The New Hereditarian Man

You Cannot Eliminate Envy

In 1924, Trotsky wrote the following:

Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.

He was speaking of the New Soviet Man. Trotsky and other communists identified greed as the problem. They imagined humanity becoming a eusocial species which prioritized the wellbeing of the collective over the individual. They imagined a final solution to the human alignment problem.

We now know that the New Soviet Man was imaginary. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. In 2024, Hereditarians imagine a new man capable of dispassionately discussing racial differences in IQ. 

The equality thesis is based on lies. Expose the lies and present the truth in a way that smart people can understand, and you can change minds. Some critics will say I am naïve: people (with the exception of the critic) aren’t rational, and presenting evidence that they are wrong is a waste of time. There is, ironically, little evidence to support that cynical view. Yes, the taboo is powerful. Many people are psychologically incapable of critically examining a belief that society has taught them is right and virtuous. After a certain age, most people lose the ability to change their mind about anything important. But we don’t need to convince everyone immediately. There only needs to be a critical mass of intelligent people who are sufficiently rational and open-minded. Slowly the taboo will erode.

Not too long ago the idea of biological evolution was considered extreme and inflammatory. In 1844, when Darwin revealed to a friend that he no longer believed in the immutability of species, he wrote that it felt like he was “confessing a murder.” Fifteen years later he published On the Origin of Species with a mainstream publisher and to wide acclaim. By his death in 1882, the intellectual class was largely on his side. The Church of England awarded him the great posthumous honor of being buried in Westminster Abbey alongside such national heroes as Isaac Newton. Within the lifetime of Darwin’s longer-lived children, religious taboos that had existed for millennia in the West mostly faded out of existence. This process was driven by evidence and rational argument.

What Nathan misses is that the moment anyone tried to take seriously the implications of Darwinism in social policy, they were demonized and are today equated with Hitler. I’m of course talking about the Eugenics movement, the progressive cause of the day. People at every step of history are pathologically allergic to speaking honestly about individual differences, especially hereditarian ones. The crux of Nathan’s argument is a datapoint in history that specifically illustrates why his plan doesn’t work: regardless of what biological facts are proven, the egalitarian sentiment remains. The total detachment of Darwinism from social policy is a perfect example of this process.

Hanania gives contemporary examples this in his critique:

Nathan Cofnas says we should raise the salience of race differences because otherwise leftists will always win any argument, and be able to justify affirmative action, DEI, and white guilt. This seems to me a clear instance of putting the cart in front of the horse. It’s not the case that people have a scientific theory about inequality, so they go on and favor steps to reduce it. Rather, they begin with a dislike of inequality and then adopt whatever scientific theories make them feel good, mostly as an afterthought.

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This can be clearly seen in the case of sex. In many ways, society accepts men and women are different. Yet civil rights law and programs to for example get more young girls into coding are able to easily ignore this fact when convenient. When I’ve talked to leftists about equity initiatives based on sex, and asked how they can reconcile them with obvious biological differences, they don’t find it too difficult to say ok, men might be more likely to be interested in something like coding, but there’s still so much we can do to encourage the women who do have the talent to go into the field. During the Super Bowl, I saw a Dove commercial that lamented the fact that teenage girls don’t like playing sports as much as boys do. Are there many people who are blank slatists when it comes to the question of which sex likes sports better? Perhaps, but the idea that “group differences exist, but unequal outcomes have a large societal component we should fix” is a perfectly coherent position.

In general, there is a rough conservation of “oppressor vs. oppressed” sentiment. It can be channeled on ground of race/sex (wokism), class/wealth (marxism), nation/ingroup (nationalism). I emphasize the word pathology to describe this sentiment because it operates on the most irrational level. When speaking or interacting with people, egalitarians simply feel bad pointing out that someone is doing a bad job. Not only that, but in private they will freely confess both that they knew this person was doing an obviously bad job and say they just couldn’t bring themselves to acknowledge this basic truth. I don’t find the current obsession with race and sex to be particularly elevated from this pathology. 

Anyone seriously concerned about this pathology should not be trying to create a New Hereditarian Man. Simply accept that you are in the minority of people who can handle this truth without falling into literal psychosis (except this psychosis is accepted, even encouraged, at a social level). Here’s the thing: despite this pathology, mankind has made a lot of technological and economic progress.

Ok, What’s Your Solution?

In my view, the solution to the egalitarian pathology is institutions which are resistant to the sentiments of the masses. In other words, rule of law and free markets. Since this is a problem I believe has existed for all of human history, I also believe the best solutions are ones from history. Markets succeed in two ways: incentivizing people to be more rational via their own self interest and selecting for people who are more rational by rewarding them with profits. 

Contrary to the propaganda of egalitarians, historical ‘legal’ systems don’t bend towards exceptional people, ones who they will say “have power”, but rather towards the bitter masses which persecute such people. Aside from very recent technological advances, a dozen men will almost always kill a single man, no matter how fit or well armed the latter may be. As Hobbes puts it,

“Nature hath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind; as that though there bee found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind then another; yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himselfe any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he. For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination, or by confederacy with others, that are in the same danger with himselfe.”

In other words, egalitarian politics systems derive from the threat of murder. Once you accept that most egalitarian sentiment will be preserved in some form as it has been throughout history, the question to ask is how to make it take the least destructive form possible. Rule of law is a crucial factor because it takes this explicit murder off the table. Sure, there may still be show trials, state-protected crime, or mob murders, but this is nonetheless less destructive than explicit murders.

So basically, my solution is present day America with fewer regulatory agencies (political bodies made to persecute exceptional people) and stricter penalties for violent crime. I also believe polarization is a means to this end. Once their self-interest is involved, people will often act in ways that acknowledge reality, all while pathologically denying they are doing so. I don’t believe in creating the New Hereditarian Man; I only believe in making it convenient for people to silently sidestep their egalitarian pathologies.