Review of Ed Dutton's "Spiteful Mutants"

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Amazon’s AI bot says it doesn’t meet their guidelines. I’m not going to play guessing games to see if I can decide why. Beside, Amazon no longer allows comments. Here is my review.

Evolution brought our problems about.  Politics won’t solve them – only time

If the right and left agree on one topic, it is that things are going to hell. The left blames racism, sexism and corporate greed. To them Donald Trump embodies all of it. The right tends to blame an assortment of conspirators including Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, George Soros and the like. The common thread is that someone is to blame.

While Edward Dutton would certainly concede that there are evil people in the world, and that the perception that there are significant problems is very real, he ascribes the problems ultimately to evolution. the Qanon and BLM people are a little bit crazy. They believe things that are inconsistent and can't possibly be true. They may be evil, but on the other hand the road by which they came to their craziness can be explained by evolution.

It is important for us as a society, and as the individuals left standing as society collapses around us, to understand what is happening and plan accordingly. Dutton's explanation is deeper than politics, beyond good and evil.

He has a thin, not very satisfying message of hope in the end. The woke generation is bent on its own destruction to the extent that the human population it is bound to shrink substantially. The only ones left will be those with a strong will to reproduce. These, per his analysis, will be conservative religious types.

Dutton is unique in his heretical willingness to speak the unspeakable. Many of the topics in this book are beyond the pale of polite discussion and most of Western society. If it were only for spurring discussion of taboo topics, he would have a valuable role to play in the modern world. But the many threads of his thought weaved together so well that it compels a thoughtful reader to examine the whole thesis. 

The table of contents provides a convenient framework for analyzing the book.

1. THE ENEMY IS ... US?  The Zombie As Modern Myth

2. MAKING SENSE OF SPITEFUL MUTATIONS The Breakdown of Darwinian Selection

3. THE RETURN OF HERESY The Faith of the Social Justice Warrior

4. THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING The Black Lives Matter Movement

5. TRUSTING THE PLAN Conspiracy Theories and the American Right

6. THE EVOLUTION OF A TABOO Homosexuality and Civilization

7. BORN AGAIN Gender Dysphoria and Alienation As Identity

8. THE END OF LOVE Herbivore Men and the Decline of Sex

9. HIDING IN PLAIN SITE The Normalization of Pedophilia

10. THE FUTURE PAST Our Social Apocalypse

1.               We are zombies – the walking dead. We are not having children. Spiteful mutants, per the title, have convinced most of the rest of our society that children are evil, a blight on the world. All children contribute to global warming and the death of Gaia. White children are continually taught that they are irredeemably evil for the sins of their ancestors as well as sins that they inadvertently but unavoidably commit themselves.

Dutton does not discuss Covid, but many are of the opinion that the multiply injected among us are indeed the walking dead, simply waiting for myocarditis, prion disease or cancer to overwhelm our weakened immune systems. Scientists have demonstrated that Covid, along with many other vaccines and environmental elements such as herbicides, plastics and 5G wireless are making it difficult for even those who want to have children to do so.

The “evolutionary mismatch” of modern man to his environment is a recurring theme. We evolved to compete, to fight against the harsh nature. Dutton writes “Congruous with this, it has been found that ‘mortality salience’—the fear of danger, death, and deprivation—predicts a desire to have children, as we are evolved to ensure that our genes are passed on in the context of imminent destruction.” Because we have abandoned tribes, we do not worry about the repository of our genome disappearing.

Some “mutants” thrive better in chaos than a stable environment.  We create our own environment, and the observation that the disorder around us is deliberate is on target.

A quote: Wokeness can be considered the new child mortality. If you can overcome the dysphoria, nihilism, and individualism that it induces and breed anyway, then your genes will survive. Zombies spread a virus of Wokeness—that induces you not to pass on your genes—and only certain kinds of people, those who are genetically resistant to Woke ideas, will leave a legacy.

2. Man, like every living creature, is the product of evolution. Each new generation carries forward the genetic qualities of its parents. The parents whose genes are best adapted to produce offspring in the environment in which they find themselves have the most offspring.

