It’s easy to roll your eyes at people demanding that we teach the history of Africa and other non-Western locales. But I support such a move, so long as the history is honest.
Of course it wouldn’t be honest; we are a society of liars.
Madam Tinubu was a wealthy and powerful chieftess of the Egba clan (Youruba people, Nigeria.) She made her money through the slave trade, and resisted the British Colonial Government because it was interfering with he ability to make money by selling humans into bondage.
Tinubu Square in Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, is named in her honor.
Cosmic Yoruba has some interesting things to say about the next chieftess of the Egba, Efunsetan Aniwura:
“…she was a WSW [note: woman who has sex with women] who never married, never had any children and was referred to as lakiriboto [a woman with no vaginal opening] …
“Efunsetan Aniwura rose to become a very powerful and wealthy trader in the 19th century, she is one of the few Yoruba women that has withstood the test of history. Oral tradition states that she had three large farms, and that no less than 100 slaves worked in each at a time. Apparently she owned over 2,000 slaves in her lifetime.
“Like other Yoruba women traders, Efunsetan travelled across the land trading with all sorts of people. Her speciality was in arms and ammunition, she would lend these to warriors when they were going on military expeditions and it seems she also went to war a few times herself.”
“I wonder if this is a classic example of history erasing a woman’s achievements. I will never get tired of pointing out how our current ideas on how our female ancestors lived are very different from the reality. We believe that they all married, lived “under” their husbands, never divorced, spent their lives in the kitchen while the men went out to work, never enjoyed sex, were all straight and so on. Powerful women like Efunsetan, who may have never married or had children and may have even been queer will have their stories snipped and trimmed, molded to become a warning for other women…so as to discourage them from craving power perhaps.”
Cosmic Yoruba has done a lot more research about traditional Nigerian life than I have, so I am inclined to trust her. Besides, her accounts line up with most other accounts I have read.
Cosmic Yoruba ends with songs praising Efunestan:
“The woman, who instils fear in others,
the fearsome one, who slaughters slaves to celebrate Id-el-Kabir.
Efunsetan is one force, Ibadan is another.
The valiant that challenges the Almighty God,
if the most high does not answer her on time,
Efunsetan leaves the earth to go and meet him in Heaven…”
Have you heard the story that Africa was a developed, thriving place full of wealthy economies and fabulous cities, until evil Europeans showed up, enslaved a bunch of people and colonized the rest?
Cities did exist in Sub-Saharan Africa, but they were few and far between. They were in the sorts of places you would expect them to, like the intersections of major trade routes or major ports. There were a few major trade items, like gold, ivory, and human beings. There were empires with wealthy individuals.
But the overall level of economic development throughout the sub-continent was very low. Those who claim that Europeans are responsible for the current levels of African development need to explain why African development was so low before the Europeans got there.
Edited to add: hey, look, we have a new graph! It is far superior to the old one, though it covers a different time range, so well still have to use both:
I really hope I can find a better graphwith special thanks to commentator “With the thoughts you’d be thinkin” and Wikimedia Commons
Back in the year one, most of the world was engaged in hunter-gathering, small-scale agriculture, or herding. The GDP of most of the world reflects this. Africa at least has gold to export, unlike the steppe. Africa is still less developed than Western Europe (and this is including northern Africa, which is quite different from Sub-Saharan Africa.)
By 1300-1400, various estimates put British per cap GDP around $1,000, with the average for Western Europe as a whole a little lower, but still more than the current per capita GDP of many modern Sub-Saharan countries. And it’s more than SSA had in 1400, well before European colonialism began. If anything, Africa’s GDP only took off after colonialsim; there is no sign that colonialism caused economic collapse.
According to Peter Frost, “In sub-Saharan Africa, high polygyny rates are associated with ‘female farming’ societies, and such societies began to spread outward from a point of origin near the Niger’s headwaters some 6,000 to 7,000 years ago (Murdock, 1959, pp. 44, 64-68).”
In The African Outlier, Frost quotes Draper, 1989 (PDF): “Much of rural African subsistence is based on the work of women in their gardens; men make only modest contributions. Typically, rights in land are held by men by virtue of their membership in kinship or village units. A man who wishes to add another wife is under few constraints (provided his kinship group has the land and bridewealth), since women, in effect, pay their own way. They produce food, and they rear children. In rural areas, when a man marries an additional wife, he is awarded additional fields for this woman and her children (Bryson 1981). The importance of male labor to support such households is reduced. In former times, before colonially imposed peace, the male role in defense was important. But since central governments have been present, men who remain in rural villages spend their time in leisure, in management of household labor, or in local political affairs…”
And in The Beginnings of Black Slavery and The Beginnings of Black Slavery II, Frost argues that, “… It looks like black slaves began to enter the Middle East in growing numbers some time before 0 AD, the result being a slow but steady increase in the region’s black population throughout the early Christian era and into the Islamic era.”
He goes on to argue that polygamy basically drove the slave trade. Do the math; if one man has 5 wives, then four men have no wives. What do you do with your extra men? Attack the next village over, capture their women and sell all of their extra men into slavery.
There are other possible explanations, but I happen to find Frost’s convincing.
The idea that things were going swimmingly until Europeans showed up and started enslaving everyone is pure a-historical baloney. In fact, did you catch this little bit above: “Madam Tinubu … resisted the British Colonial Government because it was interfering with he ability to make money by selling humans into bondage.”
According to the Wikipedia page on Colonial Nigeria, “British influence began with prohibition of slave trade to British subjects in 1807. The resulting collapse of African slave trade led to the decline and eventual collapse of the Edo Empire. ”
So Nigerian heroes were actively resisting British influence in Nigeria because the British were trying to stop them from enslaving people, and the slave trade is supposed to be the fault of the colonizers?
Looking back to 2005, I wonder what I would have predicted for the political trends of 2015. Of course it is tempting to inflate my success score (I did sort of predict 9/11 a couple of years before it happened, so at least I have that,) but here’s my attempt to be honest:
1. A variety of issues like abortion and the Middle East will remain prominent. Check.
2. Gay marriage is guaranteed, sooner or later. Check.
3. Transgender issues will never break into the mainstream, because there just aren’t that many trans people. Nope. Transgender issues have become oddly prominent.
4. Increased concern for the environment/global warming/alternative energy/peak oil. Nope.
5. Democrats focus on poverty/labor issues of the Occupy Wall Street variety. Nope. That’s been abandoned for anti-racism.
6. Internet feminism will be a growing political force. I give this a sort-of check, because internet feminism actually got much bigger than I expected, and then slid into anti-racism, which I didn’t expect. I should have, though. People were talking about it.
7. I was concerned at the time with over-criminalization/over-regulation destroying the country, but wouldn’t have predicted that anyone but me would care about these things. I’ve since discovered that I can always bond with my Republican relatives by complaining about over-regulation of small businesses, and the Black Lives Matter movement has at least noticed some aspects of the over-criminalization.
8. I did not predict the demise of libertarianism due to the rise of SJWs pushing anti-racism on the left and the the alt-right / neoreaction response.
9. I did not see ISIS coming.
So I got to thinking, what do I predict for the future? Can I do better? I’m going to write down my predictions for 2025 now, so I can check back in a decade:
1. The government attempts to cut prison population by, say, 25%, between now and then. This is not to say that they will succeed, but that this will be their goal. The easiest methods will be paroling/releasing inmates, cutting sentences, and legalizing drugs, but there will also be some push to just arrest fewer people.
