Two Caveats to Evolutionary Theory

Posted by alex zeka on January 26, 2007, 03:58 PM | #

PF, Are you hinting that this might expalin Western out-group sympathy as a product of genetic drift, i.e. those populations most adapted in other ways happened to also have the genes for out-group sympathy, which was a neutral trait in the context of poor communications, etc? Because that’s the thought which occurred to me almost immediately upon reading your (incidentally, very fine) entry.

Welcome onboard, and be sure to tell us when your latent capacity to engage in frivolous activities becomes a reality.

Posted by PF on January 26, 2007, 04:57 PM | #

Alex,

Thanks for the warm reception. Actually I wasnt hinting at anything with the post. I hesitate to postulate a genetic cause for out-group sympathy among Whites because I feel history has not sufficiently demonstrated enough out-group sympathy to convince me it is more than memetic, and hence transitory. In 2007 we are drowning in forced out-group sympathy, but 100 or 150 years ago we were blatantly exclusionist in many ways(although not enough, IMO).

I mean, trying to put things in perspective, in the century that just passed we saw the rise of Hitler and Apartheid South Africa, and although both of these faltered, they faltered largely because of economic/military/moral/political pressure from a power (USA) which had itself practiced slavery for 100+ years, and where blacks remained second class citizens until the 1950s-60s. So as I see it there is ample evidence for Out-group antipathy and tribalist exclusionism in the histories of European peoples.

Posted by Desmond Jones on January 26, 2007, 10:35 PM | #

Outgroup sympathy was well developed in the Nordic people two centuries ago.

Madison Grant wrote:

In New England, however, whether through the decline of Calvinism or the growth of altruism, there appeared early in the last century a wave of sentimentalism, which at that time took up the cause of the negro, and in so doing apparently destroyed, to a large extent, pride and consciousness of race in the North. The agitation over slavery was inimical to the Nordic race, because it thrust aside all national opposition to the intrusion of hordes of immigrants of inferior racial value, and prevented the fixing of a definite American type, such as was clearly appearing in the middle of the century.

[...]

The prosperity that followed the war attracted hordes of newcomers who were welcomed by the native Americans to operate factories, build railroads, and fill up the waste spaces - “developing the country” it was called.

These new immigrants were no longer exclusively members of the Nordic race as were the earlier ones who came of their own impulse to improve their social conditions. The transportation lines advertised America as a land flowing with milk and honey, and the European governments took the opportunity to unload upon careless, wealthy, and hospitable America the sweepings of their jails and asylums. The result was that the new immigration, while it still included many strong elements from the north of Europe, contained a large and increasing number of the weak, the broken, and the mentally crippled of all races drawn from the lowest stratum of the Mediterranean basin and the Balkans, together with hordes of the wretched, submerged populations of the Polish Ghettos.

With a pathetic and fatuous belief in the efficacy of American institutions and environment to reverse or obliterate immemorial hereditary tendencies, these newcomers were welcomed and given a share in our land and prosperity. The American taxed himself to sanitate and educate these poor helots, and as soon as they could speak English, encouraged them to enter into the political life, first of municipalities, and then of the nation.

The result is showing plainly in the rapid decline in the birth rate of native Americans because the poorer classes of Colonial stock, where they still exist, will not bring children into the world to compete in the labor market with the Slovak, the Italian, the Syrian, and the Jew. The native American is too proud to mix socially with them, and is gradually withdrawing from the scene, abandoning to these aliens the land which he conquered and developed. The man of the old stock is being crowded out of many country districts by these foreigners, just as he is to-day being literally driven off the streets of New York City by the swarms of Polish Jews. These immigrants adopt the language of the native American; they wear his clothes; they steal his name; and they are beginning to take his women, but they seldom adopt his religion or understand his ideals, and while he is being elbowed out of his own home the American looks calmly abroad and urges on others the suicidal ethics which are exterminating his own race.

Apartheid in South Africa was an elite strategy to curb altruism, and ensure cheap labour and a buffer against a black/white insurgency.  It had been used in the early days of colonisation in the US South and the Carribean. It’s design was to curb miscegenation and ally the white yeoman class to the elites against a portending insurgency, which threatened white elites in Haiti, Jamaica, Barbados and the Old South.

Posted by Andrew on January 27, 2007, 05:28 PM | #

I suppose it is a simpletons point; that the tribalist exclusionism in the histories of European peoples; became a victim of Neo Liberalism and the Cosmopolitan Lobotomization prossess.
People deliberatally submitted and had their Brains and its prossess removed; in favor of the feel good freak show of Altruisms materialism’s.

I suppose it will equate to their demise eventually , but making sure I;m not on that ship when it sinks is a nother tacticaal near impossibility we need to find answers for . And soon.

Or we will be back to square one on the evolutionary scale once more and overwhelmed by it.

Posted by Angela on January 27, 2007, 06:09 PM | #

Mr Desmond Jones,

Can you give a more detailed reference for the Grant quote?

Regards