To:    Comment at the Guardian
Re:    Defending the "moral high ground" by demonizing others as "racist"
Date: Saturday 20 January 07

In response to a Guardian article, "British society is dripping in racism, but no one is prepared to admit it", by Martin Jacques

Link to article and thread at The Guardian.
 

 

This is an interesting and important discussion for the light it can throw on human nature and social dynamics, especially if you look at them from an evolutionary and anthropological perspective.

As Prime Apes (excuse the pun) our behaviour and emotions evolved over millions of years to serve the survival and advantage of individuals and their family group in the natural environment. We were continually cooperating with some and fighting against others, in changing constellations, but always with our own individual and/or particular group interests in mind. Often an individual's interests were best served through submission to some dominant individual, group or ideology (Christianity, for example, in medieval Europe).

In the past, when the fighting was physical (one individual or group, or group of groups against another), what you needed was the physical high ground and/or a fortified structure to give you (and your group) the advantage.

In the "socio-economic environment", that has effectively replaced the natural environment, money has replaced the power of the sword, and it is the "moral high ground" and a fortified ideological structure that gives an individual (and his group) the best advantage.

Martin Jacques is defending his "moral high ground" and the fortified ideological structures he occupies with other members of his group, from where they exert power and extract tribute from society as a whole (as the Catholic Church once did). Only in the above article he has sallied forth on his mighty steed, clad in the impenetrable shinning (moral) white armor of the anti-racist, slashing at the ignorant and morally inferior peasants who dare question his groups superiority and right to rule over and exploit them (someone has to pay his and all the other "clerics'" salaries).

 

 

 

[Professore], "Why [has Martin Jacques] kept so quiet about [Muslim] . . .  racism?

Firstly, I suspect, because he doesn't want to risk getting his throat cut; and secondly, because he can insult fellow white men as much as we wants without being accused himself of racism, which he would be, of course, if he spoke with such venom and irrational contempt for any other ethnic group.

"Native Brit bashing" is a leftwing sport. As a native Brit (or, at least, European) himself, no one can fault him. And the harder he bashes the more cheers he gets from his fellow ideologues and their supporters. Europeans (not just Brits) have been so cowed by insane Nazi racial doctrines and their consequences (as well as by South African apartheid and Southern States Segregation laws) that any mention of the word "race" fills them with anxiety. And Martin and his mates are expert and well practiced in exploiting that anxiety to their own individual and group advantage.

The Catholic Church once did (to some extent still does) exactly the same, exploiting people's anxiety about their personal fears and shortcomings, threatening them with hellfire if they rejected Jesus Christ as their saviour or (more to the point) his holy Catholic Church.

It is all about the struggle for survival and advantage in the socio-economic environment. Why are social scientists so ignorant of this? Because, relatively speaking, they are still stuck in the middle ages themselves with their Ptolemaic models of socio-economic reality.

 
[Dubcek] wrote, "The way the inverted racist Thought Police have been rampaging around after this non-incident on a tv programme absolutely TERRIFIES me. On this issue we are truly living in a totalitarian state where the most insignificant deviation from the official ideology will result in the offender being utterly crushed. How did it come to this?"

It terrifies me too and is what I'm attempting to throw a light on in my posts (and on my homepage).

"How do we stop it?"

First we have to understand it. Then, I believe, it will begin to solve itself.

It's politicians and political commentators (like Martin Jacques), who think (sincerely, no doubt) they have solutions for social problems (which they earn a living from selling to us), who cause many of our problems in the first place; and those they don't directly cause, they distract us from getting to grips with properly.

These people represent an industry (an "ecotope"), like any other, primarily concerned with their own advantage in the "socio-economic environment".

 

 

[wretch] 2:34, "Xenophobia is to some extent a natural thing, as is aggression and all sorts of other junk. They're to be recognized, dealt with and so on, but not denied".

I couldn't agree more. Although, I'd go further and say that "xenophobia" (by which I mean a certain, perhaps just initial, aversion to things foreign, NOT hate of foreigners) is the flip side of a SINGLE coin, on the other side of which is "love of things familiar", like "family", for example (which has the same root, I believe).

As well as family, I also have an extended family and a super-extended family, i.e. race, that I happen to belong to, from where most of my ancestors derive, which is all very familiar to me from more than 2500 years of "hideously white" European history, and which I therefore feel a special interest in and love for - more than I do for other (non-European) peoples and their histories. Whoooops, I've revealed myself as a "racist".

But at least you know (those who are interested) how I FEEL. I'm not suppressing or denying my native (ethnic) European roots AND bias. It's there; I admit to it and stand by it. The only alternative I have is to lie about it. Are you telling me that Africans, Asians and others do not have roots and biases of their own? Of course they do, and they are entitled to them. Just as I'm entitled to mine!

We need to be honest and reasonable about them - or at least, try to be; not suppress and deny that we have them, as Martin Jacques and his mates would have us do, so that they can exploit our feelings of guilt.