Man is unique in the extent to which we modify the environment in which we live. Our evolutionary adaptedness diminishes as we change the environment around us from that to which our parents were adapted. Dutton calls us evolutionary mismatch. (refer to my YouTube Human Evolution - 3 1/2 billion years of progress, 200 of regression)

Natural selection, per Darwin, is the ability of the creatures best capable of surviving in their given environment.  Sexual selection is their ability to find a mate.  Social selection operates on groups; cooperative groups produce more offspring.  Kin selection is taking care of cousins and others.  Man has altered his social and physical environment to affect all four.

Our tribal ancestors evolved with in-group cooperation but hostility to out groups.  See Dutton’s At Our Wits End - Why We're Becoming Less Intelligent and What it Means for the Future]] and Sir Arthur Keith’s 1940s decades back Essays on Human Evolution.  Wokeness has turned it backwards – an evolutionary disaster.  Dutton writes: All of the ideologies associated with Wokeness can be regard as “spiteful.” They promote fitness-reducing behavior and evolutionary mismatch. Advocates of multiculturalism imply that Europeans should feel guilty for being European and should accept mass immigration of non-Europeans into their countries.  And: “…multiculturalism acts to humiliate and depress White people, especially White males, even as children.”

Up until the Industrial Revolution the more successful (and by inference, more intelligent and pro-social) members of society left twice as many children as others.  This reversed itself as society grew wealthier and implemented government and other welfare systems.  Whereas 50% used to die in childhood, now it is only 1%. Government supports children whose parents cannot. 

The human genome is so complex that all of us are born with some mutations. Some more than others, and the majority are benign – we can live with them, and they will be flushed out by purifying selection down the line.

Most mutations affect the brain since 84% of our genome controls its function. Such mutations affect personality and intelligence. Dutton cites a study supporting a 15 point drop in IQ since 1880. There are marked increases in schizophrenia, psychopathology and a whole host of other personality disorders. Mutants – weird people – are proliferating. Dutton calls these mutants “spiteful” because purposefully or not they create an environment in which is more difficult for anybody to raise healthy children.

3.  As Kahneman writes in Thinking, Fast and Slow, evidence flies in the face of the conceit that we humans are creatures of logic. Many kinds of illogic have been evolutionarily successful. Religion made us prosocial and encouraged us to reproduce. This is good for the species, though it might benefit an individual to be antisocial, cheating his fellow man, and not invest his resource in children.

Dutton observes that Social Justice Warriors are probably more consumed with religious devotion than nominal Christians. They passionately believe their dogmas about pervasive white racism, misogyny, and mistreatment of sexual minorities. Evidence-based, logical arguments never sway them from their convictions.  Dutton confirms what Vox Day says: “SJWs have reintroduced the concept of heresy into public discourse.” 

The chief difference is that the antiwhite, anti-natal SJW agenda cannot be evolutionarily successful because it discourages having children and discourages parents from raising children in their native culture.

4. Black Lives Matter is similar in form and intensity to the four great awakenings in America’s Christian history.  Dutton writes: ”multiculturalism is not just an ideology, partisan politics, or passing fad. It must properly be understood as a religion itself.”

Every religion needs its martyrs (George Floyd), devils (the evil white man), and magic (virtue protects you from Covid even in a huge crowd).  No punishment is too severe for the heretic sinner (Derek Chavin, Kyle Rittenhouse, the McMichaels).

Religious fervor trumps the law. Jurors in the cases above were certainly influenced by the threat of mob violence if they returned unfavorable verdicts. Portland, Seattle, Baltimore and many other cities refused to prosecute violence on the part of the BLM demonstrators.

Religion, long favored by evolution, has turned malignant. The BLM and climate religions are no longer beneficial to humanity, and especially not to people of European stock.

5. The right has its own brand of insanity. Though Dutton provides is good an analysis of QAnon as can be found, it is full of contradictions, missing links and lacunae. This may explain why it turned out to be so ineffective in the end. Black lives matter did manage to scare the devil out of people, topple a bunch of statues and burn a bunch of things down. All QAnon seems to have done is to put a bunch of naïve people in jail for a long time and provide a rallying cry for the left.

