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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35888 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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I believe there is a legitimate undercurrent of self hatred and suicidality to a lot of left-leaning beliefs.

Specifically when talking about antinatalism by way of climate change, though I swear that's more a way for people to cope with the fact that they choose temporary happiness over parenthood.

I believe the honest answer would be that white people should (ideally voluntarily) just die out.

Now among my natalist leftwing friends, I don't think 'die out' is really the right way to look at it. If all the white people have kids with nonwhite folks (as those friends have) is anyone or anything really dying out?

Specifically when talking about antinatalism by way of climate change, though I swear that's more a way for people to cope with the fact that they choose temporary happiness over parenthood.

I once had a single hippie mom say that to me outright. "I never wanted kids because of climate change but ah you know that's just an excuse."

Not necessarily representative (though I believe it is), but I was surprised to hear it spoken out loud.

If all the white people have kids with nonwhite folks (as those friends have) is anyone or anything really dying out?

I think this sentiment is only possible if you are convinced that there is no chance that your culture could die out or become unrecognisable.

Would anything be lost or die out if, in a collective fit of insanity, Japan decided to integrate - and intermarry fully - into the People’s Republic of China as a province? I imagine there would be a good amount of indigenous culture that would be discontinued. Of course, such forms of integration aren’t the only possible way cultures can irrevocably change or “die”, but I imagine it would be a pretty big shift with pretty monumental losses.

(Whether any particular instance of cultural “death”, like a language dying, is something to be regretted depends on your values, I suppose.)

If all the Uyghurs are having kids with Han, is it really genocide?

If it was by choice and not force, sure.

Wait, hold on. We've done a verbal sleight of hand here: you went from "is anyone really dying out?" to "is anyone being genocided?". I don't blame you, that's the phrase IGI mistakenly used, but let's rewind.

Consensual or not, if all the Uyghurs have kids with Han, are the Uyghurs dying out?

I don't think you can look at the situation without taking into account who's deciding to do what, but in either case, no, I don't think 'dying out' would be an appropriate way to describe the situation even if 'genocide' might well be.

I also think that there's an additional set of unstated assumptions: that the Han parent is going to pass on their culture while the Uyghur isn't, and I think that's something you can't just gloss over because that's emphatically not happening to mixed race US families.

Well that's one question I suppose. I'm sure there's a lot of different viewpoints as to whether unrestrained immigration counts as chosen or imposed for instance.

Plenty of people intent on destroying white as an identity and doing so against the wishes of at least some people though. Virulent advocates of that even.

I'm not one to care much for collective identities, since I remain despite my best efforts a rootless cosmopolitan, but it strikes me that every argument made to justify the oppression of whites magically becomes unacceptable when you swap them out for brown people or the Jews.

It just doesn't make sense that "the great replacement is okay actually", but "open borders for Israel" isn't. And that's just weird.

is anyone or anything really dying out?

There exist a rare plant called Catalina Mahogany that, because it hybridizes with its common relative the Mountain Mahogany, requires humans to preserve and continue its pure specimens.

I just can't rationalize the idea of people being wiped out when their line will continue for generations to come. I don't understand what's being 'lost' if my kids were mixed race instead of white. They're still mine and isn't that what's important?

Then I suppose you don't believe in significant biological differences between races?

I don't think vitamin D production differences are significant in the modern world with all year round availability of vitamin D containing foods plus most foods already come fortified with vitamin and supplements are cheap.

Significant differences would be in the different tolerance of environment, psychological aspects to thrive in society or make career and succeed. Maybe there are some differences in these things too but I don't think they are significant either because currently most social differences can be explained by culture and traditions rather than race or ethnicity.

It seems human intuition considers diversity for the sake of diversity to be an end.

Say I thought Hitler was bad for merely murdering so many people. That doesn't account for his attempted genocide which was to wipe a population away. The fact that his attempt at genocide involved killing is rather tangential. Charitably, his implementation of killing at such scale is the reason why he's the western example of evil.

We see this in non-political contexts with the designation of endangered species. Killing authorized game for food or sport is of course OK; but killing a member of an endangered species is not OK. Because these aren't human, and of course this isn't done at scale, this isn't anything like genocide, but why even bother saving species like this? Diversity is an end to us.

The U.N. considers it genocide to destroy a people group (even in part). So someone could implement genocide without actual killing, which would involve restricting births or whatever. You're fine to consider this nowhere near as bad as Hitler's mass-murder.

But, if (and maybe you don't) one considers Hitler's genocide made mass murder worse, then implementing genocide using non-murderous means is still genocide.

It's not that it's diversity, at least with endangered species, it's the finality of it. If you wipe out the last one (or nearly the last one), the entire species can be gone forever. If you kill an extra deer, there's lots more elsewhere. In some sense, deer are fungible (a sentence I didn't think I'd ever write).

It's less clear to me, but I'd also say Hitler was extra bad because he targeted innocent people for something they had no say in, AND he was trying to wipe out entire groups (that hadn't done anything to him). There's something hateful about that, and I think it's more about the finality and arbitrariness than a desire to maintain diversity.

I daresay a subset of western policy-makers don't count as "human intuition".

I heard someone claim once that sooner or later, given current trends, we're not going to have any more redheads. I like redheads, and think that would be a shame.

There's a lot of different varieties of human. If you blended them all suddenly and thoroughly, and everyone afterward were tallish, tanned semi-asians of a roughly-equivalent type, that would also be a shame.

I freely admit that this is an aesthetic preference with limited to no implications for actual policy, and probably genetic engineering will make these issues irrelevant in the relatively near future.

They wouldn't blend, because inheritance is Mendelian and discrete. Just look at the Uighurs and other Turks who still evidence the blonde hair and blue eyes of their Aryan ancestors, even red hair on occasion.

Though, recessive genes follow a power law in expression; so, they would be much less likely to be found in mixed populations. Northern Indians have 10% the blue eyes allele variant; so, they are only 1% likely to have blue eyes, and it is considered something rare among them.

Not everything is discrete. Height, skin color, facial features, body proportions are not. Isolated populations will continue getting unusual phenotypes due to recessive alleles taking root, but urban blended humans will all probably look like Tiger Woods or Charles Mingus or Kamala Harris.

In the long run? What's being lost is diversity. Whether that matters depends on your values, priorities, etc....and maybe how much you appreciate irony.

That depends on whether or not you are permitted to raise your children on your terms, with your own values, way of life, etc. In a strictly genetic sense, the Mongols may be one of the most successful people groups in history; in terms of their culture, society, and way of life, they are largely extinct. You can argue that was always going to happen over a sufficiently long enough time horizon, and that's correct. But it can happen on much shorter timelines, even within a single generation, and often does.

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