Love for the "Other"

[Thomas777]

Why did this sort of ethical sickness take root in the West? Why does Western Man accept (en masse) the notion that is his incumbant upon him to labor and sacrifice for the good of outsiders and out-group competitiors at the expense of his own kith and kin? What are the sources of such cultural senility? Discuss please.

[Thomas777]

Mind you, I am not talking specifically about the mercenary/individualist ethos of capitalism and the havoc it has wrought on Traditional culture (as is being discussed in the "Inferiority of Europeans" thread. Rather, I am asking why Whites, by and large, have adopted a philisophical/ethical disposition that is positively masochistic and self-defeating.

[Leif]

Why did this sort of ethical sickness take root in the West? Why does Western Man accept (en masse) the notion that is his incumbant upon him to labor and sacrifice for the good of outsiders and out-group competitiors at the expense of his own kith and kin?

It is an extension of the belief that it is "natural" for the majority to do society's necessary labor while giving the profits to an idle class of businessmen.

Why does Western Man accept (en masse) the notion that is his incumbant upon him to labor and sacrifice for the good of outsiders and out-group competitiors at the expense of his own kith and kin?

The majority of Westerners do not accept this notion. There was no referendum on allowing tens of millions of Central Americans to illegally invade the United States. Mr. Yi doubts Scandinavian countries gave their citizens the choice of allowing semites to immigrate, either.

Of course, the businesses play up whatever pro-immigrant sentimentality exists among the anti-Western individuals, flooding the "opposition" media with such views, resulting in a misconception that turning the West into a third-world country is something the average individual looks forward to. ǛǼǺ

[Fade the Butcher]

Why did this sort of ethical sickness take root in the West? Why does Western Man accept (en masse) the notion that is his incumbant upon him to labor and sacrifice for the good of outsiders and out-group competitiors at the expense of his own kith and kin? What are the sources of such cultural senility? Discuss please.The origins of it can be traced back to Romanticism. The myth of the noble savage was one of the earliest versions of it.

[Thomas777]

The origins of it can be traced back to Romanticism. The myth of the noble savage was one of the earliest versions of it.

Agreed. But I guess I am at a loss as to the ultimate source of that tendency. The "why" rather than the "how" if you will.

[leondegrance]

Why did this sort of ethical sickness take root in the West? Why does Western Man accept (en masse) the notion that is his incumbant upon him to labor and sacrifice for the good of outsiders and out-group competitiors at the expense of his own kith and kin? What are the sources of such cultural senility? Discuss please.

Many, if not most Whites believe in the religion of "ethno-outer-centricity", which is a word I made up.

While other tribes are ethnocentric, or working towards their own benefit, Whites tend to work for the benefits of all other tribes other than their own.

It is indeed a mental illness viewed upon by the elites as the greater good.

[Fade the Butcher]

Agreed. But I guess I am at a loss as to the ultimate source of that tendency. The "why" rather than the "how" if you will.The Romantic movement arose as a reaction against the glorification of reason by the Enlightenment which they came to erroneously identify with modernity. Romanticists stigmatized reason on the grounds that it was stiffling and oppressive; that it curtails freedom and self expression. They responded in turn by idolizing 'the other' of reason: irrationality, emotion, intuition, feeling, and sentimentality.

A big theme in romanticism is the "back to nature" feeling; the idea that the primitive is intrinsically better, closer to reality, more pure and essential and should thus be evaluated positively. This sort of mentality gradually evolved to the point where whites became negatively associated with reason and the nonwhite other with emotion/feeling. The influence of romanticism is seen in the whole mushy sentimental attachment to nonwhites by anti-racists.

As to the why of the matter, it is ultimately a rebellion against rationality on the part of bourgeois whites who are disenchanted with the modern world. This rebellion can take on different forms: sometimes it leads to one of the more perverse forms of anti-racism, but it can also lend itself to the sort of radical nationalism that Nazism was a variety of.

[Ahknaton]

I think it is a perversion of the ideal of the selfless individual working for the good of the group.

Many White people do not look upon their cultural & genetic heritage as a gift from previous generations that the have a moral obligation to preserve and transmit to subsequent generations. Instead, the attitude is more like that of a rich heir to a family fortune who feels perfectly entitled to piss away his inheritence because it's "his money", as opposed to building the family business for his offspring.

