Open Letter to Prince Charles

In response to his call for a Sustainability Revolution.

Dear Prince Charles

In your book, Harmony, you say the following:

“The Earth is under threat”. It cannot cope with all that we demand of it . . . If we want to hand on to our children and grandchildren a much more durable way of operating in the world, then we have to embark on what I can only describe as a ‘Sustainability Revolution’ - and with some urgency”.

I agree entirely.

Influenced - like you, I suspect - by books such as E F Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful, Meadow’s The Limits to Growth, and Herbert Gruhl’s Ein Planet wird Gepündert (We are Plundering our Planet), the whole essence of which is contained in its title, I came to this same conclusion in the early 1970s - more than 40 years ago!

Clearly, you were also an early convert to the realisation that we couldn’t carry on as we were, but needed a radical change of values and behaviour, in respect to the economy and the grossly materialistic lifestyles and lifestyle aspirations it engendered and depended on. We were placing an increasingly unsustainable drain and strain on the finite natural resources and carrying capacity of our vulnerable and already (even back then) overpopulated planet, which the very survival of our civilisation clearly depended on us putting an end to. There HAD to be a Sustainability Revolution.

I was young and naively expected those in positions of power and influence to recognise this too and take appropriate action. I was greatly encouraged by many eminent individuals, including yourself, who clearly shared my perspective and concerns.

When I eventually realised that, despite all the fine words and good intentions, the radical change of course towards a sustainable economy and ways of life wasn’t happening, and wasn’t going to happen  (on the contrary, the socio-economic order of consumer capitalism responsible in the West for our suicidal direction of travel, was emphatically endorsed by our leaders and put into “turbo mode”), I set my mind to trying to understand the cause of such madness. How could such an intelligent race as our own, capable of putting men on the Moon, be so blind and stupid when it came to the existential need to develop a sustainable global economy and ways of life?

It took a long time, but eventually I discovered what I believe to be the answer. Again, despite being older and wiser, I naively expected those in positions of authority in academia, to recognise the importance of my discovery; but again - thus far, at least - this hasn’t happened. When I’ve tried to communicate my insights and ideas to academics and others, they have not listened, or, if they have, have dismissed them, usually with distain as a form of “social Darwinism” - which I’ll come back to.

The obvious explanation for my ideas being ignored or dismissed is, of course, that they are rubbish, that I am deluding myself about their importance. After all, who am I to judge? 

Then again, who is anyone to judge?  We look to academics as authorities in understanding the human condition and situation, but as my discovery (which is indeed based on a human-evolutionary, i.e. Darwinian, perspective) reveals, it is a mistake to expect academics to have a realistic understanding of the society, state and economy they themselves, like everyone else, are utterly dependent on, and thus quite incapable of viewing objectively.

Undeterred by the lack of academic interest in my ideas, I’ve continued to develop them and explore their implications for understanding human nature and behaviour (individual, social, political and economic) which evolved, in the natural and very tribal environment as it existed for human beings long before the first states and civilisations emerged from it.

From what I know of your views, you look to “old wisdom” as your main source of inspiration in facing up to the existential challenge of achieving a Sustainability Revolution, while my inspiration is based on the relatively “new wisdom” generally associated with the name of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. I don’t reject the “old wisdom”, where it makes good sense, but see it as part of our historical heritage, which is a mixed bag of ideas and values, which need to be assessed very critically.

The Abrahamic idea of man being a sinner, i.e. a fallen angel, for having disobeyed divine (i.e. priestly/state) authority is a very bad idea, or at least, one well past its sell-by date. I see man very differently, as an aspiring ape. We have to rise above our primitive Darwinian nature, but first we must acknowledge and develop an understanding of it, rather than making it a taboo, which a previous generation of academics did in overreaction to the Nazis having hijacked and abused, for their own evil purposes, the half-baked ideas of social Darwinism

So, what does an evolutionary, i.e. Darwinian, perspective tell us about ourselves and our situation, which academics, because of their self-interested blindness to the true nature of the state and the taboo they themselves put in place, are missing?

First of all, it tells us that the human brain must have evolved to want (subconsciously more than consciously) to maintain the environment on which it depends and has been “successful” in. Clearly, we ALL depend on the socio-economic status quo and don’t want it changing to our own personal disadvantage.

This means that everyone who is anyone in society, whose “success” within it has given them any degree of power or influence, is the least inclined to want radical change. Or if, like you, they recognise the vital need for radical change, they will, nevertheless, still be subconsciously very much inclined to envisage only the kind of changes which preserve their own privileged position within the changed socioeconomic order/environment.

