Dr. Stephen Hicks (@SRCHicks) highlights underlying philosophical assumptions that individuals hold while discussing race and racism. In part one of my discussion with Dr. Stephen Hicks, we evaluate these assumptions such as the subjectivity of truth, the worldview of life as a zero-sum game, and how we came to value group identity over individuality.
Dr. Stephen Hicks is a professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, the executive director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, and a senior scholar for The Atlas Society. You can purchase his book, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, on Amazon.
Check out part two of my conversation with Dr. Stephen Hicks. Go out and own the future.
What to listen for:
- How are you viewing what is happening with the George Floyd killing, the protests, and riots? What is going on in America and across the world? (03:01)
- What are the complexities of truth and lie of “white privilege”? (11:00)
- What are the implications of a zero-sum worldview? (22:04)
- What happens when we disempower neighborhoods? (29:07)
- How did we develop a reliance on group identity over individuality? (33:44)
- How did colonialism impact the contemporary economic opportunity of various nations? (43:04)
Reference materials:
For more content by Dr. Stephen Hicks
Open College Podcast—Free Speech; Why The Philosophy Matters
Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault,
Thank you for being a dedicated listener. Without you–we would not be here.
I would love to hear from you–WhatsApp me at +1-202-922-0220Â Here you can ask question about anything that happened on the show. I look forward to hearing from you.
Until next time…
Be a change maker, take responsibility, own the future.
Thank you for listening, and as always you can find me at:
Transcript:
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Of addressing the person’s argument. What you do is you address a feature of the person that’s not relevant to the argument. So if you take a stupid person to do it as a stupid example you know if you Lucas were to say that you think twelve multiplied by eleven equals one hundred and thirty two and you laid out your reasons for that and I just said hey you know that’s the wrong answer you’re just a white guy saying that. So what I’m clearly doing is I’m not addressing your mathematical reasoning and assessing it in its own terms. I’m setting that aside and I’m focusing on your skin color which is irrelevant to the quality of your mathematical reasoning.
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Welcome to Lucas Grove Art show where we uncover purpose relentlessly pursue truth and own the future. I’m your host Lucas robot. And today we are joined by Dr. Steve Hicks who I am just utterly honored that I get to talk to him today.
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Dr. Stephen Hicks is a professor of philosophy at Rockford University Illinois USA executive director of the Center for Ethics and entrepreneurship and a senior scholar at the Atlas Society.
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He has four books explaining postmodernism nature and the Nazis. The art of reasoning and entrepreneurial living. His writings have been translated into 16 languages Portuguese Spanish Korean Persian Polish Arabic Ukrainian many more. He has been published in academic journals such as business ethics quarterly teaching philosophy and review of metaphysics as well as the Wall Street Journal. Cato Unbound and the Baltimore Sun. In 2010 he won his university’s Excellence in Teaching Award and has been a Visiting Professor of Business Ethics at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. a visiting fellow at the social philosophy and policy center in Bowling Green Ohio senior fellow at the Objectivist Center in New York and the visiting professor at the University of Casimir. The great Poland he received his bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Guelph Canada and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Indiana University Bloomington u U.S. A.
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As I mentioned he is the author of Explaining post modernism and if there is any book that I think that you should be reading right now in in these days it is for sure. Dr. Hicks book I have been reading. I’ve been telling all of my friends about this book that was written 20 years ago but seems to be so timely for everything that’s happening today. So Dr. Hicks thank you so much for coming on the show.
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A real pleasure to connect across the world this way.
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Now when we originally connected the world was a very different place right now we’re at June 3rd as this recording but when we connected the the hot topic of May was lockdowns draconian lockdowns as some would say there there’s a lot of talk about universal basic income and that seemed to be the conversation. But as we know we live in a very very different world today and I’m sure we’re going to to hit on that. But I think my first my first question is how how how do you how are you viewing what’s happening with the George Floyd killings and then the protests and the riots like how do you view what is going on right now in America and across the world Mm hmm.
