Edward Dutton > Quotes

“Why is it that we used to be able to fly from the USA to London in less than 4 hours but now we can’t? Why is it that we used to be able to put people on the Moon but now, it seems, we can’t? The answer is surprisingly simple. We are no longer intelligent enough to be able to do these things. We have become too stupid to keep Concorde in flight; let alone go back to the Moon.”
― Edward Dutton, At Our Wits' End: Why We're Becoming Less Intelligent and What it Means for the Future

“Modern Man can, if he wishes, ignore his mortality, not think about it – so distant is it from everyday life; so many and so thick are the insulating layers between himself and the real environment of food, clothing, shelter and warmth; invaders, predators and parasites. He can live absorbed in a world of drugged distraction. And this is, pretty much, the totality of the modern vision of life.”
― Edward Dutton, The Genius Famine: Why We Need Geniuses, Why They're Dying Out, Why We Must Rescue Them

“Of course people still feel gnawing anxiety, depression and despair. But these do not trigger religiousness, being increasingly dealt with by 24/7 distraction provided by the mass media, interpersonal communication and quick transportation; any dysphoria (mild depression or otherwise unpleasant feelings) is dealt with by mass medication with tranquillizers and emotionnumbing ‘antidepressants’, ‘antipsychotics’ or ‘mood stabilizers’ (these words are placed in ‘scare quotes’ because they are all marketing terms with negligible scientific or clinical rationale).”
― Edward Dutton, The Genius Famine: Why We Need Geniuses, Why They're Dying Out, Why We Must Rescue Them

“Novelty of outcome + Social Approval of that outcome = fake creativity”
― Edward Dutton, The Genius Famine: Why we need geniuses, why they’re dying out, and why we must rescue them

“In essence, and in opposition to the past ‘cohesion geniuses’ of religion, philosophy, literature, music, and art that we mentioned earlier; modern ‘evil geniuses’ have used their creativity to undermine rather than strengthen social cohesion; to argue or demonstrate that there is no such thing as truth, or that the false is true; to assert that life has no meaning, to assert that forms of immorality should be praised as virtuous, and to reject beauty in favour of originality or even to try to promote ugliness as beauty. In other words, they used their genius to reverse the values of the past and promote a dark, nihilistic and despairing Void of a life.”
― Edward Dutton, The Genius Famine: Why We Need Geniuses, Why They're Dying Out, Why We Must Rescue Them

“Karl Marx’s (1818-1883) philosophy – heavily influenced by Rousseau – altered the idealized group from the ‘tribe’ to the ‘worker’ and argued that a worker’s dictatorship must inevitably develop to ensure equality based on Marx’s fate-based understanding of History. Again, dissent was not to be permitted and dissenters were ‘enemies,’ ‘imperialists’ and so on. Its culmination was the world-historical horror of twentieth century Communism, and its descendant Political Correctness, in which ‘the worker’ is replaced by supposedly oppressed or more natural ‘cultural’ groups. Dissenters are ‘racist’ and other catch-all, highly emotive terms (such as ‘hater’ or ‘denialist’) employed to discourage dissent, such that even the slightest deviance from orthodoxy is termed ‘racist’ in order to reprove it and intimidate the deviant into silence.39 These ideologies can distilled down to three essential dogmas: (1) Those who have power – whether financial or cultural and whether deserved or not – are bad and should repent by giving it to those who lack power and creating ‘equality’ (2) Those who lack power – on whatever measure is seen as important – are superior to those who have it because they are somehow more genuine and (3) Those who dissent from this view are wicked.”
― Edward Dutton, The Genius Famine: Why We Need Geniuses, Why They're Dying Out, Why We Must Rescue Them

“So, these evil geniuses may or may not have had exceptionally wicked personalities, although all were somewhat unpleasant characters37 – but they did have a net-destructive effect on society. This effect was net-destructive because they advanced a compelling but destructive worldview; one which led to the suppression of, for example, the ability of people to perceive meaning and purpose in life, or active-encouragement of selfish, parasitic, or cruel behaviour.”
― Edward Dutton, The Genius Famine: Why We Need Geniuses, Why They're Dying Out, Why We Must Rescue Them