This is a difficult obstacle to get around, rather like trying to jump over one’s own shadow. We have to trick our brain into recognising what it (subconsciously) doesn’t want to recognise, either ignoring or rationalising it. It is a difficult trick to pull off, not least, because we can never be sure that we have succeeded, are not just rationalising and deceiving ourselves at a deeper level. We have to remain sceptical and self-critical.

If I feel with some confidence that I have got closer than most to the truth, it is because mainstream (academic) understanding of the human condition and situation is so badly misconceived, the academic brain being no different from other human brains in respect to its inclination to rationalise the state and status quo to suit its own, personal, self-interests. 

Like their medieval predecessors and counterparts, academics are privileged clients and employees of their respective "patron state", with a massive personal self-interest (subconscious more than conscious) in rationalising and defending its role, self-image (as a "nation") and ideologies (social, political, economic and racial/formerly religious), on which the state bases its claims to moral and knowledgeable authority.

Secondly, a human-evolutionary perspective reveals how the state and the society associated with it conflate and confound very different aspects of the original tribal environment in which human nature evolved, with the so-called “nation state” now deceitfully posing as our tribe or nation (intra- and inter-tribal environment) itself, while at the same time facilitating society’s SELF-exploitation (as an extra-tribal environment, on a par with the natural environment) to the personal advantage of its ruling elites and favoured (especially wealthy and academic/formerly priestly) clients, at the expense of society at large and its long-term survival.

This is why all past civilisations were bound to a cycle of boom and bust which eventually led to their demise, as happened to ancient Greek and Roman civilisation. 

Our own civilisation is bound to the same cycle. The present, unprecedented, boom phase, will soon be followed by an equally unprecedented and likely terminal bust phase. 

Our failure to face up to the challenge of a sustainability revolution will, of course, play a major role in our civilisation’s demise. But so long as we fail to recognise the true nature of the state and its primary role of facilitating society’s self-exploitation, there is no way we can rise to this challenge.

I’m not a doom-monger, any more than you are when you warn of the dire consequences of us failing to achieve sustainability, but a realist - and an optimist. 

If we continue on our present course, we are doomed. That’s just a fact that you and I have been aware of for a long time. It is probably too late now to avoid a degree of civilisational collapse in the decades ahead, which will be terrible enough, but we could still reduce its scale, overall damage to the biosphere and bio-diversity, and greatly increase our children’s and grandchildren’s chances of survival and recovery.

However, before we can embark on the Sustainability Revolution in earnest, we have to develop a much better understanding of society and the state, along the lines I have indicated above.

As heir to the British throne, you are in a uniquely influential position to promote such an understanding and to play a leading role in the revolution that would follow from it.

The question is, are you up to it?

I’m optimistic, but at the same time realistic in respect to just how big a challenge this would be for you.

All I can do is present my ideas and hope that they resonate with you.

Best regards

Roger Hicks

P.S. I know, you receive piles of letters every week and are very unlikely to actually read this one. For this reaon, I will publish it as an open letter on my blog, where others might also read it, and who knows, perhaps someone who knows you personally will recognise its relevance and bring it to your attention.

My BLOG.

P.P.S. A few years ago I watched live coverage of the Queen's Speech to both houses of Parliament, in which your mother read out the government’s plans for the coming legislative period.  

My overwhelming impression was of it being a ritual humiliation of the monarch, who is required to present the government’s plans as if they were her own, when everyone knows they are not.  

You will be expected to do the same in due course and, given public knowledge of your views on many issues, I shudder at the thought of you allowing yourself to be similarly humiliated, especially in view of you usually having more enlightened ideas than any British government is likely to have.

Political Implications of Evolutionary Psychology

This is something I recently posted on the closed Facebook page of Applied Evolutionary Psychology, which I am making generally available here on my own blog.

I’ve been observing the changes in ethnic composition in London, my city of birth, as a consequence of mass immigration, since I was a child in the 1950s and my responses to it, along with those of family, friends, acquaintances and others.

The responses I have observed have been overwhelmingly negative, essentially xenophobic, which is in stark contrast to the attitude of government, which demonises xenophobia and encourages people to celebrate DIVERSITY, i.e. their own ethnic displacement (white flight), replacement (white Britons have already been reduced to an ethnic minority in large swathes of their major cities) and ultimate demise as the country’s indigenous and dominant ethnic/racial group.

Why (not for the first time) am I bringing this subject up here? Because I believe that evolutionary psychology can explain this madness, which is what it is. It’s Orwellian and totally insane, which does not bode well for the future.

Homo sapiens evolved as a tribal and territorial animal, so of course we are going to respond xenophobically to an influx of strangers. It would be unnatural, unhuman, not to.

Western governments, it would seem, are deliberately (but not necessarily consciously) provoking xenophobia in their native populations, in order to condemn it and claim a spurious moral authority for themselves, and the power that goes with it.

