Live not by lies – Aleksander Solzhenitsyn.
In the last section (“ethics”) of On Genetic Interests, Salter discusses the distinction made by David Sloan Wilson (in reference to religion, but the concept is generally applicable to varied memes, paradigms, and beliefs) of factual truth vs. practical truth. Factual truth is what is in accordance (to the best of our ability to determine) with objective reality, it represents the results of empirical materialist inquiry. Practical truth is what people may believe, often regardless of facts and of objective reality, which may be adaptive to believe even if false. Thus, the relevant quotes from Wilson, in more detail than what was quoted by Salter, can be found reproduced here:
Rational thought is treated as the gold standard against which religious belief is found so wanting that it becomes well-nigh inexplicable. Evolution causes us to think about the subject in a completely different way. Adaptation becomes the gold standard against which rational thought must be measured alongside other modes of thought. In a single stroke, rational thought becomes necessary but not sufficient to explain the length and breadth of human mentality, and the so-called irrational features of religion can be studied respectfully as potential adaptations in their own right rather than as idiot relatives of rational thought…If there is a trade-off between the two forms of realism, such that our beliefs can become more adaptive only by becoming factually less true, then factual realism will be the loser every time…Factual realists detached from practical reality were not among our ancestors. It is the person who elevates factual truth above practical truth who must be accused of mental weakness from an evolutionary perspective.
At first glance, Wilson seems correct. This, of course, as stated above, doesn’t only apply to religion. Yockey’s Imperium is inspiring to many, including myself, and promotes some Whites to act in an adaptive fashion in defense of their Race-Culture, despite the reality that much of the book can be considered “”irrational” practical truth rather than empirical factual truth. See more here.
Myths about the history of a people, nation, race, etc. may fall into this category, beliefs in the goodness and superiority of your people, even if not based on reality, may fall into this category – indeed, many memes, paradigms, and beliefs could in theory be adaptive even if false and nonsensical.
But if you look at this issue more closely, if you consider net effects, costs vs. benefits, the situation in modern society, and the pitfalls of basing adaptive fitness on irrational beliefs and falsehoods, one begins to see flaws in Wilson’s argument. The initial superficial acceptance of Wilson’s assertion falls into question once one more fully considers its implications.
Consider the following:
- Assume that the adaptive fitness of your people is dependent on practical truth X.
- Practical truth X is false; it is contrary to factual truth.
- Enemies of your people’s adaptive fitness expose this falseness to your people, destroying their faith in X.
- Therefore, with X delegitimized, adaptive fitness suffers and your people are endangered.
Nietzsche’s “God is dead” essentially dealt with the collapse of hardcore Christian religious faith in the West under the concentrating light of science and free intellectual inquiry. The resulting nihilism has in part led to a crisis of confidence in the West, depressed birthrates, and promoting surrender in the face of militant Islam. Some say we need a revival of the Christian faith to battle this, but that is like trying to put the toothpaste back into the tube. And there are other problems with Wilson’s approach, particularly with respect to religion, as the next section of my essay will illustrate.
Alternatively, an enemy of your adaptive fitness and that of your people may twist practical truth X into a meme that is now openly destructive of that adaptive fitness, a distortion of X made easier by the reality that X is false and has no objective grounding in factual truth. Another possibility is that X was originally based on something truly maladaptive, but was modified by your people to become adaptive, but now is leveraged by enemies of your people’s adaptive fitness to be maladaptive once again. Think of how (Christian) religion can be used to promote mass immigration and other maladaptive choices to White populations, even if religion has been in the past adaptive at a national level, and may still influence fitness on the individual and familial levels.
Yet another scenario could be as follows. Imagine that rejection of science leads to short term enhanced fitness; a people that rejects science, and embraces the most irrational religious beliefs, reproduces better than others (there are data supporting higher fecundity for the religious and/or for those less educated and/or for those with lower IQs). Very well. That may work in the short term. But what if the population is faced with some sort of existential catastrophe that could have been prevented, or could be effectively dealt with, by science, and the rejection of science results in the population’s diminishment or possibly even their extinction? What if they are conquered and enslaved, possibly exterminated, by a competing people who accept science and are skilled at technics?
It would seem therefore best to have practical truth that significantly overlaps with factual truth; it is best for your practical truth to have a firm grounding in objective reality, or at least to be at least minimally defensible based on some degree of concordance with facts.
Let us again consider Imperium and other work from Yockey. Actually, much of the most “irrational” and nonsensical aspects of that work have minimal effect on the work’s main message; further, the most key aspects of the work could be viewed as defensible in light of objective reality and/or are issues that are independent of truth vs. falsehood and are a matter of choice and will. Thus, I do not believe that support for Yockey’s work necessarily invalidates the points made in this essay. The importance of factual truth remains even with Yockey’s work.
Attempting to build an infrastructure of adaptive practical truth on the weak foundation of irrational, objectively untrue, and/or unproven memes leads to an instability that puts adaptive fitness in potential future peril. The danger that discovery of the falsehood of the practical truth can be used to delegitimize the adaptive fitness, the genetic (and other) interests, based on that practical truth, will always exist. That does not seem to be an evolutionarily stable situation.
But what about arguments that a reliance on practical truth has indeed evolved, proving its evolutionary stability and effectiveness?
We no longer live in the same environment that our ancestors evolved in. Practical truth independent of factual truth becomes more and more unstable in a world full of flexible strategizers, hostile to you adaptive fitness, who have access to the Internet, with facts available instantly and instant global communication to spread those facts and to invalidate your practical truth. Even before the Internet, there were other forms of mass communication and even before that, books, schools, and intellectuals, all of which were targeting the falsehoods possibly inherent in practical truth.
A major objective of the Sallis Groupuscule is a the formation of a Far Right with a firm basis in objective reality, embracing science and technics, compatible with intellectual inquiry, and striving to get practical truth to converge on factual truth to the extent possible. I object to rigid dogmas of the Far Right and, in general, the equally rigid identities we have of Right vs. Left (e.g., if you are of the Right, you have to be a “Flubro” hostile to public health measures against covid-19) and of the fixed identity of the “movement” (you have to believe in HBD “race realism” or Nordicism or whatever). I want to promote flexible thinking, evaluating ideas on their own merits, while at the same time still being adaptive.
Thus, the issue of factual truth vs. practical truth is of great importance to my political work in all of these endeavors.
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