According to Kevin Macdonald, we Jews are the most ethnocentric people in the world. We have a patented genetic strategy, which features the moral and physical destruction of our hated rivals (the MacDonalds). And we have been following to the letter this strategy for the last 4,000 years. Yet I am a bit worried that the strategy may not be working as intended, since we Ashkenazi Jews (pic.: sample) are no more than 6 - 7 million individuals today, while the MacDonalds are over about 200 million in the USA alone and a billion world over.
It is so refreshing to find someone proudly ethnocentric yet not Jewish nor MacDonald. She calls herself FeministX and maintains a blog dealing with... herself. She likes to take pictures of herself and to post them on the internet, she analyzes with full detail her thoughts and feelings, her relations with the New York lumpen she seems to work with. Now we, her fans, have been informed that she is an Iyer, a member of an esoteric Southern Indian Tamil Brahman clan. I have never heard of them, but she explains that they have the highest average IQ of all humanity (except maybe the Jews), and they have got proportionally more Science Nobel Prizes that any other population. I had been convinced that the Parsis were the world smartest people, but have never heard of the Iyers. Are the Iyers so smart as she says? It seems improbable. My argument: No one seems to hate them. Not even in their native South India. Yet a small clannish people, if too smart and occupy high positions in society (the Iyers are judges, high public servants, university teachers, etc.) naturally bothers people. People, if black-skinned, are even more disliked, even in India. And the Iyers are very dark, yet they have no enemies. Ergo, they cannot be so smart as she says.
On the other hand, I have much to learn about non-European peoples. When my Mother was dying of liver cancer, I could not get any Israeli, Phillippine or Romanian nurse to stay with her. I offered them triple salary, yet they escaped after seeing my yellowing Mother and hearing her complains and demands. She was in a very bad mood, dying. Then appeared this small Tamil woman, and I was shocked by her ugliness and monkey-like shape. My Mother hated having ugly people around her and kill me, but she was ugly as sin. Having no choice, I hired her and to my surprise, she stayed on the 24 hours a day job till the very last minute. She came from a Christian family, spoke excellent English, was extremely clean and hard working, and astonishingly intelligent. She memorized in no time the dozens of different pills and injections my Mother was receiving, with their complex schedule. She catalogued the amazing quantities of remedies my Mother had accumulated, wrote a catalogue and guide for herself, and suddenly everything was ordered and under control. She did not became confused by Mother's moods, she did her job in a methodical way till the very moment of my Mother's death, keeping her clean and fed and fully cared for. I have no idea if she was an Iyer, but sure she was a special person. To be honest, I never got used nor became comfortable in her presence, yet I developed a sincere appreciation and gratitude toward her. She dressed black silk and cried in my Mother's funeral. I gave her a disproportionate amount of money for a foreign nurse in this country. What else could I do?
15 comments:
MacDonald genius scientist as Richard Hoste!
So great and complex psychologist Nazi brain MacDonald not understand own theory nor ethnocentry:
Kevin MacDonald is Confused About Ethnic Altruism
However, it is MacDonald who is confused, not me. Reciprocity and altruism are not mutually exclusive, so altruism can exist within reciprocal relationships. MacDonald’s theory of ethnicity attributes such altruism within reciprocity to relations among co-ethnics (members of the same ethnic group). More broadly speaking, MacDonald’s article is incoherent. Although he denies that ethnic altruism exists in one section, other passages in the article rely on the assumption that ethnic altruism does exist.
MacDonald’s confusion is evident in his blog post as well. If MacDonald does not believe in the existence of ethnic altruism, then he must disagree with Frank Salter’s theory of ethnicity, to which the concept of ethnic altruism is central. Salter plainly believes that natural selection has led to the evolution of instincts for ethnic altruism. For example, in a paper co-authored with others, Salter writes that during human history “belonging to [ethnic] groups was necessary for survival and reproduction, selecting for the predisposition to identify with and show differential altruism towards ethnic and other groups.”10 Salter goes on to argue that instincts for ethnic altruism are one of the reasons that people prefer to give money to co-ethnic rather than allo-ethnic beggars. Surely, the beggars cannot be expected to reciprocate this generosity! Why then does MacDonald say that “Salter’s work is absolutely bedrock sound” in his blog post? Either MacDonald is being dishonest or he does not understand Salter’s theory of ethnicity.
It is not hard to guess the reason for MacDonald’s confusion on the subject of ethnic altruism. He is deeply attracted to the idea but recognizes that it is vulnerable to criticisms like mine. Consequently, he denies that his theory of ethnicity depends on the existence of instincts for ethnic altruism despite the fact that it does.
In conclusion, it is clear that “The Ethnic Nepotism Fallacy” does identify real problems with ENT, including MacDonald’s version of it, which differs from alternative versions only in its incoherence. MacDonald should confront my criticisms rather than trying to evade them.