It is, I have come to realise, a modern, secular incarnation of the state’s age-old strategy of “divide and rule”, dividing society into a morally superior, now supposedly unprejudiced, ”colour-blind” and xenophilic elite, on the one hand, and the morally inferior, naturally (evolved human nature being what it is) prejudiced, not colour-blind, but xenophobically-inclined masses, on the other, who must submit to the authority of and domination by their "moral superiors”. 

It is no coincidence that we are taught subliminally to trivialise, ridicule or demonise our tribal nature, despite it being absolutely central to who and what we are as human beings, when what we should really do is study and understand it. This, however, would deprive the state of its ability to manipulate and exploit our tribal nature for its own purposes the way it has been accustomed to do for centuries.

Being a very tribal animal also makes us a very moral animal, which the state uses to intimidate and control us, but there is virtually no awareness of this, even amongst academia, because of the lack of an evolutionary perspective, which is a consequence of a previous generation of academics having made a taboo of it, in overreaction to the Nazis having hijacked and abused, for their own evil purposes, the half-baked ideas of social Darwinism, which is what evolutionary psychology and anthropology used to be called.

The problem for evolutionary psychologists and anthropologists is that much more influential social and political scientists, in the service of their state employer, are professionally committed to this madness, which, of course, they fail to recognise as such. If you try pointing it out to them, they stonewall you, and if you persist it might well cost you your job and career, just as criticising church ideology would have done in the past (in medieval times it might have cost you your life). 

I suspect that most of you already know this at some level and are therefor very careful about what you say and who you say it to, as we all have to be on this and related issues.

The social and political sciences, trapped as they are in a pre-Darwinian dark age, are leading western society badly (fatally) astray, and the only ones qualified to challenge them are evolutionary biologists, psychologists and anthropologists. 

These ideas undermine mainstream academic and state authority, which is fraught with danger, but to allow this state-sponsored madness to continue can only lead to disaster. The encouragement by much of mainstream academia of continued mass immigration into Europe is like priming a powder keg, which will eventually explode, but anyone pointing this out is dismissed as a xenophobe, along with xenophobia itself which is simply seen as an evil to be suppressed, rather than as an aspect of human tribal nature which we need to understand and work WITH rather than against the grain of.

I’m not an academic myself, which has made it easier for me to overcome the taboos which might cost an academic their career, but it means that I lack authority. My ideas are simply ignored. I know, the ideas of academics are also often ignored, but when enough academics with highly regarded reputations promote the same ideas, they tend to be listened to.

Without wanting to sound alarmist, time is running out. If we don’t get our act together soon, and succeed in dragging the social and political sciences out of their pre-Darwinian dark age, it will be too late and the consequences catastrophic.

The blogs linked to below are a bit repetitive, I'm afraid, but I hope also complementary, and provide a reasonable account of, not all, but much of, my thinking:

The West's Overreaction to Nazism

The Paradox of Race Does and Doesn't Matter.

Civilisation: An Evolutionary Cul-De-Sac?

Method to the Madness of DIVERSITY

Why I'm so Critical of Post-Racial Multiculturalism

In Defence of Anders Breivik

#Contrapot

What's Preventing the Sustainability Revolution?

This was my submission to the Conservative Party's Quality of Life Policy Group, which I never received any feedback to and had pretty much forgotten about. I've just rediscovered it and thought I'd post it to my blog.

An evolutionary/anthropological approach to the root causes of the "Sustainability Problem"

Revised version: 11 Feb 07

When tackling big problems, we are often encouraged to "think outside the box", but when someone actually does so – as I have – and comes up with insights and ideas that don't fit nicely into any of the existing boxes, they tend to be ignored or ridiculed.

This tendency to ignore, ridicule, or otherwise resist ideas that would challenge or undermine the status quo is not surprising in view of what is known about human cognition, the fact that we don't experience reality itself, but an interpretation of it, produced by our brains, which it adapts to be more-or-less consistent with the view we already have of the world, and is thereby very strongly influenced by past and present interpretations of experiences, as well as by our dependencies and vested interests.

The view we have of the existing socio-economic order is no exception, and because from birth we are all totally immersed in, familiar with and dependent on it, and because of the anxiety it would cause if we did, our brains, which evolved in, and to cope with, totally different circumstances, actively prevents us from recognizing its inherent non-sustainability. This accounts for our collective blindness to the perilous impact our economy and way of life are having on our finite and vulnerable planet, and the threat they pose, if not immediately to ourselves, certainly to our children and grandchildren.

