What happens when people are afraid to share knowledge? I hope this doesn’t surprise you, but it leads to the omission and eventual destruction of that knowledge. Some of the most reliable ways of knowing about the world, anecdote and stereotypes, are entirely anathema as evidence per se; not to say they are perfect ways of knowing, but they are better than nothing and, assuming the freedom to share observations from lived experience, those anecdotes and stereotypes tend to converge on something approximating useful information. But, in a world where acknowledging certain lived experiences would widely and immediately discredit the dogmas of Progress, the person who happens to notice things instead must feel guilty for his knowledge.

Only a fool would, of course, extrapolate from his own experience in order to make conclusions about an entire group. After all, one is generally unable to meet all the members of a specific group, save for those groups which are exceedingly small. However, given an experience one mentions to others, and many others confirm with similar observations of their own relating to that group, this generates the stereotype. By necessity, the collection of anecdotes, assuming they are allowed to be collected, thus tends to converge on a statistically significant fact of the world. There is always the possibility that some selection or bias is undetected, which is the reason for the superiority of group studies adhering to a specific and explicable methodology, but sans any such study the best means of knowing is stereotyping.

“Stereotyping,” being a nasty, bad thing, is generally poorly understood, and thus leads to confusion about when it is or should be used. Progressives quite naturally insist that only those truck driving, cigarette smoking, cheap beer drinking rednecks stereotype, and they only stereotype out of ignorance. This is to void the point, as stereotyping is committed out of ignorance, albeit an ignorance applied to former experience so as to generate behaviors which will be safer. The stereotype is best utilized in those cases where the cost of knowledge is more costly than remaining ignorant. To put it concretely, there is always the possibility that the man with swastika tattoos all over his face is a genuinely charming, insightful man with many interesting things to say, but we’re not going to risk him harming us to find out. Is it stereotyping? Yes. Is it wrong? Well, it depends on whether you believe one is obliged to place themselves in harm’s way in order to prove that some members of a group don’t fit neatly into the stereotype. Then again, anyone but a fool already understands that stereotyping doesn’t imply all members of a group are like that in the first place.

Instead, the general prohibition of sharing information which confirms undesirable stereotypes [no matter how true, or not, those stereotypes are; don’t even subject it to study and bash anyone who dares to bring up statistical data which agrees with the stereotypes], which we intuitively know to not share because we recognize that it fits into one of those negative stereotypes, leads to the proliferation of less useful stereotypes. Were I to recount my experiences with poor customer interactions [I’ve worked a few customer service jobs] but only ever mention race in the case that individual were white, this would to someone otherwise truly ignorant, leave the impression that white customers tend to be more problematic than others. This is completely opposite what is the case; my experience from all the customer service jobs I ever worked converges on one salient fact: blacks tend to be the worst customers to have. This fact is so salient in the experience of those working low wage customer service jobs that even blacks in those jobs admit this. It only seems to be upper- and middle-class whites without any experience in low wage customer service positions who seem to believe it is racist to acknowledge this mere observation. And why? They intuitively recognize that this is how stereotypes are generated, through the sharing of factual observations. As such, doing anything which might generate undesirable stereotypes [specifically and almost always of those groups of people that individual is never forced to encounter] is claimed to be racist. Those who depend more crucially on accurate stereotypes for their subsistence [figuring out which customers are likely to give better tips is necessary to making a living wage if you depend on those tips] are simply forced to shoulder the cost of being “racist” in order to make more money, and the upper-class anti-racist in turn congratulates himself on his fundamental ignorance of the experience of others.

This lack of honesty is the doublethink that allows any anti-racist to think himself superior than another for not being forced to notice undesirable features of the world. To put it bluntly, these people actually think they are superior for failing to identify with the Other. They congratulate themselves on their ignorance, which they call enlightenment, all while shitting on those he considers his inferiors. Not that he would use that language, but the behavior is identical.

A system which doesn’t reward honesty and instead rewards dishonesty cannot maintain stability. At some point, the prohibition of knowledge leads to catastrophic failure. Pretending you don’t hear that clunking noise coming from the engine might work for a while, in terms of alleviating your stress, but eventually that problem will come to collect at an inconvenient time. The inability of people to share knowledge they have with others is a fundamental breakdown of the social order. Knowledge may inform people’s behavior, and that behavior may be less than optimal for those groups most subject to negative stereotypes, but then again if a group of people are thought only able to get ahead provided people are simply ignorant of their qualities seems rather the opposite of enlightenment.

Insisting on ignorance above knowledge is not dishonest in the sense that it requires telling propositions which are demonstrably false, yet it remains dishonest in the sense that it simply prohibits the collating of facts which might demonstrate certain hypotheses false. Were a scientist caught simply omitting whatever data he knew falsified his hypothesis, he would be called a fraud; but when a Progressive insists on omission, he deserves praise.