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Well that’s uh that’s a big question scaling out from a particular event which was terrible terrifying horrifying and in many respects to the broader implications and as you know it was a particular event though that pushes people’s principal buttons and all of the big political issues religious issues and so forth and are triggered. So in that particular case I you know I’ve seen the videos as as millions of people have seen. And it seems a very clear case of police brutality police overstepping the mark. What exactly was going on in the officers mind. I don’t know whether it was racism as a contributing factor but I am of course speculating that there is some element of that they do further research why the other police officers on the scene did not step in. So the initial officer seems primarily involved but he wasn’t a solo agent until there are some at least passive abettors of the cause and then we start to scale out. This is a this is a man and police brutality cases and we do have a lot of anecdotal evidence that two police overreact and use their police powers more than situations are warranted. And anytime that that happens that strikes our sense of justice and those of us around the world who are committed to a strong sense of justice. We find that incredibly irritating. We know there’s a background of race relations while I’m actually very optimistic about race relations in the United States. I think we’ve made great progress over the last two centuries and particularly in the last two generations. Whatever the amount of racism that’s actually operative is intensely irritating. And you know it’s like a zero tolerance policy. It is the one that we want to go for so whether this is an example of systemic racism or not. It nonetheless is is incredibly irritating. But then of course we have a broader set of issues where we have a large number at least it is going to speak from the American context of groups with all sorts of causes from all parts of the political spectrum and a very active media that is more postmodern this generation than any generation previously. And they’re always waiting for the right cause to come along to do what it is that they want to do and some of course have their talking points and they get their talking points out. Some people have their action points some of them destructive some of them constructive. So whether you then end up with is the right acts the right event rather comes along at the right moment.
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And it turns into a zoo and that’s and that’s what we’re seeing today. I mean there’s everyone that I’ve talked to every commentator that I’ve listened to they’re all in 100 percent agreement. This was clearly police brutality. She should be charged. He is being charged. Everyone that I have heard and everyone I’ve talked to clearly stand for all the peaceful protests that are going on across America. And as you said we have a zero there’s a zero tolerance. You know it’s not like oh you know we can tolerate some racism. I think by and by and large as a nation we have set up are our ideals to say we will not be a racist country. But then but then you bring in this.
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Let me just interrupt on that point just for one moment. That is despite the terrible mess of everything that’s going on. No evidence of the great achievements we have made over the course of the last two centuries. Fifty years ago you would not have had a zero tolerance policy you would have had 80 percent of the population saying bad 20 percent making excuses for 100 hundred years ago those numbers would have been 60 40.
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So in one sense this was a sign of a good thing.
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But but that’s not what that’s not what people are saying you’re actually saying that the very opposite that I mean there for sure. I’m I’m listening to some voices that are that are African-American that are of minorities that are saying no this isn’t this isn’t a flag of systemic racism across our entire system. But by and large the narrative that I I am hearing from all the way over here the media we’re talking to friends through the conversations that I’m having even one on one with people is that America is a deeply racist. It’s ingrained in in everything that we are. It was founded on evil racism and that that you know are the fact that I am a white male means that I have this white privilege that maybe I’m not aware of.
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But it’s completely baked in by the fact that I was born into a white household. And right.
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And so yes let me jump in again.
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I mean yeah that that’s a strong narrative you hear it everywhere every element of what you just said is false it’s fact that there is false every every element and every major concept built into that formulation that you very nicely summarized in a paragraph just now all of that is false but it is a powerful narrative that is promulgated by any number of intellectuals journalists and activists.
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And but how can you say that. How can you say that it’s false. I mean isn’t that their their truth. Isn’t that their experience. Don’t we have to agree with it because if I don’t agree with it if I say OK I see your pain I see your suffering. I understand the generational systematic breakdown of the African-American population that happens through slavery. And if I don’t then accept the latter part which is saying and I’m a racist because I’m white and I have privilege because I’m white then it’ll only further proves their point to say we’ll see you’re you’re totally blind to it. So how can you sit there and say that everything that I just said is actually untrue OK.
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So now we’re getting into some philosophical territory right. The concept of truth.
