The Purple Wave Issue 59

Building A New World?

Introduction

Around the world and through history many people have tried to build a “better” world. Yet, far too often when the opportunity was made to do that building the product has been disaster for those people most affected, those not in power but who must pay the price demanded whether it be money or blood. Here we take a closer look at the method chosen to justify this “Construction”, Social Engineering, an oxymoronic statement if there ever was one.

Past and Current Issues

Past and Current Issues - audio file

Feature Article

Social Engineering

After a few months of reading, whenever I could find, or make, time I finally finished Modern Times by Paul Johnson.  While a very broad compendium of the history of the majority of the twentieth century, coming in at just under 900 pages, it was a very interesting read!  Johnson does a very good job of describing the major political events worldwide covering the period from about 1910 through to 1990.  The dominant theme is social engineering and its unintended consequences.

The book is a damning commentary of all, typically on the left, who have attempted social engineering during the twentieth century.  People like Vladimir Lenin, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Lyndon Johnson, as some of the more prominent names from a long list of purveyors representing the full breadth of those on the left of the political spectrum.  Many based their engineering on the theories of the intellectual elite with a track record of never being right.  Moreover, these errors typically resulted in the deaths of millions.

I need to take a moment to clarify what I mean by “the left.” As I have explained previously, in my own research, the political spectrum can be best described as the degree of freedom one has, whether it be political, personal, or economic.  The absence of freedom falls, like any chart, by default on the left.  The more freedom you have, the further to the right, regardless of which measure you focus on.

A point Johnson emphasises throughout the book is that “social engineering was never popular with the masses – quite the contrary.  It was the passion of the intellectual elites.” He further points out that the totalitarian states that typically took root because of this social engineering were “intellectually dead.” A simple example was Lenin’s call for a Classless Society, a physical impossibility as all societies stratify into classes as we are not all endowed with the same skills and physical attributes, including innate morality.  Another is Karl Marx, a lazy intellectual who never really had a job but believed himself the voice of the common worker, a group for which he could not relate due to his privileged life, except in his imagination.  It is this disassociation from reality that has always been at the core of why all attempts of imposing any form of socialism have failed miserably.

Social scientists attempted to discover “laws [that] governed inanimate nature during the twentieth century.” And “then for society to act upon their discoveries.  The emergence of this new form of intellectual Utopianism, with its strong suggestion of compulsory social engineering at the end of the road, coincided exactly with the rapid expansion of higher education, especially of the social science disciplines, in the late Fifties and throughout the Sixties.”

At this point, I must interject in that I find it difficult to consider any of the “soft sciences” such as economics, sociology, psychology, and other inexact fields of study as Science.  In none can you design and run experiments to disprove a concept, a key feature of the scientific method.  Yet these people have conducted, and still insist on conducting, experiments with real people, with the belief they will produce Utopia; yet without fail, as Johnson states “crushed beneath it so many lives and so much wealth.”

At its core, these intellectual frauds, and I cannot think of a better term to describe them, continue with their experiments, primarily because they have built around them echo chambers such that they only hear and see what they want.  Ironically, at Universities around the world, used to be dominions of free and open thought whereby debate was encouraged, now debate is suppressed.

Examples of this ongoing attempt to use social engineering while at the same time ignoring reality includes climate change, radical environmentalism, and the ever-continuing efforts to promote ideas that have never been shown to hold the value they are professed to, such as there are more than  two genders.  The “hard sciences” should and must not be ignored.

As evidence of that social engineering is still with us to our detriment, here is a very recent article title I came across: “A case for advancing psychological health and safety along with equity, diversity, and inclusion.” Even though, after a full Century of trying, and no evidence any benefits were gained, sociologists still are social engineering, unwilling, or unable due to cognitive dissonance, to see the dangers that should be obvious.  “Equity” has never worked out but instead promotes discrimination, as does “diversity” and “inclusion.” Those are three buzz words that they just cannot resist using yet there is no evidence at all that they will result in a better society.  Primarily because of the illogical nature of each.  Due to genetics and the randomness associated, none of us ever are the same nor ever will be.  Even “identical twins” show subtle differences.  While we can create equal opportunity, we cannot create equity.  And the “diversity” they are promoting is a source of the inability to have equity.

According to Johnson, “in 1995 the American sociologist Charles Murray … argued that intelligence acquired by inheritance, and knowledge acquired by education, were more closely connected than ever, and in conjunction were more determinative of income in all advanced societies.  The world belonged to the clever and the skilled to a greater degree than ever before, and it was they – he maintained – who would inherit all in the twenty-first century and the Third Millennium.” If the first two decades of the new millennium are a measure of his forecast, to me at least, it does not appear that Murray got it right.  Another example of the social science intellectual elites getting things wrong and why no social “scientist” should be trusted.  Especially in the realm of politics where their misinterpretations continue to cause grief for humankind rather than the Utopias they promised.

In his concluding chapter Johnson states “the underlying human evils which made possible the catastrophic failures and tragedies of the twentieth century – the rise of moral relativism, the decline of personal responsibility, the repudiation of Judeo-Christian values, not least the arrogant belief that men and women could solve all the problems and mysteries of the universe by their own unaided intellects – were still deeply rooted in world society.  Can they be eradicated, or at least eroded?  On that would depend the chances of the new century becoming an age of hope for mankind.” Well, all those problems are still with us, almost a quarter of the way through the new century.  It is not looking good that we will ever overcome.

One sentence Johnson wrote gave me pause in that it illustrates where we need to go if we are to become more, rather than less civilised than we currently are doing: “Everywhere, democracy and the rule of law that gave it meaning appeared on the defensive, even in its heartlands.” We need to return to a state where the rule of law is paramount along with a democratic system that is armoured from being perverted.

This problem, for those of us paying attention, is playing out south of the border.  President Trump, early in his term, pointed out the “swamp,” the growing partisan bureaucracy.  This group is enabling the political weaponization of the law to target the right side of the political spectrum while ignoring the ethics and moral rules we call laws.  But by purposely lying and breaking laws to get verdicts that are partisan rather than honouring precedent and law, they draw into question faith in an institution that is supposed to bind.  This is the reason justice is supposed to be blind!  As a result, we are seeing in real time the self destruction of a world power simply because the rule of law has become perverted for politically motivated purposes.  At their core, the reason for this is social engineering.

I draw attention to this simply because the US, by being about 10 times larger, makes everything taking place here in Canada magnified, and thus easier to see.  The same issues exist here.  Any failure of their economy due to this political failure will, and is, happening here but with much greater risk for us.  The harsher climate we live with will assure that.

This brings us full circle in that, as mentioned at the start, we are doomed to unintended consequences.  The reason social engineering has been so enticing is that it is like a Siren’s song, designed to lure too many of us by using appealing messages in the name of the “common good.” Delivered by people who, like magicians, know the message is false.  They themselves are easily poisoned by paranoia; afraid they will have others usurp their newfound power.  The history of the twentieth century is littered with a long list of people who became tyrants and, in the process, brought about the untimely destruction of so many.  The solution is simple; restore faith in the rule of law by electing people who believe in that basic tenet.

By: Alan Aubut