Also in At Our Wits’ End, he unironcially uses s/he once. I am not joking. Or he constantly writes he or she. Which shows that he does not understand that the grammatical gender has nothing to do with one’s biological one.

On page 106, he writes that in earlier times you could have been a drive-by parent. Meaning to have lots of children with many partners without investing much in them. Now this is untrue. When were these earlier times? In all great civilizations did laws exist that regulated marriage. Dutton’s knowledge of history is really not that deep; why would any father be amused about his daughter having been made pregnant by some cad?

He critizies Adam Perkins, who emphasised that personality can be just as important as intelligence to succeed in employment, while not showing, as Dutton notes, that it is more important. In The Welfare Trait, Perkins writes about those who, despite their high IQ, only go so far in the world of work due to their low agreeableness and low conscientiousness.

Dutton now writes that he could also have shown cases of people who, despite high agreeableness and conscientiousness, fail to get promoted beyond a certain level by virtue of not being clever enough.

To which I reply that such cases are thinkable, but usually less common, given that there really are not that many jobs where very high IQs are needed. Few people go into engineering, for example; I rather side with Chris Langan. Not to mention that if you dropped out of school, you won’t get far in the first place because of a lack of credentials, no matter how smart you are.

Work, for high IQ people, is usually boring as Hell anyway. That so-called career women exist has more to do with the fact that women are, on average, more malleable and can be brainwashed more easily.

In a documentary, Chris Langan, who has an IQ of 195-210, rhetorically asked something along the lines of “why am I not filthy rich, working at Wall Street?”, saying that he prefers to live a meaningful life, and this—he points to the computer screen, showing a scientific paper—is how he gets it. The Unabomber, too, wrote in his manifesto that some people want to climb the status ladder their whole life, never getting tired of that game.

Regarding the Flynn Effect, he writes, on p. 118, that inreasing living standards likely means that we are decreasingly stressed. I would argue, instead, that modern society has increased stress; noise, high population density, horrible work conditions and so on have led to more people being depressed and suicidal. Konrad Lorenz wrote a book about it in 1969 already (Civilized Man’s Eight Deadly Sins).

People have written about declining birth rates and IQ before; what Dutton presents here, though, is rather speculative.

Quite ridiculously, he claims on page 138 that geniuses decreased because populations are smaller, when in fact more Brits are alive today than when the British empire was on the height of its power. He may mean that fewer children are born, but modern populations are way too large. Further, claiming that we are no longer group selected, and that genius helped their country during times of war is again a very narrow view of genius. What is the point of this? How did Goethe, one of the greatest geniuses, help Germany during war? Or Leibniz? Shakespeare? Even Newton? Not in any way, shape or form.

That there are fewer macro innovations makes sense. After all, why do we need more technology yet? Should we not better get less dependent on it? Given that it also created a host of problems that would need to be solved; if someone developed a warp engine or some other kind of nonsense, how would that benefit man? It would only worsen our situation.

On page 149, he tries to refute an argument critics apparently use: that the evidence presented is not sufficient. Dutton replies that if they demanded this from every scientist, there could be no cars or aeroplanes (he is drunk on technology).

Though the difference is apparent: Dutton is dealing with soft science here, not hard science. As Vox Day once wrote: trust God and engineering. This is not true for soft sciences like evolutionary biology, which is only a little bit harder than psychology, the softest of all. I do not even doubt that the West is in a dire situation, but I reject most of what Dutton tries to pass on as hard facts. Evolutionary psychology can be disregarded anyway, Christopher Hallpike leveled a great critique at it in his book Do We Need God to Be Good?.

Then on pages 150 onward, he gives a rather half-hearted account of several thinkers who wrote about civilizational collapse, cyclic theories and so on. Certainly not exhaustive at all, rather subjective and also wrong.