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Who defines truth and under what circumstance are we in a position right to say that things are true or not. Now initially they’re going to have to be a ground rule if we’re going to say there is a narrative that says slavery existed slavery was horrible slavery had lingering effects. If we’re going to make those claims What’s the status of those claims going to be. Are those claims true or not true. And if you want to. On the one hand claim that those things are true then you are committed to a notion of truth objective truth and universal truth. So it would be inappropriate if at some point along the line someone else says Well I disagree with your interpretation of the truth or this implication or I want to say there are these other factors that need to be taken into account. If at that point you say oh that’s just your truth. That’s not my truth. Then you are making an illegitimate move but then you can’t go back and say that your initial claims were universal objective truths you’d have to just say those are only my personal truth so right up front. People are going to say I’m committed to. There are truths and we can argue about what the truths are or is it just going to be you have your talking points. I have my talking points. Nobody really has the truth and we’re just going to sort it out say on the streets.
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So let me help help me digest this. So if there’s one group and I guess it could be either group that looks at a set of evidence and says that this is a truth this is the truth. This is absolute and lays out that argument and you’re saying that if someone else comes along they have the right to challenge that argument and say well I look at the the factual evidence I look at the empirical data and I can I can level that argument to say well there is there’s a little bit more complex complexity to this situation. And now when the first group says that first group says well hold on a minute that’s your perspective. This is my perspective. This is my truth and also in their truth just as become the legitimate right.
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Well then you’re saying that everybody’s truths are equally illegitimate right including the initial claims that you were making.
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So then how can we have a dialectical conversation how can we have a have a conversation where we’re actually able to reason and sit down and understand one another. If if if all of our perspectives are just you know subjective.
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Right. So this is right where philosophy the rubber meets the road.
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If one believes that all truths are subjective in the sense that you just trust that we’re articulating we’re never going to have conversations. And so by one measure of the problem that we are having right now that a large number of people not willing to engage in is to to to give the other side a chance to take the possibility that their way of thinking about things right now needs to be adjusted. If we have a large number of people like that that is the sign I think of a philosophical corruption but one implication of that is that we won’t actually have debates and discussions about the issues. So my view on this is slavery was it was is a historical fact. It really did happen and then we could have lots of arguments about what counts as historical evidence what counts as historical interpretation the role of hypotheses how we compare hypotheses in terms of which ones are better or worse in terms of explanation and also the issues about the character traits that are necessary for people. We’re going to talk about complicated issues and issues that involve a great deal of controversy and pushing our emotional buttons all of those are philosophically important issues that have to be dealt with if we’re going to take up slavery is a real phenomenon and it has a legacy and we need to be able to sort out our thinking and ultimately it doesn’t matter whether you are born wealthy or born poor or born with this skin you born with that skin hue ultimately we should be able to have a good discussion about that fact and the related facts and sort out what the truth is.
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So I feel like there are there are people who are who are trying to do that there are people who are doing that.
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But but the argument then that’s leveled from the other side is well you’re doing that from a place of privilege you’re doing that from the place of being. Whether it’s a white male or any other position of power it automatically makes your claim illegitimate because you’re only viewing that world through your particular lens and you’ve actually framed an argument that forces the other person to lose. So how do we. How can we in that situation how do we actually come to objective truth right.
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All right good. So privilege is one of those buzzwords that’s being used a lot in the last generation for the most part.
