iSteve commenter Harry Baldwin writes:

The following passage in Laurence Lampert’s Nietzsche’s Task: An Interpretation of Beyond Good and Evil:

[T]o assume the value of truth for human beings is to assume that there is consonance or harmony between truth and our natures, that truth is what we are naturally fitted for. By opening mythically the heroic danger or pursuing the question of the value of truth, Nietzsche intimates that, on the contrary, truth is deadly. And if it is deadly, if truth puts everything at risk, then the old belief of Platonism that truth is what we are naturally fitted for required that the real truth be falsified, lied about. The “truths” of the old philosophy were edifying myths, beginning with the myth that truth is edifying. Our most indispensable lie is our belief in the goodness of truth. The risk in questioning the value of truth lies in the likelihood that it will destroy the falsifications that have sustained human life and force humanity to face truth’s deadliness. That truth is deadly is the deadliest truth.

In suggesting that the races are not absolutely equal in every way, [James] Watson is challenging the edifying myth that is the foundation of modern Western societies. An important question is, to what extent can a society commit to an edifying myth (Plato’s “noble lie”) and still survive? We in the West are going to find out. The lie of absolute equality is more at odds with reality than the noble lies at the foundation of Communism. Once those lost their power, people could just muddle on. But how does a multicultural society dispose of the myth of absolute racial equality? Where do we go from here?

Personally, I don’t see things as apocalyptically as many do. If the world really does turn out to be as it appears to be, how different would that be? The NFL and the Olympics trundle on despite sizable racial inequalities, so why not everything else?

But, admittedly, my sanguine view seems to be a minority one.

[Comment at Unz.com]