Kevin MacDonald: The brouhaha over climate change science has prompted an op-ed in the LA Times “Climate change e-mail scandal underscores myth of pure science.” It’s interesting to substitute race science rather than climate science when pondering their comments. Some quotes:
The East Anglia controversy serves as a reminder that when the politics are divisive and the science is sufficiently complex, the boundary between the two may become indiscernible.
Race science is also complex — complex enough for obfuscation by politically motivated parties. It’s not like the double helix structure of DNA where someone who doubts it can be safely relegated to the Flat Earth Society.
Yet both parties have agreed, although tacitly, on one thing: Science is the appropriate arbiter of the political debate, and policy decisions should be determined by objective scientific assessments of future risks. This seductive idea gives politicians something to hide behind when faced with divisive decisions. If “pure” science dictates our actions, then there is no need to acknowledge the role that political interests and social values play in deciding how society should address climate change.
Politicians (and academics and journalists) often hide behind the idea that science has absolutely proved that IQ is not a valid measure or that race differences in academic success are due to White racism, etc. No need to mention the political commitments of the people who have produced this “knowledge” — people like S. J. Gould, Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon Kamin.
In practice, science is competitive, backbiting, venal, imperfect and, indeed, political. Science, in other words, is replete with the same human failings that mark all other social activities.
For sure. I think pretty much every scientist starts out thinking science is way purer than it is. By the end of their career, they are less idealistic. In my case, it came as a result of writing The Culture of Critique. A more recent example of my disillusion is evolutionary psychology.
What is the solution? Let politics do its job; indeed, demand it. … Better to recognize that decision-makers, depending on their political beliefs, will weigh the evidence and risks of climate change differently when evaluating policy options. Voters should evaluate the decisions on that basis, rather than on the false notion that science is dictating the choices.
The problem with this is that it’s no solution at all. We are supposed to simply accept the fact that race science is politicized and that politicians are politicized in what they say about race science. Then somehow the voters are supposed to wade through all this when they decide how to vote on issues such as anti-affirmative action ballot initiatives.
But voters are completely unqualified for evaluating any of the evidence. And in any case, surely voters’ politics will affect their choices in the same way politics influences everyone else’s choices.
Of course, the media will weigh in heavily and predictably to convince voters against race realism because we all know they are politicized. The media will be effective because when it comes to race science, the realists are completely marginalized. So in the end, clueless voters who read the New York Times or watch Fox News will end up making these decisions.
I think that Jewish intellectuals have always known about the politicization of truth. And if truth is politicized, all that’s left is to try to establish consensus and delegitimize everything else –forcibly if need be. This is from Ch. 6 of The Culture of Critique:
A fundamental aspect of Jewish intellectual history has been the realization that there is really no demonstrable difference between truth and consensus. Within traditional Jewish religious discourse, “truth” was the prerogative of a privileged interpretive elite that in traditional societies consisted of the scholarly class within the Jewish community. Within this community, “truth” and “reality” were nothing more (and were undoubtedly perceived as nothing more) than consensus within a sufficiently large portion of the interpretive community.
People who dissent from the manufactured consensus are simply marginalized from polite society. So the closest we can come to truth in race science is consensus and the consensus simply reflects the politics of the people with more power.
I think a lot of race scientists have had an idealistic conception of science. Until we change the people who have the power, especially in the media, there is no chance for their ideas to become mainstream.
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“Until we change the people who have the power, especiallyin the media, there is no chance for their ideas to become mainstream’
sadly enough, I think this is true. Look at Israel – 90% of americans have no idea about how brutal it is, but I doubt the percentage is that high with politicians and pundits, yet not a peep out of them…
look at the war on christmas even those who speak out against it, dance around the undeniable fact that jewish groups are the main force, in fact the only force, behind it.
‘Admin’ for the consensus is the media conglomerates, even without any jewish influence they would have their have their own institutional reasons to marginalize the truth about race, IQ, and ethnic interests; they are part of a system of materialist consumption that sells audiences to advertisers, it’s a license to print money. (eg NBC rakes in half a billion from the Law and Orders each year).
Environmentalism got into the mainsteam by being presented as a moral message. Baldly stated scientific truths have little power to convince.
“A fundamental aspect of Jewish intellectual history has been the realization that there is really no demonstrable difference between truth and consensus. Within traditional Jewish religious discourse, “truth” was the prerogative of a privileged interpretive elite that in traditional societies consisted of the scholarly class within the Jewish community. Within this community, “truth” and “reality” were nothing more (and were undoubtedly perceived as nothing more) than consensus within a sufficiently large portion of the interpretive community.”
- This is a very interesting train of thought. That fundamental aspect (inter-subjectivity/consensus) has also been a distinctive feature of postmodern science – together with the traditional Jewish emphasis on language. Here’s an interesting quote – Thorleif Boman (Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek):
“As the Greeks have made the greatest achievements in the fields of philosophy and science in our cultural province and in the civilized world generally, so the Israelites have achieved the most in the field of religion and morals. … Along with the difference in fields of inquiry goes likewise a differrence in method of inquiry; in philosophy and science, logic is the agreed mode of thinking, but in religion and morals … it is psychology. … [T]he Hebrews really do not ask what is true in the objective sense but what is subjectively certain, what is faithful in the existential sense; therefore it is not what is in agreement with impersonal objective being that interests them, but what is in agreement with the facts that are meaningful for them. This shows that Hebrew thought is directed toward events, living, and history in which the question of truth is of another sort than in natural science.”
