Human Rationality And Desire To Conform

A presentation by Andrew Brons to British Renaissance
(broadcast on Resistance Radio)

We, as a species, call ourselves, somewhat immodestly, Homo Sapiens – Wise Man. Our distinctive characteristic as a species, we tell ourselves, is our capacity for rational thought. Of course, the fact that we perennially tell ourselves that it is true does not make it true.

There are some who would be very sceptical about the proposition that all human beings are capable of rational thought and would confine that proposition to the most intelligent minority.

My scepticism would go much further. I would say that even the most intelligent, if they move in fashionable academic circles, can allow themselves to be lured into unreason by intellectual fashions, much more than would the masses of the sparsely schooled. The way in which demonstrably intelligent academics can ignore or distort the evidence, so that they follow fashionable ideas and arrive at self-evidently false conclusions, is as astounding as it is depressing.

The falsehoods invented and then propagated by the Social Anthropologist and now accepted without question by virtually all of the academic world, have corrupted public policy. The evidence supports a largely hereditary explanation of human ability and behaviour but that evidence is ignored or refuted by false evidence and distorted reasoning.

Apparent and real intelligence and academic prowess do not provide immunity from this process. Indeed, they seem to facilitate it. Distorted reasoning and flawed perception of evidence require a truly inventive imagination.

What some, in the Nationalist Movement, call The Conspiracy (in the singular) would be described, more accurately, as a network of self-delusion, enforced by fear of ridicule, social ostracism, threats to career and sometimes fear of violence. There are conspiratorial elements among them, like Franz Boas, who inspired the delusion but most are victims of their own delusion and that of others.

All of this might sound terribly far-fetched and simply incredible – literally. However, there is academic evidence to support the theory. Two generations of psychologists at Yale University carried out what they called conformity experiments.

 Solomon Asch represented the first of these generations and Stanley Milgram represents the second. Milgram bears a striking resemblance to the comic actor, Woody Allan. Perhaps they are related!

Milgram carried out an experiment involving six students, in what appeared to be an experiment in accuracy of perception. In fact five of the six were in league with the experimenter. Only the sixth was truly the guinea pig.

 The group were seated in a line and they were shown a card with three lines of different lengths and a card with one line drawn on it. Each student was asked, in turn, which of the three lines on the first card was most similar in length to the line on the second card.

 The experiment was carried out with the same students several times with different cards. It was then repeated with different guinea pigs. The five students in league with the experimenter consistently gave the same wrong answer. The guinea pigs, on each occasion, started by giving the correct answer but in 60% of cases started to give same wrong answer as the other five.

The desire to conform caused 60% of guinea pigs to deny the evidence of their own eyes.

  Perhaps humanity is not so much Wise Man as Conformist Man.