Eugenics, Euthanasia, Race and National Socialism

[rogerhicks]

You need to be far more rigorous than appealing to your perspective if you are going to advocate social systems for people to follow.It also does not matter if you think that the ideals were hijacked. The fact is that people in power violently inflicted these systems on the populace with devastating effects.If I did not agree to be subjected to your system, what would happen to me?

 

I'm not advocating a particular social system, but ideas relating to the perverted Darwinian nature of existing social systems and how they might be reformed in the direction of being more democratic, just, humane and sustainable.

 

I think it VERY important to recognise the noble origins and original good intentions of both nationalism and socialism, and how they were hijacked and corrupted, so that we can work on their more wholesome reincarnation. As I've already said, they are deeply rooted in evolved human tribal and social nature. To dismiss them would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. A baby that should be as valuable to atheists and anarchists as the baby Jesus is to Christians.

 

The very essence of the system I envisage is that it should be grassroots democratic and not imposed on anyone. I envisage it growing within the existing system of liberal democracy, with individuals organising THEMSELVES, peacefully and legally, rather than leaving it to state and capital to do for them.

[PatrickC]

I think it VERY important to recognise the noble origins and original good intentions of both nationalism and socialism

 

Can you give me your definition of socialism in terms of nobility? Only that socialism (from my perspective) has always wanted to claim nobility, whilst mostly ignoring empiricism.. I think I understand you regarding nationalism mostly (tribal).

[JamesP]

You keep asserting that they are rooted in "human nature" without actually demonstrating it, or defining "human nature," or having answered my question about what would happen to me if I did not wish to participate in nationalism/socialism.

[rogerhicks]

You keep asserting that they are rooted in "human nature" without actually demonstrating it, or defining "human nature," or having answered my question about what would happen to me if I did not wish to participate in nationalism/socialism.

 

I'm sorry, I assume Homo sapiens' inherent and intense tribal and social nature as givens. We see and experience the evidence for it all around and within us all the time. Notwithstanding that we live in a culture which trivialises, ridicules, demonises and suppresses our tribal nature (not just, but especially as "racism"), in order to facilitate its exploitation by the state, which legitimises itself and its claim to our loyalty and obedience (to its laws) by deceitfully posing as our tribe or nation itself.

 

I envisage it being a bit like a Zionist/socialist kibbutz, that, if you are a Jew and agree to comply with its constitution, you would be free to join, and leave again, if and when you so wish. Not that I have any personal experience of such a Kibbutz, which I would, however, expect to cultivate good, friendly relationships with Jewish and non-Jewish, e.g. Palestinian, neighbours, or at least be very respectful of and considerate towards them.

[rogerhicks]

Can you give me your definition of socialism in terms of nobility? Only that socialism (from my perspective) has always wanted to claim nobility, whilst mostly ignoring empiricism.. I think I understand you regarding nationalism mostly (tribal).

 

I think we need to be very cautious about "defining" a social system, because some then feel they have a right or duty to fit individuals into it. Can you define the social set up and relationships within your own (extended) family, or what is left of it? I suspect not, but if it is a good, healthy family, it will be a close approximation to how I envisage socialism to be. You don't exploit each other, but are inclined to share and have each other's best interests at heart.

 

As extended families get bigger, difficulties arise because of the limited number of people we are able to relate to personally. Notwithstanding that we also want to relate to people outside of our extended family. This is a situation which evolution has not adapted human nature to adequately deal with; or rather, it has given us a big brain and a compassionate heart (some of us, at least), which, however, we have yet to learn how to use for this purpose.

 

What has happened, is that as society has grown ever larger, particular individuals (and their families) has sought to exploit society (their super-extended family) as an environment, rather than still seeing it as their tribe. This is the perversion of our Darwinian nature, which is central to my thinking. We shouldn't be exploiting members of our own tribe (or other tribes, for that matter); but that is what we do. It is what the state itself was created and developed over the centuries to facilitate, society's self-exploitation, to the advantage of its ruling/political elite and their favoured clients, although we are told and tell ourselves a very different story. It is basically what Stephan refers to as the "farming of human livestock".

