Excerpt from
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.nl/2013/09/technology-communism-and-brown-scare.htmlAnd what is communism? As a political formula? Perhaps we can define it, with a nice 20th-century social-science jargon edge, as nonempathic altruism. Or for a sharper pejorative edge, callous altruism.
What is callous altruism? Altruism itself is a piece of 20th-century jargon. We could contrast it with the original word for the same thing, obviously too Christian to prosper in our age: charity. When we say charity, of course, we think of empathic altruism.
When we think of charity, we think not just of helping others - but of helping others whom we know and love, for whom we feel a genuine, unforged emotional connection. For whom we feel, in a word, empathy. Understandably, these people tend to be those who are socially close to us. If not people we already know, they are people we would easily befriend if we met them.
Dickens, no stranger to genuine empathy, had a term for nonempathic altruism. He called it telescopic philanthropy. Who is Peter Singer? Mrs. Jellyby, with tenure.
So, for example, in classic Bolshevik communism, who is the revolution for? The workers and peasants. But... in classic Bolshevik communism... who actually makes the revolution? Nobles (Lenin) and Jews (Trotsky), basically. To wit, the groups in Russian society who are in fact most distant - emotionally, culturally, socially - from actual workers and peasants.
Similarly, the most passionate anti-racists in America are all to be found, in early September, at Burning Man. Everyone at Burning Man, with hardly an exception, is highly altruistic toward African-Americans. But, to within an epsilon, there are no African-Americans at Burning Man.
But wait, why is this wrong? What's wrong with nonempathic altruism? Why does it matter to the people being helped if the brains of their helpers genuinely light up in the love lobe, or not? Loved or not, they're still helped - right?
Or are they? How'd that whole Soviet thing work out for the workers and peasants?
Heck, for the last 50 years, one of the central purposes of American political life has been advancing the African-American community. And over the last four decades, what has happened to the African-American community? I'll tell you one thing - in every major city in America, there's a burnt-out feral ghetto which, 50-years ago, was a thriving black business district. On the other hand, there's a street in that ghetto named for Dr. King. So, there's that. And since we mentioned Mrs. Jellyby, what exactly has a century of telescopic philanthropy done for Africa?
Are Gawker and its ilk genuinely interested in bringing women into technology? Do they genuinely like either (a) (other) women, or (b) technology? Because it would sure seem, to the uneducated observer, that the actual effect of their actual actions is to scare women away from programming careers - on the grounds that, if they so much as master MySQL, they will be instantly raped by a pack of Satan-worshipping "brogrammers."
Do you know what women who actually want to help other women learn programming look like? They look like this. Sexist, check. Probably illegal, check. Recognizing that women are different from men in more areas than the chest compartment, check. ("Men's rights" activists, shut the fsck up! If you were real men and not communist pussies, you'd know that no one has any rights, least of all you. Only one thing makes right - that would be, of course, might - and whining that you're taking it in the tail, though taking it in the tail you are, is anything but a way to create that.)
(UC Berkeley when I was a grad student there had an excellent program, very similar, also (in practice) women-only, called the "CS Reentry Program." I was ill-disposed to respect this program and the people in it, but reality quickly convinced me otherwise. It was later done away with, for exactly this reason - communism has to pretend to be gender-neutral. So it can't actually just help women by, you know, helping women. That would involve appreciating women for what they are. Which is obviously illegal in a communist country. Similarly, once while decoding a Victorian book I told my daughter that in "the old days," many girls went to schools where there were no boys. She looked at me as though I'd told her that in the old days, the whole world was made of chocolate.)
Can men be assholes to women? Can women be assholes to men? Well, actually, it's usually men who are assholes and women who are bitches - though not without exceptions. But broadly speaking, can everyone be assholes to everyone else? They can. They are. And if you're genuinely mentoring a younger person, with genuine empathy and a genuine interest in their genuine success, what you say in every case is: life is full of assholes. When someone is an asshole (or a bitch) to you, ignore him and have as little to do with him as possible.)
Once you learn to recognize the distinction between empathic and nonempathic altruism, you'll see it everywhere. Empathic altruism - charity - is simply good. Nonempathic altruism - communism - is simply evil. There's not a whole lot of gray area between good and evil. Evil motivations can certainly, by coincidence, produce good results - but this is an accident, which has little or nothing to do with the supposed "good intentions."