’bout time, right? right.
the first thing — one of the most important things — to remember is that clannishness does NOT just apply to peoples who live in clans (or, like the arabs, lineage-based tribes). a population that is clannish, or exhibits traits of clannishness, does NOT have to be one arranged along clans/tribes. all — or maybe most (dunno) — societies that are arranged along clan/tribal lines are normally clannish — at least i think so — i can’t think of any that are not. but clannishness extends beyond that — some societies are clannish even though their members don’t spend their everyday lives surrounded by their fellow clan members.
so what is clannishness then? clannishness is (and i reserve the right to alter this definition) a set of behaviors and innate behavioral traits and predispositions which, when found in a population, result in the members of that population strongly favoring, in all areas of life, themselves, their family members — both near and extended, and even closely allied associates (esp. in clannish societies which are not arranged into clans), while at the same time strongly disfavoring those considered to be non-family and all unrelated, non-allied associates. (i know — it’s messy — it needs work. i agree. feel free to leave suggestions in the comments! thnx.)
the most important thing to remember here is: take the clannish individuals out of their native clannish environment — for instance, away from their extended families or clans — and they will still, on average, behave in clannish ways. why? because (i think) that what we’re looking at are innate traits — innate traits that are found to different degrees, on average, in different populations. and why should that be? evolution by natural selection, that’s why. to quote myself:
think of it like a two-stage rocket:
– FIRST you have either inbreeding or outbreeding (or any range in between those), and these mating patterns either focus or disperse “genes for altruism” … within extended family groups, which….
– THEN sets the stage for creating different selection pressures in that different social environments are created (egs. nuclear families, extended families, clans, larger tribes). it’s HERE in this second stage where the behaviors — either clannish or not (or any range in between those!) — are selected for (or can be selected for).
“either clannish or not (or any range in between those!).” in other words, clannishness should be viewed as a spectrum. to quote myself again:
clannishness should be viewed as a spectrum.
the pattern seems to be that, the longer and greater the inbreeding, the more clannish — and the opposite — the longer and greater the outbreeding, the less clannish.
if we take 1 as the least clannish and 10 as the most clannish, i would rate various groups as follows (these are today’s judgements — i reserve the right to alter these as i go forward and learn more about all of these populations!):
1 – the english (not all of them — probably not the cornish, for instance), some of the dutch
2 – the scandinavians
3 or 4 – the irish
6-7 – the italians, the greeks, the chinese
7-8 – the albanians
10 – the yanomamo
11 – the arabs
(see also jayman’s A Tentative Ranking of the Clannishness of the “Founding Fathers”)
since we’re talking (i think) about evolution and the selection for behaviors here, it should be obvious that populations can go from being more or less clannish — and also that populations can, and do, head down slightly different evolutionary pathways depending on their own, unique circumstances, and so probably all will be clannish (or non-clannish) in their own ways. there will be broad similarities, of course — but maybe mostly the patterns will be generally the same, just not very specifically.
_____
so what are these clannish behaviors/traits?
well, i’m not the only one who’s interested in clannishness and the effects that has on the functioning (or not) of societies. here is mark weiner on “clannism” [kindle locations 128-138]:
“[B]y the rule of the clan I mean the political arrangements of societies governed by what the ‘Arab Human Development Report 2004’ calls ‘clannism.’ These societies possess the outward trappings of a modern state but are founded on informal patronage networks, especially those of kinship, and traditional ideals of patriarchal family authority. In nations pervaded by clannism, government is coopted for purely factional purposes and the state, conceived on the model of the patriarchal family, treats citizens not as autonomous actors but rather as troublesome dependents to be managed.
“Clannism is the historical echo of tribalism, existing even in the face of economic modernization. It often characterizes rentier societies struggling under the continuing legacy of colonial subordination, as in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, where the nuclear family, with its revolutionary, individuating power, has yet to replace the extended lineage group as the principle framework for kinship or household organization. A form of clannism likewise pervades mainland China and other nations whose political development was influenced by Confucianism, with its ideal of a powerful state resting on a well-ordered family, and where personal connections are essential to economic exchange.”
that’s a good start, but here’s a more general list of non-clannish–clannish traits/behaviors (again, these should be viewed as spectrums … spectra?):
– individualism/collectivism vs. familism/non-collectivism
– universalism vs. particularism
– civic-minded/commonweal oriented vs. not civic-minded/not commonweal oriented
– liberal democracy vs. consensus democracy (or no democracy at all)
– low corruption vs. high corruption
– low-violence vs. high-violence(?)
– no feuding vs. feuding
put all of these selected for behaviors together (plus, i’m sure, others that i haven’t thought of) in different average degrees in different populations, and you get different degrees of clannishness — or very little at all — in different populations.
previously: where do clans come from? and mating patterns, family types, social structures, and selection pressures and inbreeding and outbreeding and theories
(note: comments do not require an email. (^_^) )
hbd chick 
The irish, the italians and the greeks are as clannish today as any englishman, Hollywood fantasies notwithstanding.
Considering that fact and, on the other hand, the reality of a clannic Ireland (Italy, Greece…) just some centuries ago, I prefer this explanation: human behavioral plasticity is huge.
Regardless of theoretically possible long-term processes of positive selection of “clannic (super)genes” (taking the term “clannic” in a strict sense) it seems far more plausible than those peoples under a structure of incentives that rewards the clannish behavior behave in a clannic way because, in that particular environment, it is adaptive to do so. When it ceases to be adaptive, the clannic behavior is abandoned with relative ease, cultural inertia being the only factor that delays the defection from the strategy.
I cannot see how the irish, scots, castilians, galicians, basques (all northern spaniards, for that matter), the old swiss, the slavic peoples, etc. were clannic several centuries ago, sometimes just two centuries ago and then, all of a sudden, they went non-clannic. It cannot be neither the presence, nor the absence of a “clannic gene”, unless that (super)gene expresses only the well know capacity of humans to create in-group/out-group competitive dynamics when it suits them.
If that’s the case everything gets clarified, and it could explain why some agriculturalist particularistic clannic peoples go from behaving in that way to a system of nuclear-family nepotism plus market relationships in just a couple of generations.
What’s the common pattern between these two societies?
A) Clan-based nepotism and “coopetition”. Customary private particularistic law.
B) Family-based nepotism and market “coopetition”. Statist public universalistic law.
The common pattern is the existence of in-groups and out-groups and the competition and cooperation between them.
It’s more adaptive a (super)gene for the very general “capacity to belong to adaptive in-groups” than a very specific “clannic behavior”. The first one allows you to be clannic when it is individually adaptive and non-clannic too (with loyalties to family, friends, corporation, class, party). The second one offers far less plasticity.
The empirical evidence seems to point to the first option, even if it is less “romantic”:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/04/01/biologist-e-o-wilson-on-why-humans-like-ants-need-a-tribe.html
Correlation doesn’t imply causation. We’re stuck with the same error.
Have there been any genomic studies supporting your idea that allels for clannism are selected for in clannist societies? Can you imagine an experiment that would test this hypothesis?
@luke – “Have there been any genomic studies supporting your idea that allels for clannism are selected for in clannist societies?”
no, don’t think so. anyway, “genes for clannishness” probably don’t really exist — not in the sense that they’d be unique in any way. they’re probably just variations on a more general theme: e.g. a version(s) of “genes for being tempermental” that would make clannish people particularly tempermental (and, thus, be prone to feuding — and wife-beating). like whatever genes make southern gentlemen fly off the handle more quickly than yankees. (see this post, too.)
@luke – “Can you imagine an experiment that would test this hypothesis?”
nope! i’m no good at that sort of thing. (*^_^*)
@tomás – “The irish, the italians and the greeks are as clannish today as any englishman….”
false.
please, read the definition of “clannishness” again — and take a particular look at the list of characteristics at the end of the post. you might want to follow some of those links in that section as well.
@tomás – “Regardless of theoretically possible long-term processes of positive selection of ‘clannic (super)genes’….”
i’ve never said anything about any clannishness “super genes.” it’s an interesting idea, but i think it’s unlikely. and i just want it to be noted that that idea has nothing to do with my own.
@tomás – “I cannot see how the irish, scots, castilians, galicians, basques (all northern spaniards, for that matter), the old swiss, the slavic peoples, etc. were clannic several centuries ago, sometimes just two centuries ago and then, all of a sudden, they went non-clannic.”
they didn’t (go non-clannish [i don’t know what you mean by “clannic”] all of a sudden). again, see the links in the last section of the post … and see the posts under the “mating patterns in europe series” below ↓ in left-hand column.
@tomás – “Correlation doesn’t imply causation. We’re stuck with the same error.”
guess you missed my response to your comment regarding correlation over @jayman’s. here’s a link to that post. you also might want to check out the tags to this post.
“so what is clannishness then? clannishness is (and i reserve the right to alter this definition) a set of behaviors and innate behavioral traits and predispositions which, when found in a population, result in the members of that population strongly favoring, in all areas of life, themselves, their family members — both near and extended, and even closely allied associates (esp. in clannish societies which are not arranged into clans), while at the same time strongly disfavoring those considered to be non-family and all unrelated, non-allied associates. (i know — it’s messy — it needs work. i agree. feel free to leave suggestions in the comments! thnx.)”
Muh rigor.
Does that mean the “hbd-sphere” and related blogs exhibit a high degree of clannishness (despite being oh-so-Anglo)? I guess so. :-)
@lollerskates – “…despite being oh-so-Anglo….”
oi! who’re you calling anglo! (~_^) (but now that you mention it, tell me how many hbd … and oh, say, alt-right … bloggers are anglo [and what sort of anglo]? gimme a rough percentage.)
“clannishness is (and i reserve the right to alter this definition) a set of behaviors and innate behavioral traits and predispositions which, when found in a population….”
by “population” i meant a naturally occurring one — like “the welsh” — as opposed to a “population” like, for instance, all of the left-handed people in the world. guess i should’ve specified. thanks. i’ll add that to the definition.
@ hbd chick: ““genes for being tempermental” that would make clannish people particularly tempermental (and, thus, be prone to feuding — and wife-beating)..”
I strongly suspect that inbred folks have something with their dopamine/serotonin transporter/receptors in their brain, possibly alongside other neurotransmitter(s) or endocrine factors, which differentiate them from outbred folks in certain ways.
For example:-
“Consanguinity and increased risk for schizophrenia in Egypt”
Click to access SZ_consang_HM_120209%20(2)%20(Read-Only).pdf
Now see:-
“Serotonin-dopamine interaction and its relevance to schizophrenia.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8599393
And then:-
“Role of Serotonin and Dopamine System Interactions in the Neurobiology of Impulsive Aggression and its Comorbidity with other Clinical Disorders”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2612120/
Chris.
Based purely on working among lots of different immigrant populations in their own little enclaves i think the basic idea is correct that more inbred populations are very stuck together in various ways whereas more outbred populations are much looser in their thinking and behavior but I think there are two parts to it.
Although i think it makes sense that clannishness creates an environment that in the long term will select for traits suited to that environment and outbreeding creates a different environment which in the long term will select for traits that suit a a more outbred environment, i also think outbreeding may have a much quicker effect as well through reducing what i call kin-gravity.
If some of clannish traits that were developed over time acted in proportion to genetic closeness then *before* any new outbred traits were developed there might be the effect of pre-existing clannish traits not working the same way as they had previously because of the reduction in genetic closeness i.e. in the early stages of the transition process from inbreeding to outbreeding – assuming all the populations that have undergone this process started out clannish – the transitional population should still have the same clannish traits they always had but they might not function the same.
For example, from the prvious post
“Is Beauty in the Face of the Beholder?”
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0068395
“Participants chose the most attractive face image of their romantic partner among several variants, where the faces were morphed so as to include only 22% of another face. Participants distinctly preferred a “Self-based morph”… When ranking morphs differing in level of amalgamation (i.e., 11% vs. 22% vs. 33%) of another face, the 22% was chosen consistently as the preferred morph”
Was that tested with a WEIRD population and would a more inbred group consistently pick a 33% morph?
Forgot to add, the point of the above is that populations might experience a rapid down & dirty outbreeding phase before developing outbred traits where their pre-existing clannish traits are still dominant but behave differently.
If correct, this might tie in to both the effect of very rapid industrialization / urbanization and its accidental outbreeding effect on populations like the Japanese and also your ideas on Puritans, Calvinists etc i.e. clannish traits but in the context of less actual kin-gravity e.g. keiretsu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiretsu
and Calvinism, non-familial clannishness.
[…] EDIT, 8/16/13: See also clannishness defined | hbd* chick […]
1 – the english (not all of them — probably not the cornish, for instance), some of the dutch
2 – the scandinavians
3 or 4 – the irish
6-7 – the italians, the greeks, the chinese
7-8 – the albanians
10 – the yanomamo
11 – the arabs
No 5?
It seems like what you’re trying to say here is that Northern Europeans – even those crazy Irish – are in a whole different league with regard to clannishness. I wonder if that’s not an exaggeration.
