The portion of the book actually labeled as the book is now finished. However, half the book exists as appendices, footnotes, and God knows what, none of which I've bothered with, because I trust Charles Murray so I don't need any elaborate, complicated data charts to back up what the actual book said. Much like Princess Bride, I'm content with the bare-bones version: "Skip to the end." "Man and wife! Say man and wife!"
99% of the book is just reporting various indisputable facts from endless different scientific studies. One thing that intrigued me is how completely clustered the seven 'populations' were -- there really is sound scientific reason to group South Asians, Amerindians (which of course includes Mestizos) and MENAs into races separate from Europeans. As someone who has always used 'white' to refer to people of European descent only this was gratifying.
Phenotypically, white civilization is so completely different from MENA (Middle East North Africa) civilization or South Asian civilization or Latino civilization that obviously there had to be something going on. Now we can see via unbiased computer sorting of genotypes that in fact the genomes of these groups are significantly separated from each other as well. There is an innate and biological cause for the qualitative differences in the level of civilization we see around the world.
It goes without saying that not only are blacks different from whites genetically, they are vastly more different from all other groups than all other groups are different from each other. They are politely listed as just one more race with a peculiarly large genetic distance from the other six races (MENA, South Asian, East Asian, Oceanian, Amerindian and European), but considering their genetic distance and phenotypic difference in the level of their civilization it would really be better to classify them as a separate species -- which has been my argument via 'Blacks Aren't Human' from the beginning.
Even in this book it is casually noted that many acknowledged separate species are interfertile, so the argument that blacks can breed with other races is immaterial. For that matter, Denisovans and Neanderthals are proven to have interbred with homo sapiens and yet are still classified as separate species.
Another interesting factoid in this book is that a great deal, in fact the majority of the genome has been under natural selection pressure in just the past 10,000 years. Long after all the races had separated each of them was adapting to its unique continental environment in their own local ways. This shouldn't come as a surprise, the human condition has been facing a constantly changing environment, in some ways unbelievable changes (like going from the first airplane to the first Moon landing in a single lifetime). Under that much environmental pressure the genome would have to constantly adapt or die.
Right now the environment is so toxic to life's continuation that China is fudging its birth numbers and total population to hide its own extinction level crisis. If you look at the number of kids actually attending primary school the truth is China's total number of babies born is back down to 1790 levels. It is harder to reproduce now than it was before the industrial revolution. Just reflect on that for a bit.
Because the facts are so dry and indisputable, there isn't much to say about them. The only part of the book really worth discussing was the final 1%, where Charles Murray said some rather stupid things in need of correction.
Murray claims that despite all the genetic inequalities of sex, race, and class, everyone should be treated equally. He first throws out the Christian idea that we are all 'equal in the eyes of God,' and 'all loved equally by God.' The problem with this is that God doesn't exist. But okay, if you want to delve into this further, the real problem is that no God worthy of respect would love everyone equally or consider everyone equal. That would mean God loves good and evil equally, has no value system, isn't even sentient and possessed of a will that cleaves toward a rational system of judgement, values, or goals. This would make God inferior to the lowest plant or animal on Earth. If there really is this sort of non-sentient 'ether' or 'goo' that loves everyone (and how can it even be said to experience the emotion of 'love' if it has no human level cognition of reality, values, or goals? If it has no ability to judge character?), who cares? Are we supposed to feel good that some sort of goo-being loves us, indiscriminately, just like everyone else, including rapists and serial killers?
If a guy confessed to every girl he met on the street, would they all feel deeply honored and appreciated and understood? Love is by its very definition a hierarchy. It means you care about that particular person more than any other. With each new confession it cheapens the last. By the time you reach 7.7 billion it's utterly meaningless.
If some foreign entity wants to say all people are equal, well, that's up to him, but why should that influence our reasoning? Just because God is an idiot with no standards we should be too? Why?
So God's opinion on the issue is totally irrelevant even if he did exist, which he doesn't.
Murray admits that in an age where all intellectuals reject the ridiculousness of Christianity, he pitches a new argument, that all people are equal due to their equally good moral character. But this too is prima facie absurd. If all people were alike in good character, then why are so many arrested for criminal behavior? Why do so many cheat in relationships, get divorced, take drugs, are addicted to smoking or alcohol, are obese, or infinite other moral failings? This is ludicrous. These people's character is so low, they're fat lying thieving whoring blobs, that even classifying them as human is an insult to the rest of us.
No, the differences in character are more gaping than the differences in IQ, socio-economic status, or whatever. It is the differences in character that provoke our hatred and disgust of the other races, the lower classes, the female sex and the LGBT deviants. If not for the lack of character in these groups, if not for their atrocious behavior (like how women file 70-90% of divorces or gays commonly have 1,000's of sexual partners), no one would give a shit about them one way or another.
