Lysenkoism and Cooperation in Evolution

[Aslan]

Lysenkoism was a political campaign against genetics and science-based agriculture conducted by Trofim Lysenko, his followers and Soviet authorities. Lysenko was the director of the Soviet Union's Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Lysenkoism began in the late 1920s and formally ended in 1964.

The pseudo-scientific ideas of Lysenkoism were built on Lamarckan heritability of acquired characteristics. Lysenko's theory rejected Mendelian inheritance, the concept of the "gene" and departed from Darwinian evolutionary theory by rejecting natural selection. Proponents falsely claimed to have discovered, among many other things, that rye could transform into wheat and wheat into barley, that weeds are spontaneously transmuting into food grains, and that 'natural cooperation' was observed in nature as opposed to 'natural selection'. Lysenkoism promised extraordinary advances in breeding and agriculture that never came about.

The campaign was supported by Joseph Stalin. More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were sent to prison or fired or executed as a part of this campaign instigated by Lysenko to suppress his scientific opponents. The president of the Agriculture Academy was sent to prison and died there, while the scientific research in the field of genetics was effectively destroyed until the death of Stalin in 1953. Research and teaching in the fields of neurophysiology, cell biology, and many other biological disciplines was also negatively affected or banned.


So basically Stalin's pet pseudoscience.

All of us (or at least I hope all) here believe in theory of evolution as scientifically proven and natural selection as a legitimate property of nature. And that Mendelian Inheritance as scientific truth. For those who don't know, Lamarck was a predecessor of Darwin. He proposed similar traits in organisms means that they can improve on that and passed to babies. A giraffe for example; grew its neck over generations in order to adapt to the high leaves. Or more humorously, Body-builders can have muscled children. :)

There is a place for cooperation in biology, as creatures in hostile areas must cooperate or die. And humanity is similar, if we are to not bake or drown ourselves with melted ice-caps, we need to cooperate. But really, is this kind of pseudoscience popular in the left?

Also heres a bone to pick for Rafiq :laugh:


The term Lysenkoism is also used metaphorically to describe the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives.

The word 'Neo-Lysenkoism' has occasionally been used by hereditarian researchers as a pejorative term in the debates over race and intelligence and sociobiology to describe scientists minimizing the role of genes in shaping human behavior, such as Leon Kamin, Richard Lewontin, Stephen Jay Gould and Barry Mehler.

But how does cooperation work in evolution? Humans must work in many ways to survive, instead of natural selection killing the weak. Good qualities of all the populations are built into relationships. So ancient cavemen who were good at fires worked on fire, while their friend with a good throwing arm protected them from wolves. Or even in hunting, as humanity and tame wolves began to work together in bringing down prey, and after selective breeding for the best traits for cooperation. Canis lupus familiaris, or the dog was a product of cooperation on an inter-species basis. Genes are a factor in behavior, but this term is used by the scientific racists to justify their vile believes. Associative fallacy (OH, since Lysenko was a leftist, therefore all leftists are pseudoscientists!) and other bullshit.

[oneday]

Something like The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is a good account of cooperative behaviors among animals being selected by natural selection.

But why do you think evolution by natural selection has anything to do with cooperation in human societies today?

[Aslan]

I said that genes can be a part of human behavior in very specific cases. But relations between classes is the ultimate cause of behavior in a capitalist society.

Also, isn't Richard Dawkins a pretty reactionary guy?

[Rafiq]

All of us (or at least I hope all) here believe in theory of evolution

First, a few things about Lysenkoism should be noted:

By the time of the 1930's, what we understand as 'evolutionary science' was a rather ambiguous field, the 'problem', so to speak, was not necessarily resolved. As far as an approach to humans in relation to their 'traits' goes, Lysenkoism was nowhere near as scandalous as the kind of racist essentialism that surrounds the eugenics movement. But the notion that Lysenkoism was an outgrowth of "Marxist dogmatism" is thoroughly unfounded. Firstly, Lysenkoism did not gain predominance because it proposed 'tabula rasa' and whatever. If Lysenkoism was a logical outgrowth of 'dogmatic Marxism', why did it not flourish in the 1920's, a period characterized by an infinitely more hardline Marxism than Stalinism (anyone familiar with writers like Andrei Platanov should know this!)? Lysenkoism gained prominence, because an understanding of human beings on the basis of their essential composition as accounting for certain historical characteristics was accepted by Stalinism, congruent with its bourgeois nature - you find a common theme in Stalinism of children being accountable for the crimes of their parents, i.e. a 'child of the enemy of the people' as a narrative cliche, almost. Lysenkoism was a RETREAT from Marxism as such, and Lysenkoism was nothing more than the Soviet-idiosyncratic variant of bourgeois mystification of science, a phenomena that was occurring in virtually every other country, which still occurs today.

In that sense, bourgeois ideologues have no right to scandalize Lysenkoism, because this kind of metaphysical ideologization of the sciences (and I use this term in a refined manner - not simply being 'biased', but ideology in the Althusserian science) was taking place in every country at the time. And with emerging fields like epigenetics, who knows, there might have actually been some practical truth in Lysenkoism. Either way, Lysenkoism is unjustified - but only insofar as eugenics, essentialism, all kinds of bourgeois 'ecologisms' are unjustified.

Before Lysenkoism gained hegemonic prominence, biological sciences flourished in the Soviet Union. Not many know, for example, that in fields like genetics, Soviet scientists made important contributions and were active in the development of the field - during the Fifth International Congress of Genetics hosted in Berlin, the largest delegation was from the Soviet Union.


There is a place for cooperation in biology, as creatures in hostile areas must cooperate or die.

Your question is a false one. Biology is not some scholasticism, it is not some indicator of moral considerations. You are a conscious person. You make a dichotomy between 'cooperation and competition', where in the natural world, no such dichotomy as it is made meaningful to conscious human beings is present. You are substituting processes that pertain solely to human cosncoiuenss, social processes, with metaphysical pretenses to biology. Biological processes are natural - they are outside the domain of 'human meaning' INSOFAR as we do not practically relate to it.

Your question is essentially a false one. There is no place for 'cooperation' in biology, because cooperation is a category that has nothing to do with biological processes, instead it is a moral/ethical category that is only meaningful to men and women. We don't need to consult biological, chemical, atomic or quantic processes in order to supersede the existing order, because these processes exist at a lower level than those that underlie the basis of human consciousness - social and historical processes. In other words, WE, conscious beings discussing and debating these matters, are the masters of natural processes insofar as we are even talking about them.

You are speaking about humans in a way that presupposes you yourself are an abstract, free thinking rational subject. Are you yourself not human? This is a thorouhgly anti-democratic discourse - the assumption that 'humans' have inevitable, essential characteristics, that can somehow be subject of critique for other humans. All knowledge is practical knowledge. The assumption that all humans cannot be as enlightened as you, so as to make essentialist assumptions about them, is anti-democratic and anti-Communist. It is the hallmark of bourgeois ideology.


But how does cooperation work in evolution? Humans must work in many ways to survive, instead of natural selection killing the weak

Evolution merely refers to processes of biological change. It is a totally meaningless process, there is no meaning to it. The same ape that so touchingly helps a small baby - can run around, throw shit at others, rape its grandma, and so on. It is not that animals are evil - it is that there is literally no meaning whatsoever to it, it is all proximity, it all relates to TOTALLY CONTINGENT processes of natural-reflex in relation to a set ecology coupled to degrees of 'sociality'. But humans represent a breaking point wherein the social dominants all processes, including biological ones, not that it alters them in their physical composition, but that it DETERMINES their expression, in the same way biologicla processes subsume chemical ones, i.e. are at a higher order of existence. "Evolution" is just as meaningful in describing the moral processes you are talking about, as geology or chemistry is. It is meaningless.

Humans have no ecology or habitat. So talking about 'cooperation' or 'competition' in such terms is meaningless. Those are abstractions. Who cares about 'cooperation'? The essential basis of Communism is not in 'cooperation', humans are by merit of existence social animals. Capitalism is the most 'cooperative' (i.e. socially complex) system to ever exist.

Communists reject bourgeois-darwinist metaphysics, but we also reject Kropotkinite superstition. TEHRE IS NOTHING essential, inherent, about Communism in our biological constitution. Because there is nothing essential, inherent to our physiology about ANYTHING we find meaningful - this controversy is a SOCIAL one, NOT a biological, chemical, atomic, quantic one. One cannot make pretenses to some 'big other' to justify CONSCIOUS understandings of things. The variance between ideology - Communism, liberalism, fascism, has nothing to do with any purported variance in human physiology, but in thoroughly social considerations and concerns. The basis of scientific controversy surrounding these things, is social, and relates to superstitions wrought from the necessity of reproducing these social processes.

He who speaks of 'humans' but makes an exception of himself, is not a Communist. Plain and simple. He who speaks of 'humans' in such a way but does not make an exception of himself is a fool, because knowledge is practical - to be aware of something, is to already be in a position to control it, dominate it, be in conscious control of it. WITHOUT having to alter one's physiology. That means the root, and origin of that which you are assessing, is not in your physiology but something else.


Genes are a factor in behavior

Genes are not a factor in behavior, because the variance in human behavior is between humans and between humans as historical subjects, not between humans and animals. In other words, where genes are a 'distinguishing' factor in behavioral variance, they work as trivialities. But genes have nothing to do with it - for example, you may have a genetic variation that makes the taste of broccoli shitty. You will not eat broccoli. But you can't say that the gene determined why you won't eat broccoli, because the act of eating broccoli is a social choice - this medium that is human consciousness, i.e. not eating things because they do not taste pleasurable, dominates every and all biological processe. For example? Why not a religion that tells you to eat that which tastes bad, for discipline or something? Biology won't account for that. So genes will only account for things that are trivialities.

It is like how having curly hair may 'account' for your identity by merit of how people treat you for having curly hair. The gene didn't account for shit, the SIGNIFICANCE is a social, historical one.

Humans are not 'biological' cateogires, in the same way that animals are not chemical/atomic categories. Animals cannot talk about and question their biological constitution, derive practical knowledge from this and manipulate it. If we can engage in genetic engineering, how are we determined by our genes in ANY way? We are not, because there is a dimension, a higher 'category' which subsumes all other categories: That of the social dimension, the historical one.


Also, isn't Richard Dawkins a pretty reactionary guy?

The Selfish Gene should be opposed, not because it is wrong 'empirically', but because it does not justify where it places the occurrence of selection. The whole point of the book is to say that selection occurs at the level of the gene. This is totally tautological, because one can go on to say that selection occurs at the lowest level - the atomic. It is a silly book because - well of course biological variance is a result of such processes, it simply does not justify where it places the 'order of being' here - it replaces the significance of the animal, and its phenotype, to the genotype. But this is nonsense, because the practical point of concern is the animal, the 'phenotype', not the genes (it is the phenotype, and SUBSEQUENTLY the genes). It is really complex. I don't want to go into it unless I absolutely have to.

The point is that it elevates genetic processes to an ontological level where they do not belong, transforms them into a metaphysical category. The problem is trivial, but consult for example Steven J. Gould here:

"Dawkins claims to prefer genes and to find greater insight in this formulation. But he allows that you or I might prefer organisms—and it really doesn't matter."