I’ve added this to my Fundamentals page. ;)
HBD Fundamentals: On the evolution of modern advanced civilized peoples | JayMan’s Blog
Well, I think that in addition to these factors, we must also pay attention to whether a people is really out-bred or artificially is only out-bred, when an elite seizes power and imposes its agenda. For example, I think in Britain, the Scots are being forced to accept the policies of an elite hybrid and uprooted from folk culture (and therefore root ethnic and racial) while a good portion of the English, until now (when problems of multiculturalism were not so apparent), accepted immigration. I see the Norse as the most out-bred and non-clanish all in Europe. I get the impression that half the Scandinavian population, presents trends in behavior hippies (lol)
” @ Thomas – “I can not see how the irish, scots, Castilians, Galicians, basques (all northern Spaniards, for that matter), the old swiss, the slavic peoples, etc.. clannic were several centuries Aug, sometimes just two centuries Ago and then, all of a sudden, non-They went clannic. ”
I’m only speculating, but it is possible that major bio-behavioral changes have happened in these populations. Well, that theory is that genetic changes usually happen after an accumulation of many small changes.
Therefore, changes happen from generation to generation. As West Hunter said. Select traces of intelligence and personality seems much easier and faster than we imagine. Increased intelligence, occasioned by the standard eugenic breeding eliminates the poor class, who tend to be more classically clanish. The processes of industrialization and urbanization shifted the demographic pressure from countryside to cities, creating a society (partly meritocratic) modern in Europe. As a result, people began to live in cities with large populations. The civilism and respect the space of others, essential rules of a civilized and functional society, may have influenced the rejection of selfish groups. However, these processes are given more slowly than continental populations in the UK for example. Globalization increases the supply of marriages by interests and not by blood (or techno-geographical convenience, for example, a hypothetical medieval village where geographical isolation and lack of technology to move people imposes rules endogamous marriage).
Another possibility is the average personality these groups. For example, if the Amish are clanish but are not hostile to its neighbors (rather isolate themselves than competing tribally with others) then what would happen if they stopped them from interbreeding?
Probably, they would become more like their European counterparts. (german and swiss)
Another case that stands out are the Parsi, India. I know they are even less numerous than other minorities in diaspora, as Armenians and Jews. So, how to explain that they did not have acted as a tribal society hostile to out-group?
Then you would question. So this theory is wrong, but is not so.
I think certain personality types are more susceptible to inbreeding than exogamous marriages when they are between groups.
The personality of the people of northern Europe (I would say personality purely European) appears, unsurprisingly, in the southern regions of Europe, where there is a higher proportion of people with eyes and light hair. (such as greater iq)
This applies to the idea that light-skinned women, were selected because of their personality traits, more apt to care monogamous household, submission.
Animals with lighter skin tend to be more peaceful than animals with dark skin. Everything fits.
The mixture of blood from the Middle East and North Africa in southern Europe is much higher than in the north, most significantly, it is said.
Anyway, I’m highlighting genetic factors, which addresses the theory more broadly.
OT, or maybe not: I am re-reading Dante’s The Divine Comedy (which I prefer to Lord of the Rings btw) and in the course of getting up to speed on the historical background I notice that Florence was a republic divided between to two factions, one loyal to the Pope the other to the emperor (of the Holy Roman Empire I assume). Anyway the remarkable thing to me is that the city was divided into rival “families,” each with it’s own castle, complete with tower, crowded together within the city walls. This would indicate a high degree of clannism I assume. And yet not only Florence a republic (albeit a very unstable one) but it was during this period or shortly after that we see a florescence of individualism which we associate with the Renaissance. How do you reconcile this seeming contradiction?
“How do you reconcile this seeming contradiction?”
She’ll either dispute your data point because it doesn’t fit her theory or she’ll find some ham-fisted way to incorporate it. Keep in mind that we aren’t doing “science” here – just something that superficially resembles it.
Hbdchick, why do you think hdb and related bloggers exhibit such high degree of clannishness, even the ones that come from “North European” backgrounds (and they seem to be the majority to me but I won’t press that since I’m too lazy to gather the data for definitive pronouncements)? Outliers eh? Does that mean they’re going against a major part of what made “Northern Europe” so distinctive and great (according to you)?
@Luke Lea
If we assume for the sake of argument the basic idea is correct and secondly that all populations started off clannish then it would follow that they will all start off with hubchik’s clannish traits.
If they start outbreeding either for specific cultural reasons like the cousin ban or simply as a result of urbanization and greater choice then a decline in the frequency of clannish traits and an increase in the frequency of individualist traits won’t happen overnight. It will take time.
So you would have at least three states (and in reality a spectrum)
1) Clannish traits in a clannish population.
2) Clannish traits in a transitional population.
3) Individualist traits in an outbred population.
@lollerskates – “Keep in mind that we aren’t doing ‘science’ here – just something that superficially resembles it.”
oh noes! NOT science?! boo-hoo! now you’ve made me cry! (;_;)
gimme a break with your internet bullying/attempted smearing.
note that i’ve never, ever said or claimed that i’m doing science on this blog. misrepresent me again like that and i’ll press the eject button on you.
@lollerskates – “Hbdchick, why do you think hdb and related bloggers exhibit such high degree of clannishness….”
i never said that they do.
@lollerskates – “…since I’m too lazy to gather the data for definitive pronouncements.”
well, that’s just too bad, then, isn’t it?
@hbd chick (primarily)
Surfing around led me to click someplace I don’t usually click on. But upon doing so I thought it “might be handy” for a couple of people. You included.
(You’ll want to open this on the biggest monitor available – definitely not a Smartphone.)
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/08/12/the_1931_histomap_the_entire_history_of_the_world_distilled_into_a_single.html
@JK:
I’ve seen that before (on a wall in a map store, I believe). I once had this one:
Hammond’s Graphic History of Mankind
…which, in addition to being incredibly cool, was enormously informative. At a glance, one could review many of the important events in the history of man.
We HBD’ers should have one of those as a front page. ;)
@luke – “…the city was divided into rival ‘families,’ each with it’s own castle, complete with tower, crowded together within the city walls. This would indicate a high degree of clannism I assume. And yet not only Florence a republic (albeit a very unstable one) but it was during this period or shortly after that we see a florescence of individualism which we associate with the Renaissance. How do you reconcile this seeming contradiction?”
yes, interesting. don’t know — and i wouldn’t like to speculate because i don’t know enough about the history of the mating patterns in that region yet — or even the history of that region.
i like grey’s idea, though — transitional phase. maybe that’s it.
i have read a little about the republic of florence, and what i’ve seen so far is really interesting. they seem to have been struggling for nearly a couple of centuries with getting some sort of fair, representative system that would limit the controlling powers of the big families (good luck!) — and the control of power swung back and forth.
the systems that the florentines came up with — mainly lot and rotation of office systems — were awfully similar to those in ancient athens, and they seem to have been devised for the same reasons — as workarounds to deal with the clans/clannishness in the city. from The Principles of Representative Government [pgs. 55-57]:
“Another feature of both republican periods was the existence of provisions which guaranteed rotation in office, the *divieti*. These were prohibitions which prevented the same office from being assigned to the same person or to members of the same family several times in succession during a given period. The members of the *Signoria* were replaced every two months; the other magistrates’ terms of office lasted a bit longer. The Florentine republic thus echoed the kind of combination of lot and rotation that typified the Athenian democracy.
“In the fourteenth century, access to the magistracies was in part controlled by the “Ottimati*, the aristocracy of large merchant families and leaders of the major corporations. It was possible for non-aristocrats (e.g. middle-ranking merchants or artisans) to rise to office, but only if they had been approved by the elites of wealth and birth, who dominated the committee which decided who would be ‘scrutinized.’ By contrast, the body that, through the *squittinio*, approved or rejected the names put forward was more open. It numbered some hundred members (*arrotti*) elected by citizens who had themselves been drawn by lot. Thus, the names that were finally placed in the bags after the *squittinio* had been approved twice: once by the aristocracy, and once by a wider circle.
“At the end of the fourteenth century, this complex system was regarded as guaranteeing impartiality in the selection of magistrates and as guarding against factions. Its very complexity appeared to shield it from manipulation by individuals and clans: no one could control every stage of the process or steer the result as he wished. The part played in the final stage by the neutral, unmanipulable mechanism of lot was largely responsible for generating this feeling of impartiality. Florence was no different, in this respect, from the other Italian republics.”
_____
@luke – “…a florescence of individualism which we associate with the Renaissance.”
what would you say were the indicators of increasing individualism in northern italy just before and during the italian renaissance?
have we got italian philosophers of the day going on and on about the individual? i know there were the humanists. were they very much into liberte, egalite, fraternite? the rights of the individual? i really don’t know.
@jk – “Surfing around led me to click someplace I don’t usually click on. But upon doing so I thought it ‘might be handy’ for a couple of people. You included.”
yeah, that’s really neat, huh?! i saw it the other day. wish i had the actual wall chart. (^_^) (definitely doesn’t work on a smartphone! (~_^) )
thanks!
@chris – “I strongly suspect that inbred folks have something with their dopamine/serotonin transporter/receptors in their brain, possibly alongside other neurotransmitter(s) or endocrine factors, which differentiate them from outbred folks in certain ways.”
oooohhhh! very interesting! thanks. (^_^)
@grey – “If some of clannish traits that were developed over time acted in proportion to genetic closeness then *before* any new outbred traits were developed there might be the effect of pre-existing clannish traits not working the same way as they had previously because of the reduction in genetic closeness i.e. in the early stages of the transition process from inbreeding to outbreeding – assuming all the populations that have undergone this process started out clannish – the transitional population should still have the same clannish traits they always had but they might not function the same.”
you are waaay ahead of me in thinking about the short-term post-outbreeding fallout! (^_^) i really haven’t thought this through at all, but i will do. thanks for pushing the idea!
@grey – “…there might be the effect of pre-existing clannish traits not working the same way as they had previously because of the reduction in genetic closeness….”
that’s presuming — i think — that humans can somehow work out who their near and more distant relatives are, right? which, well, the jury’s still out on that one, afaict and afaiac. not ruling this out, but not ruling it in completely, yet, either.
but certainly i think you’re right that the behaviors and behavioral patterns wouldn’t “fit” right with the new mating patterns for a while, and that would throw the whole workings of society off for a time until the new behaviors caught up with the new mating patterns. or, like you said…
“Forgot to add, the point of the above is that populations might experience a rapid down & dirty outbreeding phase before developing outbred traits where their pre-existing clannish traits are still dominant but behave differently.”
@JayMan:
Thanks. Alas, now it looks like I’ll have to do a second credit card transaction.
@ihtg – “No 5?”
No. 5 is what i wear to bed. (~_^)
no, wait. that’s not what i meant to say!
what i meant to say is that, no five ’cause i just slapped this list together off the top of my head. it’s my general impression, so don’t go quoting me everywhere!
i need to work up a more serious, meaningful ranking system, like jayman did for the founding fathers.
also, as jayman also pointed out, it really shouldn’t be a strict ranking system at all. we’re talking evolution and about different populations that have gone down different evolutionary paths — should be more of an evolutionary tree or branchy bush, really.
@ihtg – “It seems like what you’re trying to say here is that Northern Europeans – even those crazy Irish – are in a whole different league with regard to clannishness. I wonder if that’s not an exaggeration.”
well, i do think that they — the nw europeans — really are. they are an odd bunch, and they require explaining. and i think that how all these populations function in the real world bears that out. degrees of corruption, feuding/violence levels, liberal democracy [fwiw] or not, etc., etc. i mean, just look at egypt today and tell me (with a straight face! (~_^) ) that the arab world shouldn’t be ranked at 11 on my 1-10 clannishness scale.
@jayman – “I’ve added this to my Fundamentals page. ;)”
awww, shucks! (*^_^*)
@gottlieb – “Well, I think that in addition to these factors, we must also pay attention to whether a people is really out-bred or artificially is only out-bred, when an elite seizes power and imposes its agenda.”
yes, good point.
@gottlieb – “Well, that theory is that genetic changes usually happen after an accumulation of many small changes.”
yes. and “clannishness” (as i’ve [tried to] define it above) is a set of behaviors. many behaviors, i think, that i haven’t even thought all the way through, yet: tempermentality, selfishness, greed, untrusting, kin-recognition(?) … plus a lot of others.
many behaviors each, presumably, having several or many underlying genes — so there’s room for a lot of tweaking — and a lot of biodiversity.
NOT one super-clannishness-gene.
Yes, because the genes of behavior are a combination of several factors (genetic and organic, aka, environmental). But it seems to me that the main features of each type are few (big five and other theories seem to have deciphered it), so what else would not mind the uniqueness of each trait, but a combination of several traits, which in turn can alter the image we have of a higher type. For example, inter-group altruism Amish seem to be positive, not only for them but also indirectly for the groups involved. I mean, when an amish can help other groups from the moment that there is camaraderie. The maintenance of certain traits Central Europeans, who see with frequency among Germans, as an organization and strong sense of justice, ostensibly contribute to this state of affairs.
In contrast, the same main feature, the clanishness, is changed to a negative phenomenon, from the moment in which there is a combination of traits or incompatible extremes as high psychoticism.
