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Check out this Documentary on Indo-Europeans

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abott1776

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According to this documentary Indo-Europeans brought individualism, trade, and war among other things to Europe. Pre IE, people were "noble savages" living in communes, only growing what they "needed" until we came along and fucked shit up.

 

I don't think the message in the documentary was leftist, but the idea of things like individualism going back that far into pre-history, suggests that the uniqueness of western civilization was very fundamental. Fundamental in the sense that it was not just a result of Greek thinkers over 2,000 years ago just so happened to come up with formal philosophy, and everything that entails.

 

Here is the first of two videos on youtube, the poster of the video has a link to "Ajna Spirituality" website, which I don't know if it has anything to do with the documentrary. Maybe it is the spirituality of those "noble savages". I looked at the poster's other videos and they mainly had to do with Indian spirituality. I don't know where the documenatary comes from.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmHXBXG7Loo

Edited by abott1776
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Since Obama's re-election, I have read a lot of "race realist" material in my research on Western Civilization and its defense.

 

A particularly important theme, from Richardo Duchesne a pro-Western historian, is the "Faustian" personality type, i.e., a fundamental in pre-history, which is said to account for the need to strive to one's limits, to climb to the top of a mountain for the sake of it, or to go around the world for the sake of it, to land on the moon for the sake of it, to run a marathon for its own sake. It is not a means to an end, but to prove one's worthiness. The end is one's own glory and sense of satisfaction that one did it, as in a need to "justify one's existence" in terms of one's accomplishments.

 

Where else does "man's need for self-esteem" come from?

 

Indo-Europoean warrior cults demand arete on the battlefield. The need to prove oneself on the battlefield to have social standing; one exists and survives in terms of accomplishments, not merely, existing as part of a group. People are ranked and seek rank, not equality.

 

This Faustian personality type, would account for the popularity of Ayn Rand's heroes among descendants of Indo-Europeans, and since it tickles the heart of this personality type: the hero-worshipper and his need to identify and stand with heroes. This is not as universal as you might think. 

 

Here is the Faustian personality in detail by Duchesne:

 

http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2012/06/explore-duchesne/

 

Ricardo Duchesne's book the Uniqueness of Western Civilization is reviewed here by Kevin Mac Donald.

 

http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/Duchesne-Review.pdf

 

 

The intellectual leader of this movement is primarily Kevin MacDonald.

 

If I had to make a prediction, the race realists are a very fast growing movement and will dominate the culture in ten years, with Objectivism as a sort of side-kick.

 

Unlike Objectivists, they have a sense of strategy and a detail-orientation. There is always news to draw on that suits their cause from Travyon to quotas to the knockout game and make their points. They just have "fourteen words" to get across, not a philosophy.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words

 

They are very good writers and know many obscure writers who have been marginalized by the "cultural marxists" who they draw upon.

 

They're intellectual productivity is far more than Objectivists. Where are all the New Intellectuals? The race realists are minting them by the day.

 

They also attract libertarians and Objectivists:

 

http://www.toqonline.com/blog/a-sense-of-life-ayn-rand/

 

Sooner or later, one will swallow the other.

 

If there is one thing that can down or co-opt the Objectivist, and libertarian, and Austrian movements, it is race realism because their conception of man is different. I suppose a race realist would say Objectivism is, "true as far as it goes, but can only go so far." A major theme for MacDonald is the challenge "universalism," which for him, is "pathological altruism," i.e., the presumption that the whole planet has a right to live in the United States and other western countries.

 

Outside of Objectivists, no one in the culture regards altruism as "pathological."  For race realists, a "pathological elite" is bent on the ruination of Western societies.

 

Kevin Mac Donald's trilogy is like the Ominous Parallels -encyclopedia version.  When Objectivists talk about "transmission belts" of the irrational he is completely focused on that transmission belt via the Frankfurt School into the US. He takes ideas seriously.  His thesis would explain why Objectivism is marginalized from academia, and why Mises and Rand never made it in academia, whereas armies of cultural Marxists did.

