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This post was edited by Parietal_Lobe at 2017-3-10 20:51
From a strictly logical point of view, one would expect you to take any offer, down to a penny for you and $9.99 for me. After all, even a lopsided deal like that leaves you a penny richer. However, when this “take it or leave it” game has been tried on Germans, Americans, Yugoslavs, Japanese and Israelis, offers that deviate significantly from $5 for each person are almost always rejected — in effect punished — and no player ever accepts a split as unbalanced as $2.50 for him, $7.50 for the fellow making the offer. What is more, very few players from these countries ever offer a deal significantly more advantageous to himself than $5/$5, perhaps because each player knows that no such offer will be accepted.
The reason for this seems to be a sense of equity, probably innate, that moves players to punish behavior they see as unfair, even at some cost to themselves. This moral indignation, though it may appear irrational and counterproductive, is one of those rules by which sensible men bind themselves for the sake of their own and everyone else’s long-run profit. For imagine a society of egotists with no compunction about making lopsided offers in the interest of maximizing short-term gain. No one egotistical enough to feel entitled to a $9.99/1¢ split is likely to settle for the one cent when someone makes that lopsided offer to him, so in such a society few beneficial bargains will be made. In such a society I will offer you one percent of the profits for mining my gold, you will give me a piece of your mind, and we will both remain poorer than we need to be. In a society where everyone has a sense of equity and 50/50 offers are apt to be made, these offers are also apt to be accepted, and everyone will become better and better off. Emphasis on equity leads to mutually enriching bargains.
My sense is that Mongoloid moral systems put less emphasis than Caucasoid on conscience but endorse similar rules of fairness. I would love to see take-it-or-leave-it experiments with subjects of different races, although I cannot imagine such experiments being allowed in the present climate. I would predict that racial differences would be found in the lopsidedness of offers made and in offers accepted, with whites and Asians tending toward a 50/50 equilibrium, with blacks more inclined to make — but disinclined to accept — offers deviating from this midpoint. Please recall the “you’d be a fool” view of keeping incorrect change. This attitude would surely encourage short-sighted, unbalanced offers; would it also lead to the acceptance of such offers (since a penny is better than nothing) or militate against them? I suspect the latter, but I would like some data.
4) A fourth criterion of group excellence is power: When the ordinary person calls one group superior to another, he may mean that members of the first group can be counted on to defeat equal numbers of the second in battle. However unlovely, this is a standard people often have in mind, and there is no doubt that Caucasians predominate. The weapons they have invented would allow easy conquest of the planet, and they would meet resistance only from societies that have managed to imitate the weapons of the West. Nor is there much doubt that, say, a thousand Caucasoid males could organize themselves into a more effective fighting force capable of defeating a thousand Negroids. It is not clear that whites would have equal success against Asians, but again it must be remembered that ever since the Middle Ages, Asian armies have done reasonably well against white armies only by using white inventions. If in our imaginary 1,000-on-1,000 battle each group is restricted to weapons developed by its own society, whites would certainly win every time.
This standard is not as brutish as it sounds, since, for better or worse, military power is the upshot of traits that are admired in their own right: courage, intelligence (to devise better weapons and better treatment for the wounded) discipline, audacity, and concern for the group.
Superiority by this standard also has some interesting demographic implications. The first is that whites may well govern — that is, occupy virtually all positions of power — no matter what ideology is dominant. Blacks and non-European Hispanics may become more numerous in the United States, but even in a democracy they will have to have someone to vote for, and whites will generally manage to be the ones that get into a position to be elected. (We see this with the sexes: there are more female than male voters, but at the national level virtually all leaders are men.) This may explain why whites rule in Brazil, even though the black population is proportionally much larger than in the United States. It is not that blacks think whites are more fit to rule, it’s just that the naturally dominant group always does dominate.
Thus, I fully expect that when 2050 rolls around, and assuming (as the demographers assure us) whites become a minority, whites will still rule because they will be better organized. However, at some point they will be unthroned through sheer weight of numbers — perhaps by the 22nd century.
Thus, according to four common criteria — influence, emulation, efficiency and power — whites come out on top, but as I have pointed out, a determined skeptic can reject all four. We can fully expect egalitarians to reject them, at least in public: “What’s so great about influence or intellect or the capacity for moral thinking?” I doubt that anyone can mean this question seriously, but it can’t be answered except by appealing to other standards egalitarians can also disingenuously challenge. All anyone can do is point out that we do care about these things, and ask anyone who doesn’t to suggest traits we should care about more.
As I emphasize in my book, the values we have as individuals and as a culture are the ones we can’t help but use. While upbringing counts to some extent, our values are the heritage of eons of selection. We are born with them. That is the way we are. One can be objective about one’s own values for a few hours in the study, but detachment becomes impossible as soon as the world presses in. Values are like emotions. I know intellectually that the grief I might feel for the death of a son is a biological adaptation — nature’s way of making sure I take better care of my other offspring — but realizing that emotions are a trick of neural wiring would not reduce my suffering one bit.
The much touted “wisdom of the East” that teaches the extirpation of emotions is foolish. It can easily counsel an alienation from one’s own deepest commitments, and this trivializes life. The Western approach of engagement with the world, with its attendant risks of suffering, is more honest.
Each group therefore finds its own standards best, and judges the rest of the world by them. How could it be otherwise? A group of people that disapproved of its own nature would suffer a spiritual dissonance not conducive to survival, and psychologists tell us that pride in one’s ethnic group is a sign of mental health (although this sort of pride is supposed to be reserved for non-whites). By Caucasian standards Caucasians are best.
Critics of white “ethnocentrism,” like Capt. Reynaud in Casablanca, pretend to be “shocked I tell you, shocked” that whites give the highest grades to white writers, artists, composers, statesmen and inventors. What do they expect? If blacks preferred non-black culture, these same critics would say that whites have taught blacks to hate themselves. In any case, even if ethnocentrism is bad it is inevitable. We have the values we have, and we have no choice but to apply them.
So what should you say if someone asks you whether you believe in racial superiority? Ask him what he means by “superior,” what standards he has in mind. If he can’t or won’t answer, remind him that the question was his. If he doesn’t know what “superior” means, he is as much as admitting that he doesn’t know what he is talking about — and if he doesn’t know what he is talking about, why should you continue the conversation?
If he says accusingly “You know darn well what I mean,” pin him down: Tell him you know what you mean, but not what he means. If you finally elicit a concrete standard from him apply it, but remind him that any aspersions cast are his. For instance, if he says creation of material wealth is a measure of superiority, point out that, yes, white societies are richer than others and therefore better by his criterion, and that it is he, not you, who is assuming the value of wealth. This tactic will shame the most shameless egalitarian. In his heart he believes that, by his own criteria, whites (and Asians) are better than blacks. Since he will never admit this, with luck you can at least get him to go away.
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