To deal briefly with the other points in MacDonald’s post. It is true that I misunderstood his statements on martyrdom among Jews. However, MacDonald’s discussion of this issue is not as clear as it could have been, as I noted in the comments section of his blog post. I will remove the offending passage from the article. On the subject of genetic similarity theory, I have explained here that consensual validation theory better accounts for the facts. I will write more on this subject soon. “The Ethnic Nepotism Fallacy” dealt only with the claim that ethnic genetic interests resulted in instincts. The question of advancing these interests through non-instinctual “rational choice mechanisms” is irrelevant to my thesis and will be dealt with separately. Contrary to MacDonald’s claim, Salter does not address my criticism of ENT in his “Misunderstandings of Kin Selection” article.11 My criticism was that kin are the optimal vehicles of nepotism so instincts for nepotism towards co-ethnics could not have evolved. Salter nowhere takes up this problem.
Finding someone to care properly for a dying family member is a real challenge -- this woman deserved every Shekel you gave her. You should send her a few extra for your gratuitous comment about her looks in this post.
Dave, I would not have been completely honest if I left out my reaction to her physical presence. Should I feel guilty for finding her very ugly? I did not hurt her in any way, on the contrary, in a relatively short time she made more money with me than she could expect to make elsewhere, and she sent it all to her children in Sri Lanka.
The Iyengars are Brahmins and they are perhaps the most intelligent Indians around. The Indian Communist party's theoretical branches used to be dominated by them, in a similarity to the Jews, that can be traced to a tendency to rebel against orthodox religion. That said Brahmins have a high proportion of imbeciles because of consanguineous marriages. Brahmins have moved on win the times. In earlier days they had a tendency to exploit the lower castes, one story had it that if the shadow of a lower caste person falls on a Brahmin, he (the Brahmin) becomes ritually unclean and suffers a lot of angst. And I do know of Brahmin families that keep separate cutlery for their guests. Over the last 30 to 40 years their power has been much diminished and the poor among them suffer geatly from reverse discrimination imposed by the lower castes. The regional ruling party in Tamil Nadu had a saying - if you meet a Brahmin and a snake, kill the Brahmin and let the snake go. FeministX though does not sound Indian, sure she might be Indian by race but there is nothing in her blog to connect her with India.
I have to agree with DaveinHackensack that your comments on the Tamil lady was gratuitous and not upto your usual high standards. That woman would have paid the equivalent of a few years salary in Sri Lanka to an agent to find work in Israel. Do you think that she would have wanted to seperate herself from her children if she could avoid it? Can she help it if she is ugly? The same God who made you made her too.
Ivan,
You are making me feel very guilty, but I did nothing. I know that she sacrificed herself caring for a dying person in Israel so she could send money to her children back home. Sure she could do nothing to improve her looks, just as anybody else. When young she may have been attractive, but she must have been around 45 and by God, she was not a beauty. Please do not interpret my personal opinion on one certain person's look as that "all" are the same. Certainly not. In Israel we have a Cochinese Jewish community in Nabatim, I just finished a project for one farmer (he is putting solar panels on his chicken farm and selling electricity; I am helping him to get the Government subsidy) and I met extremely beautiful girls in the village, about 15 - 16 years old, tall with hard salient tits, and walking around with colorful sari with half their body showing. I know, my friend, it is considered disgusting that a man of my age is ogling girls. Old age certainly reduces capability, but increases interest and desire. Old age is so ... unjust!
On the contrary, I found J's post on his mother and this Tamil woman to be refreshingly honest, full of moral lessons and as we Goyim would understand, is a story very much in the mode of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol".
It is the curse of many a sophisticated mind to be forever cut off from the comforts that a literal belief in religious dogma would otherwise offer. However, in this post we see some eternal truths demonstrated: that not all problems can be solved by intelligence alone, that not only the young and beautiful are valuable, that genuine and selfless compassion for strangers, even foreigners can and does exist, and that we are never too old to learn these things.
A thoughtful post,J, and not the easiest to have written.
Anon.
Ogling is harmless. Sexual obsession though (I am referring strictly to myself) is a form of enslavement as bad or worse than drug addiction.
How did your mother communicate w. this woman? When my mother was in her older years, we hired Polish women - not only was it easy for them to communicate but since they spoke no English they were not as employable elsewhere (here in the US) which reduced their market value and made them relatively cheap for the round the clock care they provided. Also their cooking suited my mother - pirogys, krupnik soups, etc. - the Polish and Jewish recipes are the same once you remove the treyf meats.