“Newton’s biography reveals that he was an extreme example of the Psychoticism trait. Psychoticism is important to genius because it describes someone who is uninterested and uninfluenced by the normal human concerns – which are essentially ‘other people.’ Most humans are social animals, who see life through social spectacles, and who are motivated by the desire for friends, sex, status, and so on. But not Newton. In his early and most creative years, he simply wanted to be allowed to get on with his work.”
― Edward Dutton, The Genius Famine: Why We Need Geniuses, Why They're Dying Out, Why We Must Rescue Them

“Worse still, ‘originality’ – rather than consequence – has become the test of genius. The fact that something is ‘original’ – meaning novel, makes it praise-worthy. In fact, originality has now become indistinguishable from mere changes of fashion. In previous eras, there was not a special status given to novelty as an aspect of high quality work – but since about 1800 in the West there has been: greatness is supposedly mostly a matter of being innovative. Yet while great geniuses may innovate this is not the rule, for instance Gluck and J.C. Bach were greater innovators, but much lesser composers than, J.S. Bach and Mozart; Constable and Gainsborough were less original, but higher quality, painters than Francis Bacon or Lucien Freud.”
― Edward Dutton, The Genius Famine: Why We Need Geniuses, Why They're Dying Out, Why We Must Rescue Them

“Myself and my colleague Guy Madison (Dutton & Madison, 2017) inadvertently provided evidence for the Finnish inferiority complex in a study we did of every marriage between a Finn and a foreigner that took place in Finland in the year 2013. On average, males and females operate different sexual selection strategies. Males have nothing to lose from the sexual encounter, so it makes sense for them, if they can get away with it, to have as much sex as possible with as many different women as possible in order to maximise the probability that their genes will be passed on. Accordingly, they select for youth and beauty, as these are markers of fertility and health. The essence of beauty is a symmetrical face and a such face implies a low level of mutant genes and thus sound genetic health. Females operate differently. As we discussed briefly earlier, they have a great deal to lose from the sexual encounter, because they can become pregnant, which carries with it a range of social and physical costs. This makes them more selective. Specifically, they are sexually attracted to high status men as these men will have the resources to provide for them and their child, meaning that both of them are more likely to survive (Buss, 1989). So, socioeconomically, women ‘marry up’ (hypergamously) and men ‘marry down’ (hypogamously). We would expect that nationality would be an aspect of status. We tested this by ranking different nationalities based on various criteria and especially how wealthy a country was. We predicted that, among marriages between a Finn and a foreigner, Finnish women would to a greater extent marry men that were from countries ranked as higher status than Finland while Finnish men would disproportionately marry women from lower status countries. This is, overall, what we found. However, we specifically found that, whatever the objective national status differences, Finnish women married Western European and Anglophone (USA, Canada and so on) men while Finnish men married Eastern European and East Asian (including Japanese) women. This would imply, whatever the economic reality, that Finns regard themselves as inferior to pretty much all Western Europeans. It also indicates that the Japanese – who are far wealthier than the Finns – regard themselves as inferior to the Finns, presumably because there is some idolization of whiteness or, possibly, as has been argued by a Japanese anthropologist, the Japanese specifically adore Finnish culture (Mitsui, 2012).”
― Edward Dutton, The Silent Rape Epidemic: How the Finns Were Groomed to Love Their Abusers

“Modern society has indeed become more and more ‘evil’ – which is to say (providing here a brief definition of evil) organized in pursuit of destruction of The Good in the traditional sense of the word – the Good being (roughly) the transcendental values of Truth, Beauty and Virtue, underpinned by a sense of unity and the eternal.”
― Edward Dutton, The Genius Famine: Why We Need Geniuses, Why They're Dying Out, Why We Must Rescue Them

“We would also expect the more masculine-looking person to have higher levels of autism traits. High functioning autism (or Asperger’s) is characterised by a very strong ability to systematize (create and work out systems) but a very weak ability to empathise. Autistics are socially unskilled, obsessed with detail, and have little interest in other people. These characteristics are associated with high testosterone. Autistics are subject to elevated fetal steroidogenic activity, including elevated levels of testosterone, as evidenced by tests of their amniotic fluid (Baron-Cohen et al., 2015). Dawson and colleagues (2007) have shown that autism is associated with a distinct intelligence profile. Autistics score strongly on the Ravens test (which strongly tests systematizing) relative to scores on broader IQ tests, which include vocabulary tests, for example. They score on average 30 percentile points higher, and in some cases 70 percentile points higher, on the Ravens than they score on the Wechsler, which is a broader test. So,”
― Edward Dutton, How to Judge People by What They Look Like

