Are people better today than in the past? The answer to that question, more often than not, says things about the person answering than anything else. The cosmopolitan globalists and their attendants will argue people are better today, overall. The cynical critics of the current arrangements will go the other way, pointing out that people are dumber. In other words, the answer usually has to do with your view of the neoliberal order, rather than any factual considerations. The winners are happy while the losers are unhappy.
There are practical ways to think of the question. Steve Pinker looked at interpersonal violence over the ages, using it as a proxy for human progress. His assumption is that coming to a violent end is bad. Therefore, if fewer people are coming a violent end, it means there are fewer violent people in society. His analysis shows that violence within western societies has been in steady decline. He also points out the decline in the celebration of violence in society. The conclusion is we are getting better.
The trouble with that sort of analysis is it starts with a subjective definition of better, when nature may have other ideas. The point of life for all creatures, including humans, is to reproduce. As the saying goes, life is built for speed. Get to sexual maturity as quickly as possible, reproduce and after that it is all gravy. It’s why humans evolved some brutal responses to diseases that strike the young. Malaria is the obvious example. The risk of an ugly death in adulthood is worth the risk in order to reach sexual maturity.
Therefore, fertility rates are a pretty good proxy for measuring the health of a species, which is why biologists use them all the time. If a type of finch stops laying eggs, biologists will assume something bad is happening to the species. Whites, the engine of human material progress, have seen their fertility rates collapse. The fertility rate for Africans is rocket high. A biologist would look at those realities and conclude that the former is in trouble, while the latter is flourishing. Better may not be better after all.
Another way of looking at the question is from the perspective of the emerging data from ancient DNA. Until recent, what we knew about the intelligence of people in the past was speculative. Aristotle was obviously a brilliant person, but how smart were the guys growing olives? Were they smarter than the people working at one of Amazons distribution centers? The SAT scores for Athenian farmers have been lost, so we have no way to compare their scores to those of their analogs in our society.
The assumption has been the modern people must smarter, as we live in technologically advanced societies. The data coming in from genetics says the opposite is most likely true and there is a very good chance the data from ancient DNA will confirm it. As Cochran says, we have known for a while that people are getting dumber, but no one has been able to point to hard evidence of it. Now there is hard evidence for a relatively recent decline in European IQ. We’ll soon know where moderns stand on the IQ scale.
Of course, this all leads to the question of what defines “better” when it comes to human capital. Those Africans breeding like bunnies are a bit smarter than previous Africans due to better nutrition and medicine. They are still a full standard deviation dumber than Europeans and Asians. From the perspective of biology, their fertility rates suggest they are more fit than their childless counterparts to the north. Maybe nature is telling us something about what really matters in the game of natural selection.
On the other hand, maybe the selection pressures in the post-scarcity world are different in ways not yet understood. If the correlation between education and low-fertility is what we’re told, it would have showed up a long time ago. It used to be smart people got rich and they had a bunch of kids. Now, rich people claim to be smart and they avoid having children at all. Perhaps in a highly automated, post-scarcity world, general intelligence is not much of an asset at either end of the social structure.
Interestingly, if this is even somewhat true, it supports the observation that cognitive abilities did not evolve equally around the globe. This would explain the differences in measured intelligence. In a place with lots of naturally available food, but lots of predators, being smart is not as big an edge as being quick. In a world of high-scarcity, low time preference and the ability to plan ahead are important. The post-scarcity, technological society is a grand experiment demonstrating this in real time.
That brings us back to the initial question. Is the human capital of today better than the human capital of the past? The answer is probably yes and no. The populations with low fertility could be obsolete, to be replaced with low-IQ Africans. Alternatively, they could be in the midst of a change to better equip them for the post-scarcity world. On the other hand, maybe the formerly high IQ populations unleashed environmental changes that will keep lowering intelligence unto this high tech society collapses.
Maybe what’s really going on is a weird race to the finish line. On the one hand, human intelligence is declining as automation takes over more and more tasks. On the other hand, the robots are getting smarter and will one day function as our caretakers. The race is to see if the robots get to that point before we run out of smart people able to create the artificial intelligence and super-intelligent robots. If we get too dumb too fast, the future may be primitives living in the wreckage of formerly high tech societies.
“the future may be primitives living in the wreckage of formerly high tech societies.” It has happened before. As Bryan Ward-Perkin points out in The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, we were well into the modern era before much of Europe got back to that material (to say nothing of the intellectual) level of the Roman Empire. The blackest pill of them all is: Past a certain point, prosperity is 100% lethal to humans. It’s hard to read the history of the later Roman Empire — a never-ending series of rebellions, palace intrigues, and civil wars —… Read more »
“See also “Bill Kristol,” whose taedium vitae at his cosseted little life is so mortal that he wants us to nuke Russia just for the lulz.” What a great sentence.
“Now there is hard evidence for a relatively recent decline in European IQ. We’ll soon know where moderns stand on the IQ scale.” To speak in vast generalities, we are not only losing IQ, we are losing Wisdom. My definition of wisdom is loosely the knowledge gained by observation and experience that aids to more efficiently live life without having to relearn everything, that is passed on to others, particularly the young. Please add your definition of Wisdom. 120 years ago high IQ and low IQ lived next door in the same village and were not stratified out like now.… Read more »
When you are a peasant farmer IQ is moot and anyone from the average, mildly retarded, the autistic and the brilliant alike can contribute . Some of the very smartest will get grabbed by merchants or the church or the cities but this was not enough to matter. The real moral is to make sure your merchant class can’t get political power. Merchants don’t respect boundaries, traditions or culture for the most part and will gladly destroy a society for a profit You need some but not too many. I’m starting to think Throne and Altar is the way to… Read more »
The plan is to go to war with Russia to unseat the only dictator in the Middle East who wants to protect Christians on behalf on a moderate opposition, that includes, no shit, Al Qaeda. This will also clip the Alawites who also appear to such reasonable Muslims that the rest of the Islamic world doesn’t recognize them.
Somebody will chime in with “Israel’s wars” but I don’t even think this benefits Israel, it’s just insane.
Liberal Democracy as we practice it is a religious ideology and as such this is a religious war, our Satanic Christian Heresy “Poz” against Russia’s rising traditionalism and pro Christian stance. Russia however has working nukes and knows if they can keep the US at bay for a few more decades or less, our tritium will decay enough that we may not have a working arsenal or we’ll have too many internal problems to do much. We can’t invade them anyway and no one in Europe would permit staging enough troops to allow it. They’d get pulverized by the Bear.… Read more »
While affluence is a serious problem, Bill Kristol and his allies are not motivated by this. Affluence makes people susceptible to their manipulations.
Compared to when I was young (70s/80s) people are far better “educated”, in terms of how long they spent in government schools. Are they better? Absolutely not. The West has become a victim of our own success. Being insulated from real hardship and struggle has created a very soft society in Western Europe, America and especially Canada. Little wonder so many white people are self-loathing, they are bored and disgusted with themselves.
“Compared to when I was young (70s/80s) people are far better “educated”, in terms of how long they spent in government schools” I realized you used quotes around educated but I cannot even bring myself to do that because it says that perhaps some knowledge transfer is occurring. Outside of STEM (and even that is under withering fire) most colleges are indoctrination camps. You learn nothing of value and are fed radical left propaganda from the moment you arrive until cap & gown day. Again, the demographic skews very old here, so most people are removed from interaction with these… Read more »
Imagine if television had been oriented towards education, instead of vapid ‘entertainment’.
It’s astounding to see what youtube has become for mechanics, plumbers, outdoorsmen as a skills library. Many see their craft as their sport, with little interest in boob tube programming.
Wasn’t that the entire point of Sesame Street?
There was no followup. Once you got past counting and recognizing your letters, there wasn’t a Baker Street teaching formal logic.
BestGuest: Yes, but, Sesame Street quickly succumbed to the SJWs.
Some of the major motivations for Sesame Street were to make whites think blacks were just like them and to teach whites Spanish.
I thought the point was to begin making us comfortable hearing Spanglish and jive talk…
South Main Auto is fantastic
I’ve often thought that the whites are like trust fund kids. Talented but kind of aimless. They don’t need to work, so they end up drifting around looking for meaning in their life, which is why so many of them end up using drugs or getting involved in all kinds of stupid causes.
That lack of accomplishment and the feeling of self-worth that it engenders also seems to lead them to despise their ancestors who built the fortune which allows them to do nothing of importance.
It’s okay. I despise their ancestors too for the same reason. Better they had been whacked in a war doing something useful.
“Little wonder so many white people are self-loathing, they are bored and disgusted with themselves.”
Could you elaborate on this? The liberal whites I know are quite pleased with themselves and think they are morally and intellectually superior to whites who want to preserve their people and culture.
I have faith (in God, yes, but also) in the white man. In this sense, for hundreds of thousands of years the development of the human being has been left to chance and environment (apart from Providence if you believe in it). You might choose your mate according to your unconscious instincts for a eugenic outcome or suffer a random or capricious situation for reproduction. In any event,, you had no control over which sperm cell would collide with which egg. Not so in the near future. We will eugenically choose for health, beauty, and intelligence just as we see… Read more »
Low IQ third world people imported into the West in massive numbers equals more stupidity. The third world people then elect stupid leaders. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar are just a preview of what’s coming.
It’s what comes after that, that will tell the tale. I see race wars, and because (contrary to our gracious blog host) intelligence trumps all other survival traits – I think you’ll be seeing vibrant getting thinned out in the aftermath.
I have a good laugh whenever some pundit claims, “that this isn’t who we are” to some outrage or another. What we are, as a white race, is a particularly violent and creative race. It wasn’t an accident of history that YT stomped the crap out of everyone on he stumbled across planet wide, just for shits and giggles.
Wanna trade? No? Well, you wanna get your ass kicked? That’s some pretty nice land you got their buddy. Mind if I move on in? What’s wrong? You look a little sick. Is your immune system a little behind the times?
That immune system works both ways though Y/T has robust defenses we can still be felled in numbers, c.f 1917 flue
I once caught an Asian strain from someone who had been to Vietnam and I was down for weeks. Also caught a flu at the county fair, probably from a friendly Black Muslim guy I was chatting with , same result
From twitter:
“Conservatives who love mass immigration shouldn’t complain about AOC, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. These are the lawmakers we get thanks to mass immigration. It’s time for them to embrace the new America they championed.”
I like Cortez.
I’m not in her district and always sometimes against my better judgement and with one exception, always vote straight Republican however she’s an honest Socialist who believes what she says and this political climate rather refreshing.
In reality there is no European/Western fertility crisis. (Nor is there a Japanese fertility crisis). In both instances, the home territories are overpopulated, in absolute terms; if the population of Europe and Japan were to be halved due to low TFR, that would actually make both places even nicer to live — so long as the populations remained strictly European and Japanese, without foreign influx. The entirety of the problem is simply the endless supply of ooking swarms of Third World rape-apes pounding on the doors to get in, because they have ugly women, live in pigsties and are too… Read more »
Tucker used to ask his guests a question that I wish he would still ask. “how many people should our country have, what is the maximum?” His guests which are all for mass immigration can never answer that question. As humans we long for open space on some level. We were not meant to live on top of each other like rats. Not good for the soul!
The US went below replacement in 1973 before abortion, birth control and easy divorce were common . Till the 90’s or so it as over 80% White. the TFR than was 1.8 per family And while yes the TFR and children per 1000 child bearing age is at an all time low, its not so low that this is just a “too many minorities issue” We do need a Whiter society but fertility decline is far more likely to have been primarily a product of wage decline . They have not kept up with expenses and wages measured as percentage… Read more »
A comment by teapartydoc led me to discover the Guterians.
Bronze age raiders brought in “beast-men”, Guterians, more vicious and less intelligent than dogs.
Together, they destroyed the Empire of Akkad. Perhaps we’re seeing a very, very old aquaintance.
Another major factor in this analysis is that warfare has changed dramatically during the past few millennia. During the majority of our evolutionary history, combat was small scale and selection favored the smartest and strongest warriors, whose victors then reproduced abundantly. In recent centuries, warfare on the European continent erased large numbers of virile men because leaders were incentivized to employee their best fighters. The outcome of major engagements (think WWI and WWII) often left home-front populations with only beta males left for reproduction. Those chickens have come home to roost.
The betas went to war too.
Everyone male went to war in those days and in many areas civilians took the brunt of the casualties. Its often safer to be a soldier .
However the WW1 and 2 era is when societies started to become more urban . Urbanization is population decline
This really isn’t a problem though if societies stay homogeneous and can control the businesses interests desire for profits now most of whom have less ethics than a crack dealer.
No immigrants, no problems.
I think a big reason for the decline in white birth rates in the west is the perceived need for a two income family. Working women, especially career-oriented ones, tend to put off motherhood and have fewer children. Also lower IQ people, white people among them, seem to have much higher birth rates than higher IQ people. The movie “Idiocracy”, while silly, was prophetic on this.
Well, it wasn’t a perceived need for a two income family. The thing happened since the second half of the 20th century is the segregation from the city to the suburbs for white families. All of the white families wanted to escape to the suburbs in order to avoid the “diverse” city and have better education for their children, which drove up the demand, therefore cost of suburban housing, so they needed more money in order to afford paying a loan on a house, which leads to both parents working. Its most embodied in two places, the big cities such… Read more »
It’s not just the higher cost of the suburbs, but all the trappings that go along with it. The houses are much bigger, the cars more luxurious, the vacations fancier, the need for daycare, etc. Whites have sacrificed having children at the alter of materialism and status. Throw in the fear of traditional mating rituals brought to us by the #metoo nonsense and campus rape hoaxes, and it’s a wonder we reproduce at all.
Our mobility and its demands mean we no longer have the old structured ways for boys to meet girls.
Community used to support courtship, then families.
That’s why Japanese sex robots are the wave of the future. Until some Jew lawyer decides to defend one in court that is.
Not just mortgages on overpriced houses — inflated property taxes too. That’s another reason families need two incomes.
Suburban communities are like walled cities. High property taxes (supposedly to fund schools) are the walls. Around NYC you’ll pay $10,000/year on an average middle class house. Keeps the vibrancy out.
Diversity tax: the price you pay to not be surrounded by violent retards who hate you because of your skin color.
All good points. 80% of the population now lives in what would be considered an urban society and is rootless This plus a lack of any certitude of steady work is going to put a large damper on fertility. The White fertility rate is roughly 1.6 on average everywhere. Hispanic and Black fertility rates are not far behind in the developed world and in the 2nd tier powers although African fertility is high . Hell some Middle Eastern fertility is hitting replacement! Also the fact that 1% of the population owns nearly everything and unlike Feudalism has no reciprocal obligations… Read more »
Well, we know that black slaves in the new world had unusually low fertility rates. The incentives were all against fertility for female slaves, as well as the plantation owners. Even though the off-spring of slaves became the property of the slave owner, the cost of raising the children and the loss of productivity were string deterrents. It’s why the slave trade was mostly in males. Of course, the condition of slavery certainly had an impact on fertility. What sort of mother would want to bring her child into a world in which they are a slave? It would, of… Read more »
It seems to me that the fertility issue will not go away until something drastic happens in the restructuring of Western society. My best guess, as it relates to North American whites, is that they’ll only be so many whites that can be salvaged on the continent and that we will secede and form our own territory for dissidents (some where in Midwest), like how Taiwan is to China, where even though we maybe have populations of people that are genetically identical (if we’re just talking about whites), but think and behave and have different forms of government. THEN after… Read more »
Farm women worked as hard or harder than the men in earlier eras, often in the field during harvest or other critical times. And yet, they managed to raise large families. My own grandmother had seven children in a rural setting and worked constantly. I think there is something about the industrial age and the urban lifestyle that is to blame for the low birthrates. Contraceptives are a big culprit. It could be that women must be forced to have children whether they want them or not.
You just validated all their The Handmaid’s Tale fever dreams. I might add that men tend to favor contraceptives and vasectomies, too. One in seven men has had a vasectomy. https://www.sharecare.com/health/vasectomy/how-many-men-vasectomy “Each year, about 500,000 men in the US get a vasectomy, with rates higher among more educated and higher-income men.” “The majority of men were married or cohabiting (91%), non-Hispanic and white (87%), and educated beyond high school (81%). Only 7% of men had annual household incomes of less than $25,000, and fewer than 1% paid for the procedure using public funding; 81% of respondents paid through private insurance… Read more »
Farm work was much different than work away from home. The children were there in the fields at harvest time, as well. Plus, nothing much got done after sunset and before sunrise, and in those days you didn’t have the internet or TV, so entertainment — reading, being read to, singing, was largely educational.
It’s different now, with highly automated farming, but with a family farm, the rhythms of the family are in tune with the rhythms of the farm.
You can’t rightly compare low tech dirt farming with modernity in any meaningful way. Also infant mortality was rather high for most. It wasn’t that rare for someone to have six kids and lose 3 of them . It was enough to increase the population slowly but the biggest gains were do to lowered infant mortality Anyway US fertility rate went below replacement in the 30’s IIRC and there were no contraceptives, no easy divorce and a very conservative culture Force doesn’t do it either . Romania under Ceausescu turned to forced breeding but no one was willing to raise… Read more »
Women have always worked – but they worked at what most women are good at – making homes (either their own or as a servant). I’d add one thing to the statement – If want to kill a people, put their women into men’s work.
A lot of this is the the result of idleness driven by labor-saving technology, which hit women’s work far earlier than men. The garment industry, the washing machine, the microwave, the vacuum cleaner, etc etc.
Can you post more sources on this topic? I’ve read HBDChick and JMan about how slavery depressed birth rates in Europe, but had never heard of it depressing birth rates among the Negro slaves. What were the changes the plantation owners made that boosted fertility? Was the USA different from Jamaica, Barbados, and the rest of the Caribbean in its policies?
The economics are part of it, as the need for enough income to self-segregate to a decent suburb is a very big deal, IMO, and it is exactly how our own family went about it. The other major element is cultural. In the “old days”, people were expected to marry and start a family as a way to survive and thrive. Alternatives such as remaining single or not having kids basically excluded you from many important elements of society, as the culture revolved around home, neighborhood, school, and community. You could go off and be James Dean or Bettie Page,… Read more »
The problem here is perhaps not so much birth rates, but survival of offspring until reproduction. Zman seems to overlook this. In prior centuries, pre-industrial revolution take off, the rich (proxy for higher IQ’d individuals) indeed out produced the poor wrt children surviving to reproductive age. The poor had lots of children, but survival rate was limited. To take this into the discussion of our current age and Africans (especially, American Blacks) out procreating Whites, how many would survive in an African enivironment of limited medicine and no welfare? and more importantly, would such low IQ populations continue to out… Read more »
I’ve been wondering if all the aid to Africa over the past decades isn’t in fact immoral. If they are too stupid to get to the agrarian age developmentally, supporting them in reproducing will result in massive problems and humanitarian crises for them and for us.
Good point Malicious. I’ll be generous here. In pre-HBD day’s when we assumed everyone was equal in ability, helping others to get a leg up seemed the thing to do. But we’ve done that and it’s proven futile.
Sending aid to Africa only benefits two sets of people: The ruling classes in the West and in Africa. End this charade and if we perish, we perish..Maybe that’ll knock some sense into us
Before that, more importantly, was the criminalization of puberty.
Mom was old enough to remember when 12 to 15 year olds got married, built dams, and fought wars.
One big problem in our culture is that permanent puberty, attitudinally, is now considered a virtue.
Now you kids get off my lawn!
That was never the case inside the Hajnal Line. Where late marriage and fewer children were the Norm rather than the exception.
True, for the propertied classes, who kept title records by necessity. Marriage was a matter of inheritance, not romance.
“Common law” marriages- having a kid or two by a workman, until he moved on to the next job, town, and woman, were more than half of medieval urban families.
But, in Mom’s time, girls were called “an old maid” if not married by 18, implying that one might never gain a husband.
One mitigating factor was weight. Skinny girls’ menses don’t become regular until later, meaning it’s harder for them to to get pregnant early and often, married or not.
Let me illustrate the difference in attitudes since the 1920’s.
Seven Basque men needed wives.
Seven girls were sent from the old country.
They had never met before.
They were lined up by height.
The justice of the peace came to the small train station, and married them all on the spot.
None ever divorced.
(Only one woman said, “No, I want him, instead”; the two men switched places, and the ceremony proceeded.)
There is increasingly less need for low skilled labor anyway. With automation we have trouble finding work for adults much less young adults just starting out. This is why we push college, to keep people out even though most people ought to leave school for apprenticeships and sixteen or so. The solution is work sharing . However getting wages up to where 25-20 hours can support a family modestly and note we can easily produce enough goods is simply not possible. Western society can’t change it economic assumptions and its elite benefit too much from the current arrangements We will… Read more »
My father’s mother was 14 when married, 15 when she gave birth to her first child, in about 1922. She’s gone, but he’s still an avid cyclist at age 95. Good genes.
One point in support re cost of families: the system is rigged to keep you at or under 2 kids. You’re legally required to have each kid in a car seat. You want a car that can fit 3+ car seats, grab the lube & BOHICA. A new 3 row suburban is $70k+. Even minivans are $30k+. Plus what you’re losing on the too-small car you used to have. Most people don’t just have huge vans/SUVs for funsies, and will have buy one new. That is quite a penalty for having that third whippersnapper.
The two-income family was a subject of much propaganda and indoctrination. It didn’t arise organically.
Eh, prior to I don’t know the 50’s the two income family was the norm for much of the lower classes It wasn’t that common for ten year kids to be put to work so the family could eat The sign of affluence was getting by on one income. And note I mean wage labor here, not farm labor which is different. That said we don’t need to work nearly as many hours as we do, its a combination of the wealthy taking nearly all the wealth gains and the bloated empire that are causing it The welfare state is… Read more »
Actually, I think feminism has a lot to do with it. You had Betty Freidan and that lot, telling women they could have it all, go out and get jobs , have a high powered career, you deserve it, no one can hold you down! So, consequently, the labor pool effectively doubled, correct? So employers do what is best for them, and who can blame them, and hire women as well as men. The net result, or one of them anyway, is depressed wages, right? I mean it’s supply and demand, more workers equals less wages…simple for a capitalist to… Read more »
Funny enough, I’ve read the Feminine Mystique and I certainly can see why Betty Friedan was persuasive to her audience. I don’t think I’d blame her entirely though as it didn’t take much to push women into the work force To me this suggests that a lot of them were bored out of their skulls and not that happy with the arrangements Hypergamy is a big cause but women like having their own money and like being active too. Its not like the theoretical housewife of 1960 really had that much to do once juniors were in school. Other than… Read more »
Taxes went up,so Mom went to work for the government to maintain the family lifestyle.
“In a place with lots of naturally available food, but lots of predators, being smart is not as big an edge as being quick.” ——————————— I don’t think so. The fact is that Whitey did better than the Africans in Africa when he was inclined to do so. So much better, that a comparative handful of Whites over ruled millions of blacks – and all were better off for it. This story is not over yet. We live in an artificially inflated bubble that selects for stupidity, arrogance and weakness. That can and will end only one way. There is… Read more »
Africa is called the white man’s graveyard for a reason.
Read up on the Boers, Z. Or the Brits. Pax Brittania did not hold over 3/5s of the world because of physical fitness. As you note the denizens of Lagos can’t even keep the schools warm in winter.
Intelligence trumps all other survival traits. We shall see it again, sooner rather than later. My feeling is that China is going to replace the White Man in Africa, not blacks.
Except in Africa, where it never has. For that matter, Amerinds were not much brighter and they did OK. The reason Somalis can thrive in East Africa with their ~70 IQ is they don’t need more than that to conquer their environment.
Maybe I misunderstand you or vice versa. When a couple dozen Boer settlers massacre over 3000 Zulu warriors and settle in their land – I call that a win for intelligence. When I see easily prevented diseases, or easily thwarted predators taking the black man to the proverbial Darwinian cleaners, the ability to run and jump doesn’t mean squat.
Historically blacks have been slaves, servants or criminals. I see nothing other than a temporary and artificial set of circumstances changing that for the moment… but whadda I know?
John, the Boers beat the Zulus with modern technology, to wit, firearms. Now, I agree that the production of all that technology equals intelligence and so you are in essence, correct. But would we have the same situation if the Boers had to use spears? Or the Zulus were equipped adequately with firearms and cannon?
To bring this into the present historical situation, Whites taking part in a conflict with non-whites can expect to meet a much better armed and lead foe than can be assumed from observation of our inner city rabble.
Only as long as blacks and browns are supplied with weapons and ammo from other whites or Asians. Without those supplies, blacks and browns would be back to spears and rocks in a few weeks.
Yep. 😉
When the dozen child soldiers appear, walking up the boulevard with Kalishnikovs, I always exclaim, “can’t you fookin’ townies figure out spears, arrows, and slings!?!”
Already there: http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1722198,00.html
That sure wasn’t the case in what was rodishia and the hand full of selous scouts
Look at how Rhodesia was able to survive so long against insane odds. A whole army of black rebels with Soviet backing wasn’t equal to one platoon of Rhodesians.
For a really fun time, watch The Siege of Jadotville on Netflix!
But Wakanda. And the Negresses who saved the moon shot. And Superbowl LIII. Surely modern entertainment (and its producers) wouldn’t lie to us. Wow, just wow!
then the Boers give the land back and voluntarily get genocided. proving Zman’s point
Somalis thriving in Somalia is not really an IQ thing. It is a selection process over the generations for resilience, cunning, ruthlessness, and heartlessness. Also for surviving on almost nothing and making it work for them. They are highly adapted for their home environment, and serve as a toxic intruder, without natural enemies, to any other. Like the non-native carp that devour all the local fish when they are introduced into a new lake.
I think you missed his point, which I view as correct: should any triple digit iq population try to totally wipe out the Africans, they will succeed unless another smarter people stops them. Selection pressures go out the window when Xi Jinping decides the Han need some more lebensraum.
Out of curiosity I “went” to Lagos — the African one, not Zman’s temporary locus — via Google Maps street view. I recommend this exercise to anyone who wants to see the native African’s natural environment. No, actually that’s not quite fair; the Africans of Lagos have the worst of two worlds: their own IQ plus the white world’s NGOs and aid, enabling massive overpopulation. Look at the street views. Crumbling buildings with washing strung across the balconies, unpaved streets, trash decorating the landscape, crowds milling about with nothing to do. Not just in a few bad neighborhoods, such as… Read more »
I used to use Google maps satellite view to “visit” the North Korean gulags from above. You could even make out the incarcerated individuals in the open-air areas of the camps. Soon after, the camps were airbrushed out, and not in a pixilated sort of way, but done in such a way that you could not tell that anything had ever been there, and it just looked like plain old desolate landscape instead. Just like the guy who got carefully airbrushed away in that famous riverfront photo with Stalin. I would not be surprised if the Lagos street views get… Read more »
I also recommend visiting African cities via Google street view. After viewing the dismal dysfunction and poverty, then go somewhere like Denmark or Switzerland to contrast and compare, and then try to tell yourself, “we’re just one race, the human race.” Jerry Corn, are you reading this? Give it a try.
I actually live there and besides a few gated communes, it is generally a horrible place to live with all the traffic, noise, dirt, open defecation etc. To be fair to the US embassy, it is insanely difficult for a typical resident of Lagos to get to the US. Many did leave with DV lottery and chain migration in the past but that is all over now. The ones that manage to leave these days are usually the cream of the crop (scions of the local elite and the high IQ students). Maybe when the Chinese move in, the place… Read more »
More from a lack of will than ability.
Ten years ago I solo motorcycled from Antananarivo to Kinshasa. I was nearly killed by the locals due to their malice or stupidity countless times.
It is a truism that “Africa always wins.” A man can handle the conditions and animals quite well. But the Africans themselves are dangerous as hell to be around even when they appear to mean well or are indifferent.
Africa always wins.
Draveckys, you may find Joel Hirst’s blog interesting reading.
YOU survived. Africa may win but historically Africans always lose.
There’s a really funny book of stories about a white guy that grew up in Africa.
https://www.amazon.com/The-LawDog-Files-African-Adventures/dp/B079ZMKBRW
Of course intelligence was key to survival for our distant ancestors. Dumb people starved, got eaten, or were killed trying to find stuff to eat. Nature and Darwin selected them out of the gene-pool particularly in Ice-Age Europe.
Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons both had more brain capacity than modern domestic humans – because the dumb ones didn’t reproduce. Nature was really unforgiving back then. Mistakes hunting Mammoths or avoiding Cave Lions were not forgiven.
Thank God the SJW’s have saved us from unpleasantness of natural selection…
Problem is, so far Whitey hasn’t shown any inclination to leave well enough alone and let Ebola take it’s course. Africa would be a problem which would have taken care of itself long ago, if Whitey would only quit butting in and thwarting nature. Which, of course, he won’t. Suicidal altruism at it’s finest.
The assumption being that Ebola will remain in Africa. Such a disease might be worth stamping out while small than risking a spread to Western countries.
“Stamping out” meant quarantine, not treat, right?
Are we better? One must first define better…. compared to what? And who defines it.
I have zero doubt that the average IQ of America and probably the entire world has dropped over the past half century and is continuing to drop. We plugged up the filter in the gene pool, thwarted Darwin and started subsidizing lazy and stupid via the insanity of welfare about 60 years ago. The bill for that folly is now due and it’s astronomical.
Malthus wrote about this 200+ years ago. Don’t expect it to be part of any modern curriculum. Another taboo, long dead author. Human beings are pretty static. Human nature is unchanging and unchangeable. Violence has only declined because huge swaths of the population are being bribed to be good with free candy. About 68 million Americans are on food stamps (top of my head stat). That’s over one and a half Californias. What would happen if the SNAP payments suddenly stopped? How much violence would explode in Supermarket parking lots if millions of these people (will not mention skin color)… Read more »
http://www.trivisonno.com/food-stamps-charts
The number is 38 mln, not 68 mln. Still bad, but not as bad as some might think. The number is considerably higher as a percentage of population than the lowest point in the dotcom bubble.
Lesser known parts of SNAP include that we pay JPMorgan a considerable sum to administer the program. Given that we bailed out the banks, they should provide the service gratis.
We also let several billion be spent on soda every year.
SNAP has always been a giveaway to the food lobbies. “Feeding” the poor is not its primary purpose. If it was, rice, beans, flour, potatoes, vegetables, and maybe a bit of meat would be pretty much the only things you could buy with them.
I like the bank idea though it will never happen. As far as SNAP and soda Societies take care of their members , that is why they exist. A little luxury goes a long way to increasing human well being. Its a good investment If we had plenty of jobs for all kinds of people that paid well enough for people to get by , defined here as minimum wage for an adult being 4x an efficiency apartment within 30 minutes of work we could do without these programs We don’t. So efficiency means more welfare. As automation gets better… Read more »
Sounds to me like a moral justification for stealing from me to feed yourself. Just because a rich man steals doesn’t make it okay for a poor man to steal, or a poor woman with babies. Although history shows that the rich tend to get away with it, it doesn’t matter. Farm subsidies, WIC, bloated Raytheon contracts, etc…they’re all stealing. You have millions of hands in the till. Democracy is the tragedy of the commons on macro level.
Rights especially property ones don’t exist. Instead what you have is something closer to the Lefts social contract, the written and unwritten rules and expectations of the society you live in. Its not a literal “I signed this contract” but a shorthand for the above All societies though redistribute private wealth and resources for public use, its why the exist in the first place. Every society also has a limit as to how much it can and will be allowed to redistribute. The problem is if the costs exceed the societies capability to pay them , said society goes into… Read more »
So buy JPM, KO and PEP and ride the wave of idiocy. You can foment a bloody revolution that may succeed and then permit you to end EBT; or you can claw back some of your tax dollars from Uncle Sugar by exploiting the system.
The bribery won’t stop for a long time, as the deficit spending-induced inflation, and resulting higher Fed-sponsored interest rates, will only collapse the private sector credit markets, not the public sector, and hard core socialism will be borne out of necessity. The public sector is squeezing the private sector out of existence over time, and Trump is only buying a bit of time for the private sector side. The future deficit spending-related collapse will seal the deal and enshrine the regime of “EBT cards for all”. All the elites, and their hangers-on like the media and the politicians, are simply… Read more »
Shhhh. Like the African ‘mi-mi’, the Yaqui and Mexica were cannibals too.
Don’t remind ’em about the other White meat, okay?
Shhhhh…..the National Park Service park flyers in the southwest portray a peaceful world and the “noble savage.” In reality,the influence of the Aztecs and Toltecs spread north to the sophisticated culture of Chaco Canyon along the great roads still visible by satillite and north to other sites such as Hovenweep on the Utah-Colorado border. Brutal attacks and Cannibalism is evident.
I think Africa is an anomaly, not a better survival strategy. Africans wouldn’t be rapidly increasing in number without the food and technology provided by Whites (and increasingly Asians).
Their fate is tightly linked to ours. They may, however, succeed in drowning their rescuer.
Technically the white altruism is part of their modern “environment,” per se. Obviously, their immediate fate depends heavily on the factor of white self-destructive generosity; however, white ascending was largely a function of being ravaged by an Asian plague, so it is not as though an extreme bottleneck is a dysgenic thing in and of itself. For all we know now, a 99% die off in Africa would produce Africans on par with their European and Asian counterparts. The point being, it might be that the pre-requisite for developing higher intelligence in your tribe is to grow it beyond environmental… Read more »
Africans have been in overshoot since somewhere in the 50’s or 60’s.
Thanks to whitey…
Remove whitey from the picture, and they will face a near extinction level event.
True. But are whites going to stop giving them penicillin or AIDS drugs?
Reminds me of the AMREN article by a white intercity teacher who asked her POC class what would happen if all the white people just disappeared, the answer from the back of the class was: “We screwed!”
IQ is not the only heritable trait that will be a problem in the future. Impulse control, also an inherited trait, is a huge problem among POCs. We see this in the crime stats in places where POCs predominate. The falling IQ of our civilization will mean that coping with POCs will end up with whites barricading themselves off from the vibrancy. Technology will loom large here if this is to be successful. If you will recall, it was the superior technology of Europeans that allowed us to rise to the top in the sixteen hundreds and dominate far larger… Read more »
Our culture, with its holding up the garb and attitude of the non-impulse-controlled POC gang culture as some sort of aspirational ideal, is cutting its own throat. The idea of people actually buckling down, getting an education, behaving politely and civilly, and raising a proper family in a proper home, is derisively called “acting white”. “Acting white” needs to be a societal aspiration (once again), not a denunciation.
Your scenario doesn’t encompass the whole thing. The higher IQ blacks are able to shake down whites by exploiting their weakness, human rights. They (and feminists and trannies) are the ones who threaten white mid-level managers (and eventually top officers) with disparate impact lawsuits. They, and their white liberal accomplices, have discovered the secret to power over the white man, and are using it very effectively. The lower class, less intelligent blacks, are also exploited for this purpose.
I for one welcome our new sub saharan overlords.
In an earlier age, we would have quoted Tacitus or Marcus Aurelius. Now we get off hand references from Kent Brockwell. Ahh, mutatis mutandis…
Tactitus? What season did that character appear in?
Bwana.
The enstupification continues apace. I don’t know how long this video will stay up but it is of some natives acting restless in the Tallahassee projects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VEGCeBkWWM To address yesterday’s topic: I don’t think we need to be much concerned about the dazzling urbanites getting hold of the nuclear arsenal. Unless we’re worried about them trying to eat warheads or pound shivs out of missile components. If YT stops running the urban infrastructure 10’s of millions of hive dwellers will die of hunger and then violence within weeks, then millions more of disease once the lack of clean water and… Read more »
Nice find. I use to work in DC for “The Man” in the mean streets of SE for many years back in the day so I had daily interaction w/ the worst of the vibrancy. This is pretty much a good generic template. ANALT, basically. These hood rats would be banging on the launch console, agreed, but I think you still need to be mindful of the white dhimmis that will be held at gunpoint (spear point?) and be the key turners to unleash the White Man’s Fire. That is the bigger issue here. Lefties are literally willing to sacrifice… Read more »
We are such stuff as dreams are made on…
No majestic dreams, no need to push too hard.
Add to this a doofus aristocracy and an endless invasion of
half-retarded cavemen…surprise!
The rush headlong into automation is flatout insane, it’s a fine strategy if you want to create massive economic dislocation followed by social instability and crime. Tucker Carlson was interviewed by Shapiro on this question and said if he were president he would flat out prevent automation from displacing millions of truck drivers in the example he was given. It’s clear automation even at current levels combined with off-shoring and importing foreign workers is the reason why the white blue collars and middle-class are dying, not to mention not marrying and having children. If we had smart and relatively honest… Read more »
“Rampant out of control greed.”
I hate to tell you but bureaucrats can be pretty greedy themselves. Especially when they control the academia, police, media and tax “experts.”
Sure but the State is at least in theory acting in the common good. we may not like paying for EBT or Social Security but that money goes right back into the economy and is spent Corporations act in their own good at all times. When this benefits society at large, they need to be left alone. When it doesn’t? well as they are a creation of society, they need to be dealt with Also there comes a point on which enough is enough. Someone whose compensation is in the 7 and 8 digit range is making to damned much… Read more »
I’m an educated person here and would have been first in like for Pol Pots camps but there more I have to deal with the consequences of the amoral actions of techies and banksters, the more I think the man had a point.
Africans are the best suited to the current environment because they are having the most kids that will live into adulthood. The fact that they didn’t create this environment or that the environment likely will be destroyed by their success doesn’t matter. At this moment in time, they are the best adapted to the environment. Natural selection doesn’t pick the smartest or nicest; it picks the best adapted. Whites created an environment to which we aren’t very well suited. Nature loves a good joke, apparently. Now, who is best adapted to the environment that will come next is a whole… Read more »
Citizen, natural selection in this matter is not taking place. The fertility rate and living to reproduce is a matter of the welfare state “we” provide. Change that environment and we’ll see such drop dramatically.
Yes, which is why I mentioned that the current environment was created by whites and will be destroyed by blacks and then noted that the next environment would not be good for Africans.
