The Problems of Semitisation.

On April 25, 1945, this picture was taken of a meeting between American and Soviet forces on the Elbe. After six years of bloody war it truly was a joyous occasion, and it was wise to forget that nearly six year prior, the guys on the right were having another joyous meeting with another group of friends with whom they had since fallen out with.

The Eastern European perspective of the Second World War is not the same as the Western European one. Poles do not regard the Liberation of Warsaw in the same way that the French regard the Liberation of Paris and the emotional response to VE day in Europe has different dimension, depending on which side of the Iron Curtain you had the mis/fortune to inhabit. As Keith Lowe's book, Savage Continent, demonstrated, in the East of Europe the killing continued for a long time afterwards and many of those killed were the good guys.

When Hitler's armies stormed in Poland on September 1st, 1939, it was done with the tacit agreement of the Soviet Union, who had promised to invade Poland--on a as per previously agreed timetable--as per  the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. And though, chronologically, the Germans invaded first,  the Russians were holding off till it was their turn to put on the screws. World War Two, therefore, was a result of the combined German-Soviet agreement to unjustly partition Poland. It is therefore strange for an Eastern European to hear of how Germany "started the war", whereas in reality it was Germany and Russia that did it. For countries in Eastern Europe, the "liberation" from the Germans was the starting date for the enslavement by the Russians. Liberation proper, only occurring after the fall of Communism. What has always perplexed me is, why isn't this fact more readily recognised in the West?  Or what I should really say is, in the European cultures west of the Iron Curtain.

What always amazes me is the differential judgement accorded to both ideologies (and countries) when in reality both were malignant facets of evil. Nazism was vile on so many dimensions; for its system of concentration camps its, treatment of the Jews, it's embrace of savagery and cruelty, its plunder and so on. But so was Soviet Communism, whose body count was greater than that of Nazism and whose cruelties and savageries were on many instances on par. Every now and then I hear of how one was worse/ or better than the other but in my opinion it's a bit like choosing between cancer of the lung or the bowel: both are bad in their own kind of ways, there is nothing good about either of them.

In Eastern Europe both are seen as vile ideologies, but why the slant to the Left in the West? Especially, as the on-the-ground facts were better known there than in the East where there was widespread censorship and suppression of information?

Part of the reason I suspect, is that the West never had to fight the Russians and never got the full  experience of Bolshevism. Had, perhaps, five to six million Anglos or Frenchies been sent to the Gulag and "disappeared" Western perceptions of Russia would be different. Since it only happened to the "Western Slavs/Krauts" it really didn't matter and it really never made it into the public consciousness.  Furthermore, for those in the know, the alliance with the Communist savages must have caused considerable angst, and there is now considerable evidence that the West did know what was going on but preferred to turn a blind eye lest the "alliance" be threatened by moral questions that would have been raised. 

Necessary exigencies partially explain this dual standard during war time but with collapse of the Nazis, and the emergence of the Cold War, there was more than enough time for History to be set straight and yet it hasn't. Why? Part of the reason, I suspect, is because of the "Semitisation" of history in the West.

The terrible experience of Nazism by the Jews has resulted in their community focusing particular attention to the Nazi period, trying to understanding it, particularly with regard to their own cultural context. Given the predominance of Jews in academia and the media, the leftward slant of modern Judaism,  the freedom of speech in the West and the sheer weight of their publications ensured that the West was given a particularly Semitic interpretation of the Fascist phenomenon. This resulted in a moral evaluation which made the National Socialists more evil than the International Socialists.

Furthermore, the Anglo experience of fighting the Germans  and of having the Russians as allies, combined with cultural insularity, tended to emphasise this view. I also feel that once the full horror of what happened to the Jews became apparent, I think many of that many of the Allies were more than  happy to the let the focus fall onto German evil instead lest their own culpability in the Holocaust be bought to light by refusing to provide Jews with refuge.  The prevailing cultural interpretation of the Nazi period became Semitised.

By Semitisation, I mean the interpretation of things through a Jewish dimension to the exclusion of other facts. Now, I want to stress that I don't believe that this is as a result of a deliberate policy by the Jews or some sort of conspiratorial effort, rather, historical and biocognitive factors are more than responsible for this state of affairs.

On the other hand, in Eastern Europe, the post war interpretation of Nazi period was heavily Communised.  Here the official interpretation did not emphasise the Jewish dimension of the Nazi period but tended to see it in terms of the Marxist struggle, though everyone knew that the Jews were treated badly. It's hard to see the Holocaust as anything special when so much indiscriminate death was around in the post-War killing fields or Eastern Europe and where friends are family were disappearing in the night well into the 1970's.

I'll illustrate what I mean by Semitisation. For instance, it's a given that  Hitler is understood to be virulent anti-Semite, which he was, but it needs to be understood that he was primarily a racial purist and his anti-Semitism was secondary to it. The Semitic interpretation tends to see Hitler as intrinsically anti-semitic.  Now there's plenty enough evidence to show that Hitler was not just anti-Jewish, but he was also anti-Slav, anti-Gypsy anti-homosexual, anti-deformed, anti-Communist and anti-Catholic. Well before his final solution was formally implemented in 1942 Hitler had signed the decree for the T4 program  (1939, involuntary "euthanasia" of the mentally defectives) and it appears that the physical liquidation of the Jews was not on the top of his priority list. Though once the Nazi's decided to exterminate the Jews they did so with Germanic efficiency.

However,  as vile as the Final Solution was, an even greater depravity was in preparation, the Nazi's, Generalplan Ost, which would have killed tens of millions of Slavs and literally exterminated Poland. Focusing on Hitler as an intrinsic anti-Semite instead of virulent Darwinian racist downplays the racial purity aspect of the Nazi ideology whilst elevating the importance of the anti-Semitism.  Furthermore, by emphasising the Semitic dimension of Communism i.e. it was generally pro-Semitic early on, Fascism and Communism can be polarised on a Semitic axis. With Fascism being intrinsically anti-Semitic and thus bad, whilst communism which was pro-Semitic, and thus less evil (good). Fascism is thus seen as "more evil" from this perspective and Communist victims are accorded a lower status than Nazi ones. This type of "logic" offends common sense, natural justice and in Eastern Europe, this particularly tends to rub people the wrong way.

Semtisation is not just a Jewish phenomenon, it also needs to be seen as as a Nazi/Crypto-Nazi one, except in the negative sense. Crypto Nazi's are always on the lookout for the Jewish dimension in anything and judge the goodness or badness of a thing by its position on their own Semitic axis. If a Jew or Gentile is responsible for a crime then the Jew is worse even though the culpability is the same. Furthermore, a Jewish dimension is imputed even if there is no factual evidence for it. If the economy is in tatters, it's the fault of the Jews, If a country has lost the war, Jews are to blame. If the public is shifting to the Left the Jews are to blame. Alternative explanations are not sought and conflicting evidence is explained away.