 

 

Per MacDonald, a cultural anthropologist,

 

"Western cultures have a unique cultural profile compared to other traditional civilizations:


A tendency toward monogamy.
A tendency toward simple family structure based on the nuclear family.
A greater tendency for marriage to be companionate and based on mutual affection of the partners.
A de-emphasis on extended kinship relationships and its correlative, a relative lack of ethnocentrism.
A tendency toward individualism and all of its implications: individual rights against the state, representative government, moral universalism, and science."

 

I think this is Duchesne, under a pseudonym, discussing this Faustian personality:

 

http://www.counter-currents.com/author/dcorbulo/

 

All of this would be material for pursuing the Indo-European roots of Western civilization, which for race realists is not merely a philosophy, but a personality-type rooted in evolutionary psychology, genetics, and environmental conditions of the Northern spartan ice climates.

 

Race realism is a cultural phenomenon, no doubt.

The influence of Objectivism works in mysterious ways.

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... ... the idea of things like individualism going back that far into pre-history, suggests that the uniqueness of western civilization was very fundamental. Fundamental in the sense that it was not just a result of Greek thinkers over 2,000 years ago just so happened to come up with formal philosophy, and everything that entails.

It is plausible to say "I am an individualist because my father was one". One does not inherit individualism or other ideologies, but one does learn from others and the ideas of those around you are a huge factor. Too many people adopt their religions, philosophies and world-views by a sort of cultural-osmosis: they need a world view, and whatever is around them tends to permeate in.

However, that is only part of the story. People also change their ideas, adopt ideas other than those of their parents, and even rebel. With every generation, the ideas that have been learnt from parents, grand-parents, great grand-parents are diluted further. If one can argue that someone living today is individualistic because some ancestor who lived 4000 years ago was a warrior, then surely one can argue that that warrior was individualistic because his own ancestor from 4000 years before that was individualistic. However, doing so brings us back to "Adam" and we're all individualistic to the extent that Adam was.

Alternatively, if you argue that the guy from 4000 years ago had to become a warrior, and changed his way of thinking, becoming more individualistic, then one would be closer to the truth. (A fully deterministic account -- as in Jared Diamond -- is not convincing, but external circumstances do have a role to play: probably more so in ancient times.) Still, if one were to make that argument, then it would also follow that some guy -- say 2000 years ago -- who settled into communities changed his ideas to become less individualistic... and this we are less individualistic. Or, we might go 1000 years back and say that some ancestor from then -- one of many serfs -- had to change his philosophy again, to make his slavish life palatable, by imagining a heaven... and that's why we are Christian... and so on.

Edited by softwareNerd
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It is plausible to say "I am an individualist because my father was one". One does not inherit individualism or other ideologies, but one does learn from others and the ideas of those around you are a huge factor. Too many people adopt their religions, philosophies and world-views by a sort of cultural-osmosis: they need a world view, and whatever is around them tends to permeate in.

However, that is only part of the story. People also change their ideas, adopt ideas other than those of their parents, and even rebel. With every generation, the ideas that have been learnt from parents, grand-parents, great grand-parents are diluted further. If one can argue that someone living today is individualistic because some ancestor who lived 4000 years ago was a warrior, then surely one can argue that that warrior was individualistic because his own ancestor from 4000 years before that was individualistic. However, doing so brings us back to "Adam" and we're all individualistic to the extent that Adam was.

Alternatively, if you argue that the guy from 4000 years ago had to become a warrior, and changed his way of thinking, becoming more individualistic, then one would be closer to the truth. (A fully deterministic account -- as in Jared Diamond -- is not convincing, but external circumstances do have a role to play: probably more so in ancient times.) Still, if one were to make that argument, then it would also follow that some guy -- say 2000 years ago -- who settled into communities changed his ideas to become less individualistic... and this we are less individualistic. Or, we might go 1000 years back and say that some ancestor from then -- one of many serfs -- had to change his philosophy again, to make his slavish life palatable, by imagining a heaven... and that's why we are Christian... and so on.