Global warming is just one major consequence of an underlying "Sustainability Problem" that we should have faced up to 30 years ago, when publications such as "The Limits to Growth" by Meadows et. al. first drew broad public attention to the fact that an ever increasing population of technologically empowered, but essentially insatiable human beings (still dominated by their animal nature and behaviour), is placing an unsustainable drain and strain on Earth's finite resources and carrying capacity. Instead, because of the enormous implications for our economy and way of life, and all the vested interests in continuing with "business (and pleasure) as usual", we went (allowed ourselves to be led) into collective denial. Which, essentially, is where we still are - virtually everyone, although some more than others - but now struggling both to and not to face up to the situation as the effects of our increasing impact on the planet become ever more apparent and threatening. 

At the moment, despite all the talk about the environment, sustainability and saving the planet, we have yet to face up to the sheer scale and magnitude of the Problem. The threat it poses is terrifying, which only adds to our reluctance to face up to it; but continuing to bury our heads in the sand will not make it go away. On the contrary, like an approaching tsunami, it will engulf and destroy us if we refuse to recognise the threat. Only by facing up to it can we avoid - or at least, reduce the impact of - the approaching catastrophe, by creating sustainable economies and ways of life (for 7-9 billion! people) in our own (humane) way. 

If WE fail to do so, a ruthless Mother Nature will do it for us. The climate change we are witnessing is her just "warming up" for the job. If it entails reducing human numbers by 100's or even 1000's of millions, that is what she will do. She is not squeamish. The poor will suffer first, of course, as always, but for once we really are ALL in the same boat, Spaceship Earth, rich and poor alike.

We urgently need to face up to the ROOT CAUSE of the "Sustainability Problem", which lies in our animal nature. Unsurprisingly, in view of what Charles Darwin is supposed to have taught us about human origins, it is in our animal nature and behaviour that the existing socio-economic order (our economy and way of life) is rooted, and which free-market capitalism developed, naturally enough, both to serve and exploit.

Human emotions and behaviour evolved over millions of years to serve the individual and their family group in the struggle for survival and advantage in the "natural environment" (which included other, rival, groups of humans). With the advent of civilisation, for the individual, this Darwinian (blind, dumb-animal) struggle transferred to an artificial, "socio-economic environment", where - greatly facilitated by the development of free-market capitalism - it continues as the driving force of most human (particularly economic) activity. Only now it is driving us towards disaster, because, as things are, we cannot help but give priority to economics (the household of man in the artificial, "socio-economic environment"), rather than to ecology (the household of our planet in the natural environment), despite it being obvious (were we not blinded by familiarity and dependency) that human survival urgently demands the opposite.

From birth, we are ALL totally immersed in, familiar with and dependent on the existing socio-economic order, making it virtually impossible - not least, because of the anxiety it would cause - for us to recognise its INHERENT non-sustainability.

Man is not a fallen angel, but an animal; not just a "prime ape" (if you will excuse the pun, and the one that follows) but Earth's Greatest  Ape, who greatly and dangerously overestimates his powers of understanding and reason; like a child, and misled by his scientific name - Homo sapiens, indeed!  The failure to recognise the extent of our own blindness and irrationality (except in others, of course) is the biggest underlying threat to human survival (and, incidentally, the principal reason for my opposition to the large-scale use of nuclear energy).

The truth - which far from fitting into any boxes, threatens to rupture or sweep many of them away (thus, the massive resistance to facing up to it) - is that our growth-dependent economy and the grossly materialistic way of life it engenders are both rooted in our primitive, animal nature and, as a consequence, are fundamentally unsustainable. 

Mine is an anthropological approach to the "Sustainability Problem". It is an approach which needs to be applied to ALL the social sciences: history, politics, sociology, economics, etc. The reason it is not is that social scientists too, like everyone else, are blinded by their own total dependency on the existing socio-economic order and environment, and on the niches they occupy within it.

In view of everyone's absolute dependency on, and vested interests in, the status quo, implementing the radical changes necessary for Sustainability would be quite impossible, with everyone naturally inclined to preserve their own niche and advantages (social status, source of income etc.) in the existing socio-economic environment. This is why there has been so much talk and argument about global warming, but so little action; and the action which has or is intended be to taken barely scratches the surface, without going anywhere near solving the Problem.

The solution is not to try changing the existing order, but to create an Alternative, within, but distinct from and increasingly independent of it, which, as it grows, we can transfer our activities, dependencies and vested interests to - each of us, when we are ready and at our own pace, bit by bit, and without coercion, which would be counterproductive, evoking strong (if not violent) resistance from our animal nature, in defence of its interests in the existing socio-economic order. 

By “we” I mean those of us who have come out of denial (to some extent at least) and recognized what is at stake, for our children and coming generations. Surely, there can be no greater motivation than that. The way forward is for us to use the Internet to self-organize into groups, and groups of groups ("nonymous religious societies", which I will explain in due course), which will further self-organize and interact, gradually replacing the existing socio-political order (initially, some politicians are not going to like it, but hopefully most can be won over). There will be as many "nonymous religious societies" as are needed to cater for everyone. If you cannot find one you like, you can get together with like-minded individuals and found your own. Genuine, grass-roots democracy will come into its own, with people free to pursue their own enlightened (as opposed to dumb-animal) self-interest. And what greater self-interest can there be than saving the planet for our children and future generations?

