which were developed over decades (centuries?) in the black Church, which for a very long time was the only place where blacks had access to sustained public discourse (there weren't a lot of black college grads until fairly recently).
So in other words their habits of mind stem from preaching rather than from genuine discourse, from assertion and emotionalism rather than from genuine thought. The "Argument by assertion" Fallacy is a major feature of black public discourse, and it gets carried to rather childish levels. Of course it's easy to see where this came from, and to forgive its origins: after all, human beings should not have to PROVE they are human beings, and PROVE they should be treated as such -- the simple assertion ought to suffice. But having won that victory, they really ought to be moving on to the grownups' table, and they never do.
2. Europeans slowly invented and created Modernity, or the Modern consciousness, over many centuries. Then, for better or worse, they spread it to all sorts of other civilizations who had no experience with it, or with its development. IOW Modernity was painstakingly created by people who understood it, and then dumped in the laps of many other peoples who were understandably baffled by it. Consider the different approaches to adapting to Modernity by the Japanese (Meiji, hyper-militarism, imperialist warfare, defeat, then confinement to commercial and technological excellence); the Chinese (total chaos for decade after decade, followed at last by a sort of mercantile entente); the Arab world (mostly just sheer hostility and brick-wall head-banging).
The African-American population has only had a very short and recent chance to come to terms with Modernity in their own fashion. For centuries they were confined to plantations and had almost no contact with Modernity except for the crueler aspects; then after Emancipation came decades of Jim Crow and ghetto segregation, which kept them in only minimal contact with Modernity, and still on the receiving end of its hostile parts. Only recently (I'd argue with the rise of hip-hop) have A-A's had a chance to construct a response to Modernity on their own terms.
One would like to think that intellectual temper-tantrums like CRT are just a species of teething or growing pains, but given the near-zero intellectual achievements of earlier generations, I don't know how optimistic one can be.Replies: @Old Prude, @Stebbing Heuer, @James J O'Meara, @anon, @Mr. Grey
Good point, Germ Theory. But it’s not just modernity, it’s also modernity’s opposite:
Albion’s Seed catalogued how modern US Whites echo their ancestors from 400 years ago, and how they in turn echoed their ancestors even earlier.
So today you can stand in a wealthy, technologically advanced society yet your folkways might reflect East Anglia 1,400 years ago.
Why wouldn’t modern US Blacks echo their ancestral folkways, too, from long long ago?
The “limited cosmic good” game isn’t just for remedying the past. It literally concludes for every white in a job, a black has lost the job. Therefore, it is in the interests of the blacks to prevent whites from having any jobs at all. The justification of black slavery is just gloss. The real root is “us or them” and blacks are much more identity-conscious than whites. When whites are oppressed, or even killed, the benefits go directly to the black community, whether there’s a justification in the past or not.
You can see in that the rationale for describing the 1922 Tulsa race riots as the desire of the white community to destroy the successful black community. From the black perspective, though not from the white, the destruction of a successful black community made perfect sense. It freed up more benefits for the whites.
When you share a community with people having that outlook, you damn well better not let them gain power.
Generally, what happens in black run cities is a spoils program where the black leaders will pay back his constituency by putting in a black police chief, prosecutor, head of education, etc. Before you know it, standards across the board will go down and chaos ensues. It happens damn near every time (See Baltimore). Amazingly, apparently the people of Detroit finally had enough of this and elected a white mayor. The city is still crap, but at least it’s trending in the right direction (I hope).
Hoes for hoes?
This idea of limited good also appeared during the transition in Europe from the old regime to modernity. In medieval society wealth was land. In a peasant village, land is fixed: what one gains, another loses. Government was the ruler controlling land and the ruler seeking to conquer more land, another zero-sum game. Enlightenment thinkers observed that “sweet commerce,” based on production and exchange, was a positive-sum game that tended to benefit all. A society that was once about warrior honor and religious self-denial became one of relative peace, prosperity, and pursuit of happiness.
Today there are rent-seekers and grifters of various types, but also there are many enterprises that make life better by creating better goods and services at lower prices. If a good number of people honestly make more money than others, but by making others better off than they would have been in the absence of their contribution to the economy, who can complain. Another way of thinking about this: Mexico tends to think that it is poor because the U.S. is rich. But it’s likely that Mexico would have been poorer than it is now if there had been no economic titan to the north.