In a paradoxical sort of way both Semites and anti-Semites approach history through a Semitic interpretation, though by opposite directions and both accord Semitic issues a predominance which they doesn't necessarily deserve, since, in reality,  the Jewish aspect of thing is frequently unimportant.

The problem with Semitisation is that it is a distortion of reality and an impairment to accurate thought, and whilst some people may be disposed to hate/love the Jews the fact is that Semtisation tends to inflate their significance out of all proportion to that warranted by events.  Clear thinkers should steer well away from the cognitive habit and concentrate on objectivity and empirical evidence. Furthermore the Right should steer well clear of it, since Semtisation of issues tends to "Frame-shift" them towards contemporary culturally accepted norms of Judaism regardless of their ontological congruence. Semitising an issue in the Nazi /Muslim world would be to make the issue negative on the other hand Semitising an issue in the U.S. would place it either in the "uncritical philo-semite or rabid anti-Semite polarities.

For example, when Mearsheimer and Walt published their book on the Israeli lobby, the response in the U.S. was predictable. They were obviously anti-Semites and crypto-Nazi's by association. Instead of discussing the contents of their book, and the relative merits of it,  M+W, spent a lot of time defending themselves from charges of anti-Semitism. Here in Australia, where there is a far weaker Likud lobby, the book was given a reasonable treatment. In the Middle East, the book was proof of Jewish perfidy and even garnered praise from Osama-bin-Laden, further smearing M+W through guilt by involuntary association. An objectivist would simply say than in democratic country like the U.S.,  lobbies are allowed to be formed and advocate their various interests to lawmakers. The fact that the Jewish lobby is well organised and effectively lobbies for Israel is a credit to them.  Big deal. Its all above board. Car makers, environmentalists and NAACP do it all the time and no one goes rabid when the fact is pointed out. If Americans aren't happy with their county's policies they're welcome to lobby as well, but its far easier to invoke Jewish superpowers, mind control and conspiratorial tendencies than to do something.

Furthermore, for the Right, Semitisation acts like a magnet to wannabe Nazi's and weakens it to entryism by them. It's a no win situation, and the best way out of no win situation is not to get into it.

For the record, I'm eusemetic, and I don't like to talk about Jewish issues since the current cultural frame in which I operate admits only two positions. Uncritical philo-Semitism which needs to be affirmed continuously or presumptive anti-Semitism. Since I'm neither, and most public discussion tends to occur with morons, the matter tends to be a waste of time with me either being called a Nazi or a Jewish tool. The only reason why I'm breaking my silence on the matter is because I'm seeing anti-Semitic muttering amongst some of the Neoreactionaires and I don't think they realise just how wide they're opening the door to the Neo-Nazi's. Furthermore they're chasing imaginary demons instead of tackling serious intellectual problems.

Semitic issues are irrelevant to the problems plaguing conservatism. The problem with Conservatism is not it's relationship with the Jews but its relationship with the truth. If you're a conservative that's constantly thinking about the Jewish Question then you're really not thinking at all.

100 Years Retarded

Was browsing Conservapedia today and noticed this on the biography of Woodrow Wilson;

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856 - 1924), a Democrat, was elected as the 28th President of the United States of America, and reelected in 1916, serving from 1913 to 1921. A Princeton president who became an intellectual leader of the Progressive Movement, Wilson demonstrated his mastery over Congress by creating the Federal Reserve System, lowering the tariff, and revising the antitrust laws in a way that ended most of the "trust-busting" and drew clear lines on what was allowed. In general these policies would be in line with conservative recommendations in 2009.[ED] He supported liberal policies such as raising wages of railroad workers when they threatened a nationwide strike in 1916. Trying repeatedly and failing to broker peace during World War I, Wilson in 1917 led the United States into the war. He set up a draft and trained millions of soldiers, sending the American Expeditionary Forces to France under the command of General John J. Pershing. Woodrow Wilson was also known for his racist policies promoting segregation, and promoted eugenics based off of Darwinist theory.^[2]. 

Woodrow Wilson was doing in 1913 what has become mainstream Republican policy in 2009.  How depressing is that. Conservatism in the U.S. and the rest of the world is in serious trouble. It has literally become a party of the retarded.

Merry Christmas

Apologies to all for the radio-silence but, as usual, it has been a far busier few months than I have expected.  I must admit that I'm glad to see the year over since it hadn't panned out like I expected it to do. Anyway I hope 2015 is better.

I would like to wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas particularly Nick B Steves who took the time out to meet me in New York and another person who met me there but who shall remain nameless. You know who you are.

2014 has been a mixed year for the Right side of politics/culture  across the globe and while things may appear grim, I actually feel that we're in a better place than we were a year ago.

Best wishes to all.

Observations on the Catholic Synod.

For those who are interested, my silence in the blogosphere has been due to other unforseen commitments which I have had to take on, principally, building and designing various elements of a house. I'm still keeping an eye on things and hope (for about the umpteenth time) to be blogging regularly in the next month or so.

However, I thought I would make a brief comment on the recent Catholic Church Synod.

Nial Ferguson, in explaining the rise of the west, explained its success in due to its ability to create "killer apps" which allowed it to overtake other civilisations. I think Ferguson presents a strong and compelling case (though some of his analysis is a bit simplistic) that certain cultural memes enable the flourishing of a civilisation. Ferguson does not go very much into the "software" by which these apps are written but in my mind, it is religious and philosophical culture which are the origin of the code.

Taking a Fergusonian view on the matter then, the recent Synod really needs to be thought of as a Western Civilisation software conference, and one of the foundational bits of Western Civilisational software is the Institution of Sacramental Marriage.  While a lot of Neoreactionaries seem to be concerned with politics as a driver of social change the real money is to found in the religous and philosophical underpinnings of society.  Religion more so than philosophy, because good religion seems to provide some protective effect against bad philosophy.

Tinkering with marriage comes with great peril though I feel we should be alright. I think a lot of strange things are going to happen to the Catholic Church in the next few years and all the gay talk (and I don't mean happy) has unsettled the true guardians of the faith Traditionalists. The problem with Tradition is that it is hermetically sealed, all that has been said about the Faith has been said and there is no new development that can occur out of it. Doubling down is the Traditionalist solution to every problem. I'm sorry people think this is a caricature but I'm calling it as I see it. The Traditionalists have stopped the development of any new "killer apps."

As I see it, the question that Francis is posing to the Synod is this, "How can we develop new applications using pre-existing software and code?" The issue remains inderminate.

