XXXIX Big Brother Is Peeping You

Eyes of Blue

Fair eyes are depigmented eyes, the fairer the more depigmented, with blue the most depigmented, then grey, then all shades of green and hazel and brown to the most pigmented dark eyes. In the world population at large pigmented irides are the rule rather than the exception. In fact fair eyes are rare, they are virtually inexistent outside the white Caucasian race, which includes Arabs and Indians of India, among whom fair eyes are rare too.

According to Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa, people have a preference for fair eyes: Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters (2007), p. 61. A preference that would be “both universal and undeniable.”

These authors’ hypothesis is very interesting. To be precise it is not their hypothesis but that of an undergraduate student, Lee Ann Turney, “in her term paper for a class that she took from one of us (Kanazawa) in spring 2002.” According to Mrs Turney’s very interesting hypothesis, as the pupil dilates and contracts according to one’s emotions, blue-eyed people are more trustworthy because their pupil is more salient, being seen on a fair background.

That supposes that the eye be wide enough. Many Slavs, albeit blue-eyed, tend to have slanting eyes, so the preference cannot extend to them. This is a way to confirm or disprove the hypothesis.

Twenty years ago, when I started dabbling in physical anthropology, they said blue eyes were recessive (now they say “mostly recessive”). If blue eyes are recessive, and there is a universal preference for blue eyes, then I think the math foretells the extinction of the trait. On a global market, that is. Many a woman, and a man too, will sacrifice their preference for blue eyes when offered sufficient compensation, and if high-status people from all over the world are in search of blue eyes on the mating market, then, the proportion of blue-eyed individuals among these high-status people being small in absolute terms (see first paragraph), generation after generation the recessive trait will find fewer possibilities to be expressed in the offspring. Expect for slant-eyed Slavs, because no one cares about them. Yes, you have read it right: These latter will thrive because of the very contempt they inspire on the mating market.

This is to suggest one should consider recessiveness and dominance in studying behavior. A recessive (selfish) gene has nothing to gain from globalization. On the other hand, a dominant (no less selfish) gene must struggle with such a concept as miscegenation.

To be sure, there is globalization and globalization. In the times of the British Empire, a world empire, high-status men, to be frank, were all Britons. Local (colored) rulers, local elites were precisely that, “local,” and so were their mating markets. Blue-eyed English ladies were not to be touched by locals. The mating market of the British imperial elite was also local but, given a universal preference for the traits present in their market, their situation is more properly described as having being a monopoly.

Perhaps women in northern European cultures have always been freer than in other parts of the world because, being most of them fair-eyed, men feel they can trust them. The Nordic phenotype is also characterized by fair skin, and blushing, on a fair skin, may play the same role as the salient pupil of a fair eye. Ceteris paribus, deception is harder for individuals of the Nordic race.

This leads us to the fact that contract polities as opposed to despotism, that is, societies relying on interpersonal trust rather than on top-down power, originated in the same European regions where women have been the freest. For such societies to be able to thrive, trust must be more than a vain word. (On the geographic origins of political freedom, see Montesquieu.)

To all intents and purposes, the Wahhabis’ way to deal with their women seems sound from an evolutionary perspective.

A Call to Exceptional Men

In his Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), Darwin writes: “for with man when the beard differs in colour from the hair of the head, as is commonly the case, it is, I believe, almost always of a lighter tint, being often reddish. I have repeatedly observed this fact in England; but two gentlemen have lately written to me, saying that they form an exception to the rule. One of these gentlemen accounts for the fact by the wide difference in colour of the hair on the paternal and maternal sides of his family. Both had been long aware of this peculiarity (one of them having often been accused of dyeing his beard), and had been thus led to observe other men, and were convinced that the exceptions were very rare. Dr. Hooker attended to this little point for me in Russia, and found no exception to the rule. In Calcutta, Mr. J. Scott, of the Botanic Gardens, was so kind as to observe the many races of men to be seen there, as well as in some other parts of India, namely, two races in Sikhim, the Bhoteas, Hindoos, Burmese, and Chinese, most of which races have very little hair on the face and he always found that when there was any difference in colour between the hair of the head and the beard, the latter was invariably lighter.” (Chap. XIX)

As can be seen from a picture of my younger days, I have got brown hair and black beard. (Look here, the 9th from the top; the picture is black and white and perhaps the evidence not as clear as one could wish, but you can enlarge the picture by clicking on it to get a clearer view of the contrast.)

I hereby make a call to all men in the same exceptional situation to reach out and share their experience for the purpose of forming a club. There’s not even a word to name us. One of our first tasks will be to invent one.

To think that it has been more than a decade since I read this in Darwin and I never had the idea to make a call to such exceptional men before! (Darwin’s calling it a “little point” is wrong.)

