The Situated Nature of Social Reality
July 18, 2019
By NZB3
Here an institution (eg ‘apartheid’, eg ‘racism’, eg ‘sexism’) is defined by not by the nature of what it is but by the political identity of those involved.
To those who of us with post-Enlightenment minds this picture exposes a simple nonsense. How can the woman in this picture be against ‘sexism’ when she’s privileging one sex, boys, over another, girls?
Pointing out such things to someone who regulates their mental life according to a pre-Enlightenment discourse will do no good. In the words of their own intellectuals: The situated nature of social reality is seen as embedded in various social identities
Two battling Cultures compete for power and influence in New Zealand. It’s primitive and silly to the Anarchist but has been going on for over 200 years. Sometimes it’s open warfare but the rest of the time goes on via an endless grappling and clashing of memes and the very meaning of words. Especially words like ‘racism’ and ‘apartheid’.- Ref. The Kiwi Contest to Define ‘Racism’, AHNZ
This is why many New Zealanders today and in the past are more concerned about who you are than what you know. This is Identity Politics. This is why Māori¹ demand ownership of history, news, tattoos, art, technology. This is why they are to say legitimately, from their own perspective, that there is no such thing as “reverse-racism” or any injustice to having race-based political offices, media, sporting teams, prisons, justice systems, official honours, and calendars.
Their logic is sound; It’s their mindset premises that are irrational.
“…so now Ngaati Haua don’t even have rights to their own stories or family in that matter. You walk up to Tarore’s whaanau and tell them to back their claims up and let me know how it goes! Your nobody Rick so we don’t have to back up anything to anyone especially not you!”- Comments re the Christian telling of the Tarore story last weekend
This Māori, W.Walker, does not view knowledge as every individual’s capability and right to pursue. Stories, history itself, is placed on a collectivist level that requires an authority figure of the right identity to pronounce. Everyone else must fall into line without question. There are no facts, there is no truth, there is only the question of who gets the keys to the family brain² and what they command the lower downs to accept.
“There was a cry of indignation from the group of Maoris, and the woman, like furies, rushed towards the Tasmanian, who hastened to the withdraw…Mr Deans, warned by the fugitive, immediately intervened and addressed the discontented. He acted and spoke so well that they were calmed…”
“How changeable and inconstant are these great Maori children, how easily they pass from tears to laughter, from a deep distrust to as entire a confidence!”- p367, The Whalers, Maynard; Dumas
Ayn Rand had a term for such people who outsource their judgement to others: Social Metaphysicians. If you want such people as these to change their minds (eg Communists, Feminists, Environmentalists, Māori,..) then you must only target their authority figure.
There seems to be no limit to what the slaved mind will believe and act upon, nor how swiftly, so long as the remote locus of their conscience commands it. Until individualists and collectivists accept this difference about each other there will always be conflict.
—
1 Māori as distinct from Maori
2 Here I betray my bias toward individualism
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