Andries Louis Joubert

Politics, Current Affairs, Philosophy

recent posts

  • Alex O’Connor Vs. Emerson Green on Free Will

    Alex O’Connor Vs. Emerson Green on Free Will

    Emerson Green and Alex O’Connor are both popular philosophy of religion personalities and Green made a video today critiquing Alex O’Connor’s hard determinism. O’Connor seems to believe that free will is incompatible with determinism and that determinism is true (meaning that free will is false). Green responds to an argument that he makes for this conclusion, which basically boils down to the claim that nobody can control what they want or will to do, and our wants determine all our choices and behaviour, unless we are coerced to do something. We only ever choose the courses of action which seem most compelling to us. What determines what seems most compelling to us? That will depend on whole host of factors that we have no control over, including intelligence, upbringing, environmental pressures acting on you in the moment, psychology and personality. We often think that we could have done otherwise in hindsight, but given exactly the same conditions as obtained at the time (both outwardly in the environment and inwardly in the brain), would you have been able to want to do otherwise? The answer to that seems to me to be no, because given exactly the same conditions, exactly the same thing would have seemed compelling to you to do, even if you can, through hindsight, recognize the action to be unwise or immoral or simply not in accord with your goals. 

    Emerson Green is a compatibilist (the belief that free will is compatible with determinism) and defends that view in response. Green anticipates the argument above by saying, “I really don’t think that whether or not we have free will, depends on whether we can impossibly self-create our genes, early environment, all our desires and so on.” He contends that hard determinists are “attacking a maximalist version of control that no one should defend.” He then sketches a compatibilist version of free will. “In ordinary life, if I say I did something of my own free will, what do I mean? I just mean that it was up to me. That my actions were in accordance my desires, that no one else made me do it, that I was doing what I wanted to do…” Green goes on to argue that we can achieve “self-authorship” as a result of being able to influence ourselves to choose to be a better person or a worse person. He then claims that we can still be the source of our actions even given O’Connor’s argument. To argue this, he appeals by analogy to a garden hose. The garden hose does not generate water from nothing, but we can still coherently call the hose a source of water. The hose is not the ultimate source of the water, but it is still obviously a source of water.

    This debate depends on how one defines free will, as Green pointed out, but there is good reason to define it more “maximally” than he does. In order to yield moral responsibility, I think that free will must include the ability to do otherwise, not in the sneaky, equivocating way that compatibilists seek to give us that ability in light of determinism, but in the way we ordinarily mean when we say it. What does that mean? When we think about whether we could have done otherwise, we mean that there is a possible world where, under exactly the same conditions, we chose a different course of action. In order for that to work, you must be the author of your actions and desires in a more maximalist sense. Arguably, there also needs to be something nonmechanistic inside you that is not subject to the laws of cause and effect of the external environment, that allows you to do this. It is from this dualistic worldview that our concept of free will comes. If determinism and physicalism is true, then this is impossible, because your brain (and therefore, mind) is then just part of the environmental conditions that caused you to act a certain way. To put it another way, the only way for you to do something freely is if your brain (and mind) is not just part of the predetermined conditions that cause what you do. To put it yet another way, any distinction between “you” and the predetermined conditions that influence you is a false dichotomy (such as when compatibilists say that something is “up to you”). That is what determinism and physicalism implies.

    There is a thought experiment by Harry Frankfurt, where he imagines that there is some kind of device or action by another person (“Black”) (like a brain implant) that will cause a person (“Jones”) to only take one action.[i] Jones happens to choose that action, so that the brain implant never activated to force him to do so. This is meant to prove that we can have free will without alternative possibilities, because our intuition remains that he chose freely even though he could not have done otherwise. But this way of understanding alternative possibilities is just equivocation. He could still have chosen to try to take another action, even if he would then have been forced, meaning that the thought experiment does retain alternative possibilities, which explains our intuition that he still had free will. If the brain implant had taken away his ability to even try or even decide to do something different, then we would no longer have the intuition that he retains free will. If you still think that the thought experiment retains our notion of free will, consider the following. In order for the brain implant, or some other action by “Black” to “activate”, Jones would need to do something different, or at least begin to do something different from the action that Black wants him to take. However restrictive you make the condition that Black puts on Jones, Jones would need to do or think something which would alert Black that Jones is going to do something different or activate the brain implant, meaning that he can still do something different. So, Frankfurt has not shown that free will can exist without alternative possibilities.

