WHAT IS ‘LIBERALISM BUT ONLY FOR 130IQ+ ANGLOS’? When we talk about...
ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩@kunley_drukpa
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May 15, 2025
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WHAT IS ‘LIBERALISM BUT ONLY FOR 130IQ+ ANGLOS’?
When we talk about ideology, policy, legal and moral laws etc. we normally do not distinguish between the kinds of people we apply these laws to. A law is always implicitly a universal law meant to be indiscriminately in force for everyone. One problem in this is that because society is constituted by many groups with differing levels of ability any law we are forced to create to regulate the behaviour of ‘less capable’ individuals or groups can become, when applied universally, burdensome or stifling for ‘more capable’ groups. Many kinds of extant political problems vanish if we acknowledge that universal law doesn’t really work in societies where people have radically different levels of ability, taste and in-group biases. It is important to respect some level of human dignity and not be blanket ‘unreasonably callous’ towards the ‘less capable’ with eg tiered laws that flagrantly afford some people more privileges and rights than others - this can create a lot of resentment - but the inverse is that if there is never any discrimination the result can be a unfair levelling down to accommodate the (more individually and socially destructive) behaviours of the ‘less capable’ groups. The claim here is one about the material reality of human capital, not an ideological one or one about the metaphysical existence of ‘moral laws’.
A 130IQ+ Anglo is a kind of hypothetical ‘mostly competent’ moral agent who among other qualities can *generally* eg be trusted to behave well, not engage in individually or socially destructive behaviours, be knowledgable, fair, rational (less Djinnbrained), high agency and amicable and open, not unduly ‘closed-off’ but still firm where required. You can find a similar ‘hypothetical perfect agent’ concept in Aristotle’s Virtuous Man - ‘Arete’ (excellence) in ‘Haxis’ (disposition) - or in Confucius’ ‘Junzi’ (君子) (trans. person of high stature, superior person, gentleman). In many of the major Enlightenment and Early Modern liberal texts by eg Locke, Paine, Jefferson, Mill etc. there is arguably a tacit assumption that when we talk broadly about affording more liberal rights to people we are generally talking about a person with these qualities who can *generally* handle these freedoms more responsibly, ie like the authors of these texts themselves. The Enlightenment and its consequences become much more attractive if considered as ‘The Enlightenment but only for 130IQ+ Western Europeans’ in this way.
RE specifically ‘Liberalism but only for 130IQ+ Anglos’, implicit in that is the idea that certain kinds of more broadly ‘competent’ groups can handle greater levels of personal freedoms and forms of self-expression while still being able to sustain what Rawls called a ‘Well-ordered (Well-functioning) Society’. In particular, WEIRD Western Europeans high in traits like Universalism, Individualism, Openness etc. by their natural faculties and disposition can generally handle ‘more liberalism’ than can a society with lower IQ, more tribalisms etc. - which in order to be ‘Well-functioning’ or at least Basically Fine relative to their native standards generally need more kinds of broadly conservative / authoritarian cultural and legal interventions to keep them ‘high level’. That is, you might generally need more controls on freedom of expression, sex relations, corruption and nepotism, personal expression in conduct, fashion, art, religion, new ideas and innovations etc. etc.
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When we talk about ideology, policy, legal and moral laws etc. we normally do not distinguish between the kinds of people we apply these laws to. A law is always implicitly a universal law meant to be indiscriminately in force for everyone. One problem in this is that because society is constituted by many groups with differing levels of ability any law we are forced to create to regulate the behaviour of ‘less capable’ individuals or groups can become, when applied universally, burdensome or stifling for ‘more capable’ groups. Many kinds of extant political problems vanish if we acknowledge that universal law doesn’t really work in societies where people have radically different levels of ability, taste and in-group biases. It is important to respect some level of human dignity and not be blanket ‘unreasonably callous’ towards the ‘less capable’ with eg tiered laws that flagrantly afford some people more privileges and rights than others - this can create a lot of resentment - but the inverse is that if there is never any discrimination the result can be a unfair levelling down to accommodate the (more individually and socially destructive) behaviours of the ‘less capable’ groups. The claim here is one about the material reality of human capital, not an ideological one or one about the metaphysical existence of ‘moral laws’.
A 130IQ+ Anglo is a kind of hypothetical ‘mostly competent’ moral agent who among other qualities can *generally* eg be trusted to behave well, not engage in individually or socially destructive behaviours, be knowledgable, fair, rational (less Djinnbrained), high agency and amicable and open, not unduly ‘closed-off’ but still firm where required. You can find a similar ‘hypothetical perfect agent’ concept in Aristotle’s Virtuous Man - ‘Arete’ (excellence) in ‘Haxis’ (disposition) - or in Confucius’ ‘Junzi’ (君子) (trans. person of high stature, superior person, gentleman). In many of the major Enlightenment and Early Modern liberal texts by eg Locke, Paine, Jefferson, Mill etc. there is arguably a tacit assumption that when we talk broadly about affording more liberal rights to people we are generally talking about a person with these qualities who can *generally* handle these freedoms more responsibly, ie like the authors of these texts themselves. The Enlightenment and its consequences become much more attractive if considered as ‘The Enlightenment but only for 130IQ+ Western Europeans’ in this way.