And it doesn't matter, scientifically speaking - the emphasis on genes is ideological. It is wrong to say that genes act as a unit of selection, because selection, which refers to the ability for an organism to actually perpetually exist, acts only upon the characteristics that allow it to exist. The contrvoersy is not therefore an empirical one, it relates to the fact that Dawkins' 'choice of wording' is thoroughly ideological and has gave birth to various monstrosities. Changes occurring in the biological organism, are irreducible to its genes, genes register changes that occur in the organism, and nothing more. The point is quite simple: Dawkins superstitiously assumes that the organism is literally a vehicle for genes, i.e. the ideological insinuation is that 'genes' are units of moral value, with quasi-cosnciosu prerogatives of their own, 'struggling for their survival'. But again, genes DO NOT struggle for survival or 'compete' anymore than rocks do. There is no meaning to them - they simply exist and are allowed to exist, in the same way rocks do. Idealist ontology, conversely, would have you that 'animals have an incentive to survive', BUT THEY DO NOT. They simply survive, and are capable of perpetuating their existence. They do not "want" to, as such, because they do not "want" anything, wanting is a human category - in the same way rocks don't. They are hardwired, by merit of physical reflex in relation to an ecology, to do certain things which allow for the perpetuation of their existence. This isn't reducible to the genetic, because the genetic is only able to register the ability for the perpetuation of the existence of biological processes - the genetic sais nothing about the external processes that allow an organism to exist in the first place. Some geological catastrophe happens, and the organism can no longer exist. It is literally that meaningless, that contingent.

Keep in mind we are only talking about animals here - not humans.

The strongest criticism of Dawkins? The Selifsh Gene necessarily, the logic behind it, is responsible for atrocities like Memetics.

[oneday]

Also, isn't Richard Dawkins a pretty reactionary guy?

Yeah, it's been awhile since I've read it and I think Rafiq is right. "We are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes". Um, no.

[Red Red Chile]

The naturalistic fallacy is deployed by scientific racists. The argument is that since a certain behaviour is in our genes it is therefore justifiable. Think about what this would imply: Cavemen probably were not sticklers for sexual consent - does this justify rape in 2016 because it's 'in our genes'? You might as well argue that we should be allowed to act like apes because we evolved from them.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

The problem with Lysenkoism didn't come in Lysenko proposing his theories, but in the Soviet Union implementing large scale agricultural policies based on them with insufficient evidence while silencing competing biological theories.

As for the modern bourgeois "secular" evolutionists, the issue is in making survival some kind of natural teleology - organisms (or in Dawkins's case, genes) into entities whose objective it is to survive, and who therefore design themselves over time with that in mind. That's not the case - evolution just happens, and certain organisms survive at varying rates based on traits that are correlated with certain genes. As a consequence, organisms change. That doesn't mean that certain genes were meant to survive because they offered a "superior" design. That is anthropomorphizing nature in imposing human notions of ends onto the world.

We survive because we want to live and flourish and because we are able to find ways of doing so through social means. Whether or not that itself has some evolutionary roots, or is social, or is some combination of both, is one thing, but we certainly shouldn't impose that thought on non-sentient entities like genes with no concern whether they survive or not.

[Blake's Baby]

I think it's not an impermissible slip to think of 'superior design', but it does risk a tautology. 'This collection of genes survived because it is superior' - 'this collection of genes is superior because it survived'.

If, I say if, we define 'superior' biology as biology 'leading to more survival' (so, not pandas, or giant elk, or dinosaurs) then we need to be aware that we're pretty much saying 'more of these survived because they find it easier to survive'.

[Rafiq]

Use the search function. I have been over this NUMEROUS, NUMEROUS times.

It's like, every other fucking user we get on this forum, comes with some baggage of filth that I have to constantly attack and suppress in the same way Idid before, just so that the forum standards are not degraded. It's so insufferable how this works. Literally, every single argument in favor of 'evolutionary psychology', is now going to be repeated. Fuck it, fine, I can dedicate myself to dealing with another one of these, it's almost like Revleft is constantly under siege from the filth that comes from other parts of the internet. Until it is outright banned from the forum, this kind of filth will never be tolerated so long as I am present here. NEVER. There is no big other, ladies and gentlemen. The prevalence and popularity of this disgusting shit, is not owed to any degree of theoretical sophistication or empirical proof. It is literally that baseless when one attacks mercilessly the ideological foundations of the phenomena in question.

What I find particularly hilarious is that the keenest defenders of religion, are the quickest to defend pseudoscience like evolutionary psychology, filth that we would otherwise associate with "atheism". Disillusionist did the same thing. And why? Because evolutionary psychology, essentialism, 'genetic determinism', all of these things are just as superstitious as the religious phenomena they are so quick to defend.


The naturalistic fallacy is deployed by scientific racists.

Red Red Chile, who is not even an iota close to being familiar with scientific racism as it exists in the 21st century, sais this. No, sorry, the 'naturalistic fallacy', IS NOT committed by scientific racists of today. These racists pretend to be totally neutral, totally disengaged in any political or social controversy. The solution they give to the problem of racism, is that Africans, both in Africa and the US, etc. need to be given "special help", because the extent of their mental abilities disallow them from taking care of themselves. So no, they don't outwardly draw any moral conclusions from the conclusions they draw from the employment of their special 'intelligence tests', scientific racists today don't even use the term 'race', they use the term population. Arthur Jenson, Richard Lynn, Unz, none of them are victim to the 'naturalistic fallacy'. This does not form the basis of our criticism of these disgusting scum, one could be totally free from the 'naturalistic fallacy' as far as the producing of pseudo-scientific journals, and it would not make these journals any less ideologically engaged, non-neutral, and rabidly reactionary and disgusting. One doesn't need the 'naturalistic fallacy' to support eugenics - in fact, I believe it was Lynn who said that "Back in the 70's, I proposed a modest eugenics program for the Irish", speaking so neutrally, so unengaged. THAT is ideology - ideology does not say 'I am ideology'. It presents itself as something neutral, natural, and compelled unengaged.


The argument is that since a certain behaviour is in our genes it is therefore justifiable.

Holy shit, I'm literally so sick of this. I'm so sick of this cliche, as though the 'naturalistic fallacy' is a problem for the reactionary sciences. It isn't, NO REACTIONARY scientific current engages in the 'naturalistic fallacy' where it concerns their 'data'. Evolutionary psychologists don't, neither do scientific racists. This does not change the partisan, moral, an ideological nature of their 'work', because the whole fucking point is that these underlay which variables they are willing to take seriously and which ones they are not even capable of thinking might exist. The fact of the matter is that the critique I have leveled so thoroughly, mercilessly and repeatedly against evolutionary psychology and every kind of essentialism, including behavioral genetics, has nothing to do with talk of a 'naturalistic fallacy'. The relationship between these, and bourgeois ideology, has already been well established in previous threads, it has nothing to do with an outwardly 'naturalistic fallacy', the point is that insofar as one approaches the origin of a thing, the nature of that thing, and how they approach it, is determined. The fact of the matter is that if you think that "the problem with the blacks is that they need our help because they are mentally handicapped", as opposed ot black liberation, YOU ARE assuming a partisan social position, and you don't need any amount of fucking data to accept the former thesis spontaneously out of your own implicit racism. Passively pretending there are zero ideological or moral implications from your purportedly 'amoral', 'neutral' science, which by the way is total bullshit - is the epitome of the violent passive aggressiveness that underlies relationships of power and domination. because the fact of the matter is that, no empirical data has justified or sustained the consensus of reactionary pseudoscientific fields regarding the relationship between genes and what is the essential basis of what it means to be human, no amount of empirical evidence ALONE has sustained evolutionary psychology or scientific racism - a plethora of unknown ideological assumptions is necessary for these to be sustained and believed.


Think about what this would imply: Cavemen probably were not sticklers for sexual consent

Look how this child thinks. Cavemen, he sais. Humans have existed for 200,000 years, humans 200,000 years ago were no less human than us, were no less or more dictated by their physiological constitution as we are. So get this idea out of your head - furthermore, 'cavemen' never existed, there is no evidence homo sapiens sapiens ever inhabited caves. As far as sexual consent was concerned, since humans were just as human back then, and since we have evidence from accounts of hunter-gatherer societies not only in contemporary times but throughout recorded history, every single human society had specific and intricate sexual rituals that facilitated reproductive practices, which did not tolerate rape. Every human society was just as 'crazy' and non-animal as the next. That is because at the onset of human existence, humans left the animal kingdom - social processes took over and subsumed all biological ones, so that effectively, no human behavior has any basis in human physiology, because all human physiological processes must be articulated through language - through consciousness. Ossifying bourgeois sexuality and sexual consciousness in all its complexity to having some basis in human physiology is the point of evolutionary psychology, and that is partially why it is a baseless pseudoscience. The notion that pre-neolithic humans, were a bunch of animals running around raping is thoroughly anti-scientific and thoroughly unfounded, because humans were NEVER dictated by genes.


does this justify rape in 2016 because it's 'in our genes'?

Yes, the notion DOES in fact justify rape - it does not OUTWARDLY DEFEND rape, but it justifies the existence of rape, by explaining it in such a way, that locates the basis of rape in something that is essential the existence of humans. So you're just fucking wrong - saying that rape has its basis in our genetic constitution, which is by the way in scientific terms a laughably baseless assertion, changes and transforms our understanding of rape - and the understanding we have of the essential basis of rape, underlies the existence of rape. The notion that rape is an inevitability of human sexuality, is already the mainstream contention of society in general, but the notion that it is some kind of physical reflex, an instinct, is not only a scientifically unsupported and baseless assertion, it reproduces more generally the culture of rape and sexual slavery, no matter how willing one is to condemn rape, it DESENSITIZES AND TRIVIALIZES the TRUE HORROR of rape, subsequently, it RIPS AWAY, or attempts to, true and real aspirations toward sexual emancipation. And I haven't even touched upon why the notion is amply fucking ridiculous - I mean the same clowns who talk about how "Lacan is a charlatan", talk about this shit. Lacan, who explored that dimension of sexuality which was pathological, following Freud, which referred to fantasy, desire, ALL THE COMPLEX PROCESSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS that were previously subject to scientific inquiry by psychologists are sweepingly designated and simplistically conferred some explanation. And why?

Because of the increasingly anti-democratic nature of capitalism, we no longer have to consult the intricacies human consciousness in order to understand processes that are directly the result of it. This ossification of human behavior, into some animal category, represents the animalization of the masses, so that there is no epistemological link between the pseudoscientist who already assumes himself to be a free and rational agent, his consciousness, and that of humans in general. This represents the further exclusion of the periphreal human, from processes of power, life that concern them - it represents the decline of taking people unto themselves as all constituent parts of universal reason, it represents their alienation and animalization into blind forces of nature that need to be 'controlled' and 'manipulated' into this or that, i.e. into subjects, ultimately, who need to be REGULARLY controlled where their 'natural instincts' keep re-emerging and taking control. This notion of humans being controlled by an external force, outside of their social relations, that needs to be constantly 'kept in check' is not only a Hobbsean notion, it has its origins in the counter-enlightenment and gothic anti-democraticism best encapsulated by Anglo-Saxons like Thomas Malthus and Francis Galton. As a further means to critique this ideologically, it is also a regularly reoccurring theme in popular culture. In Television and movies, isn't the plot of a secret, dark and mysterious world full of unknowable forces, that has to be confronted by some elite group of heroes, experts who alone are capable of knowing, evermore predominant and popular?

