Category: Cultural Commentary

Who We Are, And How The Races Got To Have Different IQ Scores

Introduction: When I Realized Koko The Gorilla Was Fake

When I was maybe eleven years old, I found a book in my elementary school library about Koko the gorilla. Supposedly, Koko could talk through sign language. At that age, I assumed this must be true. (After all, it was in a book at the library.)  Within a few years, I had forgotten about Koko the gorilla. I didn’t give it any more thought. Importantly, I didn’t reconsider whether it was true that Koko was capable of conceptual thought like a human being.

When I was about 18, I was watching Rush Limbaugh on TV. (He had a TV show in the early to mid 90’s). He did a comedy bit with a person in a monkey suit doing fake sign language that was supposed to be a parody of Koko the gorilla. The bit strongly implied that Koko couldn’t talk like a person. I remember thinking: “Oh yeah, that’s true. Clearly, Koko the gorilla is fake.” I hadn’t really thought much about Koko at all in the intervening years, but as soon as I saw this Rush Limbaugh bit, my mind refocused on the phenomena of Koko the “talking” gorilla, and quickly concluded it wasn’t real. (Note: I went back and found this clip on YouTube, and the bit may be from more like 1996, which would have made me about 22. I had forgotten this was actually about a story of children being taught that Koko was real in elementary school, like I had been.)

I bring this up because this was a minor piece of false information that I had been fed when I was still a child, and not fully capable of understanding that people can lie or commit fraud for a wide variety of reasons. The lying reaches up to the highest levels of our society, institutions and government. Think about what it took to have a book about a gorilla that could supposedly talk in an elementary school library. It meant there was some adult that had been authorized by other adults, in local and state government, to pick out this book, and put it into the library, despite how misleading and false it was. The book gave children the false impression that a gorilla mind and a human mind are more similar than they actually are. It helped to advance left-wing and egalitarian narratives that human beings are no more important than animals. A lot of what is taught in schools is of a similar nature. It’s about advancing a socio-political agenda held by most universities and major institutions today. That agenda will attempt to deny reality when it does not conform with it.

It is another moral axiom of that agenda that all human beings have the same intellectual capacity, and any difference is NOT because of genetics. Instead, all differences in intelligence or other aspects of the mind between human beings is entirely a result of some external factor, like “environment”, “discrimination”, “colonialism”, or “a legacy of slavery”.  To advance that moral axiom in schools, its proponents at universities, the news media, and in government have systematically denied reality for at least as long as I have been alive, and probably much longer. But, eventually, the truth will out. That seems to be what is happening now, when it comes to certain issues surrounding race, IQ, and the mental differences between races.

David Reich’s Book

In 2018 Harvard geneticist David Riech published a book aimed at a non-scientist audience.

The book discusses advances in the science of DNA analysis that allows scientists to extract DNA from the bones of ancient humans, and sequence their DNA. This has allowed scientists like Reich to develop databases of ancient human populations, and then compare the genes of those ancient people to the genes of modern humans.

“These advances mean that whole-genome study of ancient DNA no longer requires screening large numbers of skeletal remains before it is possible to find a few individuals whose DNA can be analyzed. Instead, a substantial fraction of screened samples dating to the last ten thousand years can now be converted to working genome-wide data. The new methods have made it possible to analyze hundreds of samples in a single study. With such data, it is possible to reconstruct population changes in exquisite detail, transforming our understanding of the past.” (Introduction, Who We Are And How We Got Here, David Reich)

Much of his book doesn’t have anything that would be considered obviously controversial. The second chapter discusses how scientists have concluded that Europeans contain approximately one to two percent Neanderthal DNA, on average.

More controversial topics come up, but are glossed over, or their implications are not considered. For instance, in Chapter 9, Riech says:

“In 2012, Sarah Tishkoff and her colleagues studied the biological impact of archaic admixture on the genomes of present-day Africans without access to ancient genomes like those of Neanderthals and Denisovans that had been used to document interbreeding between archaic and modern humans in Eurasia.’

Tishkoff and her colleagues sequenced genomes from some of the most diverse populations of Africa and analyzed their data to search for a pattern that is predicted when there has been interbreeding with archaic humans: very long stretches of DNA that have a high density of differences compared to the great majority of other genomes, consistent with an origin in a highly divergent population that was isolated until recently from modern humans. When they applied this approach to present-day non-Africans, they pulled out stretches of DNA that they found were nearly exact matches to the Neanderthal sequence. Tishkoff and her colleagues also found long stretches of deeply divergent sequences in present-day Africans whose ancestors did not mix with Neanderthals. Since Neanderthals have contributed little if any ancestry to Africans, this was likely to have been the result of mixture with mystery African archaic humans-ghost populations whose genomes have not yet been sequenced.” (Who We Are And How We Got Here, David Reich, Pg 208 to 209, emphasis added.)

So, not only are Europeans and Africans genetically distinct because Europeans generally contain some Neanderthal DNA, but also, Africans generally contain an unknown “ghost population” of proto-human DNA that Europeans do not have.

“We provide complementary lines of evidence for archaic introgression into four West African populations. Our analyses of site frequency spectra indicate that these populations derive 2 to 19% of their genetic ancestry from an archaic population that diverged before the split of Neanderthals and modern humans.”  (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aax5097)

So, on average, present-day Africans contain anywhere from two to nineteen percent of their DNA from an archaic proto-human population that is even more ancient than the split between humans and Neanderthals. In the past, Africans bred with a population of proto-humans that was, presumably, even more primitive and backward than Neanderthals. It’s entirely possible that those genes affect not just African physiology, but African brains, and, by extension, African mental capabilities. (This is speculation on my part, but it is something that needs to be studied.)

Just as an interesting aside, West Africans formed the bulk of the slaves brought to North America:

“…a considerable number of enslaved people had their origins in the West African nation of Ghana, as well as neighboring parts of the Windward Coast, now Ivory Coast.” (https://www.history.com/articles/what-part-of-africa-did-most-slaves-come-from)

In other words, the two to nineteen percent archaic human population found in West Africans is presumably found in most of the people of African ancestry found in North America today. This potentially explains a lot about this racial group in the United States, and why they are so behind on many measurements of socio-economic success. It also points to a possible reason they were enslaved by their fellow Africans in the first place.

Of course, Reichs doesn’t say or imply any of this in his book. He doesn’t speculate like I am. (Although I think my speculation should form the basis for some scientific hypothesis that could be tested, but probably won’t, because scientists are afraid of the results of any such experiment.)

Reichs spends a lot of his time convincing the reader he’s not racist:

“The real offense of racism, in the end, is to judge individuals by a supposed stereotype of their group -to ignore the fact that when applied to specific individuals, stereotypes are almost always misleading…Everyone is his or her own person with unique strengths and weaknesses, and should be treated as such. Suppose you are the coach of a track-and-field team, and a young person walks on and asks to try out for the hundred-meter race, in which people of West African ancestry are statistically highly overrepresented, suggesting the possibility that genetics may play a role. For a good coach, race is irrelevant. Testing the young person’s sprinting speed is simple -take him or her out to the track to run against the stopwatch. Most situations are like this.” (Who We Are And How We Got Here, David Reich, Pg 267.)

Of course, this isn’t actually true for anything except, possibly sports, where sub-Saharan Africans appear to excel. I question even that, however. I suspect a lot of white people don’t dedicate their high school and college years to professional football or basketball, because they know that they have an infinitesimally small chance of getting into the NFL/NBA. Black overrepresentation in the NBA or NFL may just be a feature of white people being better at statistics and probability, so more of them focus their efforts on things that are a better bet of paying off.

