Gods of Science
As I was reading through The Iliad recently, I was particularly struck by the pettiness and the fickleness of the Gods. The surprising thing about the eternal Gods is how easily they get caught up in the moment. They become emotionally involved in human affairs to pass the time -- like couch potatoes sucked into reality television. The Olympians have their own favorites, their own biases, their own loyalties, their own alliances, their own tastes and prejudices. They have some sort of plan, or at least Zeus seems to -- but even he could just be shooting from the hip. As the skyfather’s plan unfolds, the deathless ones squabble with one another and meddle playfully in mortal dramas. The Gods favor one side for a while, and then just when that side thinks they have things wrapped up, the gods turn on them and favor the other side for a while. Eventually, they just get bored, pick a winner, change the channel on the Universal Remote and move on to another show.
So, too, The Gods of Science.
They want us to believe that they are above it all, that they are cold and objective, that they are guided only by the light of Unbending Truth -- an analog to Fate. But they’re not. Those who gaze down on the world from Universities have their own favorites, their own biases, their own loyalties, their own alliances, their own tastes and prejudices. They’re caught up in the moment, too. Their Unbending Truth of today gives way to their Updated Unbending Truth of tomorrow, but we mere mortals cannot question or stand against them. They know things, they assure us, that we men of clay cannot possibly grasp.
I was reminded of the changeable nature of The Gods of Science recently when The Scientific American asked, “Is the Out of Africa Theory Out?”
All the ancestors of contemporary Europeans apparently did not migrate out of Africa as previously believed. According to a new analysis of more than 5,000 teeth from long-perished members of the genus Homo and the closely related Australopithecus, many early settlers hailed from Asia.
We live in amusing times when The Scientific American appears to confirm, suddenly, that we are not all Africans.
What is not so amusing is how many students have been taught the “Out of Africa” theory as if it were Unbending Truth, when it turns out it was just yesterday’s Unbending Truth. How many young minds were influenced by this idea? How many worldviews did this Truth of yesterday subtly -- or dramatically -- alter? How many of these students became adults and went out into the world, making decisions and even influencing public policy based on a theory that may now be regarded as a falsehood?
This is only one example.
The Pseudoscience of Anti-Racism
Marxist liberals call what Kevin MacDonald, J. Philippe Rushton, and Richard Lynn do "pseudoscience," but it seems they are the ones actively engaged in churning out pseudoscientific texts.
Exhibit A is the following book, which has been making the rounds through the online review circuit:
This is the write-up that has appeared in the Male Health website:
Racism is bad for your health
From apartheid to lynchings, discrimination to expulsion, racism can be very bad for the health of people on the receiving end of it. But it can also be bad news for the racists themselves.
According to new book, Are We Born Racist?, which looks at the science and psychology behind racism, prejudice is bad for your health.
A number of studies reported in the book show that when confronted with members of another race, racists experience an acute stress reaction. The cortisol which courses through their veins as a result is part of our natural ‘fight or flight’ reaction: great in the short term for the instant energy needed for running away from sabre-toothed tigers but very damaging in the long–term because cortisol breaks down muscle tissue including the heart and undermines the immune system.
The book concludes bluntly that if you live in a multicultural society and hold racist views you are slowly killing yourself.
Cured by friendship
But there is hope. One of the book's contributors Elizabeth Page-Gould says that racism can be overcome. She reports on study she carried out in which racist individuals were given ‘friendship building’ tasks with members of another race. ‘Over the next several weeks, we watched cortisol levels diminish in prejudiced participants,’ she says, ‘a trend that lasted throughout the friendship meetings’. And, indeed, beyond.
Particularly interesting is the cover: a blond and very White baby and a chocolate-brown Black baby, with the latter reaching out for friendship and the former apparently snubbing him, leaning and looking away. Why not an Asian baby and a Black baby? Or a Latino baby and an Asian baby? Why not -- and this would be fairly accurate these days -- have the White baby reach out and the Black one doing the snubbing?
Sure, the contrast is greater with Black and White, so the choice of race for the infant models makes for a more dramatic image, but the underlying message is obnoxious: Blacks -- the innocent victims of the evil of racism, evidently -- want to be friendly, but Whites -- evidently all supremacists who believe in the Aryan master race -- are apoplectically prejudiced and do not want to know. Racism is, therefore, a White disease -- a disease that, as it happens, can be cured with psychological re-training on how to make friends.
Phew... There is hope for us yet, then!
By the way, were not those who disagreed with Communism in the Soviet Union declared insane by the authorities and interned in psychiatric wards? Were some not sent away for re-education?
But let us not get distracted with our reminiscences.
It seems there is somewhat of a major gap in the reviews I have seen of this particular text, because a key question goes entirely (and conveniently) unacknowledged: Could it not be that White people experience anxiety while in the presence of members of another race because of the attitudes and behaviour they have come to expect from them? This seems yet another attempt at blaming Whites for the failure of the multicultural experiment.
A reasonable person would blame the politicians who forced this experiment on a society that did not need it, did not ask for it, and never wanted it. It is they who are bad for our health, not our evolved psychological mechanisms of self-protection.
Perhaps is the aforementioned politicians who need internment in the psychiatric ward, or training on how to serve their country.
(I suspect less generous souls have imagined a different fate for some of them.)
