Althouse: "In one way, travelling has narrowed my mind. What I have discovered is something very ordinary and unexciting..."

June 30, 2017

"In one way, travelling has narrowed my mind. What I have discovered is something very ordinary and unexciting..."

"... which is that humans are the same everywhere and that the degree of variation between members of our species is very slight. This is of course an encouraging finding; it helps arm you against news programs back home that show seething or abject masses of either fanatical or torpid people. In another way it is a depressing finding; the sorts of things that make people quarrel and make them stupid are the same everywhere.... Freud was brilliantly right when he wrote about 'the narcissism of the small difference': distinctions that seem trivial to the visitor are the obsessive concern of the local and the provincial minds... And when you hear the bigots talk about the 'other,' it’s always in the same tones as their colonial bosses used to employ to talk about them. (Dirty, prone to crime, lazy, very untrustworthy with women and—this is especially toxic—inclined to breed rapidly.)"

From "Letters to a Young Contrarian," by Christopher Hitchens.

38 comments:

Leora said...: As Oscar Wilde said “The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet’s dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality.”; 6/30/17, 5:38 PM
Lucien said...: No matter where you go, you'll find people figuring out ways to hate and kill their neighbors.

Works just as well in Rwanda as in Srebrenica.; 6/30/17, 5:51 PM
rcocean said...: Yeah, I guess we're all the same - which is why Hitchens wanted to drop the A-bomb on Baghdad.

And I hate the phony CYA "What I discovered is very ordinary and unexciting" - Really Hitch? Just write it, and have the guts to put it out there without lowering our expectations.

Peeps are the more or less the same everywhere. But small differences can be very important. Like the differences between men and women.; 6/30/17, 6:00 PM
rcocean said...: Nazi's and Jews - what's the diff? They're depressingly small - according to Hitch.; 6/30/17, 6:02 PM
David Begley said...: Where did he go? For how long? How many languages did he speak? Total BS.; 6/30/17, 6:05 PM
buwaya said...: On this matter C. Hitchens is very mistaken.

And I am speaking as a species of colonialist-native, not simply a colonialist.
And the old colonialists were pretty damned insightful gang.
Let Hitchens try organize and Indian Cavalry regiment, a la James Skinner, or a Dyak pirate crew to conquer a Sultanate, a la James Brooke.

On his part I think it is a more subtle sort of parochialism than he ascribes to others.
But it is still parochialism.; 6/30/17, 6:07 PM
buwaya said...: "No matter where you go, you'll find people figuring out ways to hate and kill their neighbors."

But its not actually a matter of figuring out excuses for what they want to do.
Because, usually, its not something that they actually want to do.
Your statement is a cop-out, to avoid understanding the usually complicated matters at issue.; 6/30/17, 6:10 PM
Jupiter said...: " which is that humans are the same everywhere and that the degree of variation between members of our species is very slight."

So really, it doesn't matter if you read his book, or someone else's. They're all pretty much the same.; 6/30/17, 6:25 PM
rcocean said...: Englishmen goes to foreign country - spends a week there - then pompously decides he and the "natives" are the same. Pats himself on back for not being "racist".

But what do the "natives" think?; 6/30/17, 6:31 PM
tcrosse said...: Hitchens has a background as a Collectivist, so naturally he sees humanity as an Undifferentiated Mass. I disagree.; 6/30/17, 6:47 PM
Michael said...: I am a huge believer in the benefits of travel. I give myself an extra day or so when I am in new cities to roam freely in the neighborhoods not in the guidebooks. I have never had a problem. My oldest son travelled in Central America for a year and asked my opinion of my favorite countries. Nicaragua and El Salvador without question. When he returned he said he had been robbed only twice: once at knife point in Nicaragua (in Granada of all places) and in San Salvador at gunpoint (at the bus station: a place I should have warned him about). It is true that my favorite spot in San Salvador is the view from the country club dining room . LOL,; 6/30/17, 6:51 PM
Kate said...: This is something an atheist would write. The wonder and glory of each individual human surprises him, so he retreats to the grubby to find validation.; 6/30/17, 6:56 PM
Fernandinande said...: the degree of variation between members of our species is very slight.

