Diversity or community?

You might remember that a decade ago an American professor, Dr Robert Putnam, released research showing that an increase in diversity leads to a decline in social solidarity:

In highly diverse Los Angeles or San Francisco, for example, roughly 30 percent of the inhabitants say that they trust their neighbours 'a lot', whereas in the ethnically homogeneous communities of North and South Dakota, 78-80 percent of the inhabitants say the same. In more diverse communities, people trust their neighbours less.

Professor Putnam summarised his research as follows:

Diversity does not produce ‘bad race relations’ or ethnically-defined group hostility, our findings suggest. Rather, inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbours, regardless of the colour of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television.

This effect was seen for both conservatives and liberals.

Now another major study, undertaken by two Michigan State University researchers (Zachary Neal and Jennifer Watling Neal), has come to similar conclusions:

Their simulations of more than 20 million virtual “neighborhoods” demonstrate a troubling paradox: that community and diversity may be fundamentally incompatible goals. As the authors explain, integration “provides opportunities for intergroup contact that are necessary to promote respect for diversity, but may prevent the formation of dense interpersonal networks that are necessary to promote sense of community.”

...After 20 million-plus simulations, the authors found that the same basic answer kept coming back: The more diverse or integrated a neighborhood is, the less socially cohesive it becomes, while the more homogenous or segregated it is, the more socially cohesive.

It seems that you can have ethnic diversity or you can have a close sense of community - you just can't have both together.

So why then are liberals so wedded to diversity as a moral aim? The reasons no doubt intersect. First, liberals believe that the goal of politics is to maximise individual autonomy, meaning a freedom to be self-constituted or self-defined or self-directed. Therefore, a predetermined quality like our ethnicity is thought of negatively as something that constrains us and therefore has to be made not to matter. Liberals therefore don't want to discriminate on the basis of ethny or race, even if it is for an important purpose such as maintaining community.

A related reason is that liberals think of the act of individual choice as being the key expression of morality, rather than what is actually chosen. There is no moral "outside" for liberals, only the act of choosing and allowing others to do likewise. Therefore, liberal morality is based more on qualities that demonstrate a willingness not to interfere with the choices of others (except for those who fall outside the liberal schema), such as non-discrimination, tolerance, openness and support for diversity.

It's also the case that liberals tend to want to manage society in a "technocratic" way, either through the markets or state regulation, and this is more readily achievable when people are stripped of "opaque" loyalties, such as those to family or ethny, that provide direction and authority outside of the technocratic systems. In a liberal society, people tend to become interchangeable units of the markets or bureaucracies, and obviously those with power in these systems feel comfortable with this outcome.

It's also true that diversity can be used as a weapon against whoever is the existing majority ethnic group. It can be used as such either by disloyal members of the majority group or else by members of minority groups.

So what can be done? One important achievement would be to undermine the dominance of liberalism as a political philosophy in the West, as this is a significant source of the idea that diversity is a moral aim. Another achievement would be to undermine the dominance of the corporate and bureaucratic elites. This can be done by making people aware of the bias of these elites (a process already partly completed) and by building up alternative sources of media, education and culture.

Finally, the research of Jonathan Haidt shows that liberals do care about the "harm" principle of morality. So it might also have some effect to show that individuals are harmed (by a loss of community) when diversity is forced upon communities.

Now even The Simpsons is mocking SJWs

What happens when nearly all university academics are left-liberals? You get a left-wing campus culture that is so ideologically divorced from reality that even The Simpsons considers it worthy of mockery:

Startling bias on U.S. campuses

Yes, we all know that the left managed to march through the institutions and capture them, including the universities. But it is still staggering to read the research regarding the left-wing bias of academics. The following is from an article by Australian journalist Paul Kelly:

Haidt has produced staggering figures on the revolution of the past 20 years in the US university system. It is basic to the culture war now raging in America.

Haidt (not a conservative) says “very few people” in the US know the extent of left-wing conformity entrenched in the humanities and social sciences in the US academy. As late as the 1990s the left-right ratio in the academy was only 2:1 but 15 years later there has been a “transformation” with the ratio now 5:1, with “almost everybody on the left” — and this includes professors from dental, engineering and agricultural schools.