Garden Eden, for example, is not comparable to a past golden age, since, as I wrote elsewhere, reality itself had been altered profoundly because of the Fall, in which Dutton is unable to believe. Though this is irrelevant, it does not disproof its validity; as if being unable to read Latin meant that no one can.

In general, and here I side with Deep Left Jokl (Kenneth Brown), Dutton does not have a good grasp on political theory. He does not have anything coming close to it at all. (Even using a nonsensical term like Judeo-Christian [p. 154], not much thinking is going into all this really.)

Dutton then calls Spengler a morose and depressive character on page 158. Is this relevant? Even if—at least depending on the subject—, I would not take anything seriously written by someone who lived a licentious life, for example.

Dutton seems to think that Spengler was humiliated because his dissertation had not been accepted at first. Maybe he was. The reason his dissertation had been rejected, though, had to do with the fact that he wrote it as in the old days, meaning he hardly referenced or quoted other authors.

He often attempts to refute critiques by speculating what they may level against his views, though this he does in a pretty vulgar way, as on page 162, where he even uses a loaded term like pseudo-intellectual. This whole page reads as if he knows what he presents us with here is far from being watertight.

That he believes kindness to be a—I am not joking!—sexually valued quality (p. 165) is imbecilic and as far removed from truth as 1 + 1 = 0.

He further believes that the Bible somehow teaches to be fruitful and multiply; I wrote about this above, suffice to say that it teaches almost the opposite. It is the Church which taught this at best. Also, I do not believe at all that people have some vague genetic interest they are being cheated out of by not having children. I certainly do not want to pass on my horrible genes; were I not a Christian I would kill myself and be done with this madhouse the world is.

He may attribute it to neuroticism, but who cares? If I had a child living somewhere, what would this change? Would my life change? The world? Reality itself? Nothing, absolutely nothing would be different regarding my own life, more and more live as if they do not even have a child despite being a parent. By living alone again, with a new partner, as they vulgarly call it.

He also seems to take seriously climate science (p. 168), which is rather bogus, basically appearing out of nowhere in the 90s. He repeats that democracy is a result of high g (p. 172); I do not see why this should be the case. High g = atheism? Which is what democracy in essence is: no longer God but man is the center now. Is he joking? Rome never was atheist. Studies that apparently show g being associated with support for democracy obviously cannot be applied to peoples of civilizations which existed thousands of years ago.

Democracy existed in small city states in Greece, and often enough, rulers were killed if they went overboard with their politics. This is hardly comparable to today.

Continuing with what he writes on page 175, namely that during our teenage years we start to question the existence of God, whereas as small children you even believed in the tooth fairy and so on. (As g inreases, he writes, people become less religious.)

The fact, however, is that most do not really question God, and I rather side with Vox Day, who, in his book The Irrational Atheist, writes the fact that many start to leave God behind in their teens has more to do with sexuality; if God allowed them to have promiscuous intercourse they would not reject Him as much. Either way, they generally do not start reading Hume or Kant.

(I became an atheist because I simply hate life, and also had an interest in philosophy.)

He cites Meisenberg on page 176, who did some rough calculations (whatever that means). He concludes that due to these injunctions—contraception and abortion being forbidden—, the higher birth rate is almost enough to explain the rise of Christianity.

Of course this is nonsense, since Christianity grew because people converted or got converted, as can even be read in the book of Acts. Constantine converted as an adult, and Augustine did not believe until being more than thirty years old already (his mother, St. Monica, was a Christian, praying regularly he may convert.) Dutton then mentions, right after the Meisenberg quote, that early Christianity placed way more emphasis on asceticism, including living a celibate life. So this makes no sense whatsoever.

On page 177, he uses the term Dark Ages unironically; as well as claiming that Christianity promoted equality! I want my money back! He can’t be serious.

Gerhard Meisenberg is not even relevant, he can hardly be seen as an authority on the question of religion; he is a biochemist. That one has to accept the Trinity to be a Christian is wrong too (p. 180); Vox Day rejects it as well, most likely seeing in it a form of Churchianism (it is a doctrine developed over centuries.)

