The Plasma Destroys the Walls

Wikipedia tells about the ITER project to build a nuclear fusion reactor for energy production taking place in Provence in southern France. Such a reactor could provide clean energy in enormous quantities. Fusion technology is based on heating hydrogen to a very high temperature. At this temperature, the material turns into plasma. This is a state of matter where electrons separate from the atomic nuclei. The temperature of the plasma is very high. Any material that comes into contact with the plasma will melt immediately. Therefore, the plasma must be held inside a vacuum, using a giant electromagnet that keeps the plasma in the center of the vacuum, without contact with other materials and especially without contact with the walls of the container.

This, one might say, is a parable for the challenge of the Western world these days. How to keep the plasma boiling at the center of the container without completely destroying its walls.

The plasma of the Western world is the tremendous abstraction ability of the intelligent people who live in it. This is the tool with which technological breakthroughs are achieved and cultural masterpieces are created. However, this abstraction ability also erodes the old distinctions between person and person and between nation and nation. It cannot tolerate the old, irrational boundaries between people that were a source of discrimination and racism. It erodes the walls of the container, Western nationalism itself. A person with a high abstraction ability who hears "us" and "them" wants to vomit.

Liberal whites in the US are probably the first public in human history that, according to surveys, shows more affection for the out-group than for the in-group - they prefer people who are not like them over people who are similar to them. They have developed a tremendous antagonism to the racism of their fathers and are now determined to compensate for it above and beyond. However, a certain degree of national chauvinism is necessary for existence. If out of guilt they think they should dismantle the police or open the borders to all the oppressed of Africa and Central America, not much will remain of the USA.

Right-wingers, even here on the blog, don't like to hear that high abstraction ability is a sworn enemy of their views. They claim that only among those engaged in the social sciences is there a strong tendency to the left. But the truth is that also in chemistry, mathematics and computers there are six times more Democrats than Republicans. True, in these fields they do not reach the extremism of anthropology where the ratio is infinite because there are many Democrats and zero Republicans.

It is very intriguing to see if there is a systematic way to produce people with high abilities in academic fields without them becoming avowed leftists. The Israeli Jewish religious sector succeeds in this. Its ranks include brilliant scientists who are willing to express right-wing positions. The most prominent among them is Nobel laureate Professor Israel Aumann who recently celebrated his 90th birthday. However, it seems that even in this public the academic elite is to the left of the rest of the public, and in the past was represented by the small but high-quality left-wing party Meimad.

Intelligence researcher Richard Lynn previously argued that China will take over the world when it perfects the processes of embryo selection in the laboratory and ensures that every Chinese woman conceives with the fertilized egg that has the most potential for high IQ. But if IQ is related to abstraction ability and if abstraction ability erodes old national distinctions, then the Chinese will yet produce from within them, in such a process, the people who will most abhor Chinese imperialism.