The bias is much worse in the humanities. Taking his own field of social psychology, Haidt found the most recent data was 17:1. He quoted one survey with 291 respondents showing 85 per cent left-liberal and 6 per cent identifying as conservative, a ratio of 14:1.

He then followed a more extensive survey (William von Hippel and David M. Buss) involving members of the academic body of social psychologists. Of the 326 respondents, 291 identified as left of centre, which was 89 per cent, and only 2.5 per cent identified as right of centre. This gives a left-right ratio of 36:1.

Asked who they voted for or would have voted for at the 2012 presidential election, 305 out of 322 said Barack Obama (94.7 per cent), four said Mitt Romney (1.2 per cent) and 13 said another candidate (4 per cent). This meant a Democrat-Republican ratio of 76:1. When a series of political questions were put and scaled the result was a left-right ratio of 314:1.

The campuses are becoming increasingly left-liberal. The chances of a student encountering even a right-liberal academic, let alone a traditionalist one, are slight.

At some point in time, this will have to be challenged. I doubt if it is the next step, though. It seems more likely to me that gains will be made in building up an alternative media, as this is more readily achievable than trying to crack the leftist orthodoxy amongst academics.

Diversity as weaponised politics

I know I've been running on the theme of weaponised politics for a while now, but I came across one more interesting example. Last year an editor at the left-wing Huffington Post sent out a tweet that was intended to showcase the wonderful diversity on the editorial board of the newspaper. Here is the tweet:

What is the politics of diversity really being used here for? It is not to create diversity, even if that were a good thing. Nearly all of the editors are very young white women. And yet the photo is supposed to celebrate "diversity".

In this case, the politics of diversity has been weaponised against men. A workplace without men is thought to be "diverse" and therefore progressive.

And if you find yourself in the position where a weaponised politics is being used against you? The obvious thing to do is to no longer give that politics your support. Take away as much of its power as you can.

In particular, it is important to stop using the politics for virtue signalling. It's self-defeating for a man to try to signal his virtue by expressing support for "diversity" when that politics is then going to be weaponised against him.

One day we will get back to signalling our virtue by the strength of character with which we live our lives - and not by voicing our support for a left-wing politics that is aimed against us.

The values and vision of an American Democrat

Richard Fochtmann is a Democrat in the American state of Maine. He ran as a state senate candidate last year and lost. In the video below he is addressing an audience of Democrats at a Maine "values and vision" conference. Clearly, the Democrats are not trying to appeal to white male voters anymore.

You cannot stand alone

On Wednesday I wrote a post about weaponised politics:

I think it's true as well that politics can be weaponised. By this I mean that it is not just a case of pursuing abstract political principles and attempting to apply them logically and justly, but instead a means (a weapon) in pursuing group interests.

Politics today is being ominously weaponised against white people. The issue then becomes whether white people remain caught within a politics that aims to do them harm, or whether they see through the surface claims of a weaponised politics to the animosity and the malevolence underlying it.

The next day, as if to prove my point, The Huffington Post (supposedly a reputable news source), chose to run an opinion piece titled "Could it be time to deny white men the franchise?"

It's a disturbing read. The author, Shelley Garland, is apparently a white South African feminist woman (maybe even a troll, though the fact remains that the Huffington Post has chosen to run the piece).

Ms Garland is upset that white males voted for Brexit and for Donald Trump, thereby holding back the triumph of the progressive left. So she thinks it right that white males be forbidden from voting for 20 or 30 years. That would give progressives enough time to strip white males of their wealth.

This is politics weaponised against a particular group (white males). It has the aim of justifying seizing the assets of one group of people - white males - and transferring them to others.

There is a harsh reality at work here. We live in a world in which you need to be strong to defend your own interests and to keep yourself and your family safe. And it will not be enough to be strong as an isolated individual. A white man in the future might be personally resilient, a hard worker and physically courageous, but if he cedes political power to other groups he will nonetheless find himself defenceless. It is not possible to stand alone when other powerful groups are willing to organise against you.

To illustrate this point graphically, consider the following incident that took place this week in London. A couple of white men found themselves caught in a fight with a very large number of black men. As you can see in the video below, one of the white men is very strong and courageous but, inevitably, he is knocked out and then mocked by his attackers ("sleep tight").



White men are brought up to be individually strong, and part of the message is that you are strong if you are independent and able to succeed on your own. You are supposed to be self-reliant.