 

The state and society conflate and confound very different aspects of our original tribal environment, which human nature was adapted to long before the advent of civilisation. Thus all the confusion, man's exploitation of his fellow man, injustice and inhumanity. And until we recognise this we are trapped, by our own dependency on the state, the primary function of which is to facilitate society's self-exploitation, in which we are ALL necessarily implicated - not just the big wealthy farmers.

 

Sorry, if I've gone rambling on a bit. For me the ideal of socialism, is to create a society that, contrary to existing society, is not self-exploitative, in which we don't view or treat our fellow man as "livestock", but either as members of the same super-extended tribe, i.e. nation, or of other tribes and nations, which we respect and don't seek to exploit, and with whom we must negotiate the sharing of natural resources if we are to avoid coming into conflict with each other.

[PatrickC]

The state and society conflate and confound very different aspects of our original tribal environment, which human nature was adapted to long before the advent of civilisation. Thus all the confusion, man's exploitation of his fellow man, injustice and inhumanity. And until we recognise this we are trapped, by our own dependency on the state, the primary function of which is to facilitate society's self-exploitation, in which we are ALL necessarily implicated - not just the big wealthy farmers.

 

Sorry, if I've gone rambling on a bit. For me the ideal of socialism, is to create a society that, contrary to existing society, is not self-exploitative, in which we don't view or treat our fellow man as "livestock", but either as members of the same super-extended tribe, i.e. nation, or of other tribes and nations, which we respect and don't seek to exploit, and with whom we must negotiate the sharing of natural resources if we are to avoid coming into conflict with each other.

 

I'm right with you on the state conflating tribal loyalties (family/community ties let's say) for its own ends. I mean when we consider all the pomp and circumstance that revolves around state nationalism, such as flags, anthems and sports. Royal family too (in Britain). Largely our geography is an accident of birth which has little meaning other than being a part of our local environment. Whereas families, friends and business/working associates are mostly the communities we hang with and break bread with. For which none of this pomp would be considered at all useful for the flourishing of those relationships.I think I understand your definition on socialism. I'm just ever cautious how that word has become synonymous with integrity and ethics for many people. It being the complete opposite of that for the last 100 years or so, politically speaking. Personally I think it's a word steeped in too much bloodshed to ever be resurrected, but then again, perhaps that's just me of course.I have a similar view (I think) with mutual associations. These gave communities and individuals enormous protection at great value for money. Sadly the state commandeered these services for itself and provided them for free in the form of the NHS and the welfare state. We both understand where that has led us since of course. If you have the time, watch this rather enlightening synopsis of mutualism and friendly societies historically and the advent of the welfare state. I think it might interest you.

 

[dsayers]

Sorry, roger, but I'm seeing a lot of conclusions with no logical path, up to and including characteristics of the state being ascribed to statelessness. "Chaos" which in the absence of the state is balanced by competition and each individual a sovereign cortex for dissent, but within the state is balanced and restricted by nothing, which is true chaos. The state stealing from everybody to protect them against theft only to steal from them again. Then again.

 

how I envisage socialism to be. You don't exploit each other

 

Except that you do. You have to. First and foremost, is it forced or are people free to leave the arrangement? If it's forced, it is immoral. If it is voluntary, you cannot rely on the others as they may not be there tomorrow. If you have a child when others aren't, you're exploiting the arrangement by consuming more than your fair share. In order for socialism to be free of exploitation, everybody would have to value everything equally all the time. This is in direct opposition of the meaning of "value."

 

 

What has happened, is that as society has grown ever larger, particular individuals (and their families) has sought to exploit society (their super-extended family) as an environment, rather than still seeing it as their tribe.