 

I want to address a couple of things about not only your post. I don't know where all this racism claims are coming from in the comments above. I guess it was because of the first response where they talk about race realism. I don't have much interest in talking about that if the claims about it are true, that it is white supremacy dressed up in intelligent design-esque science. I don't consider the idea that seeds of individualism could be tied to very early groups of indo-european speakers coming out of the Caucus mountain region to be racist, as long as one does not tie it to race. We're talking about culture, ideas that are passed on from one generation to the next, sometimes evolving, being lost, or new ones being added from contact with foreigners or in the case of the Greeks wholly discovered on their own, like SoftwareNerd has said in his post. Western civilization took the concept of zero, from the Arabs, and they took it from the Indians, as I've heard. Indo-european does not mean the "white race", as I am using it, and how I think it is properly understood. It just means peoples that spoke within a certain language family, that most likely a millenia beforehand once spoke a common language, and thus probably have common cultural characteristics. But that does not necessarily mean that any indo-european society will turn out exactly the same, take the difference between Greeks and Persians.

 

If anyone has anything more to add to the original idea I had posted about, I would gladly welcome anything that supports or detracts that idea. I have done a bit of research , mostly from wikipedia, but they don't really cover any abstract cultural beliefs of early indo-europeans.

 

An interesting point to make in addition is why didn't Greek classical thought make a lasting impression on the arab scholars of the middle ages, while it did with Europeans? One could say, that even Christianity as a bastardized version of Platonism was such an impression, that later gave way to Aristotelianism in the renaissance. Could the stuff from the documentary make sense of that?

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An interesting point to make in addition is why didn't Greek classical thought make a lasting impression on the arab scholars of the middle ages, while it did with Europeans?

In what way did "Greek thought" have a positive (i.e. pro-rationality / pro-individualistic) impact? Do you think Plato makes more sense than Buddha? If so, why?

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"I don't know where all this racism claims are coming from in the comments above."   I wasn't implying your interest in this was racist, and it isn't, but that race realists are interested in that, too, and may have useful leads for you concerning pre-philosophical, pre-Greek answers on the origins of individualism.

 

A simple matter is that with blue, brown, black, and green eyes, red, blonde, brown, and dark hair, and various facial hair on men, and numerous ways to style long hair, including keeping it short, you can have your own unique combination of physical uniqueness that makes individualism more easily self-evident, self-conscious, and, thus, easier to conceptualize. Indo-Europeans had certain natural variations that could have psychological effects, and aid in the discovery of individualism, that peoples without those differences would lack.

 

A race realist wouldn't hide these facts or pretend they are not there. A race realist is not necessarily a supremacist, just as a physicist is not necessarily a fan of golf or guns.

 

Objectivism holds that philosophy is the prime driver in history, .i.e., ideas.   A "philososphy-supremacist" view would reject any pre-philosophic origins to individualism and I think that's a blind spot in the Objectivist approach to history.

 

Robert Tracinski had some article on this chicken-egg problem. Aristotle's work was really the culmination of a secular Greek thought that had numerous pre-Aristotlean manifestations.  Aristotle didn't build Greece. Greece gave Aristotle plenty to think about and conceptualize.  Ayn Rand said the same thing regarding Objectivism, that without the Industrial Revolution, the evidence of the mind as man's means of survival could not be conceptualized. It would seem, then, that the origins of individualism have to start with some natural phenomenon that strongly impinges on people that could give them the basis for the concept. Even art is pre-philosophical, pre-Plato. 

 

The video is very interesting.

Edited by writer1972
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A race realist wouldn't hide these facts or pretend they are not there. A race realist is not necessarily a supremacist, just as a physicist is not necessarily a fan of golf or guns.

Have you read the "14 words" you linked? You say ideas matter, so let's look at the ideas you say matter.

 

"The Fourteen Words is a phrase used predominantly by white nationalists. It most commonly refers to a 14-word slogan: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children."[1] It can also refer to another 14-word slogan: "Because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth."[2]

Both slogans were coined by David Lane, convicted terrorist and member of the white separatist organization The Order. The first slogan was inspired by a statement, 88 words in length, from Volume 1, Chapter 8 of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf:"

 

Oh look at that, white supremacy! My point is, don't post here ever again. I've seen terrible ideas on this forum before, but rationalized racism is the absolute worst thing short of violence. You explicitly said that a certain personality rooted in genetics and evolutionary psychology means the Aryan race is the ideal. "Northern spartan ice climates" refers to Aryan basically. So... yeah...

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  This is quite tame Eiuol. 