Why can’t we just apply the metaphorical equivalent of a “stop watch” in fields like law, medicine, science, engineering, or any other job? Because it has been made illegal to do so. It is largely illegal, thanks to Supreme Court precedent interpreting the Civil Rights Acts, to require workers to take employer IQ tests. It’s called “disparate impact discrimination”, which is just a fancy way of saying black people don’t do as well on IQ tests. The “stop watch”, in things far more important than the high school track team, has been made illegal.

David Reich and every other mainstream academic out there loves to use sports analogies when it comes to the issue of race and IQ, because sports are the one area black people seem to do okay in. Reading between the lines, I think they are trying to convey to their audience: “I’m not racist! Please don’t think I’m racist! See? I acknowledge black people are better at something, so I’m not racist.”

I find it sad and pathetic. They need to stop caring if they’re racist. One of two things is true at this point. Either the concept of “racism” has been so twisted and expanded that it means nothing, and should be ignored as a useful concept, or, sometimes, “racism” means nothing more than acknowledging reality, in which case it’s a virtue.

David Riech’s Hidden Message:

Historically, I think a lot of scientists and intellectuals didn’t recognize, or didn’t want to admit, the obvious implications of their theories:

“For someone who has had more impact on religious thinking than anyone else born in the last 200 years, Darwin wrote very little about religion….The reasons for his reticence are complex. Darwin did not want to upset his wife, who was devout. He did not want to upset public opinion in any way that might retard the reception of his theory. He generally approved of the religious influence on society.” (https://www.faraday.cam.ac.uk/news/Darwins-religious-beliefs/)

David Reich is like Darwin and religion. He’s a “true believer” when it comes to the morality of egalitarianism and altruism. But, his science is constantly undercutting his “faith”, just like Darwin’s science undercut his religion. Darwin may not have wanted to fully admit what the theory of evolution did to the creation story in the Bible, but later thinkers would recognize the logical implications. Similarly, David Reich may not want to admit the logical implications of his work, but others eventually will. The truth will out. The “hidden message” of David Reich’s work is this:

Yes, race is real. Yes there are actual biological differences between races. Based on the genetic data that is being collected, we’ve got to acknowledge it at this point:

“Chapter 11, ‘The Genomics of Race and Identity,’ argues that the orthodoxy that has emerged over the last century —the idea that human populations are all too closely related to each other for there to be substantial average biological differences among them—is no longer sustainable…” (Who We Are And How We Got Here, David Reich, Introduction)

But, David Riech says: Let’s use a euphemism called “ancestry” and pretend like it’s not synonymous with what everyone already meant by “race”:

“…the language of ‘ancestry’ that geneticists like me have adopted is a reversion to traditional ideas of biological race. She has pointed out that in the United States, the ‘ancestry’ terms that we use map relatively closely to traditional racial categories, and her view is that the population genetics community has invented a set of euphemisms to discuss topics that had become taboo….But ancestry is not a euphemism, nor is it synonymous with ‘race’. Instead the term is born of an urgent need to come up with a precise language to discuss genetic differences among people at a time when scientific developments have finally provided the tools to detect them. It is now undeniable that there are nontrivial average genetic differences across populations in multiple traits, and the race vocabulary is too ill-defined and too loaded with historical baggage to be helpful. If we continue to use it we will not be able to escape the current debate, which his mired in an argument between two indefensible positions. On the one side there are beliefs about the nature of the differences that are grounded in bigotry and have little basis in reality. On the other side there is the idea that any biological differences among populations are so modest that as a matter of social policy they can be ignored and papered over. It is time to move on from this paralyzing false dichotomy and to figure out what the genome is actually telling us.” (Who We Are And How We Got Here, David Reich, Pg. 253)

Here, Riech gives us a socio-political reason for not using the term “race”, rather than a scientific one. He simply assumes that anyone who speaks of race is “grounded in bigotry”, whatever “bigotry” means. It’s not “bigotry” to recognize differences in average IQ between races, or average differences in murder rates. It’s recognition of reality. Or, if it is “bigotry”, then sometimes being a “bigot” is a virtue.

I didn’t discover David Reich and his ideas through his book. I discovered him by watching an approximately two-hour long interview on YouTube. (I highly recommend listening to the video interview.) At several points, I had to rewind it and relisten to what Reich said. I found it shocking to hear an academic from Harvard University, an institution I have almost nothing but contempt for, saying what he was saying. My assumption was that Harvard does nothing but carry water for the egalitarian left. I was surprised to see one of the egalitarian left’s most sacred creeds being called into question. I don’t know if Reich has learned more since he wrote his book in 2018, or if he has simply decided that he is more committed to the truth than he is to any ideology. Some of Reich’s apparent discoveries since he wrote the book include:

1. Significant Evolution through natural Selection has occurred in Eurasia since the  Bronze Age, 5,000 years ago.

a. This contradicts Steven J Gould, who said: “There’s been no biological change in humans in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilization we’ve built with the same body and brain” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3721656/#b1-rmmj_1-1-e0006

b. The idea that human evolution has been quiescent for the last 50,000 years was a reflection of Gould’s left-wing, egalitarian ideology, rather than science. https://quillette.com/2019/03/19/the-mismeasurements-of-stephen-jay-gould/

2. Significant evolution through natural selection in Eurasia since the Bronze age has included:

a. Genes Correlated with IQ score. -An increase in those genes:

“In some cases, groups of SNPs were under selection together to influence polygenic traits. Some changes raised the frequency of beneficial traits, including some that are interpreted today as…Measures of behavioral and social status or cognitive functions, such as scores on intelligence tests, household income, and years of schooling…” (https://hms.harvard.edu/news/massive-ancient-dna-study-reveals-natural-selection-has-accelerated-recent-human-evolution)

b. Genes correlated with Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia- A reduction in those genes:

“Other changes reduced the frequency of harmful traits, such as those that are interpreted today as: Reduced risk of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia…” https://hms.harvard.edu/news/massive-ancient-dna-study-reveals-natural-selection-has-accelerated-recent-human-evolution

What the above findings tend to suggest:

(1) It’s not your imagination that black people, on average, seem less intelligent.

(2) It’s not your imagination that more black people seem to have more mental health issues:

“Compared to non-Hispanic White individuals, non-Hispanic Black individuals had a significantly higher prevalence of SSDs [schizophrenia spectrum disorders] (4.1% vs. 1.2%; adjusted odds ratio=3.49, 95% CI=1.37, 8.91) and psychotic symptoms (9.3% vs. 4.9%; adjusted odds ratio=2.04, 95% CI=1.15, 3.63), and non-Hispanic multiracial individuals had a significantly higher prevalence of SSDs (5.6%; adjusted odds ratio=4.59, 95% CI=1.53, 13.76).” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40887946/

(3) It’s not “all racism” or all “a legacy of slavery” that explains the fact that black people have lower IQ and more mental health problems.

(4) I want it be perfectly clear why this matters:

Current racial groups, like Caucasians and Africans developed within the last say, 10,000 years. Current Europeans come from genetic populations that haven’t had much interbreeding with Africans for at least 10,000 years. If there has been “directional selection” for IQ amongst Europeans in the last 10,000 years, then it occurred after European’s ancestors separated from the ancestors of sub-Saharan Africans. It implies that Europeans have evolved greater intelligence than sub-Saharan Africans since those two racial groups separated. It implies that European populations have more instances of genes that are correlated with higher IQ people. In plain terms, it means Europeans are, on average, smarter than sub-Saharan Africans due to their genetics. Biologically speaking, whether you want to call this “superior” or not depends on what environment you find those genes in. It appears those genes are not “superior” in a stone age or neolithic environment, like sub-Saharan Africa up until a couple of hundred years ago. Higher IQ is superior in a modern, industrial world.