The notion that rape is in our genes, IS a pathological reflection of the underling ideology/pathology that which society approaches rape.


You might as well argue that we should be allowed to act like apes because we evolved from them.

And this encapsulates, more generally why evolutionary psychology is a pseudoscience, a spontaneous ideological impulse - any idiot, without an iota of familiarity with evolutionary processes, a sophisticated understanding of anthropology, the anatomical origin of homo sapiens sapeins, the time span that which this encompassed, can come to the same conclusions as an evolutionary psychologist, because this pseudoscientiic tautology, this reactionary scholasticism in its practical terms is already present in the essential understanding of how ruling ideology approaches humans - the animalization of man, approaching humans in animal terms, is something Zizek more generally calls survivalism - an emphasis on our 'instincts', how well we can survive in the wild, our 'animal side', and so on. The spiritual animal kingdom is the spiritual human kingdom, today, as Zizek put it. I have gone over this numerous, numerous times already. if he used the fucking search function, he'd know that, but instead, like every baselessly arrogant new user, he is going to pretend to be the herald of some entirely new truth, to enlighten us about shit we've all already gone through so many times. "We evolved from them". We also "evolved" from microorganisms. That we "evolved" from apes (HOMO SAPIENS SAPIENS did not distinguish themselves because they 'evolved from apes', but because they became distinct from other hominids - bipedal apes existed for some time before humans, so in effect, there is a HUGE GAP of existence between chimps (or their equivalent, back then) and homo sapiens sapiens that encompasses millions and millions. Homo sapien sapiens represented a breaking point away from the biological, away from 'need', and into the symbolic order, language, where all biological processes are taken over and facilitated by the social domain. When one is hungry, one does not simply 'need' food. They also register in their mind that they need food, not because they are being controlled by some biological thing, but because they are physiologically uncomfortable while hungry. Humans don't have instincts, because instincts are physical reflexes in relation to an environment - which we call an ecology. How else do you explain something as crazy as dancing, if not the purest way in which humans demonstrate the social control over their physiology, bodily movement, etc. which is totally crazy biologically speaking?

[Бай Ганьо]

When one is hungry, one does not simply 'need' food. They also register in their mind that they need food, not because they are being controlled by some biological thing, but because they are physiologically uncomfortable while hungry.
Where does your physiological discomfort come from?

Humans don't have instincts, because instincts are physical reflexes in relation to an environment - which we call an ecology. How else do you explain something as crazy as dancing, if not the purest way in which humans demonstrate the social control over their physiology, bodily movement, etc. which is totally crazy biologically speaking?
What are human eye saccades if not physical reflexes in relation to an environment? Social conventions?

[Rafiq]

Where does your physiological discomfort come from?

I do not understand the point. From physiological processes, of course. That has nothing to do with the point, which is that one is never truly 'with' these physiological processes, one responds to them in a conscious manner. Hunger is not simply need, it is a physiological need that humans respond to in a way that is yes - social. You don't have a hardwired trajectory path to getting a certain type of food and eating it, hunting, and so on. You have to do this consciously, in the same way you are conscious in asking this very question.

The piraha people of the amazon, just as a side note, actually give hunger a moral dimension, because for them it makes them 'tough' (so they value it, but not to the point where it kills them - they obviously still eat). I don't need to talk about religious practices of fasting either, or hunger strikes. I'm waiting for evolutioanry psychologists to one day (I am sure they will do this) give us an 'evolutionary' explanation for hunger strikes in terms of adaptive behavior.


What are human eye saccades if not physical reflexes in relation to an environment? Social conventions?

What is their utility in relation to the human in question? Are they responsible for social phenomena, do they make humans do anything? Or, do they provide information that humans can articulate in a conscious manner? There are various different physiological processes that underlie our existence, but the difference is that these are outside of our conscious (or even unconscious) control (until we can find a way to replace them synthetically). They are outside the domain of consciousness. This is not the case for evolutionary psychologists, who think that human behavior is a matter of a series of physical reflexes in relation to an adapted environment - as it is for animals. Is changes in one's pupil, is that an 'instinct'? Not in the relevant use of the term, because an instinct is a term people describe for 'doing something that you just couldn't consciously control'. But you aren't doing anything while your pupils are changing - well, you are doing something which is responsible for them changing, but you aren't 'not in control of them' where you would otherwise be in control. That is the point. Pupils in that sense, are just like the brain itself - which of course is physical. You need it, it is physical, and it responds to environmental stimuli, but it is wrong to think that it determines anything - it facilitates things, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about them.

The movement of eye saccades is not an 'instinct', it is a given base of human existence, no different then the various other physiological processes, the digestive system, the functioning of the nervous system, and so on. We are dealing with entirely different categories here.

Processes of vision are ontological givens for human existence, as a standard. No one is going to use eye saccades to replace an understanding of social phenomena, no one is going to say that they are responsible for crime or for sexually preferring large hips to small hips. That's why blind people are still just as human, they are just humans deprived of what is basically a utility.

Let me put it more shortly: You don't have any control of your pupils, among various other things, consciously, that is. Meanwhile, the idea that a rapist has no control is laughable, even considering that most rapes are planned. Why the rapist wanted to rape, is a controversy of human consciousness, not human physiology (from which consciousness is only facilitated). Humans don't have instinct, anymore than someone would consider the function of the digestive system instinctual. Instinct refers to behavior, not the bases that which behavior is allowed to be facilitated. I don't know anyone who would call eye saccades a 'behavior'.

[Red Red Chile]

What I find particularly hilarious is that the keenest defenders of religion, are the quickest to defend pseudoscience like evolutionary psychology,

There is nothing inherently 'pseudo-scientific' about evolutionary psychology. If merely persues a potentially Darwinian account of the mind. The problem with it is that, that like Darwinism itself, it has been co-opted by systems of power to justify the status quo - Spencerism etc.



Red Red Chile, who is not even an iota close to being familiar with scientific racism as it exists in the 21st century, sais this. No, sorry, the 'naturalistic fallacy', IS NOT committed by scientific racists of today. These racists pretend to be totally neutral, totally disengaged in any political or social controversy. The solution they give to the problem of racism, is that Africans, both in Africa and the US, etc. need to be given "special help", because the extent of their mental abilities disallow them from taking care of themselves.

That's wrong. Their conclusions were actually quite the opposite - they wanted to justify racial stratification on the basis that some races are naturally smarter than others. The argument presented in books like The Bell Curve is that 'special allowances' made to racial minorities, like affirmative action are pointless because the handicap is innate, not social. It's not that they 'need' help it's that they can't be helped.


So no, they don't outwardly draw any moral conclusions from the conclusions they draw from the employment of their special 'intelligence tests', scientific racists today don't even use the term 'race', they use the term population.

There's a subversive reason for that - they want to disquise their racism by calling it something else. Half their time was spent defending the conception of race it self as legitimate.


Arthur Jenson, Richard Lynn, Unz, none of them are victim to the 'naturalistic fallacy'.

Absolutely they were 'victim to the 'naturalistic fallacy''. They think that black people, or populations, are inherently less able, thereby justifying their lack of economic status.


This does not form the basis of our criticism of these disgusting scum,

You and your 'our' again. Speak your own opinions I'll speak mine.



one could be totally free from the 'naturalistic fallacy' as far as the producing of pseudo-scientific journals, and it would not make these journals any less ideologically engaged, non-neutral, and rabidly reactionary and disgusting.

That's probably true but the naturalist fallacy is the best argument against them because it defeats racism on it's own terms - their argument ultimately implies it's ok to abuse the 'disabled'.


One doesn't need the 'naturalistic fallacy' to support eugenics - in fact, I believe it was Lynn who said that "Back in the 70's, I proposed a modest eugenics program for the Irish", speaking so neutrally, so unengaged. THAT is ideology - ideology does not say 'I am ideology'. It presents itself as something neutral, natural, and compelled unengaged.

The scientific racists, as far as I know, have all been quite open about their policy policy. The Bell Curve, for example, was written to discourage pro minority polices like affirmative action, believe it to be like pouring wine into a leaking cask.


This does not change the partisan, moral, an ideological nature of their 'work',

Noone is suggesting it is?


because the whole fucking point is that these underlay which variables they are willing to take seriously and which ones they are not even capable of thinking might exist. The fact of the matter is that the critique I have leveled so thoroughly, mercilessly and repeatedly against evolutionary psychology and every kind of essentialism, including behavioral genetics, has nothing to do with talk of a 'naturalistic fallacy'

:lol: Well I have not been privy to your 'thorough and mercilessness leveling' of those disciplines so that's got nothing too do with me.


The relationship between these, and bourgeois ideology, has already been well established in previous threads, it has nothing to do with an outwardly 'naturalistic fallacy', the point is that insofar as one approaches the origin of a thing, the nature of that thing, and how they approach it, is determined. The fact of the matter is that if you think that "the problem with the blacks is that they need our help because they are mentally handicapped", as opposed ot black liberation, YOU ARE assuming a partisan social position, and you don't need any amount of fucking data to accept the former thesis spontaneously out of your own implicit racism. Passively pretending there are zero ideological or moral implications from your purportedly 'amoral', 'neutral' science, which by the way is total bullshit - is the epitome of the violent passive aggressiveness that underlies relationships of power and domination. because the fact of the matter is that, no empirical data has justified or sustained the consensus of reactionary pseudoscientific fields regarding the relationship between genes and what is the essential basis of what it means to be human, no amount of empirical evidence ALONE has sustained evolutionary psychology or scientific racism - a plethora of unknown ideological assumptions is necessary for these to be sustained and believed.

What is your understanding of 'the essential basis of what it means to be human'?



Look how this child thinks. Cavemen, he sais. Humans have existed for 200,000 years, humans 200,000 years ago were no less human than us, were no less or more dictated by their physiological constitution as we are. So get this idea out of your head - furthermore, 'cavemen' never existed, there is no evidence homo sapiens sapiens ever inhabited caves. As far as sexual consent was concerned, since humans were just as human back then, and since we have evidence from accounts of hunter-gatherer societies not only in contemporary times but throughout recorded history, every single human society had specific and intricate sexual rituals that facilitated reproductive practices, which did not tolerate rape.

Please provide evidence that this is true.



Every human society was just as 'crazy' and non-animal as the next. That is because at the onset of human existence, humans left the animal kingdom - social processes took over and subsumed all biological ones, so that effectively, no human behavior has any basis in human physiology, because all human physiological processes must be articulated through language - through consciousness.

I don't think you will ever convince anybody, probably not even yourself, that human behavior has absolutely no basis in biology. The idea that social consciousness or a language instinct, or whatever it is you think is so special to humans, means that genes and hormones are irrelevant is pretty farcical and not one i'd consider useful.


Ossifying bourgeois sexuality and sexual consciousness in all its complexity to having some basis in human physiology is the point of evolutionary psychology, and that is partially why it is a baseless pseudoscience.

Probably.


The notion that pre-neolithic humans, were a bunch of animals running around raping is thoroughly anti-scientific and thoroughly unfounded, because humans were NEVER dictated by genes.

Humans probably never were 'directed' by genes. In fact the ability to diverge from one primitive instincts is exactly what is uniquely human among other animals. But to argue that genes have, or never have had, a role in determining behavior in humans, if that is what you are arguing, is absurd.