Because of this sense of ego-identification and entitlement complex with regard to Western culture and civilisation, liberal individuals feel perfectly entitled to give it away (since it's "theirs") and perfectly entitled to slander & abuse it (which they see as essentially humble self-effacement, as opposed to a form of treason against their kin).

Because of their ego-identification with the group, they transpose the notion of individual self-sacrifice for the group (which can be noble and honourable) to a twisted notion of group self-immolation for the benefit of the larger mass of humanity (who of course feel no reciprocal obligation).

Another related phenomenon is that charity has a social function of increasing the prestige of wealthy donors. This has a positive social role in encouraging wealth distribution to the less fortunate but is also related to the idea of "self-handicapping" as a mating display in animals, where they impress a potential mate by demonstrating how much they can handicap themselves (e.g. by giving away resources) and still survive, indicating fitness. Adopting liberal beliefs is a way for middle-class social climbers to achieve this status "on the cheap" by giving away what isn't theirs to begin with.

I also point the bone at Christianity, but I won't go into too much detail about this because it really speaks for itself.

[Péter]

I am asking why Whites, by and large, have adopted a philisophical/ethical disposition that is positively masochistic and self-defeating.

The truth is that there is no longer any consideration of the "other." The defining notion of what encompasses a single entity of people, a "community," if you will, has grown over the years to the point where there is not said to be disparate groups, but a single organism which merely manifests itself in a variety of ways.

The vast majority are utterly confused about this issue, because they can no longer define any particular characteristics about what constitutes the group to which they belong, partly because of their personal lack of cultural--an historical event which has come to characterize the bourgeoise as well as the proletariat--and partly because distinct forms of culture from the current era are nowhere to be found! In killing his own culture, or any progression thereof, the Western man looked elsewhere, because having become philistine, he no longer sought culture, but entertainment. Thus he invoked other groups not for the sake of extending the breadth of his own culture, but rather, as a drug to satiate his craving for that which escaped him.

This occurred on a quite a few levels, but eventually, the "other" became absorbed. Now there truly exists no "other," as most groups exhibit this trend; those ostensibly unafflicted as of yet will soon also display symptoms of such an infection. The worse part is that few are willing to get to the root of the matter. Have we espaced this diposition ourselves? The tendency to categorize not by race but by skin color is incriminating evidence of our own lack of understanding, and suggests that we have not yet surmounted our own confusion.

[Vindex]

christinsanity.

[leondegrance]

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor you could see that America had a unified, dominant white culture as the country came together to fight the enemy. The war propaganda depicting the Japanese was very racist in charicature, as we were not concerned with "offending" anyone. Now we can't even profile young, middle-eastern men in airports.

The 60's were the biggest downturn, with the counter-culture, feminism, and the civil rights movement. Whites are becoming more isolated and alienated with each passing decade.

[Kodos]

The Romantic movement arose as a reaction against the glorification of reason by the Enlightenment which they came to erroneously identify with modernity. Romanticists stigmatized reason on the grounds that it was stiffling and oppressive; that it curtails freedom and self expression. They responded in turn by idolizing 'the other' of reason: irrationality, emotion, intuition, feeling, and sentimentality.

A big theme in romanticism is the "back to nature" feeling; the idea that the primitive is intrinsically better, closer to reality, more pure and essential and should thus be evaluated positively. This sort of mentality gradually evolved to the point where whites became negatively associated with reason and the nonwhite other with emotion/feeling. The influence of romanticism is seen in the whole mushy sentimental attachment to nonwhites by anti-racists.

As to the why of the matter, it is ultimately a rebellion against rationality on the part of bourgeois whites who are disenchanted with the modern world. This rebellion can take on different forms: sometimes it leads to one of the more perverse forms of anti-racism, but it can also lend itself to the sort of radical nationalism that Nazism was a variety of.

Good post.

[il ragno]

What are the sources of such cultural senility?

Answered your own question. Cultural senility. Things are born, grow, ripen to full maturity....and, inevitably, become old and die.