2. In a related move, schools will attempt to equalize punishments by race. It won’t work.
3. Large numbers of African-Americans moved out of slums in places like Detroit and into suburban neighborhoods in places like Seattle. This will result in lower crime in Detroit and higher crime in Seattle, triggering more white flight.
3. By 2025, government will have begun reversing its imprisonment policy to deal with a 1980s-style crime wave.
4. California’s budget will eventually collapse, though probably not within ten years. A large % of people in the state will be working (and living) “under the table”, so to speak, both to protect their wages from taxation and because complying with tax laws and other regulations is a huge pain in the butt. Those who can’t work under the table will increasingly move out, driving up land prices/rents in nearby states. Without taxes, there will be no money for pensions, police, schools, infrastructure, etc. Collapse will end with the Feds moving in to take over the place and sort out the mess.
5. More generally, over-regulation and taxation will continue placing an enormous burden on businesses, especially small businesses, continuing the ossification trend that will make America an increasingly unattractive place to do business.
6. Sometime in the next decade, a 2008-style economic downturn and aftermath; pensions collapse generally.
Looking further out:
7. Increased violence in “El Norte” as Latin American drug and gang violence becomes rooted in the area.
8. The % of whites with IQs over 140 continues to decline; black IQ appears to be declining faster. High-IQ Americans will increasingly come from immigrant backgrounds.
9. Abortion, the Middle East, etc., will continue being issues just like they are now.
10. The Left fractures as Muslim groups grow powerful enough to insist on toleration for cousin marriage, polygamy, and Sharia law, and no longer support leftist ideological things like female empowerment, abortion, or gay marriage. The necessary compromises will make no one happy.
11. The current SJW-style racial narrative will move on to other topics as the growing Hispanic population starts throwing its weight around. Hispanics aren’t big on voting, but when they do vote, they’ll make a pretty solid ethnic block, and they won’t really care about black issues. Blacks will have trouble competing with Hispanics on the labor market and will get displaced from Hispanic neighborhoods. Hispanics will not have the same fear of looking racist in their dealings with blacks as whites have, and will be pretty open about this.
12. NRx as we know it will probably also be gone, as prominent bloggers get bored and move on to other projects.
You may have noticed that I like science. I also like scientists–heck, let’s expand this to most of STEM. Good folks.
Scientists tend to be quiet, unassuming folks who get on with the business of making the world a better place by curing cancer, inventing airplanes, and developing the germ theory of disease.
I don’t like it when political ideas try to dictate science. It was bad enough when the Soviet Union tried it (and Maoist China, remember that exciting time when Mao declared that the concept of diminishing returns was bourgeois capitalist lies and that just planting more seeds in your fields would result in more crops, and then millions of people died? Fun times!)
Sometimes scientists say or think unpopular things, like that humans evolved from apes or that some human populations have lower IQs than others. Or that women cry easily or that Global Warming is real.
The mature reaction to someone saying something you find offensive is to make a logical counter-argument. (Or, you know, ignore them.) Indeed, as I’ve said before, one of the beauties of science is that the whole point of it is to disprove incorrect ideas. If there’s an idea floating around in science that you don’t like, well, disprove it with science!
If you can’t, then maybe you’re the one who’s wrong.
Republicans have traditionally been the anti-science side. 49% don’t believe in evolution, versus 37% do. Throwing Democrats and independents into the equation doesn’t help much–overall, 42% of Americans don’t believe in evolution, versus 50% who believe in some form of evolution, (including god-directed evolution):
Unfortunately, a lot of those people who claim to believe in evolution don’t.
For example, according to Gallop, 2005, the majority of Americans–68%–believe that men and women are equally good at math and science. Only 10% believe that men have an innate advantage in math and science, and 8% believe that women are superior.
Do you know how depressing this is? I mean, for starters, the question itself is badly worded. Men and women are about equal on average, but men are disproportionately represented at the high end of mathematical ability and at the low end. As I noted yesterday, this is a natural side effect of Y chromosome variation. But for the purposes of doing math and science as a career, which takes rather more than average talent, men do have an innate advantage.
But instead of getting intelligent discussions about these sorts of things, we get people shouting insults and trying to ruin each other’s careers.
This popped up on FB today:
Does this count as a microaggression?
“Sexist,” of course, is an insult, akin to saying that you hate women or believe that they are inherently inferior. So according to these people, anyone who thinks that, IDK, men are more aggressive on average because their brains produce more testosterone is a bad person. Never mind that science supports this notion pretty soundly.
(BTW, it’s pretty hard to argue that society’s anti-woman views are nefariously keeping women out of STEM when the majority of people think men and women are equally talented. For that matter, if there’s any group of people that I’ve found to be extremely accepting of and decent toward women, it’s the folks in STEM. Seriously, these guys are super awesome.)
So you may remember that whole kerfluffle in which Tim Hunt–some nobody who’s contributed nothing of worth to humanity except maybe Nobel Prize-winning work in Medicine/Physiology, small stuff on the scale of human achievement–made some comments about women in science and the entire world spent about 5 minutes losing their collective shit and then a lot of pictures of female scientists got posted on the internet. (Actually, the pictures are kind of nice.)
“The days that followed saw him unceremoniously hounded out of honorary positions at University College London (UCL), the Royal Society and the European Research Council (ERC).
“Under siege at his Hertfordshire home, he sank into despair.
“‘Tim sat on the sofa and started crying. Then I started crying,’ his wife, Professor Mary Collins (herself a prominent scientist) later recalled. ‘We just held on to each other.’”
When it came to light that Tim Hunt may have just been trying to make a joke–a bad one–the provost at his erstwhile University indicated that, (in The Guardian’s words) “Professor Hunt would not be reinstated, it was impossible for an institution to tolerate someone to whom they had awarded an honorary post, even a 71-year-old Nobel prize winner, expressing views even in jest that so comprehensively undermined its own reputation as a leading supporter of female scientists.”
I am just thrilled, oh so thrilled, that university science departments now see their primary purpose as public works programs for women, rather than, IDK, the pursuit of actual fucking science.
Do you know what happens to your science department when you stop focusing on science and turn it into a pity-festival for women? You end up with a bunch of women who can’t hack it in science. Accept men and women on their merits, and you end up with quality scientists. Accept people based on their qualities other than merit, and you end up with hacks.
BTW, I’m female.
You might think Hunt’s comments were totally silly (in which case, go ahead and ignore them,) but I’ve known couples that started in labs. I don’t think it’s any big secret that people sometimes fall in love with co-workers. Is this a problem? I don’t know. Do women cry more than men? Anecdotal experience says yes.
The intelligent response to Hunt’s comments (if you want to do anything at all,) would have been to document whether or not women cry at a higher rate than men when you criticize their lab work and whether lab romances are a problem–and if gender segregated labs would actually work any better, or end up with their own issues. The unintelligent response is to make a big deal out of how offended you are and try to get someone fired.
“The likes of Richard Dawkins and Brian Cox should focus on taking up the real issue of sexism in science. It is absurd to say that scientists can do and say what they like in the name of academic freedom.”
Let’s read that again. “It is absurd to say that scientists can do and say what they like in the name of academic freedom.”
What else does St Louis have to say?
“…eight Nobel laureates, plus the ubiquitous Richard Dawkins, have come out in support of Hunt. There are over 2,000 signatures on an online petition to reinstate him to his honorary post at UCL. Contrast this with 200+ signatures on a petition that I started calling on the Royal Society to elect its first female president. The Nobel eight made an idiotic attempt to equate the upset caused by Hunt’s ill advised and sexist comments with some kind of “chilling effect” on academics.”