But how does my attitude square with the shared sense of "British identity", Gordon Brown wants us all to have, which in multiculti Britain, as he recently stated in the Telegraph, can have nothing to do with ethnicity (i.e. common origins, history or culture)?

Quite simple: British identity has ceased to have any deep or emotional meaning for me. British citizenship means to me now what it does to the millions of immigrants it has attracted to these shores: a British passport and all the benefits, perks and privileges that go with it, and access to one of the richest and most exploitable "socio-economic environments" on Earth.

The power structures that constitute a nation state (including our own) are rooted in humankind's animal nature, which free-market capitalism developed specifically to serve and exploit, and are thus inherently unjust, inhumane and UNSUSTAINABLE. Our politicians will not admit it, of course, even to themselves, since it is largely their creation, and like the rest of us, they depend on it. This blinds us all to socio-economic reality, evolution having programmed us to interpret reality as far as possible to suit our own short-sighted, dumb-animal advantage (pumping oil out of the ground, for example, to sell to others for money, who in turn burn it to make more money or to satisfy some animal need or desire, like keeping warm or flying to New York).

With gross injustice and inhumanity we have managed to survive for millennia, but with non-sustainability (which includes global warming) it's different; and all three are linked. If we fail to solve the Sustainability Problem, we (i.e. our descendents, or most of them) are all dead, rich and poor alike! But we cannot solve that problem without at the same time also solving (at least, to a large extent) the problems of injustice and inhumanity, particularly man's exploitation of his fellow man.

In short, we have to create an ALTERNATIVE, far more just and humane, and above all sustainable socio-economic order to the inherently unsustainable assemblage of nation states we have at the moment. It's a bit of a challenge, I admit, but one it's high time we faced up to.

Perhaps the Guardian would like to make up for inflicting Martin Jacques on us (although he did spark this very interesting thread) and organize some kind of a conference. Although, on second thoughts, maybe better not . . .

 
 

[MBright] January 21, 12:20 AM, to suggest that "the whole country (Hell, the whole continent) is overrun with a bunch of seditious immigrants and their children who want to bring down the state and kill all the natives" is an irrational an unhelpful response to the MADNESS of mass immigration into our natively overpopulated continent and the multi-racial/multicultural "melting pot" of a society it is continuing to create.

I disagree that Europe has collectively chosen to go this way, "the way of the dinosaurs", as you put it. It has been lead and coerced by business, politicians and the media, all of whom have their own individual and group interests in these developments, and have united to nip in the bud and suppress all opposition by condemning and dismissing it as "racist".

It is the same (or very similar) method used by the Catholic Church in medieval Europe to maintains its dominance over the population, whether peasant or prince: anyone who disagreed with their ideology (i.e. theology), thereby challenging their authority (and all the advantages and privileges that went with it) was condemned and dismissed as a heretic.

It's a simple, but very effective device, with which the power structures of "enlightened" western democracies are currently being maintained and exploited by those who benefit most from them.

The problem is, we ALL depend on these power structures and have an interest in maintaining them, at least in so far as they benefit ourselves; so it is easy getting popular support in defending them against anyone, like myself, whose ideas undermine them.

But creating a more just, humane and above all SUSTAINABLE society will necessarily involve undermining existing power structures, which are deeply rooted in our animal nature (unsurprisingly, in view of what Darwin is supposed to have taught us about human origins), in order to replace them with ones rooted in our more enlightened human nature.

"In a few hundred years, the only place you'll be able to hear German and French spoken is in Hades. And people who can't bother to reproduce certainly can't bother to fight. So the alternative is entertaining racist sentiments. But Hell, it beats chewing the furniture!!!"

That is your response, I presume, to what you see as the gradual demise of native European societies, as they are progressively replaced by the mass multi-racial/multicultural society of the "melting pot". But don't despair! And certainly don't succumb to racist sentiments. There are a lot of people (I suspect a very large majority), both native European and immigrant, who have no wish to see their ethnic identities (their relationship with their own origins, ancestors, history and culture) dissolve and disappear into the melting pot of a multi-racial/multicultural European society.

You just need to understand human behaviour and society from an evolutionary, anthropological perspective, in order to see the way out of the mess we are in. It's a hell of a challenge, I admit, but a lot better than "chewing the furniture" and a million times better than "entertaining racist sentiments".

 

"No one likes to admit they are racist or bear prejudices. . . . [and] no one, or virtually no one, ever owns up to racism".

Indeed, Martin, indeed! And I suspect that YOU yourself are harbouring some quite nasty racist feelings yourself (just like the rest of us mortals), but unlike some of us, you are unable (or unwilling) to recognise and face up to with them (and deal with them rationally), so you keep them suppressed in your subconscious, while projecting them onto others, whom you make some of your living from demonizing.

Well, am I right? Are my suspicions founded?

 

My homepage: http://www.spaceship-earth.org