Ian Jobling has posted an unfriendly reply to my blog article. It can only be described arrogant, hostile, and condescending — the sort of thing one expects from children who don’t play well with others. The arrogance is especially surprising given that, unlike his adversaries, he has not published even one article related to evolutionary psychology or the theory of kinship in a refereed scientific journal. But worse, it is massively confused on the theory and willfully ignorant of the data.
Here I reiterate and elaborate the main idea: Relationships of friendship and marriage are fundamentally not about altruism but about reciprocity and self-interest. Altruism is a no-go in evolutionary thinking generally because it implies unreciprocated giving. Kin selection is not about altruism because helping relatives at cost is compensated when relatives succeed. So, except in extreme situations like martyrdom or coercion (see below), no one is really talking about altruism.
Jobling’s original article is all about the limits of altruism — that there is a drop off after cousins, and beyond that natural selection could not operate to produce a module for kin altruism. All of his examples — from suicide bombing to giving food — involve giving some resource to kin or others, and then showing that beyond cousins unreciprocated giving can’t evolve.
But that is precisely where I start out —indeed he quotes me as follows: “Because the similarity-detecting mechanisms implied by [Rushton’s genetic similarity theory] assess low levels of genetic relatedness, they would not be expected to produce detectable levels of providing unreciprocated resources to others (altruism).” Exactly. I simply don’t understand how Jobling could disagree with me on this based on his original article. Quite simply, that’s exactly what his article labors to show — without the courtesy of citing me.
We agree on this, but then we draw different conclusions. He decides to completely jettison the evolutionary guts of GST — the data showing that people assort on the basis of genetic similarity and do so for evolutionarily significant reasons. And — most importantly — that preference for genetic similarity in others is heritable. The finding that there is genetic variation for similarity preference is highly compatible with the proposal that GS mechanisms are an adaptation. Many adaptations show genetic variation, as I have argued in the personality literature (see here and here).
Instead, Jobling proposes a non-evolutionary theory of similarity seeking — Consensual Validation Theory — that your basic anti-evolutionary psychologist (and there are many of them) would love. With evolutionary theorists like Jobling, who needs Boas or Stephen Jay Gould? Minimally, one would have to unpack CVT to propose how this fits with an evolutionary perspective. What are the adaptations? How are they triggered, etc.? How do they relate to fitness in ancestral and contemporary environments?
Fundamentally, Jobling has to show that the heritability data underpinning GST are incorrect — that is, that the degree of preference for genetic similarity is not in fact influenced by genetic variation. (Unlike Jobling’s writing, Rushton published his data in Psychological Science, a top-level mainstream journal in psychology.) Given this growing body of data, it demands a theory of how it fits with evolutionary thinking. I reject the idea that it implies altruism.
Here’s a really simple way to state my argument: Attraction to genetically similar others is no different from any other kind of attraction — e.g., sexual desire, romantic love, or beauty. No one would argue that these attractions imply altruism, and each of them has an obvious evolutionary interpretation and much supporting data that they are indeed adaptations. But when it comes to genetic similarity, the conventional thinking — which is reflected in Jobling’s original article — has always seen genetic similarity as a watered down version of kin selection and then started looking for altruism.
I began from a different perspective — seeing it as a form of attraction to people that must compete with a variety of other attractions in influencing behavior. This view is not bogged down with specious arguments about altruism that Jobling falls into. Jobling writes:
MacDonald’s logic here is plainly invalid: after all, if kin selection can work at the level of the ethny, why shouldn’t it lead to adaptations for altruism among co-ethnics as well as kin? At low levels of relatedness, altruism should be attenuated, but not absent.
First of all, nothing has to evolve — as Jobling notes in his original article. But my reinterpretation was to accept the idea that the genetic relationship is so attenuated that it becomes difficult to image how evolution would be able to engineer genetic benefits when the recipients of unreciprocated benefits are so distantly related. If I make friends with another White person, say, who is slightly more correlated with me genetically than the White average, the amount of altruism toward this person warranted by our genetic overlap would be vanishingly small and it’s difficult to see how natural selection would be able to calibrate this. As Fisher and Hamilton famoulsy wrote, it would make genetic sense to give up having one of my own children in order to help my brother have two. But how much should I give up to a friend who is only slightly more genetically similar to me than the average White person? Maybe buy him a drink? Or decide not to have one of my own children but help him have 18 more children than he would have otherwise? (Hard to do in a monogamous culture.) Or would 33 be more appropriate? 39?
There is no way that an adaptation would be able to calculate the degree of self-sacrifice warranted by this relationship. And in fact, when you look at these relationships, you see reciprocity. What is the evidence that altruism is involved?
I am arguing that although natural selection would be unlikely to be able to finely calibrate levels of unreciprocated helping appropriate for each relationship in my life, it would be able to select for self-interest in situations where there is a choice among alternatives, keeping in mind that other interests besides genetic relatedness (especially the resource value of alternatives) are involved. That is, if all else is equal (and it often is not), people should make alliances with people who are more genetically similar to themselves and they will do so because of a psychological mechanism that makes genetically similar others more attractive than average.
So imagine a choice where a woman can marry a genetically similar person or a very wealthy person from another ethnic group. (Elin Woods and Nicole Brown Simpson come to mind.) From a gene’s eye point of view, genetic similarity is one resource among several. The genes may be better off marrying the person from a different ethnic group, and at the proximal level different psychological attractions pull us in different directions. But there is no giving up of anything — no altruism. It’s completely a matter of perceived self-interest. (Elin Woods and Nicole Brown Simpson may well have behaved maladaptively, but no one can foresee the future.) In the same way, someone might weigh the benefits of allying with one’s ethnic group versus a bribe to act against the interests of one’s ethnic group.
Actually, we see a lot of this among White elites these days: Pretty much all of our White, non-Jewish media personalities and political leaders are massively rewarded for betraying their people. From a rational point of view, these people are behaving maladaptively because they are ignoring their ethnic genetic interests — Frank Salter’s argument (see below); the problem is that the emotional attachment to their people is too weak to prevent them from succumbing to the blandishments of fame and fortune.
Whereas calculating genetically appropriate levels of unreciprocated helping for a particular friendship would be next to impossible for natural selection to act on, natural selection could easily act by calibrating genetic similarity as a general attraction to similar others. In my view, this is what the data show. Rushton’s research shows that this attraction to others is heritable, meaning that partly for genetic reasons, some people are attracted to genetically similar others more than other people are. But even for people who are high on attraction to genetically similar others, within the relationship, self-interest and reciprocity are the rule — there is simply a higher cost of defection (see below). In general, people don’t go around being massively altruistic toward their ethnic group — even Jews give less than 2% of their money to charity and even less to ethnic charities. (Their giving would increase if the Jewish community was under threat — as predicted by Social Identity Theory.) But it does make people feel more comfortable with genetically similar others and trust them more (hence Bernie Madoff).