    But notice that Frankfurt’s thought experiment creates exactly the conditions which there is not in a deterministic world, that there is some causeless or causally suspended operation of deliberation and choice that functions provided there is no coercion. It presupposes what it is trying to prove. Determinism controls all our choices through prior causes that have nothing to do with us, meaning that, in the language of the thought experiment, Black’s brain implant is activated all the time. There is no such thing as human behaviour without Black’s brain implant being active. “Cannot do otherwise” is just a way of capturing the idea that we are forced to do what we do by things beyond our control. Frankfurt’s way of conceiving of alternative possibilities is not what we ordinarily mean by it. The thought experiment illustrates that our ability to have done otherwise must be internal and the only way it could be that way is if there is something in us which is exempt from the cause and effect of things around us. If we are subject to the same mechanistic world of cause and effect of the things around us, then there is no difference between any machine and us, except in terms of sophistication. We do what we are programmed to do, no more and no less. Sure, we have the ability to be self-controlled and to change and to do better, but whether we actually do so is determined by things that we haven’t chosen.

    The primary problem I have with compatibilism is that it does not seem significantly different enough from hard determinism to yield the type of free will that gives one moral responsibility. Whether you’re talking about sourcehood, selfhood, dispositions, or desires and intentions, none of these get you to responsibility, because none of them imply that you could have wanted or done otherwise (in a way that does not equivocate on what we ordinarily mean by “doing otherwise”). If physicalism is true, then your internal environment ( your brain, body and nervous system), in fact, you yourself and everything about you, is just part of the web of cause and effect, part of the conditions which determine what you do. It is a category mistake to talk about things being “up to me.” That “up to me” is drawing a distinction between a self and things I don’t control. But you don’t control yourself either. There is a “self” in the sense of an awareness of being a separate being from other beings in the world. But there is no self apart from the mechanistic world of cause and effect. When they say something is “up to me” compatibilists are subtly presupposing something in the human person that exists apart from the mechanistic world of cause and effect (while at the same time thinking that’s not what they’re doing). It is once again a dualistic paradigm rearing its head. Ironically, Green’s thought experiment about the garden hose shows exactly why he is wrong. The garden hose is the source of the water, but it is obviously not responsible for the fact that water is coming out of it. His thought experiment shows precisely why sourcehood does not result in free will or responsibility.

    [i] Frankfurt, Harry, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” In Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities: Essays on the Importance of Alternative Possibilities, edited by David Widerker and Michael McKenna (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), 21-22

  • Objective Morality and the Problem of Grace

    Objective Morality and the Problem of Grace

    The Christian religion wants you to accept that you must do absolutely everything right, but, at the same time, that you don’t have to do everything right. This is a contradiction. Christian theology has a way to make it seem that grace and moral absolutism don’t really contradict, but they do. Paul’s theology, especially seen in the book of Romans, attempts to grapple, unsuccessfully, with this problem. On the one hand, Paul recognizes that God demands absolute moral perfection, but at the same time, he recognizes that no one can meet this standard. It’s almost as if the Christian god is talking out of both sides of his mouth. However, the problem of grace does not go away just because one has exited Christianity. People simply cannot do everything they think they have to. They cannot fulfill all their moral obligations. Even if you’re an atheist, there will come a time when you see that you often do what you think is wrong. Therefore, it seems rational to think that I shouldn’t think I have to do everything right, but I also have to believe that I have to do right. This is again a contradiction. To put it another way, to accept grace, to accept human imperfection, you have to accept that it is sometimes right or permissible to do wrong, which doesn’t make sense. Does belief in objective morality require accepting something irrational, something contradictory? My answer is that it does. Moral absolutism or objective morality requires the contention that people have to do everything right. But human moral imperfection is an unavoidable fact. If you accept that you cannot do everything right, then you shouldn’t be a moral absolutist or shouldn’t believe in objective morality. One way, I suppose, to deal with this is to make morality as easy as possible. This is almost nihilism and it is not really a good solution. The secular theories of morality (like utilitarianism and deontology) have far-reaching implications for how one should treat people and it is simply not possible to do everything all the time.