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It is an entire concept. That’s to say it’s a concept or a word that’s used to destroy or undercut other legitimate concepts. Now there are privileges like privileges or social advantages granted by some people to others. That’s kind of within their discretion. So I don’t know I suppose I I belong to a tennis club and one of the options I have is I can bring a friend who’s not a member to play at my tennis club twice a week. Right. So that’s a a privilege in that case the tennis club is granting that to me as part of my membership. Right. And so on. But what is illegitimate about the way the concept is often used is that there are lots of advantages and differences between human beings that are not privileges. So for example you know I’m I’m 6 feet tall when I was a teenager I love basketball and I was really hoping that I would grow up to be about 6 foot 6 so that I could play professional basketball. So someone though who is naturally born to grow up to be 6 foot 6 compared to me who is 6 feet you know that person has an advantage. He’s 6 foot 6 I am 6 feet but that’s not a privilege. That is a natural advantage in that context that that individual has. So what has happened is that this is an illegitimate move is that people will take any advantage for any reason and turn that into a privilege. Right. The idea then being that any differences between us really are just a matter of some people deciding that other people are going to get advantages with respect to other people or the idea might be that to take another example some people who are wealthier than other people if wealth just is a privilege then what that means is that all wealth is just somehow a social granting of an advantage to some people compared to other people other people just weren’t granted this wealth somehow. And that’s meant to undercut or obliterate the idea that some people when they get their wealth they earned it by their own efforts. Right. So it’s an earned value that they have it’s not a privilege that somehow they’ve been socially magically acquired. So that’s a set of issues so one conceptual clarification will be anytime where we’re talking about advantages or disadvantages that people have or those earned advantages are they natural advantages or are they in fact privileges that have been granted by some social authorities or not.
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Now that’s one element right built into what you’re saying. Now the other part of it.
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This is the second part was the the turning of everything into an ad hominem argument that then is to say in case someone not familiar with the language instead of addressing the person’s argument what you do is you address a feature of the person that’s not relevant to the argument. So if you take a stupid person or treat it as a stupid example you know if you Lucas were to say that you think twelve multiplied by eleven equals one hundred and thirty two and you laid out your reasons for that. And I just said hey you know that’s the wrong answer. You’re just a white guy saying that. So what I’m clearly doing is I’m not addressing your mathematical reasoning and assessing it in its own terms. I’m setting that aside and I’m focusing on your skin color which is irrelevant to the quality of your mathematical reasoning. So anytime you see someone saying as a white person or as a male or as a European if that feature is not directly related to the quality of the utterance that the person is making that’s an illegitimate move. But what we do have is a large number of people who want to say I’m not interested in having to deal with people’s arguments. I want to find a way to short circuit anyone’s argument by finding some irrelevant trait but not one that I know that’s going to have some rhetorical force against the person. So to come back to our working example right of slavery the idea that this is the illegitimate tactic of people who have a certain stance with respect to slavery and certain policy implications that they want to have forwarded they don’t want to have a debate about competing theories about slavery and competing about the policy implication. So one very cheap tactic then is to say I can get anybody who disagrees with me. Dismissed from the debate by using ad hominem tactics. I can say Oh you’re a rich guy so therefore your position your argument just is invalidated and only poor people can have a position on this or your skin is not the right color therefore you’re not allowed to have an argument with respect to this issue.
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And that’s just cheating. So so because is it that they’re doing wordplay they’re taking they’re conflating advantage which is something whether that you’re born with or born your parents gave you whether it’s wealth or an education they’re know they’re conflating advantage with with with privilege. Yes. And then another thing it seems that you’re making it’s boiling down to power structures that it’s not based on any sort of I think that the argument that I hear when you say you know eleven times twelve hundred thirty two. The argument on the other side is you know using that as an example where we’re actually talking about something that’s a little bit more complex would be like well that’s a video broke just for a moment there I didn’t hear what the example was.
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When we take the example that you gave of eleven times twelve is one hundred and thirty two. As a white person arguing at that it seems like the other side would say well you know you’re just saying that because you know you’ve come from this place of privilege and we need to reexamine that. And then also what white way here you see with this privilege versus advantage.
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There’s this video that’s been going around about you know I think it’s like a poverty kind of exercise where they take middle school kids and you know if you’re born with two parents you take two steps forward and you know so the list goes on and on and there’s only one hundred dollar bill at the end.
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And and so it seems like you’re also at that. There’s also been an argument made that this is all a zero sum game and that I have an advantage that you don’t have that advantage and that that’s unfair because you’re talking about about money and wealth.
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That if I have wealth whether it’s I I worked hard for it or my parents worked hard for it and it was given to me which is it. You’re saying is an advantage. They’re saying that’s actually a corrupt value and you need to forfeit that because it’s a privilege that other people don’t have.
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Yeah well that’s very good.