Relationships based on genetic similarity create a cost for defection — just as a relationship based on sexual attraction creates a cost of defection. Someone who is in a relationship with a sexually attractive person may want to defect — for example, if the person is self-centered or a drug addict. But the cost is the loss of a sexually satisfying relationship. Again, where’s the altruism?
In short, my approach aims to avoid throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I want to retain a powerful and important set of data and show how taking account of genetic similarity in others could evolve and be an important psychological component of human behavior.
Jobling’s rejoinder seems to grasp that I reject altruism, but he claims that “When one unpacks MacDonald’s arguments, one finds that altruism is implicit in his theory of ethnicity.” Rather than tell us exactly why this is so — difficult to do, since I explicitly reject altruism — Jobling instead states, “MacDonald is saying that, because of the genetic interest they have in each other’s well-being, co-ethnics go on cooperating even when it is in their self-interest to defect. That is, an individual will forego a benefit to himself in order to grant one to his co-ethnic cooperative partner. This is altruism.”
But that’s ridiculous. That is not at all what I am saying. I am saying that if it is one’s interest to defect (see examples above), then defect. We see it all the time. Genetic similarity is not the only game in town — it’s not the only evolved interest mediated by a psychological attraction that people have.
Actually, it’s sad that it’s not the only game in town. White people would not be in such dire straits if it were a stronger force. Our greatest difficulty right now is that all the rewards for attaining high social status, fame, and fortune for Whites lie with those who turn their backs on their people — a point I elaborate in this article.
Jobling continues:
Also, MacDonald thinks that people prefer to cooperate with co-ethnics rather than allo-ethnics because the former are more inclined to trust each other more than the latter are.
This is correct and based on a great deal of data (e.g., De Bruine’s research discussed in my academic article). This would bias one in favor of hiring a co-ethnic all things being equal. But if the job candidate is completely incompetent (hiring an English major to a computer programmer job) so that the firm would be impacted negatively, this is a bad move. Again, I don’t think that natural selection could calibrate how much loss in performance the Black CEO in Jobling’s example should be willing to incur by hiring a Black person over a more competent White person. (In in this particular case, social identity mechanisms may also be involved — the CEO may see a White person in ingroup-outgroup terms which would bias the decision even more in the direction of ethnic preference.) But I do think that all things being equal in terms of talent, he should prefer the Black person. Then if the prosperity for the company leads to biological success in its employees, the Black CEO would benefit genetically more by hiring the co-ethnic.
Perhaps this is why the most flagrant racial favoritism is typically seen in departments that have little impact on the performance of the company — human resources versus research and development. Companies accept a certain amount load because they are being watched like hawks by the affirmative action industry and shakedown artists like Jesse Jackson.
Jobling writes:
Moreover, many other passages in the article are comprehensible only on the assumption that ethnic altruism exists. For example, in defining ethnocentrism, MacDonald quotes a passage from William Graham Sumner that implies the existence of ethnic altruism.
Right. But notice that that passage where I quote Sumner is in my section on social identity theory — not GST. Jobling is oblivious to the whole point of my article — that we need to posit several different psychological mechanisms related to ethnicity and ethnic conflict. I clearly don’t think that GST provides a psychological basis for the phenomenon of ingroup-outgroup conflict or for martyrdom, but I do argue that social identity theory does provide such a theory. (My original argument is presented in Chapter 1 of Separation and Its Discontents where it forms the basis of my theory of anti-Semitism; a more recent (2008) review of the literature on psychological mechanisms of ethnocentrism was published in a top mainstream journal in psychology, Psychological Review. That article also mentions recent research showing racial imprinting — infants preferring their own race, typically as a result of exposure to parents and other family members. This, of course, has led to anxiety among the righteous about racist babies. It is possible that the preferences found in genetic similarity research are mediated by this imprinting process. I can imagine a future where all Whites would be required to expose their babies to non-Whites during this formative period. Orwell would love it.)
Social identity theory fills an obvious gap — one alluded to by Jobling in his original article: Most ethnic conflict is among closely related groups. (Think Israelis and Palestinians.) In my original article I challenged Jobling to state how my argument for an evolutionary basis of social identity mechanisms is incorrect, but he has not responded. He acknowledges he was incorrect in criticizing my comments on martyrdom. But that means he acknowledges that I am correct that there are psychological mechanisms that could lead to martyrdom and intense identification with an ingroup.
Jobling:
Later, MacDonald writes, “Even if all humans were equally opportunistic and fickle in their group affiliations, so that group interest was always contingent on individual self-interest, groups as vehicles of selection would still be required in order to understand the behavior of coordinated groups.”8 Here MacDonald implies that sometimes people may not be motivated by self-interest, and it seems to me that altruism is the only alternative.
This does not follow at all. My view is that explicit processing mechanisms are critical for understanding how humans are able to form effective groups. (My most recent article on this is in the journal Evolutionary Psychology.) Jobling is simply showing that he is unfamiliar with the literature on cultural group selection. Briefly, because of explicit processing, humans are able to form cohesive groups where, for example, self-sacrificing behavior is coerced via social controls or made psychologically attractive by compelling ideologies. Think of a military unit or a group evolutionary strategy (GES). And in the case of a GES, social controls can provide a selective environment ensuring that people who are most committed to group goals and most embody the group’s cultural ideals (e.g., scholarship and religious fanaticism (hyper-ethnocentrism) among traditional Jewish groups) prosper by leaving more progeny. And that is evolution.
Jobling:
In another passage, MacDonald writes, “For individuals highly predisposed to collectivism, ingroup norms and the duty to cooperate and subordinate individual goals to group goals are paramount.”9 Subordinating individual goals to the goals of the ethnic group would seem an act of ethnic altruism. MacDonald does nothing to reconcile this sentence with his earlier assertion that ethnic altruism does not exist, despite the apparent contradiction. The same is true of the other passages in which ethnic altruism is implied.
False. This is the argument for martyrdom. Since Jobling accepts that argument (see our comments on my original article), I don’t see the problem. Again, my argument is that individualism/collectivism is an individual differences dimension of social identity processes and that people extreme on collectivism do not have an algorithm that balances the costs of group membership with the benefits of leaving the group. One of my ideas about Jewish society is that the most extreme members of the group — the ones like those in medieval Germany who killed their families rather than convert — are the vanguard. These are the Jews who populate the West Bank settler movement and the forces of the racialist right both in Israel and the US.
Jobling:
MacDonald’s confusion is evident in his blog post as well. If MacDonald does not believe in the existence of ethnic altruism, then he must disagree with Frank Salter’s theory of ethnicity, to which the concept of ethnic altruism is central. Salter plainly believes that natural selection has led to the evolution of instincts for ethnic altruism.
Salter is very clear that rational choice mechanisms are required in order to calculate ethnic genetic interests. Read his book — or my review:
A basic theme of the book is that humans cannot rely on their suite of evolved modules to achieve or even perceive their genetic interests in the modern world. Many individuals do not have the same psychological motivation for their ethnic interests that they have, say, for their family. Salter’s reasoning actually reinforces arguments that there are enormous barriers to the evolution of altruism within local groups, since, as noted above, random co‐ethnics have zero ethnic kinship. Presumably this is because our evolved psychology was designed mainly for a world of small groups separated by tiny genetic differences.