Why The Assumption That “Intelligence is always useful in any environment” May Not Be True

In the past, I had doubted that there could be significant average genetic-based intelligence differences between races. My assumption was that intelligence is always useful, whether one lives in a stone age society, or an industrial society. This would mean that Darwinian evolution would always favor increased intelligence for human beings.

I am no longer certain that is true. First, Charles Murray’s Book “The Bell Curve” suggested to me there are differences in IQ between races. Now, David Reich’s work suggests that there was “directional selection” for the genes that correlate with higher IQ in the Bronze age of Eurasia, within the last 5,000 years. Regions of the world like Africa did not go through the Bronze Age, which strongly suggests that sub-Saharan Africans did not face the same selective pressure on the genes for IQ. (It’s just barely possible some other world-wide effect caused directional selection for IQ, for all the geographically isolated peoples of the world 5,000 years ago, but not likely.)

How do I reconcile these facts with my assumption that natural selection would always select for intelligence, because of my assumption that intelligence is always a benefit, regardless of technology level? I cannot explain it at this point, but, here is a hypothesis/speculation that I hope some scientist can test someday.

Intelligence is always a benefit for an adult human being. I am not so sure that intelligence is always a benefit for children, toddlers, or infants. It may be that a child with greater physiological capacity for intelligence (a bigger brain, or more neural connections in his brain, or whatever) expends more energy as a child than a child with lower intelligence capacity. In a stone age environment, where calories are very scarce, it might be that the children born with greater genetic capacity for intelligence have a lower probability of reaching adulthood than children with less genetic capacity.

Intelligence matters much less to a child’s survival. He is dependent on his parents and elders to a great degree. If the more intelligent child requires more calories than the less intelligent, perhaps he is more likely to die in childhood.

The phrase “intelligence is always a benefit” should perhaps be modified to: “Intelligence is always a benefit for an adult human being.” For children, the situation might be different.

Once the Bronze Age occurred, there was greater surplus food, and more children started surviving to adulthood, including more children with greater genetic capacity for intelligence. As adults, they were then more successful than less intelligent people, and were able to survive and reproduce in greater numbers.

Also, the mechanism of childhood mortality for more intelligent children might have been something else besides food. Maybe there is a negative correlation between genes for intelligence and genes for, say, immunity to disease. Maybe more intelligent children were less likely to survive in a stone age environment for some socio-cultural reason unique to stone age cultures. (Maybe smarter children were regarded as threatening to the tribe and were more likely to be killed or abandoned.)

Ancient African genes do not appear to have been tested for correlation to IQ yet. That is the next logical step. We need to confirm that the same directional selection for intelligence did not occur in Africans. (This would help confirm if it was a result of a Bronze Age environment in Eurasia, or something else. Sub-Saharan Africa would seem like a natural control.)

I had decided that IQ was at least partly genetic, and that the averages differed between the races, by about ten to fifteen years ago. But, I was never really sure. I never wanted to say too much about it because I’m not a scientist. I take great care in what positions I take, and think through the evidence as carefully as I can.

In her article rejecting racism as a form of collectivism, Ayn Rand said:

“Even if it were proved — which it is not — that the incidence of men of potentially superior brain power is greater among the members of certain races than among the members of others, it would still tell us nothing about any given individual and it would be irrelevant to one’s judgment of him. A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race — and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.” (“Racism”, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand, https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-and-business/individual-rights/racism/)

It is certainly true that individual sub-Saharan Africans can buck the trend of their race, genetically. Population genetics is the study of populations, not individuals. I also don’t think genetics is 100% of the picture when it comes to intelligence. Your family and social environment growing up also seem to make a difference. The choices you make, especially in late childhood to early adulthood, make a difference.

At this point, however, I don’t think the first part of Ayn Rand’s quote can be considered open for debate any longer. As the environmentalists like to say with global warming, the science is settled. When a population geneticist from a leftist-captured institution like Harvard is admitting what David Reich is admitting, the science on the subject must be really strong.  Today, I think the question of race and IQ, and the average genetic differences between the races, is largely proved.

The Cambridge Left Sacrifices Truth For “Diversity”

Cambridge is one of the world’s top universities, and probably has been for hundreds of years. Isaac Newton was a student from Cambridge when he developed his Law of Universal Gravitation. He later became a professor, and laid much of the groundwork for the modern world. We stand on the shoulders of giants like Newton. Today, the core foundations of that great institution have been almost completely hollowed out. Cambridge is now filled with professors like Jason Arday.

Who is Jason Arday? Until recently, he was a professor of education at Cambridge. (https://www.simonspeakers.com/author/arday-jason/ )At age 37, Arday became the youngest black professor at that traditionally hallowed institution of learning. There were only five other black professors at Cambridge when he was hired. (https://channel4news.substack.com/p/the-extraordinary-case-of-professor)

Arday made many extraordinary claims, over and above his claims of academic merit. He claimed to have run 30 marathons in 35 days with a fractured bone. He said he’d raised £5 million for charity . (https://nypost.com/2026/08/10/opinion/plagiarist-prof-jason-ardays-life-story-is-published-tomorrow-and-it-gets-more-unbelievable-by-the-page/)

I’ve been around a lot of black guys who would make extraordinary claims like this. The white liberals around them would just lap it up without question. For this reason, it’s not surprising to me that no one questioned any of his obvious lies. Whenever the black guy shows up in any situation, I roll my eyes and think: “Here we go.” The ass-kissing by white liberals is about to begin.

By way of example, I once went to see a fiction writer’s panel. By my recollection it had two white guys, a hispanic guy, and a woman on it, sitting at a table for five up on a stage. They started giving their spiels about writing. Note that I said there were five chairs, but only four people on the stage? Where was the fifth person? About fifteen minutes into the presentation, a black guy sauntered in and sat down in the fifth chair. (I think he may have apologized for being late, but I’m not 100% sure he even did that.)

The black guy was introduced by the moderator after this belated appearance. The white guy sitting next to him practically fell over himself to shake hands.

The white guys were clearly the most accomplished and professional people up on that stage. But, the black guy was really good at bullshitting and loved to hear himself talk. The female moderator kept asking the black guy questions. The female moderator also routinely cut off the white guys, like she couldn’t be bothered to hear from them. (This was a little bit into the first Trump Administration, to give you some idea of where society was at. On top of that, writers are all mostly on the political left, to begin with.)

It was apparent that the black guy was the least accomplished writer up there. He had been chosen solely because he was black, and they needed a black guy on the writer’s panel. Somehow, even though black people are 13% of the US population, the writer’s panel wasn’t complete unless 20% of it was black.

I’ve seen this pattern a thousand times. The above is just one example. The black guy who is a complete prevaricating crap artist shows up, and all the white people act like what he’s saying just came down from the mountain on stone tablets. I don’t get why this happens, other than white people, especially white “liberals” don’t want to have to face the uncomfortable truth that most black people are not that intelligent. More generally, it probably has to do with most people being altruists, and they are willing to sacrifice what they know to be the truth, in order to spare the feelings of an obviously incompetent ignoramus. Here is a quote from Ayn Rand that seems to sum up this mindset nicely:

“It is your mind that they want you to surrender—all those who preach the creed of sacrifice, whatever their tags or their motives, whether they demand it for the sake of your soul or of your body, whether they promise you another life in heaven or a full stomach on this earth. Those who start by saying: ‘It is selfish to pursue your own wishes, you must sacrifice them to the wishes of others’—end up by saying: ‘It is selfish to uphold your convictions, you must sacrifice them to the convictions of others.’” (Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, emphasis added, https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/altruism.html)

So, what happened with Jason Arday? Eventually, it was discovered Arday had committed massive amounts of plagiarism. He used another student’s paper, without citation, in his own work. (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/i-was-reported-police-over-arday-case-i-was-just-doing-my-job)

When a journalist contacted Arday by email about the apparent plagiarism, Arday responded by calling the Police on the journalist, and claiming he was being harassed. The worst part is the Police took Arday’s side, and told the journalist not to contact him. This was in Great Britain where there aren’t the same protections for freedom of speech as there are in the United States. More altruism, but this time, with the imprimatur of state force to back it up.

