#143: Bias & Weltanschauung

August 2, 2018

There’s a new meme in town!

I.

Everyone’s talking about BIAS now. The word started grabbing our attention with the Peter Strzok story, but, as is always the case, the scribbling Lefties immediately saw an opportunity and took possession of it. So, how exactly are they using the BIAS meme now? For those on the Left who are getting nervous that they’re losing the narrative war, they’re using the BIAS story to draw down the difference between Leftie & Conservative from the level of world-view to a merely social-psychological one: we’re not really disagreeing on anything substantive, we’re just in the grip of a social-psychological mass phenomenon. When they think they’re losing, they don’t mind psychologizing the difference between the viewpoints.

This is of a piece with the Nussbaum move of trying to delegitimize nationalism by social-psychologizing it into a “fear of the (gasp) other.”

A couple of asides here. First, the Left always takes any traditional distaste and turn it into a “fear” to delegitimize it. Thus, a historically based distaste for homosexuality becomes “homophobia,” a distaste for Islam becomes “Islamophobia.” By this logic, a distaste for Chihuahuas has to become Chihuahuaphobia. 

It would seem, prima facie, that for the Left, there really can never be such a thing as a distaste, it’s always just a camouflaged fear. But, interestingly, anti-Semitism isn’t converted by the Lefties into a phobia. It doesn’t become Hebraphobia. Maybe that’s because Lefties think that hating Jews is n exception, it isn’t a psychological illness, and that’s because they just hate Jews themselves.

And second, their psychologizing is intended to distract us from remembering that sometimes “the other” is indeed someone to be feared. Don’t hate the XYZ, he’s “just the same as you are.” Well, very often he’s not, and hate might be just the ticket. The Nazi was someone to be feared and hated, the Japanese citizen of WWII was someone to be feared and hated (ask about the Bataan Death March or the Chinese peasants of Manchuria). And fearing the other was not a bad thing until we were taught this rubbish by the post-war Leftie academics at work to undermine the nation-state. During WWII we had no problem speaking disparagingly of the enemy.

And what is this psychological “problem” diagnosed by the Nussbaum called? Get ready for this (drum roll): XENO-phobia! Yes, shockingly, another “phobia” discovered. 

But I digress.

II.

Now, here’s something on which both sides agree: BIAS is a BAD thing.

What makes it bad? They seem to think of it as non-rational and non-conscious and thus an illegitimate driver of belief and action.

Well, I think there’s some truth in this, but, at the same time, that they’re wrong in thinking of it as a BAD thing.

What everyone is calling a “bias” is nothing other than a strongly held global world-view, what the Germans (who have words for almost everything) call eine Weltanschauung.

Is a Weltanschauung non-rational? Yes, but then all of our values are non-rational despite what the Enlightenment types would have you believe. Preferring a Western style democracy over a middle-eastern style dictatorship is indeed no less a preference than liking strawberry ice cream over chocolate. Values are just preferences, get over it!

Is a Weltanschauung non-conscious? In most cases, probably. But so what? It’s not easily noticed simply because it colors everything we think and do. After all, it is our world-view.

III.

The important thing to remember is this: the fact that our world-view is non-rational and (possibly) non-conscious does not delegitimize it. And yes, Virginia, it is a legitimate driver of belief and action. It is simply not the kind of thing to which so-called “rational justification” applies, anymore than our taste in ice cream calls for “rational justification.” This does not mean that we “have no right” to defend it with all our might; talk of a “right” here is a Leftie Enlightenment legacy piece of nonsense. We fight for our way of life simply because we prefer it very strongly over the alternatives. That’s all there is.

So, do Conservatives have a “bias”? Goddamn right they do, and proud of it.