To conclude: For all the political biases and other weaknesses of the academic system, it does give one a certain humility in the face of the daunting complexity of human behavior. Perhaps because he has not subjected himself to the peer review process, Jobling lacks this humility and the result is a demeanor filled with arrogance, hostility, and contempt.
The good news is that Jobling is safely ensconced in his own website where no one need take him seriously — least of all anyone who thinks of himself as developing the groundwork for a scientifically based legitimacy for identifying with White people and their interests.
Facing the Future as a Minority
Was the Immigration Act of 1924 Illiberal?
It’s really sad that Elin choose to toss her genes into the lake–for money. As strange as it sounds, I blame her parents more than anyone, as they did not raise her to be racially aware.
An excellent rejoinder to Jobling, whom I believe (apparently like many others) is one of two things: A) a paid shill for the people who are doing their best to destroy European descended whites and Western Culture or B) another of the many whites who decided to cast their lot with a hostile group not only for the sake of financial gain (large or small) but also because they simply aren’t smart enough to be able to take a couple of steps back and look at the big picture. Many whites seem to take things at face value. If Mr. Jobling is not knowingly working for the enemy camp, then he is a prime example of a major weakness in the mental make-up of many whites. Face value has little value when dealing with certain people.
Jobling’s second to last sentence makes no sense:
“My criticism was that kin are the optimal vehicles of nepotism so instincts for nepotism towards co-ethnics could not have evolved.”
Obviously if an actor has a choice between favoring Close Kin versus favoring Ethnic Kin, he should choose to favor the close Kin.
However, what about the cases where the choice is whether you should favor Ethnic Kin or those that are, relatively speaking, Ethnic Aliens?
(Note that all below mentions of “Altruism” refer to Altruism on an individual level.)
In a War you have to choose between behaving Altruistically toward your Ethnic Kin versus behaving Altruistically to Ethnic Aliens. Which do you think would be the superior choice from the standpoint of maximizing Fitness?
If you were Joshua before the Battle of Jericho, wouldn’t it have been better for your genes if you had an instinct that caused you to side with your Ethnic Kin the Jews over the less related inhabitants of that walled City?
Now bear in mind that Wars that led to Genocide for the losers were the calling card of Human History until very recently.
Sometimes it even would make sense to sacrifice Close Kin for the sake of Ethnic Kin, if the scale adds up.
For example, Jephthah was an Israelite General who ended up sacrificing the reproductive life of his only daughter for the sake of giving his Ethnic Kin the Israelites a great victory over the Ammonites, who were racial rivals of the Israelites.
Here’s the thing, if Jephthah’s victory over Ammon led to just a hundred extra Jews being born in the next generation, the sacrifice of his daughter was well worth it from a Darwinian Perspective.
It would be unbelievable to me is EGI Maximizing Instincts did not evolve, even perhaps instincts that lead to suicidal behavior if certain triggers are set off.
Now perhaps they evolved to less of an extent in Europe, where low population density probably led to there being less intertribal warfare, and certainly less of it than you had in the Middle East.
The question of whether Nicole Brown Simpson and Elin Woods behaved maladaptively is an interesting one.
It seems to me that when a women marries outside her race she is depriving that race of an extremely valuable and limited resource: the opportunity to begat children upon a fertile female.
Every time a White Female allows herself to be impregnated by an African as opposed to a fellow White, that means there’s going to 50% of a Genotype less White DNA in the next Generation.
That’s a big deal.
Women like Nicole Brown Simpson and Elin Woods are basically prostitutes/casualties. I don’t think it matters much if they marry outside of their race. Neither of them seems to have/had any talent other than being sexually desirable for 15-20 years of their lives. And the money made by white males off the services of men like Tiger and OJ must cancel out any possible genetic loss.
The discussion between MacDonald and Jobling is way over my head and I can grasp only parts of it. But I would like to ask a question.
Doesn’t Jewish evolution and strategy have a fatal flaw and that is that Jews depend upon non Jews in order to live and prosper and to accomplish their goals. The new vanguard may live on the West Bank and be bombing the Gaza but they wouldn’t be there without Anglo Saxon Christian technology, money and blood, that’s for sure.
Jews follow Anglo Saxons where ever we go and they become parasites and cancers upon our nations. Isn’t this their history in Europe and now America. They don’t immigrate to places such as Asia or Africa or even Israel.
Using the knowledge of their strategies and knowing our history how can we formulate a strategy to get rid of them. We know that we can continue to prosper but without us they will wilt on the vine and become a footnote.
So why not develop a theory for removing Jews from Western societies based upon what Kevin MacDonald has taught us about evolutionary strategies. Is such a thing possible, that we could exploit their fatal weakness.
For instance, if we conditioned the existence of Israel upon whether or not the majority of the world’s Jews lived there, would they choose Israel or their personal interests. According to MacDonald’s teaching as I understand it they would stick with the tribe.
In the worst case, even if we failed to get rid of them, we might get rid of Israel and allow the Palestinians the right of return. This would put Jews into a more uncertain condition and force them to become a little more altruistic. Maybe they would even let us say Merry Christmas.
“Doesn’t Jewish evolution and strategy have a fatal flaw and that is that Jews depend upon non Jews in order to live and prosper and to accomplish their goals.”
Questions mark! Use a %$@%@#$%@ question mark!
This would be a good topic for an article at TOO, how the English language has become Judaicized and how the Jew’s very annoying habit of phrasing everything in a question has changed the English language.
“Isn’t this their history in Europe and now America.”
You’re doing it again! But your point is well taken: the Jew are the white man’s psycho ex-girlfriend. We knock down their temple, they follow us back to Rome. Rome falls, they follow us through the empire. The white man f*cks off to North America, the Jew is all “Oh hai guize, can I come too?”. Get lost! Stalkers!
Sixty years after independence Israel is still a beggardly third world country heavily dependent on foreign aid. Some supremacy!
Flapdoodle, the remarks about Israel being a third world country are similar to what some other posters mentioned in another thread. In short they said that Jews are incapable of successfully running a government or civilization. I guess you could say that they can only run them into the ground. This ties in with Dr. MacDonald’s work in that I believe one major reason Jews have this problem is that in being “parasitic” most of them will not use their own people or society as the object to be taken advantage of. They need outsiders to be the “marks”. And they are very hostile indeed to the outsiders, especially those of white European descent. People want to bring up Bernie Madoff to show that Jews will “prey” on other Jews, but he is an outlier and it’s actually been shown that the structure of Madoff’s scam didn’t really hurt Jews per se, he set it up where maybe some didn’t profit, but the people actually losing their shirts were whites and some Asians.