Another academic and former Cambridge professor eventually ran Arday’s works through an electronic plagiarism detector, and posted the results online. (https://ncofnas.com/p/dei-fraud-and-cover-up-at-cambridge?ref=quillette.com) This academic had been removed from his job at Cambridge because he said that without affirmative action, almost none of the students at Harvard would be black, which I think is 100% true. (https://freespeechunion.org/archive/why-we-should-defend-nathan-cofnass-academic-freedom )

The latest news development on this story is that Arday has apparently committed suicide, and I do not feel sorry for him at all. I could feel an ounce of compassion for Arday if all he had been doing was the constant bragging and misrepresenting of his worth. Even the plagiarism might be forgivable, since the field of education is probably so shot through with leftist ideas to be almost worthless, anyway. But, on at least two occasions, he called the police on people who questioned him. This shows a willingness on Arday’s part to use physical force to silence his critics. He is a force-initiator, and that is unforgiveable. He deserved whatever ignominy he received. The fact that he was too psychologically brittle to withstand that public shame and scrutiny is entirely on him. He chose his path.

The lesson to be learned from this episode is that we’ve got to shut down affirmative action/DEI, and judge people solely on their ability to do the job. Merit means to deserve or to be worthy of something. It doesn’t mean that practicing virtue and effort will always lead to success. (Sometimes factors beyond your control cause you to fail.) But, for those who achieve a particular value, accolade, job, or social position, it means they made efforts to achieve that result.

Closely related to the concept of merit is the concept of justice. Justice demands that we must judge people in accordance with objective standards, and give them what they deserve. We give them what they deserve for selfish reasons. Jobs at Cambridge or Harvard must go to those who, by objective standards, are capable of producing value at a level that is equal to the (supposed) value of these institutions. Even people who try their hardest, and give it their all, don’t automatically deserve a job. They must, in fact, be capable of producing value that is equivalent to that job. There is no doubt in my mind that intelligence is partly genetic. Many professors or students that end up at Harvard will be there, at least in part, because they won the “genetic lottery” when it comes to intelligence. Others who tried equally as hard may end up as lecturers at the local community college or state college. (There is nothing wrong with that, ethically speaking. What matters on a personal moral level is that you gave it your best effort.) From the standpoint of justice, it’s irrelevant that genetics played a role in someone’s ability to compete in the job market. The most intelligent are capable of producing the most value for Harvard or Cambridge. The owners of Harvard and Cambridge should want the best because it ultimately means the best value will be produced, which benefits us all. If money hadn’t been spent on Jason Arday’s job at Cambridge, they might have been able to afford another cancer researcher. Maybe that scientist would have made the next big breakthrough that results in a cure for cancer. Instead, money and resources were poured down the sewer that is DEI and affirmative action.

If an airline picks pilots for its planes, it should do so on the fact that job candidates are, in fact, best able to fly and land the planes. The self-interest of the owners of the planes demands that, to say nothing of the self-interest of the passengers. That is the purpose of justice. To enhance and promote the lives of the people who practice that virtue. It doesn’t matter if the pilot that wasn’t picked had lower intelligence for genetic reasons, or because he had a bad childhood. All that matters, from my standpoint as a customer, is that the person most capable of flying and landing that plane is in the cockpit. Justice serves self-interest. That’s why we practice the virtue of justice.( https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/justice/1.html)

Intellectuals at universities are supposed to provide us with new knowledge, and new ways of thinking about the data collected. Academics in the “soft-sciences” like education, the social sciences, and philosophy are there to help us better understand ourselves, and our relationship to society and the universe. They are like airline pilots of the human psyche. When they do their work correctly, they can help us to better navigate a world fraught with dictatorships, warfare, and other dangers. Justice demands that our universities be filled with the best and the most productive. The world’s problems are too serious to tolerate even one incompetent charlatan at Cambridge, who got there through nothing but the color of his skin.

Do You Cross The Street?

In one of his podcasts, Sam Harris talks about a woman getting on an elevator with a black man, because she doesn’t want to appear racist, and it “ended badly for her”. She was willing to sacrifice her life and wellbeing for an ideology that doesn’t have her best interests in mind.

A similar situation is the old hypothetical of someone crossing the street to avoid a random black person, and whether that’s “racist”.

I have come to the conclusion that one of two things are true. Either: (1) “racism” has been expanded as a definition to the point that it is meaningless, or (2) sometimes racism is rational. (I’m indifferent to which it is at this point.)

What specifically do I consider myself to be at this point? I’d call myself a “rational white separatist”. What do I mean by that?

In the two examples above, I’d try to avoid the black person.

Crime statistics show disparities in violent crime. I’m also convinced that you are more likely to be the victim of a violent crime by a black person than a white person. I’m not going to get into the weeds on the statistics here. I’ve studied them enough that I’m convinced. The reader is invited to go study them, or keep living in denial, as they choose. At this point, anyone who denies this, I consider to be fundamentally dishonest.

The somewhat grudging retort today tends to be to admit the statistics, but to say something like: “Yeah, but we have to treat everyone like individuals.” In the above two scenarios, I know nothing about these two individuals. (The black man on the street or in the elevator). I gain nothing from being in the elevator with him or from walking close to him on the street. No matter how small the odds of death for me, they are real. On the other hand, I loose almost nothing by crossing the street or by not getting on the elevator. (Other than perhaps waiting for the next elevator, which is a trivial loss of time.) I have no information other than group statistics, and my actions do nothing bad to the black person, other than perhaps offend someone I don’t know. (I don’t care about his feelings.)  It’s not like I’m trying to justify pulling out a gun and shooting him, unprovoked, in the elevator based on nothing but group statistics. Any restriction of his life, liberty or property would have to be based on more than statistics. Treating him as an individual in a courtroom does matter, because of what is at stake.

I don’t consider myself an absolute “white separatist”, however. I don’t think that makes sense. Sometimes dealing with black people in professional or job settings is unavoidable. It’s also possible that I could meet a black person who is so exceptional that they overcome the presumption I have against separatism. (I’m not going to turn down an invite to meet with Thomas Sowell or Clarence Thomas.) Maybe there’s some black doctor out there who is just exceptional, and I would need medical treatment from him, or, if I was in combat, maybe I need to hide out in the same foxhole as a black person.

I would call myself a “presumptive white separatist”. In other words, in non-professional settings, and when it is legal, I avoid black people in general. But, that presumption can be overcome. (I cannot avoid associating with black people in professional settings, as it is mostly against the law to do so. I advocate repeal of the civil rights acts as violations of my freedom of association.)

Whose responsibility is it to overcome that presumption with me? I place it on the black person that wants to associate with me. The principle is rational egoism, plus freedom of association. They would have to demonstrate to me that association with them is going to be beneficial, and worth any risk.