    A better way to deal with it is to accept nihilistic pragmatism. The “nihilism” in nihilistic pragmatism, means that nothing is inherently wrong or right. People don’t have objective or metaphysical moral obligations. They can do whatever they like. The only thing that constrains them is rational self-interest and moral emotion. It is the task of a good society to make it in peoples’ self-interest to be peaceful and harmonious (through the rule of law). Of course, even here, people are not machines. They cannot always be rational. But since there is no objective or metaphysical requirement for them to be such, it doesn’t matter. It matters only pragmatically, only to the extent that you will get into trouble for not being rational. But there is no other dimension of reality that requires that people always do it. Nihilistic pragmatism is far superior to moral absolutism. Roman law was such a success for its pragmatism, so much so, that it continues to form the foundation of European legal systems. Moral absolutism continues to poison the way people think about morality, and it breeds fanaticism and rage. Retributive thinking reigns not only among Christians and Jews, but also among atheists, who should know better than the rest not to indulge it. In fact, I suspect that one reason why most philosophers want to be compatibilists instead of hard determinists is because they cannot break their retribution addiction. Nihilistic pragmatism also just makes sense of our moral intuitions. Very few acts, if any, are always thought to be wrong. Killing? Murder is taken very seriously, but everyone recognizes that there are times when killing is justified (such as in war or in self-defense). Lying? Everyone knows it is sometimes fine to lie (such as when one is lying to protect innocents from harm). Stealing? If I were starving, I would steal. Rape? Until fairly recently, marital rape was legal (and, in my opinion, should be again). In fact, my guess is that married and cohabiting couples constantly rape each other in small ways and they don’t care.

  • Some Thoughts on Penal Reform

    Some Thoughts on Penal Reform

    This post was originally published on songofodin.wordpress.com, an anonymous blog of mine that I’ve since taken down.

    Our society is often concerned about marginalized groups, but one group that doesn’t get enough attention is convicts and ex-convicts. Think about it. You grow up in poverty and abused; you develop anger problems and lash out at people. You quickly get in trouble with the law. Or perhaps you do something impulsively and thoughtlessly. Perhaps you are placed under a great deal of pressure in a perfect storm of negative influences that cause you to do something you can’t take back. And then you are sentenced to life…not necessarily life in prison, but a life of social trouble, where you constantly have to tell employers what you did, and have to rely on their good graces to get by. But even then, there’s a limit to how merciful they will be. You will have to work low-skilled and other low-tier jobs. Goodbye to your dreams. Goodbye to ever living a normal life again. People deserve a second chance and a clean slate, a chance to do what they really wanted after they’ve been punished. But this is impossible or very difficult to do in the current system (in North America).

                Before we look at ways to ease their suffering, let’s first ask the question of why it’s wrong for them to suffer in this way. Don’t they deserve it? Even if you think they deserve it, there is still room for compassion. But they don’t. Determinism is true. Our actions are fixed by causes beyond our control, whether in the environment or in the brain. Utilitarianism is also true, so that we have to maximize the happiness of as many people as possible to the greatest extent possible. This includes convicts and ex-convicts. This also means that the goal of corrections is rehabilitation rather than retribution. Retribution is a primitive concept that we can do without. Our society and criminal punishment has become much more humane the less we have thought in terms of it, most especially since the Enlightenment.

                One way to make it easier for convicts is to adopt a lighter corrections system, best exemplified in Scandinavian penal systems. Norway’s penal system is a very good example. It is based on the notion of “penal welfarism” and the “principle of normality”, which means that life inside the prison should closely resemble life outside the prison. The goal of the system is rehabilitation, not retribution and it addresses the social causes of crime rather than emphasizing deterrence. The sentences are shorter than in other countries. There are no life sentences and the maximum sentence is 21 years. Half of prisoners serve their time in “open prisons” where prisoners have private rooms and access to education (including vocational training), healthcare and can also go outside whenever they want (within the prison grounds). The staff are trained as social workers, not merely guards. It is well-known that the Norwegian penal system is associated with lower recidivism and the re-offending rate in Norway is among the lowest globally (20 – 30%). This system seems to indicate that treating convicts with kindness and support goes a long way to ensuring their reintegration. However, it is important to note that the penal system in Norway works in tandem with its extensive welfare system.