All of this brings up something I’ve believed for a while and I’m sure others have mentioned it here, so I apologize if I’m repeating anything. I think that jealousy plays a large role in the hostility and hatred Jews have toward white Westerners. They realize they must parasitize Western societies to do well. Again, look at Israel. It is a complete mess, poorly organized on too many levels to list. When the Jews are in charge anywhere else, sooner or later the town, city, state, country becomes a mess. Their incredible nepotism and disgust for “outsiders” plays no small role in this. I think Jews chose to follow whites simply because whites have been the most successful and the Jews look the most like us. They’d have a tougher time blending in in someplace like Malaysia for example. That might be over simplifying it, but you get my drift.
This jealousy also extends to achievement in many areas. One reason we (are literally forced to) hear so much about Jewish success in many fields is that (I believe) they are playing catch-up in a sense. I also feel that they exaggerate their accomplishments in some areas and are deliberately manipulating things not only to inhibit white children in school (stop future innovators) but have also engaged in a lot of intellectual theft, stolen credit for ideas etc that gets covered up in the media. I personally know of one case (which was mentioned by someone else in a comment on Amren which was later removed) wherein some Jewish researchers at UCLA (my alma mater) flat out stole the work of another prominent researcher (non-Jewish) and were flagrantly bowing and enjoying the credit and adulation for something they simply did not do (did not discover). The truth came out but the story was buried by the media, and we know who runs the media. As the person posting at Amren put it, the Jews still took credit and many cases seemed to enjoy the chutzpah of the thieves. Talk to some researchers in certain fields today, and they’ll first take a look over each shoulder and then whisper to you how hard it is to get grants etc if you’re a white male, most of the money is going to Jews and non-whites (Asians for the most part). Not only have the Jews worked hard to cripple the educational system but they work hard to freeze out whites who managed to get through the maze of pitfall laid out for them by ethnocentric Zionist fanatics. Another problem is the government allowing grant money but “attaching” Jews to a project, one can see the possibilities here, or Jews controlling the purse strings stating the money will come through if they are given credit as one of the authors in a paper etc. Sure, people other than Jews pull this, but according to friends of mine in a couple of areas of science I won’t list here, it’s rampant among these people. It’s starting to make me think about the exaggerations in terms of credit given to Einstein, but that’s a whole editorial in itself. I also think Jewish IQ has been exaggerated, I’ve seen so many contradictory numbers. I even have an article from Richard Flynn himself stating it to be just under 108, while others quote Flynn as stating Jewish IQ as being about 110. I do know the Jews themselves kept pushing the number from 108 to 110 to 112 to 117 all the while decrying IQ tests as bunk. I suspect Jewish IQ to probably be around 108 per Flynn, with their structure being skewed toward the verbal with below average visuospatial skills, sort a reverse of East Asians. Although little work has been done in actually looking at the SD of Jews, I would suspect it’s narrower than that of European whites.
The gist of things here in this thread is that Jobling is not equipped to argue with MacDonald, Rushton or anyone else in this particular area. He doesn’t have the background, the depth. He should realize this and probably does. This makes his motives entirely suspect.
For people having a hard time grasping some of what MacDonald and others are saying, maybe TOO should put together some type of primer for the uninitiated. I should add that Jewish success in a lot of areas is due to their ethnic networking while making to sure to keep others out, to hinder or completely halt the success of others whenever they can. This is true whether we’re looking at Hollywood, competing in classical music competitions, certain areas of scientific research and more. I believe they have actually hindered and retarded our progress in many areas. Our future was stolen from us. I have little doubt that they have huge misgivings over the computer industry taking off without the tribe at the helm, although they are working feverishly to sidetrack many things in this area. Believe me, I have first hand experience in this.
Incidentally, if one wants to see Jewish chutzpah and ethnic cronyism at work together, simply look into the creation of Facebook. To put it simply, the idea / style / code was stolen from some college kids by a Jewish fella (Mark Zuckerberg). Period. There is no doubt. I do have doubts about the originators getting their credit and money through the court system, which has been completely Judaized. Facebook is interesting as it received mentioned in the news, in the scripts of TV shows and films before it became big. This was because it was “owned” by a Jewish guy and the tribe was helping out one of its own. They worked together to help it succeed. But if you have the time, look up the story. The press does its job to cover for Zuckerberg, making remarks along the lines of the original site (ConnectU) being nothing, while Facebook is ” … a billion dollar buyout target.” Of course it is. The Jewish media kept pushing and pushing to make it a “name”. And they buried Zuckerberg’s malfeasance. He is literally persona non grata in Silicon Valley to many, despite his newfound wealth. How many other areas have these people done this type of thing? Again, other people besides Jews engage in this type of dishonest behavior, but not at such “high a percentage” for the portion of the population. It’s similar to the scores of Jews caught spying for Israel, but most get off (“No Fault Espionage”: http://tinyurl.com/yan4of5) All of this in the end goes back to much of what Jobling denies is real. I should mention I agree with those who believe the Jewish population in the US and worldwide is larger than what the Jews claim.
No doubt Kevin MacDonald knows of some intrigue when it comes to research, but it’s doubtful he could list such stories here right now. But he can correct frauds like Jobling who in the end are out to do great harm, whether they realize it or not. My bet is that most of them do realize it.
I apologize for going all over the place in this post, but our people’s position, what is being done to us, gets me worked up. I hope that more whites are feeling this way.
This post was helpful, I had to read it several times to get an idea what the issue was. I need to take the time to re-read the articles you have linked to above.
I think Jobling has misunderstood what you were saying, however I suspect a lot of others (including those who consider themselves supporters) have a similar misunderstanding.
Regarding Someday’s comment: I hope my article clears some things up. I added a sentence noting that Whites who sell out their people are behaving maladaptively–citing Salter’s argument. I confess that Jobling’s tone in his comment on my original article really angered me. Kevin M
In my life I have only studied a popular book on practical everyday psychology.
I remember certain principles which suggest to me that true altruism (i.e., “willingness to do things which benefit other people, even if it results in disadvantage for yourself”) is basically an illusion. Whenever we do things to benefit others, we secretly hope in some way or other to benefit ourselves as well.
The psychological principles involved included the following:
“The general rule concerning the effect and influence of Desire upon Will-activity is as follows: ‘You alway act in the direction which at that particular moment of consciousness seems to promise the greatest degree of emotional satisfaction and content, or which threatens the least degree of emotional dissatisfaction or discontent–the promise or threat being either direct or indirect, immediate or remote in time and place.’”
And further:
“In all cases you will find that your actions are based upon the rule that one always seeks that which will bring him pleasure, or get rid of pain, immediate or remote, for oneself or for others to whom he is bound by ties of sympathy or affection. This pleasure or pain may be on the planes of physical, mental, moral, or spiritual emotional feeling, respectively–the principle applies to all planes of emotional activity and manifestation.”
I read (most of) your post, IC. I’m a software developer, and it’s obvious to me that Jews aren’t very good at programming, or at least they are not overrepresented in what is a good paying albeit boring field.