There is a lot of discussion to be had about the details. All of this needs to be “fleshed out” with examples. I will leave most of that for another time, but I wanted to discuss one counterargument that I find particularly “Reddit midwit”. Someone is going to say something like:

“Well, men are more likely to commit crimes, but you don’t see women not associating with men.”

Women are free not to associate with men, but this isn’t a good comparison. If a heterosexual woman wants to have a relationship with a man, she must associate with at least some men, despite the real danger. (Men do commit more violent crime.) This is no different than if I want to train bears, I have to accept that there is some associated danger that can never be fully avoided.

There is much that still needs to be said about the doctrine of what I am provisionally calling “rational white separatism” or “presumptive white separatism”, including a good name for it. All in good time.

How To Think About The Assassination Of Public Speakers Expressing Political, Cultural, or Philosophic Viewpoints

On September 10, 2025, public speaker Charlie Kirk was murdered while speaking at a university in Utah. The best evidence available today says he was shot with an old-style bolt-action rifle from about 200 yards by a sniper on a roof. (I won’t say the probable murderer’s name, as that is giving him too much attention.) Reliable news sources like the Wall Street Journal report that the shooter said he committed this murder because he viewed Charlie Kirk’s ideas as “hate”: “’I had enough of his hatred,’ [the shooter] allegedly responded. ‘Some hate can’t be negotiated out.‘” (Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2025) The shooter thought he could murder someone for expressing what he considered to be “hate”. He shot Kirk through the neck, with Kirk’s blood spurting out like a geyser in front of thousands of people, who will now be traumatized by that event, to say nothing of Kirk’s family and friends. (I had the misfortune of seeing a close up of the video of his death, which sickened and horrified me.)

The response from the more irrational portions of the left-wing mob has been horrific, but not particularly surprising to me. The celebration videos online are awful, but I also think most people behaving this way are just random people on the Internet, not major public speakers or intellectuals. I will not waste time addressing those who are either mentally ill, or moral monsters.

What I do want to spend time addressing is a more subtle way of minimizing or dismissing this murder. How should we think about the murder of Charlie Kirk, if civilization, rationality, and moral decency is our objective? If this is one’s goal, the only thing to be said about Kirk’s murder is: “This is a vicious, unprovoked murder, that I condemn without question, reservation, or qualification, and the murderer must receive the maximum penalty allowed by law.”

If someone says anything like: “I don’t agree with Charlie Kirk’s murder, but I didn’t agree with him on some things.” They are implicitly saying he deserved to get murdered. (Whether the speaker realizes it or not.) It implies that in the speaker’s mind, they are at least entertaining the notion that someone deserves to get killed for expressing their views through speaking or writing. That’s okay if you are not sure about whether force should ever be used to stop someone from expressing their beliefs on politics, religion, morality, or philosophy. But, if you have such doubts, you have no business calling yourself an intellectual, a reporter, a teacher, a lawyer, or a politician. You should not speak on these topics, if you are that uncertain of the baseline value that force should not be used against people solely because of their spoken or written words that express political, philosophical, or religious beliefs. If you do insist on speaking, and say things like I’ve been hearing and reading, about how “…Charlie Kirk didn’t deserve to die, but I also disagree with him…” then you should be judged, and judged harshly, as either evil or an ignoramus.

Imagine if someone were sexually assaulted, and someone said: “I don’t agree with how they dressed, but no one deserves to be raped.” What they are implicitly saying is that they aren’t sure in their own head about that issue. That’s okay if they aren’t, but they have no moral business having a forum, such as a newspaper, a television station, or a YouTube channel, when saying such things. Morally, private newspapers and private TV channels should not give them a forum to express such views. (Obviously, the government has no business being involved in censoring people, even when they express bad ideas.)

We wouldn’t rightfully say of someone murdered, who said 100% truth: “He didn’t deserve to die because he spoke only truth.” That would imply his right to life is tied to the truth of the ideas he holds, when it is not. His right to life has no connection to the contents of his mind. One also wouldn’t rightfully say: “He didn’t do enough good things [however you define that] so he deserves to be murdered.”

If we are to live in a civilized society, whether someone states 100% truth or 100% lies must be irrelevant to their right to live. How they live their life, and what they believe, short of your need to act in emergency self defense against force, doesn’t justify intentionally killing them.

In the past, what I’ve heard from people on the left is: “Don’t blame the victim of a crime.” (For instance, when a woman is sexually assaulted.) First of all, I think this aphorism can be used as a verbal club to attack anyone who points out that you should take some care in how you live your life, and who you associate with. If you hang out with dangerous felons or drugs addicts, you’re more likely to end up the victim of a crime. I think what this saying means in a rational context is something like this: We don’t look for trivial rationalizations about the actions of the victim to minimize or excuse the actions of criminals. Even if the victim was imprudent , that in no way excuses the rights-violation by the criminal. The criminal must still receive full moral condemnation, and the full weight of the law. In this case, we can’t even say Charlie Kirk was imprudent. He wasn’t hanging out with dangerous felons, for instance. He was speaking at a college. No one on the left has trotted out the “Don’t blame the victim” line in the case of Charlie Kirk. I wonder why?

I think saying anything but unequivocal condemnation for the murder of Charlie Kirk is what Ayn Rand and her close associates called context dropping:

“Context-dropping is one of the chief psychological tools of evasion.” (The Virtue of Selfishness “The ‘Conflicts’ of Men’s Interests”, found in Ayn Rand Lexicon)

“Whenever you tear an idea from its context and treat it as though it were a self-sufficient, independent item, you invalidate the thought process involved. If you omit the context, or even a crucial aspect of it, then no matter what you say it will not be valid . . . .A context-dropper forgets or evades any wider context. He stares at only one element, and he thinks, “I can change just this one point, and everything else will remain the same.” In fact, everything is interconnected. That one element involves a whole context, and to assess a change in one element, you must see what it means in the whole context.” (The Philosophy of Objectivism lecture series, Leonard Peikoff, The Philosophy of Objectivism lecture series, Lecture 5, found in Ayn Rand Lexicon.)

The whole context of the murder of Charlie Kirk is this: A man was violently killed while speaking his ideas in public, where the shooter expressly said he did it because Kirk’s ideas were ‘hateful’. You would have to drop the context of: the individual right to life; the right to free speech; and the desire to live in a civilized society, if you gave anything but unqualified condemnation of this shooting as monstrous and evil.

I cannot remember the last time a person was killed solely for expressing ideas in the United States of America. (When they weren’t a politician with political power.) The only historical example I can think of is Martin Luther King. This is the historical, cultural, and moral context of the murder of Charlie Kirk. He was assassinated for expressing his ideas. This must be condemned, without any analysis of his ideas. To do otherwise is to implicitly sanction murder on the basis of belief.

White Student Stabbed by Black Student In Frisco, Texas

Since I’m sure the news media won’t publish much about this incident, I thought I’d make a quick blog post about it. Yesterday, a white student in Frisco, which is the next city over from where I live, was stabbed to death by a black.

Although they are about 13% of the population, they commit about 50% of the murders.

If I had children myself, I’d look at some alternative to sending my kids to schools with a population of people who are much more likely to commit murder. At this point, your only option may be homeschooling, since I doubt even private schools would be free to choose who attends their schools.

At some point, our country needs to get back to true freedom of association, where one can choose who one’s neighbors are, who their kids play with, and where they go to school. Right now, it’s apparently a “human right” to get to have access to white people so that you can stab them to death.

If you’re black, this may be hard to hear, but I don’t owe you anything above respecting your right to life, liberty and property. I don’t owe you my association, my money, or my life. Demonstrate to me that you are not a danger, and you can overcome my presumption not to want to associate with you. But, you’ll have to provide me with evidence you’re not likely to stab or shoot me.

