Brief Book Review: Against Inclusiveness: How the Diversity Regime is Flattening America and the West and What to Do About It

Below is a brief book review I wrote on James Kalb's Against Inclusiveness: How the Diversity Regime is Flattening America and the West and What to Do About It.

He mentioned my contribution here on his website.
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Brief Book Review: Against Inclusiveness: How the Diversity Regime is Flattening America and the West and What to Do About It
July 30, 2013

I hate to copy full texts from any book, especially one newly published, but sometimes that is the best way to make a point.

I've got Jim Kalb's new book Against Inclusiveness: How the Diversity Regime is Flattening America and the West and What to Do About It. It arrived at the bookstore where I placed the order far quicker than I expected (about four days). I think that is faster than Amazon.com's delivery time, unless one pays extra for overnight shipment.

In any case, I went to the table of contents first, and found in Chapter 10:

Making it Real
Difficulty of the Struggle - Towards an Anti-Inclusivist Right - Fundamental Needs: Ideals (The True, The Beautiful, The Just and Good, Religion); A Favorable Setting - Making the Case - Limits

I went to the "The Beautiful" section on pages 170-171, and below is what I read:

For modernity, beauty is no less a problem than truth. Since it makes man the measure, the scientistic view assimilates beauty to personal preference. It puts beauty in the eye of the beholder, and so makes pushpin as good as poetry. Such a view is contrary to all intelligent experience. Beauty is evidently part of how things are. It forces itself on us as something of indubitable value that cannot be reduced to personal preference. That is what it means to recognize it as beauty. Our perception of it may depend on taste, but a personal element does not make a perception merely subjective any more than the dependence of knowledge on qualities such as intelligence, experience, and good sense makes truth merely subjective (5).

Beauty falsifies the dogma that denies reality to whatever is difficult to analyze and impossible to measure. It connects the material world to something beyond itself and gives us an immediate perception of something transcendent that is worthy of our love. It gives pleasure, so it attracts and pleases, but it is no less at odds with the technological outlook than fasting and prayer. It cannot be forced, and technique serves it, but does not create it. You have to wait on it and let it be what it is.

So anti-technocratic education must emphasize the beautiful. When those who appeal to tradition and the transcendent lack a sense of beauty, what they propose seems less an absorbing way of life that leads us to a grasp of the reality of things than one arbitrary ideology among others, a matter of rules, team spirit, and group dominance and not much else.

5. For a ground-breaking study of the objectivity of aesthetic valuby by a scientifically-trained architectural theorist, see Alexander, The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe.

I think beauty is even more problematic than truth. There is truth, based on facts, objective, scientifically obtained facts, but how does one objectively establish beauty?

The problem may be less difficult for scholars and (honest) artist, but how does an ordinary person identify and accept beauty?

One's children are "beautiful" however ugly they may be in reality. One's religion is beautiful. Look at the beautiful mosques that Muslims build to express the beauty they see in their religion. One's language has beauty, however gutteral it may sound. An ugly outfit designed by a prestigious designer is considered beautiful by the high-society woman who wears it.

Yet, these same people will recognize truth, and reject lies, if they are truthful to themselves. An ordinary person can identify truth and lies, and will often discern lies even when sugar-coated with what seems like truth.

Beauty, in modernity, is far more problematic, and far easier to misidentify, than truth. It requires a different level of discernment. It may indeed really be the territory of experts who can identify it, and who relay that information to others. People can live without beauty for a longer period than truth, as long as they have some basics fulfilled like a family life, a comfortable income, shelter and food, and even find it acceptable to live without beauty.

But, ultimately, lack of beauty is far more insidious, because it drains people's objective reality slowly. One can fight against an obvious lie, but how does one fight for beauty? Walking by an ugly building, day after day, will numb the soul. Perhaps we can be saved by small acts for beauty, like Winston in Orwell's 1984, when he bought a paperweight simply because he found it beautiful amidst the soul-numbing ugliness around him.

Winston looked round the shabby little room above Mr. Charrington's shop. Beside the window the enormous bed was made up, with ragged blankets and a coverless bolster. The old-fashioned clock with the twelve-hour face was ticking away on the mantelpiece. In the corner, on the gateleg table, the glass paperweight which he had bought on his last visit gleamed softly outof the half-darkness...

[Julia] brought the glass paperweight over to the bed to have a look at it in a better light. He took it out of her hand, fascinated, as always, by the soft, rainwatery appearance of the glass.[1984, Part 2, Chapter 4]

And here is the seemingly innocuous paperweight being smashed to pieces by the thought police:

Something crashed on to the bed behind Winston's back. The head of a ladder had been thrust through the window and had burst in the frame. Someone was climbing through the window. There was a stampede of boots up the stairs. The room was full of solid men in black uniforms, with iron-shod boots on their feet and truncheons in their hands...

