Rampant egalitarianism, i.e. woke, insists all peoples are equal and that only circumstance causes difference. Which, of course, is false. But believed. One consequence of the belief was open-borders welcome-to-all immigration (greed contributed).
The beliefs of the open-armed greedy elites is one thing. The beliefs of the “migrants” invited in another. It turns out the magic soil of the West cannot dissolve the sinews of these foreign beliefs, as expected and desired, when the number of “migrants” is large.
Which you’d think would be concerning for the open-arms egalitarians, because once a certain point is reached, it will be the native population asked to assimilate to the foreign (welcomed) invaders.
Such is happening in England. Take its rulers yesterday telling it native peoples to “———“. Well, I can’t print in a family blog what the rulers just told its people. But our subject is Science, so we pass by this horror quickly.
Now England has just as good or better a claim as France as being the birthplace of modern Science. I need only say “Isaac Newton” or “Michael Faraday” and my case is proved conclusively. Alas, these men and their legacy were not “migrants”, but natives. Current elites do not love natives, but they do swoon over “migrants”. A bizarre suicidal unrequited love affair seen, as far as we can tell, nowhere else in history. Such are the ravages of egalitarianism.
Proof is from the story “Labour urged to drop ‘Western-centric’ science in school curriculum“.
Royal societies are urging the Government to make science less “Western” in an overhaul of the school curriculum.
Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, announced an overhaul of the curriculum that explicitly aims to make subjects better reflect the “diversities of our society”.
A committee leading the Department for Education’s curriculum review is currently considering the proposals of Royal societies, teaching unions, and other experts.
Prestigious scientific institutions have supported the call for diversity, and proposed the teaching of more “non-Western” discoveries.
The Royal Society of Biology has advised the committee that children should be taught about “non-Western contributions to the sciences”.
The society has recommended a “no more heroes” approach which avoids “prescriptive lists of historic figures in biology” in favour of “diverse historic and contemporary figures”.
The “diversities” of her “society” would not be there were it not for unremitting “migration”, which no one except the “elites” wanted. Thus we have one of the highest officials of the land, not uncoincidentally a female, telling us that the natives must assimilate to the migrants, and not vice versa. And she is backed by the heads of “Prestigious” scientific institutions—prestige being in the eye of the beholder.
The “no more heroes” approach is yet another blight of egalitarianism. Science and mathematics, not to mention every other area of cultural endeavor, would be nowhere without its Great Men.
David Stove in his On Enlightenment calls the desire to award ancillary, marginal, or replaceable people the same credit as Great Men “the foothills effect”.
When we first see a great mountain in the distance, we hardly ever notice at the time the foothills in which it takes its rise. But when we approach it more closely, the foothills force themselves on our attention, and some of them turn out to be formidable peaks themselves. Just so, when historians learn a great deal about Newton, Edison, or Shakespeare, they always discover the existence of a “support-staff” which is quite invisible to non-specialists: a body of predecessors, or collaborators, or stimulating rivals, to the great man. Thus, while everyone has heard of Newton, the names of Hooke, Barrow, and Flamsteed, for example, are known only to scholars…
Well, it is true, and important, that nothing and no one ever comes absolutely out of the blue, and historians are right to remind us of this truth. But the reaction of most modern historians to the foothills effect has been entirely wrong. They have used the number and size of the foothills to obscure the very existence of the great mountains.
The right reaction to it would be this. “Let Newton and Edison and Shakespeare be found, on closer examination, to have had a support-staff of thirty, or three hundred, or a thousand. By all means redistribute, over a thousand people, the fame which the vulgar lavish on one man. Even then the disproportion, between the number of the benefactors and the number of their beneficiaries, would still be about the same…”
In point of fact, it is ludicrous to suppose that any of the heroes of science, invention, or art, has ever had a support-staff of a thousand, or even a hundred. A socialist historian of astronomy, a few decades ago, could only find a support-staff of about eight for Copernicus, though he combed the entire earlier history of the world. No one could possibly get Faraday’s support-staff up to twelve, even by counting the laboratory cleaners; it would take a People’s Professor of the History of Science even to get it up to seven.
Doubtless in a Faraday biopic we can look forward to a scene of an Pakistani janitor correcting the Great Man’s equations as he lies sleeping.
We see this everywhere, and not just in Science. World War II was really saved by postal clerks. The path to the moon would be impossible without blacks to carry boxes around. On and on, egalitarianism falsely promising all are Equal.
It’s not only Science, but math too is being topologically reshaped. Here’s an attempt to give folks outside England credit for calculus, by the trick of calling these foothills “precursors”. They forget Archimedes deserves that credit.
Elites in England are busily “decolonising” mathematics, and, remarkably, some mathematicians there have spoken out about it, though it is reported “many professors fear it is too ‘personally risky’ to challenge the decolonisation agenda.” They are right to have this fear. Even now, the British police are arresting old men for posts on social media that Official Victims find give them “anxiety.” The police make up for this by helping gangs of “migrant” rapists hunt down little white girls by harassing those who complained. (One wonders how many of these cops and rulers partook.)
You’ll forgive me for quoting again from the first article about statisticians: “The Royal Statistical Society has suggested novel ways of improving diversity in the discipline, telling the curriculum review that lessons could include statistics on ‘gender inequalities’ and migration.”
Of course there are gender inequalities. Who needs this lesson? Have the elites in England forgotten males and females are unequal by definition?
Yes, they have.
It remains to be seen whether elites succeed in committing suicide, or whether brave academics and citizens rise up and overthrow their insane rulers. My money, sadly, is on the former.
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Since gender is just a social construction, it is imaginary. Everytime I see the word gender I substitute the word imaginary. So. the lessons could include statistics on ‘imaginary inequalities’ and migration.”
In England in times gone by those found guilty of treachery, treason & high treason often faced the axe, gibbet or perhaps a firing squad.
This “egalitarianism” does not insist that “all peoples are equal”. I insists that all Whites* are inherently bad and all non-Whites are inherently good (unless they start “acting white”).
* special exception is provided for the eternal victims, who have been hated for thousands of years for no reason at all.
Turin and Maxwell – two true extremely high intellects to add to your English Great Men.