That one is bound for Hell by rejecting those doctrines is not true, it is Christ who saves. It was not Christianity that burnt people at the stake for apparent “inconsequential deviations” (p. 180) of dogma, but the Church at that time. Further, that it forbade scientific inquiry is wrong as well, given that many church towers were used as observatories (cf. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization). Monks copied ancient manuscripts, they also tinkered a lot. Wind mills did not exist in ancient Rome, for example.

Besides, if it were true, what does science have to do with the dogmas of the Church? Science and religion are not in conflict; Augustine even wrote one should not mistake Genesis for a physics textbook (or so). I am not sure how physics or biology, for example, would disprove the existence of God anyway.

The following would at least disprove the God of the Bible, as Vox Day writes in The Irrational Atheist:

• The elimination of the Jewish people would falsify both God’s promise to Abraham and the eschatological events prophesied in the Book of Revelation.
• The discovery of Jesus Christ’s crucified skeleton.
• The linguistic unification of humanity.
• An external recording of the history of the human race provided by aliens, as proposed by science fiction authors Arthur C. Clarke and James P. Hogan.
• The end of war and/or poverty.
• Functional immortality technology.

Dutton worships the cult of scientism, of rationalism and is drunk on technology.

This book really is not well-written; his constant whom we met earlier got on my nerves as well. Charles Murray, who wrote books of a similar nature, is certainly a more talented writer.

Yes, not well-written at all, as I mentioned above. His constant use of “So, …” is also unbearable.

On page 185 in At Our Wits’ End, he claims that the wealthier also have higher g, which is just an assertion. We know that in the GDR/DDR (East Germany), during the first decades, many who studied came from blue collar/working class backgrounds. This was intended, those whose parents were academics usually were prevented from studying. However, in the eighties, the pool of people from working class backgrounds dried up. Those who would have been able to rise did rise, and most students came from academic backgrounds.

Intelligence itself does not result in high status; it is not clear why the wealthiest ought to be the most intelligent. Even today we see that this is not the case at all.

Further, if being higher in g means being less religious—I do not see why that should be the case, there may be other factors, like personality, involved—, then why does Dutton think that those who choose a radical religious life, like the Sufis or Christian monks, are higher in g than the average population? Of those with higher intelligence, he writes: “[…] they are, anyway, interested in intellectual pursuits and irreligious ideas which incline them not to have children.”

According to Dutton, being lower in g also means being less able to use contraception, being more religious and therefore they have more children.

In today’s society, I do not see a lot of religiousness on either side: neither the poor nor rich seem to be religious much.

It is not even clear when the first atheist geniuses started to appear; Plato, for example, was not an atheist. Neither was Newton. It is questionable if today’s atheism actually existed in the past. Again I side with Vox Day, who distinguishes between Low Church and High Church atheists. In The Irrational Atheist, Vox Day writes:

“Studies have shown that those without religion have life expectancies seven years shorter than the average churchgoer, are more likely to smoke, abuse alcohol, and be depressed or obese, and they are much less likely to marry or have children. Their criminal proclivities strongly suggest that they are less intelligent on average than theists and High Church atheists alike, and they also outnumber their High Church counterparts by a significant margin […]”

The atheism of today hardly existed in the past. Even Epicurus did not reject the existence of gods, he instead taught to rather ignore them because they do not care much about man anyway.

I forgot to mention that on page 27, regarding the validity of IQ tests, he writes that certainly we should not put people incapable of designing aerpolanes put to work doing so; the aeroplanes will crash and people will be killed. He feels rather uncomfortable about that and would suggest it is rather dangerous (as opposed to ranking people by their IQ.)

Again, we see how obsessed he is with technology, especially aeroplanes. He loves aeroplanes; he needs aeroplanes; maybe he is an aeroplane. Whatever may be the case, the problem with this is that they would not even be able to produce one if they are truly intellectually incapable of designing one. No people would get killed. (And he is unable to show why killing is to be rejected, i. e. what does he base morality on?)