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So that’s the second element that’s part of the world view that we’re discussing the first part is a cognitive element or any system a logical element that says that there is no such thing as objective truth. Rather each group has its own right truths or its own ways of looking at the world and those are conditioned into its members. And so just based on where they were born their parents the language yeah as a write whatever instead of as a human being with a mind that can assess facts objectively about the world. So that’s that’s one set of issues. But yes you’re exactly right that another element of this world view is this zero sum premise that there’s a certain amount of stuff and if some people get more or sometimes it’s well sometimes it’s social standing or reputation. But if some people have more that necessarily means other people have less and that position is deeply baked into some world views. But what it then denies is that anybody has the capacity to create new wealth in the world and that if anybody has more wealth than anybody else did that wealth could somehow be earned. So it is denying two very important facts about the world that wealth is created and that there is a justice point that’s built into this that the people who do the actual creation of wealth deserve to have more wealth. It’s to deny that possibility and the Justice attached to it.
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So we’re where I mean but what’s so what’s so wrong about about about that world view.
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What’s so wrong about the fact that people want to help the disempower to to help minorities to help others.
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Nothing wrong with wanting to help minorities and help the disempowered but if you are attacking the very notions that make it possible for the poor and the disempowered to become more powerful then you are actually destroying the very people that you think you are helping.
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If you can you see that are going to do that by attacking people who have lifted themselves out of disadvantaged situations and out of poverty situations then you are committing an injustice to them. So just on the zero sum point if you consider the way the world was so three hundred years ago the early United States. If you go to the poorest Southeast Asian Nations right now in the poorest African nations right now all of them are wealthier than average Americans were in seventeen hundred. Now again that’s a historical fact. Where did all of that wealth come from. Right. So you go to the contemporary United States. So we are now three hundred years later. You know it’s not the case that skyscrapers were just lying around and computer systems were lying around or that all of those movies and music that we enjoy that add riches to our lives and all of the cars were just lying around. Someone had to do a lot of thinking and inventing and take entrepreneurial risk and build up huge systems all of that wealth was created. And that’s a historical fact. So the question then is if you are genuinely interested in helping the poor and I’m I’m a little bit cynical about 30 year old people who say that they want to help the poor but buy into any sort of a zero sum premise. If you’re 16 and you don’t know anything about history you don’t know anything about economics and somehow it just seems magical that some people have a lot of money and some people don’t have wealth. Well that’s one thing. You’re just a kid still at that point however intelligent you are. I think there’s no excuse for people who are university educated and older who should know something about the world for saying that wealth creation doesn’t exist that everything is just a zero sum distribution. That’s just an add to electoral abdication. And at that point I don’t think those people really are interested in helping the poor and helping the disadvantaged. I think what’s going on is they have bought into a world view. They have a philosophy they have a political ideology. They are invested in that ideology and they’re going to preserve that ideology no matter what its effect is on poor people.
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So you mentioned two things. First was the beginning of the question you said something to the effect of you’re destroying the very by by attacking the wealthy and the idea that wealth can be created and saying that we’re going to take away what what that side of the argument terms as a privilege.
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But you’re saying it’s really just an advantage from their hard work or their you know their height by taking out a way that you’re also taking away the very thing that could empower the poor.
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Exactly.
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Because you could think of the lesson that you know the target group in this case they sort of take the stereotype of the poor black kid right in a terrible neighborhood.
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You go in and you tell that kid the reason you are in the situation you are in is because there’s all these other people in other neighborhoods who have money and different skin color and they’ve taken it from you and your people and they have all of the power and they don’t like you and they are making all of the rules so that you will stay exactly where you are.
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And basically there’s nothing that you can do it is it isn’t that the art of having that kid isn’t that the argument of gentrification. That’s what I’ve been hearing you know and I’m having these conversations the day come back with Well it’s probably because of gentrification and it’s evident further evidence of racism where neighborhoods gentrify and the the poor minorities are forced into a bad neighborhood. So wouldn’t you know isn’t that the argument to say Well that is true because you’ve been pushed to the margins of society well who’s doing the pushing here.
