Editor’s Note: In 2018 I posted ‘William James’ principle’:
Behind the groupthink is the great finding of William James, ‘The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated’. It is this principle that moves whites to the phenomenon of virtue signalling: if I join the ethos of the masses, I will be appreciated, even if it is a suicidal ethos.
Counter-Currents’ recent article ‘Unlearn Your Views’ by Bill Pritchard reminded me what I said in 2018. Pritchard said:
______ 卐 ______
Leftists from conservative backgrounds insist that they changed their minds because they ‘thought for themselves’, and order all Right-wingers to do the same—or else.
The claim that they ‘thought for themselves’ is easily disproven. Truly thinking for oneself is difficult. Shedding old beliefs in the pursuit of truth is an arduous, even painful process, like summiting a mountain. Anyone who has embarked on this path would realize that beliefs cannot simply be discarded overnight…
In most cases, people who reject the value system instilled in them by their upbringing did not arrive at their views through reason. They were simply initiated into a peer group/subculture whose ideology they absorbed, or they consciously decided to rebel against their parents. Swapping one ideology for another via peer pressure or rebellion is relatively easy. It’s akin to memorizing a formula instead of actually deriving it oneself and understanding why it works. This explains why Leftists scoff at those who struggle to leave old beliefs behind and proclaim that ‘it’s not rocket science’…
if you really cared about timeless truths, you would be indifferent to social fads and would not invoke the Current Year as an argument. Many Leftists from conservative backgrounds are upwardly-mobile strivers afflicted with status anxiety who prize their social standing over truth…
The reason why formerly conservative Leftists strayed further from their upbringing than I and many other White Nationalists is not that they are smarter or more independently-minded, but that they were subjected to peer influences and social pressures to which we, being loners, were not…
If the vast majority of people will never be able to independently and organically experience a radical shift in their worldviews, then telling them to do so amounts to telling them to find a new peer group.
2 replies on “Deepest”
That is really interesting. Notice, how certain students endeavor to push Marxism, of all things.
The trouble is the “west” has lost any timeless truths, at least as taught to our youth, youth are a blank machine and most will absorb teachings until they have experience.
One site called leftism out as bio-leninism, its an ideology where the people of low status can become important. Seeing the arrest pictures from USA’s BLM protests shows the type of ugly malformed people that are attracted to it.