                A way to make things easier for ex-convicts is to reform criminal record checks. A good case can be made that most employer criminal record checks are useless. It’s unclear what’s achieved by them. When the HR manager at a particular employer sees a criminal record, he or she (usually she) has to make a judgment about whether that person should be employed given their record. Based on what should this judgment be made? What experience or education in criminology does the HR manager have? Usually, none. They have some past experience with ex-convict employees maybe (but probably not a lot). The judgment about whether the ex-convict is ready to re-enter society has already been made more competently by the penal system. So why should an employer who has no, or very little, experience in such matters make such a judgment again? It is also arguable that employer criminal record checks encourage social exclusion and recidivism. The more excluded an ex-convict, the more likely they are to re-offend, because they will feel that their life is over anyway. The presumption should be that if a person has served their sentence, they should be trusted once again by society. This doesn’t mean that criminal record checks should be abandoned entirely. They can still be used for specified roles, and especially for vulnerable sector jobs (jobs involving, for instance, children and the elderly). For example, in Sweden, criminal record checks are generally illegal, except for certain positions (such as healthcare, work involving children, the penal system, and security personnel).  

  • An Argument for the Non-Existence of God from Time

    An Argument for the Non-Existence of God from Time

    Accomplished Christian apologist, William Lane Craig, believes that God was timeless before creation and temporal since creation. Both timelessness and temporality with regard to God has insuperable problems. If God is timeless, the world needs to be timeless as well or God would need to exit timelessness at a particular point in time (which is a contradiction). To put it another way, a timeless being cannot come out of timelessness because that would imply time. If there’s a moment when God ceases to be timeless, then time must have existed. If God remains timeless with the creation of the world, then the world must be timeless as well, because a timeless cause generates a timeless effect. But the world is not timeless. On the other hand, if God exists in time he must exist in space according to Special Relativity since spacetime is a unified reality. This implies that God must be a physical being somewhere in the cosmos, living on a planet somewhere, which is mythological. If God is a physical being, he would not have been able to create the cosmos (because he’s part of it). Christian philosophers might say that God inhabits a special kind of time different from our time, but not only is this ad hoc, it would also make it impossible for God to interact with his creation. No matter which option the Christian philosopher takes (timelessness or temporality) theism doesn’t make sense.

  • An Autopsy of the #MeToo Movement

    An Autopsy of the #MeToo Movement

    The #MeToo movement took center stage in North American culture in 2017 with a contagious desire to change things and take down powerful men. Since then, it has changed the way people think about sex crimes and particularly rape, but not for the better. During 2020, the high-profile influence of the movement collapsed when two of its most prominent backers, Rose McGowan and Alyssa Milano, fell out with one another. Milano backed Biden who had his own accuser (Tara Reade), which McGowan could not abide. What lessons can be learned from the mistakes of this movement? Western justice is based on the idea that it is “better to let ten guilty men go free than one innocent man go to prison.” It is full of checks and balances that undoubtedly let the guilty go free, but they are justified because they protect the innocent. #MeToo sometimes seems to have inverted this principle so that it is better for ten innocent men go to prison than one guilty man to go free. Based on this idea, here are a couple of points that I believe requires a rethink.

    “Believe all Women”

    Despite some pretensions to the contrary, “believe all women” or “believe women” did seem to mean that women who came forward with sexual assault accusations should automatically be believed by society in general and should generate swift social retribution against the accused. (Most of the push back against the movement has been focused on this issue, but there are others worth discussing.) This is not to say that accusers who come forward with such accusations should be ignored by journalists or especially by the police, but that society should withhold social sanction until the courts have reached a verdict. This rule cannot always be followed in the case of sub-criminal behaviour (where there will be no court case), but that in this case, there should be some type of investigation before social sanction ensues. By “social sanction”, I don’t mean pressure placed on an organization to investigate, but rather to demand consequences and to enact such consequences before an investigation has taken place. This all boils down to the same principle: do not punish people by taking accusations as definitive proof on their own, without some type of attempt to fairly determine the truth, and without giving the accused party a chance to defend themselves. To treat accusations as definitive proof on their own is no more than a primitive mob justice. Unfortunately, apart from social sanction, this way of thinking may have also influenced the courts and how they handle rape testimony, making it much easier to reach guilty verdicts (and not in a good way).