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And this is this goes back though to the point if you are a young kid it doesn’t matter what your skin color is what your what your wealth background is what your education background is. Do you think any young kid if the kid has the freedom can say assess my situation I’m in a pretty bad neighborhood here but I can go for a walk and I can see that things are a little bit better. Three blocks to the south I can see there a lot better 20 blocks to the south and that’s where I want to be. And then you start thinking what do I need to do in order to they’re here made those or able to do what it is that they’re doing it might start from a very simple thing like picking up your yard so you don’t have trash it might be a simple thing like taking a shower every day or two. It might be a simple thing like paying attention and realizing in school realizing that when you read a book you learn new things and developing habits in yourself. So the question is going to be what’s the best lesson all of us can teach to that young kid. Do those things. And you can move to that neighborhood in 10 years. That’s three blocks down the road and maybe even to the nicer neighborhood. That’s 20 blocks down the road. If you don’t believe in that message and I think are our enemies really are the people who don’t believe in that message. It’s a philosophical position that they’re taking. Then you are never going to get out of that poor neighborhood. Instead if you teach people the disempowering neighborhood that you are a victim that the forces of the world are trying to keep you in a victim state then you are going to just set those young people up for for greater for greater failure. So you know my view on if you take gentrification as a particular issue gentrification should be seen as a positive thing because then what you have is some people showing other people what’s possible. So here is a somewhat derelict building right. We come in. We paint it. We clean up the brick. We do nice things and everybody else walks by and says Hey wow. Something that’s falling into disrepair that can be turned around. And I like that and that’s what I wanted to do. So I start with wherever I am even if I’m in a bad situation I’m going to gentrify myself metaphorically speaking and so forth. So it would be an inspiration rather than a condemnation.
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So you’re saying it really comes back down to the individual that that individual has has power and power is not the right word.
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I’m I’m looking agents the agency thank you that the individual has agency to effect change in their life. But but the narrative that I hear and I was having a conversation with someone in December and the conversation started off with you know we’re we’re not individuals we’re just the visuals that we’re not we’re not unique beans but we are just you know subsets of the group that we live in where where do all of these. Where do all of these ideas come from and where and where do they all lead. Because it seems like a really really great things like oh yeah you know I I am just you know the makeup of my my culture but these seem innocent but where do you where does this all lead.
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Yes. So that’s also very good. So now we’re introducing clearly a third element in the package.
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The first element was there is no objective truth or objectivity possible it’s all just subjective things that one happens to believe for whatever one the second element is there is no wealth creation that everything is a zero sum distribution according to unfair power dynamics. And the third element is that there is no individuality. There is no agency. There is no self empowerment. Instead one is an aspect of the group or a representative of the group or one is some sort of a collective being. Now that that’s exactly to I correct in identifying what the issues are but yeah we have three elements now that are coming together into into a package. So the follow up question then is where does that come from. Well there’s many cases there’s a lot of high theory behind it. There are a lot of psychological theories that have argued that the human mind is is plastic and perhaps say in the example of language formation when we are young we’re just we’re in a surrounding language culture and the language culture is just glommed onto our brain and we learn to think the way our our group language thinks there are sociological versions of this you know Marxism is one but not the only one. People are born into economic circumstances but economic circumstances shape your being and your way of thinking about the world and there are also of course racial versions of it that there are different racial groups and they each have their own biological package. And so your your thinking and your feeling and your way of being is merely an expression of an underlying biological racial type. So there are lots of theories out there that deny individual agency so the other side of the debate though is a position that says no volition is a real phenomenon. We do have the psychological capacity to turn our minds on to make a decision. I’m going to think about things or I’m just going to be lazy to direct our attention I’m going to think about this thing as opposed to thinking about that thing and also to to to act. I’m I’m sitting here thinking about a particular thing whether I stand up or whether I stay seated down. That is an individual agency I can decide to stay seated or get up and that’s a real phenomenon. Now that’s of course to take us into the free will vs. determinism right or volition versus various kinds of conditioning debates and those are deep debates in philosophy. So the point though is going to be that exactly right that part of the activist package that we are hearing a lot of a lot more in this last generation are people who have very strongly bought into denying individuality and denying agency and to the extent that you buy into that is a very general principle that has a lot of implications. So when you come to the people whom your heart initially goes out to because they are not in a very good situation that’s going to be very upsetting. And we know that sometimes people are in bad situations because of past historical injustices. That’s going to make you very angry but you because of your commitment to the lack of individual agency you’re going to not believe in the only tool that’s going to help people get out of that you’re not going to say what I need to tell these people and help them realize is that they can take some significant measure of control over their own lives change their thinking change their behaviors do certain actions that are going to get them out of their bad situations. You’re not going to believe in any of that. Instead you are going to engage in what will in fact be counterproductive methods.
