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Review of Beyond Human Nature, by Jesse J. Prinz

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Jesse J. Prinz is the Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York and an Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina. His academic specialism is the philosophy of psychology, and he has produced books and articles on emotion, moral psychology, aesthetics and consciousness. His latest book, Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape Our Lives, was published earlier this year. Like much of his previous work, this new book is an attack on “psychological nativism.” Prinz (who is Jewish) claims that his latest book “concerns the cultural impact on human variation” and is part “of a critique of approaches that oversell the role of biology.”[i] The Jewish ethno-political agenda behind this critique soon becomes clear when the author acknowledges his “intellectual heroes who hover silently in the background. I mention here Franz Boas, whose pioneering work in anthropology has been an inspiration to many who try to establish universal human dignity through the study of diversity.”[ii]

In arguing for the primacy of nurture over nature, Prinz devotes a significant part of his book to attempting to explain why measured racial differences in IQ can be ascribed to environmental rather than genetic factors. He believes that “The IQ controversy is an extreme example of a more general tendency to explain human abilities by appeal to biology,” and regards it as “a particularly egregious case because it legitimates biases against many subjugated groups and mistakes social injustice for biological necessity.”[iii] For Prinz “one of the great tragedies of IQ testing is that researchers have used their results to argue fallaciously that certain groups of people differ in intelligence.”[iv] Introducing his case for an environmental explanation for racial differences in IQ, he notes that

everyone agrees that intelligence can be affected by the genes. The fact that humans are smarter than dogs is clearly a consequence of our biology. Everyone also agrees that differences in human intelligence can be genetic. Some people can be congenitally retarded, and extreme forms of genius are likely to be genetically based as well. But what about the vast majority of us who lie somewhere between Einstein and Tweedledumb [note the standard invocation of the Jewish Einstein as the quintessence of human genius]. Genius and retardation are rare conditions, which may result from genetic mutations. Are the differences between people who fall in the normal range distinguished by the genes? Is the run-of-the-mill dullard biologically different from a garden variety whiz-kid? And if so, are those biological differences fixed, or might they be altered by experience? These questions become even more heated when we turn from individual differences to differences between groups.

Do biological differences in brain power come pre-packaged with biological differences in pigmentation? These are touchy topics, and naturists have felt considerable heat for defending positions that are politically incorrect. I don’t think we should let politics arbitrate in this case, however. I think naturists simply get the science wrong. While some differences in intelligence may be linked to biology, most people have pretty comparable biological endowments. If we want to find an explanation for group-wide social inequity, then we would be better off studying the negative effects of poverty, and the positive effects of cultural practices that encourage learning.[v] Read more

Vladimir Lenin: Syphilitic Mattoid Motivated by PTED

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In The Pathology of the Left: Part I[1] I aimed to establish an outline for the Psychopathology of the Left in a broad sense, primarily by using seminal figures of the Left as case studies. Drawing on the 19th-century research of pioneer criminologists such as Dr Max Nordau,[2] and the popular rendering of those findings by early 20th-century writer Dr Lothrop Stoddard,[3] it is postulated that a type, the socially-alienated ‘tainted genius’ or mattoids as Nordau called them, seek revenge on civilisation and formulate doctrines and lead revolts of other alienated types at the lower extreme of the cultural and intelligence scale. Their impulse is that of destruction, rationalised by calls to bring down established civil and social norms in the name of ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’, as the French Revolutionaries cried, or what today is being called ‘human’ rights’, again predicated on the slogan of ‘equality’.

While there has been some friendly criticism that the citing of 19th-century physiologists such as Nordau would prompt derision,[4] I contend that these pioneers in psychology and neurology have current legitimacy that is confirmed rather than repudiated by neuroscience and the study of personality disorders, and that they are of particular value in establishing the premises of psychology prior to the influx of Left-wing ideologues into the social sciences; in particular sociology and cultural anthropology,[5] mainly as Jewish-Marxist refugees from the Hitler regime. In this category can be included Adorno and others of the so-called Frankfurt School, who immigrated en masse to the USA and took over sociology and concomitant areas of psychology.[6] Read more

How They Lie to Us: the film Margin Call

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Paul Craig Roberts made an intriguing reference the other day. He wrote that “a noted philosopher wrote an article in which he suggested that Americans live in an artificial or virtual reality. Another noted philosopher said that he thought there was a 25% chance that the philosopher was right. I am convinced that he is right. Americans live in the Matrix. Nothing that they know or think that they know is correct.” I agree.

The media, of course, is a constituent part of that Matrix, and I am particularly interested in the Hollywood branch of the media. Needless to say, most TOO readers are probably aware of Hollywood’s pronounced anti-White, anti-Christian bias and are clued in to the ways they subvert traditional White Christian culture.