    Delayed Reporting

    We are to believe that accusations are still perfectly reliable even many years after the fact. Society and even courts have softened on such reports. Memory is unreliable enough as it is, but the idea that such delayed reports are not less reliable is ridiculous.

    Power Imbalances

    Men are normally attracted to women who are less powerful and less successful than them, and women are normally most attracted to men who are more powerful than they are. There is also always a physical power imbalance between men and women, apart from the social one that is often there. Laws and principles that decree the unacceptability of power imbalances are basically criminalizing heterosexuality.Even if rules like this are trying to capture something legitimate, their vagueness makes it easy to target any powerful man who is unpopular of unlikeable. Perhaps this rule is trying to capture conduct that is sexually exploitative, but in a society that accepts sexual promiscuity, it is hard to distinguish normal sexual behaviour from exploitative sexual behaviour, because men will still be promiscuous in a way that targets younger and less powerful women. This rule then unfairly penalizes men for sexual promiscuity and not women.  

    Retraumatizing victims

    In the movement, there has sometimes been the preposterous idea that thoroughly cross-examining a rape victim will “retraumatize” them. Not only does this amount to the same thing as taking accusations as evidence enough of a crime, it is also an abuse of the concept of trauma. #MeToo feminism seems to take delight in making men as vulnerable as possible to any allegation and therefore emboldening false accusers. Even if a thorough cross-examination really hurts victims, it is still right because someone’s life is on the line.

    Activist Convictions

    Particularly when conjoined with a jury system, a high degree of social pressure will result in convictions regardless of guilt. This is not to rule out activist influence in law enforcement as they may have important insights especially when law enforcement may not be doing its job. This social pressure may be unavoidable in high profile cases, but these cases deserve extra scrutiny after the conviction.  

  • The Enemy Within: A Defense of Heteronormative Patriarchy

    The Enemy Within: A Defense of Heteronormative Patriarchy

    Trouble is coming for North America through it’s young. There is rising loneliness and less sex. In secular environments, there are fewer children and 45% of women will be alone by 2030. There is rising homosexuality (25% among Gen Z, now a quarter of the population). This is completely unsustainable. A society where young men and women fail to come together, marry and have families is doomed to fail. A civilization that is destroyed from within will not rise again. But what is the cause of the coming calamity? It’s not hard to spot the answer, though many, including conservatives, have become so used to the status quo that they don’t want to face the answer: feminism and the gay identity movement. Feminism has taught young women to be rabid careerists and to withhold sex from men as much as they want. Women are naturally ambivalent about sex through instinct and feminism has taught women to look down on men, which may explain why the younger generation has so little sex compared to previous generations. The reality is that feminism combined with the remains of male chivalry have made Western women incredibly arrogant. They are treated like they are made of glass and then become convinced that they are strong. The gay identity movement has aggressively endorsed a way of life that contributes nothing to society and works against the family. What is the solution to these problems? It requires a complete rethink of our current system and a return our pagan roots in ancient Roman and Greek thinking, especially Athenian democracy. The West is Rome so it makes sense to look to it for wisdom to defeat the enemy within without adopting everything it represented. It requires a complete rejection of all the “waves” of feminism, including the first one, and of gay identity ideology. What should replace them? A return of pagan masculinity and the heroic ideal without any puritanism about sex, including homosexual sex.

    Sex and Gender

    Why are men more suited for leadership contexts than women? The reasons are legion. Men are more rational/analytical and women are more intuitive. They are also more intelligent than women. Men are more assertive than women, meaning that men are more likely to address things that need to be addressed, while women are more likely leave them be. Men are competitive. Feminists are used to seeing the acrimonious side of competitiveness rather than its positive side: men want to do better than each other. This is the engine of progress and therefore of business which is why the feminine spirit does not belong in business leadership. Women are more likely to be bitter. Bitterness is weakness. Strong people do vengeance and then move on or they decide a provocation is not worth their response and then move on. Holding onto old hurts hampers objectivity. Women are normally attracted to men who are stronger, higher status and more successful than they are because they want to submit and be led. Women don’t want to lead, otherwise it would be the inverse. This is the same as saying that women are naturally submissive to men, at least to those men they choose as partners. Gender egalitarianism goes against nature. Women dominate men by withholding sex, which is why at least marital rape should be legal. Men then try to do everything to win their wives’ approval for sex, which means the wife then has the position of power in the relationship. It is unnatural and anti-social for women to dominate men, which is why marital rape has been acceptable until recently.