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So where I mean has has is this a new phenomenon both the idea that we’re we’re just part of a group and our identity in our language is just all baked in by our environment and also is it a new idea that we are individuals who have free will. Like when did I mean has for all time we’ve believed that we are individuals with free will and this is something new.
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No. No. The. The individualism and agency free will point is much more strongly a product of the modern world. So if you think for example most of human history and now here we’re playing amateur anthropologists write human beings were in tribal organizations and almost all tribes this was an overstatement but they had the idea that no boys were born to do men’s work. Girls were born to do who to do to do. Girls work and so already you’re not really an individual you are typed and condition right from day one in terms of what your social role is going to be. And also we do know that those economies were largely subsistence economies. So there’s some understanding that yes tools need to be made where wealth needs to be the Arab weapons need to be made. Clothes need to be made but the idea that we can create abundance was was certainly not not a notion as economies became more sophisticated. We had empires that were rigid ify into feudal systems. But again what’s known there as you know aside from the sexual division boys do boy things girls do girls things you have over many many generations the idea that you’re born into a certain class and your whole life is largely mapped out in terms of your class membership you’re a serf or Europe peasant right or your your dad is the Duke and you’re the first born son you are going to be the next Duke or you’re a little girl you are going to be married off to somebody and you start to produce baby. So the idea of individual agency and volition again is extraordinarily limited. It’s really not until you get to the renaissance of the 14 hundreds of long 14 hundreds that you start to see particularly in the commercial republics of Florence especially and in Venice the idea of individuality that you can think for yourself create yourself into the kind of human being that you wanted to and you start to see you see and see this in the artists particularly artists like Michelangelo who start to assert themselves that I have my own vision and then as feudal structure started to be challenged in those places and people started to see that people could make a wealth make a lot of money if they took certain paths and made certain choices in life or that we can take charge of our political system as those early republics did and make it different so that the rules of the game are not from God or from feudal privilege in time immemorial we make the rules because we control the political system as small r republican so it’s a relatively new idea that I can be in charge of my thinking my my dress my style my interests my economic destiny my political destiny you know at most 500 maybe as of seven six hundred and fifty years or so but of course that’s a blink of an eye in historical time and the battle has been deep and increasingly sophisticated over the course of the last centuries.
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So one thing that I hear you touched on a little bit earlier and you touched on it again it’s this idea that you Africa and I think you said South Asia they have more wealth less poverty than America did in the seventeen hundreds. Yes but there is an argument that is well that’s a bad thing in the fact that well that’s because of colonialism and that’s because the white man has come and enforced capitalism upon these people and it’s actually better that they stayed in there their cultural tribal identities and it’s actually this whitewashing.
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Yeah well that’s a a set of propositions there’s a grain of truth in a couple of them but the overall package is is quite bad.
