In particular, people who represent groups that Moldbug treats as subhuman in his writing expressed concern and dismay. Perhaps looking through their eyes for a moment might illuminate why a person would care.
In particular, people who represent groups that Moldbug treats as subhuman in his writing expressed concern and dismay. Perhaps looking through their eyes for a moment might illuminate why a person would care.
An obsession with collective identity and collective characteristics - all proletarians are noble, all Germans are masters, all rednecks are racists, etc, etc - is common, perhaps for obvious reasons, in the democratic era. And in particular, all parties responsible for the atrocities of the 20th century - Nazi and Communist alike - were thinking very much this way.
This insistence on generalization would seem very strange to most of our ancestors, who would find the leap from collective differences to collective uniformity quite irrational. For instance, Cardinal Wolsey, who governed England for Henry VIII, was a butcher's son. Englishmen of his time did not find this at all strange, though hardly any of them agreed that nobles and butchers were statistically identical.
Also, for some reason which is perhaps less obvious, not all of us have to "represent groups." It does not seem likely that either Alex Payne or Alex Miller sees himself as representing white males, for instance. Perhaps this freedom to see oneself as just an individual is the most subtle form of privilege - but I think everyone should have it.
Since we have you have you here, could you respond to the accusations of racist views that are being attributed to you? In particular, do you consider yourself to be "racist", and if so, what does this term mean to you?
I read your blog for years, and I never got that sense that you were advocating for personal or institutional discrimination against individuals on the basis of their race. Did I miss this point among all the others?
The word "racist" and its conjugations does not appear in the English language until the 1920s - see Peter Frost's cultural history [0]. If you asked Shakespeare if he was a "racist," he would not know what you meant.
"Racist" is essentially a term of abuse which no group or party has ever applied to itself. Like most such epithets, it has two meanings - a clear objective one, describing a person who fails to believe in the anthropological theories of human equality which became first popular, then universal in the mid-20th century; and a caricature of the vices, personal or political, typically engaged in by such a foul unbeliever.
I actually like the answer given by Steve Klabnik above [1]. To call Steve a communist is a serious personal insult, and you can get banned for it [2]. However, Steve reserves the right to call himself a communist, or not, as he likes. This is actually kind of cool...
[0] - http://www.unz.com/pfrost/age-of-reason/ [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9676630 [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9676861
To be a little pedantic, that's not strictly true; as Frost points out, "racist" was originally intended as a literal translation of the German völkisch, which the Nazi Party certainly self-described as. But I suppose you could say that's the exception which proves the rule.
'Capitalist' has the same issue, interestingly.
Maybe you know something I don't know, but what evidence is there to assume that he couldn't put his viewpoint aside and be a positive force for the social context?
It's really extrapolating hard to infer this from his writings. There's only one part in the Carlyle essay where he throws out a hypothesis about slavery, and nowhere does he imply that (1) this is a good thing or (2) that any persons are subhuman.