    Nature clearly intended for men to dominate women. Gender Egalitarianism is impossible because each sex will vie for power over the other. Women take power in sexual politics if men don’t assert their dominance. Feminism has never really been interested in egalitarianism, but only in triumphalism of the feminine over the masculine. Men must re-establish their authority over women. Patriarchy must return. In general, women should not do the same things as men because if women are constantly in male contexts, men lose objectivity and start to “peacock.” Weaker men will do whatever it takes to have sex with women, including voice wrong opinions, though stronger men can do only so much to resist the influence of the “peacocks.” The more peacocks voice wrong opinions for sex, the stronger feminine power and female opinions becomes. Another reason to exclude women from leadership contexts is that feminine practices of passivity and emotion will, as a matter of course, enter leadership contexts if any women are allowed. Therefore, women should be completely excluded from leadership contexts, including all managerial positions, politics and government, professions (doctors and lawyers), and academia. Women should focus on support, administration and artistic pursuits. Suffrage should be limited to male property owners (maybe property value equal to or exceeding $1,000,000 in Canada and $500,000 in the US), which is something akin to the Roman pater familias. It is such a high amount because the ruling class should include “rich values” rather than “poor values”. If you limit suffrage to the poor, you will get a poor country. Doing it like this will destroy the values of the malcontent who always wants more from society and the government, refuses to the take responsibility and who wants to destroy the rich and the strong.

    Suffrage is a privilege, not a right, which is why it can be easily taken away if a citizen who qualifies by the above criteria does not attend civic meetings or acquires “felony” convictions. They have to know what the law says and have the self-control to follow it. People with self-control can be objective under pressure. Universal suffrage has quickly led to civilizational decline and will lead to its complete destruction if it is not stopped. Too many weak, evil riffraff get to vote. To ensure that this new aristocracy knows what they’re voting for, they will have to complete an open-book exam about the policies of the candidates under consideration. These reforms will help a great deal for the problems discussed during the introduction. Women will be more submissive to men, will focus more on home life and have more children. This “aristocracy” will be rich property owners who like capitalism, liberty and want the government to leave them alone to govern their own affairs. Capitalism is still the best economic system, but it is constantly opposed by women. It is a harsh, masculine and Darwinian system that leaves the noncompetitive by the wayside (the “creative destruction” of the market). This is the only way progress takes place. A stronger emphasis on the free market will decrease the cost of living making it easier to afford a home and groceries.

    Sexuality

    The great slogan of the gay identity movement is “marriage equality.” But is homosexuality equal in value, whether socially or ontologically, to heterosexuality? Obviously not. Heterosexuality results in the family and the next generation, while homosexuality contributes nothing to society. The family is one of the most important, maybe the most important, institution in a society. It is what teaches the next generation the values of the society, makes them citizens and provides an indispensable refuge from the troubles of life as well as a platform from which to excel. Heterosexual relationships have psychological compatibility, while homosexual relationships do not. What does that mean? Male homosexuality has astronomical levels of sexual promiscuity while female homosexuality struggles with the opposite issue, colloquially known as “lesbian bed death.” Both are dysfunctional. Also, venereal disease spreads like wildfire among male homosexuals, much faster than among heterosexual couplings. To get even more uncomfortable, let’s discuss sex acts. Heterosexual couples can do everything that homosexual couples can do plus vaginal intercourse. Vaginal intercourse signals unity and sexual love in a way that no homosexual sex act can. Male homosexuals try to get to this unity through anal sex but it is simply not the same. All of this is to say that heterosexuality is objectively superior to homosexuality and should be prioritized by the state and culture, while homosexuality should be discouraged. To put it another way, Western societies should be heteronormative. This is not to say that homosexual sex acts should be condemned as immoral, but gay marriage should indeed be condemned as contrary to the health of the society. Only heterosexuality should be endorsed by the state and culture, because it is the ideal sexual relationship. Do homosexuals have to be in long-term same-sex relationships?