We have allowed ourselves to be deceived and dominated for far too long by our own animal nature and a socio-economic order that is rooted in and dependent on it (expending much of our brain power in rationalizing and justifying it). We have to create an alternative socio-economic order, rooted in our more enlightened human nature. Otherwise we will perish.

If this all sounds rather idealistic it is because at the moment that is what it is: just an idea – for preserving the planet for our children and future generations. Although the rudimentary beginnings of such an Alternative are already in existence (organic farming, fair trade, recycling, renewable resources, cooperative rather than exploitative and competitive economics, etc.), they lack a coherent theoretical and moral framework that would provide a clear and distinct alternative to the existing socio-economic order. This is what urgently needs to be developed and put into practice, grass-roots democratically, with experience feeding back into theory and further development.

Diversity is what gives the natural world beauty and stability. For the past 400 years or so, ever increasing globalization, and the absolute priority given (by our animal nature) to economics and MONEY (the most versatile form of POWER), have been reducing diversity in all its forms, biological and human (not least, in the name of “multi-culturalism”). We need to give priority, not to economics, but to Sustainability, and to retaining and cultivating human, social, economic and biological diversity.

I know how tempting it must be to dismiss me and my ideas to the lunatic fringe, but please don't; at least, not until you have given them serious, unhurried consideration. You've nothing to lose, but possibly a whole world to gain.

The feckless father of 40 children by 20 mothers

This is the interesting topic of an article in today's Daily Telegraph (LINK)

From a Darwinian perspective, Mike Holpin, the man in question, has been a lot more successful at exploiting his environment (British society) for his own reproductive success than the likes of Bill Gates, whom most people, in line with "British values", on account of his great material wealth, consider to be one of the planet's most successful men.

Not only has Bill Gates produced relatively few children of his own, he is also using his wealth to massively promote the reproductive success of other races than his own, which is a total perversion of man's Darwinian nature, but which our twisted British (and western) values consider morally virtuous.

What this demonstrates is the perverted Darwinian nature of western civilisation itself, which our academic and political elites are so smug about, vainly believing that it make them morally superior.

Only, it doesn't make them morally superior at all - unless you subscribe to their moral and cultural relativism - but very stupid, the price for which will be the extinction of their own race, which, perversely, they don't care about, or even acknowledge the existence of.

They claim, instead, to care about the "human race", which is how they rationalise their claim to moral authority, and the personal advantages that go with it.

See earlier blog in which I elaborate on The Perverted Darwinian Nature of Civilisation.

Civilisation: An evolutionary cul-de-sac?

On the perverted Darwinian nature of the state

I put this as a rhetorical question in order to offer an affirmative answer. If I'm right, and I'm pretty sure that I am, the implications could hardly be more profound or our recognition of them more urgent.

(This is the text of my 4th video blog, Part 1  and Part 2 on YouTube).

It is not an easy thing to recognise, given that it involves the environment in which we have been totally immersed since birth, are completely familiar with and dependent on, and the fact that our brains evolved to try and maintain the environment it depends on, especially when it has been particularly “successful” in it, as everyone who is anyone in society invariably has been. Understandably, the more successful someone is, the less inclined they are to question the political and socio-economic environment that facilitated it. Thus the difficulty in recognising the inherent flaws and non-sustainability of the artificial environment we call civilisation and the evolutionary cul-de-sac it represents.

Who or What Governs Britain?

In Tuesday’s Telegraph, Daniel Hannan asks “Who governs Britain?“, but the question should really be, WHAT governs Britain?

Modern brain science has shown that decisions are made prior to the individual becoming aware of them. We then rationalise these decisions and our behaviour in order to delude ourselves into a false sense conscious and rational control.

When it comes to our collective behaviour and decisions of the state and corporations (capital), the situation is no different – as history and our current situation bear witness to, although we rationalise them too, of course, either not recognising just how bad things are, or blaming the undeniably bad on others.

Far from being cynical and fatalistic about it, developing an understanding this, I believe, offers a means of raising our awareness and directing our behaviour along more rational, humane and enlightened lines. Currently, our collective behaviour is light years away from being any of these things, although we rationalise and deceive ourselves into believing that this is not the case.

So WHAT is it that rules us?

It is our our primordial Darwinian nature (what else?), which drives the struggle for survival and reproductive success, only now misplaced, perverted and, of course, rationalised (reduced largely to the pursuit and exercise of POWER: social, professional, political economic/financial etc.) in the artificial environment of human civilisation itself, where the STATE conflates and confounds our original intra-tribal and extra-tribal environments, which we evolved to response to very differently, posing as our tribe (or nation) on the one hand, representing the intra-tribal environment, while at the same time facilitating society's self-exploitation as an extra-tribal environment.