Of course it has a chilling effect. No one wants to get fired. How does a journalist even presume to claim to know what does and doesn’t have a chilling effect on someone else’s profession, when rather respected people in that profession are claiming that chilling effects exist?
Hell, there’s a reason this blog is anonymous, and it’s people like Connie St Louis. But she continues:
“This is an absurd idea and deserves to be outed for what it is, a deeply cynical attempt to say that scientists can do and say what they like. In the name of academic freedom? Is science so special that any old sexist (or for that matter racist) words that they utter are allowed? The answer is and must be a resounding no.”
Free inquiry is dead.
Remember whom to thank when we all die of cancer plague.
I remember when I first heard about epigenetics–the concept sounded awesome.
Now I cringe at the word.
To over simplify, “epigenetics” refers to biological processes that help turn on and off specific parts of DNA. For example, while every cell in your body (except sperm and eggs and I think blood cells?) have identical DNA, they obviously do different stuff. Eyeball cells and brain cells and muscle cells are all coded from the exact same DNA, but epigenetic factors make sure you don’t end up with muscles wiggling around in your eye sockets–or as an undifferentiated mass of slime.
If external environmental things can have epigenetic effects, I’d expect cancer to be a biggie, due to cell division and differentiation being epigenetic.
What epigenetics probably doesn’t do is everything people want it to do.
There’s a history, here, of people really wanting genetics to do things it doesn’t–to impose free will onto it.* Lamarck can be forgiven–we didn’t know about DNA back then. His theory was that an organism can pass on characteristics that it acquired during its lifetime to its offspring, thus driving evolution. The classic example given is that if a giraffe stretches its neck to reach leaves high up in the trees, its descendants will be born with long necks. It’s not a bad theory for a guy born in the mid 1700s, but science has advanced a bit since then.
The USSR put substantial resources into trying to make environmental effects show up in one’s descendants–including shooting anyone who disagreed.
Trofim Lysenko, a Soviet agronomist, claimed to be able to make wheat that would grow in winter–and pass on the trait to its offspring–by exposing the wheat seeds to cold. Of course, if that actually worked, Europeans would have developed cold-weather wheat thousands of years ago.
Lysenko was essentially the USSR’s version of an Affirmative Action hire:
“By the late 1920s, the Soviet political leaders had given their support to Lysenko. This support was a consequence, in part, of policies put in place by the Communist Party to rapidly promote members of the proletariat into leadership positions in agriculture, science and industry. Party officials were looking for promising candidates with backgrounds similar to Lysenko’s: born of a peasant family, without formal academic training or affiliations to the academic community.” (From the Wikipedia page on Lysenko)
In 1940, Lysenko became director of the USSR’s Academy of Science’s Institute of Genetics–a position he would hold until 1964. In 1948, scientific dissent from Lysenkoism was formally outlawed.
“From 1934 to 1940, under Lysenko’s admonitions and with Stalin’s approval, many geneticists were executed (including Isaak Agol, Solomon Levit, Grigorii Levitskii, Georgii Karpechenko and Georgii Nadson) or sent to labor camps. The famous Soviet geneticist Nikolai Vavilov was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943. Hermann Joseph Muller (and his teachings about genetics) was criticized as a bourgeois, capitalist, imperialist, and promoting fascism so he left the USSR, to return to the USA via Republican Spain.
In 1948, genetics was officially declared “a bourgeois pseudoscience”; all geneticists were fired from their jobs (some were also arrested), and all genetic research was discontinued.” (From the Wikipedia page on Lysenkoism.)
Alas, the Wikipedia does not tell me if anyone died from Lyskenkoism itself, say, after their crops failed, but I hear the USSR doesn’t have a great agricultural record.
Lysenko got kicked out in the 60s, but his theories have returned in the form of SJW-inspired claims of the magic of epigenetics to explain how any differences in average group performance or behavior is actually the fault of long-dead white people. Eg:
” The science of epigenetics, literally “above the gene,” proposes that we pass along more than DNA in our genes; it suggests that our genes can carry memories of trauma experienced by our ancestors and can influence how we react to trauma and stress.”
That’s a bold statement. At least Pember is making Walker’s argument for him.
Of course, that’s not actually what epigenetics says, but I’ll get to that in a bit.
“The Academy of Pediatrics reports that the way genes work in our bodies determines neuroendocrine structure and is strongly influenced by experience.”
That’s an interesting source. While I am sure the A of P knows its stuff, their specialty is medical care for small children, not genetics. Why did Pember not use an authority on genetics?
Note: when thinking about whether or not to trust an article’s science claims, consider the sources they use. If they don’t cite a source or cite an unusual, obscure, or less-than-authoritative source, then there’s a good chance they are lying or cherry-picking data to make a claim that is not actually backed up by the bulk of findings in the field. Notice that Pember does not provide a link to the A of P’s report on the subject, nor provide any other information so that an interested reader can go read the full report.
Wikipedia is actually a decent source on most subjects. Not perfect, of course, but it is usually decent. If I were writing science articles for pay, I would have subscriptions to major science journals and devote part of my day to reading them, as that would be my job. Since I’m just a dude with a blog who doesn’t get paid and so can’t afford a lot of journal memberships and has to do a real job for most of the day, I use a lot of Wikipedia. Sorry.
Also, I just want to note that the structure of this sentence is really wonky. “The way genes work in our bodies”? As opposed to how they work outside of our bodies? Do I have a bunch of DNA running around building neurotransmitters in the carpet or something? Written properly, this sentence would read, “According to the A of P, genes determine neuroenodcrine structures, in a process strongly influenced by experience.”
Pember continues:
“Trauma experienced by earlier generations can influence the structure of our genes, making them more likely to “switch on” negative responses to stress and trauma.”
Pember does not clarify whether she is continuing to cite from the A of P, or just giving her own opinions. The structure of the paragraph implies that this statement comes from the A of P, but again, no link to the original source is given, so I am hard pressed to figure out which it is.
At any rate, this doesn’t sound like something the A of P would say, because it is obviously and blatantly incorrect. Trauma *may* affect the structure of one’s epigenetics, but not the structure of one’s genes. The difference is rather large. Viruses and ionizing radiation can change the structure of your DNA, but “trauma” won’t.
” The now famous 1998 ACES study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Kaiser Permanente showed that such adverse experiences could contribute to mental and physical illness.”
Um, no shit? Is this one of those cases of paying smart people tons of money to tell us grass is green and sky is blue? Also, that’s a really funny definition of “famous.” Looks like the author is trying to claim her sources have more authority than they actually do.
“Folks in Indian country wonder what took science so long to catch up with traditional Native knowledge.”
“According to Bitsoi, epigenetics is beginning to uncover scientific proof that intergenerational trauma is real. Historical trauma, therefore, can be seen as a contributing cause in the development of illnesses such as PTSD, depression and type 2 diabetes.”
Okay, do you know what epigenetics actually shows?
The experiment Wikipedia cites is of male mice who were trained to fear a certain smell by giving them small electric shocks when they smelled the smell. The children of these mice, conceived after the foot-shocking was finished, startled in response to the smell–they had inherited their father’s epigenetic markers that enhanced their response to that specific smell.
It’s a big jump from “mice startle at smells” to “causes PTSD.” This is a big jump in particular because of two things:
1. Your epigenetics change all the time. It’s like learning. You don’t just learn one thing and then have this one thing you’ve learned stuck in your head for the entire rest of your life, unable to learn anything new. Your epigenetics change in response to life circumstances throughout your entire life.
