The Secret Knowledge Read Free Page A

devoted their lives and energies to doing so, undeterred not only by scorn but by despair. 4
    I will now quote two Chicago writers on the subject, the first, William Shakespeare, who wrote “Truth’s a dog must to kennel; he must be whipped out, when Lady the brach may stand by the fire and stink”; the second, Ernest Hemingway, “Call ’em like you see’em and to hell with it.”

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    CULTURE, SCHOOL SHOOTINGS, THE AUDIENCE, AND THE ELEVATOR
    Culture predates society, as it evolves before consciousness.
    Consider, Friedrich Hayek writes, an unwritten law that is universally accepted and practiced and that both predates and gives rise to verbal codification: in a potentially violent altercation, the party nearest his opponent’s home will withdraw.
    The Culture, of a country, a family, a religion, a region, is a compendium of these unwritten laws worked out over time through the preconscious adaptations of its members—through trial and error. It is, in its totality, “the way we do things here.” It is born of the necessity of humans getting along. It does not come into being because of the inspiration, nor because of the guidance, of any individual or group, but it evolves naturally: those things which work are adopted, those which do not, discarded. This evolution has been referred to as “social Darwinism,” but, as Hayek teaches, it is not. Darwin observed that the individuals of a species which were better fitted to their environment throve and interbred, thus strengthening their particular adaptation. Those without the effective adaptation died out.
    But the evolution of a culture takes place not through the disappearance of those lacking a beneficial adaptation and the interbreeding of its possessors, but through imitation . That culture which has discovered a beneficial adaptation is imitated by those cultures which perceive its worth—the possessors and nonpossessors of an adaptation do not compete on this basis—all may adopt the beneficial behavior and thrive.

    The greatest endorsement of my Grandparents’ immigrant generation was “He is my landsman.” Which was to say, “He comes from my shtetl and my lodge (my culture), and I can, thus, predict how he will act.” This is not to say that the landsman was perfect, or that the prediction was infallible, but that, sharing a culture, one could take a large amount of energy which otherwise would have been expended on self-defense, and utilize it more productively. (Cf. the locker room of a jiujitsu academy, where one may safely leave one’s valuables unlocked and in the open; as the more skilled could easily overcome the neophytes, and skill has been gained only through attendance and study—status awarded not only for physical accomplishment, but, as per the tenets of this particular tribe, for honorable behavior.)
    The grave error of multiculturalism is the assumption that reason can modify a process which has taken place without reason, and with inputs astronomically greater than those reason might provide.
    Sowell, in Ethnic America , points out that the behavior of ethnic groups in America predates their immigration (or transplantation) to this country; and may be seen as growing out of the ancient necessities facing these groups in their original lands. For example, the Jews are an historically stateless people, and so had to invest their time and wealth in that which could be transported without confiscation—education; the Irish, living for centuries under foreign rule and at the whim of invaders, had to form their own hermetic state-within-a-state, to provide support, protection, and justice, hence their introduction of and success with what became known here as ward politics.
    These cultural adaptations predate and are the basis for that more conscious, more sophisticated agglomeration called society, which might be said to be the appurtenances growing out of culture.