Compared to other animals, sure. Compared to each other, the difference are quite large.

(Dirty, prone to crime, lazy, very untrustworthy with women and—this is especially toxic—inclined to breed rapidly.)

AGOPAETS! All Groups of People are Exactly the Same™!

No group is less prone to crime, etc. than any other group; that's been determined by decree so you don't need any other information.; 6/30/17, 7:27 PM
FullMoon said...: ///it’s always in the same tones as their colonial bosses used to employ to talk about them. (Dirty, prone to crime, lazy, very untrustworthy with women and—this is especially toxic—inclined to breed rapidly.)"

California"s "Bum Blockade in the 1930's:

"Though these refugees came from a number of states, Californians often lumped them together as “Okies” or “Arkies,” who became the butt of derogatory jokes and the focus of political campaigns in which candidates made them the scapegoat for a shattered economy. They were accused of many crimes, as well as shiftlessness, lack of ambition, school overcrowding and stealing jobs from native Californians."; 6/30/17, 7:42 PM
bgates said...: this is especially toxic—inclined to breed rapidly

According to UN historical data, during the period 1950-2010, the population of the United Kingdom increased from 50.6 million to 63.3 million. (And over ten percent of the population in 2010 hadn't been born there.)

Over the same period, the population of Nigeria increased from 37.9 million to 158.6 million.; 6/30/17, 7:55 PM
rhhardin said...: Inclined to breed rapidly means a culture with recent high infant mortality.; 6/30/17, 7:58 PM
wild chicken said...: Well?? It was true about the Okies. Was a huge culture clash back then.

But we got some good country music out of it.; 6/30/17, 7:59 PM
Clyde said...: Humans may be the same everywhere, but the cultures they create are not. Culture matters, and all cultures are not equally good.; 6/30/17, 8:02 PM
rhhardin said...: Then there's that small jihad thing.; 6/30/17, 8:02 PM
Michael K said...: I have friends in other countries as does my daughter. Many of my students were from other countries.

I think there is much to be learned.; 6/30/17, 8:03 PM
Sebastian said...: "Then there's that small jihad thing." And if I remember correctly, Hitch a thing about that jihad thing.

Humans are the same everywhere in that their different ideas make them do very different things.; 6/30/17, 8:09 PM
mockturtle said...: I travel to experience different cultural ambiance, unfamiliar languages, architecture and cuisine. Meeting people is part of the experience and yes, a broadening experience.; 6/30/17, 8:19 PM
mandrewa said...: I had a friend in college who was from Iran. He was probably ten years older than me but we got along pretty well. I remember being surprised at the time how familiar or how recognizable his personality was. My expectation would have been that he'd be more different. That there would be at least a layer of behavior that a quite different culture would have created, but actually it wasn't that obvious.

A couple of times though he said things that brought the difference into highlight. Once he was talking about his sisters, and it turned out that they did not go to college. In fact they never even left the house unless accompanied by a male relative.

I stood there kind of stunned, listening to that, and trying to imagine what it would be like to live essentially one's whole life inside a house, where a visit to even a shopping mall is a special event.

He had an American wife and his wife worked with retarded children. He was talking about that, and he said, without quite saying it directly, but still the implication was clear, that it wasn't worth it and that in Iran they'd arrange for such children to die.

Now the point of that anecdote is to acknowledge that I do know what Christopher Hitchens is talking about. And yet I wonder if he is attributing too much to a recognizable personality. It may be that there are only so many personalities to go around, and that no matter where one goes, one is going to find the same basic spectrum. But this doesn't mean that people with similar personalities are really the same. The lessor "trivial" differences may when summed up across a culture amount to a big practical difference.

Speaking of mental retardation and the alleged triteness of human differences I'm about to bring up a topic that is grossly politically incorrect. In fact the sensitive should probably just shut their eyes right now.