“One of the first high-throughput studies of epigenetic differences between monozygotic twins focused in comparing global and locus-specific changes in DNA methylation and histone modifications in a sample of 40 monozygotic twin pairs. In this case, only healthy twin pairs were studied, but a wide range of ages was represented, between 3 and 74 years. One of the major conclusions from this study was that there is an age-dependent accumulation of epigenetic differences between the two siblings of twin pairs. This accumulation suggests the existence of epigenetic “drift”.
In other words, when identical twins are babies, they have very similar epigenetics. As they get older, their epigenetics get more and more different because they have had different experiences out in the world, and their experiences have changed their epigenetics. Your epigenetics change as you age.
Which means that the chances of the exact same epigenetics being passed down from father to child over many generations are essentially zilch.
2. Tons of populations have experienced trauma. If you go back far enough in anyone’s family tree, you can probably find someone who has experienced trauma. My grandparents went through trauma during the Great Depression and WWII. My biological parents were both traumatized as children. So have millions, perhaps billions of other people on this earth. If trauma gets encoded in people’s DNA (or their epigenetics,) then it’s encoded in virtually every person on the face of this planet.
Type 2 Diabetes, Depression, and PTSD are not evenly distributed across the planet. Hell, they aren’t even common in all peoples who have had recent, large oppression events. African Americans have low levels of depression and commit suicide at much lower rates than whites–have white Americans suffered more oppression than black Americans? Whites commit suicide at a higher rate than Indians–have the whites suffered more historical trauma? On a global scale, Israel has a relatively low suicide rate–lower than India’s. Did India recently experience some tragedy worse than the Holocaust? (See yesterday’s post for all stats.)
Type 2 Diabetes reaches its global maximum in Saudia Arabia, Oman, and the UAE, which as far as I know have not been particularly traumatized lately, and is much lower among Holocaust descendants in nearby Israel:
It’s also very low in Sub-Saharan Africa, even though all of the stuff that causes “intergenerational trauma” probably happened there in spades. Have Americans been traumatized more than the Congolese?
This map doesn’t make any sense from the POV of historical trauma. It makes perfect sense if you know who’s eating fatty Waestern diets they aren’t adapted to. Saudia Arabia and the UAE are fucking rich (I bet Oman is, too,) and their population of nomadic goat herders has settled down to eat all the cake they want. The former nomadic lifestyle did not equip them to digest lots of refined grains, which are hard to grow in the desert. Most of Africa (and Yemen) is too poor to gorge on enough food to get Type-2 Diabetes; China and Mongolia have stuck to their traditional diets, to which they are well adapted. Mexicans are probably not adapted to wheat. The former Soviet countries have probably adopted Western diets. Etc., etc.
Why bring up Type-2 Diabetes at all? Well, it appears Indians get Type-2 Diabetes at about the same rate as Mexicans, [Note: PDF] probably for the exact same reasons: their ancestors didn’t eat a lot of wheat, refined sugar, and refined fats, and so they aren’t adapted to the Western diet. (FWIW, White Americans aren’t all that well adapted to the Western Diet, either.)
Everybody who isn’t adapted to the Western Diet gets high rates of diabetes and obesity if they start eating it, whether they had historical trauma or not. We don’t need epigenetic trauma to explain this.
“The researchers found that Native peoples have high rates of ACE’s and health problems such as posttraumatic stress, depression and substance abuse, diabetes all linked with methylation of genes regulating the body’s response to stress. “The persistence of stress associated with discrimination and historical trauma converges to add immeasurably to these challenges,” the researchers wrote.
Since there is a dearth of studies examining these findings, the researchers stated they were unable to conclude a direct cause between epigenetics and high rates of certain diseases among Native Americans.”
There’s a dearth of studies due to it being really immoral to purposefully traumatize humans and then breed them to see if their kids come out fucked up. Luckily for us, (or not luckily, depending on how you look at it,) however, humans have been traumatizing each other for ages, so we can just look at actually traumatized populations. There does seem to be an effect down the road for people whose parents or grandparents went through famines, but, “the effects could last for two generations.”
As horrible as the treatment of the Indians has been, I am pretty sure they didn’t go through a famine two generations ago on the order of what happened when the Nazis occupied the Netherlands and 18-22,000 people starved.
In other words, there’s no evidence of any long-term epigenetic effects large enough to create the effects they’re claiming. As I’ve said, if epigenetics actually acted like that, virtually everyone on earth would show the effects.
The reason they don’t is because epigenetic effects are relatively short-lived. Your epigenetics get re-written throughout your lifetime.
” Researchers such as Shannon Sullivan, professor of philosophy at UNC Charlotte, suggests in her article “Inheriting Racist Disparities in Health: Epigenetics and the Transgenerational Effects of White Racism,” that the science has faint echoes of eugenics, the social movement claiming to improve genetic features of humans through selective breeding and sterilization.”
I’m glad the philosophers are weighing in on science. I am sure philosophers know all about genetics. Hey, remember what I said about citing sources that are actual authorities on the subject at hand? My cousin Bob has all sorts of things to say about epigenetics, but that doesn’t mean his opinions are worth sharing.
The article ends:
“Isolating and nurturing a resilience gene may well be on the horizon.”
How do you nurture a gene?
There are things that epigenetics do. Just not the things people want them to do.
Important backstory: once upon a time, I made some offhand comments about mental health/psychiatric drugs that accidentally influenced someone else to go off their medication, which began a downward spiral that ended with them in the hospital after attempting suicide. Several years later, you could still see the words “I suck” scarred into their skin.
There were obviously some other nasty things that had nothing to do with me before the attempt, but regardless, there’s an important lesson: don’t say stupid ass things about mental health shit you know nothing about.
Also, don’t take mental health advice from people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
In my entirely inadequate defense, I was young and very dumb. David Walker is neither–and he is being published by irresponsible people who ought to know better.
To be clear: I am not a psychiatrist. I’m a dumb person on the internet with opinions. I am going to do my very damn best to counteract even dumber ideas, but for god’s sakes, if you have mental health issues, consult with someone with actual expertise in the field.
Also, you know few things bug me like watching science and logic be abused. So let’s get down to business:
This is one of those articles where SJW-logic plus sketchy research of the sort that I suspect originated with funding from guys trying to prove that all mental illnesses were caused by Galactic Overlord Xenu combine to make a not very satisfying article. I suppose it is petty to complain that the piece didn’t flow well, but still, it irked.
Basically, to sum: The Indian Health Service is evil because it uses standard psychiatry language and treatment–the exact same language and treatment as everyone else in the country is getting–instead of filling its manuals with a bunch of social-justice buzzwords like “colonization” and “historical trauma”. The article does not tell us how, exactly, inclusion of these buzzwords is supposed to actually change the practice of psychiatry–part of what made the piece frustrating on a technical level.
The author then makes a bunch of absolutist claims about standard depression treatment that range from the obviously false to matters of real debate in the field. Very few of his claims are based on what I’d call “settled science”–and if you’re going to make absolutist claims about medical related things, please, try to only say things that are actually settled.
The crux of Walker’s argument is a claim that anti-depressants actually kill people and decrease libido, so therefore the IHS is committing genocide by murdering Indians and preventing the births of new ones.
Ugh, when I put it like that, it sounds so obviously dumb.