Yes, the notion DOES in fact justify rape - it does not OUTWARDLY DEFEND rape, but it justifies the existence of rape, by explaining it in such a way, that locates the basis of rape in something that is essential the existence of humans.

It does not justify rape. Murder is in the human DNA too. That not justify it, it just acknowledges the fact that, under certain conditions human's are capable of it.


So you're just fucking wrong - saying that rape has its basis in our genetic constitution, which is by the way in scientific terms a laughably baseless assertion, changes and transforms our understanding of rape - and the understanding we have of the essential basis of rape, underlies the existence of rape. The notion that rape is an inevitability of human sexuality, is already the mainstream contention of society in general, but the notion that it is some kind of physical reflex, an instinct, is not only a scientifically unsupported and baseless assertion, it reproduces more generally the culture of rape and sexual slavery, no matter how willing one is to condemn rape, it DESENSITIZES AND TRIVIALIZES the TRUE HORROR of rape, subsequently, it RIPS AWAY, or attempts to, true and real aspirations toward sexual emancipation.

It does not trivialize rape. Murder is a natural instinct too but nobody would say that it isn't taboo or anti-social.


And I haven't even touched upon why the notion is amply fucking ridiculous - I mean the same clowns who talk about how "Lacan is a charlatan", talk about this shit. Lacan, who explored that dimension of sexuality which was pathological, following Freud, which referred to fantasy, desire, ALL THE COMPLEX PROCESSES OF CONSCIOUSNESS that were previously subject to scientific inquiry by psychologists are sweepingly designated and simplistically conferred some explanation. And why?

Lacan was indeed an idiot.


Because of the increasingly anti-democratic nature of capitalism, we no longer have to consult the intricacies human consciousness in order to understand processes that are directly the result of it. This ossification of human behavior, into some animal category, represents the animalization of the masses, so that there is no epistemological link between the pseudoscientist who already assumes himself to be a free and rational agent, his consciousness, and that of humans in general. This represents the further exclusion of the periphreal human, from processes of power, life that concern them - it represents the decline of taking people unto themselves as all constituent parts of universal reason, it represents their alienation and animalization into blind forces of nature that need to be 'controlled' and 'manipulated' into this or that, i.e. into subjects, ultimately, who need to be REGULARLY controlled where their 'natural instincts' keep re-emerging and taking control. This notion of humans being controlled by an external force, outside of their social relations, that needs to be constantly 'kept in check' is not only a Hobbsean notion, it has its origins in the counter-enlightenment and gothic anti-democraticism best encapsulated by Anglo-Saxons like Thomas Malthus and Francis Galton. As a further means to critique this ideologically, it is also a regularly reoccurring theme in popular culture. In Television and movies, isn't the plot of a secret, dark and mysterious world full of unknowable forces, that has to be confronted by some elite group of heroes, experts who alone are capable of knowing, evermore predominant and popular?

Nobody needs to be controlled. We need to control ourselves.


The notion that rape is in our genes, IS a pathological reflection of the underling ideology/pathology that which society approaches rape.

No it's not.


And this encapsulates, more generally why evolutionary psychology is a pseudoscience, a spontaneous ideological impulse - any idiot, without an iota of familiarity with evolutionary processes, a sophisticated understanding of anthropology, the anatomical origin of homo sapiens sapeins, the time span that which this encompassed, can come to the same conclusions as an evolutionary psychologist, because this pseudoscientiic tautology, this reactionary scholasticism in its practical terms is already present in the essential understanding of how ruling ideology approaches humans - the animalization of man, approaching humans in animal terms, is something Zizek more generally calls survivalism - an emphasis on our 'instincts', how well we can survive in the wild, our 'animal side', and so on. The spiritual animal kingdom is the spiritual human kingdom, today, as Zizek put it. I have gone over this numerous, numerous times already. if he used the fucking search function, he'd know that, but instead, like every baselessly arrogant new user, he is going to pretend to be the herald of some entirely new truth, to enlighten us about shit we've all already gone through so many times. "We evolved from them".

Sorry buddy I hate to break it to you but humans are animals which can indeed explain much of our behavior.


Homo sapien sapiens represented a breaking point away from the biological, away from 'need', and into the symbolic order, language, where all biological processes are taken over and facilitated by the social domain.

What a load of garbage. So basically you're so afraid of biological determinism as used by bourgeois ideologues you've thrown the baby out with the bathwater and become a social determinist. The sad thing is you needn't be afraid of biology or genes.


When one is hungry, one does not simply 'need' food. They also register in their mind that they need food, not because they are being controlled by some biological thing, but because they are physiologically uncomfortable while hungry.

Great insight.


Humans don't have instincts

:rolleyes:


instincts are physical reflexes in relation to an environment - which we call an ecology. How else do you explain something as crazy as dancing, if not the purest way in which humans demonstrate the social control over their physiology, bodily movement, etc. which is totally crazy biologically speaking?

What a quaint argument. Dancing? What kind of dancing are we talking about? Ballroom? There's probably as many different reasons for dancing as there are dance forms. I'd say the main one is because it's fun. How is dancing 'crazy', biologically speaking? Nothing is crazy, biologically speaking. Humans are capable of just about anything. Dancing is probably as a-biological as any other behavior. But I can think of examples where there is a biological component - like for social bonding or mate selection.

[Rafiq]

Everyone, do you see this? Do you see how he posts? What is this, if not trolling? This fucking HALF ASSED, CAUSUAL posting style. Where do you get the confidence to respond? He is like a hysteric who keeps bombarding someone, who he clearly understands is going to school him, with a bunch of nonsense because "na na na I can". He's like a little kid acting stupid around his parents so as to exploit the crevices and intricacies of freedom where their parents set restrictive standards. It's almost fucking disgusting how I have been conferred the role of a master, a teacher, and this guy is literally like my student. I literally fucking feel violated. Are you a masochist, or something? Do you enjoy having what you say be shut down like this? You CLEARLY don't devote proper effort into developing your arguments, so what in effect are you doing?

It's like he's begging to be shown how painfully wrong he is, "Well fuck bruh, I don't know, I'm just gunna say things cuz dats what i'm confident in thinking". He lacks the modesty to admit he isn't certain about what he's talking about whatsoever. I won't stop, as promised. Either that, or you so confidently speak with authority, because what you say, in your mind "sounds reasonable". You let a BIG OTHER do the talking for you, i.e. ruling legitimate ideology. You TALK as if you have some fucking BIG SECRET to reveal, like you are in a position of authority to just fucking DISMISS me and give me these fucking one-liners: "No, u wrong, lul". WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU? WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU TO SAY THIS? I put EFFORT and CONSIDERATION into my posts, if I say something, I BACK IT UP WITH AN ARGUMENT that takes into account EVEN a potential crticism you may have of it. Do you do the same?

Are you good at arguing? Tell me, ARE YOU ENGAGING THIS DISCUSSION maturely and sufficiently for the topic at hand? TELL US, I want you to LITERALLY try and say you are. Fucking god fucking damnit, I put HOURS into these, I put so much effort, AND THIS IS HOW HE RESPONDS? THIS? Like just from that alone, YOU ALREADY LOSE this discussion. End of story, you fucking lose. Now, this is about making sure NOTHING YOU SAY you get away with.


There is nothing inherently 'pseudo-scientific' about evolutionary psychology. If merely persues a potentially Darwinian account of the mind. The problem with it is that, that like Darwinism itself, it has been co-opted by systems of power to justify the status quo - Spencerism etc.

There is no comparison between the field of evolutionary psychology and Darwinsim, because Darwin never made any pretense to the psychological and the social. What you fail to understand is that evolutionary psychology, the offshoot of sociology, was wrought not from - as it was from Darwin, real empirical observation or the onset of scientifically assessing prepossesses that were previously occupied ideologically. Let me put it this way: Darwin's understanding of the biological domain, was scientific not because he asserted a set of empirical facts, but because he simply opened up the space that allowed us to scientifically assess biological processes, whose empirical existence was not at the least bit controversial whatsoever. Evolutionary psychologists are not doing this with the psychological domain, they were REACTING to the science of psychology/sociology even, and replacing it with a pseudo-scientific paradigm whose premise is not only unsupported empirically, but is totally superstitious. The only reason necessary to understand why a "Darwinian account" of the mind is nonsensical, because you are using this same mind to make pretenses to its innate and inherent qualities - and yet, you will never be able to form a Darwinian account for your own epistemology, that which sustains your ability to talk about "the human mind". This is what you don't understand: There is a space of consciousness you are occupying, that you will never be able to explain on evolutionary terms. And that quite simply explains why evolutionary psychologists, or their apologists like you, have private superstitions one way or another: Because this space of consciousnesses, so tell us the evolutionary psychologists, is either "not subject to scientific inquiry" by merit of their positivist filth, and this is the space that which the superstitions replace with "The soul" or "the human spirit", which is perfectly compatible with evolutionary-psychology filth. But at the onset of Marxism, whose psychological arm is Lacanian psychoanalysis, there is no room for the human spirit, because Lacan DOES deal precisely with this domain of consciousness, scientifically. In effect what you say is just as stupid as saying "Social darwinism pursues a Darwinian account of society, it's just been co-opted by the system" - HOW can you avoid this argument, honestly? How do you CONSISTENTLY oppose this? You claim that I am letting my "biases" get in the way of real sciences, how is that any different from what you are doing regarding social Darwinism?

In addition, nothing in the paradigm of evolutionary psychology allows you to pick and choose what is, and what isn't reactionary, because the "science" behind it is identical: THE SAME pseudoscientific methods, which lead us to the conclusion that "Men preferring lighter skin, might be an evolutionary adaptation", lead us also to the conclusion that "men prefer more masculine faces during ovulation as a result of evolutionary selection". You can't say one is co-opted by the system, and one is not, solely because of your self-declared political position, both are just as consistent as the other. To go even further, the reason it is specifically pseudoscientific is because, obviously it fails the qualification for science by Marxists. But what about the qualification of science for POSITIVISTS, who regularly call historical materialism pseudoscientific because it is unfalsifiable? Indeed by the same qualifications, evolutionary psychology is unfalsifiable, that means that even by bourgeois standards of what constitutes science, i.e. their own standards, it is pseudoscientific.