Specifically I'm talking about black Africa and IQ tests. The standard defense here is to pretend that IQ tests aren't valid but in fact they can be constructed in a large number of different ways and the results are robust and repeatable. In fact extremely robust and repeatable if we are talking about a group of people.

The mean IQ of black africans is about two standard deviations below the mean of white europeans. So if the mean IQ of white europeans is 100 then the mean IQ of black africans is about 70. That means the majority of black africans are mentally retarded.

To throw some light on what this means it is by law illegal for the US army to enlist a man whose IQ is below 83. Eighty-three is the number that the US army came up because they found from experience that anyone with an IQ below that is far more likely to be a liability than an asset.

Now getting back to Christopher Hitchens, how could he possibly have failed to notice a difference as large as this and one that would be expected to have huge, profound, and far reaching consequences?

One answer, perhaps the most likely, is that he is simply lying.

Another would be that he only chose "to know" people that were in some sense like himself. Actually this is the way people typically operate. We choose who we associate with. And then that of course raises the question of how meaningful Hitchens' observation really is.; 6/30/17, 8:28 PM
Michael K said...: "I had a friend in college who was from Iran. "

I had and still have a friend from Iran who went to medical school with me.

Hass and his brother fled Iran when the Shah was in power. He transferred into USC medical school as a second year student and graduated with us. He did his orthopedic surgery residency and married a nurse named "Dixie." His parents were still in Iran and he took Dixie and his children to meet them about 1972. He was met at the Teheran airport by the SAVAK who took him into an interrogation room.

He was told that he had two choices. One was to get on the plane back to New York. The other was to serve his one year military obligation as a doctor in the oil fields. If he did so, his wife and kids could spend time with his parents in Teheran and go back to the US.

He spent his year learning to play golf in Iran. They used a piece of Astroturf to hit the ball and oiled sand greens. He finished his year and is a member at Lakeside Golf Club in LA. I see him and Dixie at reunions.

I think he gave up on Islam, if he ever believed it, years ago. I never asked him.; 6/30/17, 9:19 PM
Fernandinande said...: mandrewa said...
One answer, perhaps the most likely, is that he is simply lying.

Maybe he was being poetic, but whatever it was, he certainly wasn't serious. The most popular form of lying about different human populations is to say "culture", but excerpts like the above are why I've always considered Hitchens to be a well spoken lightweight.; 6/30/17, 9:47 PM
rcocean said...: Killer Doc in NYC was an immigrant.

But still, he was good for America.; 6/30/17, 10:04 PM
Gospace said...: mandrewa said...

The mean IQ of black africans is about two standard deviations below the mean of white europeans. So if the mean IQ of white europeans is 100 then the mean IQ of black africans is about 70. That means the majority of black africans are mentally retarded.

To throw some light on what this means it is by law illegal for the US army to enlist a man whose IQ is below 83. Eighty-three is the number that the US army came up because they found from experience that anyone with an IQ below that is far more likely to be a liability than an asset.

I've read elsewhere that one of the easiest ways to create a racist is to send someone to an African village to help build some infrastructure, let's say a well, and then send them back a year later to see what's happened to it. Rhodesia used to be the breadbasket of Africa. Zimbabwe can't feed their own people without aid. South Africa used to not have rolling blackouts and frequent brownouts. Now they're common.; 6/30/17, 10:43 PM
Roost on the Moon said...: Reminds me of an old favorite: There's More To Life Than Just Traveling The World And Marveling At Its Varied Peoples And Cultures

Recently, I was with the Wapemba tribe in Zanzibar, and I heard their chieftain recite the mythology of creation that these people had known for thousands of years. And I was struck by its similarities to other creation myths, including the Judeo-Christian model. Then I thought to myself, so what the fuck am I doing here in Zanzibar? Why did I slog all the way to Africa to hear a story that I could have heard at the Baptist church two blocks from my house? You get what I'm saying? If all people are the same on the inside, why did I spend a year learning Swahili when I could just talk to the girl at the Tast-E-Freez? It's all the same shit, folks. Save your plane fare.; 6/30/17, 10:52 PM
Fen said...: "distinctions that seem trivial to the visitor are the obsessive concern of the local"

What condescending bullshit. The visitor finds it trivial because he is ignorant. I know this first-hand :) after misjudging with arrogant assumption. But after settling in with the locals a few months, I learn why it's such a huge thing to them.