 

Is this how it happened? Or is that for all of recorded history, subjugation of others has been present and the larger population just meant more efficient means of enslavement needed to be employed. If you can get the slaves to fill out their own theft forms (tax return) and whip each other for not doing so, you barely have to lift a finger to own 300 million people AND be paid exorbitant amounts of money for doing so.

[rogerhicks]

I'm right with you on the state conflating tribal loyalties (family/community ties let's say) for its own ends. I mean when we consider all the pomp and circumstance that revolves around state nationalism, such as flags, anthems and sports. Royal family too (in Britain). Largely our geography is an accident of birth which has little meaning other than being a part of our local environment. Whereas families, friends and business/working associates are mostly the communities we hang with and break bread with. For which none of this pomp would be considered at all useful for the flourishing of those relationships.I think I understand your definition on socialism. I'm just ever cautious how that word has become synonymous with integrity and ethics for many people. It being the complete opposite of that for the last 100 years or so, politically speaking. Personally I think it's a word steeped in too much bloodshed to ever be resurrected, but then again, perhaps that's just me of course.I have a similar view (I think) with mutual associations. These gave communities and individuals enormous protection at great value for money. Sadly the state commandeered these services for itself and provided them for free in the form of the NHS and the welfare state. We both understand where that has led us since of course. If you have the time, watch this rather enlightening synopsis of mutualism and friendly societies historically and the advent of the welfare state. I think it might interest you.

 

 

My ancestors have lived geographically in Northern Europe for thousands of years - since the end of the last ice age - so I would hardly call my birth here an "accident", any more than Native Americans are "accidentally" born in America. It is their ancestral homeland, where they BE-LONG. From your profile photo I would guess that Europe is your ancestral homeland, whose history you have good reason to feel proud (and ashamed) of. This is a sensitive issue, I know, but a very important one nevertheless, which needs to be taken very seriously, if we want to avoid the conflicts inherent in "globalisation".

 

We have to deal, peacefully and legally, but nevertheless, with states deceitfully laying claim to our tribal loyalties. I view the British state with the same contempt that it views me and my fellow native Britons.

 

Socialism, like nationalism, has been thoroughly discredited by those who hijacked and exploited their popular appeal, but I don't think we can replace them with other words. We need to scrape off all the shit and liberate them. They are much too important to simply discard.

 

My hope is to establish a political movement of "grassroots multi-national socialism", which is a concept I really like. It will drive the unthinking Left (because of its nationalism), the unthinking Right (because of its socialism) and the unthinking in general (because of its national socialism) mad, of course, but that can't be helped. Hopefully it will attract thinking people from right across the political spectrum. The concept of national socialism, which the Nazis hijacked so long ago, has remained under Nazi occupation for far too long.

 

I've watched the video you provided a link to, and which I thank you for. I found it very interesting, and quite inspiring. It reminded me of the grassroots socialism which arose spontaneously in 19th and early 20th Century Britain, before it was hijacked and imposed from the top down as social welfare, by our mercenary "patron state", deceitfully posing as a "nation state".  

[PatrickC]

My ancestors have lived geographically in Northern Europe for thousands of years - since the end of the last ice age - so I would hardly call my birth here an "accident", any more than Native Americans are "accidentally" born in America. It is their ancestral homeland, where they BE-LONG. From your profile photo I would guess that Europe is your ancestral homeland, whose history you have good reason to feel proud (and ashamed) of. This is a sensitive issue, I know, but a very important one nevertheless, which needs to be taken very seriously, if we want to avoid the conflicts inherent in "globalisation".

 

Well, it's funny you mention that. Yes I am of European descent of course. But mostly I have a rather disparate national lineage. Hungarian, English and Scottish. Almost born in Belgium, but mostly lived in North Wales and the south east of England. So it feels more accidental for me. However, by 'accident' I meant more in a philosophical way. Because it's entirely plausible your family could have moved to the US, Canada or Australia potentially.