Many see the very fact that Francis is asking this question as proof that he has gone "Lefty". But I don't think this is the case. In a speech, which was not widely reported by the media, Francis pretty much lays the boot into "alternative arrangements":

In an audience with members of an international Marian movement, Pope Francis warned that the sacrament of marriage has been reduced to a mere association, and urged participants to be witnesses in a secular world.

“The family is being hit, the family is being struck and the family is being bastardized[Ed],” the Pope told those in attendance at the Oct. 25 audience.

He warned against the common view in society that “you can call everything family, right?”

“What is being proposed is not marriage, it's an association. But it's not marriage! It's necessary to say these things very clearly and we have to say it!” Pope Francis stressed.

This ain't no New Age Pope.  No wonder the media turned a blind eye. The Cathedral does not want you to know.

Somebody's been reading this blog

Firstly, a quote by G.K. Chesterton

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types -- the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. 

Secondly, a quote by Pope Francis at the end of the Synod.

......And since it is a journey of human beings, with the consolations there were also moments of desolation, of tensions and temptations, of which a few possibilities could be mentioned:

 - One, a temptation to hostile inflexibility, that is, wanting to close oneself within the written word, (the letter) and not allowing oneself to be surprised by God, by the God of surprises, (the spirit); within the law, within the certitude of what we know and not of what we still need to learn and to achieve. From the time of Christ, it is the temptation of the zealous, of the scrupulous, of the solicitous and of the so-called – today – “traditionalists” and also of the intellectuals.

 - The temptation to a destructive tendency to goodness [it. buonismo], that in the name of a deceptive mercy binds the wounds without first curing them and treating them; that treats the symptoms and not the causes and the roots. It is the temptation of the “do-gooders,” of the fearful, and also of the so-called “progressives and liberals.”

Francis, pretty much sums up what I feels ails the Catholic Church at the moment and why it is currently withering.  On one hand, there is a strong Traditionalist faction which permits no innovation even within the spirit of pre-existing doctrine, on the other, another faction which innovates stupidly to the Church's destruction.

A YouTube clip to ponder.

What does it mean to be Conservative.

This panel discussion from a few years ago raises several important points.


I think Waleed Aly (a moderate Muslim) gives a very good analysis of what constitutes modern conservatism.

It's a frightening realisation since, if you think about it, real Conservatism is nearly dead. Perhaps this explains the Left's triumph during the 20th Century. More to come.

Alpha Widow.

I'm still quite busy at the moment and therefore blogging is light. Still, this story in the Daily Mail caught my eye and is further proof of a concept developed in the manosphere: The Alpha Widow.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2747077/Wife-admits-let-fantasies-past-lovers-ruin-marriage.html.

Now, I'm not going to say much about the article as it is self explanatory however I want to make a quick comment concerning Neoreaction and the manosphere.

As I see it, Neoreaction needs to be thought of as a ideological/philosophical movement aimed at restoring a true Conservatism.  The current state of affairs with regard to Conservatism is so bad in my opinion that almost anyone whose sole qualification is to be against the Left can claim to be conservative.  The rot is conservative thought is that bad. One area where Conservatism is profoundly diseased is in its understanding of female sexuality and is a classic example of the ideology working to further the enemy's aims. Any Conservative renewal is going to need a rethink in this vital domain of human existence and it's one of the reasons why I think the manosphere has an important role in getting conservatives on board with the real nature of female sexuality.

A paragraph to ponder.

Anthony Daniels, otherwise known by his pen name, Theodore Dalrymple, is perhaps one of the best conservative writers out there. Should it interest anyone to know why I started blogging it is because of him. It's not that his work inspired me, rather, I wanted to also confirm what he wrote about in his articles, as an independent blogger. My writing is no where in his league and I never expected to get the audience that I have but it was my intention to second the observations that he made whilst working with the underclass and social services as a physician.  I had analogous experiences here in Australia and I felt almost duty bound to give support to his views. I imagine that there are doctors in the U.S. who could report the same.

Daniels regularly writes for the Salisbury Review, which purports to be the Quarterly Journal of the Conservative Anglosphere (it too, seems to be soliciting writers, so arid in thought is Conservative Britain) and his writing is generally quite perceptive and well reasoned.  But imagine my surprise when I saw this paragraph in a recent work of his;

The other question to which I have found no satisfactory answer, despite having been asked it many times, is what is a conservative. My reply is that a conservative has no fixed doctrine to which he must subscribe. He has, rather, a general attitude [Ed], namely that man is fallible, that regress is as much to be feared as progress is to be hoped, that human action always has unforeseen consequences so that prudence is a virtue, that ignorance is always greater than knowledge, that those who came before us were as intelligent as we, that tradition contains wisdom as well as irrationality, that life cannot be lived according to a preconceived plan, that wickedness lies in wait for all of us, that man is imperfectible.

Strange, how one of the best conservative writers out there has a difficulty with understanding the nature of conservatism. I don't think Daniels is alone in his view of conservatism. I have a lot of respect for Daniels, and his understanding of conservatism as consisting of tradition, caution and the preference of the familiar seem to be the predominant themes in contemporary understandings of itself and itself reflects the Burkean tradition of thought.  Personally, I think that this is conservatism's fatal flaw.

The problem with this temperamental view of conservatism is that it is bound to no fixed principles, rather, this type of conservatism exists to act as social retardant to innovation, regardless of whether this innovation is good or bad. A temperamental does not have fixed prinicples but rather a fixed attitude. So while a temperamental conservative may oppose moral relativism initially, if enough people come on board, if it is implemented slowly and if it appears to work, he'll slowly come around to the idea and then, he will be resistant to having the principle changed. This type of conservatism does not really afford any protection against the slouch towards Gomorrah. The Conservative impotence at events in Rotherham is a case in point. As I've said before, modern conservatism is simply the Right wing branch of the Left.

Rot Britannia: The Conservative Failure.

Deplorable as the events in Rotherham are, perhaps what's even more dispiriting is that nothing is being done to punish those who had failed in their duty of care.  Britain is currently led by a coalition government headed by a so called "Conservative". What is most galling in this entire sordid episode is the government's response, which seems to consist entirely in  asking calling for the negligent authorities to resign.

Is the government that impotent?  Here is a God given opportunity for the conservatives to rout the lunatic left from one of the branches of government and all they do is dither. It's a Chamberlain moment.

Much like the GOP's response to illegal immigration in the U.S., it seems conservatives everywhere seem impotent when it comes to trying to halt the Left's institutional march.

I mean, why not introduce legislation to punish those who are negligent?  Why not disband the council and put in a set of administrators? Why not launch an enquiry into the behaviour of child protection services (heavily staffed by left ideologues) and purge the system of its rottenness?  How about "compensating" the UKIP voting family that had its foster children taken off them? Or writing up exemplary legislation to allow them to sue officers who debase their office to such a degree. It's all low hanging fruit, just the there for the grabbing but "conservatives" in England, just like everywhere else, sit there twiddling their thumbs.