One of my favorite essays unpacking Hollywood’s subversion has always been Kevin Beary’s “Adorno’s Bastards: Pleasantville and the Frankfurt School,” which parses the storyline of the anti-White film Pleasantville. Unfortunately, Beary’s colorful site with film stills has disappeared, leaving only this truncated version on another site.

Readers know I have done readings of many films and may also know that I’ve written quite a bit about Jewish involvement in finance and deception in that field (see here, here, and here). Today I’d like to write a review of a movie that encompasses both.

J.C. Chandor’s 2011 film Margin Call tells a story that loosely mirrors the fall of Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers. Even for Hollywood, however, the deception in this movie is staggering, and it occurs on many levels. It terrifies me to think that the masses will swallow this tale, particularly the images that will have such a powerful subliminal impact. Read more

The Southern Point: Rhetorically Speaking, Part 2

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John Randolph of Roanoke as a youth, Gilbert Stuart, 1804–1805

The rhetorician who practices “amplification” is not thereby misleading his audience, because we are all men of limited capacity and sensitivity and imagination. We all need to have things pointed out to us, things stressed in our interest. The very task of the rhetorician is to determine what feature of a question is most exigent and to use the power of language to make it appear so.

–Richard Weaver, Language is Sermonic, pp. 219–220

Richard Weaver’s writing lays an ideal groundwork for a counter movement against the status quo modernist worldview, which has hitherto dominated ethnic discourse in the United States, towards a more authentic American conservative position able to embrace the racial concerns of Whites. Weaver teaches us how to persuade without exploiting, in a format conducive to the natural tendencies of the rural conservative mentality, the largest cross-section of the American populace—a constituency that we must win.  Neutrality is not an option.  If we don’t inspire this group’s allegiance, it will be fielded into the ranks of our enemies.

In “The Cultural Role of Rhetoric” Weaver argues that it is important to point out the distinctions between dialectic and rhetoric because their respective functions have been confused in modern times. Dialectic thinking is logical in an abstract vacuum of perception. When applied to human endeavor it tries to use a rational technique to solve problems that are also deeply entwined with history, custom, and culture. However, it is ill-equipped to think in these terms.  For example, think of how out of touch a computer would be if it was given the task of solving humanity’s problems. It may have a superior grasp of logical principles, but in the absence of an understanding of human nature and human interests and desires, it could not possibly generate  adaptive solutions. Likewise, dialectic taken out of its proper function does not deliver an accurate holistic picture of man and his condition in time.  Weaver suggests that this may have been a contributing factor in the Athenian justification of Socrates’ execution: too much dialectic. Read more

Stephen Jay Gould’s Jewish motivation: Natural selection by any other name

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Stephen Jay Gould is definitely high on the list of ethnically motivated pseudoscientists that populate The Culture of Critique. In reading over the section on Gould from Chapter 2 (see pp. 30-37), I was struck by how many evolutionary biologists viewed Gould as a charlatan and were willing to say so in public. John Maynard Smith’s comment gets it exactly right: Gould “has come to be seen by non-biologists as the pre-eminent evolutionary theorist. In contrast, the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with. . . . All this would not matter were it not that he is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory.”

Gould’s importance comes from his position at Harvard as well as his access to the media. (Gould’s Chair for Politically Correct Popularization of Evolutionary Biology at Harvard is now held by Steven Pinker.) My treatment in Culture of Critique emphasized his obvious political motivation and his defamations of various 19th- and early 20th-century scientists, such as Samuel George Morton.

The point is that Gould’s political motivation, his lack of academic credibility, and his fraudulent use of sources were well-known before the 2011 study showing that in all likelihood Gould committed scientific fraud in his analysis of Morton’s data on race differences in skull size (“Stephen Jay Gould: Next to Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius in the Devil’s Mouth at the Center of Hell“).

But Gould is a Jewish intellectual hero, so it’s not surprising to see attempts to rehabilitate him. An article by Benjamin Ivry in the Forward attempts to do just that—badly, beginning with the implication that Gould’s only intellectual sin was his defamation of Morton. But in the process he provides some good material showing Gould’s strong Jewish identity. Indeed, the title, “Evolutionary Biology after Auschwitz,” only makes sense if there is indeed a deep connection between Gould’s work as an evolutionary biologist and his Jewish identity. Read more

The Southern Point: Rhetorically Speaking

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The U.S. Senate Chamber, 1850 – Robert Whitechurch

A world is supported by four things…the learning
of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of
the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of
these are as nothing…without a ruler who knows the
art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!