“Most men I met in Finland appeared to be these silent, unemotional types. Their symptoms were not as pronounced as those of the man on the plane, perhaps, but they were the type of men of whom I met very few in England: Taciturn, introvert, joyless, reserved, and perfectly happy to be solitary, engaged in pursuits that were absolute anathema to me such as hunting, trekking and cross-country skiing. Presumably their incapacity to experience joy rendered sport quite attractive, because it would elevate their endorphin levels. It also appeared to render alcohol extremely inviting.”
― Edward Dutton, The Silent Rape Epidemic: How the Finns Were Groomed to Love Their Abusers

“And as we have observed (Hammond & Axelrod, 2006), based on computer models, all else controlled for, the more ethnocentric group will always triumph.”
― Edward Dutton, The Silent Rape Epidemic: How the Finns Were Groomed to Love Their Abusers

“The problem, however, is if a society’s living standards become too high, and its stress levels become too low, then it will gradually stop believing in God and so stop perceiving its own culture as uniquely important and perceiving foreigners as a dire and cosmic threat.”
― Edward Dutton, The Silent Rape Epidemic: How the Finns Were Groomed to Love Their Abusers

“Religious myths are encoded by the evolutionary survivors, because those who believed that the gods sought different behaviors from those promoted by the myths simply didn’t pass on their genes.”
― Edward Dutton, Making Sense of Race

“In sum, committees do not look after geniuses – rather they ignore them, or persecute them. It is likely no coincidence that English genius very suddenly all-but disappeared in the era from about 1955-198069 in which bureaucracy waxed dominant in national life – and nowadays geniuses are absent, invisible, or fighting for survival against the forces of mass media, committees, peer reviewers and other faceless officials. This is sad for the geniuses; perhaps fatal for our society.”
― Edward Dutton, The Genius Famine: Why We Need Geniuses, Why They're Dying Out, Why We Must Rescue Them

“Indeed, research by Congolese physician Denis Mukwege et al. (2010) implies that to divinely sanctify the rape of the invaded country’s females is likely to be very adaptive in terms of group selection. Rape, they argue, is a way of asserting dominance not just over the females, but, by extension, over their fathers, brothers, male cousins and, in many ways, all males on the opposing side. It destroys their morale and undermines their confidence, because the conquerors assert dominance and control over the central resource for future existence, namely the wombs of the women of those whom they are conquering. Based on an analysis of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mukwege et al. (2010) aver that rape can be a quite deliberate war strategy, because it creates deep trauma and insecurity among the victims and their networks, helping to undermine their ability to defend themselves. It may, therefore, be no coincidence that the original meaning of ‘rape’ was to ‘pillage’ or ‘steal.’ Only in the early 15th century did ‘rape’ come to refer to the abduction and sexual violation of a woman.”
― Edward Dutton, The Silent Rape Epidemic: How the Finns Were Groomed to Love Their Abusers

“In positions of power, these mutants can then persuade even non-carriers to reject religiosity and even adopt some ideology that destroys their ethnic group, and thus their own genetic interests, such as Multiculturalism.”
― Edward Dutton, The Silent Rape Epidemic: How the Finns Were Groomed to Love Their Abusers

“In a society of declining intelligence, we would expect: rising crime and corruption; decreasing civic participation and lower voter turn-out; higher rates of illegitimacy; poorer health and greater obesity, an increased interest in the instinctive, especially sex; greater political instability and decline in democracy; higher levels of social conflict; higher levels of selfishness and so a decline in any welfare state; a growing unemployable underclass; falling educational standards; and a lack of intellectualism and thus decreasing interest in education as a good in itself. We would also expect more and more little things to go wrong that we didn’t used to notice: buses running out of petrol, trains delayed, aeroplanes landing badly, roads not being repaired, people arriving late and thinking it’s perfectly okay; several large and lots of little lies . . . In addition, the broader modern system – especially of extended formal education (stretching ever further into adult life), exam results and continuous assessments, required subjects and courses; the supposed ‘meritocracy’ – suppresses the influence of genius, since the Endogenous personality is seeking, ever more strongly with age, to follow his inner drives, his Destiny, and all the paraphernalia of normal, standard requirements stands in his path. While others need sticks and carrots, and are grateful for encouragement, discipline and direction; the Endogenous personality is driven from within and (beyond a basic minimum) he neither needs nor appreciates these things – at best they slow him down, at worst they thwart and exclude him. The Endogenous personality requires mainly to be allowed to do what he intrinsically and spontaneously wants to do – but in modern society he is more likely to be prevented.”
― Edward Dutton, The Genius Famine: Why We Need Geniuses, Why They're Dying Out, Why We Must Rescue Them