The fact is that many of the "conservative" governing elite are not conservative at all. What distinguishes the mainstream conservatives from the Left at the moment is perhaps a slightly less insane economic policy, but on social matters they seem in agreement.  The Right has now become the right wing of the Left. This terrible decline in conservative representation in government has meant that  religiously inspired/non-Marxist political policy has now been rapidly pushed outside of the Overton Window in most of the world.  The conservative Right and religious right is increasingly being seen as being extremist.

Not that the rank and file haven't noticed. Around the world the conservative bloc seems to be splitting in all directions, the level of disgust in "our" politicians rises. However as we fissure the left coalesces, and like ISIL, unites.

The failure on the part of the right ultimately stems from a failure to understand itself. What exactly is conservative? Who is conservative? The fatal error, I think, is in seeing conservatism as dispositional ideology; one of temperament and not rooted in particulary ontology. Philosophy matters as we of the true right are about to find out.

In group and outgroup limits have to be redefined, lest we find ourselves voting for crypto-Lefty's representing the Right.

Rot Britannia

Further sign of decline from that once great power, Britain, stems from the northern English town of Rotherham. The sordid details of which can be found here. Now as someone with limited experience of the social services here in Australia, the abuse that was perpetrated on those of low socioeconomic status and in government care comes as no surprise. The poor, freed from the "oppressive" constraints of Christian morality and presided over, in their benevolence, by social services which never, ever have enough money, are sliding to a level of squalor and exploitation that would have made the owners of those "Dark Satanic Mills" proud.

Most of the Newspaper articles dealing with the subject have focused on the Pakistani origins of the perpetrators and the politically correct cultural shield which protected them. These things are irrelevant in my mind. Young children are being abused every day in similar circumstances. The fact that the Pakistanis seemed to be better organised and more "efficient" in their abuse than the average British thug does not take away from the fact the supervising authorities failed miserably in their duty of care to the children.

It appears that despite three internal investigations, no one in any senior position was aware of the the depravity of the situation. Not that these same supervisory authorities were incapable of acting quickly when notified of "genuine" danger.  Or when a Christian gets accused of sexual abuse.

What really stinks is that there are no consequences.  The South Yorkshire Council, which is a cesspit of Labour slime, are going to hold out till the controversy blows over, paid job and pension guaranteed. The Conservative government apparently can't dismiss town functionaries whose exercise of office is criminally negligent, though it doesn't even seem to care about doing so.

Speaking today in Dumfries, Mrs May (Ed: The Home Secretary) said it was not her job to select or dismiss police and crime commissioners but appeared to suggest he should heed calls from his own party to go.

WTF? I mean what use is there having any "conservatives" in power  if they can't clear the worst excess of the Left from office? Why is it that the Left can pretty much flout any convention, not be held to any standards, commit blatant fraud and rest assured that when conservatives are in power they have nothing to fear. I mean 1400 girls were sexually abused under their watch. How bad does it have to get?

And what about politics? Are the Conservatives so limpid in their vision that they don't want to exploit the situation to their political advantage? I mean where is "fire in the belly" and the desire to wipe the bastards out.  Absolutely nothing.  How does such dross rise to the top of the Conservative establishment? Is there not one intelligent conservative in England? Not that the Left's own instinct for survival is diminished. It immediately went into damage control mode and sacrificed the Police Commissioner, a paid member of the Labour party. The Left seems to act whilst the Conservatives dither.

The Informed Public

I've been busy again these past few days so I haven't had the time to put up a considered piece. Still, I thought this video by Rick Shenkman was worth putting out there for consideration by those who read my blog.  Shenkman, Associate Professor of History at George Mason University and author of the book, Just How Stupid are We?, gives a good talk outlining the problems of modern democracy. Neoreactionaries may particularly be interested in the last five minutes of his talk.  If pressed for time the good stuff starts at the 15minute mark.

The Shifting Universe.

There is currently a revolution underway in our understanding of genetics and biochemistry.  The traditional understanding of human DNA, as being comprised of approximately containing 2% useful information and the rest of it being junk, is rapidly being debunked by research into non-coding RNA.

The junk appears to matter, and matter a lot, especially with regard to our understanding of ourselves. It's my opinion that these findings will lead to the death of Darwinism and pose a serious scientific challenge to the belief of Atheism, not because evolution will be seen to be impossible, but far less probable. It's an Gallileo moment.

Here is a talk by professor John Mattick, whom I've spoken about before. Mattick is not some scientist from Flat Earth Ministries or the like. From what I can gather, Mattick believes in evolution but this talk of his, based upon the latest findings in molecular biology, illustrates just how much contemporary science has under appreciated the enormous complexity of the DNA/RNA transcription mechanism. Furthermore, Mattick explains how contemporary understandings of evolutionary biology are just flat out wrong.

The talk, titled, Most assumptions in molecular biology are wrong,  lasts about an hour and gets pretty technical towards the end but I feel it's worth persisting with.


Intersting titbits. (Mainly at the end.)

It appears that Lamark may have been right all along.
The brain can rewirte its own DNA!
(That is shot accross the bow to the eugenicists and the Hard-HBD crowd.)
Most molecular biologists have a hard time thinking around mainstream paradigms.
The genetic processes in the brain seem to have an analogy with the immune system.
Our favourite idiot, Richard Dawkins, gets an oblique put down.

If you've got the time, get a coffee and sit down and have a listen. Most of it is easy to understand for those with a bit of scientific understanding.

In addition, those who have interested in the subject and like to keep abreast of things, this blog keeps a digest of the latest findings with regard to non coding RNA.

A Troublesome Intelligence.

Like everyone else, I've read Wade's book and I thought I would wait till the hullabaloo settled down before I would put my two cents in. I'm not intending for this to be a formal book review rather a collection of my thoughts on it.

From where I sit, it appears that those who believe in HBD are slowly splitting into two camps.  The first group comprises the "Hard HBD" crowd who, whilst acknowledging the role of environment, deny it in practice and effective preach a genetic Calvinism. They have a strong whiff of the eugenics movement about them. They are the intellectual opposite of the blank-slate crowd.

On the other hand, there is the "Soft HBD" faction, of which I count myself as one, who believe that both genetics and environment shape the nature of the individual with the proviso that you can't put in what God's left out. I, for instance, am never going to be a good sprinter; no matter how much I try. I can, however, improve my running performance with some training--but I'm going to hit a practical limit--and that limit is going to be set by my genetics.

It's my belief that most people don't normally operate at their maximum genetic potential unless their environment is conducive to do so. Any any evaluation of human performance therefore, needs to look at both parameters.  The practical problem with my approach, though, is that most people lack the mental machinery to juggle more than one variable at a time and hence the popularity of the one-size-fits-all interpretation of phenomenon. To the strong HBD crowd I'm a blank-slater. Such is life.