What If Nicole Brown Had A “No Interracial Dating” Policy?

“Interracial couples represented as many as 17.9% of substantiated events, and these couples were 1.5 times more likely to mutually assault each other than ethnic minority couples, and twice as likely as White couples to experience a mutual assault.” (Martin BA, Cui M, Ueno K, Fincham FD. Intimate Partner Violence in Interracial and Monoracial Couples. Fam Relat. 2013 Feb 1;61(1):202-211. doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3729.2012.00747.x. Epub 2013 Jan 22. PMID: 23554541; PMCID: PMC3611980.,  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3611980/ )

The new Netflix documentary about the Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman murders is worth a watch. It went through the investigation and trial in a way that made sense, and even made sense of the jury verdict, even if you don’t agree with it. (Which I don’t.)

I want to look at a particularly telling scene in the video. It was an interview by someone in Nicole Brown’s family. The interviewee talked about when Nicole first started dating the person that she would eventually marry, divorce, and later be murdered by. The interviewee said that Nicole told her mother over the phone that she was dating a black man, apparently checking to see if that was going to be a problem with her family. Her mother is reported to have said something to the effect of: “That’s okay.”

Her mom would clearly get the “I’m not racist” seal of approval from the majority of people living in our society since the 1960’s. (Whatever “racist” means, which I’m not sure at this point.)

A few days later, I was driving in my car, thinking about the documentary when a thought occurred to me that was completely novel. I am a product of the mainstream public education system in the United States, and I’ve lived in “respectable” middle class culture here my whole life, so I tend to have a lot of biases and unchecked premises based in that culture, even though I am well into middle age. In other words, I’m just as capable of having “blind spots” in my thinking, thanks to left-wing and egalitarian brainwashing, mostly from the public schools. Anyway, my new thought was this:

“What if Nicole’s mother had responded differently when Nicole told her she was dating a black man? What if Nicole’s mom had responded more like someone from 1940’s Alabama than someone from 1980’s Los Angeles?”

What if Nicole’s mom had said: “If you date a black man, you’re cut off and disowned. We’ll never speak to you again.”

Her mom and dad would have been called “racist” if it got out. There’s also no guarantee Nicole would have listened to them, although it clearly mattered to her, since she “tested the waters” with her parents by letting them know in advance over the phone.

If Nicole had listened to them in this hypothetical case, she probably wouldn’t have died. (Most likely some other white woman would have died, since there are plenty today that would marry a rich, famous football player. I’ll never understand the stupid obsession with football and sports.)

I can hear it now: “There are plenty of white women that get murdered by their white husbands. You’re being ‘racist’. Blah, blah, blah.”

Those people might have a point, except there are studies showing that intimate partner violence is higher amongst interracial couples. We can opine about the causes of this. I’m sure a leftist will say it’s all a legacy of slavery, and really white people’s fault that Nicole’s ex-husband nearly cut her head off. From a personal standpoint, of who you should date, it doesn’t really matter what the reason is or whose “fault” it is that the statistics show what they show. What matters in the dating world today is that one should at least be cognizant of the statistics when thinking about dating interracially. One should at least consider the dangers.

I’m sure someone will also say: “Logical fallacy! Fallacy of division! I’m going to date them, and get to know them, and then, if it turns out that they are dangerous, I’ll just stop dating them, you racist.”

Except, at that point you’re in a relationship with that person, and when you go to break it off with them, they might view you as “theirs”, just like Nicole’s ex-husband viewed her as “his”, and he then killed her in an obsessive rage of jealousy. (Such was the motive theorized by the Netflix documentary.)

Also, keep in mind, it doesn’t matter to me what you do in the end. Virtue-signaling people who do things on the basis of being “progressive” and “open minded” deserve their leftist ideology, I think.

The One About the Sex Session Marathon

A few weeks back, there was a lot of buzz on the Internet and YouTube about a woman in her early 20’s who had sex with 100 men in a the span of about 24 hours. This was apparently “training” to eventually have sex with 1,000 men in a 24-hour period, and break some sort of world record. The woman is a sex worker, who does penis in vagina penetration pornography on the Internet, so she’s hardly what you’d call an “average” person. I have no idea what motivates her, and I’m not going to speculate.

I’m also not sure how she is defining “sex” for the purposes of the world record. I don’t know how you could have penetration to ejaculation intercourse with 1,000 men in such a short time span. By my calculation, that’s less than a minute and a half per man. I think there was some talk about the men being “prepped” by other people ahead of time? (I’m not going to delve too deep into that, as I’d rather not know the details.) Would that even count as one-on-one sex, or some sort of orgy, if the guys are being “pre-stimulated” by other people?

For me, there is a certain “ewe” factor, on a completely emotional level. I cannot imagine engaging in the sex act in front of a bunch of other-nonparticipants, and on camera, like that, but that could be because I grew up in a culture that may over-emphasize chastity for religious or socially conventional reasons that don’t always make sense.

However, sometimes traditions and social conventions have a good basis in something real, either in the past or even in the present. I think we should still try to figure out what those reasons are, since it establishes a context for the convention and points to possible exceptions or limits for it. For instance, the incest taboo has a scientific basis, so it is more than simply an inexplicable social convention.

I suspect there are psychological reasons for some of our conventions on sex, such as limiting promiscuity, but I don’t have enough knowledge about human psychology to say. I want to look at this entirely from the standpoint of biological and medical evidence that I am fairly certain about. (This is not to say there isn’t a psychological component to this that might make promiscuity a bad idea. I just don’t know enough about that to say.)

What is the biological and medical evidence for avoiding promiscuity?  I can think of two major reasons fairly quickly:

Avoiding unwanted pregnancy. Technologies like birth control and abortion have somewhat limited this concern. But, in the past, this would have been a major reason.

Avoiding sexually transmitted disease.

I think women should be particularly wary of promiscuity to avoid STD’s. The evidence I see says women are more likely to contract an STD from sex. Women are more likely to contract HIV from unprotected sex than men:

“The risk of HIV seroconversion per heterosexual act is estimated to be approximately twofold higher for the female compared to male partner…” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5882769/

“Overall, 19 (12%) male partners and 82 (20%) female partners were infected with HIV, suggesting that male to female transmission is 1.9 (95% confidence interval 1.1 to 3.3) times more effective than female to male transmission.”  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5882769/

““A meta-analysis of 10 studies exploring the risk of transmission through vaginal sex was published in 2009.4 It is estimated the risk of HIV transmission through receptive vaginal sex (receiving the penis in the vagina) to be 0.08% (equivalent to 1 transmission per 1,250 exposures).

A meta-analysis of three studies exploring the risk from insertive vaginal sex (inserting the penis into the vagina) was estimated to be 0.04% (equivalent to 1 transmission per 2,500 exposures).4” https://stanfordhealthcare.org/medical-conditions/sexual-and-reproductive-health/hiv-aids/causes/risk-of-exposure.html

From what I’ve seen, women who have unprotected heterosexual intercourse with an infected partner are about twice as likely to contract HIV as men. The probability of contracting other STD’s seems to be higher for women also:

“Having sexual contact without using a barrier increases your risk of genital herpes. Barriers include condoms and condom-like protectors called dental dams used during oral sex. Women are at higher risk of getting genital herpes. The virus can spread more easily from men to women than from women to men.”

“Women, people with a history of sexually transmitted diseases, older people, Black people in in the United States and men who have sex with men diagnosed with genital herpes at a higher than average rate.”