                                      -Frank Herbert, Dune

The Old South was far ahead of the New World Order.  What it lacked in technological development, it made up for in a concrete understanding of human nature that was grounded in reality. That reality was firmly rooted in two principles based upon experiential observation: the existence of ineradicable distinctions between different races and the danger of concentrating power in one unitary source that could arbitrarily determine the outcome of local domestic issues from afar. Indeed it may be stated unequivocally, that American civilization cannot truly go forward at all if its interpretation of human relationships and psychology deniesthese two points. It is for this reason that the philosophic fountainhead of resistance to the New World Order in the United States must inevitably begin with an endorsement of Southern rhetoric.

The term “rhetoric” has come to mean one of two things in contemporary culture: artificial speech or dishonest propaganda. This is a sorry state of affairs. It represents, in part, the overwhelming distortion that a purely nominal and positivistic machine age has introduced into human discourse.  The ancients had a much more elevated conception of the term, viewing it as a necessary analogue to the process of dialectic. Rhetoric was the high art of persuasion and the power of a particular style. Elsewhere I have addressed the polarization between the scientific and poetic modes of discourse and the need for redressing a balance between the two. The original ideal concept of rhetoric represents another evolutionary component of the poetic mode, a category that I previously dubbed the Bardic Dynamic. Read more

Myth and the Russian Pogroms Part 3 – The Jewish Role

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We continue our series of essays examining the Russian Pogroms with this essay on the part played by Jews in provoking the disturbances. As stated in Part Two, one of the key problems with existing historiography on the pogroms (and ‘anti-Semitism’ generally) is that these narratives invariably argue that the plight of the Jews was the result of nothing more than irrational hatred. Jews adopt a meek and passive role in this narrative, having committed no wrong-doing other than being Jews. There is no sense of Jewish agency, and one is left with the impression that Jews historically have lacked the capacity to act in the world. In almost every single academic and popular history of the pogroms, the author blindly accepts, or willfully perpetuates, the basic premise that Jews had been hated in the Russian Empire for centuries, that this hatred was irrational and rootless, and that the outbreak of anti-Jewish riots late in the 19thcentury was a ‘knee-jerk’ emotional response to the assassination of the Tsar and some blood libel accusations.

This is of course far from the truth, but the prevalence of this ‘victim paradigm’ plays two significant roles. Firstly, Jewish historiography is saturated with allusions to the “unique” status of Jews, who have suffered a “unique” hatred at the hands of successive generations of Europeans. In essence, it is the notion that Jews stand alone in the world as the quintessential “blameless victim.” To allow for any sense of Jewish agency — any argument that Jews may have in some way contributed to anti-Jewish sentiment — is to harm the perpetuation of this paradigm. In this sense, the ‘victim paradigm’ also contributes heavily to the claim for Jewish uniqueness and, as Norman Finkelstein has pointed out, one can clearly see in many examples of Jewish historiography the tendency to focus not so much on the “suffering of Jews” but rather on the simple fact that “Jews suffered.”[1] As a result, the paradigm offers no place to non-Jewish suffering. Simply put, the ‘victim paradigm’ is a form of secular “chosenness.” This aspect of the narrative is seen, quite rightly, as a useful tool in the here and now. There is perhaps no race on earth which uses its history to justify its actions in the present quite like the Jewish people. From seeking reparations to establishing nation states, Jewish history is one of the foundation stones propping up Jewish international politics in the present. As such, Jewish history is carefully constructed and fiercely defended. The interplay between Jewish history and contemporary Jewish politics  is plain to see — I need only make reference to the terms “revisionist” and “denier” to conjure up images of puppet trials and prison cells.

Secondly, the omission of the Jewish contribution to the development of anti-Semitism (be it in a village setting or a national setting), leaves the spotlight burning all the more ferociously on the ‘aggressor.’ Within this context, the blameless victim is free to make the most ghastly accusations, basking in the assurance that his own role, and by extension his own character, is unimpeachable. The word of this untainted, unique, blameless victim is taken as fact — to doubt his account is to be in league with the ‘aggressor.’ In Part Two we explored the manner in which the RJC took full advantage of this construct to purvey appalling, and unfounded, atrocity stories. More generally, exaggerated tales of brutality by non-Jews are commonplace in Jewish literature and historiography, and go hand in hand with images of dove-like Jews. For example, Finkelstein has pointed to Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird, a work now widely acknowledged as “the first major Holocaust hoax,” as an example of this “pornography of violence.”[2] The twin concepts of Jewish blamelessness and extreme Gentile brutality are inextricably bound up together, and supporters of one strand of the ‘victim paradigm’ are invariably supporters of the other. Take for example that high priest of Jewish chosenness, Elie Wiesel, who praised Kosinki’s pastiche of sadomasochistic fantasies as “written with deep sincerity and sensitivity.”[3]    Read more