June 2016

XXXVIII

Social Optimum. The person satisfied with his lot ought to be placed in a lower condition, because he might be as satisfied in that lower condition as he currently is, and other people envy his current condition. Because of his case, it is likely that the overall equilibrium is suboptimal. Being unsatisfied, even unhappy, is a good omen; there only needs not go off the rails, because then one becomes useless.

Business Cycles. The cycle implies to do nothing against recession but at the same time, because the population is impacted, to make believe everything is done. This is the function of politicians. In the case of those “in command,” the function can be best described as follows: Dispose of in case of need.

Make-Work. It is not because the economy needs our work that we are working. No, we are working because we wouldn’t know what to make of our free time.

If it is idleness that corrupts (Voltaire), then one should ask whether the brightest child is not as idle in school as the worst dunce.

Reading a newspaper is relying on partial and partisan rhetoric; reading two newspapers is a waste of time.

What used to be called the servile class are now called entrepreneurs. The house cook now runs a restaurant, the footman has opened an electrical and plumbing business, the housemaid is a self-employed cleaning lady. These are the entrepreneurs. As to the economy, it’s the technostructure that handles it.

Nothing great in the world has ever been achieved without passion (Hegel). A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do (Oscar Wilde).

The real problem is not mass unemployment but mass employment.

Mankind owes everything to cynics. What a cynic was the man who invented the wheel, who thought walking was foolish when the others said it was a duty.

Definition. The organization man is an intermediate state between man and the machine.

When the organization man wants to save his soul from complete mechanization, he turns to politics and becomes a politician. He plays at elections, at personal power… This is why the man who remains an organization man all his life hates the politician, who puts something human, however primitive, in his own life. Of course he despises him at the same time because, whereas he, the organization man, has an aura derived from the fact that he represents the corporation (“I represent the corporation”), the politician has an aura derived form the fact that he seeks to represent or actually represents the people, and that for sure has a peculiar smell.

Below good and evil: This is the life of the organization man.

At a Parisian café a cup of coffee is expensive because it is served to you by a grumpy waiter.

The principle of least effort is at the core of the economy because it conditions productivity. However, the organization man has a hierarchical, even a feudal outlook; his objective is to be well seen. Hence a burst of efforts and energy as spectacular as it is worthless.

To sacrifice oneself in order to provide one’s children with a better life than one’s life (meaning to legitimate one’s overwork) is as bright an idea as that of a life after death.

They say moral judgement relates to the act and not to the person. However, women permit to some what they take offense at from others.

Man can take his pleasure with any woman (who does not disgust him). Why would he consult anything but his interest in the choice of a mate?

Taking his pleasure with any woman, man is a pig. Furthermore, all great minds agree to say that work prevents one from cultivating oneself and thinking. Thus modern man, as condemned to work, is a dog. I say he is a rat too, but that is merely a personal opinion.

It is so complicated to be a woman that if a woman told the whole truth, not one man would comprehend her consistency.

Women are superior to men, except in their tastes, because they love men. Whereas men have noble tastes that incline them towards objects of a superior quality.

Politicians are proof that cretins can go far in life, and our societies cannot do without such a message of hope.

Rechtschreibreform. These last years the Germans have invented a few linguistic niceties such as Schifffahrt, Rollladen, Stopppreis, Schwimmmeister, &c, and they are serious about it, they really mean to write like that. Once the philosopher said, “Jeder Wohlgesinnte und Einsichtige ergreife also mit mir Partei für die deutsche Sprache gegen die deutsche Dummheit.” (Schopenhauer) (“I call every good-meaning and reasonable person to take side with me for German language against German stupidity.”) As we can see, it’s now too late! Who cares about Germans and Germany anyway?

Zillions of euros are spent in advertising aimed at associating in the male consumer’s mind this or that low-end product with success in courtship whereas everybody knows that, to succeed with women, one would rather earn more money than what allows to buy these cheap products.

What a person buys under the influence of mass advertising is what prevents him from distinguishing himself, when his goal is to distinguish himself. N.B. I’d say it pays the poor to distinguish himself from the poor surrounding him, in poor women’s eyes, but it impairs the rich to distinguish himself, because then he’s just an eccentric.

We sent people to the moon (so they say) but we can’t even make silent fridges. You just can’t buy a fridge for an open-plan kitchen without making a no man’s land of your living room due to the nuisance!

Mass culture is the engine of automatized consumption.

Oscar Wilde is like me, he can’t believe in the authenticity of ordinary people’s passions: “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” When asked about their life by social scientists, people remember a film they liked and tell the story.

My ancestors must have owned slaves, because I hate to work.

Scholars tell you work is good in order to keep not working.

From Dr Blau, evolutionary psychologist: “Those who make sexual pursuits too conspicuous a goal of their life are considered base. I am not saying these people are base, only that they are considered base, including by myself.”

June 2016