    My belief is that LGBT ideology (the idea of gay identity and orientation) should be completely rejected. The reason for this is simply that gay identity propaganda seems deceptive, because gay men are actually bisexual (or something of that nature, without affirming sexual identity). Why should we believe this? Many men who come out as gay were first in apparently successful heterosexual marriages, complete with multiple children. They reach mid-life and decide they will from then on be gay. This seems to me to mean that gay men still find women sexually attractive and enjoy sex with them. But what then is the homosexual identity? What is it that drives certain men and women to long-term same-sex relationships when they still find the opposite sex sexually attractive? I don’t have a clear answer to this. We’ve already established that rising homosexuality is a problem due to the fact that heterosexuality is objectively superior and because long-term homosexual relationships are anti-natalist. The fact is that an increasing number of people want to be LGBT in some way or another due to cultural pressure and this will be a lot less if heterosexuality is encouraged while long-term homosexual relationships are discouraged (without discouraging all homosexual sex acts). If there is such a thing as gay identity (i.e. the desire for long-term same-sex relationships), it should be regarded as a disability due to its non-ideal nature, so that the rest of society does not regard it as a viable option. Even those who “have to” should be encouraged to take wives and husbands and do homosexuality “on the side” without making it a way of life. Heteronormativity here is not meant to imply that those with such a disability should be excluded from the “aristocracy” I’ve described above. Most importantly, something in LGBT identity goes against pagan masculinity. This is why it does not belong anywhere near the military (again referring to homosexual identity not homosexual sex acts) and in great numbers, it will weaken the men in a society whether it is outside the military or not, especially if it is as strongly endorsed by the culture and the state as it currently is in Western societies.

    Race

    This piece is titled “a defense of pagan heteronormative patriarchy”, but not “racist patriarchy.” Why is that? While it is true that blacks have a different genetic profile to whites (including genetic propensities to lower intelligence and criminality), black men who meet the criteria of the new “aristocracy” will undoubtedly be more than competent to rule alongside the rest. They are probably more intelligent, more stable and more independent than their black peers. White men are genetically inferior to Asian men in terms of criminality and slightly less intelligent. Jewish people tend to be more intelligent and law-abiding than white men. Should we then include only Asian and Jewish men and exclude white and black men? This is not about selecting the perfect racial genetic profile, which is unnecessarily strict and perfectionistic. The criteria do enough to select for the best men regardless of race. If white men do not consider themselves inferior to Asians and Jews, then black men should not consider themselves inferior to whites even given the scientific facts regarding race.

    Religion

    Christianity is the reason for the current crisis. Feminism developed out of Christianity and the gay identity movement developed out of both (Christianity and feminism). Christian men were unable to stop these movements that are currently destroying the West because of its lack of cultural confidence and weakness. It harsh to say but simply true that men become weaker when they become Christians. They become too soft and too eager to please everyone. Paul tells his followers to constantly avoid making people angry (e.g. Romans 14:13-23) and to “be all things to all people” (1 Corinthians 9:22). The New Testament strongly teaches non-retaliation and Jesus even condemns all anger. Strong Christian men reject something in Christianity and do their own thing with it (e.g. Matt Walsh and Pete Hegseth). The masculine side of Christianity can also no longer find expression due to new knowledge and intellectual weaknesses that can’t be overcome. Intellectual confidence is required for masculinity. Men need to know they are doing something that makes sense, that’s clever, even if they are not intellectuals. Finally, orthodox Christianity has too many things to be strict about which also generates weakness. I suspect that Christian men, especially left-leaning men, wanted to be saved from strictness of Christianity and so embraced feminism and gay identity politics, because those were the only alternatives at the time. Liberal Christianity is more rational than orthodox Christianity, but it is bankrupt. It’s churches are aging and emptying and it worships gay pride. Some combination of Roman or Greek paganism and atheism is ideal. Even though atheists today have supported a number of wrong causes (socialism, feminism and LGBT identity politics), secular people, including Deists, have made things much better over time through an excellent tradition of rational thinking that comes from the Enlightenment. Atheists made things better by simply opposing the theocratic impulse in Christianity and its irrationalism, secularizing society, promoting skeptical values and making science socially authoritative. If people cannot be atheists, they should do paganism in a theistic way but without “mythic literalism” which will generate superstition or irrationalism. The great thing about paganism is that people can focus on those things that they identify most with.