If you presented to me a morally upright person who was self-reliant, conscientious, honest and cheerful with 60 IQ, 80 IQ or whatever, of course I'd consider him not only the equal of a 186 IQ person but generally the superior. That's how rare good people are in this world.
So again, Murray is just lying through his teeth when he talks like this, in a futile attempt to justify the existence of the completely overpopulated 7.7 billion people in our midst. Actually, the vast majority of the world's people are evil, shouldn't exist, and cannot be justified since they lack any moral worth whatsoever.
Liberals' argument is that sure, people may be evil currently, but with the right upbringing and law codes and institutions they can be uplifted into worthy vessels. Murray says no, that's impossible, their flaws are innate and genetic, and here's all the proof. Then he says, 'but don't worry, we're all equal already due to ::hand waving::'
That doesn't fly. If you reject the liberal ability to improve the losers in our midst, there is no further reason to countenance their existence. It would be a vast improvement and relief to the world to eugenically cleanse the gene pool of all its failures. The world is groaning with the number of polluting, consuming bodies on this Earth. The economy cannot support their endless demands for more welfare and fake jobs that give them 'dignity' but don't benefit anyone but themselves. Crime and terrorism run amok, all springing from the same well-known groups which could easily be purged, the cost they put on us eternally eliminated. The moment you admit that there's no saving, no helping these people, at that very moment you should be organizing the firing squads.
There are two arguments one can make for treating all people as equals, neither of which Murray makes because he's too stupid:
People are equal because they are all capable of killing other people, which makes them threatening enough that we must accord them some measure of deference to not antagonize them. This is a reasonable, practical, utilitarian check on oppressing others. I don't actually believe this argument because it's been proven across history that a small regiment of white troops can battle and defeat endless hordes of non-whites (see the battle of San Jacinto, the battle of Blood River, the battle of Plassey). Even the high-IQ, well organized Japanese in World War II suffered a 10:1 casualty ratio in their fight with US troops. They just can't keep up, they never have, and there's no theoretical basis to believe they ever can.
Certainly nuclear powers must be given some measure of deference, because for now there doesn't seem to be a good way to painlessly kill them, but every other country should be fair game.
Likewise, within countries, the threat of riots or uprisings is inconsequential. Samurai have put down peasant rebellions outnumbered 100:1. The same for knights versus peasants in Medieval Europe. If the military chose to eliminate any domestic portion of the population nobody could stop them. The difference in firepower now is infinitely higher than back then. Not only could they simply nuke cities inhabited by undesirables, killing all opposition with no losses, the military is full of sophisticated weaponry that no rioters, even supposing they have hand guns, could oppose -- tanks, helicopters, jets, aircraft carriers, cruise missiles, drones, submarines, etc, etc. It would be more lopsided than fully armored lancers charging into a group of ill-nourished peasants with hoes.
More evidence that governments can slaughter their people whenever they want comes from Stalin, Mao, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc. The people could do nothing once the government decided to purge them there, so why would it be any different this time?
So yes, theoretically, any group capable of defending itself should be treated as equals, but that's rarely actually the case.
Women can defend themselves just fine, if you're wondering, because they can inspire men to fight to protect them. I would not advise targeting women beloved by powerful men. The same is true of children beloved by powerful men.
The second argument for treating everyone equally, that actually does extend to all 7.7 billion people on Earth and thus could actually protect them, unlike all previous arguments, is that all people are capable of suffering. Suffering is an evil in itself, something I wouldn't wish upon anyone, or even animals. Out of sympathy and empathy for how awful it must feel to not be afforded basic human rights and dignities, it behooves us to tread lightly.
It may even be the case that simply hurting others causes us so much sympathetic pain that it's just not worth it even disregarding their feelings.
However, I hold that this can no longer hold true as a serious consideration once we approach the level of existential threats. If the continued existence of mankind or civilization is on the line, such petty concerns as people's feelings must be tabled until the threat is extinguished. After all, if we all go down, there will be a hell of a lot more suffering, in the long run, than if we settle things now.
And it just so happens that we're in the midst of a dozen or so existential threats all of which need prompt and severe action to solve. Overpopulation and insane population growth in the absolute worst groups (like Niger's 7.24 fertility rate), resource exhaustion, mental illness, obesity/drugs/alcohol/tobacco, crime, Islam, well below replacement birth rates among civilized nations, the dissolution of the nuclear family and the crisis of loneliness, debt, welfare parasitism, the rising tide of sexual deviancy that cannot have children or raise them well, the lack of a meaningful vocation or purpose on Earth, global warming, nuclear proliferation, pick your poison.
If left unchecked due to sympathy for various peoples' feelings, a lot more suffering will occur in the future to a lot more innocent and undeserving victims, than the suffering it would take to solve these problems while we still have a fighting chance.
