Prof. Obioma notes that there is no country in the world ‘where the black man is dignified.’
In the same breath, almost as a knee-jerk reaction, he wants to pass blame: ‘History dealt us an unforgiving blow in the incursion of foreigners into black lands’, referring to Arab and European enslavement and colonisation. But, this immediately begs the question: why have similar acts not had a similar effect on ethnically disparate nations?
Nigerians are very dear to me because of their glorious sense of humour and their relatively strong middle class, which have accumulated enough capital to educate their children in the West. But even Nigeria, ‘the most populous black nation on Earth, is on the brink of collapse.’ Prof. Obioma comes very close to ceasing all lament about blacks’ problems and looking for their cause within their own populations rather than blaming some other group:
‘As long as we continue to ignore our own self-assessment…we will remain the undignified race.’
Prof. Obioma undertakes the task; so, what is the main symptom in need of resolution? He writes, ‘If we, black people everywhere, cannot gather the resources within our powers to exert real changes and restore our dignity, we will continue to be seen as weak.’ He makes an excellent point, but a major obstacle to this goal is that Africans haven’t undergone the sort of environmental and cultural changes that Asians and especially Europeans have for thousands of years — agriculture, advanced trading cities, saving for winter etc. etc. The civic environments which developed on other continents radically altered the state of play for natural selection. Even bigger was the impact of many centuries of Christendom.
Africans, whilst having sadly lost many connections to their ancient tribal ancestry, have more importantly not had the time or the environment to develop the work ethic, familial values and natural desire to delay gratification. Thus, Ghana and South Korea, which were at similar levels of development in the 1960s, are completely different today; South Korea is a first-world nation state but Ghana hasn’t much improved.
What’s more, the West has spent trillions trying to improve the economy of African countries.
Therefore, it is not necessarily that most black people cannot gather resources, but rather that so many do not want to accumulate capital over a long period. In economics this is called time preference — the ability to put off gratification is low time preference and, conversely, blowing your monthly wage on booze and cigarettes is high time preference. How else could East Asians have taken so successfully to industrial, modern capitalism, if not because they have a strong middle class with certain values and natural tendencies?
It is foolish to ignore genes and culture when, for example, considering why blacks are disproportionately represented in violent crime wherever they are found in the world, and East Asians, the exact opposite. Blaming white people for this may be good for guilt-tripping more welfare but, as Prof. Obioma notes, this ‘does nothing to inspire respect’ and only encourages dependency. But, the very act of moaning about the white man and denying any personal responsibility for the failure of black communities and countries the world over, despite their receiving lots of money from the white man, is also a sign of weakness, and does nothing to inspire confidence.
After all, the Barbary Slave Trade saw whites being enslaved by pirates from North Africa between the 16th and 18th century. Why do Europeans not frequently complain that the Ottomans stole many more children from our shores to be forced into slavery than whites ever did from African shores? Why are some Asian clans not demanding reparations from their once conquering neighbours? We can take care of ourselves, that’s why.
I propose that African-origin peoples focus on developing stronger Christian middle classes. Black countries will probably never meet the cultural and economic expectations of the West. But, as they develop in their own way, there are important lessons they can learn from Western history.
Obviously, many will complain that these socio-biological factors, which contributed to the development of First World countries, are insurmountable in the short-term — and right they are! But Christianity is perhaps the best cultural technology for incentivising those behavioural changes which result in powerful epigenetic effects in the short-term, as well as the most sustainable values for sexual selection in marriage for the long-term. Black majority countries should look to Western history and recognise that Christianity mitigated the Dark Age, following the disappearance of Western Rome, and built the greatest civilisation the world has ever known against fearsome odds.
So, what are the short-term and long-term social benefits of Christianity?
In Biohistory: Decline and Fall of the West, Jim Penman argues that all civilisations move in epigenetic cycles, fuelled by environmental factors such as famine, religion and war, which change the temperament of a nation. He claims that Christianity produced social changes, particularly through familial behaviour, i.e. the way children were raised and women were treated. Previously children had been largely ignored or beaten; the Church encouraged them to be schooled and nurtured. Penman claims these changes helped produce the great revolutions in European history, by reducing stress levels and increasing positive psychological developments. Other important factors were the promotion of chastity and the nuclear family.
Obviously, the dissuasion of anti-social behaviour is very valuable also for developing healthy trading relationships. In computer simulations of the famous prisoner’s dilemma scenario, through numerous iterations of interactions between individuals with different temperaments, it has been found that cheaters only prosper if a very small number of interactions occur. But, in the real-life world of business, repeat interactions over many years are the norm. So, what is more beneficial for the long game?
‘Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth’, said Christ. Exactly right! The ‘tit-for-tat’ strategy always dominates over cheaters in the long run and creates a far more cooperative environment for trade. No wonder we humans, the most successful species on the planet, are so social. But even better is the strategy ‘tit-for-tat with forgiveness’. These units would randomly forgive others who had cheated them previously. This is so significant in the simulations because it avoids the possibility of getting trapped into long cycles of retaliation; consider the cliché blood feud. The firm, fair but forgiving units end up dominating the simulation every time. Consider then the wonders this could do for African trade; after all, as Christianity and its work ethic grows in China, so too does the Chinese economy.