On page 188, he claims puritanism preached a sexual morality not seen before. His proof? The nobility apparently had illegitimate children. What does that have to do with the Church? Or the common man? Nothing. He does not even understand that our times are one of the most sex-obsessed that ever existed. Worse, he cited St. Jerome who lived way before the puritans and already noted that intercourse is for procreation only. The Church has always been attacked for being prude and whatnot. Dutton is a liar.

He writes, on page 189, that a youthful civilization is more creative and so on. His shallowness is at its peak here, when he writes, and I qoute:

In Elizabethan England, 36% of the population is under 16 and 7% is over 60. From our discussion of age differences in personality and g alone we can see how this will shift behaviour patterns to a society that is more risk-taking, adventurous, creative and self-confident. Think of all the creativity you engaged in as a student before you settled down to sit in front of a computer all day, like almost all of us do. Think of all the reckless and embarrassing experimentation you engaged in with sex, booze and political or religious extremism as well.

Now this is such a horrific sentence, a most horrible view! Not to be read. But I did. Unfortunately.

First off, if extremism, which is another loaded term, negatively correlates with intelligence, one may question how representative studies are that show smart people to be less extremist anyway. Either this is all a lot of nonsense, or age plays a role as well.

As I already stated, my personality did not change much. Secondly, Kant wrote his Kritiken, without which he would not have achieved such fame, when he was well over fifty years of age. Further, Dutton states that high IQ correlates with low self-esteem, which means a younger society is also dumber. Young people are not in charge of society anyway; and if they died early, what kind of creativity did they exhibit? Why does he think that the industrial revolution is the peak of the West?

The last sentence is complete hogwash; I sat at a desk in my youth, as many who have intellectual interests did. Dutton clearly is not someone who learnt much in life, which is why he has such little knowledge, is monolingual (noted by Volkmar Weiss, see his review above); add to this his rather ridiculous academic career.

After all, he did not even study genetics or anything of that sort, but … theology? Are you kidding us? Worse, he focused on so-called Christian fundamentalism, writing a dissertation on what is most likely a complete waste of time — as it already sounds highly politically correct (“fundamentalism” is a loaded term.) That he mentions sex and booze shows how much we have lost; you could not picture a Jakob Burckhardt writing such dung. Dutton is proof himself that we are in decline.

Quoting Nicolás Gómez Dávila:

An abrupt demographic expansion rejuvenates society and makes its stupidities recrudesce.

More nonsense on page 192, he wants to make the point that the adoption of extreme humanitarianism, in the form of multiculturalism and “cultural Marxism”, is the beginning of the Second Religion. Together with postmodernism and populist nationalism, they are anti-rational ideologies which apparently show how far g has fallen. They are unquestionable dogmas: equality is the ultimate aim; this nation is superior to others.

Clearly, so-called populist nationalism does not claim this; it is just a reaction to untrammeled immigration and other negative developments. It is not clear at all why supporting democracy should be seen as “rational”, or why rationality ought to be superior, given that our origin is all but rational. It is just a tool, nothing more.

To quote the great Colombian reactionary Don Colacho again:

In the intelligent man faith is the only remedy for anguish.
The fool is cured by “reason,” “progress,” alcohol, work.

Our spontaneous aversions are often more lucid than our reasoned convictions.

“Cultural Marxism”, mentioned more than once in this book, is not a clearly defined term anyway. Though most have a vague idea about what it means, it certainly is not scientific in any way.

In a footnote (p. 192), he even distances himself from criticism of mass immigration, writing any positive (!!) or negative effects it may have are of no importance to his argument, the fact that it is occurring just shows he is right. Or so.