The good news is that this doesn't necessarily signal the end of the white race, merely the American outpost of same. The bad news is that the American outpost has become the Home Office of the white race during the past 100 years. Well, that century is dead, and a new one upon us. It's something we have difficulty seeing, and understanding, because all of us here are to lesser or greater extent the children, and thus the products, of the 20th (American) century - and thus tethered to a probably-outdated way of seeing the world, and its history, as secondary objects in orbit around a nation called 'the United States'....not unlike the way a man will see physical existence as secondary to his own consciousness of physical existence.

Does existence itself end when we die? Well, in a way. We die, and everything we see and hear and touch and taste 'dies' with us. But the cruelest blow to our hubris is the certain knowledge that the world spins on after us....without us. So one type of White European Man may well die out, hoisted on his own petard of self-obsession, and probably deservedly so. But who is to say that the white men who survive our follies won't be better, smarter and saner - won't learn at least what errors not to make from the cautionary example of our stupidities?

[Ambrosio Spinola]

As for me, I count on our God of bio-chemistry to keep us alife a bit longer so that we might watch first row the decline and fall of our civilization and the start of Banana republic everywhere.

[Kodos]

and thus tethered to a probably-outdated way of seeing the world, and its history, as secondary objects in orbit around a nation called 'the United States'

America will still be power #2 behind China once all the painful transitional shit is over( and we became the military evangelical republic of the United States).

[Geist]

The Romantic movement arose as a reaction against the glorification of reason by the Enlightenment which they came to erroneously identify with modernity. Romanticists stigmatized reason on the grounds that it was stiffling and oppressive; that it curtails freedom and self expression. They responded in turn by idolizing 'the other' of reason: irrationality, emotion, intuition, feeling, and sentimentality.

I'm not sure I agree Fade. Romanticism is a cultural movement whose impact cultural was more or less artistic, it was a cult much like the cult of sensibility which proceeded it but its affects were limited to an dominant class whose political leanings were becoming far more liberal due to Enlightenment thinking and empiricisms notion of the blank slate human.

In other words, I do not believe Romanticism had the influence enough to be given the rather erroneous privilege of giving birth to the cult of the other.


A big theme in romanticism is the "back to nature" feeling; the idea that the primitive is intrinsically better, closer to reality, more pure and essential and should thus be evaluated positively. This sort of mentality gradually evolved to the point where whites became negatively associated with reason and the nonwhite other with emotion/feeling. The influence of romanticism is seen in the whole mushy sentimental attachment to nonwhites by anti-racists.

Once again the roots of this are in the age of sentimentality which stressed emotional response in society coinciding with the civilizing process of the age, the reformation of manners which was the fruit of female influence in questions of morality. I'm not arguing against you here but I disagree with the use of Romanticism, it was not simply not that powerful to achieve the effects you attribute to it, even in a fleeting way.

As to the why of the matter, it is ultimately a rebellion against rationality on the part of bourgeois whites who are disenchanted with the modern world. This rebellion can take on different forms: sometimes it leads to one of the more perverse forms of anti-racism, but it can also lend itself to the sort of radical nationalism that Nazism was a variety of.

Modernity bred alienation but it was willing alienation, look at the obsession with luxuries in the mid-19th century, the Arcades in Paris for example. With all these luxuries the people of the thinking classes become more focused on interiority for a while, but over time this breed enniu which is the alienation of the middle classes in my opinion. With boredom came a focus on the other, on escaping the noble classes and pondering the noble savages which although raised in the Romantic era could not have developed past fancy without the systemized decimation of culture in the name of commodity which is the line from the sentimental era to our age.

[Fade the Butcher]

Check out Charles Taylor's Source of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity.

[Dan Dare]

Why did this sort of ethical sickness take root in the West? Why does Western Man accept (en masse) the notion that is his incumbant upon him to labor and sacrifice for the good of outsiders and out-group competitiors at the expense of his own kith and kin? What are the sources of such cultural senility? Discuss please.

I think that this essay on Competitive Altruism (http://www.amren.com/0310issue/0310issue.html) in Amren offers a plausible account of the driving mechanism behind this otherwise inexplicable (and quite unique) behaviour that has become a part of the canon of western liberal culture. The essay is spread over two issues btw.

As to why competitive altruism actually came to be in the first place, I find Fade's analysis above quite convincing.