They only believe in it for humans. It's too obvious that many animal species are highly precocial: unlike humans, they have no society, education system, etc., and, in many cases, even no family structure and parental care to speak of, and yet they are able to survive and thrive from the get-go. Trying to argue that animal minds are blank slates is completely untenable. I am not aware of anyone who has bothered to try to make this case: not Boas, Gould, Lewontin, or any of those others who have made the case that this is so for humans.
Humans are actually the odd ones out, being extremely altricial (i.e. non-precocial). Somehow humans have lost something that animals possess in abundance, e.g. instincts (the German philosophical anthropologist Arnold Gehlen called this 'instinct deprivation'), and possibly even Cartesian innate ideas. These are the things that enable animals to survive without education systems, etc. And it is their absence in us that requires us to make such structures: we have to learn how to survive because the necessary knowledge for survival is not innate to us.
That's where all the Leftist and liberal nonsense comes in: the human mind, and near only the human mind, could convincingly argued to be essentially a blank slate upon which only external factors write, and they simply argue for the equality of these blank slates. The ruinous fool Locke seems to be interpreted as following a view like this.
The mistake seems to be in thinking that empiricist blank slatism necessitates racial equality, not even merely as an ultimately unattainable ideal, but as an objective truth. Racial equality is 'just the truth'. Some mysterious cause has ensured a levelling, a uniformity.
Of course, nothing about empiricism necessitates racial equality: even if I was firmly an epistemological empiricist, I see no reason to believe that every blank slate is one of equal size, quality, etc. Human brains are not produced as though they are all products of one production line and thus essentially identical: racial egalitarians, for all their supposed commitment to diversity, are inconsistently denying diversity where it is most evident. Thus, even brains empty of mental contents, and thus in that sense all equal—equally empty of ideas, instincts, etc.—could still be unequal in their capacity to learn, utilize, etc. mental contents. This view seems closer to a greater thinker like Leibniz.
The first view is the one on which racial equality rests: the one that needs to be demolished because it is so thoroughly incompatible with genuine human progress. Leftist and liberal views of race that force the intelligent to shoulder the increasingly crushing burden of the stupid and impulsive—increasingly crushing because those are also the fastest growing in number—will only lead to the world being ceded in its entirety to them, and to the extinction of the intelligent. Without enough intelligent people, they also will die off by the multitude, and, thus though they are too short-sighted to see it, it is not even in their own self-interest for the status quo to continue.
On your last point, this is clearly measurable with birth rates. The lowest IQ countries are cranking out the most kids, and within a country like the US, the lowest IQ (and poorest) segment of the population has the highest birth rate. While the most intelligent segment is not at replacement rate.
That's why our deficit keeps growing, taxes keep growing, and welfare systems keep growing. And those low IQ countries are dependent on the high IQ countries. That are also slowly collapsing. Soon, the high IQ countries will fail, and within them, the welfare population will have an uprising when there aren't enough high IQ providers for them. And the low IQ countries will starve without these high IQ countries to support them. This will be an interesting century...
Somehow humans have lost something that animals possess in abundance, e.g. instincts
You touch on this but I'd like to be explicit; humans do have an instinct, one that supercedes the plethora of environmentally dependent instincts in other animals because it is universally useful.
We possess curiosity. Coupled with our unique ability to learn and actually understand (as opposed to the brute force, blind, behavioural change animals use to adapt) we can live anywhere and do practically anything.
But to fully utilise this ability, we need the capacity to hold knowledge. Our education systems (even culture, generally) are a shortcut to cramming only the necessary information into even small brains, giving the illusion of equality. Of course, if the information fed to students is not all necessary, we quickly see who is able to correct the failure and who is trapped in the false worldview they have been provided.
They only believe in it for humans. It's too obvious that many animal species are highly precocial: unlike humans, they have no society, education system, etc., and, in many cases, even no family structure and parental care to speak of, and yet they are able to survive and thrive from the get-go. Trying to argue that animal minds are blank slates is completely untenable. I am not aware of anyone who has bothered to try to make this case: not Boas, Gould, Lewontin, or any of those others who have made the case that this is so for humans.
Humans are actually the odd ones out, being extremely altricial (i.e. non-precocial). Somehow humans have lost something that animals possess in abundance, e.g. instincts (the German philosophical anthropologist Arnold Gehlen called this 'instinct deprivation'), and possibly even Cartesian innate ideas. These are the things that enable animals to survive without education systems, etc. And it is their absence in us that requires us to make such structures: we have to learn how to survive because the necessary knowledge for survival is not innate to us.
That's where all the Leftist and liberal nonsense comes in: the human mind, and near only the human mind, could convincingly argued to be essentially a blank slate upon which only external factors write, and they simply argue for the equality of these blank slates. The ruinous fool Locke seems to be interpreted as following a view like this.
The mistake seems to be in thinking that empiricist blank slatism necessitates racial equality, not even merely as an ultimately unattainable ideal, but as an objective truth. Racial equality is 'just the truth'. Some mysterious cause has ensured a levelling, a uniformity.
Of course, nothing about empiricism necessitates racial equality: even if I was firmly an epistemological empiricist, I see no reason to believe that every blank slate is one of equal size, quality, etc. Human brains are not produced as though they are all products of one production line and thus essentially identical: racial egalitarians, for all their supposed commitment to diversity, are inconsistently denying diversity where it is most evident. Thus, even brains empty of mental contents, and thus in that sense all equal—equally empty of ideas, instincts, etc.—could still be unequal in their capacity to learn, utilize, etc. mental contents. This view seems closer to a greater thinker like Leibniz.
The first view is the one on which racial equality rests: the one that needs to be demolished because it is so thoroughly incompatible with genuine human progress. Leftist and liberal views of race that force the intelligent to shoulder the increasingly crushing burden of the stupid and impulsive—increasingly crushing because those are also the fastest growing in number—will only lead to the world being ceded in its entirety to them, and to the extinction of the intelligent. Without enough intelligent people, they also will die off by the multitude, and, thus though they are too short-sighted to see it, it is not even in their own self-interest for the status quo to continue.
On your last point, this is clearly measurable with birth rates. The lowest IQ countries are cranking out the most kids, and within a country like the US, the lowest IQ (and poorest) segment of the population has the highest birth rate. While the most intelligent segment is not at replacement rate.
That's why our deficit keeps growing, taxes keep growing, and welfare systems keep growing. And those low IQ countries are dependent on the high IQ countries. That are also slowly collapsing. Soon, the high IQ countries will fail, and within them, the welfare population will have an uprising when there aren't enough high IQ providers for them. And the low IQ countries will starve without these high IQ countries to support them. This will be an interesting century...
You touch on this but I'd like to be explicit; humans do have an instinct, one that supercedes the plethora of environmentally dependent instincts in other animals because it is universally useful.
We possess curiosity. Coupled with our unique ability to learn and actually understand (as opposed to the brute force, blind, behavioural change animals use to adapt) we can live anywhere and do practically anything.
But to fully utilise this ability, we need the capacity to hold knowledge. Our education systems (even culture, generally) are a shortcut to cramming only the necessary information into even small brains, giving the illusion of equality. Of course, if the information fed to students is not all necessary, we quickly see who is able to correct the failure and who is trapped in the false worldview they have been provided.