The transition from zero-sum values to positive-sum values in less than two generations is reported in miniature in an ethnography of a 20th century rural Spanish village: From Duty to Desire.If Sailer’s suggestion is correct, rural Spanish culture transitioned swiftly by outmigration to the cities (from zer0-sum land to positive-sum commerce) but American black culture is slow to transition to modern values.
Western civilization is increasingly worshiping a population composed of individuals with an average IQ of 70, whose life view is actually based on the idea of limited cosmic good. To be fair, Biden’s world view seems just as based on a belief of limited cosmic good.
It’s all just so horrible.Replies: @Francis Miville
I lived among many Black environments. Their intellectual capacities can leave much to be desired. But nowhere I met with the idea of limited cosmic good among them. This idea you denounce is much more widespread among East Indians, Slavic people, and Anglo-Saxons. The latter are particularly seduced by that idea when it comes to ideology and explains the popularity of terminal global warming theories among them. Blacks are rather marked by the idea that even man-made goods are unlimited as if they grew naturally unless some evil spell is at work.
True story:
When Blacks took over South Africa there were lines at banks to get free money.
They really thought that the banks would just hand out money since Blacks were in charge.
Or, blacks simply didn’t have the intellectual capacity to dress up African witchcraft with Marxist jargon, but they were the first to practice it.
Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour, Helmut Schoeck, Liberty Press (Indianapolis, 1969) first published in German, 1966,Replies: @scrivener3, @Wizard of Oz
I wish I could remember who put me on to that excellent book not long after it was published. Searching my memory I recall that Rhee have been a number of ways cultures have avoided envy. The Greeks attributing bad things to punishment by the gods was one I recall. I can’t remember whether “Judaeo-christian” was given some respectability in recognition of the fact [?] that the Jewish God was down on envy, as the Christian versions were too. Yes, I see that someone has pointed to the presumably Orthodox Russian peasant……
Present day elite activity portends a regime of Scientism and materialism. So you will be happy living in your human compartment, under 24/7 bio-medical surveillance. Don't be surprised if your vanquishing of superstition leads to the rise of another annihilationist leader who promises a return to the gods and imagination because that's what the vast majority of humans crave. Personally, I prefer the middle ground between the two extremes. But that's too reasonable.Replies: @Feryl
We aren’t just past peak Boomerism (which occured from circa 1975-1995), we’re also decades past having a decent middle class. Point being is that most people have turned to materialism (however misguided) because we don’t have the luxury to goof off anymore. Note that pre-Boomer generations didn’t do that much goofing off either, since they had grown up with scarcity and had to focus on the real world. The obvious problem is that these days America’s elites are full of crap and steering us toward an iceberg, and I don’t have any reason to see any change anytime soon since every stressor faced by society after 9/11 has been handled poorly by elites(since the late 2000’s a large majority of Americans have agreed that this country is heading in the wrong direction).
Two thoughts about this have always lurked in the back of my head about it: they don't come from scholarship or study, but rather from plain observation and applying a sort of chess-logic, so they're really just speculation...
1. From my observation, a large part of the embarrassing shallowness and plain idiocy of black political discourse stems from certain habits of mind which were developed over decades (centuries?) in the black Church, which for a very long time was the only place where blacks had access to sustained public discourse (there weren't a lot of black college grads until fairly recently).
So in other words their habits of mind stem from preaching rather than from genuine discourse, from assertion and emotionalism rather than from genuine thought. The "Argument by assertion" Fallacy is a major feature of black public discourse, and it gets carried to rather childish levels. Of course it's easy to see where this came from, and to forgive its origins: after all, human beings should not have to PROVE they are human beings, and PROVE they should be treated as such -- the simple assertion ought to suffice. But having won that victory, they really ought to be moving on to the grownups' table, and they never do.
2. Europeans slowly invented and created Modernity, or the Modern consciousness, over many centuries. Then, for better or worse, they spread it to all sorts of other civilizations who had no experience with it, or with its development. IOW Modernity was painstakingly created by people who understood it, and then dumped in the laps of many other peoples who were understandably baffled by it. Consider the different approaches to adapting to Modernity by the Japanese (Meiji, hyper-militarism, imperialist warfare, defeat, then confinement to commercial and technological excellence); the Chinese (total chaos for decade after decade, followed at last by a sort of mercantile entente); the Arab world (mostly just sheer hostility and brick-wall head-banging).