“that’s presuming — i think — that humans can somehow work out who their near and more distant relatives are, right? which, well, the jury’s still out on that one, afaict and afaiac.”
Partly that* but also in the case of urbanization you’d have a lot of individuals who had physically left their clans behind in their home village so they’d have the clannish traits – whatever they might be – but physically no clan.
*I think at a bare minimum there’ll be family resemblance which on average ought to be increased by inbreeding through linkage effects. I’m not sure if that’s generally accepted or not? It could be me jumping the gun. Either way if you recast family resemblance as a form of self resemblance then the study that found the people tested were most attracted to a face that was 22% their own seems to suggest people can recognize self-resemblance.
Personally I do think it’s likely that more inbred groups will be found to have better us-dar than more outbred groups and that kin recognition could be a good place to start looking for clannish traits but the path of least resistance option is simply greater family resemblance through linkage effects. I don’t know if that has ever been studied?
i mean, just look at egypt today and tell me (with a straight face! (~_^) ) that the arab world shouldn’t be ranked at 11 on my 1-10 clannishness scale.
Don’t know. As crappy as Egypt is, a place like Afghanistan seems to me like a whole different level of clannishness. The Arabs – and especially the Egyptians – are civilized in comparison.
hbd*chick – what would you say were the indicators of increasing individualism in northern italy just before and during the italian renaissance?
All those famous personalities from the period and the individual portraits in the museums . . .
I think your comparison to Athens seems apt. The republic broke down, at least in Dante’s case, by military violence of one faction against another, followed by proscription. Same thing brought down the Roman republic incidentally.
Here is a sketch of the towers of Florence in Dante’s time
More info:
Towers built in 11th-12th Century by rich and powerful families are among the most striking medieval characteristic of Florence: some of them are to be found also in Oltrarno.
History – Pictures
The skyline of medieval italian cities was characterized by countless raging towers, and Florence made no exception: the most prominent families built imposant towers which not only were used as (rather unconfortable…) homes and strongholds during frequent civil wars. They also embodied the family’s power, and had to be built taller than the ones of enemy clans . . .
You’ve not mentioned Mexicans, a group very important in the US. Those who live in counties and states heavily populated by Mexicans, legal or illegal, know how clannish they are.
@mnnllg – “You’ve not mentioned Mexicans, a group very important in the US.”
i’ve written a couple of posts on mexicans — mostly the mayans. see the “mating patterns in the americas series” down near the bottom of the page ↓, left-hand column.
the posts don’t amount to a comprehensive look at mexicans at all. have barely scratched the surface. mexicans are not one group — there were many different populations in pre-columbian mexico. i will try to investigate them more in future, so … stay tuned!
Hi, fascinating discussions as usual, it’s a whole big puzzle to solve!
“that’s presuming — i think — that humans can somehow work out who their near and more distant relatives are, right? which, well, the jury’s still out on that one, afaict and afaiac.”
This is just one random search result:
Newborn infants respond preferentially to simple face-like
patterns, raising the possibility that the face-specific regions
identified in the adult cortex are functioning from birth. We
sought to evaluate this hypothesis by characterizing the
specificity of infants’ electrocortical responses to faces in two
ways: (1) comparing responses to faces of humans with those
to faces of nonhuman primates; and 2) comparing responses
to upright and inverted faces. Adults’ face-responsive N170
event-related potential (ERP) component showed specificity to
upright human faces that was not observable at any point in
the ERPs of infants. A putative ‘‘infant N170’’ did show
sensitivity to the species of the face, but the orientation of
the face did not influence processing until a later stage. These
findings suggest a process of gradual specialization of cortical
face processing systems during postnatal development. http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/8431/1/8431.pdf
Then there is this:
Dance with me….60.000 Starlings in flight with two falcons hunting them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctMty7av0jc
“Such movements are a prime example of emergent behavior: the behavior is not a property of any individual bird, but rather emerges as a property of the group itself. There is no leader, no overall control; instead the flock’s movements are determined by the moment-by-moment decisions of individual birds, following simple rules in response to interactions with their neighbors in the flock.”
According to Earth Flight documentary, each bird monitors the position of seven other birds. I think vocalisation is part of that process.
Looking at a documentary about outlaw bikers recently I was reminded that this might just be a more general ingroup loyalty trait. Historically, the group has always been a group of relatives and close allies so if you have inbreeding it would promote a general ingroupish/tribal behavior. Evolution would not to be more specific then if the group was always your relatives.
Then, in the modern environment, you’ll find bikers and others who incidentally have these traits teaming up and living by their own code and behaving bad towards outsiders. Every such group will work out their specific system depending on the current conditions they find themselves in.
These gangs are usually not ethnically mixed so there is probably some kin recognition, but how much of is this hardwired? Do people keep track of who is a first or second cousin and so on?
Your definition,
“clannishness is (and i reserve the right to alter this definition) a set of behaviors and innate behavioral traits and predispositions which, when found in a population, result in the members of that population strongly favoring, in all areas of life, themselves, their family members — both near and extended, and even closely allied associates (esp. in clannish societies which are not arranged into clans), while at the same time strongly disfavoring those considered to be non-family and all unrelated, non-allied associates.”
implies that outlaw bikers and similar groups aren’t clannish since they don’t necessarily favor family members when they make the gang their family. But their behavior is suspiciously similar. Perhaps clannishness can be generalized, at least to the racial/ethnic level.
@Luke Lea
“All those famous personalities from the period and the individual portraits in the museums . .”
“Towers built in 11th-12th Century by rich and powerful families are among the most striking medieval characteristic of Florence: some of them are to be found also in Oltrarno.”
Although it’s possible to make a case for Renaissance Italy being in a state of transition i think most of the evidence you’ve presented is pretty much classic clannish behavior – even including the towers – and do people talk of those times in terms of personalities or families? Is it Cesare Borgia or the Borgias? I’d say the artistic explosion of the time was an expression of that as well with the families used patronizing the arts as another way to compete. So i’m thinking any individualist aspects of the Renaissance would more likely have displayed as it spread north.
However back-tracking again in mid-paragraph i think your point may illustrate the implicit pressure for out-breeding (at least to a certain level) in that the clans in Florence *needed* to be able to co-operate as Florentines to compete with other Italian city-states but they found it extremely difficult because of their clannish distrust of the other clans. It’s almost a snap-shot of the blog’s core idea.
Extending that thought, where did the pressure to co-operate at a higher scale than they were comfortable with come from? I know very little about the Renaissance but as a wild guess i wonder if it was a city or cities in the Po valley like Milan where for some unknown reason the aristo families within those individual cities were better able to co-operate.
So i wonder if maybe Florence was in a state of transition but not from clannish to individualist but from the extended family scale of clannish to the tribe/city-state scale.
If so an interesting thought is their ancestors may have probably gone through this process before i.e. Romans, Etruscans etc had already gone through that phase once in antiquity but dropped back to the extended family scale after the collapse of Rome.
Staffan
“implies that outlaw bikers and similar groups aren’t clannish since they don’t necessarily favor family members when they make the gang their family. But their behavior is suspiciously similar. Perhaps clannishness can be generalized, at least to the racial/ethnic level.”
I’m thinking part of the definition problem may be looking at clannishness from a WEIRD point of view and seeing it as abnormal – when in fact it’s the default normal human behavior. It’s the foundation. When you look at it that way then various levels of out-breeding, whether deliberate or accidental, would at first simply lead to *distortions* of that base behavior. Only over time would new traits or new trait frequencies create fully fledged WEIRD behavior.
Even in the NW euro countries where this process was ongoing for the longest time it still didn’t effect everyone in the country to the same extent (and could also go backwards if people like that found themselves on a wild west frontier somewhere and reverted back to clannish behavior). Outside the NW euro core the process didn’t start (or wasn’t enforced) to the same extent. Lastly i think in some parts of Europe the process didn’t really start at all until very recently *except* among immigrants from those parts – especially immigrants to America and the Anzac countries.
So, all in all, if one reverses the perspective and looks at it as clannish = normal and outbreeding creating distortions to that base behavior then my response to your point would be – were / are members of the original biker gangs drawn disproportionately from specific regions and/or ethnic groups or sub-ethnic groups with a more recent clannish history? If hubchik’s core idea is correct then i think they would be.
Basically, clannish people without a clan looking to create a new sense of belonging.
(Possibly partly the result of WWII conscription dragging people away from their original locality and them ending up in places like California – or people simply moving away from their original locality for work.)
So i’m thinking something like
1) clannish behavior (default human normal)
2) distorted clannish behavior (tribe/city-state level clannishness)
3) clannish-WEIRD hybrid behavior (the currently WEIRD populations in earlier centuries when they were partway through the process and possibly also non-WEIRD populations affected by dramatic urbanization and industrialization – national scale identity)
4) WEIRD behavior (current WEIRD populations)
and that there are always outliers in both directions at each level.
Staffan @ ”Implies que outlaw bikers and similar groups since aren’t clannish They do not Necessarily please family members When they make the gang Their family. But Their behavior is suspiciously similar. Perhaps clannishness can be generalized, at least to the racial / ethnic level.”
If many of outlaw drivers are foreigners, and nations where clanishness prevails then it is likely that most of them exhibit behavior clan individualized.
I think the idea of clan would resemble an atmosphere of competition for resources.
I think that as long as individuals are mini-nations, most nations are a conglomerate of genetically similar than or cohesion of the elite or bio-behavioral factors displays a specific set of moral , religious and cultural codes.
Addressing my own query above about how we might test hbd*chick’s hypothesis that generations of clannishness select for allels favoring clannish altruism even when the clans themselves no longer exist, how about the case of American blacks. They certainly came from tribal societies in constant conflict with each other, and presumably these societies were themselves composed of clans. Many African Americans are certainly “racists” to judge by their reactions to the OJ and Zimmerman trial verdicts. OTH they shoot each other down in the ghettos with alarming frequency. Does this tell us anything? I don’t know.
How about the crips and the bloods? Is there gang solidarity? Prison solidarity? Is nepotism and/or ethnocentrism a problem with African Americans to a greater extent than with the general non-Jewish northern European population? Is there any data?
@gottlieb – “In contrast, the same main feature, the clanishness, is changed to a negative phenomenon, from the moment in which there is a combination of traits or incompatible extremes as high psychoticism.”
ah! i see what you’re saying. yes. you’d think that “clannishness” could, indeed, manifest itself in different ways in different populations (depending on their evolutionary histories) — sometimes in positive ways, and sometimes in negative. that makes sense.
btw, you know sometimes the amish can be a little naughty! (~_^)
@grey – “Partly that* but also in the case of urbanization you’d have a lot of individuals who had physically left their clans behind in their home village so they’d have the clannish traits – whatever they might be – but physically no clan.”
yes. i think those guys are interesting. but i think they’d probably be the most interesting if/when they turn up — in small numbers — in non-clannish societies. it would be interesting to see how they behaved then. (when they turn up in large numbers, we know how they behave — unfortunately.)
btw, here’s william hamilton on barbarians (the examples he was thinking of were inbreeders — at least the germanics were) bringing altruism genes to washed out civilizations and pumping them up again [link]:
“The incursions of barbaric pastoralists seem to do civilizations less harm in the long run than one might expect. Indeed, two dark ages and renaissances in Europe suggest a recurring pattern in which a renaissance follows an incursion by about 800 years. It may even be suggested that certain genes or traditions of pastoralists revitalize the conquered people with an ingredient of progress which tends to die out in a large panmictic population for the reasons already discussed. I have in mind altruism itself, or the part of the altruism which is perhaps better described as self-sacrificial daring. By the time of the renaissance it may be that the mixing of genes and cultures (or of cultures alone if these are the only vehicles, which I doubt) has continued long enough to bring the old mercantile thoughtfulness and the infused daring into conjunction in a few individuals who then find courage for all kinds of inventive innovation against the resistance of established thought and practice. Often, however, the cost in fitness of such altruism and sublimated pugnacity to the individuals concerned is by no means metaphorical, and the benefits to fitness, such as they are, go to a mass of individuals whose genetic correlation with the innovator must be slight indeed. Thus civilization probably slowly reduces its altruism of all kinds, including the kinds needed for cultural creativity (see also Eshel 1972).”
bruce charlton’s idea that luke dropped in the comments the other day reminded me of the highlighted sentence.
@grey – “I think at a bare minimum there’ll be family resemblance which on average ought to be increased by inbreeding through linkage effects. I’m not sure if that’s generally accepted or not?”
you know, i don’t think anybody has looked at that! — inbreeding vs. outbreeding is so far off everybody’s radar. on the one hand, the w.e.i.r.d. researchers don’t think about all the inbreeders out there, and on the other hand, i think that any researchers out there from inbreeding populations (say, india) don’t think about how westerners outbreed. nobody’s thinking about it! (except some people doing health-related genetics research.)
i think inbreeding (and outbreeding) must affect family resemblance. in fact, i’m pretty sure it does, going by what i know from “the old country.” although things are starting to change a bit now with the population moving around more, back there in a local region, the locals can readily guess what town or hamlet you’re from just by how individuals look. that has GOT to be from all the inbreeding. even i can spot individuals from particularly inbred hamlets that are known for “keeping to themselves.” (~_^)
@grey – “Personally I do think it’s likely that more inbred groups will be found to have better us-dar than more outbred groups and that kin recognition could be a good place to start looking for clannish traits but the path of least resistance option is simply greater family resemblance through linkage effects. I don’t know if that has ever been studied?”
no, like i said, i don’t think anybody has looked at this at all. would be cool, though!
