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Saturday, September 27, 2008

What is Racism? Why is it bad?

Only God knows what racism is, it has so many definitions and permutations, it is a catch-all insult used to bully anyone into submission. Racism could properly be called winning an argument against a liberal----or a libertarian. When it comes to race, they are peas in a pod.

However, to be fair, I will try to understand the opposing side and exactly what racism means to them and why they have objections to the most natural feeling in the world, preferring those genetically near to you to those genetically distant from you, just like your own relatives over strangers. Of course, you will hear from them that they don't care about even their own family because they are genetically related, that they would care just as much about step-fathers, half-brothers, adopted children, and all their in-laws. Of course, this laughably flies in the face of reality and common knowledge, everyone knows such relations are NOT equal to the real thing, but they will say it anyway. Otherwise their entire argument falls apart. To admit genetic closeness matters AT ALL to you, is to admit the entire creed of tribalism, because some people are more related to us than others. Much, much more related. In fact, from the standpoint of genetic variation, two randomly selected white strangers are more related to each other, than a race-mixer's own half-breed child is related to the white parent. And two white strangers, from the standpoint of an australian aborigine, are essentially identical twins, the gulf between them and he is so great. Don't believe me? Read it all in Ethnic Genetic Interests by Frank Salter. This is all scientifically established fact and beyond all debate. So much for that. The question isn't how genetically related groups are to each other, but whether it matters AT ALL how much.

Getting back to the definition of racism, lets try and take a few cracks at it.

1) Racism: To care about group characteristics and attach importance to the fact that people belong to certain groups, in this case the genetically related clusters known as race.

This offends a lot of people already. Individualists deny that people belong to any group, or that any group has any value. An individualist claims that only singular people have any value, that no group exists but we're just a loose collection of individuals, and that no group value can ever trump the value of a single person. To care about a group is anti-indivualist, it might put a group's interests or values or concerns over the individual, and thus, it must be rejected. These nihilist anarchists must also deny the value of other groups such as family, nation, the human race, the past, the future, the Church, the football team, the orchestra, pretty much anything conceivable offends them. Individualists must spend their whole lives being offended due to groups caring about group interests wherever they go. It must outrage them constantly to see families sticking together and caring about each other even when it pinches the individual's wishes, countries uniting to fund and fight a war for the nation's well-being even though it calls for the sacrifices of soldiers, or blockers blocking for running backs so that the team as a whole can make a first down even though it hurts to get hit. However, most people want to be part of something bigger than themselves, most people realize how puny and pointless their lives are, and wish to be part of something greater and more magnificent that they can truly respect, and thus value themselves as a vital part, a crucial member of something truly profound. A narcissist may think he's so great he can justify his own life and be all the value he needs, but the rest of us, all the sane members of humanity, realize Robinson Crusoe lived a miserable, meaningless life and the last survivor of the human race would be a crushed and hopeless man. We need to be part of something more, something that transcends our own mortal, temporary lives, something that survives, something strong, something ideal we could never be. Not in a million years of practice, not in a million years of work. Caring about belonging to a group is the most natural feeling on earth and every healthy normal person has it, the fact that This is the objection individualists have against racism is just the nihilist screaming and squealing to everyone that they should go join the death cult like him.

So let's move on to a different objection, that it's okay to care about a group, but it's wrong to care about this specific group, your race. The reason usually given is that race is simply 'physical' and not 'ideal' or 'spiritual.' This two-fold division of body and mind, matter and spirit, has been around since Plato and distorts all western thinking into this dumb, unnatural, factually wrong theory. According to western thought, there is no value to dumb inert matter, or anything physical at all. Valuable things exist in the form of 'thoughts,' 'ideal forms,' 'holiness' or some sort. To care about something which isn't composed of thoughts is heresy. God is composed of pure abstract thoughts, so is 'Good,' 'Truth,' 'Beauty,' 'Love,' and everything else we're allowed to care about. To care about race is not transcendental, it does not surpass matter, it's as silly as caring about dirt.