6. Dutton’s long history of the evolution of the treatment of homosexuality is accurate and rather sympathetic. Most interesting our his theories about why homosexuals are becoming more numerous.

7. The section on the emergence of transsexualism is truly enlightening. It has a deeper history than one would expect. It is becoming more common as the personality traits associated with the transsexual become more common and better accepted throughout society.

Spiteful mutants have a lot to do with both homosexuality and transsexuality.  They have loudly advance the agenda and pronounce these behaviors normal. In doing so they make it acceptable for people who are unsure of their own sexuality, or are easily persuaded by people around them, or are simply egotistical exhibitionists seeking attention to latch on to the transsexual identification.

While there are significant differences between transmen and transwomen, for the most part their personality traits reflect their birth gender more than their adoptive gender.

8. The human race is dying out. We are not reproducing ourselves. People on the left, characterized by the SJW’s, have long been by and large anti-natal. Physiologically, our sperm counts have fallen by half. Our bodies are not as healthy as they used to be. We have modified our environment to the point that it is not conducive to raising children. They need space, not small, expensive boxes in high-rise buildings. The traditional caregivers, grandmothers, aunts, older sisters and so on, are no longer there. There is no tribe to welcome a rising generation of warriors.  Dutton writes: “We now live in a context in which patriarchal controls on female sexuality—due to feminist ideology—have broken down. The result is, in effect, the return of polygamy. Females want to have sex with a small number of high-status males and, being more educated than men on average, will find that there are relatively few of these to go around. They will also suffer from the dysphoria caused by not living in the patriarchy to which they are evolved.  

9. Most other taboos having fallen, pedophilia appears to be next. Advertising and magazine articles are normalizing pedophilia in our minds. Children are increasingly sexualized. The schools seem to be obsessed with gender identity in children as young as three.

Dutton does not say whether or not polygamy will become legal, but he does observe that there are fewer barriers to hypergamy, status seeking women serially attaching themselves to alpha males such as Elon Musk. Though polygamy leads to an elevated birthrate in less-developed societies, he does not proposed such an effect in developed countries.

“The population is increasingly in an “evolutionary mismatch.” We are evolved to be with genetically normal humans, who are mentally healthy, and shun those who are not. We are evolved to a situation of hierarchy, often with hereditary and religiously sanctioned leadership. We are evolved to live in a religious society, as well as a patriarchal society, with clear sex roles. We are evolved to live in a homogenous society. This is our “evolutionarily familiar” environment, and animals tend to become unhappy and stressed if placed outside familiar structures, leading to depression and anxiety, which leads to infertility—a sense that nothing is worth it.37 People do not enjoy living in an “evolutionary mismatch,” no matter what they might feel they should say in public.”

10.  “As discussed, the Woke have relatively low fertility. So, the kinds of people who will survive the Zombie Apocalypse are those who, for genetic reasons, can resist it. These will be people who, for genetic reasons, very strongly desire children, or somehow end up having them, even in the face of the most suboptimal possible environment. And there is evidence that desiring your own children and to be pregnant with them—or “baby fever”—is intense, not uncommon, is heritable, and more genetic in younger age cohorts. This implies that sexual and other selection pressures mean that a portion of a self-aware population that understands, as all populations seem to, “where babies come from,” has an adaptive desire to strongly want their own babies and that this is being selected for in a context in which people can control their fertility with contraception.”

Dutton writes that many believe “The world is run by highly intelligent, evil people. They are going to institute eugenics for themselves and create a super-race. World government is real; elite tyranny is imminent, and the rest of us might end up enslaved or exterminated.”

He should take some comfort in the fact that not only are spiteful mutants highly represented among the intelligent, meaning they are unlikely to reproduce themselves, but regression to the mean as described by Gregor Mendel and Francis Galton (not the statistical artifact associated with retesting) ensures that they will not, on average, be as smart.  See the video review of James Flynn’s Does Your Family Make You Smarter? Intelligence is highly heritable but not highly predictable.  The makeup of uppermost intellectual strata changes significantly from generation to generation.

This book does not offer a solution to our problems, but does suggest where to look.