May 5, 2022·edited May 5, 2022Liked by The Evolved Psyche
> Why wouldn’t the managerial class use this leverage to prevent us from having abortions?
Wow, what a question! Bravo! Now I am going to be stuck on it for a while.
Here is a stab at the answer:
Promoting freedom of abortion allows the managerial class to exercise its ventriloquism on behalf of the aggrieved women who would like to have that freedom and are being coerced by the society not to. The opposite would not work: nobody forces a woman who does not want to have an abortion to get one (at least not on the societal level.)
As regards the central question of this piece, my expectation is that the managerial class favors an underclass dominated by fast life strategists (r-selected population, I believe is the ecological term) because such a population also favors a high time preference. As such, they are much easier to control, having less ability to reason through the logical long-term consequences of their actions, are more prone to impulsive behavior, and more easily emotionally manipulated.
It would follow that the managerial class themselves would not follow the r-selected strategy they encourage in the lower class, and indeed they are generally K-selected: low reproductive rate, high offspring investment, low divorce rate, etc.
It might also be expected that, at the same time the population is being biologically engineered to be more r-selected via subtle Darwinian pressure, the managerial class would take steps to psychologically engineer the population to encourage r-selected traits. The normalization of porn addiction may be consistent with this, as it reduces impulse control at a neurological level. Obviously, in a consumer economy, reduced impulse control is a net benefit to the managerial class. Even aside from economic questions, a population that has become less capable of impulse control will have greater need for the guidance of the managerial class, i.e. this engineering has the effect of consolidating the class's position by making it more indispensable.
It is bemusing to see detached, realist analysis of this topic. If you delve into biological determinism I propose something to consider. I believe it is possible to be a biological determinist and believe in free will simultaneously. I think it's just two different levels of analysis. Even though recognizing biological determinism is necessary at some level because to believe otherwise is to engage in magical thinking by circumventing commonly understood laws of causality, this is not the best way to understand human action. Just like evolutionary biology is a more appropriate lens by which to examine this issue (as you have done) than say, physics, praxeology is the most appropriate for examining political economy (IMO). Mises called this methodological dualism. https://grantesmith.substack.com/p/framing-the-problem?s=w
I've been thinking about why the managerial class would feel so strongly about abortion and thought of three:
1. Part of Replacement Theory. Abort natives, replace with immigrant serfs.
2. Transhumanism. A key example of science and medicine transcending despised biological realities.
3. Eugenics. Ideally who gets aborted would be controlled by the managerial class as part of social engineering.
Before reading your book (Which I only discovered along with this blog thanks to the great review by Robert Barnes on his locals page), I hadn't put together Fascism, Communism and Neo-liberalism as coming from the same class ideology. It all seems to come back to Nietzsche's idol of man's self-perfection as a replacement for God. Wonder what you think.
The managerial class wants women to have abortions. Kids get in the way of their jobs. They want employees shuffling papers, not changing diapers.
> Why wouldn’t the managerial class use this leverage to prevent us from having abortions?
Wow, what a question! Bravo! Now I am going to be stuck on it for a while.
Here is a stab at the answer:
Promoting freedom of abortion allows the managerial class to exercise its ventriloquism on behalf of the aggrieved women who would like to have that freedom and are being coerced by the society not to. The opposite would not work: nobody forces a woman who does not want to have an abortion to get one (at least not on the societal level.)
As regards the central question of this piece, my expectation is that the managerial class favors an underclass dominated by fast life strategists (r-selected population, I believe is the ecological term) because such a population also favors a high time preference. As such, they are much easier to control, having less ability to reason through the logical long-term consequences of their actions, are more prone to impulsive behavior, and more easily emotionally manipulated.
It would follow that the managerial class themselves would not follow the r-selected strategy they encourage in the lower class, and indeed they are generally K-selected: low reproductive rate, high offspring investment, low divorce rate, etc.
It might also be expected that, at the same time the population is being biologically engineered to be more r-selected via subtle Darwinian pressure, the managerial class would take steps to psychologically engineer the population to encourage r-selected traits. The normalization of porn addiction may be consistent with this, as it reduces impulse control at a neurological level. Obviously, in a consumer economy, reduced impulse control is a net benefit to the managerial class. Even aside from economic questions, a population that has become less capable of impulse control will have greater need for the guidance of the managerial class, i.e. this engineering has the effect of consolidating the class's position by making it more indispensable.
It is bemusing to see detached, realist analysis of this topic. If you delve into biological determinism I propose something to consider. I believe it is possible to be a biological determinist and believe in free will simultaneously. I think it's just two different levels of analysis. Even though recognizing biological determinism is necessary at some level because to believe otherwise is to engage in magical thinking by circumventing commonly understood laws of causality, this is not the best way to understand human action. Just like evolutionary biology is a more appropriate lens by which to examine this issue (as you have done) than say, physics, praxeology is the most appropriate for examining political economy (IMO). Mises called this methodological dualism. https://grantesmith.substack.com/p/framing-the-problem?s=w
I've been thinking about why the managerial class would feel so strongly about abortion and thought of three:
1. Part of Replacement Theory. Abort natives, replace with immigrant serfs.
2. Transhumanism. A key example of science and medicine transcending despised biological realities.
3. Eugenics. Ideally who gets aborted would be controlled by the managerial class as part of social engineering.
Before reading your book (Which I only discovered along with this blog thanks to the great review by Robert Barnes on his locals page), I hadn't put together Fascism, Communism and Neo-liberalism as coming from the same class ideology. It all seems to come back to Nietzsche's idol of man's self-perfection as a replacement for God. Wonder what you think.