In terms of startups, the Jewish high tech companies that have succeeded seem to have done so with a massive amount of free publicity and easy access to capital that their fellow Jews provide for them. We can definitely compete with, and defeat, Jews in software development, and I think the same might be said for engineering.
As for on topic commentary, the discussion is way too academic for a propeller head like me but if there are entryist philosemites attempting to infiltrate the pro-white movement, and it’s pretty obvious that is happening, I’m happy to see our man Kevin attacking it with both barrels. As we say around these parts: give ‘er!
Dear Dr. MacDonald,
I’m really surprised to hear you say that people have no instinct to sacrifice anything for the good of their co-ethnics. Instead, you argue that people will only support genetically similar others if there is nothing at stake.
I found this surprising because I thought that Salter did indeed argue that we are hardwired to make sacrifices for our ethnic groups just as we are for our family. I thought that the only difference was that the instinct was much stronger with our family.
Here are a couple of excerpts from Jared Taylor’s review of Salter’s book that seemed to argue that we are hardwired to make sacrifices for our ethny:
“[A]n act of charity or heroism by an Englishman that prevented 10,000 Danes from replacing 10,000 English would be adaptive even if the act cost the altruist his or her life and with it all prospects of raising a family (at least a family of less than 167 children), since this would save the equivalent of 167 of the altruist’s children. Preventing replacement by 10,000 Bantu would warrant a much larger sacrifice because the genetic benefit is about 65 times larger; random Englishmen are almost as related as parent and child compared to the relationship between Englishmen and Bantu.”
“The genetic distance between English and Bantus is so great that, on the face of it, competition between them would make within-group altruism among random English (or among random Bantu) almost as adaptive as parent-child altruism… Thus it would appear to be more adaptive for an Englishman to risk life or property resisting the immigration of two Bantu immigrants to England than his taking the same risk to rescue one of his own children from drowning …”
http://www.amren.com/ar/2005/01/index.html#cover
Mr. Walsh: The argument about whether it is adaptive to be self-sacrificing is separate from whether there is an an evolved module to make us self-sacrificing. That’s the point of the quote from my review of Salter at the end of my article. In other words, it is rational to be self-sacrificing for our ethnic group but we do not have a psychological adaptation that makes such self-sacrifice psychologically compelling. In fact, one might say that we White people would be much better off if there were such a module. My view is that we all have to take account of these arguments and become more self-sacrificing for our race than we find psychologically compelling. For example, I would readily give my life if I could thereby have averted the 1965 immigration law. But that’s a rational judgment. When it comes right down to it, it would be psychologically difficult for me to actually do that–which doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t do it, just that it would be hard. But our rational judgements should at least make us work harder for the cause of our race. Kevin M
But, Prof. MacDonald, surely there is a contradiction in what you say. If self-sacrifice is maladaptive, as you appear to argue in your article, it is maladaptive whatever its cause, whether that cause is emotional or rational. Consequently, any genes that cause self-sacrifice will be eliminated by natural selection. So if some racialists were motivated to sacrifice themselves for their race through rational choice mechanisms, the genes that caused that behavior would be eliminated. People would evolve to behave irrationally, that is, not to sacrifice themselves.
(God knows what the term “rational” even means here. In a biological sense, those behaviors are rational that are evolutionarily adaptive, but rational doesn’t seem to have that sense here.)
The point is that you can’t eat your cake and have it. Either self-sacrifice is adaptive or it is not. And if it is not, people who are not mentally ill will never sacrifice themselves for their race for any reason, rational or otherwise.
Again, the point of my article is that we did not evolve psychological mechanisms to make us self-sacrificing — that make us desire to be altruistic in the current climate. That doesn’t mean that it’s not rational to be self-sacrificing. And to expand on what I said previously, we should all reflect on the fact that very high levels of self-sacrifice are indeed warranted in the modern environment–much higher than we see from the vast majority of White people. Notice the sub-title of Salter’s book “Family, ethny, and humanity in an age of mass migration.” He’s writing about what is adaptive right now, and I agree with him. As I say in my review of Salter, “Salter’s reasoning actually reinforces arguments that there are enormous barriers to the evolution of altruism within local groups, since, as noted above, random co‐ethnics have zero ethnic kinship. Presumably this is because our evolved psychology was designed mainly for a world of small groups separated by tiny genetic differences.”
But, Prof. MacDonald, evolutionarily speaking, self-sacrifice is never the best strategy, and genes that cause people not to sacrifice themselves will inevitably beat out those that do. Imagine there is an ethnic group and Hero sacrifices his life to save it. This may be adaptive for Hero in that he saves the copies of his genes that are in other members of the ethnic group. However, the other members of the ethnic group benefit from Hero’s sacrifice just as much as he does, plus they get to remain alive. So their fitness will be increased even more than Hero’s is by his sacrifice. What this means is that genes that cause people not to sacrifice themselves will always win out over genes that do.
Genes for self-sacrifice definitely lose out within groups over a long period–that’s the basic argument against group selection. But Salter’s argument clearly shows that such behavior would be very adaptive because if, say, it stopped immigration, there would be a huge payoff for me. It is true that selfish White people would benefit more because they are not paying the cost. But it’s still adaptive to do it because I have a huge genetic interest in the success of other Whites. My fitness loss compared to other Whites from not having children would be trivial in comparison to the gain I would achieve by not having the US overrun with, say, Africans. If that were a real-world alternative, I would be an altruist in a heartbeat–even though my ancient brain would be quite upset with me.
Dr. MacDonald,
What you say is very depressing. Indeed, now I completely understand why we are in the situation that we are in today. It’s no longer a mystery why whites refuse to care about their racial dispossession. The biggest reason that they do nothing is because they have no natural instinct to be self-sacrificing for their ethnic group like they do for their family. And this is so despite the fact that it would be adaptive for them to be self-sacrificing given the very large genetic differences between many human populations. In fact, given these genetic differences it at first seems bizarre and illogical that people wouldn’t have an instinct to be self-sacrificing for their ethnic group. However, the quote from your review of Salter’s book makes sense of it. You write that “Salter’s reasoning actually reinforces arguments that there are enormous barriers to the evolution of altruism within local groups, since, as noted above, random co-ethnics have zero ethnic kinship. Presumably this is because our evolved psychology was designed mainly for a world of small groups separated by tiny genetic differences.”
Thanks for responding to my comment about this very important issue. I really appreciate it.
So you agree that self-sacrifice for the ethnic group would never be evolutionarily stable because selfish strategies always win over a long period. So do you agree that the evolution of instincts for self-sacrifice is impossible in theory? Because the way you put it in your review of Salter’s book quoted above, it sounds as though you think instincts for self-sacrifice could possibly evolve but failed to do so because of the circumstances of human evolution, because “our evolved psychology was designed mainly for a world of small groups separated by tiny genetic differences.”
