I was watching some YouTube videos made by people who rescue and refurbish old computers from the junkyard and return them to function. Basically, they take an old Core2Duo computer, fix some tiny thing that was wrong and turn it into a, well, Geekbench 3000 slug, so that one doesn’t have to buy a new i5 or i7 machine that would fly and work great, but instead extend the life cycle of an old, obsolete machine that will continue working below modern standards and annoy people for another 5 years.
Which made me think about analogies. You see, the leftist Western ideology, as formulated after WW2, wants to make us believe that all humans share the same hardware, all you need is install the right operating system of leftism and human rights, basically the right fundamental ideology, and run the right software, basically indoctrination, education and political correctness, and you get a good, emancipated human being. Then, if something doesn’t work, you blame pre-existing societal conditions, basically the software that interferes with the leftist ideological perfection, but you never actually consider the possibility that your premises might be faulty, that some types of hardware might be actually inferior and unfit for purpose (in translation, that some people might be simply to stupid to function in a modern environment, like trying to install Windows 10 on a Pentium IV computer; it might limp along, but it will work like shit).
Since the modern OS defines “good” as “opposite from Hitler”, let’s see how Hitler viewed those things. First of all, he didn’t see people as individuals, just as we don’t see computers as individuals. He would see humans as specific cases of some hardware type running a certain ideology and intellectual content. His rationale for getting rid of inferior races would be that they can’t function on the level that modern civilization demands, they basically can’t run the current OS and modern software, and keeping such obsolete or faulty hardware in function just drains the resources from the rest of humanity, it doesn’t actually add anything useful and takes resources away from the places where they could be desperately needed. Essentially, by killing a retarded child you free up resources that can be used for assisting 10 talented children; a computer analogy would be that by throwing away an old Core2Duo machine you allow yourself the option to actually put resources into buying a new i7 beast that will raise your overall functionality and productivity by a level that more than simply justifies the expense, so that getting rid of the old bucket actually isn’t a loss, it’s a gain. Keeping something shitty alive actually isn’t a net positive.
Also, there’s a matter of ideology. If some people’s heads are filled with an ideology that makes them want to kill you, you can either attempt to dissuade them, which is ineffective and costly, or you can simply kill them and produce new bodies with a non-hostile and useful OS to take the empty space. A computer analogy would be that you can take a box that runs Windows XP, and you can either install Windows 10 on it and thus refurbish it to work in a modern environment, or you can concede that it isn’t worth the trouble and simply throw it away and buy a new box that runs a modern OS quickly. Essentially, the concept would be that trying to teach inferior nations how to work on a German level isn’t worth the effort; it’s better to simply kill them all and expand the already high-functioning Germans to fill the empty space.
So, what we have here is akin to one of those philosophy seminar questions, such as “should we eat babies?”. If you react emotionally, you’re obviously too stupid to be there in the first place. If there’s something wrong with it, there should be a coherent rational response. In the case of eating babies, the rational response is that you don’t want to become a baby-eating monster, regardless of the fact that there is often an excess of babies and lack of food and the babies are nutritious. You don’t do certain things because the very choice of some options opens ethical floodgates that can destroy the connective tissue of human society. Growing decerebrated fetuses in order to harvest them for organs can make all the intellectual sense in the world, but it is such an ethically monstrous act, it opens the society to increasing horrors if practiced. Essentially, if you dehumanize other beings, if you lower the threshold of outrage over certain acts, it normalizes evil and society turns into a horror show.
This is an easy argument to make, but it’s faulty. In fact, evolution functions exactly along the lines of eliminating sub-par animals so that they don’t consume resources and contribute inferior genes to the gene pool. If you have wolves that have speed and strength sufficient for killing a sick or malformed deer, but can’t harm an average or superior deer, this will actually cleanse the deer gene pool and improve their population, primarily by freeing up the resources that would otherwise be wasted on something that either wouldn’t get the chance to reproduce at all due to sexual selection, or would reproduce with inferior offspring, or would be a nuisance in other ways. So, Hitler’s essential evolutionary argument is correct. His problem was that he had no faith in the power of free market of labor, goods and resources, among other things because his precious Germans were losing in the free market to Jews, who are arguably better. So, instead of letting the free market place resources in the hands of winners and let the losers wither away, he decided to replace that process with ideology and arbitrary assessments of superiority and inferiority. The result, of course, was a disaster and injustice of enormous proportions. I don’t, however, see a problem with the basic concept. Let people compete. Make just rules. The winners will accumulate most resources, and losers will starve. That’s actually perfectly fine and is recommended by Jesus – give more to those who already have the most, take away from those who are incompetent. That’s how you introduce healthy criteria of virtue into a society, instead of breeding whiners and victims who all demand someone to intervene in their favor in order to “redress social injustices”. The only social injustice takes place when you take resources from the successful ones in order to feed the unsuccessful ones. It’s like killing healthy deer in order to help the lame and sickly ones.
But our society went the other way – it decided that by existing, you have rights, and if reality doesn’t match that expectation, you call it injustice and whine until someone, either society or the state, punishes someone for success and compensates for your failure. This is not all that different from Hitler’s position – since his Germans can’t compete with the Jews on equal and fair terms, he will change terms and use the Germans’ advantage in physical power in order to simply kill the Jews and thus clear out the space for Germans. So, the problem with Hitler wasn’t that his philosophy and practice were pro-evolutionary and social-Darwinist, it’s the exact opposite: he didn’t have faith in social Darwinism because his chosen subset of mankind didn’t fare all that great in those conditions, so he decided to be a socialist and “redress injustices”.
A consistent believer in evolution would never adopt social interventionism. He would have faith that better will prevail, regardless of what he thought “better” to be. In order for better to prevail, it suffices to not rescue obsolete trash from the garbage heap and attempt to refurbish it, and not to play Robin Hood by taking from the haves and giving to the have-nots. Rather, buy that which is great, and avoid buying trash.
That works for humans, too. Give to those who inspire you. Don’t give to beggars who try to guilt you into giving them resources. Don’t feel guilty if worthless people are poor. Feel guilty if worthy people are poor, because that means that you didn’t support that which you deem worthy.
Your social responsibility is simply to support that which you deem worthy and great. Applied throughout society, that will make humans who are of no value to anyone fall to the garbage heap and die, all by themselves, without any need for some Hitler to act like an artificial evolutionary agent and kill them. Don’t feed that which is worthless, and it will die. Feed that which is worthy, and it will grow. Don’t have sex with something that is pitiful, and don’t feed that which is pitiful. As a result, you have instant eugenics of the best kind, without needing to resort to horrors in order to artificially implement something against the natural order.
So what is the conclusion about Hitler? What’s the problem with him? Basically, his problem is that he was a nationalist and a socialist. Because he was a nationalist, he tried to assure supremacy of his nation, against evolutionary free-market criteria. Because he was a socialist, he believed in state intervention with the goal of “redressing injustices”. The combination of those two was a nightmare of the worst kind. The problem wasn’t the eugenics, nor the concept of survival of the fittest, nor the concept of superior and inferior races. The problem was in the enforcement of arbitrary criteria. If you believe in evolution and survival of the fittest, laissez-faire. Hands off and let the successful ones succeed, and the unsuccessful ones fail. If your gardening demands weeding, it means you’re growing the wrong plants. Try growing nettles instead of spinach.