The reason why evolutionary psychology becomes popular nad prevalent, is because it assumes that its premise, is a given, is simply a logical conclusion of Darwinism, which is that the essential basis of human consciousness, what we call "human behavior" in modern society, must have been selected for as a series of evolutionary adaptations. It ignores the fact that behaviors that are selected for for animals, are purely physical reflexes in relation to a set ecology, animals have habitats which they are hard-wired to conform to - the only 'human habitat', conversely, is produced by humans themselves - because humans define the conditions of their own existence. When animals select for this or that behavior, it is no different from a robot - it is purely mechanical, it is a PHYSICAL REFLEX they do not consciously control, or even are consciously aware of, they are "with" their biological needs, that is what they are - they are no different from automata. The more social an animal becomes, the more varied its behavior is allowed to become - but still, only within the context of a pre-defined ecological habitat that which their physical reflexes are selected to adapt to. Humans represent a CUTTING POINT, where we do not have instincts, or physical reflexes that determine our behavior - we possess complete and total control of our bodily movements where those bodily movements for us constitute human behavior. The domain that which we are allowed to control for this behavior, was not 'selected' for, for this assumes that the complexities of human consciousness as it is historical and social, pre-exists in the brain, when in reality, the brain merely FACILITATES the social dimension. Humans are not like ants, who are 'hard-wired' to act in a social way, humans act in a social way, because this social dimension IS ITS OWN dimension, which subsumse all others. That is why humans have fields of knowledge they call "biology" in the first place - how can one even talk or think about biology, if the contours of the same consciousness is a biological entity? But more on this later. The underlying point is: It is pseudoscientific, because it does not properly prove the hypothesis that it starts out with, by correctly controlling for the necessary variables. It observes real empirical phenomena, but it does not prove scientifically how this phenomena was 'selected' for, they don't even prove how it is innate empirically by locating it physiologically, and subsequently proving that this physiological structure is, and always will be responsible for X behavior. It attempts to make, in other words, ossified physiological basis's for ABSTRACTIONS. There is no 'innate' predisposition, for example, for rape, if the ways in which men rape, historically, alter and change in relation to their social totality. If rape was some innate instinct, as they say, then the expression of rape would not be able to vary as it does - otherwise, how does one isolate the phenomena of "rape" that can be abstracted from its real context, even as it relates to man's consciousness? They do this, of course, by attributing to ABSTRACTIONS IN THOUGHT, essential qualities - i.e. ideas and concepts are given an ontologically definite basis. That is why it is superstitious and pseudoscientific. The reason as to why it gained predominance, again, is because of how it relates to anti-democratic discourse, the notion of qualifying the inner essence of man's consciousness/being in a way that is external from his consciousness and being, outside of his social being. Because none other than men are qualifying in the first place, this is perfectly synonymous with the anti-democratic pathology, that men and women, or even onself (I will get to that ) is controlled by some mysterious force that is external from the contours of their own consciousness. The paradox begins when we ask: What is the evolutionary purpose, specifically, that can explain why humans are engaging in evolutionary psychology as a pseudoscience? What evolutionary psychological structure, innate process, is responsible for humans thinking about evolutionary psychology in the first place? This is clearly a paradox.


It's not that they 'need' help it's that they can't be helped.

You're wrong, Richard Lynn, among others, CLEARLY AND SPECIFICALLY state that THEY CAN be helped, just that the ways in which they are being helped, do not properly help them because they do not take into account their innate intellectual disabilities. Instead of quoting the racists individually, which will take time, I'll quote for you wikipedia which summaries, and leaves sources for, their views on the matter:

Jensen and Rushton wrote that research has shown that in a group with a lower average some individuals will be above the average of other groups. They also argue that when society is blamed for disparities in average group achievements that instead result from biological differences, the result is demands for compensation from the less successful group which the more successful group feel is unjustified, causing mutual resentment.[111] Linda Gottfredson similarly argues that denying real biological differences instead causes people to seek something to blame, resulting in hostility between groups. She furthermore argues that "virtually all the victim groups of genocide in the Twentieth century had relatively high average levels of achievement".[112] Gottfredson has also disputed that a lower-achieving group gains from denying or concealing real biological differences. An increasingly complex society built on the assumption than everyone can do equally well means that they who do not have this ability have increasing trouble functioning in most areas of life. They need various forms of special assistance, which is not possible as long as the existence of the need is denied[/B

So clearly you are wrong, they ARE in fact saying that it is in the best interests of the 'less intelligent' races, to accept their 'biological basis', because according to them, from the onset of doing this, one can 'work past these differences and help certain groups where such help is needed'. So honestly, you don't know what you're talking about - I am so familiar with these motherfuckers that it is literally not surprising why at the onset of becoming familiar with their work, people find them 'reasonable' - they simply aren't familiar with their arguments. But even assuming that this was untrue, that would not make them violate the so-called "naturalisitc fallacy", because they don't have to say a damned thing about whether they think these 'biological differences' are good, meant to be, or cosmically justified. In their mind they are simply pointing out "empirical facts" in a neutral manner, the conclusion of which is up to us. If you accept essentailism in any way, then you accept scientific racism, it's that simple - it is the logical conclusion of essentialism. Otherwise you are being inconsistent.


Half their time was spent defending the conception of race it self as legitimate.

No, they refer to populations, as races, and there is clearly disparity in the phenotypical characteristics of populations who have been separated for tens of thousands of years. This is what you fail to understand - if the 'innate lesser intelligence' among black people, is just as predominant as the phenotype for curly or 'kinky' hair, as well as black skin, that sais nothing about race being an 'invalid' category for them, because they are clearly recognizing that there is such a thing as black people, who share a closer geographic origin, that have black skin, on average thicker hair, to an extent different facial bone structure, and so on. That is not controversial, it is only controversial because the bourgeois-liberals have to inconsistently accept that "biology accounts for the essential basis of human behavior", while at the same time deny that 'different populations', who already have clearly genetic differences in their physical constitution, do not have common 'intelligence'. If what we call the essential basis of human behavior, consciousness, is genetic or innate in anyway, then it is a genotype/phenotype (which they haven't located empirically), whose predominance among 'populations' should be treated in the same way that other physical characteristics, like hair color, height, skin color, bone structure, is also treated. This is an inconsistency which the scientific racists point out, which is why scientific racism IS NOT retreating or some marginal thing - it is growing in the fields that which it belongs, so-called 'psychometrics'. Sceintific racism is a logical conclusion to any essentialism.


They think that black people, or populations, are inherently less able, thereby justifying their lack of economic status.

Do you hear how ridiculous you are? An evolutionary psychologist who sais that rape is owed to some biological reason, necessarily justifies rape because he is explaining why rape occurs, in your mind? Scientific racists, are merely pointing out in their mind WHY black people lack 'high economic status', they are not saying that they should lack this status, but that for example eugenics programs need to be introduced for them, so that they can 'select away' their inherent stupidity. This is what Lynn suggested for the Irish in the 70's, which hilariously enough would be ridiculous in the context of 2016 because they are not as marginalized as before. I know you are salviating hearing this, you probably agree with them. Admit it, you find the idea appealing, 'reasonable' at least.


You and your 'our' again. Speak your own opinions I'll speak mine.

Did Rafiq derive his 'opinion' from his own physiology? Is it written in my fucking DNA? Was it selected for, in an evolutionary manner, the specific 'opinions' Rafiq has in 2016, in your mind? I, in defiance of conventional postmodern etiquette, refuse to "speak for my" opinion, BECAUSE IT NOT "my" opinion, these are views that are socially grounded, wrought from access to universal reason, which place me squarely in a real paradigm, a real tradition and camp, which is irreducible to any idiosynchrasy inherent to my personality, or my physiology, and the list goes on. This is what you fail to understand - when one has an 'opinion', one relates to views and positions that are already social, already behind the confines of their own existence. Furthermore, one's own identity is social itself, so as a Marxist, I merely recognize where this identity belongs. Because you have no notion of any of this, because you are a child who likes to talk shit because they think they'll get in their last word, this all must be quite beyond you. I DO NOT speak to myself, because there is nothing particular about Rafiq, which makes this controversy solely one that is unique to him, my views are nothing more than the logical conclusion, extrapolation of a long tradition which is irreducible to any single individual.


That's probably true but the naturalist fallacy is the best argument against them because it defeats racism on it's own terms - their argument ultimately implies it's ok to abuse the 'disabled'.

The naturalistic fallacy is seldom ever reserved for 'distinguished' pseudosceintists, but to the conventional wisdom of the masses, who think that because something is natural, it is therefore good and often times inevitable rather than purely arbitrary. This is the ignorance of the masses, it has nothing to do with the arguments of scientific racists, who simply say that "blacks are inferior". Whatever conclusoin they draw from this, IN ACCUSING THEM OF THE NATURALISTIC FALLACY, YOU ARE NOT CHALLENGING ANYTHING, you are perhaps targeting hte conclusions they might draw from this 'observation', but in doing so you are put squarley in the camp of the scientific racists who already do this. The reactionaries are immune to this "fallacy", because in their mind they are describing empirical reality, they are desscribing certain inevitabilities of life, whether they like those inevitabilities or not is irrelavent to their arguments.


The Bell Curve, for example, was written to discourage pro minority polices like affirmative action, believe it to be like pouring wine into a leaking cask.

And if you were even close to familiar with the argument, you'd know in effect THEY ARE saying that they are unengaged, neutral on the matter. According to them their opposition these polices stems from neutral scientific inquiry, not the other way around: You say that they are racists, and therefore they write the bell curve and oppose affirmative action to justify this racism. But that's not what they say, they say that they accrue all of these 'neutral' findings, as scientists, and this leads them to the conclusion of both opposing affirmative action and accused of being racists, because "Science isn't PC.".[B] You do little, if anything, to rebuke my point.


Noone is suggesting it is?

You insinuate precsiely this, when you say that the naturalistic fallacy


Well I have not been privy to your 'thorough and mercilessness leveling' of those disciplines

Which results from nothing more than your neglection of using the fucking search button. If you had been privy them, you wouldn't be able to be making the arguemnts that you are, you would at least attempt to TRY and rebuke my counter-arguments, which are already estabilished. You haven't, you've simply touted the most predictable bullshit, which I have demolished so many times over and it literally looks so pathetic on your part. You know what goes through my mind? The sheer naivety of you. Like child you have no idea what's in store for you and these little 'arguments'. You'll see, though. You come on this forum, without an iota of humlity with you, and you assume that you're somehow this game-changing figure, as though you're the first person to introduce any of these arguments. You don't just jump into a fucking forum and start touting complete bullshit, especially when other users tell you to use the god damned fucking search button to get an idea of the nature of the arguments you're trying to oppose. Instead you run in here blindly, with your arms flailing around, shamelessly with your utter ignorance, and now you're paying the price for that - I've literally changed your life to the point where you are going to spend a lot of time with me, in this thread, and in the other thread. This is what you get, you trapped yourself, and as long as you are on this forum, this is all you'll ever be able to do. You could have came to the forum, admitted your lack of knowledge, you could have been humble from there, but you didn't. This is where your baseless confidence in what is essentially uncritically accepted ignorance has led you, this is all you will ever be on this forum: Rafiq's adversary. So again, enjoy your new role here.


What is your understanding of 'the essential basis of what it means to be human'?