The Catholic Church – A Darwinian Perspective

My response to an article in today’s Telegraph on the beatification of Pope John Paul II:

“[the] sexual abuse of children by priests . . [which] he swept . . under the carpet, [was] hardly the conduct of a saint.”

Of course not. It was the conduct of someone more interested in the authority and POWER of the church he headed and so strongly and self-interestedly  identified with.

“This was the miracle that Vatican rules require for the beatification to take place at all (a second is now needed for canonisation).”

This, I think, illustrates the gullibility on which the POWER of the Catholic church depends.

“. . he did not win over the dissenters in his flock, but that didn’t stop him commanding attention and respect.”

“Flock” is an appropriate way of describing the “sheeple” whose belief in and identification with the Catholic church give it so much POWER. Although, if it works to your material advantage (as in the case of Catholic clergy and academics), you are more a shepherd than a sheep, with a vested interest in being gullible.

“ . . the enduring place in our national life of tradition and authority, [which for Catholics] the papacy continues to [serve].”

This, I suggest, reflects man’s deep and inherent tribal nature, which civilisation teaches us to suppress, deny, ridicule, trivialise or demonise (e.g. as “racist”), while at the same time manipulating and exploiting it subliminally for its own (perverted Darwinian) purposes.

Our original tribe having been usurped by the state and a money economy (civilisation), has left us with a profound emotional need for a substitute, be it the STATE itself (posing as our NATION), our religion, company, political party or ideology, football team, or whatever, all of which manipulate and exploit, but rarely truly satisfy, our need for tribal identity and loyalty.

The Problem is Our Low Birth Rate?

My response to the claim, made in a comment on my Telegraph blog (The Union Flag) that “the white man’s problem is his low birthrate.”

I couldn’t disagree more. Our low birth rate is a BLESSING. It is a tragedy that we fail to recognise that. What we need is quality, not quantity.

Our planet is already unsustainably overpopulated, certainly given the kind of lifestyles and lifestyle aspirations most people are currently pursuing or aspiring to. But never mind exceeding Earth’s carrying capacity, as we are currently doing; as a species, we need to live WELL within its limits, leaving ourselves plenty of room for manoeuvre when environmental conditions change, as they surely will.

We urgently need to stabilise and start reducing the global population – something our own, white race, is already doing. Instead of worrying about our decreasing numbers and bringing in immigrants to make up for them (which is utter madness!), we should be rejoicing at the fact, and adapting ourselves, i.e. society, to the changing demographics.

What’s happening at the moment is that Europeans are being displaced and replaced by migrating and faster breeding non-European races, which is very Darwinian, of course: survival of the fittest and all that. From a primitive Darwinian perspective, Europeans seem to be flawed, thus accounting for our absolute and relative decline in numbers, to the advantage of less flawed (dare I say, “superior”) races.

However, what from a primitive Darwinian perspective seems to be a flaw, isn’t, if we want to avoid a primitive and brutal Darwinian struggle for resources and survival with our fellow humans, which a ruthless Mother Nature would, as a matter of course, subject other, less intelligent, species to; this being the way that evolution works!

We have the knowledge and intelligence to transcend our primitive Darwinian nature and avoid this brutal struggle within our own species, but at the moment it doesn’t look as though we are going to use them, because of our blindness to the way in which our Darwinian drive for survival and reproductive success, misplaced in the artificial environment of human civilisation itself, has been perverted to a struggle for individual advantage, POWER and riches.

What Ails the Family?

Evolution never intended the nuclear family to exist on its own, but within the context and with the support of an extended family and community, both of which the modern STATE and a money economy have made redundant and thus caused to wither and virtually disappear.

It is as if we had cut the arms and legs off a person’s torso and attached artificial limbs (provided by the state or bought with one’s own money), in their place, and now wonder why they can’t dance as well as we would like.

If you’re rich and can afford the very best artificial limbs, that helps a lot, but even that is no substitute for extended family and community (genuine community, not the meaningless abstractions politicians harp on about).

The fundamental problem, which is it high time we recognised and developed an understanding of, is that social structures (material, such as housing, and organisational), having been shaped by man’s perverted Darwinian and thoroughly corrupting drive for POWER, are adapted to managing and servicing “human resources” and “consumers“, rather than to providing for the needs of human beings.

What’s needed is a fundamental reorientation and reorganisation of society as a whole – not from the top down, as left-wing statists and fascists would impose on us (with the catastrophic consequences we are familiar with from the 20th Century), but grass-roots-democractically, from the bottom up.