My mother was self-sufficient and an Israeli woman coming in for a few hours a day did the housekeeping chores and went to the market and the pharmacy and the bank and post office and so on. She did not want anyone living with her. Then she had trombosis in her leg and had difficulties to walk, so we started to look for a live in person/nurse from Hungary. The nurse-importing company offered us Hungarian speaking women from Western Romania, heavy set strong peasant women from Transylvania, as there is some kind of agreement with that country. Se were supposed to receive her in two months. In the meanwhile my mother went to the hospital to have inserted a blood filter in her vein, which solved the thrombosis problem. But then they discovered that she had liver cancer, untreatable, so the head doctor invited us to a meeting and said that he had a long healthy life, survived to return alive from Auschwitz and marry and have me and see her granddaughters grow and marry and finishing university, bla bla bla and that she should allowed to die in her home surrounded by the environment she was used to. No treatment (except morphium) and no hospital. She returned home and we hired a friend of her (not yet 70 years old) to sleep with her in her home and took another Israeli woman to help the one she was having during the last years. But now my Mother became even more exigent and demanding, complained that they were dirty and lazy and her friend - could not cook real Hungarian food. It happens that she had been a famous professional chef in Hungary, and that offended her deeply and they had a fight and she took her things, called a taxi and left. My daughters slept with her for a few days and I went crazy looking desperately for a Hungarian speaking nurse available in Israel. But no one wanted to come when they understood that that she needed physical help to go to the bathroom (I did not talk about cancer). Hungarian nurses are in demand (there is a large Hungarian elderly population in Israel) and they decide where and with whom they want to work. Then I went to shop for a South American woman, as my Mother spoke Spanish too, but they are also choosy. Then I brought about ten Phillipine girls in short sequence, but they are thin boned and delicate, and my Mother was a large and heavy woman. They could not help her to the bathroom and no one accepted the job. All this was a very difficult period for me, as I have no brothers or sisters and no one stood at my side except my dear wife. I was fully occupied in running for doctors receipts and remedies, and organizing the whole bureaucracy. I bought in male nurses, who are stronger and are in less demand, but even they refused to stay. Normally there is in Israel a large population of illegal workers, and one can choose among them, but just now (year 2008 - 9) the government decided to force Israelis to work by chasing off illegals and to pay the dole only if the jobless comes to work regularly (it is the famous Wisconsin plan, managed here by Canadian advisers. It does little to increase the popularity of America among Israeli lumpen prole). So I spent two sleepless weeks (no exaggeration) and then appeared from nowhere our saviour in the form of this little black woman with match stick legs (I am at again!) and a strong presence of mind. I acted as translator via telephone and in person 4 or 6 hours a day. My mother remained conscious all the time, watching what was being said in other rooms, and so on. She lived two months from the day cancer was discovered in her liver.
1. J, please accept my condolences on your mother's death. I'd like to say something else, but nothing would be appropriate.
2. Ivan, truthfulness is not necessarily hatred or ill-will.
3. I can top that for welfare reform, see here.
Hey, I'll reply to you more completely later, but it's highly unlikely that your nurse was an Iyer. That sounds like the typical mental profile of a lower or middle caste Tamil. In my experience with lower caste servants in India, Tamils generally have high memory capacity and a sort of academic organization to everything they do. When I was a child, the other maids were also children and they had memorized a remarkable amount of information without any formal education. High castes tend to have the calculator like cognitive traits of the lower castes and additionally they have a creative spark, probably because they have the leisure to develop intellectual pursuits.
J - There's an old saying that if everyone could put their own tsuris in a bundle, in the end you would pick your own bundle of tsuris and not someone else's. We (my sister and I) went thru our own tsuris getting Polish women for my mother but it was not as difficult as yours. Luckily my aunt lived in a nearby town that had a Polish community and she had some contacts there. Each of the women came to the US on 6 month tourist visas and would be paid in cash - something like $300/week for being on duty almost 24/7, (on Sunday we'd find some way to get them to church). They could save almost every cent of this. At the time, this was equivalent to a month's wages in Poland, so after 6 months here the women could return with savings equal to 2 years wages. This was attractive enough that one woman would often recruit the next - her neighbor or friend. The women from the countryside and in the summer did best - my mother also lived in the countryside and loved gardens, etc. so there was something to do. In the winter, the city women especially would go a little crazy - no one to talk to but my mother, they could not even understand the television. Even though they spoke the same language, they had nothing in common - the Jew and the Catholic, the woman who had been born under the Emperor Franz-Joseph (my mother was from Galicia) and the women who had been born into Communist Poland. Some took to drink, not that it requires much persuasion for a Pole to take to drink. Some were smarter than others - none as smart as your Tamil. One I recall was a veritable giant (Poles can be very large and tall) - she would lift my mother as if she were a rag doll. My mother had no terminal illness per se although she was frail and weak - one day her heart just stopped - after 92 years it had had enough.
J.,
Point taken, and allow me to offer my condolences if this tragedy happened recently. Close family friends in New York faced a similar challenge in caring for their dying mother in her home. After a search, they ended up finding a wonderful Caribbean woman who helped care for her until the end, and then mourned her at her funeral.
Anonymous,
Yours was an insightful comment.
It happened on October 14, 2009. Next day we buried her at Kever Benjamin's new cemetery. The cemetery is divided in two parts: the Jewish one, where my mother is, and the secular one, where are those Jews who hate the religion and miscellaneous non Jews. All "look" East, toward Jerusalem. In fact, towards the Arab town of Kalkiliya on the next hill. I was wondering that in the Techiyes HaMetim (Resurrection) the souls will have to transit through that large Arab town in their ascence to greet the Saviour in Jerusalem. Maybe Kalkiliya will not exist till then. Maybe there will be no Resurrection either, and that would be a pity.
May you be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.
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