Gilgamesh in Fate/Stay Night pointed out that even the lowliest slave in Babylon was more valued by his fellow citizen than the modern inhabitant of Earth. This is because they were all economic contributors, even the muscles of a man were valuable tools that got needed work done. The wombs of women, of course, were priceless, as there were never enough to offset all the sudden and tragic ways people could die back then. This is why he called for the mass slaughter of as many people as he could get his hands on, reasoning that the strong who survived and emerged on the other side would yet again be accorded a decent level of respect, meaningful employment, and bonhomie, which is the proper state of man.
I see no argument anyone can make against Gilgamesh's plan. Most people on Earth are treated like dirt and would be better off dead, they're so lacking in the things that make life worth living, but are constrained by biological evolved instincts from ending themselves. Gilgamesh was a doctor and his plan was euthanasia. The lack of respect these people give even to themselves betrays their sense of worthlessness -- anyone addicted to bestial pleasures like drugs, alcohol or obesity has already admitted they have no further mental or spiritual recourse. They've already admitted that they exhausted the life of the mind, or the spirit, or the heart, and have moved on to chemical rushes alone.
If these people were quietly suffering in some corner I suppose they could just be left to suffer (though it seems heartless to do so), but they're also menaces to the remaining healthy organisms. They commit crime, they cost us money, they vote for bad policies, they boom loud music, they litter, they pollute, they cause traffic jams and overcrowd our infrastructure, they reproduce even more dysfunctional children, they're dragging the rest of us down with them. People who have already forsaken any divine value or purpose, who can no longer even be classified as rational animals, ie, humans, still take an enormous, ever-growing, and ultimately unsustainable toll on the rest of us.
So to put it another way, in abstract, everyone should be given some measure of deference and respect in abstract in order not to increase the amount of suffering in the universe, but that measure of deference cannot be allowed to exceed the suffering their continued existence would entail.
Out of pity and my wish to eliminate suffering for the good and bad alike, I've always advocated a citizen's dividend. A basic income is a good way to respect our fellow man precisely due to our wish for them not to suffer unnecessary pain. It's also a small price to pay, at only $12,000 per person per year. The government already spends $22,726 per person per year so we'd basically be halving the cost of government with its implementation. You could also argue that it's cheaper than going to war with various insurrectionist elements and buying them off is the practical thing to do.
But when people are such noxious plagues upon the Earth that they end up costing us $50,000 a year, $100,000 a year, $1,000,000 a year, or infinity -- at what point must this price be borne out of nothing but pity? Surely there must be a limit to the costs they can extract from society simply because various chemical reactions can occur inside their brains.
The dividing line can be debated -- maybe everyone costing society $13,000+ should be executed immediately, or maybe it's $100,000. Whatever. The point is there has to be a line. That line comes well before violent criminals. It comes well before welfare octo-moms. It comes well before preachers of terror against the infidel. It comes well before communists who would plunge our country into economic depression. It comes well before eco-freaks demanding we forgo electricity and eat bugs.
And this well-before line is extending, and extending, and extending, to ever-larger groups of men. It's manifestly obvious how many freaks are in our midst, whose ultimate ambition is cataclysmic ruination of everything humanity has built up until now.
Neither God's irrational love, pity, fear of retaliation, nor a blind faith in their manifestly-false 'good character' can deter us from what must be done. If we are to survive, as a people, as a civilization, if we are to join the stars instead of return to the stone age, large numbers of people have to die. (Or if you prefer, not be allowed to reproduce, vote, or exert any other influence on society and be allowed to die naturally of old age).
Just consider, in the 1970's, there were three billion, possibly four billion fewer people on Earth than there are today. There was nothing unnatural or unthinkable about that number of people existing instead of this number of people. So calling for the elimination of 3-4 billion people isn't radical, it's having 3-4 billion people with no plan on how to support them that was radical. In a few decades there are slated to be another 3-4 billion people. How many more? How many more are we supposed to take? For all these stupid human rights equality God's love divine eternal souls reasons?
If we took the bottom half of mankind and eliminated them, as measured by character and behavior, (which includes whether they support good causes or evil causes), would the total amount of suffering, across the rest of mankind's future, go up or down?
Now, the argument can be made, that if you're constantly culling the 'bottom half,' eventually that would include everyone except the last man on Earth. But that's not my standard, my standard isn't on a curve, it's whether you can abide by simple moral maxims that are the minimum floor to be a good person. So long as you abide by these standards you're under no threat personally, nor is any other good person. What is the argument for allowing known sinners to muck everything up -- forever?
Remember, the liberal argument that they can be uplifted has already been debunked by the science. Murray admits that the lower classes, the lower races, are unsalvageable. They're unsalvageable -- but we must live with them, even help their numbers grow exponentially, all the same?
Really?
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