Instead of continuing to allow ourselves, like “sheeple, to be organised by state and capital, whose perverted Darwinian nature seeks to facilitate “society’s” self-exploitation as a human resource and environment, we need to organise OURSELVES, as “people”, peacefully and grass-roots-democratically, into rational TRIBES and NATIONS.

Where to start? First, by recognising and developing an understanding of our own Darwinian nature and how, misplaced and perverted in the artificial environment of human civilisation, it has given rise to the social, political, religious economic and financial power structures which provide its framework and shape society.

From "White Supremacy” to “White Inferiority”

If an extraterrestrial biologist were observing human population dynamics, i.e. demographics, on planet Earth, it would be puzzled by the strong population growth in Europe, beginning in about the 15th Century, accompanied by the spread of these fair-skinned (white) humans around the globe, but then followed by their increasing replacement through non-whites, even in their original European habitat.

In terms of being better adapted to their environment, there must have been something “superior” about this white population, otherwise it wouldn’t have expanded the way it did. But what happened, this extraterrestrial biologist would wonder, to halt and reverse this expansion? Why is the white race now being replaced by other races? What is it that now makes other races “superior”, i.e. better adapted to their environment, even in the white race’s original habitat?

Only able to observe superficial human characteristics, such as skin pigmentation, this extraterrestrial biologist is puzzled, and curious to know the explanation for what is going on: why this reversal from being a particularly successful (“superior”) and expanding race, to a relatively unsuccessful (contracting, “inferior”) race?

To understand this, our extraterrestrial would have to come to Earth and study human evolutionary psychology, along with its social and power-political implications.

Human populations are organised by their power elites, not as genuine societies, serving the general good of their members (as they are led to believe by the power elites, who deceive themselves into believing it as well), but as an exploitable environment and human resource (now also as a market), for the benefit of these power elites.

Originally, these power elites comprised just an aristocracy (ruling by the power of the sword) and a priesthood (ruling by the power of the word), who cooperated (competed and sometimes fought) in creating and exploiting to their own advantage the power structures of the STATE, which they shaped to facilitate “society’s” self-exploitation as a human environment.

Over the centuries, others (e.g. certain professions) managed to gain advantages for themselves, culminating finally in western democracy, in which, in theory at least, EVERYONE is free to advance themselves and exploit both their natural and human environments to maximum advantage for themselves and immediate family – provided they keep to rules (law), of course; although, these are often bent or even broken by those hopeful of getting away with it.

From an evolutionary perspective it is clear that human civilisation and the states that comprise it represent something of a perversion of evolutionary purpose, which humans themselves, despite their knowledge of Darwinian evolution, are loath to continence, having created taboos which prevent them from developing a Darwinian understanding of themselves and their civilisation. There is an understandable reluctance, hard-wired into the human brain, to undermine the very environment (the socio-economic status quo) they depend upon, especially if they have been particularly “successful” or occupy a privileged position within it.

Man evolved as a tribal animal, and although his original tribe is long gone, destroyed and replaced by the STATE, he is still dominated by deeply rooted tribal needs, emotions and behaviour patterns, which the state (and capital), while denying, ridiculing or condemning the existence of, manipulates and exploits to its own advantage. The very legitimacy of the state is based on its claim to representing a NATION, as the equivalent and extension of its subjects’ (citizens’) original tribe.

For a tribal animal, like Homo sapiens, there are effectively two very distinct, but often interdigitating, environments, in response to which he has evolved very different behavioural response patterns: one intra-tribal, the other extra-tribal. What the state, and state-like institutions such as the Catholic Church, do, is conflate and confound these two environments, which they then facilitate the self-exploitation of to the advantage of their particular elites.

Europeans were organised by their power elites into pseudo-nation states, i.e. “super tribes” which proved to be very powerful and successful in extending their influence around the globe. However, not having the interest of a genuine tribe or nation for its people as a whole, but being primarily concerned with personal advantage (often associated with the interests of particular groups) within the pseudo-nation, and with rivalries, leading to war, between European pseudo-nation states, the European race was soon in decline. A decline which its power elites make not just a moral virtue of, but a moral imperative, any interest in themselves as a genuine (super) nation of closely related peoples being demonised and condemned as an evil they call “racism”.

Thus, our extraterrestrial observer might begin to understand his puzzling observations.

Conservative Statism

It’s generally assumed that statism is a characteristic of the political Left, which the Tory Right is opposed to, but in fact, both the Left and the Right are committed to the STATE and, in their own rather different ways, each as statist as the other, much as in the past the aristocracy and clergy, who cooperated in creating the state in the first place, were.

The difference between the Left and the Right is that the former wants a big state, the latter a small state; only the perverted Darwinian nature and purpose of the state remains the same in both cases, which is to facilitate “society’s” self-exploitation to the advantage of power, wealth, privilege and, of course, talent.