The reason why I mention this is that the Strong HBD crowd seem to have enthusiastically embraced Wade's book and seem to have taken to vigorously defending it. This is understandable given the current politically-correct intellectual climate. Unfortunately, this defence seems to be rather non-selective and any criticism of Wade's book is immediately assumed by a few of the Strong HBD crowd to be a defacto advocacy of blank-slatism. As mentioned before, some people can only do one idea at a time.

I must admit that I was left underwhelmed by Wade's book. Not because I'm a theist but because because our understanding of the biochemical basis of behaviour is so poorly understood that it's very difficult to make any definitive claims as a result. Wade acknowledges that the link between genetics and behaviour is poorly understood but nevertheless proceeds to produce a theory with regard to the the rise of the West on the most tenuous of links. Atheists, quite validly,  have for years chided Christian for their reliance on the "God of the gaps", in Wade's book we find its atheist equivalent; the "Darwin of the gaps argument"--"We don't know have behaviour and genes are linked but evolution has done it".  It's intellectually sloppy.

The two best reviews of Wade's book in my opinion were Fred Reed's and Theodore Dalrymple's. Dalyrymple was taken to task by Derbyshire who made a few fair points, but I note the Derb didn't tackle Dalrymple's point about the variation in homicide rates in New Zealand. Nor did he explain the relative increase in frequency in lactose persistence in desert Mediterranean Spain. (Note, for those who are interested. Lactose intolerance doesn't kill or maim you so I don't know how it confers selective disadvantage.) Furthermore there are alternative explanations for some of the modern day genetic signatures which he has failed to countenance.

Like the authors above, I found Wade's evolutionary explanations a bit hard to swallow. For example, his illustration of the domestication of the fox through selective breeding seem to gloss over the fact that it was only achieved through enormous selections pressures which have no analogy in Western History.  How relevant it is to the formation of Western Society is beyond me. His arguments about the persistence of surnames may be less related to good behaviour but due to the luck of being born in a wealthy family. Richer families have lower infant mortality so more survive to become breeders. Furthermore, the economic history of Europe shows that there is no gradual increase of wealth throughout most of history (as would be expected by the "bred behaviour thesis"), rather, wealth levels remain flat until the industrial revolution.

The other problem with Wade's contention is that is can be easily put to the test with common experience. For example, one complex behaviour which has been under strong selection pressure (at least in the Christian West) is that of monogamy. We can quite clearly say that until recently, Western society has strongly promoted marriage and punished its exceptions. Adultery was harshly punished, sometimes with death, bastard children were ostracised and given limited rights especially with regard to inheritance. It would be expected, then, that selection pressures will have have produced a population primed for sexual monogamy. If we looked at the data in 1950 it surely would have proved Wade's point. But the trend has totally reversed over the past fifty years, far too rapidly for genetic effects to be responsible.

Furthermore Wade seems to have serious gaps in his understanding of the biochemistry of DNA and seemed to be in the dark with regard to the  role of non-coding DNA;

Most mutations affect only the copious regions of DNA that lie between the genes and are of little consequence. (Page 73)

It's rapidly being proven that this is not the case. Never mind, as Wade wasn't putting forward his ideas as fact, rather, a theory. But it's hard to form a good theory when you appear to be ignorant of the basic facts.

However what bothers me about Wade's book is the subtle digs he makes at Christianity throughout it. He continually tries to paint Christian religion in a negative light especially with regard to its relationship with science. For example, he mentions Aquinas's condemnation by the Bishop of Paris, but not the Church's overruling of that Condemnation. He tries to paint the advancement of science, especially in medieval times as occurring within "independent institutions" failing to mention that these institutions were Church run. Printing presses were shut down in Muslim lands, not in Christian ones, where Bishops and Cardinals enjoyed enormous prestige and power and could prohibit books from being printed. The telescope was rejected by the Chinese after it had been bought to them by the Jesuits. Someone needs to remind Wade that Newton believed in God.

The closest that Wade comes to giving Christianity some credit is in acknowledging that theological discussions may have habituated men to reason.  It's a rubbish proposition.  Aristotle, which predated Christianity, certainly taught the laws of logic and metaphysics. Men were thinking logically in Europe well before Christ. Not only is he ignorant of the intellectual history of the Church but where he acknowledges it he gets it wrong.

In the end, his explanation for the rise of the West is due to geographic and historical luck; the peculiarities of which shaped evolutionary forces to produce science and Western civilisation. In other words, it just happened. I'm afraid the proposition didn't convince me.  The reason why it doesn't convince me is because, as Wade acknowledges, China and Muslim world were more advanced with regard to Science than the West in the early Middle Ages. If evolution gives rise to behaviours which foster science, then clearly selection pressures favouring science were operating in these cultures as well. Given the continuity of these cultures, why did evolution stop there? Wade provides weak explanations.

What really got me down after reading Wade's book was that was a product of Wade.

Let me explain what I mean. Wade is not your ordinary man. Educated at Eton, an editor of the prestigious journals, Science and Nature and Science Editor for the New York Times, Wade occupied important nodal points in the development of contemporary Western Scientific Culture and indirectly influenced the development of it. One often imagines that the men occupying these positions are broadly educated and cultured. It appears that Wade is not.

Take, for example, his position with regard to the Church. I'm fully aware that there were instances where the Church tried to suppress scientific discovery but these were the rare exceptions and not the rule. It's as if Wade did not know who Mendel was or his occupation. The Church by-and-large encouraged the development of science, and people who've looked at this matter in some detail have noted an intimate connection. It is evident from Wade's writings that he is factually ignorant of the intellectual history of the Church. Now I want to be clear. I'm not faulting Wade for getting specific facts wrong, rather, the general direction of them, Now this wouldn't matter if he were some grunt scientist working in some obscure corner, but he occupied a position of considerable influence and probably influenced policy.

He is, effectively, uneducated with regard to Western Intellectual history and yet has occupied important roles in the shaping of it. To be so ignorant of history and yet to occupy the positions that he has is truly worrying for a whole host of reasons. Wade is a scientist who is ignorant of science's underpinnings. A Church-hostile scientist is likely to end up a science hostile scientist as well. Lysenkoism was the official policy of an avowedly atheist state.

Wade is clearly has a good adequate knowledge of genetics but seems to be ignorant outside his area of expertise. He is typical of many of today's technocrats and an example of Ortega y Gasset's Mass-Man: Specialists who can't see the big picture. The problem is that when these guys advocate social or educational policy they are given an ear because they are thought to be all wise, whereas in reality, they are very ignorant outside their area of particular expertise. The fact that this type of mind is now routinely produced in our best universities and ends up occupy positions of great power is a very troublesome intelligence.