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/genital-herpes/symptoms-causes/syc-20356161

“Females are at higher risk of acquiring genital herpes from a male partner than vice versa. Studies of heterosexual couples with one partner who had symptomatic recurrent genital HSV-2 (“source partner”) revealed annual transmission rates of 11–17% in couples with a male source partners and 3–4% in couples with a female source partners”

https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/infectious-diseases/sexual-health-sexually-transmitted-infections/canadian-guidelines/herpes-simplex-virus/risk-factors-clinical-manifestation.html

A woman who eventually wants to have children is putting them at risk, too:

“A baby can be infected with HSV during delivery. Less often, the virus is passed during pregnancy or by close contact after delivery. Newborns with HSV often have infections of internal organs or the nervous system. Even with treatment, these newborns have a high risk of developmental or physical problems and a risk of death.”

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/genital-herpes/symptoms-causes/syc-20356161

Feminism has done a real disservice to women’s health by saying or implying women can have sex just like men. The danger for STD’s is greater, and even with access to abortion and birth control pills, unwanted pregnancy can happen. Abortion is a medical procedure, so there is danger there. Feminism ignores biological fact to tell women they are the same as men, when they are not. Women have the same fundamental rights as men to life, liberty, and property, but that doesn’t mean they are the same as men and it doesn’t mean that a rational woman shouldn’t behave, in many ways, differently than a man because of her physiology.

I’ve known women who pursued the feminist “I’m just like a man,” attitude and wound up regretting it later in life. I’ve seen women end up with STD’s because they weren’t sufficiently selective in who they had sex with, particularly unprotected sex. There are women reporting on social media and YouTube about getting HIV in their early 20’s after having unprotected sex with men they barely knew. I once heard a second-hand story about someone I’d met, but was no friend of mine, who had an unprotected sexual relationship with a woman even though he knew he had herpes. She wound up symptomatic, and when she told him, he lied and claimed he knew nothing about it.

Some will claim that herpes is “no big deal”, but as the quote above shows, herpes can lead to developmental and physical problems and greater risk of death for newborn children. I once heard another story about a woman who had herpes, and she had lost a child while giving birth to it. I don’t know for a fact that she had herpes when she gave birth, or that herpes had anything to do with it, but it certainly sounds like it may have been the case.

This is not to say that I think it’s okay for men to be promiscuous, from a medical and health standpoint. But, the risks are lower for them as a matter of biological fact. There are high “social risks” for men. In a certain sense, higher than for women. Sleeping with another man’s wife/girlfriend can lead to death by violence. A man could end up paying a lot of child support, and not getting to see their children much or at all. A woman might choose not to tell you that you are the father of her child. I’ve seen this happen before, too.

Men don’t have an ideology, taught in all schools, telling them to go out and have random sex, which I think feminism strongly implies or explicitly endorses for women. If anything, religion tells men not to have premarital sex, and so does feminism, the more extreme and Marxist elements of which, tend to make outlandish claims about how all heterosexual sex is rape.

My moral appraisal of the woman who had sex with 100 guys in 24 hours was pretty much “whatever”, at first. I don’t know her, and I don’t have any reason to particularly care. I also didn’t want to be morally “puritanical”, but then I wondered how much she is causing young women to think this is how they should live. I think it also encourages young men to seek out women that behave like porn stars. This, in turn, makes young women think they need to behave like porn stars to get a man. I wouldn’t be surprised if more pornography causes a spike in STD transmission. As a result, my more considered appraisal of her is fairly negative. I wouldn’t call what she is doing “evil”, I’d call it “mildly bad”, “not great”, or “ill advised”. I hope that teenagers and young adults out there recognize that she is not someone to desire or emulate, if only because of the health dangers.

None of this is to say I think pornography should be illegal. People need to learn to exercise the thinking faculties of their minds, and make good decisions on their own. The more government tries to protect people from their bad choices, the more people who do not think are protected from their lack of judgment and prudence, and the more it discourages the need to think.

Making porn illegal is analogous to giving people welfare, which discourages them from learning new skills to get into the work force. They become dependent on government and do not know how to work. Similarly, what I call “spiritual welfare”, like regulating porn, would cause people to become dependent on government in deciding what things on TV and the Internet are good for them, or not. It destroys the capacity in the population at large to think and reason these things out for themselves, and it makes them dependent on government.

Additionally, some stuff that might be considered “pornography” by the more puritanical conservatives might have beneficial uses. “Soft core porn” or “erotica” might have its place. For instance, a long-married couple might legitimately watch it to “spice up” their sex life -I don’t know for sure. Each individual can make up his or her own mind on where they want to draw the line on what they want to watch, and what they want to participate in, when it comes to sex. (They can also live with whatever consequences that come from that.) As an egoist, I am not primarily concerned with how others live their lives. If I don’t like it, I can just not associate with them. To me, being promiscuous is more like being a smoker. I think it’s probably unhealthy, but I don’t disassociate with someone just because they smoke. As long as they do that part of their life separate from our friendship or association, I’ll simply ignore it.

Altruism In Action: The Felon Heart Transplant Recipient

Anthony Stokes was a black juvenile delinquent who needed a heart transplant in 2013. Initially the hospital refused to provide him with a transplant because he had a history of committing crimes, and had a “history of non-compliance” with the directives of his doctors regarding his health. This meant he was not a good candidate for a heart transplant over others who would actually take the gift of a heart transplant seriously.

Of course, once the leftist media got a hold of this story, the hospital was criticized for being “mean” and “racist”. The hospital caved to pressure, and reversed its decision, giving Stokes a heart. Since there are only a limited number of human organs available for transplant, this meant that someone else had to wait, and possibly die, because they gave a heart to the less-deserving Stokes. (The fact that we have limited organs for transplants, which could be solved with a free-market in organs, where people would be paid, while alive, to contractually sell their organs when they unexpectedly die in the future, is a separate issue. We can argue about that at another time. Right now, the system is what it is.)

What did Anthony Stokes do with his new lease on life? Go out and commit more crimes, of course. About two years after he got his heart transplant, he committed an armed robbery of an 81 year old woman in her house, shot at her, and then ran from the police in a high speed chase. During the course of the chase, he crashed into a pole, and died. (Presumably, he decided he was going to get his “reparations” through armed robberies.)

Our society is a society dying of altruism. What is altruism? It’s not just “helping others”. Its fundamentally about sacrificing those who are good to those who are evil:

“The injunction ‘don’t judge’ is the ultimate climax of the altruist morality which, today, can be seen in its naked essence. When men plead for forgiveness, for the nameless, cosmic forgiveness of an unconfessed evil, when they react with instantaneous compassion to any guilt, to the perpetrators of any atrocity, while turning away indifferently from the bleeding bodies of the victims and the innocent—one may see the actual purpose, motive and psychological appeal of the altruist code. When these same compassionate men turn with snarling hatred upon anyone who pronounces moral judgments, when they scream that the only evil is the determination to fight against evil—one may see the kind of moral blank check that the altruist morality hands out.” (“For the New Intellectual“, Ayn Rand; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/altruism.html )

There is more I could say about this story. I could talk about how we coddle black criminals, because it is considered “racist” to hold them accountable for their actions, and thereby infantilize and endanger other blacks as well as whites. It’s also a story about how “black culture“, by which I mean the culture of a significant segment of black society, needs to be changed, both for the sake of black people and our own. It’s also a story about how many, many, many needlessly guilty white people, especially the “liberals” and “progressives”, are unwilling to judge and hold black people accountable for their actions. But, I think, at root, it is a story about altruism run amok, and not just with respect to race relations. Until more people explicitly recognize the value of their own lives, and chose a set of reality-oriented principles for living their lives, and for living in a rational society, which includes the willingness to judge and recognize a criminal when you see one, it’ll only get worse.