Of course, mass immigration does not have any positive effects (at least as far as the common people are concerned); migration is war and vice versa, as Martin van Creveld demonstrated in There Will Be War Volume X: History’s End

It gets worse and worse! Dutton is so uneducated, he, again, cites some irrelevant author who writes about Christianity, namely Sedgwick, M. Writing that maybe another possibilty (of surviving this decline) is adoption of a broader belief, inherent in Christianity, that “Wisdom is found in the East” (the quote is from the book by Sedgwick on traditionalism). Now this is not inherent in Christianity at all, never was or will be.

That Guenon became a Sufi or so had to do with the fact that as a traditiionalist, he adopted the local religion; living in Egypt, this was Islam. He most likely did not care much about it.

He thinks that Buddhism may be adopted, which is rather unlikely given the hedonism of the West. He continues that maybe more youtfhul societies that industrialised later, like Russia, China or the Islamic world may invade instead, where selection for g went into reverse more recently. As Dutton often does, he answers critics beforehand by writing that this is not mere speculation, but that others have examined this issue in detail and predicted the same. The footnote lists … Richard Lynn and his book Eugenics: A Reassessment. This has to be a joke!

His view of religion is uninteresting anyway; he sees them as interchangeable. Yet, their moral codes differ. He never asks himself, as did smarter atheists like Nietzsche or Schopenhauer, how to even define what is “good” and what is “evil” behaviour.

To quote Gómez Dávila again:

All strange religions waver between the diabolical and the ridiculous.

The believer knows how to doubt; the unbeliever does not know how to believe.

The last chapter follows with another bad analogy, writing that all of us are going to die, and most are going to grow old before this happens; most put this to the back of their heads. Yes, maybe most people, but I am not most people and hanged myself in my early twenties.

Further, he claims that old age can be much more enjoyable—as if youth is devoid of suffering …—for those who plan for it instead of not thinking about it. For example, by being socially active, so that one does not end up alone with only the television and a occasional phone call as social contacts.

I already referenced Nils M. Holm and his work, and will do it again: again. If you hardly have much in common with people, this will only make matters worse. Schopenhauer died aged seventy-two and did not have a lot of social contacts. It also shows that he does not read books.

He then goes on to write that people, when they are younger, ought to appreciate that old age will come and save for a pension than spending it on stuff they do not need and ultimately become a burden on their family or community. How are they a burden on their family when people often enough claim that children are a provision for one’s old age? The Bible teaches that there will always be poor people.

Certainly, no one should be allowed to live a deranged life, having children out of wedlock. However, the state allows this to happen, yet Dutton does not seem to be interested in understanding how to change the state. He abhors theory, does not want to do the groundwork, the heavy lifting.

He writes that the more intelligent among us will plan for being elderly when we are not yet elderly so it will be less difficult when it (almost) inevitably comes.

To which I reply that the smartest are, in his own words, the geniuses, with super high IQ, and they usually did not care about this at all. (He will attribute it to their personality, of course.) Similarly, high IQ individuals do not have to value life at all, why would they? This does not have anything to do with high g. I may also simply hate life and be done with it; further, making lots of money, as I wrote a thousand times now, has little to do with a high IQ, but more with personality traits that are even negative in nature, as Langan made clear.

He is very patronising! On p. 198, he continues with his whining about old age; maybe he should have opened a serious book at least once, like Schopenhauer’s notes on old age; Seneca; Marcus Aurelius. He writes that as age progresses, things we used to be able to do will become at best dangerous or impossible. He mentions, and I am not joking!, the following activities: marathon running, staying up all night drinking, driving a car. Now is this shallow? It certainly is.

But it explains why Dutton comes across as a hack, a pseudo-scientist who cannot even fluently read French or German; let alone Latin and Greek. He was too busy drinking and having sloppy, unpleasant sex as a student. No time for studying!

He continues that we are too old now as a civilization to relaunch Concorde; our g is too low. He never wonders why there is no second Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe. Dutton is a philistine, he hardly reads, and when he does, he reads badly-written papers that are, for the most part, pseudo-science anyway.