But the socio-biological benefits of Christianity do not end there. For example, in promoting chastity, among other ideal virtues, the Church encourages careful selection when choosing a spouse, producing much more sustainable family units in which to nurture those important values for the future economy of black nations. Not least among those values are of course the cardinal virtues of prudence and temperance, and the consequent eschewing of greediness and other impatient, high-time-preference behaviours; in time, this could lead to less corruption and an infrastructure of real economic growth.
However, so long as blacks pander to leftist ideals for welfare’s sake, they will not only help to destroy the economies of those Western countries they live in, but also any hope of developing their own in majority black countries. After all, if they want at least one majority black nation to stand on its own two feet with dignity, what advice would leftists offer? As Prof. Walter Block joked, ‘Why are we giving poor countries foreign aid? Just tell them to raise their minimum wage!’
If we Westerners want to help, we could afford to trade more directly with business-owners in African countries. Trusting that government-aid, sent to some despot, will find its way to those seeking to build businesses is folly. Also, trusting that the removal of said despot will radically alter the political situation of said countries is equally foolish. As Ilana Mercer, author of Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, noted, ‘Surely by now it should be
common knowledge that in Africa, you replace a despot, but not despotism; you oust a tyrant, but not tyranny?’
To conclude, it is no coincidence that those individuals with higher IQs tend to be more economically successful and, naturally, countries with higher average IQs are too. But, if black nations wish to up their game, they should heed the advice of Penman and learn from the West’s successes and mistakes. Whilst Prof. Obioma and others cannot find the help they need from leftist ideology, which compels them to promote socially and economically degenerative policies, they can find it from those who care enough to tell the truth, though they are called ‘racist’. In an interview with Penman, I asked him which countries could expect to see the biggest improvements in the next century; he was sure that, if Christianity continued to grow, some would be African.
Chapter 3
Why Libertarianism Is Unique to ‘the West’
Most deny that genetics and cultural developments have anything to do with the success of the West. Environmental determinism as exemplified by Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, explains everything in terms of environmental influences rather than an interplay of genes, culture and environment — what Greg Cochran and the late Henry Harpending called the ‘endless dance of biological and cultural change’ in their brilliant book, The 10,000 Year Explosion.
Popular historian Prof. Niall Ferguson is famous for presenting six ‘killer apps’ which set ‘the West apart from the rest’. But these are presented as tick-boxes to be imposed by some state; as though, overnight, any population could suddenly become identical to white middle-class people in the West. After all, that’s what happened in Iraq, right? No. Saying that competition, science, property, modern medicine, consumerism and a strong work ethic made Westerners more successful is putting the cart before the horse. Culture is a manifestation of the individuals interacting within a society. It is a bottom-up, organic process; the success of the West wasn’t something created by the state but by individual Westerners despite the rise of statism. Yet, there is still tremendous, even legislated resistance, to accepting any role whatsoever that biology may have played in the successes of any group of people.
To understand why, I spoke with Richard Lynn, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Ulster. ‘Political correctness is the root of the explanation of this problem,’ Lynn told me. ‘People differ genetically and if you say, for example, that some people are more intelligent than others, this is going to hurt the feelings of the less intelligent. This is the reason there is such resistance to accepting the truth.’
Not wanting to hurt any ‘feelings’ has not only caused academic institutions to provide their students safe-spaces to shelter them from the real world; they’ve been safe-spacing all of us from the facts. For example, it is now in vogue to deny the existence of different races (not just genders), and to dismiss IQ as a strong indicator of future success. In fact, it is a career-killer to discuss genes as determining almost anything — except for homosexuality of course. Just ask Helmuth Nyborg, former Professor of Psychology at Aarhus University in Denmark. He lost his job (but was cleared of misconduct allegations) for daring to investigate why the average IQ in Europe is lowered by accepting large numbers of immigrants from the Third World; thus, prompting popular scientist, Prof. Steve Pinker, to note, ‘No one has the right to legislate the truth.’ So, to hell with political correctness; I want the truth!
What Makes Europeans Different?
First, Prof. Lynn explained that you can distinguish Europeans as a race. That’s right, races exist! In the past, the perceived races were the big three — mongoloids, negroids and caucasoids. But, as ethnicities or sub-groups develop greater differences, they form definite race groups. Prof. Lynn says that we can distinguish as many as ten races, depending on how we define the clusters of gene variations — Native Americans, Arctic peoples, Europeans, Sub-Saharan Africans, Bushmen, North Africans and South Asians, East Asians, South-East Asians, Pacific Islanders and Aboriginal Australians.