Hitchens here reminds me of guy who dismisses another's problem as "drama". But when it's *his* problem, it gets dialed up to 11 and is super serious important.; 6/30/17, 11:42 PM
n.n said...: Thus individual dignity is reduced to [class] diversity (e.g. "color of skin"). Each a faith-based perception of human life.; 6/30/17, 11:45 PM
Roost on the Moon said...: Just in case the "race science" on offer here is convincing to anyone:

Consider that height is extremely genetically heritable, and yet a political division in Korea a few generations ago has lead to drastically different aggregate numbers between north and south. Probably not just height, you know?

That is: before you go off making irredeemably racist pronouncements in public, consider that impoverishment, malnourishment, and lack of stable institutions might play a role in aggregated IQ statistics, and might swamp any differences played by genetics.

Also consider that these "statistics" are being put forth by a couple of dopes in a web forum who claim that the majority of people on an entire continent are mentally retarded. And while they do sound like they do a lot of "internet research", they don't sound especially well-traveled. Which is maybe a point against Althousian travel skepticism.; 6/30/17, 11:50 PM
Oso Negro said...: Having traveled extensively (hello from Odessa, Ukraine), I can say with certainty that all the British ex-pats gathered at the local watering hole are the same the world over.; 7/1/17, 12:55 AM
sinz52 said...: H.G. Wells wrote "War of the Worlds" as an allegory.

He had been musing about how the European colonialists had treated less advanced Third World countries with contempt. So he wanted to show Europe what it would be like if an even more advanced civilization treated Europe with contempt.

There will always be racists who keep pointing to IQ differences among races. However, we now know that the most important factors in determining the intelligence of a human being include adequate prenatal care and adequate nutrition after birth. And those are in turn dependent on a society's levels of poverty and inequality.

Thus, you always have to control for those factors.

When black children are raised by affluent white families (e.g., Mitt Romney, David French of National Review), they do just as well as white people.

"The arrogant American nation makes the Negro clean its boots and then proves the inferiority of the Negro by the fact that he is a bootblack"
-- George Bernard Shaw; 7/1/17, 8:31 AM
mockturtle said...: Sinz, I can understand your reasoning but it doesn't explain some obvious exceptions. Here are a few:

If white cultures can become affluent and well-nourished, why not black cultures?

The early American colonists subsisted on corn meal for years and yet those who survived founded a nation.

The Japanese diet both pre- and post- WWII was meager and insufficient for optimal growth and yet the Japanese built a powerful and disciplined military structure.; 7/1/17, 9:38 AM
mockturtle said...: Oso Negro observes: Having traveled extensively (hello from Odessa, Ukraine), I can say with certainty that all the British ex-pats gathered at the local watering hole are the same the world over.

Definitely! Likewise Canadians.; 7/1/17, 9:41 AM
William said...: I read the Chernow biography of Rockefeller. Southerners, of all races, used to test lower on IQ exams. Rockefeller initiated a program to eradicate tapeworm infestations in southern states. Up to 25% of the population were infected in some states. The program was successful, and there was quantum jump in southern IQ's.......... In Russia, Peter the Great tried to overhaul the Orthodox religion and bring it into accordance with then modern practices. The Old Believers kept their beards and were willing to die and murder for their beliefs. Some people made the sign of the cross with two fingers to indicate the duality of the nature of Jesus. Other people made the sign of the cross with three fingers to indicate the primacy of the Trinity. Some people considered the way you made the sign of the cross an intolorable provocation. People were killed because of it.......The differences between people are minor but it takes a century or two to realize that fact. When someone is trying to kill you, that is not a minor data point.; 7/1/17, 9:42 AM
mandrewa said...: When I read "The Bell Curve" by Herrnstein and Murray I was dismayed. Low IQs are correlated with so many bad things. A low IQ predisposes you to committing murder, violent assault, rape, being impoverished, and on and on and on. And it's not a little tilt, it's pretty darn substantial.