@ihtg – “Don’t know. As crappy as Egypt is, a place like Afghanistan seems to me like a whole different level of clannishness. The Arabs – and especially the Egyptians – are civilized in comparison.”
i think that the arabs on the arab peninsula — those in saudi arabia and yemen, etc. — are probably about as clannish as the afghanis and would be just as dysfunctional if it weren’t for all the oil. i mean, look at yemen.
you’re right about the egyptians, though. they’re not as clannish as the “core” arabs or afghanis. the further south you go in egypt, the more clannish they get (particularly when you get to the nubians — not to mention the bedouins). egyptians are less clannish down in the delta — and there are class and urban/rural differences, too (upper class, urban egyptians are less inbred, and they certainly seem less clannish in many ways — they’re not westerners, but they’re not bedouins, either).
i still think i’d rank the egyptians at about an 8 or 9, though. again, just going by my general impression. (i really need to work up a proper ranking system — using real data.)
Hbdc Chick @ ”ah! i see what you’re saying. yes. you’d think that “clannishness” could, indeed, manifest itself in different ways in different populations (depending on their evolutionary histories) — sometimes in positive ways, and sometimes in negative. that makes sense.
btw, you know sometimes the amish can be a little naughty! (~_^)”
Yes, I know.
Well, nobody’s perfect.
Luke Lea
“Addressing my own query above about how we might test hbd*chick’s hypothesis that generations of clannishness select for allels favoring clannish altruism even when the clans themselves no longer exist, how about the case of American blacks. They certainly came from tribal societies in constant conflict with each other, and presumably these societies were themselves composed of clans.”
Yes, i think they’re likely to be unique in that they would probably have been very tribal and then very rapidly outbred due to slavery.
hbdchick
“yes. i think those guys are interesting. but i think they’d probably be the most interesting if/when they turn up — in small numbers — in non-clannish societies.”
Well i think they already have – kind of. If you imagine a very rapid industrialization and urbanization from an originally very clannish base – like Japan for example – then that implies a very rapid outbreeding as people moved from their home villages to the towns and married randomly. So you’d have a society of people with their original clannish traits living in clanless cities with not enough time to have developed traits suited to that environment.
It makes me wonder if there were social movements in Japanese cities during this time which hint at a sense of distress at not belonging?
As a separate thought i think the current troubles in Egypt and Turkey are partly the result of the outbreeding effect of cities relative to the countryside.
@luke – “…and the individual portraits in the museums….”
oh, that’s very good! i like that. thanks! it does seem like an indicator of creeping individualism. (~_^)
wonderful paintings! so many blonde chicks! (^_^)
_____
here’s what i know — or what i can infer/guess — about the history of mating patterns in northern italy:
– don’t ask me about the romans/whoever was living in northern italy before the germanics got there — dunno;
– it’s unclear whether or not the langobards were marrying cousins/closely, but they probably were given what the historians know about the other germanic tribes — but, again, not known for sure;
– the franks were serious about avoiding cousin marriage once the church banned it, so it’s likely — but i don’t know for sure — that they brought/enforced/encouraged the cousin marriage bans to/in northern italy when they took over the place;
– fast-forward to … the florence region! … in the 1300-1400s, and — very interestingly — individuals in rural, moutainous areas were more endogamous than individuals living in urban areas as far as marrying within parishes goes. not sure if this means that the urbanites were, in fact, marrying actual close cousins more than the mountaineers. further research is req.;
– fast-foward again to the twentieth century and florence is one of the regions of italy with the lowest first cousin marriage rates (although it was ca. 6% in 1910-14).
that’s all i’ve got for northern italy. so far. (^_^)
@gottlieb – “Well, nobody’s perfect.”
(^_^) (^_^) (^_^)
@grey – “So i’m thinking any individualist aspects of the Renaissance would more likely have displayed as it spread north.”
that’s my general impression — but someone, please, correct me if i’m wrong — that most of the philosophical, etc., stuff regarding the individual comes more out of northern europe rather than northern italy — and then not really until the englightenment [sic]. amirite?
but there was something happening in northern italy, too, in the renaissance. something transitional maybe? they were struggling with representative democracy — and they were some of the first to have communes. there was some sort of broader collective ideal trying to get out there.
@grey – “So i’m thinking something like
1) clannish behavior (default human normal)
2) distorted clannish behavior (tribe/city-state level clannishness)
3) clannish-WEIRD hybrid behavior (the currently WEIRD populations in earlier centuries when they were partway through the process and possibly also non-WEIRD populations affected by dramatic urbanization and industrialization – national scale identity)
4) WEIRD behavior (current WEIRD populations)
and that there are always outliers in both directions at each level.”
i like this! (^_^)
@staffan – “Looking at a documentary about outlaw bikers recently I was reminded that this might just be a more general ingroup loyalty trait.”
i do agree that humans, being social creatures, do have a general ingroup loyalty thing going. we want to bond with other people and work with them (well, all you non-contrarians out there want to do that (~_^) ) — and if left alone without any family, humans will extend their trust and loyalty to others pretty quickly. (to be honest, i’m pretty sure this is a general social mammal thing, and it’s why you can get dogs and cats or lions and gazelles to bond when they’re infants. also, as an aside, speaking as a woman, i think that this loyalty/alliance-building thing is stronger in men than women.)
anyway … so i do agree with the definition of “tribal” that you use over on your blog (i keep meaning to tell you that, but i somehow never get around to it!).
having said that, i think that some peoples are more “intensely tribal” (or my “clannish”) than others, and that that’s simply a result of their evolutionary history (inbreeding+selection for clannish traits). that’s really all i’m getting at with this clannishness stuff … i think.
i couldn’t figure out how to work it into the definition, but i did mention this in the post:
“the most important thing to remember here is: take the clannish individuals out of their native clannish environment — for instance, away from their extended families or clans — and they will *still*, on average, behave in clannish ways.”
let me rephrase it:
“take the ‘intensely tribal’ individuals out of their native ‘intensely tribal’ environment — for instance, away from their extended families or clans — and they will *still*, on average, behave in ‘intensely tribal’ ways.”
in other words, i think some peoples (my inbred, clannish peoples) will exhibit a more intense ingroup loyality trait than other peoples (more outbred, non-clannish peoples).
like greying wander above, i’d be curious to know the backgrounds of all those bikers. (^_^)
hbd*chick – It makes me wonder if there were social movements in Japanese cities during this time which hint at a sense of distress at not belonging?
You mean like imperialism aka The East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
Let’s hope something similar doesn’t come out of China.
@luke – “Addressing my own query above about how we might test hbd*chick’s hypothesis that generations of clannishness select for allels favoring clannish altruism even when the clans themselves no longer exist, how about the case of American blacks.”
yeah, i’m really interested in looking at the case of african americans, although it’s going to be difficult to reconstruct historical mating patterns with so few historical sources for west africa.
i’ve poked around a little re. mating patterns in west africa today and, yes, there is a lot of cousin marriage — pretty much all maternal cousin marriage. (and there’s the polygamy, too, which also narrows the relatedness.) the question is: how far back does that go? who knows?
@grey – “Yes, i think they’re likely to be unique in that they would probably have been very tribal and then very rapidly outbred due to slavery.”
yes, outbred rapidly because individuals from different populations would’ve then been able to mate with each other — but if they were all (or mostly) clannish, they might’ve just been swapping clannishness genes with one another.
otoh, i have a couple of articles in my files here about african american slave marriages (don’t remember where the plantations were located), and, after converting to christianity, they mostly avoided close cousin marriages — from very early on, iirc.
however, even though they may have become outbreeders in the new world, were they in the right sort of circumstances to allow for the selection of non-clannish behaviors? i dunno, but i doubt it. and/or was it enough time? with nw europeans we’ve got something like 500-1000 years before the clannishness disappears (1000 years before it really disappears). not enough time for african americans, i suspect … if they started off as clannish.
@grey – “If you imagine a very rapid industrialization and urbanization from an originally very clannish base – like Japan for example – then that implies a very rapid outbreeding as people moved from their home villages to the towns and married randomly. So you’d have a society of people with their original clannish traits living in clanless cities with not enough time to have developed traits suited to that environment.”
ah! yes. that makes sense — and would probably be … weird.
a few populations that i can think of, when they’ve undergone that industrialization/urbanization process, they actually fall back into cousin marriage. this apparently happened right across the board in mid-nineteenth century europe. don’t know if this is a general pattern or not, but there is often a lot of chain migration/marriages when rural populations start to move to cities.
however, having said that, wrt your japan example, the japanese actually had a push towards outbreeding right at the time when they were industrializing/urbanzing, didn’t they? so that must’ve been an odd combo!
@grey – “It makes me wonder if there were social movements in Japanese cities during this time which hint at a sense of distress at not belonging?”
dr*t. still need to learn more about japan!
@grey – “As a separate thought i think the current troubles in Egypt and Turkey are partly the result of the outbreeding effect of cities relative to the countryside.”
in the case of egypt (don’t know about turkey), egyptians who have been living in urban areas for many generations seem to marry cousins much less than rural egyptians. (this is very much a class difference, too). also, recent rural egyptians for some reason seem to switch a lot from fbd to mbd. no idea why. also, i remember reading somewhere, but i can’t find it now, that a lot of the poor egyptians in urban areas now marry “within the neighborhood” and not so much close cousins. i don’t know for sure, but it could be that they’re still marrying people from the same village/region back from where they’re from (and, so, are marrying distant cousins), because perhaps rural migrants move to the same neighborhoods in the citiies? don’t know that for certain, but i wouldn’t be surprised — it’s a common enough pattern.
Where do Ashkenazi Jews fit here? They seem to be more overrepresented than the English in holding and supporting the non-clannish traits/behaviors and social and political movements.
I just wanted to collect all the interesting comments made and respond to them collectively.
@Greying Wanderer – “Forgot to add, the point of the above is that populations might experience a rapid down & dirty outbreeding phase before developing outbred traits where their pre-existing clannish traits are still dominant but behave differently.”
“If correct, this might tie in to both the effect of very rapid industrialization / urbanization and its accidental outbreeding effect on populations”
@Greying Wanderer – “I’m thinking part of the definition problem may be looking at clannishness from a WEIRD point of view and seeing it as abnormal – when in fact it’s the default normal human behavior. It’s the foundation. When you look at it that way then various levels of out-breeding, whether deliberate or accidental, would at first simply lead to *distortions* of that base behavior. Only over time would new traits or new trait frequencies create fully fledged WEIRD behavior.”
“(Possibly partly the result of WWII conscription dragging people away from their original locality and them ending up in places like California – or people simply moving away from their original locality for work.)”
“So i’m thinking something like
1) clannish behavior (default human normal)
2) distorted clannish behavior (tribe/city-state level clannishness)
3) clannish-WEIRD hybrid behavior (the currently WEIRD populations in earlier centuries when they were partway through the process and possibly also non-WEIRD populations affected by dramatic urbanization and industrialization – national scale identity)
4) WEIRD behavior (current WEIRD populations)”
@Greying Wanderer – “As a separate thought i think the current troubles in Egypt and Turkey are partly the result of the outbreeding effect of cities relative to the countryside.”
@Luke Lea – “Anyway the remarkable thing to me is that the city was divided into rival “families,” each with it’s own castle, complete with tower, crowded together within the city walls. This would indicate a high degree of clannism I assume. And yet not only Florence a republic (albeit a very unstable one) but it was during this period or shortly after that we see a florescence of individualism which we associate with the Renaissance. How do you reconcile this seeming contradiction?”
@gottlieb – “Well, I think that in addition to these factors, we must also pay attention to whether a people is really out-bred or artificially is only out-bred, when an elite seizes power and imposes its agenda.”
@gottlieb – “Partly that* but also in the case of urbanization you’d have a lot of individuals who had physically left their clans behind in their home village so they’d have the clannish traits – whatever they might be – but physically no clan.”
The reason I focus on culture because it seems to me to offer a more holistic picture of the interrelationship between nurture and nature. Nurture in terms of environment includes many aspects. There is the obvious nurture of family which would directly relate to kin and clan. And there are the obvious environmental conditions of geography, climate, ecosystems, disease, starvation, malnutrition, war, etc. But there are also another variety of external conditions where people’s lives are controlled or regulated by some dominant group or ruling elite
Sometimes changes happened slowly over centuries such as banning of cousin marriages. But I suspect that clannishness was at times destroyed or decreased very quickly.
Enslavement can almost entirely destroy a culture with all of its rules and traditions that determined breeding patterns and the slaveholder can enforce entirely new behaviors and genetics mixing. Manoralism, the enclosure movement and rapid industrialization might also have had the power to utterly annihalate clan systems and behaviors in short periods of time. If you isolate inbreeders from their clan and mix them with outbreeders, they will outbreed and within a few generations they might forget their inbreeding past.