That can work in a highly homogeneous society, particularly if you are competing in the corporate world for success. But in an era of weaponised politics, it won't do. You cannot stand alone when a crowd of people wish to do you harm. In that scenario you need to organise with others to defend yourselves as a group.

The reality of the world is about to hit us hard. I hope that we can adapt quickly to the new situation we are going to find ourselves in. It's a little hard for us to imagine now what that future mindset will look like, as we have been influenced by an individualistic liberalism for so long and have become accustomed to living atomised lives, cut off from each other in our suburban homes.

In the coming world, we will need to more confidently assert a group interest, and we will need to find ways to organise so that we have a more effective means of defending ourselves from those who wish us harm (and, also, to maintain our own culture, values and tradition).

I can't be entirely sure what this will look like, but there are little groups of traditionalists springing up in Australia which represent one possible path toward this goal. If you're interested in them, the contact details are as follows:

Melbourne Traditionalists: You can contact me (Mark Richardson) via swerting (at) bigpond.com

Sydney Traditionalists: see here.

Perth Traditionalists: see here.

Guillaume Faye: a return to values

Sydney Trads have a "quote of the week" feature at their website. I particularly liked this one by French writer Guillaume Faye:

Moreover, as the philosopher Raymond Ruyer, detested by the left-bank intelligentsia, foretold in his two important works, Les nuisances idéologiques and Les cents prochains siècles, once the historical digression of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has finally closed, with egalitarianism’s hallucinations having descended into catastrophe, humanity will return to archaic values, that is, quite simply, to biological and human (anthropological) values: distinctive sexual roles; the transmission of ethnic and popular traditions; spirituality and sacerdotal organization; visible and supervisory social hierarchies; the worship of ancestors; initiatory rites and tests; the reconstruction of organic communities that extend from the individual family unit to the overarching national community of the people; the deindividualization of marriage to involve the community as much as the couple; the end of the confusion of eroticism and conjugality; the prestige of the warrior caste; social inequality, not implicit, which is unjust and frustrating, as in today’s egalitarian utopias, but explicit and ideologically justifiable; a proportioned balance of duties and rights; a rigorous justice whose dictates are applied strictly to acts and not to individual men, which will encourage a sense of responsibility in the latter; a definition of the people and of any constituted social body as a diachronic community of shared destiny, not as a synchronic mass of individual atoms, etc.

I had to look up the meaning of the words synchronic and diachronic:

synchronic: concerned with something as it exists at one point in time.

diachronic: concerned with the way in which something has developed and evolved through time.

Weaponised politics

There is a website called Everyday Feminism that has about 5 million monthly visitors. Below is a screenshot of a recent homepage of the site:

You'll notice that the focus of the website is an animosity to white people. There is an offer of "healing from toxic whiteness training," a "reality check for your typical white men aren't the enemy objection," a "let's expose the white double standard" story, and a "white privilege explained in one simple comic" piece.

There are two ways of looking at all this. The first is to explain the politics behind it all. This can be done. If you are a liberal and you believe that equality is the natural state of affairs, and you then need to explain why racial outcomes are different, one option is to believe that one group has set itself up as a false racial category ("whiteness") to exploit other groups in order to maintain an unearned privilege. The point of politics is then to deconstruct whiteness so that the era of full human equality is finally ushered in. Hence, the unrelenting attacks on white people on the feminist website.

However, I think it's true as well that politics can be weaponised. By this I mean that it is not just a case of pursuing abstract political principles and attempting to apply them logically and justly, but instead a means (a weapon) in pursuing group interests.

Politics today is being ominously weaponised against white people. The issue then becomes whether white people remain caught within a politics that aims to do them harm, or whether they see through the surface claims of a weaponised politics to the animosity and the malevolence underlying it.

Once more on the WQ

I'm never really confident writing on the Woman Question, so take what follows as speculative thought on the issue.

One thing that can disappoint men is that women aren't very attracted to masculine virtue. A man can be honourable, courageous and upstanding - but this is not what is likely to attract a female partner. But the thought occurred to me that perhaps the same thing is true when it comes to male attraction.