 

   @writer1972

   

   The problem with the fourteen words is that it is rooted in collectivism and altruism. The only difference between the slogans of communists and that is that a specific breed of humans is made into a god instead of humanity as a whole. I don't plan on living my life for anglo-saxons, germans, or slavs anymore than I plan on living for humanity as a whole. White nationalists want to me to breed more white children for them. I may or may not have white children. I might select a mate from another race to procreate with though if that person suits my values better. It isn't up to the white race how I live my life or who I breed with. If the white race goes away it goes away. 

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  This is quite tame Eiuol. 

 

He's saying a particular race has genetic traits that make them better. No, he's not being a white supremacist, but it's still racist, and would go as far as to speak favorably of people who agree with a very racist "Fourteen Words". The OP is about culture anyway, which is sensible and doesn't imply any race being better. Writer isn't talking about a culture being better, see post #6 about anything else implicit in Writer's post. And anyway, it's just a myth to say Aryans of old were uniquely individualistic - if anything, Nazis relied on telling that myth.

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He's saying a particular race has genetic traits that make them better. No, he's not being a white supremacist, but it's still racist, and would go as far as to speak favorably of people who agree with a very racist "Fourteen Words". The OP is about culture anyway, which is sensible and doesn't imply any race being better. Writer isn't talking about a culture being better, see post #6 about anything else implicit in Writer's post. And anyway, it's just a myth to say Aryans of old were uniquely individualistic - if anything, Nazis relied on telling that myth.

 

  I respect your decisions. 

 

  I don't consider racists to be any worse than your typical Anarchist (Socialists). He just takes the same premises in an unpopular direction.

 

EDIT: Added reading material. 

 

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_and_nationalism

 

  Although the New Left today supports multiculturalism and has moved its narrative to be "anti-racist" the far left and right have had deep connections in their philosophies for quite some time. Mikhail Bakunin is a man you can see quotes of on both Stormfront and Revleft today. 

Edited by Hairnet
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My offspring have hybrid vigor, my relatively pure Germanic ancestry be damned.

The good news is that in a few hundred years it will be hard for people to say that they have any specific ancestry, because lines will be so mixed. Hopefully, that'll be the end of the racists.

One thing that history does teach us is that positive things come when one person open to good ideas interacts with another culture, and adopts the good ideas from them. One could form a thesis that "interacting civilizations were the ones that really made progress". it is a weak thesis, but clearly stronger than an "Indo-European culture" explanation.

In fact, to the OP's point: the rise of rationality in the west can be ascribed more to cultural interaction, than to inherited culture. If one traces the descendants of the Greeks and their European cousins, one finds some pretty bad times. Yet, the ideas of Aristotle -- even if not many genes -- went to the middle-East, and were preserved ... cross-cultural learning of good ideas. Then, when Aristotle was re-discovered, this rediscovery is the same process that happens during cross-cultural learning. The unsteady flow of history, and its major reversals debunks the idea of simple and continuous generational transmission.

Edited by softwareNerd
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  I don't consider racists to be any worse than your typical Anarchist (Socialists). He just takes the same premises in an unpopular direction.

 

I think racism is worse than socialism. France could be said to be more socialist than capitalist in that government spending makes up over 56% of the economy. Yet would you rather live in a racist society than France?

 

France:

20_full.jpg

 

Racist society:

segregation-drinking-fountain-400x300.jp

 

I do agree that France is like it is despite its socialism. Also that many other socialist societies don't look like France. However segregation and lynchings and such things happen in ALL racist societies.

 

Therefore since some socialist societies can still protect a majority of a person's rights (like France), socialism is better than racist societies which trample on most of a person's rights.

Edited by Kate87
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I think racism is worse than socialism. France could be said to be more socialist than capitalist in that government spending makes up over 56% of the economy. Yet would you rather live in a racist society than France?

 

France:

20_full.jpg

 

Racist society:

segregation-drinking-fountain-400x300.jp

That's great. Except that the Eiffel Tower, the monument you're using to prove that socialism is better than racism, was built in the 1880s. Back when France wasn't 50% socialist. But it was plenty racist and anti-semitic, along with the rest of Europe.

P.S. In the modern world, racism is little more than a personal fault some individuals have, that affects no one except them and people looking for faults in others, to sneer at and blame for their own failures. The times it finds its way into actual government policy are few and far between.