You can also simply destroy the conditions upon which a particular clannish society relies such as kill their leaders and make their homeland uninhabitable. You could also focus on particular clannish people by disproportionately imprisoning them, especially if combined with isolation cells, or making them so desperate that they’ll join the military (nothing like the military to make young men into patriotic citizens). Whatever you do, you just need to do it consistently for a few generations until the culture is forgotten and the behaviors altered.
Also, one must keep in mind that the non-clannish aren’t always against the clannish and clannishness. The British elite found it useful to send the clannish Scots-Irish to Ulster in the hope that they would subdue the clannish Irish. The Tidewater elite found it useful to send the clannish Scots-Irish to the frontier where they would subdue the clannish natives. Another tactic is that colonial governments in countries such as in Africa sometimes found it useful to increase clannish behavior in order to divide and conquer by setting clannish groups against one another. So, some post-colonial people might be in some ways more clannish than they were before being colonized. It’s not hard to get people to revert back to increasing clannishness. Just isolate them on a reservation or in a ghetto and then give them little if any hope of escaping. Some Native Americans probably were less clannish after being put on reservations than before.
There is a whole lot of social engineering going on, whether or not it was intended as such. Most of it is probably unintentional. I suspect much of the clannish behavior we see in certain populations isn’t their normal behavior.
If not for constant invasion and warfare destroying their society’s stability and infrastructure, would the Afghanis be so clannish now? They were once a developing country with women’s rights and other good things of a civil society. If the same thing was done to Ireland, how long would it take the Irish to revert back to full clannishness?
Considering centuries of colonialism and globalization, it makes me wonder what kind of world we are collectively creating and for what purpose. Do the global superpowers gain something by forcing the Afghanis into increasing clannishness? Or is it just a side effect of maintaining power? Why does the CIA for example overthrow and assassinate democratically elected leaders? If civil society were to increase in such societies, they would begin the process of decreasing clannishness. The Ottoman Empire never would have existed if the Arab people hadn’t been going a long way down the road toward non-clannishness. So, who gained from the destruction of the Ottoman Emprie. And who gains from the present state of affairs in the Middle East? If thought of as a social engineering project, what is trying to be achieved? Is it a success according to some goal?
A lot of the clannish behavior we see today is probably extreme distortions and maladaptations of tribal nature being forced into unnatural conditions and stressful situations. Mass industrialization, urbanization and globalization has had disproportionate negative impact on the poorest countries, typically those that have experienced centuries of imperial warfare and colonial exploitation. The world we live in today didn’t happen by accident. It was created that way by the largest social engineering experiment in human history. Clannish people, both European and otherwise, have for good reason fought against this destruction of the clannish way of life.
One problem we have is that we don’t know what healthy clannishness looks like. There aren’t any tribes left in the world that haven’t been effected by modern society. We don’t know what clannishness looks like under natural conditions. Modern society doesn’t just offer new alternatives. It destroys previous alternatives and the memory of what those alternatives meant.
Correction: “Some Native Americans probably were less clannish after being put on reservations than before.”
I meant to write: Some Native Americans probably were more clannish after being put on reservations t than before.
BTW the basis for my comment is knowing about the history of Native Americans.
Their tribal structures and ethnic identities were in some cases quite fluid. Furthermore, the violent plains tribes were a later creation. After Spanish contact, many tribes were decimated from disease and the survivors formed new tribes with newly created violent cultures based on apocalyptic religions. Those plains tribes weren’t existing in a natural state of clannishness. Also, many of the tribal people in the region of the northern and middle colonies had already been developing Mestizo like cultures with the French and so if anything were decreasing their clannishness.
Once forced on reservations, they became more isolated than ever before. Isolating people on reservations or in ghettoes is a very strange situation, completely abnormal conditions for human nature.
hbdchick
“however, even though they may have become outbreeders in the new world, were they in the right sort of circumstances to allow for the selection of non-clannish behaviors?”
Yes exactly. And even if they were it would still take time to develop those new traits. There ought to be all sorts of transitional states like this where people still have clannish traits but no clans. I can imagine all sorts of effects from situations like that e.g. religion as clan substitute for Roman slaves.
Another thought, if inbreeding did lead to stronger family resemblence through linkage effects and if kin recognition was a form of self-recognition and if people’s default state was to be around people they were closely related to (and therefore looked like) then how might that effect an individual’s fight/flight response i.e. would the default level of violent traits be set in the context of having a strong brake provided by strong kin recognition i.e. might you expect violence to initially go up with outbreeding and only decline after the fight/flight response was dialled down a little?
just a bit of wild speculatin’
.
Luke Lea
“You mean like imperialism aka The East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Let’s hope something similar doesn’t come out of China.”
Yeah. I think out-breeding whether by design (cousin-ban) or accident (mass urbanization *if* the old marriage form isn’t maintained after the move to the cities) ought to lead to nationalism at least as a stage in the process. Their lower level of aggression may counter that though.
@ted – “Where do Ashkenazi Jews fit here? They seem to be more overrepresented than the English in holding and supporting the non-clannish traits/behaviors and social and political movements.”
well, i don’t know, yet, ’cause i’ve barely looked at their mating patterns/history of social structures yet (there are a couple of posts — see left-hand column below — but not much yet).
ONE thing that i’m certain of at this point, however, is that i think we need to recognize that there are different sorts of ashkenazis, when it comes to clannish behavioral patterns that is. i think the further east you go in europe, the more clannish ashkenazis — or ashkenazi sub-groups — get (and i betcha the mating patterns will line up with this). see this previous comment of mine for more thoughts on this — but, please, keep in mind that those are tentative thoughts.
@benjamin – “But I suspect that clannishness was at times destroyed or decreased very quickly.”
i don’t think that clannishness can be destroyed quickly, because (of course) i think that clannishness is a set of innate behaviors. but certainly clans can be destroyed very quickly — e.g. the scottish clearances.
@hbd chick – “i don’t think that clannishness can be destroyed quickly, because (of course) i think that clannishness is a set of innate behaviors. but certainly clans can be destroyed very quickly — e.g. the scottish clearances.”
I doubt it would be easy and maybe not likely to destroy clannishness quickly. I was thinking about how breeding can quickly establish new traits. There could be natural conditions that could create similar results as breeding in quickly concentrating new genetic traits. Certainly, one could breed humans directly, but I don’t know that has ever been done to any extent even with slavery. However, some practices when combined might unintentionally act to speed up the process of eliminating certain genetics and increasing others. In controlling marriage, family and kinship practices, it might act like breeding in that the new behaviors sought are possibly correlated to particular genetics.
I only use breeding because it is a known easy method of creating quick genetic changes in a few generations. When humans choose mates, they are essentially practicing breeding on themselves. But what happens when some external person(s) or condition creates a large-scale change in breeding patterns that goes contrary to what an individual would choose under normal circumstances?
I’m not sure what such circumstances might create such radical shifts, but it seems like they are possible. Modernity has had massive change on human civilization and one suspects that there might have been a correlated speeding up of genetic change.
@benjamin – “If you isolate inbreeders from their clan and mix them with outbreeders, they will outbreed and within a few generations they might forget their inbreeding past.”
yes, but then the inbreeders would just be acquiring the outbreeders’ genes. (~_^) and the outbreeders the inbreeders’ genes [see lengthy quote from hamilton in comment above].
@benjamin – “If not for constant invasion and warfare destroying their society’s stability and infrastructure, would the Afghanis be so clannish now? They were once a developing country with women’s rights and other good things of a civil society. If the same thing was done to Ireland, how long would it take the Irish to revert back to full clannishness?”
that era in afghanistan was really an aberration, and the women’s rights, etc., didn’t extend very far outside of kabul. afghanistan has been very clannish and tribal since … forever (or a very long time anyway).
i like your thought experiment, though! how about this one?: how long would it take the english (the english of, say, the home counties) to revert back to full clannishness if they were subjected to invasion and warfare?
@benjamin – “Do the global superpowers gain something by forcing the Afghanis into increasing clannishness?”
yes. probably, like you said earlier, divide and conquer. =/
@benjamin – “The Ottoman Empire never would have existed if the Arab people hadn’t been going a long way down the road toward non-clannishness.”
oh, no, no, no. i think the ottomans were very clannish, and they understood very well how to play clannish peoples off one another — they were some of the all-time greatest experts at divide and conquer by playing up the clannishness they found out there.
ONE thing that i’m certain of at this point, however, is that i think we need to recognize that there are different sorts of ashkenazis, when it comes to clannish behavioral patterns that is. i think the further east you go in europe, the more clannish ashkenazis — or ashkenazi sub-groups — get (and i betcha the mating patterns will line up with this).
The furthest east were the Eastern European/Russian Jews, many of whom subsequently migrated west to the US. These Ashkenazis were heavily overrepresented in supporting the non-clannish traits/behaviors and social and political movements such as the Russian Revolution and the Civil Rights movement in the US.
In terms of supporting non-clannish traits/behaviors and social and political movements, Ashkenazis as a whole are less diverse than NW Europeans are, and are more uniformly on the non-clannish side than NW Europeans are.
They should be ranked at the top, no?
@benjamin – “A lot of the clannish behavior we see today is probably extreme distortions and maladaptations of tribal nature being forced into unnatural conditions and stressful situations.”
well, there are no “unnatural conditions.” there are some very new and never before seen conditions to be sure — but they’re not unnatural. it’s all nature.
@ted – “They should be ranked at the top, no?”
probably not at the top, no. main reason: israel (zionism, etc.). hardly universalistic, israel (although i know that some israelis actually are).
@benjamin – “I was thinking about how breeding can quickly establish new traits.”
yes. it’s not that quickly — not under normal circumstances anyway (and most of what we’ve seen in human history is normal circumstances).
you don’t need millions of years to significantly change people’s behaviors by changing the breeding patterns/selection pressures, but you probably need a good 1000 years/ca. 40 generations or so. something in that order anyway.
@hbd chick – “yes, but then the inbreeders would just be acquiring the outbreeders’ genes. (~_^) and the outbreeders the inbreeders’ genes [see lengthy quote from hamilton in comment above].”
Interesting quote.
I would agree that mixing goes both ways. I make that argument about assimilation. The forced assimilation of Germans during the World Wars did make the Germans more American but maybe also made American culture more German. Just a speculation I have considered.
However, it depends on the population size of the inbreeders and outbreeders, the ration of one to the othre. For my German cultural example, the Germans were the single largest ethnicity in America and so assimilating them wasn’t likely to happen while leaving the dominant culture unaltered. Plenty of smaller ethnic groups, though, have been assimilated without leaving even a trace behind. Similarly, if the inbreeders were a small group thrown into and mixed up with a large population of outbreeders, their impact on the outbreeders might be minimal or nearly non-existent.
The barbarians of the quote had such an impact partly because they came in such large numbers. There was no hope of easily assimilating them or absorbing their genetics without change.
@benjamin – “Similarly, if the inbreeders were a small group thrown into and mixed up with a large population of outbreeders, their impact on the outbreeders might be minimal or nearly non-existent.”
absolutely! quantity matters. a LOT.
@benjamin – “For my German cultural example, the Germans were the single largest ethnicity in America and so assimilating them wasn’t likely to happen while leaving the dominant culture unaltered.”
i agree, 100%! (which is why i’m so concerned about tens of millions of mexicans/central americans coming to the u.s…. =/ )
@hbd chick – “that era in afghanistan was really an aberration, and the women’s rights, etc., didn’t extend very far outside of kabul. afghanistan has been very clannish and tribal since … forever (or a very long time anyway).”
Part of my point was that it simply demonstrated change toward non-clannishness was happening in that culture. What if it had continued unabated and even increased since that time?
Also, consider it in terms of the Ottoman Empire. What if the Ottoman Empire had never been destroyed and had brought Afghanistan under its influence? Just imagine if the Middle East hadn’t become a battleground and plaything of colonial empires and instead had maintained itself as power to be reckoned with. The Ottoman Empire was comparable to other empires of its time. What would another century of industrialization and urbanization have done for the populations of the Ottoman Empire? How less clannish would that be today?
“i like your thought experiment, though! how about this one?: how long would it take the english (the english of, say, the home counties) to revert back to full clannishness if they were subjected to invasion and warfare?”
Clannishness is the original state of homo sapiens. Even the most non-clannish person probably carries much genetic carryover from our collective clannish evolution. Part of the problem of non-clannish civilization is that it is so unnatural and hence precarious.
@hbd chick – “oh, no, no, no. i think the ottomans were very clannish, and they understood very well how to play clannish peoples off one another — they were some of the all-time greatest experts at divide and conquer by playing up the clannishness they found out there.”
I bet the ruling elite and the urbanized populations weren’t as clannish. As far as that goes, the Spanish Empire and British Empire were full of their own clannish people. The Iberian Peninsula and the British Isles are full of clannish groups. Most empires probably have had populations that were mostly clannish, but it is who is at the center of an empire who are the less clannish.
Then again, ruling elites do tend to be rather inbred or that has tended to be the case with European royalty and aristocracy. Anyway, why wouldn’t the Ottoman Empire have fallen the same path other empires took in assimilating clannish groups and lessening clannish behavior/genetics?
