Cybernethics / Cybernéthique

Two signs of relative lack of civilization in Mexico. First, there are lots of security officers, public or private, everywhere; they are a symptoms of a high crime rate. Streets are much dirtier than in Boston; unhappily, I cannot vouch for Paris being better these days.

The mexican political leaders have always been the minority of mainly spanish ascent, which makes it all the more interesting that they resurrected the cult of old Aztec emperors as emblems of the Nation. As if indians were happier enslaved by the Aztecs than by the Spanish. Sad national identity. Not that you can ever build a positive identity by looking into the past for reasons of pride. Pride can only be a positive attitude when forward looking into future achievements.

In the metro, advertisement is rare, and half of it is government propaganda. That felt oh so very wrong. I'm told the same about a lot of the radio broadcasts. Taxpayers paying through the nose for services most of them (particularly the poorest) don't use, and the service-users being additionally brainwashed into worshipping the plunderous institutions -- oppression surely hasn't stopped because of a change in regime. As a positive side-effect, rich tourists like me are beneficiaries of these subsidies. Happily, the streets have all the normal advertising of the modern world. Mexico is still civilized, despite government.

There was a snowstorm eight days ago, and that's the precisely the time I chose to go out shopping for tidbits at Home Depot. I asked my way twice. The first time near the subway station, a very gentle man explained me the way, under the highway twice along a crooked itinerary. I try to follow his instructions. And then, along what was either the last straight line to Home Depot or a straight line to nowhere, I try ask confirmation from another poor soul lost in the dark and in the snow across the lane. The guy asks violently who I think I am to jump at him, and that says that next time I do that he could hit me or kill me, then continues his way. From what I see of his face, he's saying that defensively, and from the tone of his voice, he sounds like a nice guy who wouldn't hit an innocent man. But he obviously must have grown in quite a bad district, where nice people are abused by violent criminals who poison any cooperative attitude -- and he's tried to develop a carapace to survive there. Up to now, I've mostly been confronted to nice, helpful people in this country, who were raised in a civilized atmosphere of general benevolence. Violent uneducated scum haven't invaded all the cities here as they have in Europe. But apparently, impune rule by aggressive violence is the rule in parts of this country, and that's quite sad. Yet another result of the victim disarmament program of which the rulers are so proud.

There is no such thing as a clash of Civilizations. For one, there are no Civilizations. There is only one Civilization, and it is universal: The West.

But whereas its name, Occident, tells from which shore of the Hellespont it took flight, The West unites people from all ethnic or cultural origins in a common peaceful cooperation through the respect of individual rights. The Japanese robot-maker, the Indian software engineer, the Senegalese phone operator, the Chilean wine-maker or the Israeli gardener, all partake in our Occidental Civilization, that knows no limits and no discrimination except those of human accomplishment: one is what one creates.

Absurdists, relativists, multiculturalists, leftists, anti-racists, socialists, etc., like to say that all human civilizations are equal. Well, if they are, either THIS is not civilization at all, or it is quite a dreadful civilization (Cám ơn Kae, Razib). As usual, the actual consequences of the absurdists' utterances is either to decree as civilization what is actually barbarianism, and thus institute the subjection of millions of the (more) civilized to the (relatively) barbarians; or it is to deny their humanity to the barbarians, and lead to the subjection and massacre of millions of innocents because they were born in the wrong families.

One of my favorite self-quotes is:

Racism consists in attributing to genetics what is due to memetics.

By denying the relevance of memetics, by claiming the collective right of populations to preserve their culture that deserves respect by imposing it on their individual members, so-called anti-racists are eminently racists, so-called liberals oppose basic individual liberties, and so-called progressists advocate the most abject regress to barbarianism.

Those who advocate barbarianism are criminals, who should be repressed without mercy. And I don't mean only those who act, but also those who sponsor crime and give instructions. Those who laud barbarianism and help it progress, who breed it with subsidies, who silence the defenders of civilization with censorship, are the complicits of barbaric crimes and the enemies of civilization; they also deserve to be repressed without mercy. And in neither case is this a matter of what family you were born in. It's a matter of individual choice between good and evil.

Civilization is universal. It is for everyone. So is barbarianism. Individual responsible choice of life despite collective oppression is not just the path to progress and civilization; it is progress and civilization. Let each individual choose, and enjoy or suffer the legitimate consequences. And let these consequences be the extirpation of the enemies of civilization.