If a strategy of behaving altruistically towards the ethnic group always gets outcompeted by selfish behavior, then the scheme that Salter lays out in On Genetic Interests is unworkable. Any genes causing altruism will inevitably be replaced in the long run by genes causing selfishness. And don’t tell me that the success of Salter’s strategy merely depends on suppressing free riders. As long as there any individual differences in fitness at all, the strategy that maximizes individual fitness most effectively, the selfish strategy, will win out.
As I see it, Salter’s scheme could work only in a state that suppressed all individual differences in fitness, that is, one that ensured that everyone had exactly the same number of children from here to eternity. Such a state would, in my view, be even more miserable than one that got overrun by Africans.
I don’t think we should be thinking about what is evolutionarily stable in the long run but rather think in terms of the foreseeable future–or at least the length of time it would require to become dominant. Each person in our ethnic group/race should be aware that high levels of self-sacrifice on behalf of group interests are warranted even if one was aware that in the long run selfishness would win out and we would have to start all over again–with some altruists doing their best to serve group interests. That is expressed at the level of the individuals. But certainly one way to ensure higher levels of self-sacrifice would be to erect an ethnostate that suppressed free riders–a group evolutionary strategy. I don’t see why it would be necessary to suppress all fitness differences. Traditional Judaism survived for centuries with significant suppression of free riders, quite a few examples of martyrdom (especially if you include the Jewish rebellions agains Rome in the ancient world) and continuing individual differences in fertility–with the wealthy and scholars outreproducing the others. Are you saying that Judaism is inherently unstable?
I’ve been having a back and forth with Jobling on ENT that I think is highly relevant to this discussion:
http://whiteamerica.us/index.php/blog/blog/kevin_macdonald_is_confused_about_ethnic_altruism/#comments
” And don’t tell me that the success of Salter’s strategy merely depends on suppressing free riders…”
In other words, you are deciding a priori not to accept a possible “solution” to the “problem” you assert. Very interesting.
Is it that you too eagerly grasp onto “the scheme that Salter lays out in On Genetic Interests is unworkable”
Of course, the “scheme” laid put by Salter does not necessarily depend on “self-sacrifice” that is extremely fitness depressing, as he mentions “repeated small acts of ethnic nepotism” that incur little or no cost as one option.
Indeed, if a European-descended person, say, votes for a candidate who wishes to stop replacement migration, it is difficult to see how that’s a sort of “self-sacrifice” to is going to suppress fitness to the extent that we need to institute a regime that ensures no fitness differences to eternity (a complete absurdity).
Or, does the “Saxon” believe we ever so need immigrants to the extent that eschewing them constitutes a radical “self-sacrifice” on the part on ethnic/racial nationalists? In most cases, to create and maintain the regime “laid out by Salter” would not require “self-sacrifice” by most people.
And this discussion is sort of irrelevant. Is “self-sacrifice” being weeded out in human populations? People have been “sacrificing” themselves for people and nation since the dawn of human history, and still do so today. One would think if “self-sacrifice” is so horribly fitness depressing to erase “sacrificial alleles” (if such exist) from the population, we would have long ago erased such from all human populations that have ever warred or engaged in any other conflict.
Not so. Thus, acts of “self-sacrifice” – in the *rare* events they are required – preserve a given population that contains frequencies of the same “self-sacrificial” alleles exhibited by the altruist. Imagine such imaginary alleles are recessive. Only “recessives” exhibit “self-sacrificial” behavior, yet such behavior can boost the fitness of the mass of the population, including all the heterozygotes who carry the allele (increasing its general frequency).
Alternatively, “self-sacrifice” can be the result of a general co-inherited gene complex that is created in some fraction of individuals, and as along as the frequency of the individual alleles are maintained in the population (which can be assisted by “self-sacrifice” to help that population), the such extreme altruists will always pop up in each generation, despite being weeded out.
“Self-sacrifice” is theoretically and empirically evolutionarily stable. And, as said, rarely required.
Putting aside that Salter states in OGI that genetic competition between individuals – resulting in differential fitness – is important for evolutionary progress and is part and parcel of EGI, let us consider the question of the evolutionary stability of “self-sacrificial altruism.”
Hey! It is evolutionarily unstable to “self-sacrifice” for “close kin!” Your selfish cousin Fred will reap the benefits of your sacrifice, replacing his selfish genes for your sacrificial ones. Perhaps your children inherit the selfish genes from their other parent! Over the centuries, sacrifice for selfish relatives will weed out “altruism genes” from the population.
But, the “argument” goes – close kin are more likely to “share genes for altruism” compared to unrelated strangers (including co-ethnics). Great. But, masses of unrelated co-ethnics are more likely to share “genes for altruism” than masses of racial aliens from the other side of the Earth.
It is a matter of CHOICE – a point ignored by those with an agenda. The carrying capacity of a nation is going to be filled by “someone.” It cannot be filled by your “close kin,” regardless of how sexually active you are. It’s going to be filled by masses of ethnies, either those more related to you or those more distant.
Not only is it adaptive from a total distinctive genome standpoint to favor those more similar, but they are more likely to have frequencies of the same “self-sacrifice” genes as those more distant – or at least, are likely to have the same frequencies as those more distant, not less.
Given a choice to “sacrifice” to save the ethny, or to see the entire ethny – including by the way, your own posterity – eventually become displaced, one is hardpressed to see how it is “unstable” to preserve the ethny when the only other realistic choice is distant racial aliens. It is one or the other. You are not going to create 100,000,000 clones of your “close kin cousin Fred” to populate a nation…
I’d like Dr. MacDonald or a few others here who have a background in psychology to enlighten me – as I am unfamiliar with some of the concepts and ideas presented. While certain behaviors (well, just about all) have a genetic basis, including self sacrifice, they no doubt need to be reinforced by a/the culture itself in order to manifest themselves fully in a population in terms of actual engagement, meaning performed or acted upon. With Western Cultures, lets take the US for example, having its culture perverted, controlled in twisted fashion, wouldn’t certain natural behaviors be constrained?
This may appear simplistic but I think that a situation in which certain, natural genetically based behaviors are kept bottled up, not allowed to be expressed, cannot go on in perpetuity.
Replying to Curious but not George: There’s no question that culture has an influence. In present-day Western societies, even identifying as a White person with White interests is demonized, much less having a sense of duty and self-sacrifice to advance our racial/ethnic interests. This demonization implies that any White person who becomes a White advocate will pay a heavy psychological price. We naturally want to be appreciated and esteemed by others. But that is not going to happen if you explicitly advocate White interests, at least not in the mainstream media or, say, in universities (the site of my difficulties). That’s why creating a counterculture among Whites who identify as Whites is so important–White advocates can feel psychologically validated by others. We certainly have this on the internet now. Kevin M
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Mr. Sallis,
It appears that you actually disagree with Kevin MacDonald on this issue. You seem to clearly believe that we are hardwired to make sacrifices for our ethny just as we are for our family. I definitely think that you make a really great point when you say that “people have been “sacrificing” themselves for people and nation since the dawn of human history, and still do so today. One would think if “self-sacrifice” is so horribly fitness depressing to erase “sacrificial alleles” (if such exist) from the population, we would have long ago erased such from all human populations that have ever warred or engaged in any other conflict.” Also, I thought that you made a good point about how you could use the same logic that is used to argue against the evolutionary stability of self-sacrifice for the ethnic group to argue that self-sacrifice for close kin is evolutionarily unstable. And in addition to this you also make some technical arguments about how sacrificing for the ethnic group is in fact evolutionarily stable.