 

My mother is technically entirely Scottish. Yet most Scots scoff at the idea of me having any Scottish lineage, often based purely on my (English) accent alone. Growing up in Wales wasn't much better either (even with a then welsh accent). Not that it particularly bothers me frankly, but it makes it awkward at attempting to describe oneself in nation terms I think. I'm sure I'm not alone in that experience.

[aeonicentity]

Most people don't "hate the other". On the contrary, we spend billions on holidays to exotic places with exotic peoples for the very reason that they are so different from ourselves and what we are used to. Most people, including myself, genuinely love diversity - but in the right context!

 

Race is not a "social construct", as the state and its privileged clients (usually employees) in academia would have us all believe, but REAL and important. Not in the way that genuine racists (racial supremacists) believe it is, but because central to any deep and meaningful sense of both personal and group, i.e. national, identity. It is the STATE which is the real "social, i.e. political, construct".

I would argue that most people DO hate the other, and that the example you gave is entirely untrue. In fact, most people spend billions of tourism dollars to go places they've already been, or places recommended by people they trust. They usually either go with or to family. Rarely do we decide to go alone to a strange place with no associates simply because we want to experience 'something else'. I know in my case I have never actually taken a vacation without going to family. This is often because I can't rationally justify to myself the idea of spending thousands of dollars to fly to thailand to do who knows what when I could spend those thousands of dollars on several flights to california to meet my cousins. we like the exotic for the exoticness of it, but we don't like to do it alone with The Others. We want to observe them from afar, not sweat with them and rub shoulders. This is a natural human tendency, and is divorced from race. You wouldn't want to be a stranger in Paris any more than a stranger in Beijing.

 

race absolutely is a social construct. Fundamentally my genetics are functionally identical to just about everyone else on the planet, and my physiology only differs minorly from everyone else's. Race exists purely from inbreeding (albeit on a larger and less destructive scale). This inbreeding is created by social construct wrapped around some physical neccessities. For example untill recently it was impossible for a man born in China to have babies with a Latino. He had to marry a chineese woman who looked like him because they were culturally similar, and lived in the same artifically defined social state. Thus is born race. over time this constant isolation of culture caused people to begin to look similar within their own social groups. This merely accentuates our fear of the other, not replaces it.You will see as our society becomes increasingly more global and less restricted in mobility race will play a significantly smaller role in mate selection than issues like socioeconomic status, social objectives, politics and religion. These issues transcend something as superficial as geographic region of origin (for example I'd never marry a crazy statist, no matter how white she was.) Actually this is already very much the case within both Latino and Black and poorer white communities with many women having multi-racial children.

[PatrickC]

Yes, I do see technology as making us increasingly more mobile in the future. It's a less talked about new 'travel age' that we have entered compared to the information one. But mostly because travel and working abroad have been highly restricted by passports, visa's and state immigration policies. Once all that goes, it will be interesting to see where people will choose to live. I imagine some significant migration is likely. Perhaps that will be based on old family ties, as much as an improved climate or business prospect, who knows.

[dsayers]

My ancestors have lived geographically in Northern Europe for thousands of years - since the end of the last ice age - so I would hardly call my birth here an "accident",

 

Did you intend to be born where you were born? Did you make efforts to be born where you were born? Then where you were born was an accident in the context of its bearing on your life. If you own yourself, then you own the effects of your actions. You do not own where you were born.

 

whose history you have good reason to feel proud (and ashamed) of.

 

Pride and shame are not valid descriptors of the actions of other people.

[rogerhicks]

You do not own where you were born.

 

Pride and shame are not valid descriptors of the actions of other people.

 

I feel pride and shame for those I identify with, which generally speaking is my own European race. 

 

Since Britain has become multi-ethnic, I no longer identify with it as my nation, because I no longer feel that it is. The very notion of "multi-ethnic nationhood" is, to my way of thinking and feeling, an oxymoronic absurdity, straight out of Orwell's 1984.

 

"Celebrating diversity" is Orwellian newspeak for Native Britons to celebrate our own ethnic displacement (white flight), decline and ultimate demise.