He gets crazier still on page 201, writing that colonising Mars may be our best chance! I am not joking, he really thinks that this would change anything (if it were possible, which it isn’t.) He writes that the harsh conditions would increase g again, and if we want scientific progress to continue, adding that 90% of us would not be alive otherwise—which is just another subjective percentage—this may be our best hope.

I do not want to live, and if people have more illnesses today because of science and technology, why would anyone want to live such an awful life? I certainly do not want to live mine, and suicide for those suffering from mental illness has been legalized in a few countries like Belgium already. Dutton is a life- and sex-obsessed sissy who wants to live no matter what. I am not. God threatens with eternal damnation, therefore suicide is risky.

Well, why would anyone think this? Because Dutton is not that smart, he did not study any subjects that are math-heavy, for example, even though he constantly cites the high IQs of physicists or so. His own IQ is most likely not as high, he may have an axe to grind. Maybe he feels inferior.

And how often did I read who we met earlier now? Feels like ten thousand times. Dutton should be slapped for his horrible writing style and shallow worldview. You can write about the decline of civilisations without being a sex- and life-obsessed imbecile; like Spengler did, for example.

That we need a sense of the eternal, and that somehow Christianity gave us this, has nothing to do with valuing this world. The Bible teaches that heaven and earth will pass away, that we ought not to get entangled too much with worldly endeavours. He repeated, on p. 202, the nonsense again of colonising another planet, which will do what for us? Nothing.

That he then considers something as stupid as Beyondism by Cattell shows how clueless he is. While he has not much faith in it, it displays his lack of understanding regarding its philosophical underpinnings. Morality has to be objective, it has to have an objective law giver. God. Cattel wrote of man’s evolutionary adventure, which sounds psychopathic, given how bloody it all is; worse, evolution is hardly a fact, evolutionary biology being only somewhat harder than the softest of all sciences, psychology.

His reservation about implementing eugenics is rather dishonest; after all, more and more children are born out of wedlock. He even cites an article claiming that soon, more than half of births will be born illegitimate. Apparently, people do not care much about having children, which goes against his pet theory of genetic interest, which does not exist, of course. It is an awful reality, but why do more and more people leave or kill their children? They certainly would treat a treasure chest full of money and gold better.

While I find tampering with genetics repugnant as well, the medical students in Gerhard Meisenberg’s study are rather dishonest too, given that they most likely are pro-abortion, for example. And also have little qualms with pre-marital intercourse.

Citing an article in a footnote, Dutton has to accept that more than IQ is necessary to succeed, especially at the top. The article presented data that one in five corporate executives exhibited psychopathic personality traits. This shows that Langan is correct.

Eckart Knaul, whom Volkmar Weiss cites in his Amazon review I linked to above, wrote a shorter book as well on the perils of technological progress (“Glamour and Gloom of Progress”). Knaul was a physician, noting, in 1972 already!, that the development of modern science and progress seemd to have reached their maximum potential. Now, he continues, the drawbacks of unbridled technological progress become clear as day.

Dutton, however, as I noted, is drunk on technology. Dutton lives in Finland; Pentti Linkola was finnish. I certainly do not support him much, he was an atheist and insincere, having had affairs and fathering children even. Still, Dutton is wholly uncritical of the influence technology has on our lives.

This books was a waste of time. Horribly written, it shows what we have lost in less than a hundred years, if compared to the writings of a Hans Freyer, for example.

On page 179, he again cites this Meisenberg guy, who is anything but an authority on religious matters, writing that the difference between the pagan gods and the Christian God is that He has no personality, He is simply perfect. You do not aim to become like God, Dutton writes, but prostrate before Him.

Christ is the example one has to follow, knowing that one will never achieve becoming sinless as Christ was. Further, Job was a pious man who argued with God, this in itself is not blasphemy as long as it does not end in suicide. All sins will be forgiven, except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

These guys have no clue; they are clueless; they do not know what they are writing about.