RE specifically ‘Liberalism but only for 130IQ+ Anglos’, implicit in that is the idea that certain kinds of more broadly ‘competent’ groups can handle greater levels of personal freedoms and forms of self-expression while still being able to sustain what Rawls called a ‘Well-ordered (Well-functioning) Society’. In particular, WEIRD Western Europeans high in traits like Universalism, Individualism, Openness etc. by their natural faculties and disposition can generally handle ‘more liberalism’ than can a society with lower IQ, more tribalisms etc. - which in order to be ‘Well-functioning’ or at least Basically Fine relative to their native standards generally need more kinds of broadly conservative / authoritarian cultural and legal interventions to keep them ‘high level’. That is, you might generally need more controls on freedom of expression, sex relations, corruption and nepotism, personal expression in conduct, fashion, art, religion, new ideas and innovations etc. etc.
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These kinds of freedoms for ‘less capable’ people because they have ‘less of an ability to regulate themselves’ tend towards creating more individual and social disorder, the trade-offs in the immaterial affording of more individual liberty leads to a spiralling in the real material world. Conversely, a high-functioning savant can be given more creative freedom (maybe even to be ‘blasphemous’) and it can be trusted that the pay-off in terms of the value of their output or ‘human dignity-wise’ how much ‘freedom’ the savant is given is worth it, worth accommodating. This person might find certain social conventions that ‘less capable’ people need in order to self-regulate stupid or suffocating - so it might be cruel to always hold him to them in the same way you would the ‘less capable’.
Here are some obvious examples of ‘rules’ that can either be either necessary or unreasonably stifling depending contextually on who they are applied to: Drug Laws - a basic but good example of this. An ‘130IQ+ Anglo’ who ‘does’ eg weed or coke can *generally* handle that use in a more ‘serious consequence-free’ way than the ‘less capable’. The ‘less capable’ *generally* has a more addictive personality, less impulse control, is more self-destructive etc. But the ‘universal law’, or more broadly a universalising moral code, prosecutes both equally in a way that is not in alignment with the disparate, real world consequences of the two different persons using drugs. This isn’t to endorse drug use, just to say that the two outcomes if it does happen are demonstrably different in kind.
Road Rules - both as a pedestrian and a driver a ‘130IQ+ Anglo’ is *generally* going to be more able to be trusted to be responsible. They can drive above a speed limit faster than someone less capable with less incident, they can judge better when it is safe to walk across roads without the use of traffic lights etc. The ‘less capable’ person is more likely to make worse judgements, involve themselves in more accidents. While road regulations cause inconvenience for more capable road users they are a necessary lowering down because without them lower capability road users would create a magnitude more problems.
Social Trust - standards of decorum, respect for others in the public space *generally* (but not always) track the average quality of a society’s human capital. The lower it is the more often *generally* you will have to use different kinds of incentives (including force and prosecution) to maintain high levels of public decorum. This includes more obvious problems like littering, politeness, security etc. but also less obvious problems like corruption.
‘-but for 130IQ+ Anglos’ is the (meme) claim that different kinds of rules and regulations can be more or less destructive depending on who they are for. If you still want to insist on a universal law ‘for fairness’ sake’, (this is a strong moral argument) the more ‘130IQ+ Anglo-like’ a population is generally the more liberal and flexible it can be in that law.
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Here are some obvious examples of ‘rules’ that can either be either necessary or unreasonably stifling depending contextually on who they are applied to: Drug Laws - a basic but good example of this. An ‘130IQ+ Anglo’ who ‘does’ eg weed or coke can *generally* handle that use in a more ‘serious consequence-free’ way than the ‘less capable’. The ‘less capable’ *generally* has a more addictive personality, less impulse control, is more self-destructive etc. But the ‘universal law’, or more broadly a universalising moral code, prosecutes both equally in a way that is not in alignment with the disparate, real world consequences of the two different persons using drugs. This isn’t to endorse drug use, just to say that the two outcomes if it does happen are demonstrably different in kind.
Road Rules - both as a pedestrian and a driver a ‘130IQ+ Anglo’ is *generally* going to be more able to be trusted to be responsible. They can drive above a speed limit faster than someone less capable with less incident, they can judge better when it is safe to walk across roads without the use of traffic lights etc. The ‘less capable’ person is more likely to make worse judgements, involve themselves in more accidents. While road regulations cause inconvenience for more capable road users they are a necessary lowering down because without them lower capability road users would create a magnitude more problems.
Social Trust - standards of decorum, respect for others in the public space *generally* (but not always) track the average quality of a society’s human capital. The lower it is the more often *generally* you will have to use different kinds of incentives (including force and prosecution) to maintain high levels of public decorum. This includes more obvious problems like littering, politeness, security etc. but also less obvious problems like corruption.
‘-but for 130IQ+ Anglos’ is the (meme) claim that different kinds of rules and regulations can be more or less destructive depending on who they are for. If you still want to insist on a universal law ‘for fairness’ sake’, (this is a strong moral argument) the more ‘130IQ+ Anglo-like’ a population is generally the more liberal and flexible it can be in that law.
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