There was another crash. Someone had picked up the glass paperweight from the table and smashed it to pieces on the hearth-stone.

The fragment of coral, a tiny crinkle of pink like a sugar rosebud from a cake, rolled across the mat. How small, thought Winston, how small it always was!...

There was another, lighter step in the passage. Mr. Charrington came into the room. The demeanour of the black-uniformed men suddenly became more subdued. Something had also changed in Mr. Charrington's appearance. His eye fell on the fragments of the glass paperweight.

'Pick up those pieces,' he said sharply. [1984, Part 1, Chapter 10]

Charrington knows that beauty is revolutionary. It can ignite the rebellion of the weakened and submissive, like Winston. Once Winston realized the possibility of acquiring beauty, he started to gain some strength.

Kalb makes similar observations about the re-creation of language and meaning in liberal society in his new book:

To some extent, the new standards are based on the view that the old ones were bad, because they had to do with the non-commercial and non-bureaucratic arrangements of the old society. Reversing and violating those standards has therefore become a virtue. Central and marginal have changed places: Islam has become a religion of peace, homosexual couples stable and loving, blacks wise and spiritual, immigrants the true Americans. In contrast, Christianity is presented as a religion of war and aggression, Middle Americans as violent and irrational, Republicans as the Taliban, and traditional marriage as hateful, oppressive, divisive , and pathological. When women and minorities do well, they deserve the credit, when they do badly, white men deserve the blame. Any flaws in the groups promoted from the margin to the center are whitewashed, the more glaring the flaws the thicker the coating. [P. 8]

Double Whammy Discrimination: Diversity at all Cost Even if it Means Empty Museums

In our postmodern era I would be defended as a discriminatee.

My non-White, Third World background would automatically place me in the "victim" pigeonhole where my word against my white "antagonist" would preside, NO MATTER WHAT.

That is, until I start to defend this "white" monster and say he is the one being discriminated against.

Then the wrath, slow though it may come, is full on!

Especially if it is a white women who is regulating the discrimination channel.

This happened to me recently after I attended (and participated in) a lecture at the Art Gallery of Mississauga, where a group of artists were to discuss the works of Homer Watson, a late 19th early 20th century painter from southern Ontario.

I wrote about the exhibition and the panel discussion here: Homer Watson, Native Son. But I left out my questions to the panel.

As wrote in my post:

Last year, I attended a panel discussion on the exhibition Beyond the Pines: Homer Watson and the Contemporary Canadian Landscape at the Art Gallery Mississauga. I had visited the exhibition numerous times, going through Watson's work one by one, to study his technique, his evolution as an artist, his views, his concerns, and his Canada.

The exhibition also displayed works by contemporary Canadian artists to bring this pine "narrative" to the fore. Some were reasonably good, but none reached the overall skill and beauty of Watson's paintings.

I was gong to leave it at that, just a personal observation (not naive or untutored, since I have a solid background in the arts), hoping that I would gain some insight from these artists.

But I should have known better.

The catalogue the AGM produced for this exhibition prefaced with this objective:

Contemporary Canadian artists looking at landscape must also find a way to access the ‘truth’ of a subject that is not only strongly represented in our national artistic history, but one that is both deeply political and personal.

So the "truth" of a subject is now mandated to "represent" not just our nation "objectively" but has to incorporate political and personal views as well.

A tree is not a tree is not a tree, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein .

I asked Reinhard Reitzenstein, one of the panelists, who is a pretty good sculptor (and who is white), if he believes that Homer Watson's standards, and art, set an example for artist in general or if his English (Western) heritage is insignificant. This was of course not what I was asking, as Reitzenstein clearly understood. I was asking him if he thought that Watson's work was good, was superior.

Reitzenstein talked for a bit and finally admitted that he doesn't want to emulate the now archaic art of Watson. We are in the modern age after all!

So, irrespective of technical expertise, artistic beauty, or individual ingenuity, as long as an artist follows the archaic art of Watson, his work can not be deemed "good."

This is the tired discussion of art which has reached now such a comical zenith that works are exhibited in museums and galleries simply based on their mockery (and not simply rejection) of this western tradition. And many artists have become wealthy doing so.

But the public isn't with the program, which is why the Art Gallery of Mississauga has to go through loopholes to get people to visit its exhibitions, including set up committees and workshops to "study" this lack of museum attendance.

I received a "newsletter" email about a year after this exhibition from the AGM, one of the few I have received from them to invite me to participate in two workshops ttled: Collections Through The Prism of Diversity Series (here are day one and day two of the schedules):

But I was given about a week's notice for a two day workshop, where would have had to pay $250/day to attend. My first reading of the email, before I saw the dates, was to figure out ways could come up with the sum, including asking for a reduced fee. Soon after, I realized that I was put on the list as a "visible minority" participant.

Here is the email I sent the gallery:

I can only surmise from this late notification that the AGM is getting some kind of monetary benefit from this "email list" which it seems to use haphazardly to meet with its program mandates.