The essential basis of what it means to be human, is death drive, what Freud called but misinterpreted (Here is Freud's basic stupidity - falling back from his real observations, i.e. nonsense like eros and thanatos). Death drive is not what you think it is - it is not simply the desire to irrationally kill or die. Instead, what Lacan calls death drive, refers to a space between 'nature' and 'culture' which defines the essential basis of what it means to be human. This drive, refers to a 'crazy' kind of insistence beyond both life and death, in insistence on repetition, irreducible to any kind of survival utility, a total catastrophe is responsible for human existence, probably. Death drive, the sphere that is neither nature nor culture, but something in between, is best encapsulated by the screaming cries of a baby at birth. No other ape, no other mammal, or even animal in general, cries so irrationally and helplessly at birth, and why? Because other animals, no matter how social (i.e. chimps), their basis of existence is hard-wired. This 'wailing' at birth, represents the utter naked helplessness of the child, subject to further qualification by latching onto some kind of social/symbolic order that would allow it to define its own basis of existence, its own meaning. One only becomes human, by mimicking other humans, there is no dimension to being 'human', that is outside of this mimicry, outside of one's total subjugation to what Lacan calls the symbolic order, the means by which biological processes are facilitated by the social. Other animals, no matter how social, have varying degrees of physical reflex that are responsible for some of their behaviors. THERE IS NOT ONE physical reflex that is responsible for the contours of human social behavior, because one cannot assume the role of a zoologist investigating 'human behavior' and 'human instincts', YOU ARE A PART of this, even as you are pretending to play the zoologist and taxomonize them, YOU ARE ENGAGING in 'human behavior', what we call human social life. Kant said something which encapsulated this: Humans are the animal, which needs a master. No other animal, not chimps with their alpha males either, need a master to constitute themselves. Here, "master" does not mean domineering power figure, but in Lacanian terms master-signifier, i.e. humans need to be 'controlled' by the social totality they constitute, by their inter-relations toward each other, i.e. language. Zizek summarizes this quite nicely:

A naked man is the same nonsense as a shaved ape: without language (and tools and...), man is a crippled animal - it is this lack which is supplemented by symbolic institutions and tools, so that the point made obvious today, in popular culture figures like Robocop (man is simultaneously super-animal and crippled), holds from the very beginning. How do we pass from "natural" to "symbolic" environs? This passage is not direct, one cannot account for it within a continuous evolutionary narrative: something has to intervene between the two, a kind of "vanishing mediator," which is neither Nature nor Culture - this In-between is not the spark of logos magically conferred on homo sapiens, enabling him to form his supplementary virtual symbolic environs, but precisely something which, although it is also no longer nature, is not yet logos, and has to be "repressed" by logos - the Freudian name for this monstrous freedom, of course, is death drive. It is interesting to note how philosophical narratives of the "birth of man" are always compelled to presuppose a moment in human (pre)history when (what will become) man, is no longer a mere animal and simultaneously not yet a "being of language," bound by symbolic Law; a moment of thoroughly "perverted," "denaturalized", "derailed" nature which is not yet culture. In his anthropological writings, Kant emphasized that the human animal needs disciplinary pressure in order to tame an uncanny "unruliness" which seems to be inherent to human nature - a wild, unconstrained propensity to insist stubbornly on one's own will, cost what it may. It is on account of this "unruliness" that the human animal needs a Master to discipline him: discipline targets this "unruliness," not the animal nature in man.

In Hegel's Lectures on Philosophy of History, a similar role is played by the reference to "negroes": significantly, Hegel deals with "negroes" before history proper (which starts with ancient China), in the section entitled "The Natural Context or the Geographical Basis of World History": "negroes" stand there for the human spirit in its "state of nature," they are described as a kind of perverted, monstrous child, simultaneously naive and extremely corrupted, i.e. living in the pre-lapsarian state of innocence, and, precisely as such, the most cruel barbarians; part of nature and yet thoroughly denaturalized; ruthlessly manipulating nature through primitive sorcery, yet simultaneously terrified by the raging natural forces; mindlessly brave cowards... [3] This In-between is the "repressed" of the narrative form (in this case, of Hegel's "large narrative" of world-historical succession of spiritual forms): not nature as such, but the very break with nature which is (later) supplemented by the virtual universe of narratives. According to Schelling, prior to its assertion as the medium of the rational Word, the subject is the "infinite lack of being /unendliche Mangel an Sein/," the violent gesture of contraction that negates every being outside itself. This insight also forms the core of Hegel's notion of madness: when Hegel determines madness to be a withdrawal from the actual world, the closing of the soul into itself, its "contraction," the cutting-off of its links with external reality, he all too quickly conceives of this withdrawal as a "regression" to the level of the "animal soul" still embedded in its natural environs and determined by the rhythm of nature (night and day, etc.). Does this withdrawal, on the contrary, not designate the severing of the links with the Umwelt, the end of the subject's immersion into its immediate natural environs, and is it, as such, not the founding gesture of "humanization"? Was this withdrawal-into-self not accomplished by Descartes in his universal doubt and reduction to Cogito, which, as Derrida pointed out in his "Cogito and the history of madness", [4] also involves a passage through the moment of radical madness?

The problem with evolutionary psychologists, is that they assume man is in fact not a crippled animal, but that the essential basis of what it means to be what we call human, is something people "selected" for in an evolutionary way, i.e. something they already have outside the social/symbolic order. Human sexual practice, or human "behavior" (in disgusting ecological terms) in general, among other things, is now deemed to not only have an innate basis (which is baseless), but was apparently "selected". This is totally nonsensical, because the domain that is responsible for this "human behavior" is something that humans themselves are either consciously or subconsciously already immersed in, because OUTSIDE OF THE SOCIAL ORDER, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A "HUMAN", but a very crippled person who would not even be able to walk on two feet. You are talking to me right now. We are talking about "humans". THIS VERY definition of the "human", what we conceive as human, is social. Otherwise, why are you talking to me about something you should not even be aware of, something that should simply, passively define the conditions of your existence? The point is quite simple: What is the PRACTICAL PURPOSE behind evolutioanry psychology? It is a scholasticism which attempts to explain phenomena in our society, in terms that give this phenomena an inevitable or primordial basis. It is almost a knee jerk reflex today - go on google, search "Why do we like scary movie" and I promise you, you will be given some pseudo-evolutionary explanation as to why scary movies are popular in our society. In doing this, they leap-frog over 200 years of Western philosophy, the highest spheres of intellectual achievement, and replace it with the most crass and juvenile narratives of human existence. So degenerate is our society, that over 200 years ago, in this very same domain of qualifying humans, thinkers were ahead of us. The assumption that we are living in the end of history, that present day capitalist relations constitute some inevitable human habitat or ecology, when these relations are not born out of some static balanced relationship with nature, but are constituted by none other than humans themselves. It is just like how Marx attacked the older political economists: THE MINUTE you introduce the historical dimension ,their scholasticism of capital falls a part. Neuroscientists accommodate for this by calling it the "Sapient Paradox", which is laughable considering only philistines think this is a paradox, i.e. who presuppose nonsensical notions of human essential existence that doesn't even fucking take into account historical change.


Please provide evidence that this is true.

Show me an example of one recorded human society, that did not have social-sexual rituals, i.e. total subservience of sexual processes to the social totality that clearly defined the parameters of what you can and cannot do in sexual terms. Just one example please. My point is quite simple: Attempts to find a primordial past where there were "pure humans" bound by instinct, is impossible, because humans were always just as human as they are today, they were never dictated by "instinct", there was never a "pure human nature", not 150,000 years ago and not 2,000 years ago, the basis of human survival always had to be facilitated in a social manner, and not even the will to survive is necessarily innate: A human society that can successfully reproduce its conditions of existence, and therefore the humans constituting it, is the human society that endures. The will and ability to survive, is facilitated and even justified in social terms. Outside of this social framework, one very well may be dead. Every human society was just as crazy as the next: Show me ONE recorded hunter-gatherer society, that did not have crazy rituals, myths, dances, and so on. There was none, because physiology is not responsible for the essential basis of variance in human qualities, historical/social totalities are.


The idea that social consciousness or a language instinct, or whatever it is you think is so special to humans, means that genes and hormones are irrelevant is pretty farcical and not one i'd consider useful.

The example I previously used was:

Genes are not a factor in behavior, because the variance in human behavior is between humans and between humans as historical subjects, not between humans and animals. In other words, where genes are a 'distinguishing' factor in behavioral variance, they work as trivialities. But genes have nothing to do with it - for example, you may have a genetic variation that makes the taste of broccoli shitty. You will not eat broccoli. But you can't say that the gene determined why you won't eat broccoli, because the act of eating broccoli is a social choice - this medium that is human consciousness, i.e. not eating things because they do not taste pleasurable, dominates every and all biological processe. For example? Why not a religion that tells you to eat that which tastes bad, for discipline or something? Biology won't account for that. So genes will only account for things that are trivialities.

It is like how having curly hair may 'account' for your identity by merit of how people treat you for having curly hair. The gene didn't account for shit, the SIGNIFICANCE is a social, historical one.

Humans are not 'biological' cateogires, in the same way that animals are not chemical/atomic categories. Animals cannot talk about and question their biological constitution, derive practical knowledge from this and manipulate it. If we can engage in genetic engineering, how are we determined by our genes in ANY way? We are not, because there is a dimension, a higher 'category' which subsumes all other categories: That of the social dimension, the historical one.

Why can you not address this, head on? Because you talk out of your ass and you are far bellow the standards that are necessary to engage this discussion. Firstly, let's get something clear: Not only is social consciousness "special to humans", IT IS UNIQUE ONLY to humans. No other animal possesses what we call consciousnesses, in any conceivable way, not even chimps or dolphins. These animals are dictated almost purely by certain proximity, by certain stimuli of pre-conceived biological structures. The point is simple: If what we call "human behavior" had ANY basis in biology, then that would entail there is balance between humans and the natural world around us, WHICH IS THE POINT of naturally selecting for human behavior. This balance is called an ecology, it refers to the relationship between an animal, and how well it can adapt to a certain environment. But there is no balance, humans regularly change the world around them, and constitute their own conditions of existence, insofar as their bodies can physically handle it. The notion that "genes and hormones" are relevant in this regard, is a both tautological and refers to an ontological fallacy: It assumes that meaningful understanding of human historical, social variance, can be explained by juxtaposing humans to animals. This animalization of man, is in tune with our degrading and eroding democratic standards, it is not coincidental that it is in this same epoch where an explosive rise in "animal rights", sensitivity toward animal welfare, has increased: Because humans today are now lowered to the level of animals, in the eyes of ruling ideology. Today the triumph of Communism IS THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH DRIVE, this freedom from the social order, that temporarily unleashes the "crazy", unstable element in between our physical constitution and our culture, death drive is expressed in every moment of historical change and revolution (and not war, as Freud thought).

Hormones and genes are significant only in arbitrary ways. That is to say, when the margin becomes closer and closer, then human variance in how humans act, becomes more and more arbitrary. Hormones and genes don't "determine" ANYTHING, however, they simply can influence the outcome of phenomena which is already totally arbitrary, such as, for example, one's favorite candy, or some stupid habit/gesture you do like a tick, one that has no historical or social variational significance whatsoever. Of course hormones can influence human sexualtiy, BUT ONLY WITHIN THE PRE-DEFINED FRAMEWORK AND CONTEXT of an already socially established sexuality, standard of sexuality. Say that, in some society, having long fingers is gendered to be female. That you are born with longer fingers does not "determine" anything, outside of the context of how society qualifies you. So in effect, certain hormonal imbalances can influence your sexuality, how horny you are, but they don't determine the context or substrate, they merely accentuate what is already defined by the social order. Hormones, for example, can make you act more 'submissive', BUT THE VERY ACT of being submissive, is only meaningful in social terms - in a different historical context, these same hormonal imbalances can make you act in an entirely different way. There is no telling what one gene, or hormonal imbalance, would be expressed as in Tribal afghanistan, or in the Indus River valley civilization where it is associated with something in 2016. So genes and hormones have nothing to do with human behavior, INSOFAR as that behavior is an ontological category. The true variation that is important, is variance in one's social being, one's consciousness. And anyone who knows any black people know, black people ARE a separate historical people, occupy a separate historical trajectory path from whites. Black people in other words do not share the same social being as whites, they are like a different nationality, with a different language and a different "culture" (stupid word). What it means to be black, in relation to the black man's consciousness is what is important, and this is what must be addressed before any talk of "biological differences". The same goes for any other kind of essentialism. You claim that this notion, finally, is not useful. Well your standards of utility, being both a reactionary and a bourgeois ideologue, are quite different than we Communists who seek to transform the social basis of life. Of course it is not useful to you - you who is practically inclined to reproduce the existing order rather than change it.