Conservatives On The Secular Basis of Sexual Propriety -A Trojan Horse For Dogmatism

I occasionally watch bits of a podcast called “whatever” on YouTube. It reminds me of “The Phil Donahue Show” from when I was a kid, although it’s more focused on sex and relationships. The host will have a panel of women on. Some of them will be involved in the pornography industry or doing sex work, sometimes including women that do legal sex-for-money work, such as in a brothel in Nevada. There will also be a person on the panel who represents the “conservative/religious viewpoint” on sex and romance.

Additionally, there will be some women on the panel who have more “average” lives, and are not sex workers and also are not conservative ideologues. The point of the podcast, from a “getting viewership” standpoint, is obviously to get the two “sides” into debates about what is and isn’t appropriate or acceptable when it comes to sex, romance, dating, and marriage. Often the debates will center around questions like: “How promiscuous is too promiscuous?” “Is sex before marriage okay or desirable?” “Is viewing or producing pornography okay?”

In the most recent episode I partially watched, there were two women who do or have done legal sex work at brothels in the state of Nevada, as well as a couple of women who do Only Fans pornography in varying degrees of undress.

The conservative/religious viewpoint was represented by Candace Owens, who is a conservative, Catholic podcaster. During the course of the podcast, she made arguments for why monogamy is preferable to promiscuity, and why things like paying money for sex, and polyamorous relationships are not desirable for the people engaged in such activities.

I saw Candace Owens making, basically, two types of arguments in the podcast, although she did not explicitly acknowledge the difference between these two categories of argument. They are the same two arguments that most religionists make about marriage, sex and romantic relationships:

(1) Non-monogamous relationships and sexual promiscuity are contrary to biology and fundamental aspects of human psychology. An example of this type of argument is the following, although I don’t know that it is explicitly made on the podcast: Too many sex partners before marriage make pair-bonding more difficult, and watching pornography will affect pair-bonding later. There is supposedly some scientific evidence for this, although that is disputed. (https://healthland.time.com/2011/02/09/do-men-really-bond-with-porn-spoiling-them-for-real-life-sex/)

(2) Non-monogamous relationships/sexual promiscuity are contrary to the Bible/Christian doctrine, at least as they interpret it.

The conservative/religious ideologues I see online make the first, secular, argument when they say things like: Women who are promiscuous when young will find it difficult to be in a committed relationship later. That may or may not be true -I don’t know. But, when pressed, the conservatives like Ms. Owens fall back on: Promiscuity is contrary to the Bible. In other words, argument number two. At the end of the day, conservatives believe such behavior is undesirable because it is contrary to their interpretation of the Bible. That is what really matters to the conservatives/religionists, not any sort of scientific or psychological argument.

There may or may not be evidence to prove the first argument, regarding biology/human nature. Even as an atheist, I still regard monogamy as ideal, and I try to avoid being too promiscuous. But, I am open to the possibility that I hold this attitude because of the somewhat Christian culture I grew up in, which might still be buried in my subconscious. For that reason, I tend not to pass judgment on people who choose unconventional sexual lifestyles, such as promiscuity, polyamory, or to be sex workers. (I think it’s easier to justify certain types of nude photos, sexual dancing, or erotic art as consistent with a healthy psychology, but again, I’m not 100% certain.)  All I am willing to say is that open relationships would not work for me.  (I would get too jealous to share a wife or girlfriend.)

I would like to see someone pose the following question to conservative/religious pundits making these two types of arguments regarding sex work and promiscuity: “If the scientific evidence will later show that promiscuous behavior before marriage does not affect pair-bonding, and it is possible to be in a long-term polyamorous relationship, or to be a sex worker without psychological damage, will you then change your opinion on this topic? Do you actually follow the science, or is this really about what you think the Bible says, evidence and logic be damned?”

This method of argument used by conservative/religious people extends beyond the realm of sexual propriety. For instance, they will use the same sorts of arguments when it comes to abortion. They will present psychological or medical arguments, which they allege are science-based, for why women who get abortions will be medically harmed by abortion, or that it will affect their psychology adversely. The science here may or may not be true, but, at the end of the day, they are really opposed to abortion because they believe it is contrary to their interpretation of the Bible. Even if there were scientific evidence that abortion causes no harm to a woman, or less harm than an unwanted pregnancy, the religionists aren’t going to suddenly change their mind. That’s because science has nothing to do with their viewpoint. It’s about religion, which is based in their faith.

Do the Conservatives/Religionists really believe that love and romance are important when they promote things like sex only after marriage? Religious institutions instruct their followers not to marry atheists because they would be “unequally yoked”, and they regard sex as a sin for purposes other than reproduction. So really, their desire for pair-bonding isn’t about love or romance, but about making yourself what they believe is a better servant of god.

More generally, conservatives will wrap up their religious arguments with secular-sounding justifications in other areas too. They will say things like: “We need religion to keep people moral.” But, why do we need morality at all? When asked this, they are probably going to say something like: “Morality is needed to keep people from committing murder and stealing.” If that is their reason for why they think morality is necessary, and if I can present a secular moral code and a secular basis for the criminal law, will they abandon religion? Of course not, because these arguments are just rationalizations. They want to advance their religion, and are pragmatic enough to use a secularist argument as a fig-leaf, if it suits their agenda.

Truly religious institutions recognize this, too. They will say things like: “Works do not get you into heaven.” In other words, not stealing and committing murder is not what they believe gets you into heaven, so they don’t really care if people are moral or not. The truly consistent ones realize that logic, reason, and science are irrelevant. Even “conventional morality”, such as “stealing is wrong” and “murder is bad”, is irrelevant to them. Many of these western religious institutions might not commit murder for god (yet), but they are certainly committing manslaughter.

Am I being hyperbolic? The Catholic Church forbids the use of contraception, even in the context of marriage. There is good evidence that the lack of contraception world-wide leads to unnecessary deaths for women. (https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2012/ahmed-contraception) The Catholic Church even opposes the use of contraception by married women with certain medical conditions that would make pregnancy unusually dangerous. They are expected to either abstain from sex or risk death if they become pregnant. I submit that this is advocacy of manslaughter by the Catholic Church. They are promoting the use of force by government to prevent women from using a device that will save their lives.

The Catholic Church will tell those women not to have sex. But, without sex, how do they maintain a romantic relationship with their husbands? The Catholic Church will respond that sex is an unnecessary aspect of marriage. I do not believe that assertion is at all reality oriented. More fundamentally, it also shows what the Catholic Church thinks of love. It is a belief in platonic love as an ideal. Sex is dirty and base for the Catholic Church. They view it as a necessary evil for reproduction, and nothing more.

Tying this back in to the ‘whatever’ podcast with Candace Owens, at points the sex workers claimed that sex and love are not connected. They said sex has nothing to do with love, so loveless sex without psychological consequence is possible. Interestingly, the Catholic Church also believes in love separated from sex. ‘True love’ between a man and woman is platonic, with sex as a necessary evil, for purposes of reproduction. This is what the truly dedicated religionists actually believe.

I don’t know if non-monogamous and polyamorous people can find lasting happiness with that sort of lifestyle. (I’m very skeptical.) All I can say for sure is it doesn’t work for me. But, swingers and sex workers are not the people who need to fear the declarations of religious institutions like the Catholic Church about how people should govern their sex lives. The people who need to be wary are the monogamous couples who want to sleep with their husband or wife without the psychological consequences of perpetual guilt and shame.