Both sides, Left and Right (in the past, aristocracy and clergy) deny this, of course, each claiming, on the contrary, to SERVE society, which to some extend they do, through the STATE, which we ALL depend on; but as a shepherd serves his flock, which isn’t primarily for the flock’s sake, but for his and/or his employer’s own sake, for the meat and wool the flock provides and can be exchanged at market for MONEY, i.e. POWER.

It’s important to realise that most individuals on both sides of the political divide sincerely believe that they are not exploiting society, but either behaving neutrally or contributing positively to it; the clergy (or liberal left), for example, by administering to the poor and disadvantage, the aristocracy (or Right), through their contributions to business, government and/or charities.

In reality, there’s a lot more to it than that, of course, with things being incomprehensibly complicated, confused and contradictory. However, if one takes a human-evolutionary, i.e. Darwinian, view of the situation, thereby distancing ourselves, with all our dependences and prejudices, at least to some extent, from it, one can begin to understand it.

Over millions of years of evolution, human emotions and behaviour patterns evolved in response to two interdigitating and interacting, but very different environments: one intra-tribal the other extra-tribal. Then, with the advent of civilisation, along came the STATE, which conflated and confounded them, playing the role of our tribe (and intra-tribal environment) on the one hand, while, on the other, also facilitating society’s self-exploitation as an extra-tribal environment. THIS is where all the confusion and contradictions, present in our own society, come from, most of which we simply ignore or rationalise. This is why one moment we see the STATE as our friend and the next as our enemy.

The extent to which we interpret and rationalise the situation (whether particular or general) to suit our own preconceived ideas and advantage cannot be overemphasised. The problem is, it is extremely difficult to see in ourselves, although a lot easier to see in others we disagree with.

It’s difficult to see how we can hope to be objective at all. Certainly, we can never be entirely objective, but I think that by cultivating awareness and understanding, from a Darwinian perspective, of just how subjective and rationalising we are (all of us), we can achieve at least a degree of objectivity.

Oil Price Shock that’s no Surprise

I posted a rather depressing – although quite realistic – comment on the thread of an article in last Friday’s Telegraph, “Oil price shock; you ain’t seen nothing yet“, which I followed with another, more optimistic one, both of which I though worth posting here on my blog.

First post:

“Oil price shock“

Why the “shock” or surprise? Many of us have seen this coming for decades and been warning about it.

We should have started moving away from a fossil-fuel based economy decades ago, when the necessity was made abundantly clear in numerous publications, but our political and business leaders weren’t interested. Nor the media, which encouraged people not to worry but to follow their leaders example and continue with business and consumption as usual.

The Telegraph was – as it still largely is – particularly dismissive of suggestions that the economy needed to be placed on a sustainable basis.

Still, why should I worry? By the time things start to turn really nasty here in western Europe, with a bit of luck, I shall be dead and gone.

Sorry kids! I’m afraid that we – your parents and grandparents – have screwed up on you. But don’t think we didn’t want the best for you. We did. We were just too stupid, too greedy, too complacent, too distracted (by work, shopping, holidays, providing for YOU etc.) to realise that we were screwing up.

2nd Post:

Despite the above post, and the inherent non-sustainability of our rapacious, growth- and fossil-fuel and other non-renewable-resource depend economy, along with the grossly materialistic lifestyles and lifestyle aspirations it both engenders and depends upon, I see no reason (or excuse) for resignation or despair.

We may not be able to avoid the approaching global catastrophe, but we CAN still reduce its scale and increase our children’s prospects for survival and recovery. The only question is HOW?

Obviously, the first thing an increasing number of people need to do, is come out of denial. Otherwise there’s no hope at all. Keeping our heads in the sand may serve us well, personally, who are soon going to be dead and gone, but that’s hardly a responsible attitude to take towards our children and grandchildren, who will still be alive (hopefully) long after, and who many want children and grandchildren of their own . . .

Then we need to develop an understanding of our situation and how we got into it – why our political and business leaders, aided by the media, led us into denial, instead of facing up to the threat when it was being pointed out to us.

I spent most of the 70s expecting politicians to face up to the issue of sustainability, and then most to the 80s and 90s trying to understand why they weren’t. Why instead, and insanely, they were leading us into denial and encouraging us to carry on with business and life as usual.

The answers I eventually came up with and am still working on (which are in urgent need of being extended and clarified) are based on a human-evolutionary, i.e. Darwinian, approach to understanding human nature and the social, political, religious and economic power structures it has given rise to over the centuries.

Our situation is essentially a consequence and expression of our own, perverted, Darwinian nature. Only by developing an understanding of it, rather than continuing to deny or rationalise it, is there any hope of us solving our existential