The notion that humans are "biological" subjects is pure superstition, because it gives "biology" a moral and ontological meaning. In other words, it's just another "theme", no different from some religious myth. IN reality biology is MEANINGLESS, it is just as meaningful as a rock. It is not as though ultimately we are "biological" subjects, i.e. there is a hidden "biological need" that is controlling our behavior. That is even more stupid than the Christian notion of the soul - it is simply superstitious and wrong. Categories go like this: First the psychological, then the social, then the biological, then the chemical, then the atomic, quantic, and it goes on. Conflating the first two with the third category is just as stupid as conflating the third category with variance in the fourth: These are DIFFERENT SUBSUMING ORDERS. The biological HAS NO MEANING, an animal does not "try" to reproduce itself any more than a rock "tries" to reproduce itself (at a chemical/atomic level), it simply DOES, by merit of its existence. Meaning is a human category, so extrapolating what is human meaning (why we do things) to biological processes, which are totally meaningless, arbitrary, born from catastrophe, accidents totally meaningless accidents, something external from the domain of our consciousness, is the highpoint of clownish philistinism.

Do you even know how, for example, the lowest biological unit perhaps, a cell reproduces itself? It simply does, by merit of existing. It doesn't "want" to, just like a tiger dosen't "want" to survive, it does not "want" anything, it just does, because it is like a machine - a computer. Computer don't "want" to do anything, they simply do, like a rock. For Darwin, an animal survives, and is therefore fit. But for Spencer, and neo-spencerists, an animal already has certain morally pre-conceived qualities, so an animal is fit, and therefore survives. There is a difference. For Darwin survival is pure proximity, it simply means you weren't killed by some stupid accident. For spencer ,survival is like an actual, meaningful willful 'drive' organisms have. In reality, if an organism is not hardwired to properly reproduce itself, it simply dies. There are plenty of examples of this happening due to individual mutations, as well as whole species. So the fact that organisms strive to survive, (non humans, that is), is simply because they are hard-wired to, because they are allowed to exist. Humans, CONVERSELY, give survival MEANING, we JUSTIFY our lives, in our very social intercourse. That is not biological, that is social/psychological.


Probably

So why do you keep arguing otherwise, if you're not even properly fucking certain?


But to argue that genes have, or never have had, a role in determining behavior in humans, if that is what you are arguing, is absurd

What constitutes "human behavior" is the point of controversy. I claim genes have no influence on this, because this is a social/hisotircal category. The arbitrary variation betwen already pre-ordained behavior, such as one's favorite candy, can be influenced by ones genetic composition, but again, the GENE doesn't determine anything, HOW YOU ARTICULATE it does. Again, that brocolli tastes bad because of a certain genetic variant DOES NOT MEAN your genes were responsible for not eating brocoli.


Murder is in the human DNA too. That not justify it, it just acknowledges the fact that, under certain conditions human's are capable of it.

That is total fucking bullshit, because, is typing on Revleft in your DNA? Is watching TV in your DNA? Did you select for it? The point is: Being capable of something, and attributing that something to some external process, is quite different. That someone is capable of something does not mean this was determined by their physiological composition. Are humans CAPABLE, physiologically, of murder? Yes, but the reason as to why they murder has nothing to fucking do with some innate or instinctual substrate, some innate physiological process. The closest example racists tried to use was the prevalence of the MAOA2 genetic variation accounting for 'aggression' and crime. Even though Chinese both in the US and in China have the same amount as black people do. In fact, it was found that the genetic variation DOES NOT in fact determine aggression, it only becomes significant if one is traumatized in childhood, and furthermore, it refers to the storing of some chemical build up in the brain, i.e. it regulates the production of a certain chemical in the brain, and variation in it can influence people to release 'behavior' in an "all at once" manner, i.e. build up and then explode. But this doesn't determine the ANGER, or "aggression", it merely relates to its expression. This anger and aggression is only socially relevant. It can be expressed in our society BOTH through gambling or murder, but the propensity to either murder or gamble, does not come from anything inside of you, it comes from the social meaning of both of these things. IF ONE DID NOT have the inclination to be violent, which is not innate at all, but again purely social, to begin with, it wouldn't be there.


Murder is a natural instinct too

"Murder is a natural instinct" he sais, with the argument being "Well, just cuz rape is natural don't mean it's trivialized, murder is natural too". WHAT? AS IF THIS NOTION IS UNCONTROVERSIAL? Murder is a NATURAL INSTINCT? EXCUSE ME? It is NOT a fucking "natural instinct". You claim it is a natural instinct? PROVE it! Simply PROVE it, empirically, show us how murder is a "natural instinct", or even an instinct AT ALL! Show us! What's that, you can't, properly? So why do you say it is a "natural instinct"? "Because murder's always been around". What you say is so fucking stupid, empirically speaking it has no authority over notions of the Christian soul giving us free will. You say "murder's always been around". But what is murder? The act of ending another person's life, which can be done by making it so they physically do not exist - WHY DOES THAT HAVE to be a natural instinct, to explain it, something which in proximity IS SO SIMPLE. You don't need any fucking "natural instinct" to justify murder, because murder, whether done in a fit of anger or intentionally, is justifiable and explainable in terms of the social order in question, the symbolic order, NOT any kind of innate physiological structure. In other words, a human mode of production is SELF-SUFFICIENT UNTO ITSELF, it does not need any external causation, each social order, each mode and way of human life, and reproducing this life, is self-sufficient unto itself, has its own inner-logic and basis of existence, which is irreducible to the biological composition of its constituents. All evidence shows that there is tremendous variance between hunter-gatherers across the world. Is this variance owed to physiological factors? No, because there is no "set" means by which a social order will reproce itself: IT IS kind of like Darwinism - the propensity for a social order to reproduce itself, determines whether it can go on existing. If it cannot properly reproduce itself, it will be subject to further qualification (which is the point of history), and if it does not change, it can literally just lead to the death of every single human constituting it.

So in effect you trivialize both murder and rape, and nothing more with your stupid example. My argument stands, EXACTLY as it applies to murder:

Yes, the notion DOES in fact justify murder - it does not OUTWARDLY DEFEND murder, but it justifies the existence of murder, by explaining it in such a way, that locates the basis of murder in something that is essential the existence of humans. So you're just fucking wrong - saying that murder has its basis in our genetic constitution, which is by the way in scientific terms a laughably baseless assertion, changes and transforms our understanding of murder - and the understanding we have of the essential basis of murder, underlies the existence of murder. The notion that murder is an inevitability of human existence, is already the mainstream contention of society in general, but the notion that it is some kind of physical reflex, an instinct, is not only a scientifically unsupported and baseless assertion, it reproduces more generally the culture of violence and the meaning of murder in social contexts, no matter how willing one is to condemn murder, it DESENSITIZES AND TRIVIALIZES the TRUE HORROR of murder subsequently, it RIPS AWAY, or attempts to, true and real aspirations toward a society free from repressive violence. And I haven't even touched upon why the notion is amply fucking ridiculous.

Because of the increasingly anti-democratic nature of capitalism, we no longer have to consult the intricacies human consciousness in order to understand processes that are directly the result of it. This ossification of human behavior, into some animal category, represents the animalization of the masses, so that there is no epistemological link between the pseudoscientist who already assumes himself to be a free and rational agent, his consciousness, and that of humans in general. This represents the further exclusion of the periphreal human, from processes of power, life that concern them - it represents the decline of taking people unto themselves as all constituent parts of universal reason, it represents their alienation and animalization into blind forces of nature that need to be 'controlled' and 'manipulated' into this or that, i.e. into subjects, ultimately, who need to be REGULARLY controlled where their 'natural instincts' keep re-emerging and taking control. This notion of humans being controlled by an external force, outside of their social relations, that needs to be constantly 'kept in check' is not only a Hobbsean notion, it has its origins in the counter-enlightenment and gothic anti-democraticism best encapsulated by Anglo-Saxons like Thomas Malthus and Francis Galton. As a further means to critique this ideologically, it is also a regularly reoccurring theme in popular culture. In Television and movies, isn't the plot of a secret, dark and mysterious world full of unknowable forces, that has to be confronted by some elite group of heroes, experts who alone are capable of knowing, evermore predominant and popular?

The notion that murder is in our genes, IS a pathological reflection of the underling ideology/pathology that which society approaches murder.


Lacan was indeed an idiot.

Red Red Chile, who has never read or meaningfully understood Lacan, who LITERALLY IS JUST TALKING OUT OF HIS FUCKING ASS sais this. You say things so fucking PASSIVELY, like, are you typing wiht half your brain up your ass or something? Are you literally just throwing shit at this point? Are you not even ENGAGED in this discussion, are you just TROLLING at this FUCKING point? "Lacan was indeed" he sais, INDEED an idiot, as though he is in a position to qualify Lacan IN ANY sense.


Nobody needs to be controlled. We need to control ourselves.

As stated:

Because of the increasingly anti-democratic nature of capitalism, we no longer have to consult the intricacies human consciousness in order to understand processes that are directly the result of it. This ossification of human behavior, into some animal category, represents the animalization of the masses, so that there is no epistemological link between the pseudoscientist who already assumes himself to be a free and rational agent, his consciousness, and that of humans in general. This represents the further exclusion of the periphreal human, from processes of power, life that concern them - it represents the decline of taking people unto themselves as all constituent parts of universal reason, it represents their alienation and animalization into blind forces of nature that need to be 'controlled' and 'manipulated' into this or that, i.e. into subjects, ultimately, who need to be REGULARLY controlled where their 'natural instincts' keep re-emerging and taking control. This notion of humans being controlled by an external force, outside of their social relations, that needs to be constantly 'kept in check' is not only a Hobbsean notion, it has its origins in the counter-enlightenment and gothic anti-democraticism best encapsulated by Anglo-Saxons like Thomas Malthus and Francis Galton

And relate it to what I said before:

Plain and simple. He who speaks of 'humans' in such a way but does not make an exception of himself is a fool, because knowledge is practical - to be aware of something, is to already be in a position to control it, dominate it, be in conscious control of it. WITHOUT having to alter one's physiology. That means the root, and origin of that which you are assessing, is not in your physiology but something else.

But let's move on from both of these statements. What you hilariously fail to understand, regarding anti-democratic discourse, is best exemplified by a certain Tywin Lannister from the TV series game of thrones, a perfectly anti-democratic logic:

No man is free, not even a king.