@hbd chick – “well, there are no “unnatural conditions.” there are some very new and never before seen conditions to be sure — but they’re not unnatural. it’s all nature.”
All that I meant was that there are conditions that are contrary to the conditions under which human nature evolved and so human nature has no instinctual responses for adaptive behavior in such novel conditions. Of course, humans can adapt to almost any conditions, whether or not those adaptations are optimal and healthy or even sustainable. Humans will always adapt or try to adapt.
It is similar with other animals. You put rats into a crowded environment and they will adapt to that environment. However, their adaptation will include increased aggression, violence, killing and cannibalism. Forcing rats into a crowded cage that they can’t escape is contrary to the conditions under which rat nature evolved.
probably not at the top, no. main reason: israel (zionism, etc.). hardly universalistic, israel (although i know that some israelis actually are).
Most Ashkenazis support non-clannishness with regards to Israel. Hence they’re frequently called “anti-Israel” by other Jews and by pro-Israel NW Europeans in the US.
The Jews who are non-universalistic with respect to Israel tend to be Sephardic and Oriental Jews, and marginally Jewish, mainly Slavic Russians.
@ Benjamin David Steele
I think all of us here on the bottom, are scientific experiments. The world and especially the Western world, into a large test tube.
I think that religion may have some relationship with the clanishness somewhere. Note that the idea of religion is a broad view and if West Asia, is also universal, but in the sense of imposition, like,” My God is more legitimate than his.”
I mean, people clanish need a tangle of laws to be followed.
I also think the idea of individualism is also linked to greater genetic variation. And in this case, I realize that some nations live identity conflicts. In Latin American countries, I believe there was a kind of symbiosis between traits clanish and out-breed, caused by transmission through osmosis, the genes most tribalist, present in the 3 racial roots of these people and racial mix, which naturally weakens the genetic similarity.
I think most Western nations live this type of conflict (liberal-conservative, righ brain-left brain, inbreed-outbreed) because the process industralização and Fordism, the extreme specialization in the labor market, reconfigured the company in a growing and outlier model swiss cheese, formed by bio-cultural niches.
And the lack of coexistence and learning creates oddities like prejudice American male urban against rural man, forgetting for example, that much of their food (including eating) is derived from mechanized farms (or not so) of American farmers .
It is the famous alienation. People are so isolated in their achievements and their way of life to another and forgets, forgets the other what is different, because living in niche identities strongly demarcated (tribalism of ideas) they especially urban ones, the supposed diversity of divergences neglicencialmente tolerated.
An interesting case that could exploit Hbd Chick, is the case of Thailand. I feel that this country is a rare case of non-clan society outside Europe.
IndustrializaÇÃÃÃÃO = industrializaTION
LOOL
@ted – “Most Ashkenazis support non-clannishness with regards to Israel.”
what do you mean by “support non-clannishness with regards to Israel”? thnx.
@hbd chick – “i agree, 100%! (which is why i’m so concerned about tens of millions of mexicans/central americans coming to the u.s…. =/ )”
True. Then again, we all get attached to the way things are.
People were attached to the way things were before the Germans were assimilated and the American culture was Germanized. But today that Germanized American culture is what we know and love. There is no living memory left of American culture before being Germanized. We treat this Germanized American culture as if it is the way things have always been.
That is the tendency of humans. We become attached to our tiny little blip of existence, not realizing how unusual our moment in time is. We project the present onto the past claiming our defense of the present is a defense of the past when in actuality the present is what changed the past. We modern Americans are what the ethnocentric Americans of the past feared would happen. We have have found the enemy and he is us.
A few generations from now will be an entirely different America. Those future Americans will project their own contemporary times onto us. America will go on assimilating and changing.
BTW I’m offering this as a description rather than a prescription. As you know, I prefer the non-assimilationist Midlands model. The assimilationist model gives you mutts. Who are the English? Celtic, Angles, Saxons, Danes, Norwegians, Normans, etc. That is the English mutt model adopted by mainstream American society.
That is the problem with empires. They tend toward the mutt model. Assimilation is how you create patriotic nationalism. If we want to be a single nation and global superpower, then we’ll have to assimilate in order to create some new mutt ethnic identity.. I personally don’t want that because I like cultural differences, but there is no way to have one without the other.
@benjamin – “Part of my point was that it simply demonstrated change toward non-clannishness was happening in that culture. What if it had continued unabated and even increased since that time?”
i don’t think that it was an indicator of much change in afghanistan at that time. some elite groups in kabul decided to behave a bit differently — in a more western fashion — for a while, but most of the country did not go down that road. i don’t think they went down that road at all.
@benjamin – “Part of the problem of non-clannish civilization is that it is so unnatural and hence precarious.”
it is odd. but, at the same time, i don’t think that, say, paleolithic hunter-gatherers were necessarily as crazy clannish as the arabs are today. it would depend on a lot of things, i think — population density being a big factor. not all peoples in the past were equally clannish — just as not all peoples today are equally clannish.
but, i agree — the hyper-non-clannishness is odd — and probably pretty unusual (although i think the bushmen might be relatively non-clannish — i still need to read about them).
I think the case should be studied Ashkenazi firstly for its unusual molecular morphology. I have searched several papers and all converge to the higher incidence of left-handed people among them than their gentile counterparts and this may explain a lot of questions about them as unusual incidence of mental disorders, mental agitation, high verbal and mathematical intelligence (seems that some studies have suggested that some types of left-handed intellectually exceed these two attributes).
In addition, there are also a number of other disadvantages (or advantages with unusual high price) that this implies, as a higher incidence of mental disorders such as asperger, stuttering, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
Some factors that seem anecdotes or has no certainty of scientific evidence is that lefties tend to have reversed their emotions compared to right-handers.
Ashkenazi Jews are basically extreme Weird group, as conceptualized Staffan (old fashioned and Weird groups).
They want more diversity because they themselves are more diverse in behavior, temperament
Want to impose the gay agenda, because there are probably more of them who are homosexual than its counterpart Gentile
The eternal struggle between Ashkenazi versus non-white is an old conflict between the Weird (predominantly righ brain oriented, creative, subjective and morally adept to the new behavioral changes) Old fashioned and conservative (predominantly left brain oriented, more organized, morally objective thinking binomial and reckless social stability).
@benjamin – “Anyway, why wouldn’t the Ottoman Empire have fallen the same path other empires took in assimilating clannish groups and lessening clannish behavior/genetics?”
because i think that the ottoman turks, themselves, were very clannish. the ottoman empire was not based on universalism, etc., etc.
@benjamin – “All that I meant was that there are conditions that are contrary to the conditions under which human nature evolved and so human nature has no instinctual responses for adaptive behavior in such novel conditions.”
ah! yes. gotcha now! agreed. (^_^)
I mean supporting non-clannish, universalistic, liberal politics in Israel like Ashkenazis do in Western countries. Things like opposing the settlements, supporting Palestinian rights, supporting Israeli Arabs (who make up 20% of Israel’s population), supporting the rights of marginalized Jews such as Ethiopian Jews, supporting migrant workers and immigrants, etc.
@Gottlieb – “I think all of us here on the bottom, are scientific experiments.”
Ain’t that the truth!
“I also think the idea of individualism is also linked to greater genetic variation. And in this case, I realize that some nations live identity conflicts.”
That is definitely true for the US. During the colonial times, it was a crazy mix. The entire US history is an identity conflict.
In the 18th century, South Carolina was majority black and Pennsylvania was majority German (not to mention that Western two thirds of the future US was majority Mexican). When the English founding fathers talked of the rights of Englishmen while convening their congress in ethnically diverse Philadelphia, they were obviously ignoring the non-English people all around them.
I wonder what all those Germans thought of the rights of Englishmen. No wonder the British government wanted to take their rights away as Englishmen. After all, many of the colonists weren’t Englishmen. It’s ironic that the Anglo-American colonists were unlikely to have regained their rights without the help of non-Anglo-American colonists along with the Spanish and French empires.
The English were mutts which is the basis of their cultural history which relates to their constitutional history. I suppose their mutt ethnicity might be the source of the English value of individualism. The American mutt ethnicity built off of this and increased the genetic mixing. Maybe its because most Americans are so mixed up that we have such a love for individualism. When you are so mixed you have no single ethnicity to identify with.
Benjamin David Steele @ ”Ain’t that the truth!”
Because this is not true??
Hmm, Look, I think the more individualistic tend to be so, because their genetics are (more) varied, to say the more you mix it outside the family, the greater the tendency that has unusual combinations, especially if their parents are not far away and this manifests completely on their cognitive style, behavioral or polical choices AND more individualism. ”I have” a theory that the group Weird, and more anti-clanish are the epitome of this long process of exogamy and that they would be smarter than average, based on the idea that lower inbreeding intrarracial, greater intelligence (off cours that eugenic patterns should be contributed also to this). That is to say, I think when you mix within racial lines, but broader, as Finnish with English or French to Greek (well, I do not know where these lines can be marked) you will have less clanish. But if you mix outside racial lines, it can happen (as in the discussion of the last post Jayman) that ‘old traits’, submerge the two races and obviously the clanishness can also reappear. In this case I supplement that Latin Americans exhibit a conflict of traits clanish and anti-clanish.
The American case differs slightly because the conflict does not occur internally, but (much more) precisely because groups populating differente niches, stable niche within American and predominantly Anglo-Teutonic landscape, with urban niches that before the great immigration of today, have displayed a ethnographic landscape far more diversified, especially the northeastern Yankee.
I also think that after the need for cheap labor and stabilization of migration from the countryside to the city, people smarter (and probably are more culturally divergent) began to migrate to the city.
The very idea of clanishness primitive (the most primitive type) relates, in my opinion, very strongly with the idea of non-intellectualism, since its antonym is precisely the divergence and variety of ideas, science needs it.
@Gottlieb – As far as I can tell, I don’t think there is necessarily any strong disagreement between us in these last few comments. However, my knowledge and experience is mostly limited to the US and related countries. I can’t say much about your knowledge and experience of other countries. I can only try to translate what you are saying into the context of US society. Sorry about that.
That said, I see no reason the same principles wouldn’t apply to any country in about the same way. In the US, we have a variety of kinds of mixed populations with a variety of combinations. Mexicans are mostly a mix of Spanish and indigenous. Cubans are mostly a mix of Spanish and Africans. Blacks are mostly a mix of African and British.
American blacks are an interesting case. They are typically referred to as African-Americans, but they more accurately should be called Anglo-African-Americans, Celtic-African-Americans, Afro-British-Americans or something like that. Blacks have some qualities of Scots-Irish Southerners with whom they probably share some genetics along with sharing centuries of cultural history. The Scots-Irish are semi-clannish, but blacks are in some ways the least clannish of all Americans. Maybe it has to do with having been difficult maintaining their own separate culture for most of Americn history.
I first became aware of US blacks lack of clannishness from an anecdote. A black leader told blacks that they should only buy from blacks in order to help black business owners. Whites criticized this as being racist. However, what these critics didn’t understand is that no one had to tell the Irish to only buy from the Irish or the Chinese from the Chinese. These non-black ethnic groups had the clannish sense of loyalty to buy from their own without anyone having to tell them.
Blacks also get accused at not having enough family values. I would translate this as meaning that they don’t have as strong of clannish kinfolk loyalty. It would be interesting to measure how strongly they identify with values of individualism.
At the same time, the ghettoization has isolated some populations of blacks which has created a sub-culture. This more isolated and concentrated black population has shown more of the clannish culture of honor common among white Southerners, even when these blacks have been in the North for a few generations.
Blacks like many other groups will under the right conditions revert to clannish behavior and yet they don’t seem to have as strong of a clannish identity. I’m not sure what explains black culture. Slavery has made them a unique population.
As an entirely different example, the Spanish of the Iberian Peninsula are among the most genetically mixed up people of Europe. I’ve speculated that such mixed up genetics and the history of cultural diversity is what made the Spanish so good at governing an empire ruling so many diverse people.
Their method was interesting as well. They found the best way to assimilate people into the Spanish Empire was to spread Spanish genetics throughout the population which created a caste-based mestizo culture with those of purest Spanish descent at the top.
I wonder how the Spanish govern themselves in Spain in this post-imperial era. Is there any remnants of a caste-based society? Where do the clannish Basque and Romani fit in as they have their own autonomous communities within Spain.
Do the mainstream Spanish people value individualism more for being so genetically mixed? Is there a Spanish mutt culture equivaent to the English and American mutt cultures? Or has the clannish communities in Spain helped keep Spanish society more clannish overall? Do they merely have clannish pluralism?
A different way to look at this issue is by using what appear to be atypical examples or at least examples that don’t easily fit our expectations. I’m thinking of large empires with clannish ruling elites and populations. And I’m thinking of tribal people who are less clannish. As for the latter, some Native Americans seemed a lot less clannish than others. They were more willing to form alliances with other tribes and more willing to marry and adopt Europeans into their tribe.