What men find attractive in women is something that could be described as an outflow of warm feminine emotion - of love, care, kindness and concern. A man is likely to think that a woman who shows this feminine quality is "nice" or "sweet" - as opposed to the opposite ("bitchy") - and this can become a man's moral framework in judging women. In other words, the nice woman is considered to be morally good, the harsh one to be morally bad.

But maybe this is, in part at least, confusing attraction with morality. Just as a woman might confuse a dominant masculine man with the idea of a "good man" - so too might men confuse the warmly or sweetly feminine natured woman with a "good woman".

This doesn't mean that it's of no concern whether a woman is attractive in her femininity or not - obviously men will want the women of their society to be attractive (and feminine attraction might be connected to a woman's ability to bond to her children etc.) However, what I am suggesting is that there needs to be a moral framework for women that stands apart from attraction.

Let's say that we have a woman who already qualifies as being feminine and attractive in the sense I set out above. She still requires a moral framework separate to this in order for her to make the right choices in her life, to contribute to her family and community, to retain the integrity of her personhood and so on.

For instance, a woman can be emotionally "sweet" but in her adult life she will need beyond this a moral framework that includes patience, forgiveness, industry, loyalty, humility and service (without these she is unlikely to be successful in her family commitments). Therefore, it is right for women to be judged on their possession, or lack of possession, of these virtues.

It seems to be the case as well that women, even more so than men, require larger commitments in order to fully establish a moral framework. If a woman commits to her family (i.e. she is proud of her family lineage and tradition and wishes to uphold it); or to her church and her faith; or to her nation and people - then this brings out her more serious moral commitments (which are not activated in a society based on the individual pursuit of happiness).

Cardinal George: a tale of two churches

Shortly before his death, Cardinal George of Chicago wrote an insightful column on the position of the church in the United States.

Here in Melbourne the Catholic Church still seems to be trying to be an arm of the liberal state. I've long thought this to be unwise, given the incompatibility of liberalism with Catholic doctrine.

Cardinal George set out the problem with great clarity in his column ("A tale of two churches").

He begins with the claim that the liberal state in the U.S. once promised to protect all religions and not become a secular rival to them, "a fake church". He then adds:

There was always a quasi-religious element in the public creed of the country. It lived off the myth of human progress, which had little place for dependence on divine providence. It tended to exploit the religiosity of the ordinary people by using religious language to co-opt them into the purposes of the ruling class...It had encouraged its citizens to think of themselves as the creators of world history and the managers of nature, so that no source of truth outside of themselves needed to be consulted to check their collective purposes and desires. But it had never explicitly taken upon itself the mantle of a religion and officially told its citizens what they must personally think or what “values” they must personalize in order to deserve to be part of the country. Until recent years.

The situation now? According to Cardinal George:

The “ruling class,” those who shape public opinion in politics, in education, in communications, in entertainment, is using the civil law to impose its own form of morality on everyone. We are told that, even in marriage itself, there is no difference between men and women, although nature and our very bodies clearly evidence that men and women are not interchangeable at will in forming a family. Nevertheless, those who do not conform to the official religion, we are warned, place their citizenship in danger.

He urges Catholics to resist yielding to the false state religion:

The inevitable result is a crisis of belief for many Catholics. Throughout history, when Catholics and other believers in revealed religion have been forced to choose between being taught by God or instructed by politicians, professors, editors of major newspapers and entertainers, many have opted to go along with the powers that be. This reduces a great tension in their lives, although it also brings with it the worship of a false god. It takes no moral courage to conform to government and social pressure. It takes a deep faith to “swim against the tide,” as Pope Francis recently encouraged young people to do at last summer’s World Youth Day.

Most of the Catholic leadership here in Melbourne seem to be desperately trying to fit in with the state religion rather than taking a stance against it. They are doing this not by renouncing core theological positions, but by "reading" Catholicism as an SJW philosophy. (Says the modern Melbourne Catholic: "I will serve others by supporting SJW political campaigns.") This might temporarily avert a crisis of belief by realigning Catholicism with the Zeitgeist, but in the longer term it is helping to cement in place a liberal state religion that is deeply, philosophically at odds not only with Catholic theology but with the future existence of a Western culture and civilisation.

When you ignore biological reality

Liberals want to believe that our biological sex can be made not to matter. A lone refugee in Sweden begs to differ. He manages to beat off three female police officers and smash their car when they are sent to arrest him for arson: