Normal decent human beings

If you follow Twitter debates, you’ll see a point where leftists and rightists disagree—particularly over race and immigration—and the leftist will say, “It’s called being a normal decent human being,” and that is meant to conclude the debate; perhaps sometimes they say “ordinary” and not “normal”, but the point stands. The trope is so common that the right parodies it with appropriate “look-down-my-nose” wojaks and the like. Yet the left is justified in its position because their views are just what “ordinary decent people” think—in public, anyway.

This is because the West’s belief system is progressive liberalism—classical liberalism so degraded that, in theory, the state acts to help every individual become an independent gentleman thinker like John Stuart Mill engaged in an “experiment with his life”. There was a time when only property-owning males were thought to be able to act that way, but around 1904 we discovered everyone in the world can be like John Stuart Mill (with appropriate help from the state until they get over the “adjustment period”, of course; and even Mill himself gave a sympathetic nod to socialism in the end). The result is a society where everyone thinks they’re an independent thinker engaged in a life of experiment within the limits of self-regarding action (“It doesn’t hurt you what I do, does it?”); and they are helped to do so by the state. This is all what “political correctness” and “wokeness” are (the words denote the same thing, just at different evolutionary stages).

The West has always been “woke”, always been “politically correct”—at least for the last 120 years or so. It’s just what a “normal decent human” is. The video above is an RAF recruitment video from 1985 called Tornado—you’ll notice at the end that there’s a black airman. At the time Britain was 0.9% black, and the RAF was whiter than that. So for there to be a black airman there is statistically unlikely. He’s there because it’s a propaganda video for the state and the state celebrates racial diversity—particularly black people because they were enslaved and so it is our responsibly as “ordinary decent humans” to help them become independent “life-experimenters” just like John Stuart Mill. This is what the state believes, this is what it is normative to believe (even if on the inside you feel something else)—and this is how it has been for decades.

It’s why when I was young, when the nightly news still meant something in a TV-orientated society, the two main channels, BBC and ITN, had black anchors (even though blacks were then 1.1% of the population). It made the point, just as in Hitler’s Germany the anchors might have been blonde Aryan types—it shows us what the national ideal is. Humans are memetic; they mimic what they see on the screen—the screen creates the illusion of collectivity even when you’re alone. This is what the collectivity believes—and if you don’t believe that you’re out-group, hostile.

Humans have no natural defences—no claws or body-armour—all we have is hands-intelligence-speech. All we have is our ability to solve problems and coordinate with other humans through speech—to be out-group on the savannah was death, beyond the campfire were large cat-like beasts that would eat you (occasionally dragged the odd straggler from the fireside when everyone dozed off). Hence we humans fear above all to be the out-group—and mass media creates an artificial in-group to control you.

This is why the leftist, “over-socialised” in Ted K’s jargon, reacts to rightist points with the response that they should just be a “normal decent human being”—even the “human being” assertion is leftist, not “it just isn’t cricket, old boy, it just isn’t English” but “decent human being” (you’ve been propagandised to love the world, you see—even though “the world” doesn’t love you).

Ironically, there are people who are indoctrinated into this view, in which Hitler’s Germany is the ur-evil, who will post a picture of a huge group of German shipyard workers giving the Roman salute but then zoom in on the one man who refuses to give the salute (such bravery). It fits with the individualistic liberal remanent in the system. Yet, of course, they are the ones who give the Roman salute. Ask them to criticise black people and it will be excruciation for them because they have been indoctrinated their whole lives into the view that to do so is anti-social out-group behaviour, as if you excused yourself at dinner with your in-laws with the words, “I’m just going for a shit.” Agony. So, despite the claims to be “the one man who stood out”, most people cannot do it—and they cannot even identify the “Hitlerian” doctrine with which they have been inculcated; it’s the water they swim in—what makes ideology ideology is that it is conceived as normal when it is only a subjective interest generalised.

I picked up RD Laing’s Sanity, Madness, and the Family (1964) the other day—it’s about schizophrenia but I learnt something about how Western beliefs work as well. Laing did long audio-cassette recordings with schizophrenic families at a time when cheap portable tape recorders were new. The families would occasionally mention “coloured” people, who were then a novelty in England. They said things like, “We were kind to her, like she was a coloured person.” This demonstrates that when immigration began the popular attitude (semi-propagandised) was that “coloured people” were slightly disabled, so you had to patronise them like someone in a wheelchair or with a mild mental retardation.

Normative Western views reflect decadent politeness—the mother who tut, tuts her child to silence him when he says “Mummy, why can’t that man walk?” when a man in a wheelchair appears reflects the attitude “We were kind to her, like she was a coloured person”. Those people who criticise black people in particular and immigrants in general are perceived by the decadently polite feminine consensus to be like someone who mocks a cripple to his face. Hence right-wing people will always appear to the left, even if what they say is mild as milk, as “monsters” who can’t just be “normal decent human beings”. It’s why the right is connected to the shamanic position, for the shaman is the man who goes out into the darkness where the wild beasts lie and survives—nay, he befriends them; and when he does so he is no longer bound by the group taboos—he has become, as Aristotle said, “a god or a beast”; for only gods and beasts may survive outside the city walls.