I get that this current environment is artificial in a sense, certainly for Africans, but it is the environment at the moment.
My point is that the environment must change before Africans revert to their old fertility. The question is whether enough whites will make it through this environment to reclaim our dominance in the future.
Citizen, well put. I have the same fear.
“On the other hand, the robots are getting smarter and will one day function as our caretakers.”
Picture Colossus and Guardian arguing at 1000 terahertz over the speciesism inherent in their system of herding and feeding the barely sentient remnants of humanity. Will the robots have poz too?
The last few A.I attempts Tay being the most well known end up very racist. I suspect the data leads to A.I. Hitler rather than Poz
Is ever-expanding population a good thing? Yes in one way, as politics is a numbers game, and our culture is facing an existential political threat. On the other hand and leaving that aside, automation and tech make idle “excess population” out of whatbused to be needed manpower. Eg: I don’t need 10 welders, I need one engineer with a laptop and 10 robots. Society doesn’t do well with large numbers of idle useless people. Further, our people like privacy and space, a lawn and a backyard for their SFH, and not being able to see into your neighbor’ living room… Read more »
I agree However it does no good to have permanent population decline just so you can have more welding machines. We’ve had just short of 50 years decline ignoring the Great Depression . Without immigration once momentum stops , the population shrinks Its a hell of gamble to assume that as you constantly reduce wages the population will magically go up. That seems to be a sucker bet as its never happened anywhere ever. Its also suicidal to have generation after generation replaced either with foreigners until they like the Hispanics have stop reproducing. If you want the Amish and… Read more »
Actually, I think that The Rich are having more children these days (see Bezos, 4, Gates, 3). It’s the lefty swamp and the fools that follow them that are not breeding.
Which is probably another proof of God’s existence.
One of Bezos’ kids is adopted from Asia.
Look at what has happened to the West, and is that not a possible reason as to why the Drake equation’s predictions of high likelihoods of meeting E.T. haven’t panned out?
I think that same thing almost every day. The aliens also regressed into idiocy, got stuck in communism before their space program was self-sufficient, or otherwise fot stuck in the ideological traps we see popping up.
Drake’s equation is nonsense, because all of his elements are guesswork. And when you take guesswork times guesswork times guesswork times guesswork, SEVEN times, your result is useless. Garbage in, garbage out.
This guy made some brilliant videos on the Fermi Paradox, and how it can be explained.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muoknOAXHzg
“The SAT scores for Athenian farmers have been lost”.
I lost my coffee through my nose with that one….
The one thing I’ve noticed about Sub Saharan Africa, is that at no time was some great temple or monument or palace uncovered from the thick jungle vines. Even the indigenous Guatemalans can point to something substantial being built. That alone says 1) Either there is an intelligence issue or 2) They are intelligent, just lazy n words.
I’m leaning towards #1.
There is an analog factor to intelligence. Humans senses are analog, and the human brain excels at processing and integrating analog inputs. Things are getting interesting, as humans rely more and more on digital inputs. Analog senses and the ability to integrate analog information are degrading. Perhaps, analog people will survive at the expense of digital people.
Caretakers? Our automated overlords will function as our undertakers. Don’t you watch the movies?
A few ancients have a lower aggregate iq than a lot of moderns. There is also the utilization problem of the ancients who need iq for farms and science where moderns can devote vanishingly little to agriculture, leaving much more genius for science. Obviously the modern has its own limitations and diminishing returns. Diversity might be the strongest such force, as it both suppresses higher iq and elevates lower iq. I think; however, it remains to be seen how the trends develop this century. FWIW, the highest social class has above replacement TFR, as does the lowest. It is the… Read more »
Nick Taleb would tell you that IQ is a fraud invented by nasty paper shufflers and that since Greco-Romans like him (he’s not one of those dirty Arabs, he’s a proud Mediterranean Phoenician/Greek/Roman) and Mespotamians were kangz who invented shieet it means that Negroes will achieve all that Whitey has in a few years if we stop being racist.
Just as a point of contest, I have just seen my 3 kids through the college education process. I have personally talked to scads of young , white, and completely deluded white kids who scored well on the act . When you learn what sort of crap they really believe, I defy anyone to call them “high IQ ” if IQ has any real meaning at all.
You can have the best computer in the world, but if you fill it full of garbage data, you’re going to get garbage results. IQ is a measure of computing power, not data quality.
I would not argue with that at all, Vizzini. the enstupidation is learned , not innate. But it’s there just the same , and it is dangerous as *@#@%$ .
Pierre Omidyar: Net worth 10 billion dollars
Cuckservative Inc writers, a bunch of 10 dollar whores
https://twitter.com/ScottMGreer/status/1090992260966215680
CONSUME
OBEY
Can’t get a more feminist mindset than “They Live”
Japan, and China.
If you want to know the future of White fertility rates and the White race itself just watch last night’s Tucker Carlson interview with the hateful bitch “Monica.”
The SAT scores for Athenian farmers have been lost,
Seems at least civil servants weren’t smarter back then.
Regarging ancient DNA. They dig up one skeleton, somehow extract a sample for testing. Use that DNA to guess that person’s IQ and somehow use that to guess at an average for a population? Seems a little fanciful to me.
That’s not how it works.
[…] Z-man had a post about human capital and if people are better of today than in the past. He theorizes both yes and no and about genetics […]
Maybe civilization itself (or more correctly its development) is dysgenic, for any species, anywhere in the universe. Two steps forward one step back and the cycle continues, just hope nobody presses the big red button
Wow! What an excellent premise for a dystopian science fiction novel! Please write it before it’s no longer fiction and your readers can no longer understand the uh, what was I talking about?