The book may have impressed the plebs but it didn't impress me.

Another Nail in the Coffin.

 
Australian Politics.

And yet another example which exemplifies the utter failure of the Right to tackle the things that matter in West.

Niall Ferguson explains the success of the West as coming about from the development of six "killer apps" which allowed it to overtake the rest of the World. I'll have more to say about Ferguson's thesis in later posts but one of Ferguson's glaring omissions with his "apps" thesis is in failing to recognise the "software" used to write them.

One of the principal pieces of "code" is the notion of "objective truth" and the free pursuit of it, from which is derived the principle of freedom of speech and the scientific method.  Attack the principles of objective truth or that of freedom of speech and you suddenly undermine the whole of European Civilisation. The code has to be protected at all times otherwise the apps fail to function.

The Left has for years attacked these principles in many ways. Philosophically, through a rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics; socially, through political correctness; and legally by shutting down speech which subjectively offends instead of objectively injures.

"Hate speech" legislation, which places the locus of injury in the subjective response of the victim instead of the objective evidence of injury is perhaps the most pernicious "viruses" undermining Western Civilisation.  The problem with this type of legislation is that its most enthusiastic hive-mind advocates pursue its intention with a sense of high minded moral zealotry whilst undermining the very foundations of the society they live in.

All of us know people whom you can't tell certain truths to because they will be offended, and that's the problem with hate speech legislation, It elevates subjective offence of being of greater importance than objective truth. In such societies where the principle of "hate speech" is embraced, the amount of discussion permitted is solely determined by the sensitivity of the victims and the recognition by the courts of the injury.

When this retard said that Christian opposition to homosexuality rested on "hate" rather than religious principal, you already know how the courts are going to rule when the heat is put on the Christians. More importantly, you also know that when it comes to a discussion about Gay issues, the limits of conversation are going to be set by the "sensitivity" of the those who are offended. If you want to shut down debate, find offence in everything your opponent says.

That is why the current backflip by the Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott is quite simply a disgrace. The Conservatives went to the election with the promise of a repeal of the more idiotic elements of the hate speech legislation. This was a piece of legislation that would have cost next to nothing to repeal and was seen as unpopular by the average Australian but perhaps not in the crowd that the Prime Minister moves in.

Now, with next to minimal pressure, they've decided to support it.  Furthermore, it's a backflip by a man who is both a genuinely committed Catholic and the leader of the Conservative faction in Australian politics. Furthermore, he was educated at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

Some take home messages from this utterly dismal episode.

1) A prestigious university education does not guarantee you a brain.
2) Being pious does not protect you from metaphysical and moral stupidity.
3) Calling yourself a conservative does not make you one.
4) Political Conservatism in Australia is dead.

The Guns of August. Paragraphs to Ponder.

 
A friend came to see me on one of the evenings of the last week — he thinks it was on Monday, August 3rd. We were standing at a window of my room in the Foreign Office. It was getting dusk, and the lamps were being lit in the space below on which we were looking. My friend recalls that I remarked on this with the words: "The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time."

Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary on the Eve of the First World War.

A man need not be a Christian to know all this. But one must be a Christian to give form to this, and then heroically to live and die. In 1912, aboard an English coastal steamer as untroubled a young man as only an innocent son of Wilhelmism could be, I theorized to the only other passenger, an old Chinese intellectual, in the course of an evening promenade on deck, that the whole of Christianity, everywhere in the world, now found itself in a single vast agony.

The venerable old man, a follower of the precepts of Lao-tzu, professor of Asiatic religions at Tsingtao Academy, looked at me with amusement. Then he said quietly that Christianity still had before it its great and decisive task. I was deeply impressed by the way he spoke.

Today, thirty years afterward, bowed as I am under the weight of responsibility for certain major sins, having attained to a certain height on some few occasions and fallen to certain depths on others, I know the thing is not so simple. Certainly, Christianity still has its great work before it. But in the face of the Satanism which now prevails, a second Catacombs will be necessary and a second Nero's burning-of-Rome before the spirit may emerge victorious a second time.

Friedrich Percyval Reck-Malleczewen. Diary of a Man in Despair.

You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Matthew 5:14-16

Service Announcement.

Just a brief note to let people know that I'm still around though radio silence is will extend for the next few weeks. Home and profession life has been busy and business is forcing me to take a trip.
I imagine I'll be up and running in the next month or so for those who care.

Purge.

I've been busy the past few weeks so posting has been very light.  This article by William Saletan which I read in Slate today (Hat tip Ray Sawhill), should give all serious Conservatives some pause for concern.


Read it and understand.

I'm a tolerant guy, what people do in their bedrooms is really up to them but I think its pretty obvious where the whole Gay "tolerance" lobby is going.  The whole gay lobby is not at all about tolerance, its about unquestioning enthusiastic endorsement: everything else is to be purged. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Brendan Eich discriminated against any gay employees, his problem was that he wasn't pursing the party line.  Brendan Eich committed thoughtcrime.

If the article is to be believed, most of the push for his firing came from that soft underbelly of masculinity, the IT crowd. In my experience, with a few exceptions, it's a collection of beta nerds and sperg's and it's no surprise that Asimov's emissaries of a Star Trek universe should be pushing so hard for sexual ambiguity. Spock had no heart, they have no balls. Enthusiastic acolytes for their own gelding.

The late Christopher Dawson, taught me a lot about tyranny. Everyone imagines the Soviet Gulags or the Nazi Concentration camps, but Dawson recognised that even tyranny has a certain cultural flavour and Anglo tyranny will be unlike anything else. There will be no slaughters or death camps (though a few notable individuals may be sacrificed as examples) rather, there will the progressive ostracism of any individual who doesn't follow the party line.  Loss of job, loss of status, exclusion from cultural institutions, forced education and so on. Imagine being a Catholic in Georgian Ireland and you'll get the picture. In Nazi Germany it was more extreme version of the same.

It quickly became clear that [Hitler] intended to imprison the Catholics, as it were, in their own churches. They could celebrate mass and retain their rituals as much as they liked, but they could have nothing at all to do with German society otherwise. Catholic schools and newspapers were closed, and a propaganda campaign against the Catholics was launched.

It's gonna get ugly, really ugly.

Conservative Protestants, for years you have pilloried, disenfranchised, persecuted and subordinated us. The smarter ones amongst you can see that now you are about the get the same.

Welcome to the family, my brothers.

Slutology.*

A drop in the usual tone of this blog.

The science of Slutology continues to advance and here I present another interesting paper worth perusing.

Attractiveness and Spousal Infidelity as Predictors of Infidelity in Couples from Five Cultures.