Very nice quote from Knutsson. Re Someday’s comment: You are correct that there are a lot of economic powers that benefit from the current consensus. That’s why we have to have a historical perspective that shows how it got this way. And we must realize the demise of the current consensus would mean a huge upheaval in all of our institutions. I do think it can happen, but the longer it is put off, the more cataclysmic it will be. Kevin M
Kevin M: As usual, Pat Buchanann hits the nail on the head:
Copenhagen has always been about an endless transfer of wealth from America, Europe and Japan and creation of a global bureaucracy to control the pace of world economic and industrial development.
End game: enrichment and empowerment of global elites at the expense of Western peoples whose leaders have been bamboozled by con artists….
In April 1992, as the alarm over the Earth’s end times began, scientists worldwide issued what was called the Heidelberg Appeal, aimed at just the kind of hysteria we are witnessing now in Copenhagen.
“We are … worried … at the emergence of an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific and industrial progress and impedes economic and social development,” said the scientists.
“We contend that a Natural State, sometimes idealized by movements with a tendency to look towards the past, does not exist and has probably never existed since man’s first appearance in the biosphere. … (H)umanity has always progressed by increasingly harnessing Nature to its needs and not the reverse.
“We do, however, forewarn the authorities in charge of our planet’s destiny against decisions which are supported by pseudo-scientific arguments or false and non-relevant data.”
link: http://buchanan.org/blog/shakedown-in-copenhagen-3274
No average person knows enough about climate change to be able to judge whether the official consensus is correct, but race is different.
A little science can go a long way for the average person, if it confirms their own experience.
“Until we change the people who have the power, especially in the media, there is no chance for their ideas to become mainstream.”
Exactly. That is why we must reject the ideas of Libertarianism/Radical individualism because it rejects a political truth: The masses will ALWAYS, WITHOUT EXCEPTION be influenced by elites in one form or another. We need to embrace this fact and construct a political system that fosters elites who care about the nation and people.
Somday:
“…the consensus is the media conglomerates, even without any jewish influence they would have their have their own institutional reasons to marginalize the truth…”
And THIS is why we can never have a (liberal) capitalist system if we want to preserve/protect our race, or even if we CARE about the quality of the nations people. Capitalism by nature is anti-Nationalist. It is globalist in nature and only views the nations citizens as economic units. We must embrace the good aspects of both Nationalism and Socialism…in addition to science and a workable economic system.
The racial right in the US is wrong to embrace capitalism and our radical individualistic values. It is contradictory and makes no sense. European racialists had it right in merging the best parts of different systems (Capitalism, Socialism, Nationalism etc.)
Up a paddle without a creek.
Show me where an Ancient Greek believed in an objective reality, and Truth, as you reify it?
Or are we to suppose that the Skeptics, Sophists, Pyrhonians, and Stoics, were all positivists?
J’accuse -
1) of historicism – you are projecting Auguste Compte on the Greeks
2) your statement about Jews, and our perception of truth, is based on nothing but the statement itself.
3) you yourself conclude – let’s face it, there is no reality, and we ourselves must manipulate it as the Jews have done.
The final point, reminds me of the accusation that anti-semites project on the Jews, the malady from which you yourself suffer.
In which case, Goebbles ability to manufacture truth, come in handy. Surely the Nazis believed all their propagandistic drivel?
But let me guess, their attitude was “borrowed” from the wicked Jews!?
Consider something terrible dear Mr. MacDonald.
It’s terrible, but give it a try -
Our sages believed in Hashem, and so do some of us less educated ones.
From the article:
A fundamental aspect of Jewish intellectual history has been the realization that there is really no demonstrable difference between truth and consensus. Within traditional Jewish religious discourse, “truth” was the prerogative of a privileged interpretive elite that in traditional societies consisted of the scholarly class within the Jewish community. Within this community, “truth” and “reality” were nothing more (and were undoubtedly perceived as nothing more) than consensus within a sufficiently large portion of the interpretive community.
The question of whether reality exists as more than consensus reminds me of conversations I’ve had w/leftist friends of mine. They cling like fanatics to their Jew-inspired idea that “race doesn’t matter”, except of course that it is understood that all social problems are the fault of white people. If there’s anything that’s objectively true for such people, that is it! But as many have noticed, this is really just a translation of a Judeo-Christian way of viewing the world: heaven = a raceless world; racism = Satan; whites = Satan’s representatives on earth; political correctness = church doctrine, a means of attaining salvation. Sadly for the white cause, many more people accept the religious worldview than the scientific one. For the average person, science is not an absolute authority. It’s just one of many sources he consults in deciding what to think. What his peer group or fellow church members think is usually far more important to him than any science.
But although science may be politicized, reality remains neutral, and even leftists must acknowledge its existence when it presses them hard enough. For example, a leftist may get a consensus among his friends that he can safely step in front of a Mack truck doing 60 mph (or safely live in a negro ghetto), but it’s very likely that reality won’t agree, and the world will shortly have one less leftist. Even leftists realize this on some level, and that’s why they live in white areas, not black ones. The problem comes from alternative explanations that may be offered to deflect attention from the bare genetic cause; e.g., a constant recourse to environmental explanations for negro failure.
I would suggest that whites were the first to develop the scientific method because of a genetically-based “reality orientation” found in the most intelligent of them, as opposed to the Jews’ intellectual orientation towards religious fantasy and mythology. The one is externally focused, evolved under the harsh environmental conditions of neolithic Europe; the other internally focused and narcissistic, evolved in the segmentary societies of the Middle East. Both are survival strategies and have a certain value. The skill in manipulating people that the latter leads to confers survival advantages in society, while the former leads to survival advantages in the real world — at least, so long whites allow no Jews in.