North Carolina might be a good place to look. It has an odd history and population, including some people with extremely mixed up ancestry. North Carolina early on was a safe haven for clannish people (including Native Americans), religious dissenters, and political dissidents. I’m sure these people all fought each other, but they also found common enemies in the ruling elite. There is a weird mix of conservatism and progressivism there. I wonder if that relates to a more genetically mixed up population and yet with plenty of clannish ethnicities in that mix.
That makes me further wonder about what kind of results are created by ethno-genetic mixing. Mixing two separate inbreeding ethnicities would probably be very different from mixing two outbreeding populations. Then there is the issue of ethnic interbreeding when two populations are entirely separate. Is it different to have English who are a mix of Celtics and Northern Europeans than Spanish who are a mix of Celtic, Mediterannean, Moors, etc? Are the Celtics any genetically closer to Northern Europeans than to the Moors?
Well, I think the concept of the spectrum of non-clanishness clanishness yes can be applied worldwide. However, I think there are finicky differences among some realities. Like I said, Latinos who are primarily mixed race, crossed a threshold where the sharing of similar genes creates a society based on the extended community as with Scandinavia. What made the Scandinavians in this way?
Sharing genes is not far regions and probably a dash of blood Saami, which is mixed with some strains Mongolian. Are only assumptions and sometimes I like to travel possibilities. (Sorry!! LOL). Then we have centuries of exogamous marriages and sharing genes among families is the extended clan. If before the clans helped themselves at the expense of others, now, the natural community help themselves.
In the U.S., yes, we have a very mixed population, but mixing that occurred there failed to turn all Americans in people of mixed race. As I said, there, white as afield regions as Sicily and Ireland married.
The idea of hybrid vigor would immersing ancient traces between the two races in the crossbred proles. And as we know, one of the obvious traits that would submerge the clanishness.
I do not think black Americans are less clanish U.S. group. I think as a black display multiple behavioral traits archaic, so clearly they display behavior clanish, especially the lower class. American blacks smarter, to be less clanish (I think this is a tendency for the more intelligent) but they are a minority in their group and not interfere in the behavior.
I think blacks are the exact opposite behavior taxonomic than whites, especially white northern Europeans. Note that due to the large phenotypic diversity between whites forced the old racialist determine various types of European thought and this fraction was also established for all other races. In contrast, blacks have a weak view of who is black and who is not. As a result, they tend to consider, often vision established by whites (aka, Jim Crow in the American South). But here in my country for example, blacks tend to determine the blackness through meager phenotypic markers such as skin color. So when you see various types of people with different skin colors and physical characteristics within the black American community, does not mean they are less clanish, but for historical reasons (the establishment of parameters for racial taxonomy and its social implications and cultural) and bio-behavioral, they tend to consider the mongrel within their group. Something similar happens here with respect to whites, But note that many here are not real white, but more like the MENA. This should affect the way people determine who is in his tribe and who is not.
Perhaps so many Hispanics and blacks are groups that exhibit clanish traits, caused even the inbred late weddings and the mix of archaic genes as clanishness, emerged by racial mixing and own standard mating racial resulting in decreased sharing of similar genes. In summary, the mixture distant genes (but genetically different families closer) results in the extended community while the race mixture results in ethnic conflict (inclusive internal conflict with people can present the same time clanish and non-clanish traits).
Unlike what happened in the U.S., here, the population niches of the non-clanish and clanish tribes are very close. Finally, Latin America is a mess of lines of the non-clanish and clanish while the U.S. and to a lesser extent Europe, are societies that are headed for a diverging trend between two clear types of people, non-clanish and clanish. In the U.S. and Canada, the non-clanish populate urban centers and clanish populate the fields while the medium-sized cities, especially in the slightly more distant coasts, is a transition zone between the two groups.
hbd*chick – “Yeah. I think out-breeding whether by design (cousin-ban) or accident (mass urbanization *if* the old marriage form isn’t maintained after the move to the cities) ought to lead to nationalism at least as a stage in the process.”
I’ve heard 19th century European nationalism described as a kind of faux communitarianism, an emotional substitute for the real ties of community that were destroyed by the twin processes of urbanization and industrialization. To judge by the contemporary scene in the West it was a passing phase, but while it lasted . . .
Benjamin,
I feel you have a strong liberal discourse and in my opinion, when there is no weighting (also depends on when you should have it) there is no logic. For that you have concluded that black Americans have not had the opportunity to showcase their culture, you should keep in mind a number of facts and arguments to substantiate it and not by emotional motivation. I speak from experience, living in the country with large numbers of blacks and mulattos can tell you that they have had the opportunity to showcase their culture and has not been successful. Note that what we call black culture largely does not originate from ancestral land, but the direct influence them with white people (and many of them Jews).
If in the past they had no chance because of the ugly white racism so now we know that they have all the opportunities they want and the result …
seems to be … not the best.
politely speaking.
When evaluating the conflict of different people in a multicultural reality, as the great American cities, it is necessary to study hard, the various causes that model different behaviors. Well, in fact, the South Asian and Northeast Asians comunities are more tribalist than ”Northwest European” (wasp and culturally white wasp) communities eg. But the most important is the intelligence and other factors. The fact that blacks have completed late they should buy from you, like other communities do naturally, does not mean they are the least clanish U.S., please. Means that first, they are familiar with the culture of the great multicultural U.S. cities and also with the greater American culture itself.
I think blacks are a group apart should submit their idiosyncrasies behavorial, we should not associate them openly with Eurasians, because these are two relatively distinct groups. Eurasians have similar behavior patterns, because they originate from the same initial populations and has mingled much more than compared to SSA. Even black Americans, are still 80% SSA. I agree that mixing with Europeans may have changed their behavior, but first of all it is necessary to analyze the structure of this group. If the distribution of alleles Europeans is homogeneous or if there are groups as almost pure groups with mulatto groups historically associated with the african american community.
Regarding the Iberians, I think they are more non-clanishness especially if you compare to the southeastern Europeans. Perhaps the invasions and mixtures with north European populations (barbarian invasions) may have triggered this decline in clan behavior (slightly if you compare to north euros). I think some people who have long been marrying within their community creates a set of ”clanish genes” as their genetic signatures, as I think happens with middle eastern. Note that Greeks, Italians and South Slavs have more genetic markers in this region compared to Spanish and Portuguese. The Portuguese are still less clanish seen that in any region of Portuguese colonization you see racial mixtures. The Spaniards have a more standard Indian colonization, where mixing occurs to conquer the territory (through settlement) and then separation by caste racial purity. But perhaps the Portuguese have also done something similar, but with less accuracy.
At most, I disagree that this type of achievement is more efficient, it is much better you govern your. No genetic similarity , the social atmosphere becomes unsustainable and the elite need to make a number of concessions to the governed that gradually will reap the power of this elite. The elite generally smarter, tend to reduce the number of children to maintain the heritage within generations, increasing the risk of demographic racial impurity or marriage with people less intelligent. This happened with the gemanic elite in transilvania,
http://www.v-weiss.de/cycle.html
(I hope it will last text right, because I’m not in time to re-read it, sorry)
Yes, they are questions that should be raised. I believe that genes Northern Europeans are more likely to create anti-clanishness but I think depends on the selective pressures. The mating pattern of today is different from the pattern of mating in the past and I think the culture that interferes considerably. As I always like to use as an example. If in a few generations it is possible to raise the intelligence and change to personality of a population then it is quite possible that genes clanish can be selected in a given context, as can be de-selected in another.
I think extremely peaceful societies like the Nordic nations, created an environment for the proliferation of anti-clanish genes and establishment of a radical liberal elite, and even the acceptance of the population, and this elite of this culture, was part of the whole pattern of mating Nordic postwar. More intellectual, more peaceful, less testosterone and more susceptible to trap to grandiloquence philosophical.
I think we live in a time of darkness to intellectuals, since the anti-clanish genes, more common in men peaceful, smarter, begins to be regarded as unproductive for women while genes clanish return to be considered more interesting for survival in white extraction countries. In addition, it always highlight the differences in fertility between liberals and conservatives.
“like greying wander above, i’d be curious to know the backgrounds of all those bikers”
Or criminal gangs in general. Often they are ethnic-based. Here on the west coast of BC we do have a United Nations gang (this is not a joke!), with the non-ethnic requirement dropped. But they ARE all criminals, so they may not be representative of how normal (non-criminal) people act. We also have lots of ethnic gangs too.
I think Ashkenazis would have to be ranked at the top in least clannishness. They have been more uniform and much more overrepresented than the English in non-clannishness and supporting non-clannish political/social movements. In fact their primary opponents in supporting non-clannishness in the US were WASPs. The conception of the US as a “melting pot”, a “nation of immigrants”, a proposition nation, came from Ashkenazis. They were the major supporters of black civil rights and sexual liberation in the 60s, and more recently of Human Rights such as migrant and LGBT rights in the US and worldwide.
In Germany, Ashkenazis were the major supporters and were prominent leaders of the Weimar Republic, which was the liberal democracy that replaced the authoritarian German Empire in 1919. The Weimar Republic was known for its non-clannish politics and social liberalism, its inclusion of minorities, its protection and fostering of gay and sexual rights and freedom, etc. The primary opponents of the Ashkenazis were Germans who succeeded in destroying the Weimar Republic and replacing it with the Nazi regime.
Also the Princeton historian Jonathan Israel argues that the intellectual foundation of the Enlightenment and of modern, secular, universalistic liberal democracy originated from the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Israel#Viewpoints
“Israel has made a detailed case that the philosopher Baruch Spinoza “and Spinozism were in fact the intellectual backbone of the European Radical Enlightenment everywhere, not only in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, and Scandinavia but also Britain and Ireland”, and that the Radical Enlightenment, leaning towards religious skepticism and republican government, leads on to the modern liberal-democratic state.[2][3]”
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/enlightenment-contested-by-jonathan-israel-427458.html
“In Radical Enlightenment, the great revisionist study which Enlightenment Contested continues, Jonathan Israel made an irrefutable case for the Amsterdam philosopher Baruch Spinoza as the instigator of modern “Western Atlantic” values, with individual liberty, universal equality, democracy and rationalism at its core. A previous notion of the Enlightenment was based on a more moderate programme, associated with Hobbes, Locke and Voltaire.”
@ted – “I mean supporting non-clannish, universalistic, liberal politics in Israel like Ashkenazis do in Western countries. Things like opposing the settlements, supporting Palestinian rights, supporting Israeli Arabs (who make up 20% of Israel’s population), supporting the rights of marginalized Jews such as Ethiopian Jews, supporting migrant workers and immigrants, etc.”
ok! just checking to make sure that we’re on the same page, and we more or less are. i’d also be interested to know how many ashkenazi jews — both in and outside of israel — support (or don’t support) open borders for israel. that’d be another good indicator of degree of universalism.
the most important thing now, though, is numbers. data. actual facts. have we (you) got any data anywhere to show ashkenazi (both in and outside of israel) opinion on all of these issues? some links to surveys maybe? thanks. (^_^)
@ted – “Also the Princeton historian Jonathan Israel argues that the intellectual foundation of the Enlightenment and of modern, secular, universalistic liberal democracy originated from the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza.”
yes, i’ve seen that. and that’s interesting.
that is only one historian’s conclusion, though. he may be right, but the jury’s still out on that one, afaik.
Stepping back from speculating for a second and reading your definition some more i think the idea that clannishNESS as a collection of traits doesn’t require clans is true but potentially confusing. Once evolved yes, clans aren’t required for clannish traits because those traits are in the genes – the traits might require clans to function as they were originally intended but they don’t require clans to function. However clans were required initially as the traits were evolved for life in clans and so by definition required clans to evolve.
So perhaps, something like,
#
Clannishness is a set of human behavioural traits evolved in small extended family groups to suit life in small extended family groups.
The broad category of clannishness contains variation within it related to specific types of small group life e.g. forager, fisher, valley farmer, mountain farmer, pastoralist, FBD pastoralist etc but what clannish traits all have in common is they developed to optimize co-operation at the small group level.
A critical and ubiquitous aspect of optimizing co-operation at a small group level and therefore of clannishness is maintaining a high level of relatedness within the small extended family group through inbreeding defined as a preference or insistence upon close cousin marriage.
Clannish people are people with clannish traits. They may or may not still live in the clans those traits were evolved to suit.
Clannishness would be the driving force behind what has been called amoral familialism.
#
There’ll be plenty of things wrong with that definition as well but i think if you first define clannishness as a broad category (to allow for variations, FBD etc) but contain that broad category within a simple conceptual boundary of evolved small-group behaviours and as such the *foundation* of human behaviour then i think it’s conceptually much easier to see the potential transformations from that broad foundational state i.e.
1) What happens to clannish people who lose their clans?
2) What happens to clannish people who outbreed?
– 2a) are there quick effects simply from the loss of relatedness
– 2b) are there slow effects as new traits or trait frequencies develop to suit the new environment
3) What happens when you have clannish people and outbred people living in the same city?
etc
Maybe it’s just my linear brain liking to see things as a process.
@Luke Lea
“I’ve heard 19th century European nationalism described as a kind of faux communitarianism, an emotional substitute for the real ties of community that were destroyed by the twin processes of urbanization and industrialization.”