 

The British state has only ever deceitfully posed as a nation, in order to legitimise itself, its political elite and the immense power they wield. Since inviting half the third world to join our "pseudo nation" and embracing an ideology of white racial self-denial and self-contempt, post-racial multiculturalism, which denies, demonises and suppress as "racist" the natural ethnic basis of national identity and nationhood, this is now plain for all, who are not ideologically blinkered, to see.

 

I don't feel that I "own where I was born", i.e. my ancestral homeland, but that it kind of owns ME. 

[dsayers]

I don't feel that I "own where I was born", i.e. my ancestral homeland, but that it kind of owns ME. 

 

Is this to say that where you were born/ancestral homeland typed those paragraphs full of conclusions with no proof or rigor? Can we universalize this? I'm white. I have a touch of Cherokee in me, otherwise my ancestry comes from Europe. This would mean that your claim is that the same area owns me as well. But if it's issuing your words (forgive my use of "your" words in this instance as it's inconsistent with your claim; damn, did it again with "your" claim), how can it also be issuing my words, which challenge your words?

 

I feel I've arrived at "you do not own where you were born" with some rigor. Can you demonstrate how you concluded that where you were born owns you? If not, then it's incumbent upon you to re-examine that conclusion.

[rogerhicks]

Is this to say that where you were born/ancestral homeland typed those paragraphs full of conclusions with no proof or rigor? Can we universalize this? I'm white. I have a touch of Cherokee in me, otherwise my ancestry comes from Europe. This would mean that your claim is that the same area owns me as well. But if it's issuing your words (forgive my use of "your" words in this instance as it's inconsistent with your claim; damn, did it again with "your" claim), how can it also be issuing my words, which challenge your words?

 

I feel I've arrived at "you do not own where you were born" with some rigor. Can you demonstrate how you concluded that where you were born owns you? If not, then it's incumbent upon you to re-examine that conclusion.

 

To be honest, I don't really understand your questions. I'm just stating how I FEEL, how I relate to race and place. 

[dsayers]

Well, if you felt that the sun and the moon were the same size and then you were exposed to the science behind actual size/distance and perception, you'd be challenged to either re-examine your perception, or cling to a proven falsehood. In the latter, it would be revealed that you believe what you want to believe and are not interested in the truth. I trust in light of the amount of effort you've put into this thread that the truth is of interest to you.

 

This sort of thing is really important to understand since nationalism and coercive control structures in general have been responsible for the deaths of millions of human beings. If you ask me, there's only one meaningful way by which to divide people: Those who initiate the use of force and those who do not.

[rogerhicks]

Well, if you felt that the sun and the moon were the same size and then you were exposed to the science behind actual size/distance and perception, you'd be challenged to either re-examine your perception, or cling to a proven falsehood. In the latter, it would be revealed that you believe what you want to believe and are not interested in the truth. I trust in light of the amount of effort you've put into this thread that the truth is of interest to you.

 

This sort of thing is really important to understand since nationalism and coercive control structures in general have been responsible for the deaths of millions of human beings. If you ask me, there's only one meaningful way by which to divide people: Those who initiate the use of force and those who do not.

 

You are right, I am very interested in the truth. The truth about the true size of the Sun never ceases to amaze me; although it is the difference in size to the Earth that I normally think about, with more than 100 Earth diameters fitting into the diameter of the Sun, and the whole Earth/Moon system fitting within the volume of the Sun . . . The thought of it boggles my mind. And yet I've often seen the Sun close to the horizon looking no bigger than a beech ball, compared to the building, trees, cars, or whatever in the foreground . . . 

 

I went through a phase of reminding myself every time I watched a sunset or sunrise that it wasn't really the Sun setting or rising, but of the horizon doing the exact opposite. However, I quickly got back into the habit of seeing what I saw rather then what I knew to be true.

 

What we experience isn't the truth, which we can only make imperfect models of, but I do not think that what we experience and feel is necessarily invalidated by it.