In other words, anti-democratic logic doesn't simply refer to a caste of individuals who do not need to control themselves, presiding over masses of people who do. That is not how the ALIENATION here works. Instead, one DOES interpret this to be within themselves, the logic is one of a hierarchy of oppression, wherein even the king is enslaved by his religious morality, or whatever, to "keep his instincts" in check. The reason why it is anti-democratic, is because one is SELF-ALIENATING themselves in doing it, one is excluding their dimension of human consciousness, from the domain of universal reason, attributing it some external power. That's the point. But in ossifying these things as instinct, one opens up the space for their temptation: That is why pedophilia is so common in the Catholic church, the church sees pedophilia as a sin, an evil influenced by Satan's temptations, something whose existence is owed to something outside of the social/symbolic order, it therefore DOES become something that is justified, because its basis of existence is seen as somehow inevitable, something that we need to "repress" and "control". But in creating this dichotomy, the very thing we need to "repress" and "control" is legitimized, insofar as the expression of which is no longer traced to its psychological dimension on a social level, but merely someone's inability to enact proper control over themselves. EVERY REPRESSIVE society, since Asiatic production, was built around this notion of "repressing" one's instincts. The best example is to be found here:

Gja05symHkk

In this documentary, sexual harassment and the standards of which are explored in Egypt. In Egypt, wearing something that would otherwise be considered "modest" in the west, is grounds for sexual provocation of males. But a common logic for Islamists, as you will find in this video, is that they "cannot control" their instincts. A cleric in australia even said, "If you leave out a piece of meat, do you expect a dog not to eat it?" regarding rape. Now of course, for Islamists, this does need to be controlled by men, but the need to repress the "inherent" urge to rape a women showing her ankles, or wearing make-up, is presumed to exist. This JUSTIFIES this dimension of sexual harassment and rape, because clearly in the west it is not true that showing one's ankles will provoke sexual harassment or provoke mans "instinct" to rape. This is how ALL OPPRESSION works, the basis of what one is repressing, i.e. "Chaos, anarchy, violence, rape," etc., are presumed to be innate, SO THAT WHEN THE SYSTEM IS VIOLENT, BRUTAL, OR WHEN THOSE IN POWER ENGAGE IN RAPE, and so on, THIS IS DE-SENSITIZED and merely attributed to the inability for organs of repression, to be repressive enough in curtailing one's "instincts". So you clearly aren't familiar with this anti-democratic disoucrse, because THE POINT IS THAT "WE NEED TO CONTROL" OURSELVES. The very INSISTENCE on the notion that we have a spontaneous urge to do that which the system must repress, GENERATES, JUSTIFIES and LEGITIMIZES the thing that is purportedly being suppressed - it becomes the yin of the yang. Lenin made the same remark, regarding bourgeois sexual morality and its hypocrisy - prostitution is deemed immoral, bad, but at the same time tacitly inevitable, so that EVEN THOUGH they outwardly say that "We are against prostitution", they tacitly think it is a natural thing, an inevitable thing, so that when their "urges" kick in, the pious bourgeois man will visit a prostitute.

The NATURE of the "urges themselves" that are purported that need to be "controlled", is in fact, generated by the real conditions of life, historically, itself. Humans indeed need to control themselves in Communism, BUT NOT against the substrate of some inherent or spontaneous "urges", but so that they DISCIPLINE themselves to socially coordinate, against the backdrop NOT of "instincts taking in", but of being totally confused and lost. Self-control and self-consciousness are synonymous here, because self-control means you are not REPRESSING anything, you are directing your own body and your own basis of existence, in a way that is socially conscious.


No it's not.

IS THAT A COUNTER-ARGUMENT? IS EVERYONE WATCHING THIS? DO YOU SEE THIS? DO YOU SEE THIS FUCKING RESPONSE HERE? AFTER I POUR SO MUCH CONSIDERATE EFFORT AND DETAIL, THIS, SO BASELESSLY CONFIDENT OF HIM, THIS IS WHAT HE FUCKING SAIS? Should I fucking TAKE YOUR FUCKING WORD FOR IT? SHOULD I JUST FUCKING BELIEVE YOU, RED RED CHILE? IS THAT HOW ARGUMENTS WORK?

Holy FUCK, I'm literally almost 100% convinced he's a FUCKING troll. God damnit, god FUCKING damnit, it's like his goal is to get me banned so I slip up and flame him.


Sorry buddy I hate to break it to you but humans are animals which can indeed explain much of our behavior.

Show me an animal that talks about "animals" and sais "I am an animal and my behavior can be explained by that". Humans ARE NOT animals, they are HUMANS, and the basic fact that I INSIST on this difference means I am right. What a disgusting degenerate, aesthetically pseudo-survivalist society we live in. What you say is just as fucking stupid as those TV shows about werewolvse and whatever, i.e. "My primal instinct is kicking in, my wolf instinct". It's pure fucking nonsense. The mere ability to 'articulate' or 'sense' what you think is a 'primal instinct' MEANS IT IS NOT AN INSTINCT OR AN ANIMAL BEHAVIOR AT ALL, BECAUSE YOU CAN BE CONSCIOUS OF IT. In this wretched age of degenerate bourgeois humanism, which has led to the animalization of man, the true triumph of humanness is Communism, over the beasts of capital. We are human! We are not animals, we INSIST upon our non-animalness! THAT, "buddy", THAT is death drive.


So basically you're so afraid of biological determinism as used by bourgeois ideologues

BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM, you fool, IS NEW. I do not have to abandon it, we Marxists have been "Social determinists" for over a hundred years. It is the bourgeois ideologues who discard and do away with the real science of the social/psychological because THEY had to account for it, while at the same time in such a way that reproduces the conditions of the system. It is not going to be USED by the bourgeois ideologues, it is, by its nature, ALREADY qualitatively ideological and bourgeois. This is what you fail to understand. I am "afraid" of biology? You disgusting philistines have no notion of biology, you ossify it into some kind of ontological cateogry that has meaning to it. Look how fucking CASUALLY he uses the term BIOLOGICALLY, it's so fucking SUPERSTITIOUS. As if you've EVEN COME CLOSE to grounding ANY of the alleged processes in some empirically verified 'biological' process. YOU HAVEN'T. And I will cut off my FUCKING BALLS if you or anyone else can/has done this.


Great insight.

:rolleyes:

"Oh look, how ridiculous - ican't properly justify why this is ridiculous, but it just sounds ridiculous because I think, literally, WITH my ass."

Thank you for conceding both arguments to me, dear child.


But I can think of examples where there is a biological component - like for social bonding or mate selection.

"Social bonding and mate selection", he sais. THAT DOES NOT refer to some biological causal basis of dancing, because that would assume that the COURSE of how one dances, is laid out biologically. But dancing is so fucking varied both historically and even in the context of our society, it's literally so hilariously stupid to say that dancing is in any way biological. IF IT WAS BIOLOGICAL, then the EXPRESSION of dancing would be THE SAME, because dancing is NOT AN ABSTRACTION that has an ESSENTIAL basis of its own, i.e. there is no "dancing" that has an essential basis that you can abstract from all forms of dancing, because dancing has different meaning and different connontations in different contexts. There are war dances. There are dances that simply express political ideas, i.e. like in a play. Historically the function of what we call 'dance', only is still called 'dance' because it refers to the act of moving one's body in an intricate, complex and fashioned way, in congruencey with some kind of ritualized message. Dancing is used in religious ceremonies, in forms of worship, it had ALL SORTS of different functions - the only function dancing had IN COMMON as an abstraction, is TOTAL SUBVERSION of the human bodily movement to some social act, idea, and so on. Now of course in our society, dancing at clubs is sexual. That, holy shit, has NOTHING to fucking do with some biological mechanism, even if the act of insemination or fucking involves biological processes. Watching TV involves biological processes too, it doesn't FUCKING make it a biological act. "Mate selection" he sais so fucking PASSIVELY, like WHO THE FUCK are you? "Mate selection", our self-ordained zoologist sais, are you not yourself human? Do you know how fucking STUPID you sound when you use the phrase "mate selection" in reference to humans? Mate selection? Do you LITERALLY in your head believe this shit? PROVE there is a "biological" component. Just fucking PROVE it, that's all! YOU WILL NEVER be able to prove this, because it is total nonsense - dancing is something that involves the domain of consciousness, IT IS JUSTIFIABLE AND EXPLAINABLE SOLELY BY THE INNER LOGIC OF THE SOCIAL CONTEXT IT IS IMMERSED IN, there is no NEED, no REASON why biology needs to have ANYTHING to fucking do with it, because ALL BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES are subsumed and taken over by the social domain. That's why you can go into a fucking club and start dancing like an idiot because you think it's funny, and there is no biological component to this whatsoever. The act of "thinking it is funny", for example, IS TOTALLY a social act. There is no "secret biological language" behind social acts, everything is social, including the expression of all sexuality. The social domain reproduces the conditions of human life, by determining the conditions of human sexuality - human reproduction, the very way in which humans are reproduced, is facilitated in a social manner. Like lol, dancing is biologically ordained? WHAT? Is there a fucking THING inside of me, which tells me how to dance? And which dance, what kind? Base club dancing, which is literally so ingenuine and staged for anyone with a keen fucking eye? The most sophisticated dancing, even at a club is always very well trained, very well coordinated, it's never fucking spontaneous. You start from the FALSE PREMISE that "everything human that exists, must have a biological reason for existing". Well I wipe my fucking ass, spit on, ridicule and tear to threads this premise. WHAT DO YOU SAY FOR YOURSELF?

It's so sad because Red Red Chile, EVERY EXPECTATION I had of you, YOU LITERALLY made yourself look EVEN WORSE than what LITTLE I expected of you. It's PATHETIC. I though to myself "There is no way this guy is so stupid as to say that dancing is some sexual selection process or something", I LITERALLY was thinking that as I was typing. You fucking have set a new standard and precedent for stupidity on this forum.

From now on, the entirety of your presence on this forum is going to spent dealing with me. So get used to it, and get to fucking work, because as of right now I await your response. I expect a detailed response not only in this thread, but the other one as well, by the way. Get to it.

[QueerVanguard]

So basically you're so afraid of biological determinism as used by bourgeois ideologues you've thrown the baby out with the bathwater and become a social determinist.

Can we flush this genetic reductionist, peven stinker fanboy bigot out with the shit water??

[Red Red Chile]

I am not a 'genetic reductionist', I just think any account of human behavior that does not take seriously into account genetics given how much we know about it, is absurd. rafiq seems to have come to a rather awkward synthesis that genes are relevant and not relevant at the same time.

[Red Red Chile]

This fucking HALF ASSED, CAUSUAL posting style

No ... it's just that you build mountains of crap on false premises. So I take out the premise and expose the garbage heap. What's the problem?

Anyway, you did post some interesting things here which I'll respond to. I'll even watch the documentary about Egypt in the meantime.

[Rafiq]

What's the problem?

Because child, that's not how a discussion works. If you accuse any one of my arguments of having a false premise, then you need to justify specifically why you believe it has a false premise. The act of dismissing what you groundlessly conceive as garbage, is a controversial act, one that needs to be specifically justified in a manner that is worthy of the post itself. If you are unable to do this, if you are unable to use reason to justify yourself, you are in no position to be in this discussion at all, and furthermore, your posts are nothing more than tantamount to trolling.

You see, Red Red Chile, your arguments are quite juvenile, they are simply stupid. You may think you are special in that I allot so much time to you, but the reality is that I do my best to make sure the forum's standards are not degraded by individuals like you. A simple use of the search function will bring up evidence that I don't discriminate to that end, you're not the first, and you're not the last. However, I can justify, very thoroughly and in a manner that is intricately considerate of my opponents posts, statements and arguments, every singe qualification I level against you. You clearly have not done this, and you cannot do this. You haven't exposed any garbage heap, because never in the course of our interactions have you 'succinctly' targeted the essential basis of my arguments, you have abstracts phrases out of context, and used those phrases to repeat the same arguments which I've already flushed down the shitter.