Some actual quotes:
“In the last 40 years, certain English words and phrases have become more acceptable to indigenous scholars, thought leaders, and elders for describing shared Native experiences. They include genocide, cultural destruction, colonization, forced assimilation, loss of language, boarding school, termination, historical trauma and more general terms, such as racism, poverty, life expectancy, and educational barriers. There are many more.”
Historical trauma is horribly sad, of course, but as a cause for depression, I suspect it ranks pretty low. If historical trauma suffered by one’s ancestors results in continued difficulties several generations down the line, then the descendants of all traumatized groups ought to show similar effects. Most of Europe got pretty traumatized during WWII, but most of Europe seems to have recovered. Even the Jews, who practically invented modern psychiatry, use standard psychiatric models for talking about their depression without invoking the Holocaust. (Probably because depression rates are pretty low in Israel.)
But if you want to pursue this line of argument, you would need to show first that Indians are being diagnosed with depression (or other mental disorders) at a higher rate than the rest of the population, and then you would want to show that a large % of the excess are actually suffering some form of long-term effects of historical trauma. Third, you’d want to show that some alternative method of treatment is more effective than the current method.
To be fair, I am sure there are many ways that psychiatry sucks or could be improved. I just prefer good arguments on the subject.
“…the agency’s behavioral health manual mentions psychiatrist and psychiatric 23 times, therapy 18 times, pharmacotherapy, medication, drugs, and prescription 16 times, and the word treatment, a whopping 89 times. But it only uses the word violence once, and you won’t find a single mention of genocide, cultural destruction, colonization, historical trauma, etc.—nor even racism, poverty, life expectancy or educational barriers.”
It’s absolutely shocking that a government-issued psychiatry manual uses standard terms used in the psychiatry field like “medication” and “psychiatrist,” but doesn’t talk about particular left-wing political theories. It’s almost like the gov’t is trying to be responsible and follow accepted practice in the field or something. Of course, to SJWs, even medical care should be sacrificed before the altar of advancing the buzz-word agenda.
“This federal agency doesn’t acknowledge the reality of oppression within the lives of Native people.”
and… so? I know it sucks to deal with people who don’t acknowledge what you’re going through. My own approach to such people is to avoid them. If you don’t like what the IHS has to offer, then offer something better. Start your own organization offering support to people suffering from historical trauma. If your system is superior, you’ll not only benefit thousands (perhaps millions!) of people, and probably become highly respected and well-off in the process. Even if you, personally, don’t have the resources to start such a project, surely someone does.
If you can’t do that, you can at least avoid the IHS if you don’t like them. No one is forcing you to go to them.
BTW, in case you are wondering what the IHS is, here’s what Wikipedia has to say about them:
“The Indian Health Service (IHS) is an operating division (OPDIV) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). IHS is responsible for providing medical and public health services to members of federally recognized Tribes and Alaska Natives. … its goal is to raise their health status to the highest possible level. … IHS currently provides health services to approximately 1.8 million of the 3.3 million American Indians and Alaska Natives who belong to more than 557 federally recognized tribes in 35 states. The agency’s annual budget is about $4.3 billion (as of December 2011).”
Sounds nefarious. So who runs this evil agency of health?
“The IHS employs approximately 2,700 nurses, 900 physicians, 400 engineers, 500 pharmacists, and 300 dentists, as well as other health professionals totaling more than 15,000 in all. The Indian Health Service is one of two federal agencies mandated to use Indian Preference in hiring. This law requires the agency to give preference hiring to qualified Indian applicants before considering non-Indian candidates for positions. … The Indian Health Service is headed by Dr. Yvette Roubideaux, M.D., M.P.H., a member of the Rosebud Sioux in South Dakota.”
So… the IHS, run by Indians, is trying to genocide other Indians by giving them mental health care?
And maybe I’m missing something, but don’t you think Dr. Roubideaux has some idea about the historical oppression of her own people?
Then we get into some anti-Pfizer/Zoloft business:
“For about a decade, IHS has set as one of its goals the detection of Native depression. [How evil of them!] This has been done by seeking to widen use of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), which asks patients to describe to what degree they feel discouraged, downhearted, tired, low appetite, unable to sleep, slow-moving, easily distracted or as though life is no longer worth living.
The PHQ-9 was developed in the 1990s for drug behemoth Pfizer Corporation by prominent psychiatrist and contract researcher Robert Spitzer and several others. Although it owns the copyright, Pfizer offers the PHQ-9 for free use by primary health care providers. Why so generous? Perhaps because Pfizer is a top manufacturer of psychiatric medications, including its flagship antidepressant Zoloft® which earned the company as much as $2.9 billion annually before it went generic in 2006.”
I agree that it is reasonable to be skeptical of companies trying to sell you things, but the mere fact that a company is selling a product does not automatically render it evil. For example, the umbrella company makes money if you buy umbrellas, but that doesn’t make the umbrella company evil. Pfizer wants to promote its product, but also wants to make sure it gets prescribed properly.
” Even with the discovery that the drug can increase the risk of birth defects, 41 million prescriptions for Zoloft® were filled in 2013.”
Probably to people who weren’t pregnant.
“The DSM III-R created 110 new psychiatric labels, a number that had climbed by another 100 more by the time I started working at an IHS clinic in 2000.
Around that time, Pfizer, like many other big pharmaceutical corporations, was pouring millions of dollars into lavish marketing seminars disguised as “continuing education” on the uses of psychiatric medication for physicians and nurses with no mental health training.
… After this event, several primary care colleagues began touting their new expertise in mental health, and I was regularly advised that psychiatric medications were (obviously) the new “treatment of choice.” ”
Seriously, he’s claiming that psychiatric medications were the “new” “treatment of choice” in the year 2000? Zoloft was introduced in 1991. Prozac revolutionized the treatment of depression way back in 1987. Walker’s off by over a decade.
Now, as Scott Alexander says, beware the man of one study: you can visit Prozac and Zoloft’s Wikipedia pages yourself and read the debate about effectiveness.
Long story short, as I understand it: psychiatric medication is actually way cheaper than psychological therapy. If your primary care doctor can prescribe you Zoloft, then you can skip paying to see a psychiatrist all together.
Back in the day, before we had much in the way of medication for anything, the preferred method for helping people cope with their problems was telling them that they secretly wanted to fuck their mothers. This sounds dumb, but it beats the shit out of locking up mentally ill people in asylums where they tended to die hideously. Unfortunately, talking to people about their problems doesn’t seem to have worked all that well, though you could bill a ton for half hour session every week for forty years straight or until the patient ran out of money.
Modern anti-depressant medications appear to actually work for people with moderate to severe depression, though last time I checked, medication combined with therapy/support had the best outcomes–if anything, I suspect a lot of people could use a lot more support in their lives.
I should clarify: when I say “work,” I don’t mean they cure the depression. This has not been my personal observation of the depressed people I know, though maybe they do for some people. What they do seem to do is lessen the severity of the depression, allowing the depressed person to function.
” Since those days, affixing the depression label to Native experience has become big business. IHS depends a great deal upon this activity—follow-up “medication management” encounters allow the agency to pull considerable extra revenue from Medicaid. One part of the federal government supplements funding for the other. That’s one reason it might be in the best interest of IHS to diagnose and treat depression, rather than acknowledge the emotional and behavioral difficulties resulting from chronic, intergenerational oppression.”
It’s totally awful of the US gov’t to give free medication and health care to people. Medically responsible follow up to make sure the patients are responding properly to their medication and not having awful side effects is especially evil. The government should totally cut that out. From now on, lets cancel health services for the Native Peoples. That will totally end oppression.