Meanwhile, to date, socialism in its many incarnations (communism, national socialism, third world dictatorships and mixed economies) has affected the lives of every person on the planet, and ended the lives of hundreds of millions.

But forget the modern world. When you look through history, you'll find that the number of people falling victim to racist government action again pales in comparison to the number of people being victimized by equally or more severely harmful government action born out of socialist fervor.

Edited by Nicky
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I do agree that France is like it is despite its socialism. Also that many other socialist societies don't look like France. However segregation and lynchings and such things happen in ALL racist societies.

 

Therefore since some socialist societies can still protect a majority of a person's rights (like France), socialism is better than racist societies which trample on most of a person's rights.

There's no "therefore" here. Both racism and socialism are never going to affect a society the same. The "badness" isn't going to be identical. Take any society which is more of either and you may prefer one over the other for any number of reasons. Taking a pick of either socialism or racism is like picking one of two different rotten foods.

 

Historically, both racism and socialism have done horrible things to many people. If I were to pick, I'd say socialism does more damage, but, how would you even calculate something like that?

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Kate,

 

When I use the term socialism, I do not mean a "mixed economy". I mean a society controlled by socialists or communists. While France is as an example of a society that has a very large state, it still is a society that values commerce and would be considered fairly right-wing by people such as Noam Chomsky.

 

I am talking about places like Venezuela or Bolivia who empower these political parties and allow them to fully nationalize industries and direct the nation. European countries are more statist than the rest of The West or The Far East but they still embrace commerce as a way of life, they just do so under various statist paradigms depending on who is elected at the time.

 

If you take a place like Nazi Germany, you see a state that gained power by claiming it would expel foreign interests. If you consider Vietnam, you see a parallel's between their revolution and Germany's.They were both expelling what they saw was French dominion, as both nations had suffered humiliating defeat by the French and French abuses.

 

The Nazis are often seen as being unique in their racial collectivism, however the idea that both Marxism and Capitalism are two sides of the same Jewish coin isn't an idea unique to the Nazis. Mikhail Bakunin, a known anti-Semite, opponent of Marx, and a 19th century Anarchist also believed in the exact same narrative that Jews were backing two types of globalism, international capitalism from the West and Marxism from The Soviet Union.

 

If you look at Al-Jazeera English, a web publication that has a far-left opinion staff, you will see an obsession with indigenous people's who are unfairly exploited by the white man. It really isn't any different than the struggle between Germans and the Jew, Slav, and French. The New Left claims to be anti-racist, but the Old Left's lasting legacy in this world is nations who are cut off from global trade and are extremely xenophobic and nationalist.

 

 

 

 

 

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There is a (at least, partial) false dichotomy of socialism and racism.

By restriction of movement, association and ownership, affecting ALL races but obviously repressing one, a de jure racist society is by definition socialist. Though not necessarily the reverse.

South African author, Don Caldwell:

"The architects of apartheid didn't pretend that apartheid was capitalism. They were quite blunt about their socialist views."

[...]

In a free, capitalist society...people enjoy a wide range of rights and freedoms:

The right to own and exchange private property.

The freedom to move within the country in search of better living conditions and jobs.

The freedom to work where you choose at wages you negotiate.

The right to keep the fruits of your labour.

The freedom to travel overseas or emigrate.

Diversity and choice in education.

Free trade and unrestricted flows of foreign investment.

The freedom to start companies and run shops.

Equal treatment under the law.

Under apartheid, these and other liberal-capitalist rights were either absent or severely restricted." ["No More Martyrs Now", 1992]

------

The huge injustice in South Africa, then and now, is that Apartheid is considered inarguably to have been 'Capitalist'.

By most businessmen and industrialists themselves as well - not only by the man in the street or socialist politician.

And pre-WW2 Germany's National Socialist Party...

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You are really stretching the term socialist there. Apartheid is statist and certainly illiberal , but it doesn't involve class struggle or the ephemeral goal of a democratically ran economy as a promise.

 

Things are complicated when you see that more than a handful of racists are now pro-market and simply want the right to segregate themselves voluntarily from other groups.

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Things are complicated when you see that more than a handful of racists are now pro-market and simply want the right to segregate themselves voluntarily from other groups.

Sorry, I don't know who you mean by the "handful of racists".

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