Nothing here that's new under the sun but it's nice to see science proving what common sense asserts. Some choice quotes from the paper:

This  wide  variation  in  reports  of  frequency  of  infidelity  and  non-paternity  may reflect differences in  reporting  accuracy  regarding  these  delicate matters.  In  a  US  study, women  (but  not  men)  tended  to  underreport  their  number  of  sex  partners  unless  they believed  lying could be detected (Alexander  & Fisher, 2003). Another  study of American women  found  that  when  asked  face-to-face about  number  of sexual  intercourse  partners in  the  past  year,  1.08%  of  married  women  reported infidelity  whereas  when  the  same question  was  asked  through  a  computer  questionnaire,  6.13%  of  the  married  women reported  having sexual  intercourse with  more than  one man  (Whisman  & Snyder, 2007). [Ed: Ouch! That's almost a sixfold increase!]

Values: Smith (1994)   found  permissive  sexual   values  to   be  associated   with infidelity.   Over   three-quarters   of   Americans  who   did   not   think  extramarital   sexual relations  are  “always  wrong”  reported  engaging  in  infidelity,  whereas  those  who  said  it was  “always  wrong”  reported  a  10%  rate.  Being  politically  liberal,  highly  educated,  and sexually  permissive  before  marriage  was  related  to  casual  sexual  mores.  At  least  two studies  have discovered  that  the more  religious  people were, the less likely  they reported engaging in  extramarital sexual relations (Buss & Shackelford, 1997; Whisman  &  Snyder,  2007)

Physical attractiveness, as determined by independent raters, was not a predictor of the number of times US college women engaged in extra-pair sex [ED](Gangestad & Thornhill, 1997). In fact, women with low self-esteem tended to have had more sex partners and one-night stands (Mikach & Bailey, 1999). Similarly, adolescent girls who had had many sex partners rather than few or none tended to have lower self-esteem and more depression (Spencer et al., 2002). 

One factor that seems to affect infidelity across cultures is low paternal investment. For example, in matrilineal societies paternal investment typically is low, often giving rise to the  avunculate, and infidelity and divorce tend to be common (Daly, Wilson, 1983; van den Berghe, 1979). Similarly, where the wife is relatively independent economically of the husband, marital bonds tend to be weak (Friedl, 1975; Goode, 1993; Seccombe & Lee, 1987) and infidelity by the wife is relatively common (van den Berghe, 1979).

Nothing is certain in life and picking a good partner is hard but an attractive girl, who loves her daddy, and is from a good, stable, conservative-religous family is a pretty safe bet.

*Hat Tip to Randall Parker for the term. Though he uses tt". i.e. Sluttology

Phenotyped.

As mentioned in my previous post, one of the facilitators for the rise of feminism and separation of sex and gender has been the predominance of Dualistic understanding of the human person.  Feminism and all the other variants of gender aberration draw their strength from this predominant Western understanding of man and thus any Christian push-back to these movements  must avoid a purely "spiritual" approach to the problem. Calls for more prayer, reflection, virtue on their own, will make matters first by unintentionally re-enforcing the Cartesian duality. The work around to this problem is by balancing the spiritual perfection of man with an insistence on his physical perfection as well. Effectively, what is needed is a muscular Christianity.

Literally Muscular.

If Christians are to be serious with regard to pushing back Cartesian dualism they need to reassert the hylomorphic model. They need to balance the prevailing culture by affirming the goodness of the flesh since according to hylomorphism bodily perfection is but is one measure of spiritual well being.

To illustrate what I mean, consider the following example. A house is an arrangement of building materials according to a plan. It's hylomorphic in the sense that the plan determines the arrangement of the material. Now, assuming that the plan is good, the goodness or the badness of the house is dependent upon how faithfully the material is arranged to the plan. A good house reproduces the plans perfectly, a bad house is one that is deficient in some way, say, in workmanship or quality of materials.

On the other hand, the materials and workmanship may be good but the plan is flawed. For example a house that is designed in such a way so that it is almost guaranteed to leak (see Frank Llyod Wright) is a bad house. It's bad because it doesn't conform with our pre-conceived conceptions of what constitutes a good house. Therefore a house may be defiecient in either workmanship, materials or design.

Keep this thought.

Now biological sex needs to be seen as the physical instantiation of gender, or in other words, the "plan" of the human being.  A man is the biological instantiation of the masculine form whilst a female is the instantiation of the feminine. Masculinity and femininity are therefore not something "tacked on" to the body but rather physical states of human being. It also needs to be understood that masculinity and femininity don't just code for the sex organs but their imprint is felt at the level of biochemical processing, neurological wiring, skeletal structure, muscular placement etc. Gender permeates the entire human being and so the dichotomy between gender and sex is false. Gender and sex are one.

A perfect woman, for instance, is one that perfectly instantiates the feminine ideal. Her body will be perfectly feminine. She will think in a feminine way, walk in a feminine way, talk in a feminine way and so on. Femininity permeates here entire being in both presentation and act.

Now, masculinity and femininity need to be seen to be seen as akin to "house plans" the proper expression of the plan may be frustrated by disease, mutilation or neglect. Shoddy workmanship or material may impinge upon the expression of gender and therefore gender deficiency needs to be seen as a privation of instantiated form. The interesting thing here is that this privation of gender assumes a moral dimension when it is deliberately chosen. In other words, deliberately making yourself less masculine or feminine, either through neglect or by choice, is an evil. Caritas imposes a moral duty to stay true to our gender type.

But how do we determine what constitute perfection in form when it comes to gender? The feminists could quite literally argue that we are simply defining form according our own conceptions of it and therefore there is no such thing as "objective form".

The feminists have a point, in that our conceptions of gender have a certain degree of subjectivity to them. But the accuracy of our subjectivity is one of degree and not of direction. In this famous image, which is a morphed average of the faces rated on "Hot or Not"

 there is a clear variation in facial morphology between the least rated and the most.  Something which would not be present unless there was some type of predetermined human response to facial beauty.* In nearly all higher order civilisations, there appears to be an extraordinary degree of congruity with regard to conceptions of masculine and feminine beauty which leads to the conclusion that there must be some kind of genetic basis to our response to beauty.* There is a certain degree of objectivity to the issue.

What is masculine or feminine, therefore, is not determined by philosophical argument, or social construct, or power relationships, but by our human response to the experience of it.What's masculine is that which is what we feel to be masculine and likewise for femininity. The summed human experience of them are therefore accurate guides to their essential natures.

