I respect Murray for his work but here he’s talking out of his butt. It’s an age-old fantasy of intellectuals that “simple folks” are more virtuous than the not-so-simple and have access to some sort of innate wisdom. In the 19th century, Russian revolutionaries called themselves “narodniki” (or “peoplists”) and would join “the people” in miserable villages to find true values and a revolutionary spirit. Needless to say, they found nothing but bovine resignation amidst outrageously disgusting daily habits and deeply perverted sexual mores. Narodniki themselves were beacons of clean living amongst these brutes.
Solzhenitsyn mocked the intelligentsia’s quest for virtue among the IQ-deprived in his novel The First Circle. The ultra-intellectual protagonist finally manages to join “simple folks” and, to his horror, discovers that the congenitally stupid are just as nasty, pathetic and vicious as the brilliant. The only difference is that they are more easily scared and more subservient.
There is no”indigenous way of learning.” There’s no alternative math and no easy, “natural” virtue. Murray is moved by the same feeling of guilt that animates Leftists to come up with “sacred indigenous wisdom.”
Intelligence doesn’t make you a good person. Neither does stupidity. But guilt will turn you into a liar, and that’s not a virtue.