Let's start off by noting that biological determinism is a core Nazi belief just as its opposite, human perfectibility, is a core communist belief. It's just one of the reasons why Nazis and communists hated each other.
Now I myself am a communist so I believe in human perfectibility. I also believe you all are cognitively crippled (mentally handicapped) and nothing can be done about that. But ... you still can be perfected.
It's not like there isn't plenty of room for improvement since you're all idiots who believe in the most idiotic things and act in the most idiotic imaginable ways. EVEN IF nobody could change your nature (you being idiots) they could still manipulate the ways you interact (acting like idiots) and the contents of your environments (believing idiotic things).
What History Says
And there is plenty of empirical evidence for the asking that human beings HAVE perfected themselves already. One merely has to look at the history of human psychology. I'm not talking about the academic field of psychology but the changes of the human mind in history.
Julian Jaynes' book on the origin of consciousness points out how all of conscious history can be generalized as reducing psychosis, neurosis and anything else that undermines consciousness. Like religion, pedophilia and child abuse.
Lloyd deMause's books on childrearing modes go into extreme detail into exactly what the psycho-social changes were during the history of consciousness. deMause generalizes them all as reducing reversal and projection while maximizing empathy.
Funny thing, the same mechanism that drives empathy is also the mechanism that drives conscciousness (See Formal Definition of Consciousness). Formation of other-identities is the same as formation of self-identity. Imagine that!
Think about that for a minute. Two psychologists studying radically different periods of history, working independently, and who would have probably spat on each other if they'd ever met, drew conclusions which a third person manages to prove are logically equivalent.
How Perfectibility Happens
So there is plenty of evidence that humans ARE perfectible. Which immediately raises the issue of just how the fuck have humans managed to perfect themselves given that you all are idiots. The obvious answer to which is that YOU all are idiots ... and I'm not.
Kazimierz Dabrowski described how some few individuals (he said 10% of the general population, I say 5%) can perfect themselves. It's really an amazing process. A shitty description but an amazing process. I've provided a better one. See What Are Core Values?
More important is that deMause's childrearing modes sound a lot like Kuhn's scientific revolutions. There are long periods of stability where progress is driven by logical expansion. And then there are very short periods of great instability where progress is driven by something entirely different from logic.
This tells me that psychological progress within childrearing modes (both in expansion within the population and also moving from early- to late-stage) is driven by analytics. And that jumps to the next childrearing mode are driven by synthetics looking for something radically new. And analytic-synthetics are far more successful at accurate jumps than pure synthetics.
Communist vs Nazi
Whether it's in the scientific arena, the psychological arena, or even the technological arena, it's people like me who are responsible for revolutions. Analytic-synthetics who can and have perfected themselves. And yes I do have very good ideas about how to manipulate your environments and your interactions so you all behave less like idiots. Also, I am a communist.
So it angers me when hardcore right-wing conservative (and probably religious) psychologists like Steven Reiss push Nazi ideas like biological determinism in contradiction to all of my first-hand experience and all of the evidence of history! And it angers me far more when he manages to sound like a reasonable person and authority rather than the crazy lying nut he actually is.
You are my hero.
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