This essay is from the booklet The Most Powerful Idea Ever Discovered published in 1998. In comparison, watch Chicago's black mayor Lori Lightfoot because the same circumstances outlined in the essay are rapidly developing there. Another example is Rutgers Law School. Rutgers Law School is now telling student groups they must promote critical race theory or lose funding. Kimberly Mutcherson who is Co-Dean and Professor of Law at Rutgers is black. This decision at Rutgers Law School is based on incentives the essay below discusses.
72-Year-Old Good Samaritan Nearly Beaten to Death After Stopping to Help Black Teen with Flat Tire
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The following essay discusses an important special case relevant to the limits of kindness.
The following essay discusses an important special case relevant to the limits of kindness.
After the October 1996 riots by blacks in St Petersburg, even some liberals have begun to question the liberal dogmas about black-white race relations. One notable example is an editorial by Robert Friedman, deputy editor of editorials for the local liberal daily, the St Petersburg Times ("The year isn't 1966", November 24, 1996: D1). From this piece it is obvious that Friedman, like most liberals, is not ready to make any negative generalizations about black behavior, tho he is willing to offer some criticisms of a type which rarely pass from liberal lips. The theme of his piece was an address to blacks which said — in the pitiful, self-effacing manner peculiar to liberals — Hey, liberals are the good guys — we gave you a nice liberal mayor, a nice liberal police chief, nice black representation in the city administration, and so on and so forth, and, gee, guys, now you've tried to burn down our city. So really, guys, that's just not very nice, and you really ought not to have done it, and hey, I hate racism just as much as you, and so you really, honest-to-golly ought to clean up your act and at least not burn anything more down, and, jeez, it would be really, really, great, too, if you just apologized, and hey, that wouldn't hurt too much now, would it?
Friedman's editorial calls for comment on several points. The first is that few people respond to words, but most respond to incentives. Which means that when, after all this black rioting, the mayor calls a "conference" of "leaders" to "hear what the city can do", and when the big wigs in Washington come down and express their "concern" and consider extending federal "help"; and when the newspapers run long articles about "racism" with scowling black faces and pictures and bios of those who fueled the riot; and when these same papers run long articles about "root causes" and "healing" and "racism" and "police brutality" and all the other liberal shibboleths and hugbears, then it is pretty obvious that the folks who are doing this are providing piles and piles and piles and piles of incentives for rioting, hating Whitey, non-negotiable demands", and everything else that Friedman and other editorial writers at the Times have piously denounced. Which leads me to ask why Mr. Friedman and his fellow liberals don't just go down to south St Pete and burn a few buildings themselves and spare the rest of us the self-righteous pieties?
But speaking of incentives, there is another important issue here, namely, blacks do not respond to the same incentives that whites do. In this context I am not speaking of their renowned laziness, their drug habits or similar qualities which are often mentioned, but rather to a quality of a character which is apparently fundamental to whites but significantly absent in blacks, namely, sensitivity to obligation. In an oblique way this is acknowledged by Friedman's editorial, because what he says there in essence is, Hey, we've given blacks every reasonable thing, so how about blacks at least acting like civilized human beings? Or to pt it another way, Whites have worked hard to do the right thing (and more) for blacks, so how about blacks acknowledging the obligation and behaving accordingly?
Now lest I seem to be grandstanding about the above observation, let me point out that the significance of sensitivity to obligation is discussed at length in my booklet The Most Powerful Idea Ever Discovered, where I note that this is a characteristic fundamental to the operation and success of Christianity indeed is the unrecognized core of Christian belief, altho most Christians are essentially unaware of this fact. More particularly, it may be suggested the the (implicit) recognition by Christianity of the power of obligation constitutes a significant advance over Judaism 'whose core belief about interpersonal relations is "an eye for an eye"), and may thus be responsible for Christianity's success in its philosophical "competition" with the faith which spawned it.