But what about these two arguments by Kevin MacDonald:
“Salter’s reasoning actually reinforces arguments that there are enormous barriers to the evolution of altruism within local groups, since, as noted above, random co-ethnics have zero ethnic kinship. Presumably this is because our evolved psychology was designed mainly for a world of small groups separated by tiny genetic differences.”
“But my reinterpretation was to accept the idea that the genetic relationship is so attenuated that it becomes difficult to image how evolution would be able to engineer genetic benefits when the recipients of unreciprocated benefits are so distantly related. If I make friends with another White person, say, who is slightly more correlated with me genetically than the White average, the amount of altruism toward this person warranted by our genetic overlap would be vanishingly small and it’s difficult to see how natural selection would be able to calibrate this. As Fisher and Hamilton famously wrote, it would make genetic sense to give up having one of my own children in order to help my brother have two. But how much should I give up to a friend who is only slightly more genetically similar to me than the average White person? Maybe buy him a drink? Or decide not to have one of my own children but help him have 18 more children than he would have otherwise? (Hard to do in a monogamous culture.) Or would 33 be more appropriate? 39?”
I don’t want to be interpreted as saying there are no psychological mechanisms that promote self-sacrifice to one’s ethnic group. Based on the psychological literature, my paper “An integrative perspective on ethnicity”
(http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/PLS2001-3-067.pdf) argues that being high on collectivism predisposes one to self-sacrifice for ingroups, especially under conditions of external threat where a sense of “shared fate” develops. In situations of perceived shared fate, the line between self-interest and group interests becomes blurred. Here’s one passage:
If there are important individual differences in psychological mechanisms related to developing a sense of shared
fate [this is based on the literature on individualism/collectivism), it would not be surprising to find that some individuals are extremely prone to a sense of shared fate, to the point that defecting from the group is not a psychologically available option. There are, in fact, examples of such people. Especially striking has been the phenomenon of individuals who readily undergo martyrdom or mass suicide rather than abandon the group. And as I noted in my previous ccomment on martyrdom on my original blog [http://theoccidentalobserver.net/tooblog/?p=158], “I am certainly not saying that Jews have a unique adaptation or that they evolved to martyr themselves. Being very high on collectivism obviously has its advantages in terms of group cohesion and commitment. And for the most part, Jews and other highly collectivist groups have not been put in a position where they have had to chose between defection and martyrdom, so the maladaptive behavior of martyrdom would not typically be selected against in the real world, or at least not often enough to really be strongly selected against.” Kevin M
Hypothetically speaking, if Jews were only able to live around other Jews, I think (and I think Prof. MacDonald has written something along these lines, though I can’t remember for sure) they’d split into multiple groups and use one another as outgroups. Israel is very divided, and there’s a power struggle going on between the secular and the Orthodox types, who don’t seem to like each other very much.
But that isn’t exactly exceptional (maybe in terms of degree). It’s human nature. Given a Euro ethnostate, we’d probably see something similar between Euro ethnies. That’s part of why I don’t consider myself a racial nationalist any more; culture and language are important too.
Women like Nicole Brown Simpson and Elin Woods are basically prostitutes/casualties. I don’t think it matters much if they marry outside of their race. Neither of them seems to have/had any talent other than being sexually desirable for 15-20 years of their lives. And the money made by white males off the services of men like Tiger and OJ must cancel out any possible genetic loss.
Let’s take actual reproductive success off the table for a moment, and substitute for it x, which represents a phantom reproductive success that these defectors’ instincts are working toward.
If Nichole and Elin were working toward x, consciously or not, might their behavior make sense? Let’s shift analogies for a moment. Imagine if you could’ve replaced all of Genghis Khan’s mates with white women. Say, for the purposes of argument we’re talking about 1000 women. Given Khan’s enormous reproductive success, wouldn’t this have been a good trade? It would constitute a significant “whitening” of the Mongoloid gene pool (and ruling class), relative to the investment anyway.
I’m not advocating miscegenation, just trying to proffer an explanation for certain instances involving elite outgroup males. And it’s worth pointing out that Nichole and Elin represent losses to their husbands’ EGI. Who really lost more in these pairings? Them or us? I submit they did. Would Nichole or Elin have done much with their lives, relative to the wealth they captured via miscegenation? (Obviously these are problematic examples because Nichole was murdered and Elin married someone with an EGI with the equivalent of multiple personality disorder)
“You seem to clearly believe that we are hardwired to make sacrifices for our ethny just as we are for our family.”
I “clearly” never said that. I *did* say that self-sacrificial behavior can be adaptive and evolutionarily stable, at least under various circumstances. Perhaps this self-sacrificial behavior is not any “hardwired” “altrusim gene” but rather the rational ability to disregard instinct and behave in an adaptive manner in a contextual situation. The ability to dispassionately analyze adaptive behavior is likely linked to “g” as well as other inherited psychometric traits – traits that would be enriched in co-ethnics and thus selected for (and not against) in certain instances of self-sacrificial behavior. It need not be “hardwired” in this sense.
Look, I can say that it is adaptive for Joe Shmoe to eat a low fat, low salt, low refined sugar diet, because Joe will live and longer, healthier life, which in turn will allow him to better provide resources to children, grandchildren etc, boosting inclusive fitness. But, is he “hardwired” to such a diet? Hardly. Instead, we are “hardwired” to crave fats, salt, and sugar. The ability to ignore “instinct” which was adaptive in the past but no longer is today is the sort of rational thought mechanisms to which I refer and which are likely just as heritable as any “altruism genes.”
“Salter’s reasoning actually reinforces arguments that there are enormous barriers to the evolution of altruism within local groups, since, as noted above, random co-ethnics have zero ethnic kinship.”
True. However, we are no longer living in homogenous nations are we? Compared to the non-ethnics among which we live, co-ethnics have considerable kinship. Even considering homegenous nations, competition between such nations (eg, war) introduces gradients of kinship which can justify “self-sacrificial” behavior. Again – I am not talking about the “evolution of altruism” here, which has been among the biggest strawman arguments on this issue. EGI looks forward, not backwards. What do we do now and in the future, not what ancient humans did thousands of years ago – that’s the key.
“Presumably this is because our evolved psychology was designed mainly for a world of small groups separated by tiny genetic differences.”
Genetic studies suggest accelerating human evolution, which coincides with contact between genetically distant ethnies. Did human evolution stop at the dawn of the Neolithic? No.