Also, anyone who has ever paid an ounce of attention to anything the government does knows that expanding the IHS’s mandate to acknowledge the results of oppression would increase their funding, not decrease it.
Forgive me if it sounds a bit like Walker is actually trying to increase his pay.
“The most recent U.S. Public Health Service practice guidelines, which IHS primary care providers are required to use, states that “depression is a medical illness,” and in a nod to Big Pharma suppliers like Pfizer, serotonin-correcting medications (SSRIs) like Zoloft® “are frequently recommended as first-line antidepressant treatment options.” ”
My god, they use completely standard terminology and make factual statements about their field! Just like, IDK, all other mental healthcare providers in the country and throughout most of the developed world.
“This means IHS considers Native patients with a positive PHQ-9 screen to be mentally ill with depression.”
Dude, this means the that patients of EVERY RACE with a positive PHQ-9 are mentally ill with depression. Seriously, it’s not like Pfizer issues a separate screening guide for different races. If I visit a shrink, I’m going to get the exact same questionaires as you are.
Also, yes, depression is considered a mental illness, but Walker knows as well as I do that there’s a big difference between mentally ill with depression and, say, mentally ill with untreated schizophrenia.
” instance, the biomedical theory IHS is still promoting is obsolete. After more than 50 years of research, there’s no valid Western science to back up this theory of depression (or any other psychiatric disorder besides dementia and intoxication). There’s no chemical imbalance to correct.”
Slate Star Codex did a very long and thorough takedown of this particular claim: simply put, Walker is full of shit and should be ashamed of himself. The “chemical imbalance” model of depression, while an oversimplification, is actually pretty darn accurate, mostly because your brain is full of chemicals. As Scott Alexander points out:
“And this starts to get into the next important point I want to bring up, which is chemical imbalance is a really broad idea.
Like, some of these articles seem to want to contrast the “discredited” chemical imbalance theory with up-and-coming “more sophisticated” theories based on hippocampal neurogenesis and neuroinflammation. Well, I have bad news for you. Hippocampal neurogenesis is heavily regulated by brain-derived neutrophic factor, a chemical. Neuroinflammation is mediated by cytokines. Which are also chemicals. Do you think depression is caused by stress? The stress hormone cortisol is…a chemical. Do you think it’s entirely genetic? Genes code for proteins – chemicals again. Do you think it’s caused by poor diet? What exactly do you think food is made of?”
One of the most important things about the “chemical imbalance model” is that it helps the patient (again quoting Scott):
” People come in with depression, and they think it means they’re lazy, or they don’t have enough willpower, or they’re bad people. Or else they don’t think it, but their families do: why can’t she just pull herself up with her own bootstraps, make a bit of an effort? Or: we were good parents, we did everything right, why is he still doing this? Doesn’t he love us?
And I could say: “Well, it’s complicated, but basically in people who are genetically predisposed, some sort of precipitating factor, which can be anything from a disruption in circadian rhythm to a stressful event that increases levels of cortisol to anything that activates the immune system into a pro-inflammatory mode, is going to trigger a bunch of different changes along metabolic pathways that shifts all of them into a different attractor state. This can involve the release of cytokines which cause neuroinflammation which shifts the balance between kynurinins and serotonin in the tryptophan pathway, or a decrease in secretion of brain-derived neutrotrophic factor which inhibits hippocampal neurogenesis, and for some reason all of this also seems to elevate serotonin in the raphe nuclei but decrease it in the hippocampus, and probably other monoamines like dopamine and norepinephrine are involved as well, and of course we can’t forget the hypothalamopituitaryadrenocortical axis, although for all I know this is all total bunk and the real culprit is some other system that has downstream effects on all of these or just…”
Or I could say: “Fuck you, it’s a chemical imbalance.””
I’m going to quote Scott a little more:
“I’ve previously said we use talk of disease and biology to distinguish between things we can expect to respond to rational choice and social incentives and things that don’t. If I’m lying in bed because I’m sleepy, then yelling at me to get up will solve the problem, so we call sleepiness a natural state. If I’m lying in bed because I’m paralyzed, then yelling at me to get up won’t change anything, so we call paralysis a disease state. Talk of biology tells people to shut off their normal intuitive ways of modeling the world. Intuitively, if my son is refusing to go to work, it means I didn’t raise him very well and he doesn’t love me enough to help support the family. If I say “depression is a chemical imbalance”, well, that means that the problem is some sort of complicated science thing and I should stop using my “mirror neurons” and my social skills module to figure out where I went wrong or where he went wrong. …
“What “chemical imbalance” does for depression is try to force it down to this lower level, tell people to stop trying to use rational and emotional explanations for why their friend or family member is acting this way. It’s not a claim that nothing caused the chemical imbalance – maybe a recent breakup did – but if you try to use your normal social intuitions to determine why your friend or family member is behaving the way they are after the breakup, you’re going to get screwy results. …
“So this is my answer to the accusation that psychiatry erred in promoting the idea of a “chemical imbalance”. The idea that depression is a drop-dead simple serotonin deficiency was never taken seriously by mainstream psychiatry. The idea that depression was a complicated pattern of derangement in several different brain chemicals that may well be interacting with or downstream from other causes has always been taken seriously, and continues to be pretty plausible. Whatever depression is, it’s very likely it will involve chemicals in some way, and it’s useful to emphasize that fact in order to convince people to take depression seriously as something that is beyond the intuitively-modeled “free will” of the people suffering it. “Chemical imbalance” is probably no longer the best phrase for that because of the baggage it’s taken on, but the best phrase will probably be one that captures a lot of the same idea.”
Back to the article.
Walker states, ” Even psychiatrist Ronald Pies, editor-in-chief emeritus of Psychiatric Times, admitted “the ‘chemical imbalance’ notion was always a kind of urban legend.” ”
Oh, look, Dr. Pies was kind enough to actually comment on the article. You can scroll to the bottom to read his evisceration of Walker’s points–” …First, while I have indeed called the “chemical imbalance” explanation of mood disorders an “urban legend”—it was never a real theory propounded by well-informed psychiatrists—this in no way means that antidepressants are ineffective, harmful, or no better than “sugar pills.” The precise mechanism of action of antidepressants is not relevant to how effective they are, when the patient is properly diagnosed and carefully monitored. …
” Even Kirsch’s data (which have been roundly criticized if not discredited) found that antidepressants were more effective than the placebo condition for severe major depression. In a re-analysis of the United States Food and Drug Administration database studies previously analyzed by Kirsch et al, Vöhringer and Ghaemi concluded that antidepressant benefit is seen not only in severe depression but also in moderate (though not mild) depression. …
” While there is no clear evidence that antidepressants significantly reduce suicide rates, neither is there convincing evidence that they increase suicide rates.”
Here’s my own suspicion: depressed people on anti-depressants have highs and lows, just like everyone else, but because their medication can’t completely 100% cure them, sooner or later they end up feeling pretty damn shitty during a low point and start thinking about suicide or actually try it.
However, Pies notes that there are plenty of studies that have found that anti-depressants reduce a person’s overall risk of suicide.
In other words, Walker is, at best, completely misrepresenting the science to make his particular side sound like the established wisdom in the field when he is, in fact, on the minority side. That doesn’t guarantee that he’s wrong–it just means he is a liar.
And you know what I think about liars.
And you can probably imagine what I think about liars who lie in ways that might endanger the mental health of other people and cause them to commit suicide.