Western thought is wrong. The brain, a physical existence, is the source of all thoughts. There is no division between body and mind. There is no spirit, nothing that transcends matter, there is nothing but the universe around us. We are creatures of flesh and bone, strands of DNA that use our entire bodies and brains to replicate themselves in a mindless, unconsidered process. The DNA has programmed us to want certain things, our bodies give us the capacity to go get them, our brains the reason to guide our bodies in this goal. Everything in a working human goes towards fulfilling our evolutionary role. That is why it exists, power to serve the 'mothership,' our genome, the will behind all living things. Whether we like it or not, none of our thoughts matter, and nothing matters but Matter, because nothing else exists. Everything else is a fairy tale used to console us at night. Any humans who mutate to the point where genes can no longer influence them to survive and multiply, any humans who 'transcend' life, will naturally die. The rest of us who still have some healthy instincts, who are still guided by our genes and not phantasms of the mind, who still use their brain to achieve goals not craft false illusory mentally crafted tacked-on goals, simply inherit the earth and take over. Everyone whose values transcend instinct and evolution are cripples, on the way to extinction. To be pitied just like lackwits and paraplegics, their survival instincts are paralyzed, atrophied, and now they pass on like the dodos, totally incapable of protecting themselves from the harsh reality of Nature.

Let me rephrase it as many times as necessary to make things clear: The will is due to our physical nature, not an abstract thought nor a non-existent spirit. The composition of our physical nature, the A's, C's, G's, and T's of our DNA, composes our will, our purpose, and our destiny. Those who ignore their natural instincts and natural role and natural goal in life, the one provided for them at birth, the will to live, the will to grow, the will to progress, not just themselves but all genes like theirs in one giant cooperative venture, might gain their prize of some other fabricated, abstract goal like 'holiness,' 'justice,' 'truth' 'harmony,' or whatever the buzz word of the day is--but their goal will die with them and be shown for how hollow and useless it was when it becomes no more. Those who live stick to the original goal of life, they are the healthy children of each generation, those who reject it are degenerate cripples who, through some accident or other, like any other defect, are on par with retards, bubble-boys, schizos, and so on. The result is always the same, dead enders through and through.

However happy someone becomes, it's all meaningless when they die. Whatever ideology someone serves, if it's anti-life not only you, but all your precious fellow-believers, will die and, thankfully, the ideology will die with you. There can be no edifice, no tradition, no heritage from a rotten foundation. Something great, something vast, something durable, something magnificent or impressive, can rely on only one thing, one recourse, love of life and service of life as the greatest good. An ephemeral goal will have an ephemeral existence, it will sputter out just as quickly as it came, leaving just as few traces afterwards, as it had before hand. Nothing but reverence for life, love of life, and instinctual embrace of the goods life provide for you and meant for you, lives on. And thus, you can't be a part of something greater unless you join the great stream of life. Thoughts that endorse the basic goal of existence, of physical, down and dirty reality, are valuable, because they serve something valuable. Thoughts that don't, that just wander off into lala land, ideologies, faiths, abstractions, feelings, and all the rest, are pernicious and deadly, a catching disease which can cripple millions, billions of people into extinction, just like the dodos died from not fearing humans to the last stupid bird. They are mental traps that divert you from nature's course, and the more you spread them, the more harm you do to everyone you meet and everyone you care about and everyone you know.

