Et_in_Arcadia_ego
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User ID: 1849
Et_in_Arcadia_ego
2yr ago
Yeah, I don't want to be annoying about asking for evidence about these things, but I haven't seen a partic vivid trajectory personally except for unhappiness having to do with recent Covid issues of course. I just don't attach much weight to this personal impression given that I am in a relatively well-off context.
I do think one can easily support claims about general unhappiness in terms of objective statistics for 'obviously bad things that make people unhappy', like poverty, drugs, crime, etc (although it is tricky with regard to people taking say, happiness drugs, as they could have been unhappy before and just not taken drugs, when there is a recent pervasive marketing of them). Maybe there are indicators one can find elsewhere in culture, media that more unhappy people are liable to consume to see their feelings reflected back at them.
Et_in_Arcadia_ego
2yr ago
How do we know that there has been a general decline in overall happiness over the period you have in mind?
Speaking of incentives, I just don't see how Jews can let go of ethnic organizing and its fruit after largely giving up on wokeness and the eternal victim card, so some sort of privilege will emerge and be acknowledged.
Jews didn't attain most of their powerful position in society through wokeness and the victim card, they can maintain their position just fine without any need for the kind of explicit discourse shift on the matter you predict. In fact I don't think recent wokeness was even all that beneficial for the Jews, when whites are purposefully disprivileged at high levels that includes the elite Jews that would be competing for those positions; many liberal-left Jews that supported these things are sincerely ideologically universalist and I have not yet seen strong evidence that their positions would be explained primarily in functionalistic terms. I do better understand the prediction when you clarify that you don't have in mind literally formal discriminations, which be would be rather strange.
So I am making the fairly simple to defend prediction of a continuation of the status quo, more or less. I think there is a massive burden of proof on those predicting significant shifts on such sensitive matters. I mentioned Cofnas as that's a good recent example of someone using HBD details to try to refute hostile analyses with other reasons for Jewish success in America; to ask precisely, is that the kind of discourse you imagine being used to legitimate Jewish success alongside the added value judgement that Jews are better and have more rights (by rights you apparently just mean social permission to ethnically organize and inhabit high positions and so on? You say they already do this, so I don't see why the discourse would need to change on it. Acknowledging the existing situation so explicitly just invites hostility).
Also, would you say your position on Jewish power and reasons for it is somewhere between KMac and Cofnas? Should I read KMac if I want the fleshed out details you have in mind with the claims about Jews in power and their doings? Feel free to recommend any other author if there is one with the canonical analysis, presentation of details for you. I'm sure we would disagree on plenty of details, extent but we don't need to go into all of that as I could assume them for sake of argument and still disagree I think on the basic claim about the discourse shift you predict to justify, legitimate, etc Jewish power in next few decades; groups think they are better than the rest all the time but they don't easily get the rest of society to accept such claims in the open and that basic fact plus society's remaining uncomfortability with HBD discourse even if scientific facts are accepted is what makes me fairly confident about your prediction being mistaken; I think you under-estimate how much such claims based on HBD details would be intuitively repugnant to the average American and indeed most liberal-left universalistic Jews regardless of their power and I don't know how I might show that to you.
This state of affairs can hold without any especially significant discourse shift, I also think, which maybe is another reason I am confident:
In the end, if your company's board of directors is largely made of one ethnicity because that ethnicity just has higher board-of-directors PGS, and they act in their collective ethnic interests in ways not available to others, and this is not framed as redressing past wrongs, providing support to vulnerable groups and leveling the playing field – what can such a position be called, if not superior?
Also, on this:
But you are right that there are Gentile white subgroups with lobbying capacity. It's only the central case of whites, normie cishet WEIRD Americans of Anglo-German stock and those who have politically joined them, who cannot advance their collective interests. Some say they don't have those interests and just aren't «a thing», but all sorts of sociometric proxy data correlated with their identity, and identitarian concerns underlying e.g. Trumpism, suggest the opposite; had they their own think tanks and advocacy groups to coordinate explicitly, I believe they'd have been a thoroughly dominant force.
I think WASP elites choose not to advance interests on ethnic lines, this is a matter of ideology. I do not believe they are vigorously prevented by other groups, basically. This is however a complex issue where multiple factors may be at play but I incline against explanations where them being prevented by other groups play a major causal role. Their own ideology is more important and this is what I think happened historically with WASP elites in America by the way, in the 20th century. I can cite to you the book "The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America" by Eric Kaufmann, the narrative of which is summarized as such:
Kaufmann begins his account shortly after independence, when white Protestants with an Anglo-Saxon myth of descent established themselves as the dominant American ethnic group. But from the late 1890s to the 1930s, liberal and cosmopolitan ideological currents within white Anglo-Saxon Protestant America mounted a powerful challenge to WASP hegemony. This struggle against ethnic dominance was mounted not by subaltern immigrant groups but by Anglo-Saxon reformers, notably Jane Addams and John Dewey. It gathered social force by the 1920s, struggling against WASP dominance and achieving institutional breakthrough in the late 1960s, when America truly began to integrate ethnic minorities into mainstream culture.
It seems to me that understanding this historical sequence properly where the facts are all settled can help us evaluate contemporary claims about these groups, so feel free to dispute this further.
regular Gentile Whites are the sole ethnic grouping that cannot plead for its interests directly, and that affordance is, in my mind, fair to call a «right», if an informal one. Formalizing or at least admitting this difference, at first coyly, then matter-of-factly, is not unthinkable.
