People in Clown World exhibit all kinds of neuroses, most of them caused by our highly unnatural way of life. Adapting to modern industrial society has proven to be challenging for even the most resourceful of people. As this essay will examine, the forced diversity that we all live under has created a form of mental illness particular to itself.
A neurosis refers to a class of mental disorders that are characterised by anxiety, obsessional thoughts and avoidance behaviour. Karen Horney considered the defining characteristic of neurosis to be a worldview that is distorted by compulsive needs. Neurotics exhibit their unusual behaviours, according to Horney, to meet their exaggerated needs for power, prestige and affection.
It’s common for people to be neurotic about cleanliness – some are excessively anxious about getting infected by germs and will obsessively wash their hands or clean their teeth. These behaviours feed the neurosis by causing the neurotic to feel themselves superior to others on account of their greater hygiene, and that other people will be more affectionate towards them because they are so clean.
People with race neurosis are similar. Their need for power is met by silencing others for making ‘racist’ comments, and their need for prestige is met by looking down their noses at those moral inferiors and shaming them. As with other ingratiating behaviours motivated by neurosis, those with race neurosis believe that this virtue signalling will cause others to like them more.
‘Race neurosis’ refers to a very specific kind of neurosis that is most accurately considered a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The compulsive need in the case of race neurosis is the need to deny human biodiversity. This compels them to believe that all human subgroups are precisely the same and, when different, only different for environmental and not genetic reasons.
The person with race neurosis will instantly disregard any explanatory theory of human behaviour that assumes that human biodiversity exists. They do this out of a deeper compulsive need – the one to assert that all human subgroups have equal value. This assertion may be true in a metaphysical sense, but it isn’t at all true in a biological sense – and the racial neurotic has trouble making a distinction.
No two things in Nature are the same, whether measured as individuals or as groups. Of any two, one will be taller, one will be darker, one will be relatively more endomorphic – and one will be smarter. This means that, by any measure you care to name, one will be superior and the other inferior. A person with race neurosis has extreme difficulty accepting this.
This neurosis is an echo of the earlier Christian neurosis that was triggered by the realisation that humans were just another form of animal. In the same way that this realisation led to people denying the science of evolution and castigating Darwin as a heretic, race neurosis also leads to people denying the science of evolution and castigating its proponents as evil.
Race neurosis goes hand-in-hand with creationist narratives about the origins of the human species. Because no two things in Nature are the same, human biodiversity denial is most plausible when it can appeal to a creator God, who (for various reasons) is presumed to be unwilling to create superior and inferior groups of people. Therefore, certain qualities (like intelligence) can be assumed to be equal across all human groups.
People suffering from race neurosis also practice a variety of avoidance behaviours, on account of that they live in constant fear of empowering “far-right wing extremists”. They are extremely reluctant to acknowledge either white or Asian superiority in any intellectual or behavioural facet, out of the fear that, if either was widely acknowledged, certain races would find themselves in gas chambers again.
Race neurosis can even go so far that a person can think it immoral for someone else to say that it’s okay to be white.
A person can confidently be said to have race neurosis if they become angry or distressed when a belief in human biodiversity is asserted. If a person merely disagrees with hereditarianism, they will be able to discuss the relevant scientific evidence without becoming distressed. But if they suffer from a form of race neurosis, they will sense that one of their sacred beliefs is being challenged, and they will become defensive.
Race neurosis is deliberately aggravated by the mainstream media, who play up stories that have a racial angle and play down stories that don’t. Examples can be found right now in the numerous articles admonishing people to abstain from any anti-Chinese racism that might have been provoked by coronavirus fears. This constant hammering has created the false impression that racial prejudice causes a significant proportion of the world’s avoidable suffering, and that is one of the world’s foremost issues.
Also contributing to the problem is the common eschatological belief that all of the world’s races are destined to fight to the death for supremacy in some future race war, willingly or otherwise. People who hold this belief are often afraid that talking about human biodiversity will set this conflict off. Their logic is that recognition of group differences is a step on the slippery slope to warfare.
The cure for race neurosis is genuine hardship. Anyone genuinely worried about whether they have signalled their anti-racism hard enough is immensely privileged – to worry so much about something so meaningless is evidence of no genuine troubles. In Clown World, the disconnect that many people have from reality manifests in psychiatric conditions such as race neurosis.
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This article is an excerpt from Clown World Chronicles, a book about the insanity of life in the post-Industrial West. This is being compiled by Vince McLeod for an expected release in the middle of 2020.
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If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.
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