Now, if it's right to care about a group, and it's right to care about the physical nature of life, not one's mentality, abstractions, faith, ideologies, or other ephemeral fluff that spins off from you, then caring about your physical group, racism, cannot be bad either. The clash here isn't between racists and non-racists. The clash is between Will and Mind. Those who love and embrace their Will, form one side of humanity. Those who love and embrace their Mind, form the other. Will has existed inside all living things, Mind is only a recent invention used to heighten Will's power, but perverted into its own goals like any other degenerate body part which instead of serving its intended pro-life goal, mutates into a dangerous deadly mistake, like wisdom teeth or appendixes. Those who keep using their mind to pursue their Will, the will to live, life's goals of survival, progress, growth, and empowerment, are deemed evil and heretical to those who have rejected Will as evil or 'primitive' and insist on transcending onwards to the new, abstract goals of Mind. A 'racist' is commonly described as some sort of knuckle-dragging Neanderthal because those who live by Mind consider themselves the ultimate flowering of transcendent being, and those who live by Will primitive throwbacks to the earlier stage of amoebas and ants. In their arrogance they think the petty creations of their own minds, mere phantasms and chimeras, to be superior to the true creations of the living, active, existent Universe. They worship a tiny subset of the power of life, the power to think and reason and abstract, but reject life itself. Consider it primitive, worthless, barbaric or obscene. So these cripples, these Will-less inert objects simply on their way to the landfill, arrogate to themselves the plumage of endless pretty nothings: 'honor, kindness, decency, faith, wisdom, rationality, tolerance' or God knows what (who really cares what it is? it's all one thing, the product of Mind, and thus all the same in the end), and turn around and in serious holy righteousness, declaim against those who have refused to jump off the cliff and die with them. Refuse to limit themselves to a mere emanation of life in preference to life itself, refuse to worship the creation instead of the Creator. A Racist is a follower of their inborn Will, the genetic wish for your genes to continue on to the next generation, and the one after that, and grow in strength each time so that nothing can challenge your continued survival, and grow in number each time so that Life continues its age old project of converting the will-less universe into the willed universe, a universe of Body, Will, AND Mind, and all its pretty thoughts.

There can be no prouder title than racist, no better group than your race, no higher goal than to wake the sleeping potential of the universe and turn it into a living God. Don't shun it, don't run away from it, and don't be ashamed of it. The primordial is the source of everything else, by definition. Drinking from the source of life is a lot cleaner than the bilge, the waste products of life, the effluents life throws out like poisonous breath or shit or vomit or sweat--which is all Mind can ever produce when it advocates extinction.

However, it may be unclear to some why Racism IS pro-life, even if they agree with the basic idea that the meaning of life is more and better life. Couldn't an individualist, say, be pro-life and out to achieve more and better life for himself? Or couldn't a universalist want more and better life for all humans? Or perhaps all humans and rodents and plants and bacteria too? Why race? What makes race so special? Why no bigger, and no smaller? Isn't it arbitrary?

Race is special because people with shared characteristics have naturally shared interests, basically they are one extended genome that lives or dies together. That grows or shrinks together. That succeeds or fails together, because they have the same group strategy, the same group capabilities, the same group weaknesses, the same group identity.

Take, for instance, an imaginary race which through biological relatedness, all have a love of red sand. They are only happy when living in a red sandy desert. They are great at living in a red sandy desert, and no one else is as good at them at it. They do terribly at non-red sandy desert life and are incompetent at issues beyond red sandiness. You as an individual, no matter what your other characteristics, share this characteristic with the group, you were meant for red sandy deserts. Now, is this not a natural reason to unite with the rest of your race? For one thing, if you bring in a bunch of foreigners, they'll be utterly incompetent at red sandy living, and will just be a burden on you and drag you down. For another, all red sandy desert dwellers have a fierce desire to retain their land, and thus would die to protect it, just like you, from those who would displace you from it. Third, you all share the same values and feelings and thus you feel at peace and at home with people who understand and love you. Those who mocked red sandyness, or thought the desert stinked, or thought you sucked for living in one, are far away and never meet you. Fourth, 'you' are represented all around you in people with the exact same genes as you, and protecting them amounts to protecting your will to live, which properly recognizes that your Mind is just another part of your body which will eventually be buried and rot away, but your Will can potentially live on forever, as a force infinitely larger than it is today, and a glory far beyond anything you could possess. Fifth, everyone else who agrees to care about race, will care about You for belonging to the race, and thus you will instantly belong to a loving, sharing, helping community which rewards you beyond all measure compared to the pittance of your sacrifice for them. As Kant says, act in such a manner that your act could become a universal law. If you pledge yourself to the race, the entire race will pledge itself to you, and what greater friend than an entire race of people to look after you? The strength of the wolf is the strength of the pack, the strength of the pack is the strength of the wolf. Universalism cannot provide this good because if everyone cares about you equally to everyone else, then they may as well not care about you at all. They will treat you no better or worse than anyone else, in short, caring matters only if it's special, only if it's rare, only if it's caring above someone or something else. Universalism is an empty suit, it promises love for everything and in the end, loves nothing and no one. You are just as badly off as before. And of course individualism offers just as little, you can be sure no one gives a damn about you or will ever help you there--whee.