But wait, he keeps going:
“In an astonishing twist, researchers working with the World Health Organization (WHO) concluded that building more mental health services is a major factor in increasing the suicide rate. This finding may feel implausible, but it’s been repeated several times across large studies. WHO first studied suicide in relation to mental health systems in 100 countries in 2004, and then did so again in 2010, concluding that:
“[S]uicide rates… were increased in countries with mental health legislation, there was a significant positive correlation between suicide rates, and the percentage of the total health budget spent on mental health; and… suicide rates… were higher in countries with greater provision of mental health services, including the number of psychiatric beds, psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses, and the availability of training in mental health for primary care professionals.””
Do you know why I’ve been referring to Walker as “Walker” and not “Dr. Walker,” despite his apparent PhD? It’s because anyone who does not understand the difference between correlation and causation does not deserve a doctorate degree–or even a highschool degree–of any sort. Maybe people spend more on mental health because of suicides?
Oh, look, here’s the map he uses to support his claim:
Look at all those high-mental healthcare spending African countries!
I don’t know about you, but it looks to me like the former USSR, India/Bhutan/Nepal, Sub-Saharan Africa, Guyana, and Japan & the Koreas have the highest suicide rates in the world. Among these countries, all but Japan and S. Korea are either extremely poor and probably have little to no public spending on mental healthcare, or are former Soviet countries that are both less-developed than their lower-suicide brothers to the West and whatever is going on in them is probably related to them all being former Soviet countries, rather than their fabulous mental healthcare funding.
In other words, this map shows the opposite of what Walker claims it does.
Again, this doesn’t mean he’s necessarily wrong. It just means that the data on the subject is mixed and does not clearly support his case in the manner he claims.
” Despite what’s known about their significant limitations and scientific groundlessness, antidepressants are still valued by some people for creating “emotional numbness,” according to psychiatric researcher David Healy.”
So they don’t have any effects, but people keep using them for their… effects? Which is it? Do they work or not work?
And emotional numbness is a damn sight better than wanting to kill yourself. That Walker does not recognize this shows just how disconnected he is from the realities of life for many people struggling with depression.
“The side effect of antidepressants, however, in decreasing sexual energy (libido) is much stronger than this numbing effect—sexual disinterest or difficulty becoming aroused or achieving orgasm occurs in as many as 60 percent of consumers.”
Which, again, is still better than wanting to kill yourself. I hear death really puts a dent in your sex life.
However, I will note that this is a real side effect, and if you are taking anti-depressants and really can’t stand the mood kill (pardon the pun,) talk to your doctor, because there’s always the possibility that a different medication will treat your depression without affecting your libido.
“A formal report on IHS internal “Suicide Surveillance” data issued by Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Epidemiology Center states the suicide rate for all U.S. adults currently hovers at 10 for every 100,000 people, while for the Native patients IHS tracked, the rate was 17 per 100,000. This rate varied widely across the regions IHS serves—in California it was 5.5, while in Alaska, 38.5.”
Interesting statistics. I’m guessing the difference between Alaska and California holds true for whites, too–I suspect it’s the long, cold, dark winters.
“In 2013, the highest U.S. suicide rate (14.2) was among Whites and the second highest rate (11.7) was among American Indians and Alaska Natives (Figure 5). Much lower and roughly similar rates were found among Asians and Pacific Islanders (5.8), Blacks (5.4) and Hispanics (5.7).”
Their graph:
So much for that claim
Hey, do you know which American ethnic group also has a history of trauma and oppression? Besides the Jews. Black people.
If trauma and oppression leads to depression and suicide, then the black suicide rate ought to be closer to the Indian suicide rate, and the white rate ought to be down at the bottom.
I guess this is a point in favor of my “whites are depressive” theory, though.
Also, “In 2013, nine U.S. states, all in the West, had age-adjusted suicide rates in excess of 18: Montana (23.7), Alaska (23.1), Utah (21.4), Wyoming (21.4), New Mexico (20.3), Idaho (19.2), Nevada (18.2), Colorado (18.5), and South Dakota (18.2). Five locales had age-adjusted suicide rates lower than 9 per 100,000: District of Columbia (5.8), New Jersey (8.0), New York (8.1), Massachusetts (8.2), and Connecticut (8.7).”
States by suicide rate
Hrm, looks like there’s also a guns and impulsivity/violence correlation–I think the West was generally settled by more violent, impulsive whites who like the rough and tumble lifestyle, and where there are guns, people kill themselves with them.
I bet CA has some restrictive gun laws and some extensive mental health services.
You know the dark blue doesn’t look like it correllates with?
Healthcare funding.
Back to Walker. “Nearly one in four of these suicidal medication overdoses used psychiatric medications. The majority of these medications originated through the Indian Health Service itself and included amphetamine and stimulants, tricyclic and other antidepressants, sedatives, benzodiazepines, and barbiturates.”
Shockingly, people diagnosed with depression sometimes try to commit suicide.
Wait, aren’t amphetamines and “stimulants” used primarily for treating conditions like ADHD or to help people stay awake, not depression? And aren’t sedatives, benzos, and barbiturates used primarily for things like anxiety and pain relief? I don’t think these were the drugs Walker is looking for.
” What’s truly remarkable is that this is not the first time the mental health movement in Indian Country has helped to destroy Native people. Today’s making of a Mentally Ill Indian to “treat” is just a variation on an old idea, … The Native mental health system has been a tool of cultural genocide for over 175 years—seven generations. Long before there was this Mentally Ill Indian to treat, this movement was busy creating and perpetuating the Crazy Indian, the Dumb Indian, and the Drunken Indian.”
Walker’s depiction of the past may be accurate. His depiction of the present sounds like total nonsense.
” We must make peace with the fabled Firewater Myth, a false tale of heightened susceptibility to alcoholism and substances that even Native people sometimes tell themselves.”
The fuck? Of course Indians are more susceptible to alcoholism than non-Indians–everyone on earth whose ancestors haven’t had a long exposure to wheat tends to handle alcohol badly. Hell, the Scottich are more susceptible to alcoholism than, say, the Greeks:
Some people just have trouble with alcohol. Like the Russians.
Look, I don’t know if the IHS does a good job. Maybe its employes are poorly-trained, abrasive pharmaceutical shills who diagnose everyone who comes through their doors with depression and then prescribes them massive quantities of barbiturates.
And it could well be that the American psychiatric establishment is doing all sorts of things wrong.
But the things Walker cites in the article don’t indicate anything of the sort.
And for goodness sakes, if you’re depressed or have any other mental health problem, get advice from someone who actually knows what they’re talking about.
Empathy: the psychological identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.
False empathy is claiming empathy with people one has never met/has no connection with, for the purpose of harming/denying empathy to someone right in front of oneself, someone with whom you ought to have some sort of connection.
It is generally expressed as, “yes, I see you are hurting terribly, but I do not care because of your opinion on X”, or even, “No, you cannot actually be hurting, because of your opinion on X.”
This is not empathy. It’s a form of bullying; it drives people apart and decreases trust.
(Another form of false empathy is identifying with the suffering of others, but being completely clueless about their hopes, joys, angers, humor, or basically the vast majority of emotions and motivations they feel.)
Leftist ideology (cultural Marxism) ascribes all observed statistical differences in group performance to nefarious cultural forces, therefore nefarious cultural forces must be at work everywhere, therefore you must be oppressed at all times, thus you must dedicate yourself to finding the oppression in every aspect and moment of your life. So we deconstruct every movie, commercial, TV show and book, searching for the hidden oppression that will explain why more of us aren’t math professors or CEOs or magical flying unicorns.