    Military

    Patriarchal and heroic values will help the military as well. A feminized and gay culture cannot support it properly and it is growing weaker by the day, with little interest from men in being soldiers. A strong and clever enemy will know how to exploit these weaknesses. The military is ideally a masculine, authoritarian and uniform culture, which is why it should exclude women and gay identity politics and certainly any trans stuff. The presence of women in the military erodes the ideal of physical excellence and the men know they can get away with more if women are present, because they lower the bar and people want to be softer with them. It also changes the atmosphere and the attitude within the military. Leaders in the military know that women were included from kindness and a desire to be inclusive. This makes everything softer.

  • The True Slave Morality

    The True Slave Morality

    There are different forms of egalitarianism but the most extreme and unreasonable one involves “equality of outcomes,” or that everyone should be the same in some respect (usually wealth). Equality of outcomes (in terms of wealth) implies communism and its influence can be seen in left-wing politics. If this is the wrong type of egalitarianism, what is the correct type? It can be called “equality of consideration” or non-discrimination, though, in reality, this is nothing but fairness. People should be considered equally by the government and employers and any other person who has the power to make decisions about their lives. Conservatives often talk of “equality of opportunity.” This sometimes means the same thing as equality of consideration, but it can also mean something that is the same as equality of outcomes. If everybody should have the same opportunities, then they must start out from the same position, meaning that outcomes must be the same as well. The target of my criticism will be equality-of-outcomes and socialist egalitarianism. A good example of equality-of-outcomes egalitarianism is feminist activism, which attempted to use affirmative action to increase female representation in the workplace, rather than letting meritocracy take care of any inequities. Affirmative action is a tool used by equality-of-outcomes egalitarianism, since it rejects equality of consideration in favour of the idea that there should be more or less the same proportion of the population, in terms of characteristics like race and sex, in the workplace as in the general population. Apart from being almost impossible to achieve, this is unethical, because it rejects simple fairness. Of course, some people just want to push representation a little, without wanting to achieve equality of outcomes regarding those traits.

    A Case Against Socialist Egalitarianism

    Social democracies in Europe are also motivated by a concern for socialist egalitarianism, even though social services can be justified apart from such egalitarianism. It is not inequality, but poverty, that’s the problem. Nobody has much of a problem with inequality between the rich and richer. It is benevolence (best encapsulated by utilitarianism), rather than equality, that should motivate a concern for the poor. But doesn’t it seem unfair for people to be born with a leg up on others and shouldn’t society try to correct this unfairness? It’s true that something about it does feel unfair. However, if it is wrong for any given person to have more than any other person, then the ideal world is one where everybody has exactly the same attributes and talents in every single way, as any differences in talent, intelligence or character would imply inequality. That would be a very dull place to live in. Socialist egalitarianism also implies that all envy and jealousy is morally justified. If someone has more than you in any respect and you feel anger toward them for this, you are justified, and then you would also, by implication, be justified in attempting to destroy what they have that you don’t. For this reason, it is socialist egalitarianism that is the true slave morality, the drive to reduce every excellence to rubble. Unfortunately, socialist egalitarianism motivates one to strike upward as well as helping downward. Most of the effects of “income inequality” might really be the effects of poverty, including social division, reduced social mobility, health issues etc. Inequality and relative deprivation (the cause of social division) only become a real problem when you’re poor. Then you feel keenly what you don’t have and what others have. Everybody in the West who believes in socialist egalitarianism is also a hypocrite, since they are morally obligated by their theory to give away their money and assets until they are equal to the poorest of the poor in the world. If they truly believe that egalitarianism dictates that billionaires should not be allowed to have so much wealth, then nobody in Western societies should have as much as they have, because there are people in the world who are poorer than them.

    A Utilitarian Case Against Socialist Egalitarianism

    If equality of outcomes is a moral imperative, then some type of communism must be the right political system. However, if communism doesn’t work (i.e. doesn’t result in the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people), then it can’t be a moral requirement. This means that equality of outcomes is not a moral requirement. There’s also no point in half-measures, in pushing equality a little if it can’t be absolute. Morally, either it should be implemented or it shouldn’t. Also, if you believe that inequality is an evil, is it more evil than poverty? Poverty causes much greater suffering, and is therefore much more evil. Since communism causes much greater poverty than capitalism, it is more immoral than capitalism, even if inequality is an evil. Hopefully, humanity can move on from this foolish and destructive conceit so that we can fully embrace the progressivism inherent in capitalism and the power of simple fairness to correct injustices.