So, let's move away from the red sandy desert and specifically say why whites should be racist, if they have any will to live at all, or any remote caring for the goals Life has given us.

Shared IQ, which means a shared way of life that we're good at together. Our shared IQ range means we can understand each other, work together, play together, talk together, interact in a meaningful manner. Those races with low IQ will only drag us down, those with higher IQ will only lord over us. But our average IQ makes interacting with each other the same as fish swimming in our own gene pool. It is comfortable. It is effective.

Shared personality, which means we don't rub raw on each other. Life is difficult enough, getting along is hard enough, without having to import people with completely different instincts and feelings than your own. The noisy, excitable, violent, shortsighted blacks or the cool, crafty, clannish, passive Asians can't make as good neighbors, friends, or lovers as people like ourselves.

Shared looks, which are easy and pleasing on the eye.

Shared vulnerabilities, which means we will all be exploited and attacked in the same way by those unlike us, and thus to defend ourselves we must defend others falling into the same trap, to the same trick, to the same device. Since the race will always have the same predators who exploit them, they may as well unite to defend against them, whether they be inexplicably violent brutes or devilishly clever shadowy manipulators, we will be prey to them alone or together, so we may as well be together.

Shared strengths, which means you can unite with those around you to accomplish something difficult because all your thinking and feelings are in the same stream. Even if random members of your race can't exchange probability theorems with you or argue what the rights of man are back and forth in correspondence, members of your race will innately be better suited to understand and appreciate your thinking, and thus well suited to your arts and sciences and receptive to them. Confucius cannot be great without the Chinese to hear him, just as Locke makes no sense without the English to read him. Poetry within the race is better than poetry outside it, as is art, literature, movies, paintings, and all the rest. A race enjoys its own culture above its ability to enjoy alien cultures, and thus if the individual wishes to keep a culture suited to it, he must protect and unite with the race. Just so, a universalist could never enjoy the unique fruits of his own race's culture, which are best suited to him and appreciate him most, but would be eternally stuck in having to listen to a rap song for every classical, read a haiku poem for every sonata, and watch a bollywood film for every Star Wars. A universalist who makes no distinctions, can never move forward between worst and best.

For this reason and endless more, race is not arbitrary, its shared genes create shared characteristics and shared interests, requiring a shared group survival strategy rather than a 'go it alone cowboy' universe, and rendering impotent any attempt to extend beyond the race with those unsuited and unlike you who will only make your life hell with their differences and antipathies. Someone who wants to live, who wants his progeny to live, who thinks evolution exists, that the fittest survive, that genes are spread across a spectrum of relatives and aren't unique to the individual, rationally ends up at race, no more, no less. Those who reject life, of course, can find a reason to ignore all the advantages of teaming up with your race in order to live, but those who embrace life, can't possibly form an argument why racism is not the way to do so.

I don't think this is the last word on racism, but these are words enough. I'll come back to it from some other angles some other time.

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