The reason why we find the fat, weak, deformed or disfigured unattractive is because our biology elicits a noxious response to their presence. Our biology therefore has a strong influence with regard to our determination of  physical beauty and we are hard wired to be drawn to the beautiful. (i.e. that which has a perfect form)

But the other dimension which strongly influences our conceptions of gender polarity is that of the erotic. Now by erotic, I mean the whole series of qualities in a person of the opposite sex which draws us to them. When the average man argues that his ideal woman is combination of a Madonna, a mother and a whore he is crudely outlining his conceptions of an ideal femininity across its many dimensions. Gender polarity, in fact is most marked when considered from an erotic perspective and what's interesting when you look at it from this approach is that evaluations of masculinity and femininity are to a large degree determined by the opposite sex. What the opposite sex finds sexually attractive is what is sexually attractive. Therefore masculinity can be objectively evaluated at this level by observing the response of women to different types of men. Conceptions of masculinity/femininity which ignore this dimension are thus false and it is precisely at this level where traditional carnal-lite approach to Eros has done most harm. The war against Eros has diminished gender polarity and has facilitated the rise of androgyny.

The hylomorphic critique of feminism therefore is on two levels:

1. Firstly Hylomorphism is opposed to Cartesian (body-spirit) approach in its understanding of the human sexuality. Sex and gender are not distinct entities but rather a intertwined physical instantiation of one.
2. The hylomophic approach criticises feminism because it is an ideology which embraces the privation of the feminine form. It makes women literally unfeminine. It uglifies them.

The hylomorphic critique has nothing really to say on the legal status of gender except insofar as any law or legal privilege leads to a privation of form.  i.e. legislating women to be combat soldiers.
Here the critique is not that woman cannot perform the duty but rather that duty "defeminises" her and thus makes her less of a woman even though she may be a good combat soldier.

The Christian approach to feminists is thus to call them out as being less womanly than they should be. The problem with feminism and genderism of any kind, is not that it turns them into the opposite sex, it turns them into deficient human beings.

*Roissy's running a female attractiveness survey. The congruity of the ratings are proof of the relative objectivity when it comes to assessments of female beauty.

*Neoreaction needs to embrace bio-aesthetics in order to combat the crappiness of modern art and architecture.

Cartesian Gender

Atheist warning. This is a socio-theological post.

Next, reacquaint yourself with the principle of hylomorphism.

Proceed.

One of the main contentions of this blog is that rise of modernism is a consequence of certain "structural" weaknesses  that were present in traditional society and culture.  Any conservative attempt to combat modernism therefore requires an understanding of the underlying pathologies which both gave birth to it and sustain it. I critique the Church quite a bit, not because of any malice, but because its ideas were the dominant cultural force which shaped the mindset of modern Western man and many modernist heresies are themselves mutations or adaptations of Christian thought.

As I've mentioned before, one of the areas of structural weakness concerned issues with regard to sexuality. The Catholic Church, at least in theory, has always endorsed a hylomorphic concept of man but in its war against the excesses of the flesh, the Church pushed back too hard and created a "carnal lite" version of man. This notion of man, comprised of a "good" spirit which led him to heaven and corrupting flesh which was dragging him to hell. And although the Church was officially committed to the hylomorphic vision, practically, in its day to day operations  it practiced a Cartesian duality with regard to the man's nature.  It's this Cartesian framework which sets up both the division of not only spirit and the flesh, but with a little imagination, of both gender and biological sex.

If identity and reason find their locus in the spirit, and the flesh is considered not only as something transient and temporary but hostile to spiritual perfection, it's easy to see how, when it comes to conceptions of the human person, the body is percieved to be both inferior to the spirit and hostile to it. Spiritual identity and corporeal body are thus put in opposition and though the Church did not subscribe to the dualist doctrine the take home message as understood by the faithful was Cartesian. It didn't help that the  Church in in its traditions, pushed the idealisation of the ascetic and the mortification of the flesh.  Modernism's conception of the human person is therefore an adaptation of mainstream Christian practice which saw rationality and corporeality as two separate entities.

Even Christianity's conceptions of masculinity and femininity tended to be framed along virtue centric lines and less along biological properties. To be manly, men had to possess virtues A, B, C......and so on. Women likewise had to posses virtues X, Y, Z....e.t.c. But the thing about virtues is that they are chosen behaviour: habits of deliberate choice which are not constrained by biology. When you frame gender along these lines you imply that gender is a matter of proper will and not biological nature. It's not much of a stretch to see how feminism gets its ideas of gender being both  a choice and social construct.

To illustrate what I mean, consider the following two women. Which of these is more feminine?

Now I've chosen Megan Fox for no particular reason except that she is very attractive but otherwise  morally average. Mother Teresa, on the other hand, is a moral giant but quite frankly is less attractive that Ms Fox.  How do we evaluate femininity in these two women?

There are strong strains in mainstream Christian thought which would assert that Mother Teresa is the more feminine of the two.  According to this approach, true femininity just as easily found in the obese-hirsute-fishmonger's wife as is in the Victoria's Secret model provided they live a Christian life. Likewise, traditional conceptions of masculinity tended to see masculinity as a series of character virtues. The problem with this approach is that it views femininity/masculinity as a collection of chosen moral qualities irrespective of the biological vehicle in which they are found. Thus, the Church's own position on the subject, while opposed to radical feminism,  provides unintentional support for its opponents by reinforcing in practice an underlying meta-philosophy that biology and gender are distinct. Feminist gender theory is a corruption of Christian Cartesian dualism.

On the other hand, Joe average, would clearly call Megan Fox the more feminine.  Because, for the average man, femininity is a metric of female perfection, not of moral quality and Ms Fox more closely approximates the ideal female form than Mother Theresa does. It strange to contemplate that the lecher honours hylomorphism in his sin more than the Church does in its practice, but the Devil is found where you least expect him and he's hardest to see when cloaked in apparent virtue.

The contemporary Christian problem, in its battle against gender/sex incongruity is how to fuse the two. The traditional cultural heritage, with its practical de-facto dualism, doesn't help since it effectively shares the same understanding of the human person as feminism does.  Pushing one helps the other.  Modern appeals of gender "authenticity" to biological sex are unconvincing. What exactly does "authentic" to self mean? Who defines it? The argument of every trans-sexual arguing for sex change surgery is that their bodies are not authentic to their nature's. The Christian response is that a trans-sexual's conception of their authenticity is not really authentic. It's a circular logic.

The workaround for this problem starts with a re-commitment, both in theory and practice to the doctrine of hylomorphism. Secondly, there needs to be a recognition that biological sex is the hylomorphic incarnation of gender. Thus gender is not a choice but a per-determined state of being. Thirdly, there needs to be an understanding that there may be "privations of form" with regard to gender incarnation and thus people may be born male or female and that they may be born with less than their fair share of masculinity or femininity. Fourthly, the operation of Caritas on the form of gender is to perfect it. Gender commitment is a virtue. Thus, anything which privates gender in any way, shape or form needs to be seen as an evil. Finally, the Church needs to recognise that moral virtue and gender identity are two separate things it needs to stop conflating the two. Just as a white man does not become more white by the practice of Charity neither does he become more manly by doing so. Virtue and gender are not synonymous.