Then sure, Jews have that right, along with various other ethnic minorities, including even specific Gentile white ethnic groups like Italians and so on (although of course those interest groups became much less vigorous as they integrated into the white mainstream and their ties weakened. But my point is that such interest groups are still around at the local level all over the place in America). The fact that Jews share this right with other minorities makes it very weak evidence for your specific claims about future of Jewish status and its public articulation in America. I grant that they manage to do more with the right than various other minorities, sure.
I also don't think the HBD denial is sustainable in the long run either by the way, but I think the issue will still be sensitive enough that no group is going to be having some kind of literal superiority, in the mainstream, predicated upon HBD details for quite a while if ever in the public sphere. That said the exact timeline on accepting HBD details I'm pretty unsure of. Maybe it will relate to development of bio-technology interacting with genetic details. You read the Jewish scholar Nathan Cofnas's use of HBD details with regard to Jews to argue against various alternative theories of their success, like that of Kevin MacDonald? Is that the sort of use of HBD details you imagine in public discourse with regard to Jews? He was not trying to argue for anything beyond that with it though, let alone legitimate future explicit formal privileges as far as I know.
Your examples of Indian elites in the west are interesting. I agree it would probably be one indicator of increased ethnic caste-ism if a lot more people with Indian cultural background became Western leaders, although I would still want to see the actual evidence and details of them bringing in caste-ist tendencies; the most elite, public-facing could easily be the most culturally integrated. I did hear about Indian executives in American tech bringing Caste-ist discriminatory tendencies with them though (against fellow Indians from lower castes), there were some lawsuits.
How will it relate to the tendency you predict if the American courts strike down affirmative action, barely implicit racial discrimination (like against the Asians at Harvard) in elite universities? I take all the recent hubbub with regard to that as evidence of how uncomfortable Americans remain with explicit racial privileges even for unfortunate groups, let alone already successful groups. I agree without checking the exact statistics that Jews do quite well in American universities for various reasons (some combination of connections, talent, wealth, general success in America, good networking; perhaps their merit advantage has declined in America with Asian immigrants and so on), that is one reason why they definitely wouldn't need or desire to claim any literal formal privileges with associated legitimation through HBD. I don't think they have much incentive at all to radically rock the boat in terms of public claims to privilege.
By the way, is part of your general prediction that American anti discrimination laws will be repealed to allow for the greater privileges you imagine?
And also, unrelated, but hope you are doing well in Turkey or wherever you are now after fleeing Russia, per your previous sharing of personal situation on forum.
Sorry to reply to old comment (was browsing the threads after just making an account here). But I had to ask about your bold prediction here:
I think in my lifetime, even with moderately pessimistic estimates (i.e. the next 15 years) I'll see the flip-flop on this topic, a sharp transition to normalization of the belief that Jews, as a politically represented ethnic fraction, are just inherently better and have more rights than Gentiles
Really? On what grounds will this belief be justified? Certainly not religious ones in the secular mainstream. You expect HBD beliefs to be normalized as well? You perhaps consciously exaggerate by adding 'and have more rights' though I'm not 100% sure; I have no idea what sort of rights you think would be claimed. Maybe it seems so vastly unlikely to me because I don't think mainstream sentiment tolerates such extreme dissonance as that, the message for several decades being so vigorously against that kind of claim-to-superiority. The majority of non-Jews will not tolerate it and the taboo on HBD is sufficiently severe in terms of normalized public discourse. If anything, I think the attempt to normalize the claim would be dangerous for Jews, a lot of cultural and financial power can be taken from a small minority if they offend their neighbors as what happened in Weimar Germany illustrates.
And I don't think you provided a good illustration of Western elites becoming more tolerant of explicit ethic casteism, a comment here with our idiosyncratic commentariat is not a good illustration of any mainstream elite opinion. I am not aware of any good evidence of Western elites becoming more tolerant of explicit ethnic casteism in the way you have in mind, did you have any better examples in mind?
I would ask to bet on it with terms in your favor given how unlikely I consider the proposition concerning the Jews but probably neither of us would offer enough money to make it worthwhile and give motivation to coordinate over a period as long as the next 15 years. Feel free to give more precise details of how we would determine the outcome of such a bet just for fun if you like, though.
Yeah, it's a big topic where's confident opinions come from holistic impressions based on lots of history, contemporary anecdotes and rhetoric, etc so reasonable to end it with that; knowing where you agree with KMac, I can read him if I want lots more details on your perspective. Obviously there are a lot of crank-ish commentators on this topic so good to know what to look into beyond my present indefinite questioning of your perspective here.
I see how the point about self-deception would eliminate the contribution of various observations, and that actually helps me understand your justification for sudden shift in discourse to ethno-centric HBD legitimation quite a bit. So reading KMac would be very helpful for me to see that, yes.
Even harder to analyze than Jewish power is future trajectory of ideological justifications, discourse; seems like intuitions about what is or is not acceptable and pace of change on them are based on one's reception of the vibes. As one needs not just confidence on Jewish double-think but acceptance in rest of society. I do hope the IQ HBD taboo gets eradicated, awfully annoying in dealing with all sorts of mundane policy issues.
My point with the book reference about WASPs was just to point to the extent native American forces contributed to the same left-liberal political dynamics that helped eliminate WASP hegemony, which could undercut some of the more ambitious claims about how non-WASP elite actors contributed to their decline. But we don't need to prosecute such details further, though I do recc the book if you are curious about 20th century WASP decline.
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