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I think anyone who looks at the historical record and says that the average African now is in a worse situation than an average African six hundred years ago I mean that’s just astounding historical ignorance. I don’t think there’s any excuse for that. So you know if you go back 500 years ago and you look at just one portion of Africa life expectancies were extraordinarily low in the 20s or 30s. So just take the contemporary Congo when then all of the countries on the southern part sub-Saharan Africa and there are going on down to to Angola. So now life expectancy is more than twice what it was just a few centuries ago. So anybody who wants to say oh that’s a bad thing I’m sorry. That’s just it’s just ignorance. The amount of music and economic opportunity that’s available to people now. Contemporary Africans compared to five or six four or four or five or six centuries ago astoundingly different. And it’s also that the vast majority of those states were slave states. I mean all of the slaves that were exported to the Arabian nations and across the Atlantic they were the vast majority of 99 percent of them other African tribes conquering and taking people as slaves to be sold to the Arabs and to be sold to the Europeans engaged. So the fact that a significant portion of the economy was a slave economy and know something like 75 or 80 percent of the people living in those those countries were living as slaves whereas now there still is slavery. But it’s a small minority of the population and mostly underground. Anybody who says that’s not an improvement. Again I think is a historically ignorant right at best. Now the second part of what you were saying is the legacy of colonialism and clearly colonialism is an extraordinarily mixed record. And I think one needs to get nuanced pretty quickly. You know the historical track records of British colonialism compared to say Portuguese colonialism and Spanish and German and French colonialism. Those are those are very mixed records. The ones that I know the most about you know growing up in Canada and living most of my career in the United States is the legacy mostly of British colonialism. So you know then you can say obviously the British did all sorts of bad things in their colonial empires all over the world but at the same time the British did all sorts of good things right. All over the world. So if we consider Hong Kong right now. So you’re living in Hong Kong right now. Do we want to say to the Hong Congress right now you know it’s really so sad that the British colonial lives do you know a century ago and in that case it seems to be pretty ridiculous. You know obviously the British did some bad things in Hong Kong over the course of the last hundred and twenty years or so but Hong Kong is a magnificent accomplishment. And part of what made it a magnificent accomplishment was precisely that the British came in and set up certain institutions and those institutions made Hong Kong able to do very good things. The record of British colonialism I think in the Middle East before and after World War 2 that’s a much more mixed with a lot of terrible things that are going on British in South Africa. Again a much more mixed record right and so forth. But you know the example I like to give here is the example of Botswana. If we’re going to focus on Africa for example so I take to look at Botswana which is a landlocked southern African nation and its neighbour Zimbabwe and other landlocked southern African nation. And both of them were colonies of the British right up until the 1960s or so. Both of them similar histories tribal mix of natural resources. Actually the Zimbabweans have slightly better natural resources Zambia Botswana is mostly Kalahari Desert. If you look at the look at the geography of both of them achieved independence right from the British. So everything that is pretty much the same same history same mix of tribes religions Natural Resources colonial history and so forth both achieve independence. What the Zimbabweans decide at that point is we are going to effectively stop doing everything that the British wanted us to do and we’re going to import a different ideology. So long story short they decided that they were going to become Germans of a certain sort and become Marxist revolutionaries and so they they became a kind of communist socialist state. But when the bit Botswana did was to say after they got rid of the British just to say we think the British institutions are common law education markets and so forth pretty good and we’re going to take ownership of them and be self ruling and so on and we’re going to continue in effect to do things the British way. So what we have is almost a perfect social science experiment where one country says we’re going to use British institutions the other says we’re going to use ported German institutions and Zimbabwe became a basket case. And Botswana became one of the richest if not the richest southern African nation. And my understanding is if you look at the current numbers the average Botswana right now is about eight times as rich as the average Zimbabwean. And lives more than 12 years longer than the average Zimbabwean does. So now we can debate the merits and demerits of colonialism. Right. Absolutely but to say that colonialism makes everybody a victim and that I think is a huge historical overstatement and a disservice. Some crimes. Colonies bring good ideas and not all colonialism is important force at the point of a gun sometimes it’s a mixture of voluntary import export that’s the only one.
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So that is all that we have for part one of this two part episode with Dr. Stephen Hicks. Stick around for episode next episode where we are going to be talking about the fruits of radical Marxism and where to continue that conversation right over into the next episode. I love hearing from you and answering your questions if you have a question from this episode or any of their episode please. What’s that mean. Plus 1 2 0 2 9 2 2 0 2 2 0. That’s 1 2 0 2 9 2 2 0 2 2 0.
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Forward to hearing from you.
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Remember I’m Lucas Skrobt. You are a change maker so go out and own the future.