Environment only explains how certain biological qualities could have evolved, but not what they are. It has been hypothesised that European libertarian and individualistic cultures and institutions are the result of four socio-biological qualities: IQ, time preference, testosterone, and psychopathy. It so happens that ethnic Europeans fall between the East Asians (China, Korea and Japan) at the higher end of the spectrum, and the Bushmen and Aboriginal Australians at the other (but closer to the East Asians) on all these factors. For example, for the average East Asian IQ is 110, for Europeans it is 100 and Bushmen average at just over 60. Having a relatively high IQ with moderate levels of testosterone and psychopathy has culminated in a general spirit which was described by Spengler as ‘Faustian’ in its restlessness.
So, to rival Prof. Ferguson’s ‘killer apps’ of the West, I shall present my own in the helpful acronym, W.E.S.T.:
Wits
Higher IQs in Northern climes are relatively easy to explain, Prof. Lynn insisted. Humans had to adapt to survive colder environments. In order to build fires, make clothing and think ahead (i.e. winter is coming), one had to be smart and also possess a low time preference. Every winter weeded out the less intelligent from the gene pool. Prof. Lynn’s Cold Winters Theory of the development of higher IQ has become widely accepted.
Similarly, Gregory Clark’s widely accepted theory in A Farewell to Alms is that the Anglo-Dutch economic miracle, which has been making the world an increasingly fun place to live for the past 300 years, was a result of our middle classes out-breeding the lower since the Late Middle Ages. What’s more, lower classes were routinely wiped out by plagues and diseases, meaning that downward social mobility replaced them with the survivors from higher classes, raising the overall IQ, work ethic and sense of familial responsibility.
Ethos
At this point one may ask himself, ‘But what makes the West so different from the advanced East Asian civilisations? After all, they have higher IQs than Western nations and Japan, in particular, has a high trust society.’
Thousands of years ago, China was developing great states with a single despotic leader who subdued the population and exterminated non-conformists. Meanwhile, something completely different was happening in Europe. As Prof. Ricardo Duchesne shows in his magnum opus, The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, Europeans and the unique societies we produce are descended from the Indo-Europeans. These were warrior nomads from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe who evolved to value kudos from peers above their very own lives. This didn’t merely produce berserker warfare and the heroic sagas of both Northern and Southern Europe, but also libertarian aristocracies. They were libertarian in that they did not force others to submit to their sovereign authority, as did the oriental despots, but rather sought to sincerely earn the respect of their peers.
One of the major differences between East Asians and Europeans are their respective levels of psychopathy. I have written elsewhere on Prof. Lynn’s work regarding the differing levels of psychopathy in different ethnic groups.70 Now, psychopathy does not necessarily mean antisocial, sociopathic, violent traits. Indeed, moderate psychopathy, consisting of Factor 1 psychopathic traits, includes quite desirable qualities, producing the most charming and charismatic characters we know — captains of enterprise, the life and soul of parties etc. With this in mind, Prof. Lynn has shown that whites have a higher average level of psychopathy than East Asians, whose ancient despotic states have long domesticated any individualistic assertiveness out of them. Yet they are moderate when compared to the higher average levels of Africans which, as Prof. Lynn has explained in his article, ‘Racial and Ethnic Differences in Psychopathic Personality’, lead to a higher propensity to antisocial behaviour. How then does this Faustian, moderate psychopathy manifest Western civilisation?
It has been hypothesised that the relatively higher average degree of Factor 1 psychopathic traits in Europeans, inherited from Indo-European ancestors, was as much
responsible for their flouting of their own lives in berserker warfare, as it is for the characteristics of today’s white man — so restlessly curious and competitive that he must conquer all boundaries, being the first to the poles and ever outwards, even to the moon. This flagrant disregard for one’s own physical safety in order to achieve immortal fame typifies Spengler’s Faustian spirit.
Prof. Lynn certainly agrees that the higher degree of psychopathy in the West has historically produced a willingness to ‘stick one’s neck out and dissent from received opinion, like Galileo or Darwin.’ This led to the West becoming more creative and dynamic, overtaking China in terms of innovation around 1500; whereas the Japanese proverb declares, ‘The nail that sticks out gets hammered down!’
Since Plato, what we call ‘the West’ has been marked by that inner quest to plunge to the depths of the human psyche and conquer oneself, as well as one’s surroundings. The competition to ‘know thyself’ produced philosophy, but it was the peculiarly European ethos of welcoming competitors, whose kudos one valued, which allowed its different schools of thought to exist. Whilst the Chinese sage would never have disagreed with a previous sage, Aristotle was welcome to disagree with Plato.
Thus, various political, religious and scientific revolutions are everywhere in Western history, whereas the Chinese are currently concerned about their creativity deficit, despite their brilliant ability to handle received methods and opinions. Moderate psychopathy, therefore, seems to be the source of the individualism which has given rise to the libertarian streak of the West. This produced an intellectually restless people, innovating the various schools of Greek philosophy and the scientific method etc. in a spirit of rational competition. Note that such movements did not and probably could not develop in the Islamic or Chinese civilisation, despite their technological advances.
The Uniqueness of Western Law Page 6