So what, then. is the power of obligation? In brief, it is the fact that a good deed crates the desire in the recipient to return — and perhaps augment — the good which was received. And it is not only whites who feel the power of obligation, but also the Japanese; for to the Japanese, the gravest insult is an allegation that someone "does not know giri [obligation]". But my point is that, if the power of obligation is fundamental to Western and Japanese civilizations — and may indeed be the key to why they are arguably the world's most successful civilizations — the power of obligation seems significantly absent among blacks , and may thus be an important contributor to the fact that black civilization (such as it is) — and individual blacks themselves — are beset with failure.
But I am not about to decry blacks as immoral because they are insensitive to obligation. Contrary to current liberal dogma, to be sensitive or insensitive is a matter of perceptual acuity; not morality; and we should no more hold blacks guilty of a moral crime for their insensitivity than we should hold a colorblind man. The point is rather that Western morality proceeds from the assumption that men are sensitive to moral obligations, so that that when this assumption is false — as it largely is in the case of blacks — morality collapses. This, however, has never been a problem before the present, since before the 1950s blacks were recognized and treated as inferiors, and thus there was no significant interaction between blacks and whites in which there was an expectation of a common morality. But now that blacks have been officially recognized as "equals" (actually, superiors), it has become impossible to control black behavior because white morality is powerless against the obligationally-insensitive blacks. In effect, then, blacks have become a sort of Trojan horse in white society because they can abuse the system without suffering the consequences (shame and guilt) which whites would suffer, a fact which gives them the power to destroy society by taking advantage of whites.
There is, however, a special irony in this situation, because it is primarily due to the shame and guilt of whites — or more precisely, white liberals — which has unleashed the black plague on the rest of society. That is, liberals felt guilty about slavery, about treating blacks as inferiors, and the like; and it was because of this guilt — a guilt which blacks in a similar position are largely incapable of feeling — that blacks were given "civil rights" and became "equal" with whites. Indeed, the black hero of heroes — the great pretender "Dr" Martin Luther King — achieved his exalted status precisely because he was the black man who discovered how to manipulate whites by pressing the guilt button. And in view of the success of Christianity by producing Western civilization, it is ironic that the basis of Christianity and the ultimate source of its power and morality — namely, sensitivity to obligation — is now proving to be Western civilization's greatest weakness and the cause of its decline and possible collapse.
The above discussion raises the question of why whites and blacks are different in obligational sensitivity. While it is impossible to answer this question with certainty, it is possible to make a credible speculation. Because Africa is, on the whole, a rich country of desirable climate which will sustain human life without much work (how much effort is required to roast some caterpillars and pick some fruit?), it seems reasonable that Africa was a preferred place of residence, and thus fell into the hands of those who were strongest, thereby leaving the less-desirable and generally-colder portions of the world to the physically less-capable. As a result of evolutionary pressures, however, this situation had the ironic effect of strengthening the "weaker" tribes excluded from Africa by weeding out those who could not survive the cold , and in particular those who could not cooperate with others in forming societies which could carry out such vital functions as group hunting (necessary for bringing down large animals) and defense.
The result was that the once-weaker "ice people" now became stronger as a result of their relegation to the colder climes, particularly with respect to their intelligence (needed for inventiveness in obtaining food in colder climes) and ability to form cooperative groups. Africans, then, remained under evolutionary pressure to maintain physical superiority — thus possibly accounting for their present-day worldwide dominance of many sports — but — since food was plentiful — were without such pressure to increase intelligence (possibly accounting for low black IQ) or to be industrious (possibly accounting for their laziness).
While it is true, at least from the viewpoint of white morality, that blacks are severely indebted to whites, it is useless to appeal to blacks' moral sense because "they do not know giri". Liberals, on the other hand, are morally sensitive, even if misguided; but the debt to the remainder of society which liberals are accruing by letting blacks make mincemeat of American and Western civilization is so large that they will probably never admit their indebtedness or their mistakes, which is probably why the best solution to the race problem is to not only send the blacks back to Africa, but the liberals along with them.
John Bryant
The Most Powerful Idea Ever Discovered (1998)
Pages 7-10
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Here is a good example of how blacks see "obligation":
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