Canadian evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad has just published a book entitled “The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas are Killing Common Sense.” While I am perhaps over simplifying, his major concern would seem to be the Left’s absurd attempt to remove Biology from the human narrative, to suggest that the way societies unfold is almost exclusively the result of arbitrary “constructs” imposed by “ruling elites.” It is Marxism disguised as Science. It is the way “progressives” demand we see the world today.
Let us use the issue of Gender to exemplify Saad’s thesis. To radicals such as Gina Rippon, Men and Women are, quite aside from their obvious physical differences, virtually identical, the different paths they pursue through life being mainly a matter of social conditioning. Common sense as verified by one’s real life experiences would suggest this to be a gross simplification. Tons of scientific evidence supports this conclusion. In her book “The Sexual Paradox” Susan Pinker cites a number of experiments conducted on male and female infants well before their parents could have taught them that little boys ought to like blue and little girls pink, experiments which show that they are in fact significantly, statistically different from the very moment of their birth.
But while girls seem to be naturally more empathetic, does this mean every female is more empathetic than every male? Of course not! While evolution would seem to have designed women to assume the role of motherhood, does this mean every woman ought to want to be a mother? Of course not! The fact that Nature inevitably plays a role in our lives does not mean that it is invariable, inflexible or deterministic. Indeed a truly progressive perspective must grant that we are each the result of the ineffable interaction of Nature and Nurture submitted to the authority of Human Consciousness and Volition.
But if we have Free Will, if we are each to some extent responsible for what becomes of us, the Left’s Materialistic Determinism is seriously compromised. And, quite beyond the issue of Gender, if Nature has in fact programmed the species in radically different ways, the goal of socioeconomic parity becomes an arbitrary pipe dream.
“Progressives” are Utopians, their obsession with submitting the world to their Egalitarian “ideals” ironically being what makes them so dangerous. Because Free Will by definition defies external manipulation, they simply delete it from consideration. Because Nature is beyond their control, they ludicrously declare that we are all imbued with the same natural attributes. What would seem to be the three obvious components of the Human Dynamic, “progressives” have reduced to one. We are all simply the helpless victims of our Environment. It is a conclusion which Saad suggests is idiotic.
If Men and Women are intellectually and temperamentally more or less the same, the socioeconomic realm ought to reflect that fact. When it does not, Radical Feminists immediately invoke the specter of Male Oppression. Of course there are chauvinist jerks out there who resent the intrusion of Females into their formerly all-Male domains, but Science and common sense suggest that in many cases the disproportionate presence of Men or Women in various socioeconomic areas is a result of their genetically programmed differences. Turning their back on the very possibility, impassioned defenders of Girl Power can be found on most days of the week in most mainstream newspapers and journals lamenting the disturbingly low percentage of females in one profession or another. I have a pile of such rants before me. Hypocritically, disingenuously, none of them discuss the low ratio of Women in areas such as the military, mining, construction, etc., areas in which a life of physical hardship and the possibility of a premature death are a distinct reality. Feminists want Equality only when it suits their agenda!
In 2017 James Damore was fired by Google for daring to suggest that the relatively low number of Women in that company’s tech department was perfectly reasonable. Having discovered that his employer had spent millions of dollars unsuccessfully trying to entice more women into that sector, Damore researched the subject of Male/Female genetics and concluded that women simply weren’t as interested as men in jobs of a purely technical nature. This was considered unconscionable by the geniuses in charge of Google!
Saad suggests that the logical fallacies that pervade “progressivism” are a dire threat to our personal freedoms, indeed that the quest for statistical “equity,” [i.e., if 25% of the population is purple, then 25% of those in every profession ought also to be purple] is actually a recipe for social injustice. Critics of his book find this a gross exaggeration. Yet examples of the firing, “cancelling” and outright vilification of anyone who does not share their beliefs are a daily feature of contemporary life; as is the ever increasing number of quotas which have been established replacing Merit and Achievement with the tyranny of arbitrary statistical expectations.
The inclination to ignore biologically programmed differences within the species leads quite naturally to the urge to minimize if not demonize the results of those differences where they simply cannot be ignored. As we have already seen, the notion that the Ancient Greeks with their Rational/Scientific perspective were in any way superior to the Indigenous of the Americas is now seen as an expression of White Supremacism, Science and Reason being just one way of approaching the world. This Sentimental Relativism, this refusal to make sane value judgments because they might be “hurtful,” has led the more radical elements within contemporary Feminism to some truly ridiculous conclusions.
I have already mentioned books such as “The Beauty Myth” and “Fat is a Feminist Issue” which imply that Men’s preferences for the physical attributes of some women over others, however they may vary throughout the species, are cruel, hurtful and in many cases the cause of serious dysfunction among Women. For Gad Saad the allure of Female Beauty is not only natural to every heterosexual Male on the planet, but one of the most powerful instincts to which he is prone. Of course there are Men who brazenly objectify Women for sexual reasons just as there are Women who brazenly objectify Men to get at their wallets, indeed Women who go out of their way to objectify themselves because they love being the center of Male attention. But these are moral issues which need to be examined within the context of the individuals involved, whereas in the Identity based paradigm of contemporary Radical Feminism, Men have actually been demonized simply because they are enchanted by Women. In a recent interview with Dave Rubin, Saad recounted how his young son had come home from school one day and asked him “Dad, are all Men evil?”
In his talk with Rubin, Saad refers to the “wall of bullshit” confronting Men on the subject of the much despised “Patriarchy.” I was immediately reminded of a 2017 article published in the N.Y Times by one Stephen Marche which asserted that the Male Libido is inherently vile and that the only sex between a Man and Woman which is not an act of aggression is sex with a flaccid penis. In 2018, in response to the notion that Man’s reverence for Female Beauty is inherently demeaning to Women, the Miss America Pageant announced that it would no longer focus on their contestants’ physical appearance. As always, such Left-motivated policies assume the very worst of our species, Men apparently being intellectually incapable of appreciating female beauty without crassly reducing Women to mere sexual objects!
Such attempts to deny the givens of Human Biology riddle feminist literature. For Saad the Nature/Nurture dichotomy is a fiction, each of those factors clearly intersecting in a dynamic that cannot be easily parsed. This is to say that Social Convention must accommodate rather than simply cancel Human Nature. But those on the Utopian Left are addicted to easy answers, indeed impose their Egalitarian agenda like religious fanatics. Saad insists the “silent majority,” those not familiar with the “sophisticated” tropes of Postmodernism, those whose primary allegiance is to simple Common Sense, must rise up and challenge the absurdities which have come to infect Contemporary Western Culture or see its Traditional Principles and Values, which a mere 70 years ago were considered unquestionably worthy of defense, simply pass into oblivion.
The Left’s refusal to acknowledge the impact of Biological Diversity on the human dynamic is complemented by its equally absurd refusal to acknowledge the efficacy of Human Consciousness and Volition. Yes, its sophisticated perspective simply ignores the Realities of our status as both our Physical and Mental Beings!
In an Oct. 11 episode of the Rubin Report, Coleman Hughes, a Black man, offers powerful evidence that it is not Systemic Racism that is beleaguering so many of America’s inner-city Blacks but their own consciously pursued, cultural values. His is a Moral perspective which focuses on Individuals and the choices they make and is therefore completely foreign to the Neo-Marxist drivel that has come to dominate contemporary political discourse.