“But my reinterpretation was to accept the idea that the genetic relationship is so attenuated that it becomes difficult to image how evolution would be able to engineer genetic benefits when the recipients of unreciprocated benefits are so distantly related. If I make friends with another White person, say, who is slightly more correlated with me genetically than the White average…”
But more than “slightly correlated” when compared to an African, a Chinaman, or a Desi.
“And it’s worth pointing out that Nichole and Elin represent losses to their husbands’ EGI.”
You are confusing EGI with parental kinship.
The men do lose parental kinship. However, whether non-white EGI are bolstered by diminishing white numbers while non-whites thrive worldwide is another issue.
‘It would constitute a significant “whitening” of the Mongoloid gene pool (and ruling class), relative to the investment anyway.’
A good trade for who? Mongols have their own genetic interests to preserve, and, I don’t see how creating Eurasian mongrels advances white EGI.
Here is where I part company with Salter since he concentrates on gene frequencies/gene copies while I view genetic structure as also part of genetic interests – a view that in my opinion is bolstered by modern genetic science.
Good point Mr. Sallis,
From the standpoint of the Gene Patterns that make White people what they are on a genetic level, the actions of Elin Woods and Nicole Brown Simpson rendered them pure deadweight loss.
It isn’t just that we lost 0.5 White Children for each half-breed child they produced in lieu of a child with a White Father, it’s more that we lost 1.0 White Children.
Now perhaps it was eugenic for the white race considering that it is the opinion of some here that Elin and Nicole are/were entirely worthless as human beings.
But the eugenic benefit was probably very small considering that there’s almost certainly regression to the racial mean in one’s worth as a human being in the same way that there’s regression to the racial mean in height and other traits.
The only example of race mixing I would give approval to is the mixing between a Polish man and a Korean woman that led to the birth of Karen O, the lead singer for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
The race mixing that led to her probably caused two thing:
1. Karen O was born.
2. Some Polish guy got to impregnate up two Polish women.
Plus almost all Karen O’s fans are White, and her intoxicating music has probably inspired them to have more unprotected sex.
I mean, just try to watch the following performance, and especially the last part where Karen O does a weird little dance, without feeling an uncontrollable urge to go out and have unprotected sex:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsgRCRlf77U
I understand it would be even better if Karen O’s music made her white fans go out and get married, but sometimes you have to take what you can get.
“I mean, just try to watch the following performance, and especially the last part where Karen O does a weird little dance, without feeling an uncontrollable urge to go out and have unprotected sex..”
The benefits of blog comments threads are clearly evident.
On another note, I’d like to comment on the whole idea of “a gene for altruism/self-sacrifice (ASS, no pun intended) that is selected against by ethnic altruism.”
I doubt that any such “gene” actually exists, and much of this anti-Salterian hot air is therefore irrelevant. ASS is likely a highly complex behavior, with both genetic and environmental/cultural components. Similar to “g” it is also likely that the genetic component of ASS derives from many genes acting in concert – a co-adapted gene complex, for example. With a nod to Occam’s Razor, it is probable that the mental modules responsible for ethnic ASS is the same as that for close kin ASS (which is why nation states often use blood-and-soil kin metaphors to motivate populations in times of war). No doubt that rational thought mechanisms are employed to shift from kin ASS to ethnic ASS, particularly when the threat is more subtle than outright warfare. All these traits are highly unlikely to be encoded by one, or a few. genes.
If correct, we have a behavior, partly cultural, the genetic component of which is derived from many genes distributed at varying frequencies in populations, and which “piggybacks” on kin altruism modified by “g” and rational thought. It would be very difficult to select out these traits in populations by the types of actions that Salter proposes, particularly when co-ethnics are more likely to share with you the same co-adapted gene complexes (and culture) than other races.
Now, true enough, harkening back to some of Hamilton’s ideas of invigorating “barbarians” reintroducing altruism to exhausted cosmopolitan populations -if true – suggests that gene complexes encoding ASS can alter in frequency over time. However, this would be due to mechanisms other than Salterism; and, indeed, the best way then to avoid this is to avoid the “exhausted cosmopolitanism” characterizing modern post-Western “multicultural” societies. Helping co-ethnics that share your “ASS complexes” is a better strategy for preserving the genetic component for altruism than is the promotion of selfish individualism which would have the exact opposite effect.
Taking into consideration the need to build social structures that reward ethnic ASS is a project that activists need to consider as well. We can structure our own environments, to the extent we are able, to “select for” what we wish. Sentient animals do have this advantage of the non-sentient (some of which are featherless bipeds).
Therefore, ethnic ASS is not “hardwired” as is (possibly) kin ASS; however, in times of group stress, the mental modules of kin ASS can be (manipulated by others?) “used” to promote ethnic ASS. In highly ethnocentric groups, the link from kin to ethnic ASS would be easier.
Rational thought mechanisms that may have to counter hard-wired instincts come into play in promoting EGI in complex environments in which the threats are more subtle, and are being masked by state actors who wish to reconcile majorities to their own dispossession.
“With a nod to Occam’s Razor, it is probable that the mental modules responsible for ethnic ASS is the same as that for close kin ASS (which is why nation states often use blood-and-soil kin metaphors to motivate populations in times of war).”
That is a fascinating idea, and it makes a lot of sense to me.
Does this mean that someone with a high Kin-based Altruistic Self Sacrifice Propensity (or KASSP) would also tend to have a high Ethnic Kin-based Altruistic Self Sacrifice Propensity (or EKASSP)?
Because if it does, it suggests that High EKASSP Whites could do more good if they concentrated on bestowing their ASS on Whites that have high KASSP.
Also it suggest that a evolution toward higher EKASSP could be going on with White Americans (not that the effect couldn’t be overwhelmed by concurrent cultural changes) due to the fact that the “Red States” have higher White Birthrates that would presumably correlate both with higher KASSP and higher EKASSP.
And the beat goes on:
http://whiteamerica.us/index.php/blog/blog/kevin_macdonald_is_confused_about_ethnic_altruism/#23416
Actually it would be better to have it so:
Kin Based Altruistic Self-Sacrifice = KASSP
and
Ethnic Kin Based Self-Sacrifice = Ethnic KASSP.
The difference between KASSP and “Kin-based ASS” is that KASSP isn’t the behavior, but rather the biological (and possibly cultural) factors involving in making the behavior more likely to transpire in a particular individual.
EKASSP isn’t a very good acronym not that I think about it.
I can see that you are an expert at your field! I am launching a website soon, and your information will be very useful for me.. Thanks for all your help and wishing you all the success in your business.
Perhaps you should write on the subject more often
Keep up the good work!
Mr Sallis,
I was interested in your thoughts on this Article..
http://statsaholic.blogspot.com/2009/12/startling-new-research-shows-that.html
Given your comments on the importance of Gene Combinations in EGI, I’d especially be interested in your opinion on the last paragraph:
“One significant implication of this finding is that if an American Soldier faced off against an Iranian soldier in battle, on average it would actually be in the best genetic interests of White Americans if the Iranian was the one who emerged victorious and alive from the martial contest.”
Thank you.