“Those who were brightest were the first to accept the new religion, as they could talk themselves into anything. They even talked themselves into having small families or no children at all.”
― Edward Dutton, Witches, Feminism, and the Fall of the West

“Thus, the collapse of religion is problematic for all intelligent societies, but especially for European ones, because they have followed this ‘genius strategy.’ When religiousness declines, God - who for so long has protected the society from the negative consequences of having high intelligence – is dead. Accordingly, the society’s intelligence leads to its own destruction. Most importantly, intelligence predicts being trusting. There is a naivety to being intelligent. High in trust, highly intelligent people will let foreigners into the society and assume that they are ultimately honest and good and everything will be okay in the end. Low in self-esteem, they will perceive their own culture as worthless and backward and not worth preserving. They are likely to believe that their culture will be improved by being ‘enriched’ by somehow superior elements of the cultures whose adherents are entering their country. Registering high in Openness, those of high intelligence will be excited and fascinated by the immigrants and they will be prone to try to look for the positive in them. Being high in empathy, if the immigrants, or potential immigrants, are from poorer societies then the intelligent will be strongly inclined to help them. Being trusting, they will assume that this will be reciprocated; that the invaders will be extremely grateful. Denuded of their religion, the highly intelligent are woefully naïve. They are decadent and they are invaded by the Enemy at the Gate.”
― Edward Dutton, The Silent Rape Epidemic: How the Finns Were Groomed to Love Their Abusers

“In a review entitled ‘When Religion Makes It Worse,’ Yael Sela and colleagues (Sela et al., 2015) observed that various parts of both the Old Testament, to which Muslims in part adhere or which have influenced Islam, and the Islamic scriptures, therefore, unsurprisingly render it God’s will that you can rape the daughter of your enemy if you invade their land. It would surely elevate the damaged self-esteem of Muslim refugee males to believe that they are part of an invading force. It is indeed a common belief among fundamentalist Muslims that they must colonise the West under Islam (Armstrong, 2001). Leviticus 20: 13 tells believers that in a situation of war, you should kill every male in the opposing tribe and take all the females for yourself. Zechariah 14 is explicit that the enemies of Jerusalem are to be vanquished while their womenfolk are to be raped and enslaved. Judges 21 tells those who fear the Lord to invade the place of their enemies and kill every male as well as every female who is not a virgin. Virgins, however, are to be forcibly married to the soldiers who have slaughtered their families. The Koran 4:3 is quite clear that a man should take multiple wives: ‘Marry of the women, who seem good to you, two or three or four; and if you fear that you cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only) or (the captives) that your right hands possess.’ In other words, you can do what you like with female infidels, with the womenfolk in the country which you have invaded.”
― Edward Dutton, The Silent Rape Epidemic: How the Finns Were Groomed to Love Their Abusers

“British philosopher Colin Wilson (1931-2013) exposed this in his marvellously insightful short study: Lord of the Underworld: Jung and the Twentieth Century (1984);”
― Edward Dutton, The Genius Famine: Why We Need Geniuses, Why They're Dying Out, Why We Must Rescue Them

“Some geniuses are nice, many are nasty – but that is not the point. The point is that the genius feels his first (or a very high) responsibility is to do his utmost to create and sustain the best conditions he needs for his work, and to do that work, and communicate that work. He feels his duty is to follow his Destiny. And this motivation comes above the desire to help other people.”
― Edward Dutton, The Genius Famine: Why We Need Geniuses, Why They're Dying Out, Why We Must Rescue Them