If more people have seen the latest Avengers Movie* than got raped in Rotherham, then the portrayal of women in the Avengers must be what’s holding women back. A white woman who loved black people so much she pretended to be black people and spent her life trying to advance black causes must secretly be causing racism.
I remember my days in the feminist trenches. (In my defense, I was in college.) Reading daily about rape and abuse is quite stressful. Our brains aren’t great at coping with information systems that aren’t neighborhood gossip, which results in massively overestimating the likelihood of rare events just because people are talking about them.
Convincing yourself that every interaction is oppressive, threatening, and dangerous creates feedback loops of anxiety and fear, making people miserable as fuck.
I want to move toward a political/social system and discourse are based on trust, rational discussion, and not making ourselves miserable.
I agree that gender is a social construct. So is sex. (So is the other kind of sex.) So is species. So is “fish”. So is blue. So is reality.
People say “X is a social construct” as though this were some deep, profound statement about this thing being actually some form of mass delusion.
All “socially constructed” really means is that the definition of a word–or concept–is agreed upon via some form of common consensus. Thus, the meaning of words can be changed if everyone decides to do so.
“Gay” was once socially constructed to mean “happy.” Now, by popular consensus, “gay” means something else. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, homosexuality and pedophilia were conceptually linked–we would say, homosexuality was socially constructed to include pedophilia. Today, the two terms are not seen as synonymous–the social construction has changed.
You ever notice that “red onions” are purple? Our socially constructed categories of “red” and “purple” have changed.
We all filter the raw material data of reality through the ideas, concepts, patterns, and categories already in our heads–our assumptions about the world can lead two different people to have radically different experiences of the exact same physical reality.
This is a natural effect of language being language, rather than, say, rocks. It is not a profound statement. It is a caution that we may be led astray at times by conceptual categories, our categories/definitions may need occasional updating in light of new data, or that edge cases may not always fit neatly into broad categories.
Most people understand this intuitively, as part of how interfacing between our fallible little selves and reality works. That reality does not always conform exactly to our notions about it is confirmed every time we stub a toe.
When people start making a big deal out of social constructivism, it is natural to think this must be some big, profound, important insight, otherwise they wouldn’t be going on for so long.
But people only pull out this argument when they want to deny the existence of actual reality, not when trying to argue that your notion of “ornamental shrub” is socially constructed and you should plant a blueberry bush.
Reality exists, no matter how we care to conceptualize it and organize the data we’re getting about it. Most categories that weren’t invented for the sake of a novel (“elves” probably are totally made up,) exist because they serve some sort of functional purpose. Being able to call someone “male” or “female,” “black” or “white” or “Bantu” or “Japanese” allows me to convey a bundle of information to the listener–a feature of language obvious to virtually everyone who has ever engaged in conversation, except to folks trying to eliminate such words from the language on the grounds that they are made up and so carry no information.
So I hear Moldbug was dis-invited from a tech conference (where he was to present on tech-related subjects) because someone didn’t like his politics.
If you haven’t read Moldbug, his main schtick seems to be that he thinks the French Revolution was a bad idea and we should go back to having a monarchy. (To be fair, I am oversimplifying a guy whose blog is >2x as long as War and Peace. I should probably also throw in that he coined the term “Cathedral” and described Progressivism as a religion and is generally opposed to it.)
I understand that most people think Moldbug’s ideas are weird, but if you let guys who think Stalin was an okay dude into your conferences, (and they do; actual communists face very little discrimination in modern America, as evidenced by the fact that many of them are happily employed at major universities and tech companies,) then you really ought to extend the same political agnosticism to a guy who wants to reinstate the Stuarts.
I converse regularly with people who openly refer to themselves as international communists and count them among my friends, despite believing that they are kind of wrong and that their ideology leads to mass murder. They mean well, I suppose. Of course, if they start looking funny at the Kulaks, I may have to change that assessment.
Likewise, I would have no objection to conversing with Moldbug; he is an interesting guy with an obviously expansive intellect, traits I admire in people. I doubt he means anyone ill-will, and he certainly doesn’t have the political power to put any of his ideas into motion. Republicans can and actually do bomb people in Iraq or Iran or Syria or wherever they feel like when they happen to have power, which is fairly frequent. Moldbug isn’t going to reinstate the Stuarts or any other part of his agenda (whatever that is.)
Shame on those who made it their 5-minute mission to try to ruin someone’s career just because he has some wacky political ideas.
“The problem with the war between the sexes is there’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.” — attributed to Kissinger.
You may wish to refer back to my post about dorkiness and assholes, and how popular movements get overtaken by popular people who may have very little interest in whatever the movement was originally supposed to be about. Instead, the movement becomes yet another way of reinforcing the status quo of popular people, which is why, of course, virtually everyone babbling on about other peoples’ “privilege” is insanely privileged. To be perfectly frank, I don’t hear any of the homeless people I talk to complaining about privilege.
So if you’re trying to avoid people who talk about privilege, try volunteering with the homeless. Besides, they actually need the help.
Anyway, back on track. As I was thinking about all of these things, I had another of those little moments of clarity. Feminism is framed as a females vs. males thing. It is very literally about raising up women, as a group, and fighting the “patriarchy”, symbolic of the all-male power structure.
Perhaps at some point it was that.
But this runs into an obvious problem that Kissinger himself articulated: men and women live together. You can’t tear down men without tearing down the women who live with them (and you can’t build up women without building up the men who live with them.) My [male relative]’s bad divorce outcome will have a direct and measurable effect on my material well-being; money going to his ex-wife is money that will not go to me. Since both of us are female, there is no net gain in female well-being. (Technically, it’s a net loss due to legal fees.) This is only an anecdote, of course. Let’s not overthink it.
If feminists were really serious about tearing down the patriarchy, we’d see different behavior. They’d block-vote for female political candidates, not vote for male candidates, set up all female communities and businesses, etc. In reality, feminists spend a lot of time arguing about whether some character in a popular movie or video game is sexist or posting on Twitter about how much they hate creeps. This doesn’t make any sense, until you realize that the whole notion of Males vs. Females is bunk and not even what feminists are trying to achieve.
We do not live in a society where females exist physically separate from men and desire to act as a single block in opposition to a single block of men. That is not how we live and act. Rather, we live in a society where males and females are intricately linked–as are their social statuses. Popular politicking, then, is about asserting the popular people’s dominance over the non-popular.
Popular men and women unite behind a common moral facade in order to assert dominance over unpopular men.
To the extent that this raises up women generally, it only raises them up relative to already unpopular men, not so much relative to men generally, and not so much relative to men who are actually the prime movers of the “patriarchy” (though earlier or more genuine forms of feminism may have had such effects, and there may be un-intended “trickle up” effects.)
Overall, feminism doesn’t seem to have many direct effects on unpopular or low-power women, except inasmuch as these women are generally connected to low-status males. Unfortunately, our society’s notions of popularity and status are pretty darn worthless, leading to the denigration of sincerity, hard work, and intelligence.
This suggests a big difference between the dynamics of feminism and the critical race theories it is so closely associated with these days: most members of different races actually don’t live with each other. So arguments about one set of group dynamics probably aren’t valid when applied to the other set of dynamics.
This theory doesn’t seem great for easily quantified predictive value, but someone else may be able to think one up.