In my case, the mandate appears to be that of a minority female artist who can participate in the discussion on how to add more "diversity" into the art collections of the region.

Through your lack of appropriate notification, you indeed lost the participation of a minority female artist (myself) who would have made a unique and substantial contribution to this discussion.

And the reply I received from Mandy Slater the director:

The AGM prides itself on its high professional standards and its strong relational manner. We provide a safe and accountable space for our diverse staff, volunteers, artists and audience. All of this supports the democratic nature of the work we do at the AGM.


Moving forward, if you are able to visit the AGM in a congenial and supportive way I encourage you to do so. If at any point in the future, you visit the AGM and create an unsafe, critical and or threatening space, we will contact security who will request that you leave the premises. If you do not comply they will be entitled to further legal action under the Ontario Trespass to Property Act. I have cc’d senior Security Officers at the City of Mississauga on this and other incidents regarding inflammatory and false statements made by yourself.

The AGM prides itself on embracing diversity and inclusion as a core institutional value. We strive to create an accountable and inclusive space that supports like-minded individuals.

Diversity counts at all costs, even if it means getting the "diverse" complainant out the door!

The irony of the AGM's position of course doesn't occur to its staff: that they are discriminating against me (shutting down my "voice" ) in order that they might continue with their program is exactly what they are accusing the white inheritors of Homer Watson.

This time though, they have found a whole different story: An "ethnic minority" who supports a white tradition!

Transformation

Full report here.

Diversity or Community?

Image source

Diversity or Community?
By: Mark Richardson, blogger at Oz Conservative

You might remember that a decade ago an American professor, Dr Robert Putnam, released research showing that an increase in diversity leads to a decline in social solidarity:

In highly diverse Los Angeles or San Francisco, for example, roughly 30 percent of the inhabitants say that they trust their neighbours 'a lot', whereas in the ethnically homogeneous communities of North and South Dakota, 78-80 percent of the inhabitants say the same. In more diverse communities, people trust their neighbours less.

Professor Putnam summarised his research as follows:

Diversity does not produce ‘bad race relations’ or ethnically-defined group hostility, our findings suggest. Rather, inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbours, regardless of the colour of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television.

This effect was seen for both conservatives and liberals.

Now another major study, undertaken by two Michigan State University researchers (Zachary Neal and Jennifer Watling Neal), has come to similar conclusions:

Their simulations of more than 20 million virtual “neighborhoods” demonstrate a troubling paradox: that community and diversity may be fundamentally incompatible goals. As the authors explain, integration “provides opportunities for intergroup contact that are necessary to promote respect for diversity, but may prevent the formation of dense interpersonal networks that are necessary to promote sense of community.”

...After 20 million-plus simulations, the authors found that the same basic answer kept coming back: The more diverse or integrated a neighborhood is, the less socially cohesive it becomes, while the more homogenous or segregated it is, the more socially cohesive.

It seems that you can have ethnic diversity or you can have a close sense of community - you just can't have both together.

So why then are liberals so wedded to diversity as a moral aim? The reasons no doubt intersect. First, liberals believe that the goal of politics is to maximise individual autonomy, meaning a freedom to be self-constituted or self-defined or self-directed. Therefore, a predetermined quality like our ethnicity is thought of negatively as something that constrains us and therefore has to be made not to matter. Liberals therefore don't want to discriminate on the basis of ethny or race, even if it is for an important purpose such as maintaining community.

A related reason is that liberals think of the act of individual choice as being the key expression of morality, rather than what is actually chosen. There is no moral "outside" for liberals, only the act of choosing and allowing others to do likewise. Therefore, liberal morality is based more on qualities that demonstrate a willingness not to interfere with the choices of others (except for those who fall outside the liberal schema), such as non-discrimination, tolerance, openness and support for diversity.

It's also the case that liberals tend to want to manage society in a "technocratic" way, either through the markets or state regulation, and this is more readily achievable when people are stripped of "opaque" loyalties, such as those to family or ethny, that provide direction and authority outside of the technocratic systems. In a liberal society, people tend to become interchangeable units of the markets or bureaucracies, and obviously those with power in these systems feel comfortable with this outcome.

It's also true that diversity can be used as a weapon against whoever is the existing majority ethnic group. It can be used as such either by disloyal members of the majority group or else by members of minority groups.

So what can be done? One important achievement would be to undermine the dominance of liberalism as a political philosophy in the West, as this is a significant source of the idea that diversity is a moral aim. Another achievement would be to undermine the dominance of the corporate and bureaucratic elites. This can be done by making people aware of the bias of these elites (a process already partly completed) and by building up alternative sources of media, education and culture.

Finally, the research of Jonathan Haidt shows that liberals do care about the "harm" principle of morality. So it might also have some effect to show that individuals are harmed (by a loss of community) when diversity is forced upon communities.