The African-American population has only had a very short and recent chance to come to terms with Modernity in their own fashion. For centuries they were confined to plantations and had almost no contact with Modernity except for the crueler aspects; then after Emancipation came decades of Jim Crow and ghetto segregation, which kept them in only minimal contact with Modernity, and still on the receiving end of its hostile parts. Only recently (I'd argue with the rise of hip-hop) have A-A's had a chance to construct a response to Modernity on their own terms.
One would like to think that intellectual temper-tantrums like CRT are just a species of teething or growing pains, but given the near-zero intellectual achievements of earlier generations, I don't know how optimistic one can be.Replies: @Old Prude, @Stebbing Heuer, @James J O'Meara, @anon, @Mr. Grey
Money, guns and bitches?
‘There is only a limited amount of good (that is: life force, good luck, prestige, influence, children, possessions) in the cosmos. Each person is allotted a fixed quantity of this good. It can only be increased at the expense of someone else, by way of black magic, ritual murder or theft.’
In other words life as a zero sum game. should be expected from an r selected population where the individuals cannot work together.
1. Not really. Most of the theorists of Critical Race Theory (CRT) are AA, or more precisely mixed race. With some exception (Delgado and his wife Stefancic).
2. Also intellectuals dream up a lot of theories, and these theories go into the market of ideas. Some catch up, and those that catch up are those that are palatable to the intended audience. CRT is the ideal theory for a specific audience.
3. It is interesting to note that early theorists forerunning CRT (such as Frantz Fanon) which grew up in the tradition of western philosophy had a very different view, and advocated separation from the colonizers.
4. The realization that, when the game allows gains from cooperation, you can actually do that and realize the gains is sophisticated. It takes ... cognitive skills to realize this. Modern experimental research in game theory finds precisely this. Which brings us to a potentially different explanation of why a zero-sum view of the world may be more popular in some groups.Replies: @Anonymous, @Bizarro World Observer
I’d point out that many people, not just Africans, believe in a zero-sum economy. Thus the popularity of socialism, etc. You don’t need to believe in witchcraft, although I’m sure it helps.
I’d be surprised if most people didn’t believe they’re poorer than they should be because somebody else has more than his fair share. It’s part of human nature.
Also, black slaves in America didn’t come from southern Africa. Africa is a big continent.
You can see in that the rationale for describing the 1922 Tulsa race riots as the desire of the white community to destroy the successful black community. From the black perspective, though not from the white, the destruction of a successful black community made perfect sense. It freed up more benefits for the whites.
When you share a community with people having that outlook, you damn well better not let them gain power.Replies: @PaceLaw
Yes, no doubt! Just take a look at the black-run cities around the country. Is there a genuinely successful one? Some may point to Atlanta, but it seems as if it is spiraling with a huge crime spike which has caused nice white areas, such as Buckhead, to threaten to secede from the city.
Generally, what happens in black run cities is a spoils program where the black leaders will pay back his constituency by putting in a black police chief, prosecutor, head of education, etc. Before you know it, standards across the board will go down and chaos ensues. It happens damn near every time (See Baltimore). Amazingly, apparently the people of Detroit finally had enough of this and elected a white mayor. The city is still crap, but at least it’s trending in the right direction (I hope).
The Princess Royal was asked this *What would you have chosen to be if you had been born into a
totally different class of society?*
She answered, *Oh, I’d have been a long-distance lorry (truck) driver.*
Prior to that the negro is engaged in a headlong race to take what he can get and hell with anyone else.
Consider African governance. There is no 'socialist or communist ideology' exhibited by African states within their borders though they do play heavily on the world stage for 'debt forgiveness' and foreign aid. An African leader would be thought a fool if he did not line his own pockets and those of his clan with the revenues a government receives. Nelson Mandela may have been too old when he assumed power in South Africa to concern himself with becoming personally rich but his wife, Winnie, sure wasn't and neither were the other ANC leaders he brought to power.
Not a lot different in the US either except for the scale of the theft ( designer sneakers e.g.) reflects the low expectations and circumstances of the thieves.Replies: @Billy Corr
Winnie Mandela’s mother was half-white and Winnie herself, obviously, had a white maternal grandfather.
Despite her ancestry, she detested whites and people of mixed race.
Fanon and a great many politicized “blacks” in the past, and present, have been / are people of mixed race.
Blacks are rather marked by the idea that even man-made goods are unlimited as if they grew naturally unless some evil spell is at work.
True story:
When Blacks took over South Africa there were lines at banks to get free money.
They really thought that the banks would just hand out money since Blacks were in charge.