“The proper social role of the highly able Endogenous personality is not as leader. Indeed, the Endogenous personality should be excluded from leadership as he will tend to lack the desire to cooperate with or care for the feelings of others. His role should be as an intuitive/ inspired ‘adviser’ of rulers. Adviser-of-rulers is a term which should be taken to include various types of prophet, shaman, genius, wizard, hermit, and holy fool – the Socrates of the early Platonic dialogues is an historical example, as is Diogenes, the Cynic, of Sinope (c.412-323 BC), who lived in a barrel and is supposed to have snubbed Alexander the Great (without being punished), or even the Fool character in Shakespeare plays. These are extremes; but the description of Endogenous personality and of an ‘inner orientation’ also applies to most historical examples of creative genius. The Endogenous personality – therefore – does not (as most men) seek primarily for social, sexual or economic success; instead the Endogenous personality wants to live by his inner imperatives. The way it is supposed-to-work, the ‘deal’, the ‘social contract’; is that the Endogenous personality, by his non-social orientation, is working for the benefit of society as a whole; at the cost of his not competing in the usual status competitions within that society. His ‘reward’ is simply to be allowed, or – better – actively enabled, to have the minimal necessary sustenance, psychological support (principally being ‘left alone’ and not harassed or molested; but ideally sustained by his family, spouse, patron or the like) to be somehow providedwith the time and space and wherewithal to do his work and communicate the outcome. For the Endogenous personality, this is its own reward.”
― Edward Dutton, The Genius Famine: Why We Need Geniuses, Why They're Dying Out, Why We Must Rescue Them

“Therefore we currently have an incentive system in place to generate fake creativity: an incentive system in which there are un-creative people who dishonestly strive to be regarded as original because they want to appropriate the label of creative and usurp the title of ‘genius’. In sum, under modernity creativity has been reduced to novelty – and novelty can be simulated. It is trivially easy for clever and well-trained people to generate mere novelty, so there is an excess of it (we call it ‘fashion’). Therefore the discriminative test applied to novelties is whether they are approved by the social systems that allocate high status. When novelty is socially approved, then the person who generated it gets to be called creative – maybe even a creative genius. Thus: Novelty of outcome + Social Approval of that outcome = Fake creativity And fake creativity is an attribute bestowed upon an outcome or person; bestowed by the social systems for generating status – in other words the mass media (primarily), politics, civil administration, the legal system, education... in a nutshell the Leftist Establishment.”
― Edward Dutton, The Genius Famine: Why We Need Geniuses, Why They're Dying Out, Why We Must Rescue Them

“geniuses and make us aware of the work of geniuses; the question arises: How was it that such simple and unselfconscious societies could spontaneously recognize and respond to something as complex and unpredictable and unique as a genius – when our much more prosperous and complex society cannot? The reason is just that most human societies of the past, and certainly those societies where genius most thrived, were serious; they recognized that life is a serious business, that there is a reason for it all, a purpose to it all, and (in those societies where genius was most prevalent) that each person had a part to play – by contrast, at least in mainstream public discourse, modern Western society does not acknowledge any of this.”
― Edward Dutton, The Genius Famine: Why We Need Geniuses, Why They're Dying Out, Why We Must Rescue Them

“This would happen in any time period, but in an electronic age these processes are likely to occur much faster and have more profound effects. As trust levels continue to plummet, people stop trusting mainstream politicians and mainstream newspapers, a process we are already observing. They will begin to assume – as a matter of course – that these people and news sources are deceiving them and, as we have seen, on many key matters they will be correct. They will turn to alternative news sources and vote for alternative political figures. As jurist Cass Sunstein (2018) has explored, this will create an echo chamber effect whereby people will increasingly only be hearing the viewpoints which they already accept. This will help to further cement a divided, Balkanized, and untrusting society. Concomitantly, we will expect Finnish society – like all European societies – to become increasingly diverse in terms of worldview, as the ‘spiteful mutants’ spread their views which, through a virtue-signalling arms race to appear ever more caring, will become more and more extreme.”
― Edward Dutton, The Silent Rape Epidemic: How the Finns Were Groomed to Love Their Abusers

“A number of studies have shown that transsexuals score very high on measures of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (and other personality disorders).483 The violent and intense reaction of transmen to academics who objectively explore the causes of transsexuality can been argued to be a clear manifestation of “Narcissistic Rage.”
― Edward Dutton, Witches, Feminism, and the Fall of the West