I imagined that I was a young black man, which I'm not, and looking at "The Bell Curve" and it was kind of horrifying. So I was motivated to try find something wrong in their reasoning. But I couldn't find anything wrong.

The best I could come up with was to note that the human species has been through a recent genetic bottleneck and that we are all descended from a very small group of people that lived maybe a hundred thousand years ago. And to wonder if it was even possible for such a dramatic variation in IQ to arise across races in so few generations.

Of course that was back in 1995 and since then we've learned a few things. For example we've learned that European adults developed the capacity to drink milk about 5,000 some years ago. What that means practically speaking is that one or a few people had a mutation that allowed them to drink milk without getting sick as adults. And they thrived. And their descendants thrived. And everyone else died.

That's what it means when a population changes and it's genetic.

Well if that's possible then it's possible for IQ to change quickly also.

Another thing we've learned since 1995 is that everyone in the world, with the exception of black Africans, has Neanderthal ancestors. And that fact destroys the idea that everyone is descended from the same small group of people that lived one hundred thousand years ago. We are, but some of us have other additional ancestors.

So anyway back in 1995 having exhausted my own reasoning I moved on to what other's thought. I picked up a book of about 20 essays criticizing "The Bell Curve." It was intended for college students and, unfortunately, it was embarrassing. Eighteen of the twenty essays showed a fundamental lapse of logic in that they thought it was sufficient to express hatred for the authors of "The Bell Curve" and nothing more. That somehow calling people names disproves the argument. Anyways it is embarrassing. Or it should be embarrassing. I would be embarrassed to be these people.

Only two of the essays addressed the issue. And one of them was exactly the reasoning I'd already come up with on my own. And note that that was not actually a disproof. It's more of an attack on the plausibility. But as I've already noted that argument has since fallen apart. The other essay wasn't memorable. I can't remember its argument but at least it had the virtue of trying to deal with the issue. That is attacking the validity of the concept of IQ or something somehow related to that. There is no point in saying anything else critical if you can't do that.; 7/1/17, 1:30 PM
mandrewa said...: There are an amazing variety of IQ tests. Or another way to put it is that there are an amazing number of things that correlate with IQ.

One of the simplest I've ever heard of only takes fifteen minutes and is kind of like a video game except it is a really simple game. It is only one activity. And what makes this work I think is that no one has ever done this before. So you are faced with a problem you've never solved before and you are trying to achieve something and it is counted the number of times you achieve it. The higher your score the higher the IQ. And this simple task has a 60% correlation with the IQ scores given by much more elaborate and lengthy IQ tests.

Any general knowledge test is an IQ test. Or another way to put it is that general knowledge tests given to people that have not specifically studied for the test have a pretty good correlation with the best IQ tests.

There are IQ tests that are basically non-verbal other than the instructions and are nothing more than pattern recognition, and yet they correlate quite well with totally verbal IQ tests.

There are lots of things that are not normally considered IQ tests that correlate well with IQ.

For example it's pretty crude, but still, take this blog. Who do you think reads a blog like this? The blog does nothing to distinguish between someone with an IQ of 130 and 140, but there is probably a cut-off point where no one with an IQ below that is ever likely to read it.

IQ is not just a number. It has many practical consequences. Like for instance can someone read? Can someone read and demonstrate that they understood the sentence they just read?

We say that almost everyone born in America can read. But if the definition of reading includes the ability to answer simple questions about what was just read, then I suspect there are a number of Americans that can not do that. And it is much larger percentage than we want to admit.; 7/1/17, 2:01 PM