Yes that’s what i have in mind although i don’t think it’s faux i think it’s a natural consequence of what is being described here. This may sound odd but i see ita as similar to the energy states of electrons in an atom – there are only a few stable states so the electrons either stay at their current stable state or if enough energy is applied they jump to the next stable state.
I also think at each jump the ability to co-operate on a larger scale creates a huge jump in the amount of group synergy.
Combined together those two premises would mean any population that makes the jump to national scale identity would by definition break whatever balance of power existed beforehand with obvious consequences. Once the new situation stabilized things might settle down again but i do see a phase of relative ultra-nationalism as a logical consequence of this process for the balance of power reasons mentioned – at least for those nations that suddenly become *much* more powerful e.g. Holland 1600s, England 1640s, France say 1800s, Germany, Japan and Italy 1870s etc.
I think it’s a bit like young men going through puberty when they first start coming into their full strength. I was a terror as a teenager but gradually calmed down – partly no doubt because as an early developr i came into my full strength a bit sooner than most of the others so i *could* be a terror.
“at least for those nations that suddenly become *much* more powerful”
Should have been “become relatively much more powerful.” I think all populations that make this jump will become more powerful simply through the increased synergy but it’s those who become *relatively* much more powerful than their neighbours are those liable to go through a stomping phase – like young men who go through puberty early.
ok! just checking to make sure that we’re on the same page, and we more or less are. i’d also be interested to know how many ashkenazi jews — both in and outside of israel — support (or don’t support) open borders for israel. that’d be another good indicator of degree of universalism.
Why would the views of Jewish Americans with respect to Israel be relevant? Are the views of English Americans with respect to England’s border policies relevant? Note that Israel is much more non-Ashkenazi than England is non-English. England is something like 85% English. Israel is 20% Arab, and about 50% Ashkenazi. So Israel is already much more diverse from an Ashkenazi point of view than England is. Also what would “open borders” mean specifically?
the most important thing now, though, is numbers. data. actual facts. have we (you) got any data anywhere to show ashkenazi (both in and outside of israel) opinion on all of these issues? some links to surveys maybe? thanks. (^_^)
Data on what? Ashkenazi liberalism?
@ted – “Why would the views of Jewish Americans with respect to Israel be relevant?”
because we’re trying to determine how universalistic ashkenazi jews as a group are — on average — and ashkenazi jews live both in israel and outside of israel. i’m interested in the opinions of ashkenazi jews living in europe, too.
@ted – “Data on what? Ashkenazi liberalism?”
liberalism, views on israel, corruption, nepotism, civicness — anything that can tell me how clannish ashkenazi jews are (or are not). see the (partial) list at the end of the post wrt behaviors/behavioral traits that i think are are related to clannishness.
right now, i don’t have any data on ashkenazi jews. i’ve looked at all the other groups i included in my Top 10 list, but i haven’t looked at jews of any sort. i can’t rank them until i have some data about them. (and, anyway, please keep in mind that the list in my post is something i did off the top of my head. i need to work up a serious ranking system, as i mentioned above. the list in the post may be subject to change!)
edit: forgot this part…
@ted – “Also what would ‘open borders’ mean specifically?”
simply — what are the opinions of ashkenazi jews wrt immigration to israel — does the majority think that there should be no or little immigration to israel? limited immigration to israel? lots of immigration to israel? and are we talking about jews immigrating to israel? arabs immigrating to israel? africans immigrating to israel? etc., etc.
@grey – “Stepping back from speculating for a second and reading your definition some more i think the idea that clannishNESS as a collection of traits doesn’t require clans is true but potentially confusing. Once evolved yes, clans aren’t required for clannish traits because those traits are in the genes – the traits might require clans to function as they were originally intended but they don’t require clans to function. However clans were required initially as the traits were evolved for life in clans and so by definition required clans to evolve….
“Clannish people are people with clannish traits. They may or may not still live in the clans those traits were evolved to suit.“
yes! yes, thank you. that is just the sort of help i was looking for. (^_^)
i was fumbling around with that idea there (the one highlighted), but i couldn’t put it into words. THANK you! (^_^)
back to the drawing board….
because we’re trying to determine how universalistic ashkenazi jews as a group are — on average — and ashkenazi jews live both in israel and outside of israel. i’m interested in the opinions of ashkenazi jews living in europe, too.
Right, but what would “open borders” mean specifically? And why would the views of Jewish Americans with respect to Israel be relevant rather than their views with respect to America? Are you also looking at the views of English Americans regarding England?
liberalism, views on israel, corruption, nepotism, civicness — anything that can tell me how clannish ashkenazi jews are (or are not). see the (partial) list at the end of the post wrt behaviors/behavioral traits that i think are are related to clannishness.
There’s lots of data on Jewish liberalism and Jewish support of equality, universalism, secularism, civil rights, etc.
The Jewish vote has been overwhelmingly Democratic:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/jewvote.html
A majority of Jews support equality for gays:
http://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/on-gay-marriage-poll-shows-a-state-split/
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2008/11/la-jews-overwhe.html
Jews are more secular than Protestants and Catholics:
Click to access Harris-Interactive-Poll-Research-While-Most-Americans-Believe-in-God-Only-36-pct-A-2003-10.pdf
Etc.
Jews score much higher than other groups on these types of measures.
hubchik
“back to the drawing board…”
Glad to help.
.
Ted
A lot of the people who comment here – well me mostly – are very speculative whereas hbdchick is very data-driven and the data hbdchick is interested in is historical mating / marriage patterns.
A lot of the people who comment here – well me mostly – are very speculative whereas hbdchick is very data-driven and the data hbdchick is interested in is historical mating / marriage patterns.
There’s lots of data on Jewish politics, social attitudes, support for liberalism, equality, universalism, etc and they suggest that Jews rank highest on these measures.
South Africa would be another data point. South African Jews were major supporters and leaders of the anti-Apartheid movement, which was a universalistic and pro-equality movement and which was opposed by the Afrikaners, who are of Dutch descent.
@ted – “Are you also looking at the views of English Americans regarding England?”
no, because most english americans have been here so long that i think that their “emotional ties” to old blighty are probably pretty weak. otoh, i AM interested in knowing how, for instance, mexican-americans feel about immigration policies for mexico. other more recent immigrant groups, too. (i had a great conversation with a greek taxi driver — been in the u.s. for 22 years — and he thought that open borders for the u.s. was just fine, but for greece — no! greece is for greeks. (~_^) )
@ted – “There’s lots of data on Jewish politics, social attitudes, support for liberalism, equality, universalism, etc and they suggest that Jews rank highest on these measures.”
thanks for the links! at some point i will probably (hopefully) get around to checking out the “clannishness” of jews (and, like i said, i think different jewish groups are probably clannish or not to different degrees) — and then i’ll look at any and all data out there that i can find. i just haven’t done that yet, which is why no jews of any sort featured in my Top 10 list there. the only jewish group that i maybe could’ve thrown in there is my favorite — the hasidim — who, let’s face it, are awfully clannish. i don’t know precisely where in my ranking they belong, but it’s gotta be at least a 7.
edit: you’ll notice that i didn’t include any africans in my list, either. haven’t looked at any african populations yet. (well, not really. the ethiopians a bit.)
@Gottlieb – “I feel you have a strong liberal discourse”
That sounds like an accusation. How dare you imply I’m liberal-minded. :)
“For that you have concluded that black Americans have not had the opportunity to showcase their culture, you should keep in mind a number of facts and arguments to substantiate it and not by emotional motivation. I speak from experience, living in the country with large numbers of blacks and mulattos can tell you that they have had the opportunity to showcase their culture and has not been successful. Note that what we call black culture largely does not originate from ancestral land, but the direct influence them with white people (and many of them Jews).
If in the past they had no chance because of the ugly white racism so now we know that they have all the opportunities they want and the result …
seems to be … not the best.”
I wouldn’t generalize about all black people any more than I’d generalize about all white people. I honestly don’t care if American blacks have showcased their culture. I think it is hard to even say what their culture is. For centuries, African Americans didn’t have a separate independent culture. The culture they have today is an American mutt culture.
The main thing that interests me is how unique is the history of African Americans. No other group in American history had such drastic changes forced onto them. They didn’t even have control over their own marriage and breeding patterns. Their lives were controlled which forced entirely new patterns. To my mind, that is an experiment like no other.
“The fact that blacks have completed late they should buy from you, like other communities do naturally, does not mean they are the least clanish U.S., please. Means that first, they are familiar with the culture of the great multicultural U.S. cities and also with the greater American culture itself.”
I basically agree. I have no idea what it ultimately means. It just offers a clue that there is something atypical about their collective behavioral tendencies.
“I think blacks are a group apart should submit their idiosyncrasies behavorial, we should not associate them openly with Eurasians, because these are two relatively distinct groups. Eurasians have similar behavior patterns, because they originate from the same initial populations and has mingled much more than compared to SSA. Even black Americans, are still 80% SSA. I agree that mixing with Europeans may have changed their behavior, but first of all it is necessary to analyze the structure of this group. If the distribution of alleles Europeans is homogeneous or if there are groups as almost pure groups with mulatto groups historically associated with the african american community.”
Supposedly, the average African American has %22 European genetics and %10 of African Americans have more than %50 European genetics. So, 1 in 10 US blacks are more European than African. That seems extremely significant to my mind. I don’t know what impact it would have culturally. It might depend on which specific European genetics those are.
I haven’t looked into the genetic research, but I would guess that most of that European genetics is Celtic and English. I wonder what cultural practices and social behaviors they inherited along with the genetics. Like many others, I do see a connection between the African American population and the Southern Celtic population. Both groups have the same traits and problems related to the clannish culture of honor.
The Scots-Irish are particularly important in considering American black culture. I have noted previously that the Scots-Irish are more middling on the clannish scale, despite the culture of honor. It may have to do with their being border people, unlike the Highland Scots and the Irish. I would guess that American blacks are also more middling and yet with certain clannish traits that they have retained from their Southern cultural heritage.
Re: Ashkenazi in-group feelings: I’m just reading a pretty good book, Shiksa: The Gentile Woman in the Jewish World by Christine Benvenuto (who incidentally is/was one — she married a Jew and then later converted) which sheds a lot of inside light on this interesting subject for anyone who is interested. It has good stuff on Jewish mother-in-laws, Jewish American princesses, and the phenomenon of Jewish intermarriage generally. And, best part, some Jewish jokes. Here’s one:
A man warns his son against marrying a non-Jewish woman. “A shiksa,” the man says, “will cause trouble.”The son marries a woman who converts to Judaism before their wedding. The Saturday after the wedding, the father calls the son to find out why he hasn’t come to work at the family business. “It’s Shabbos,” the son explains. “My wife wants us to to to synagogue on Shabbos.” To which the father replies, “I told you marrying a shiksa would cause trouble!”
no, because most english americans have been here so long that i think that their “emotional ties” to old blighty are probably pretty weak.
If they think open borders are good, but don’t especially care about England, then they may oppose open borders for England or think that it’s up for the English to decide. It doesn’t seem consistent to selectively look at the data if we’re trying to measure and rank groups.
At any rate, I’ve never heard of English Americans or the English being particularly open borders. Historically in the US, the primary opponents of immigration have been WASPs. I believe that’s still the case today.
Yes, Jews, like every other group, have ethnic jokes. The English have racial and ethnic jokes. English Americans have racial and ethnic jokes.
A majority of Brits opposes immigration:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/05/05/uk.election.immigration.poll/index.html
Some 77 percent of the British people questioned say net immigration should decrease or that no immigration should be allowed at all, according to the poll of more than 4,000 people.
I believe a majority of Americans opposes immigration as well, with WASPs tending to be most opposed.
@ted – “A majority of Brits opposes immigration….
“I believe a majority of Americans opposes immigration as well, with WASPs tending to be most opposed.”
yes, thank you. i’ll keep that all in mind when i look into it further. (^_^)
“I believe a majority of Americans opposes immigration as well, with WASPs tending to be most opposed.”
I guess that just goes to show WASPS are no longer in control. I remember when Ted Kennedy (Irish Catholic) assured the nation that the 1965 Immigration Act would not alter the ethnic composition of the United States.
BTW, was Kennedy a “useful idiot” or what?
This is interesting: “The non-Europeanization of America is heartening news of an almost transcendental quality.”
It’s hard to say whether Wattenberg is motivated by a Trotskyite Neo-Conservative vision of universalism or Ashkenazi ethnic self-interest under the assumption that Ashkenazis will be safer in a multi-ethnic society. Or maybe a little of both. In either case Mr. Wattenberg is politically naive, as has often been the case with left-wing or otherwise ideologically motivated East European Jews, whether it be pinning their hopes on a Communist utopia on planet earth or a Zionist utopia in blank slate Palestine.
Specifically in the case of Wattenberg’s vision of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural United States he overlooks that fact that American Protestants (and, indeed, practicing European Protestants in general!) have consistently been the Ashkenazis best, most welcoming friends in the world. To expect the same kind of sympathetic support from Latin American and East Asian immigrants is delusional, as is the assumption that initiating trade and immigration policies that undermine America’s middle-class standard of living cannot undermine popular support for the state of Israel over the next couple of generations.
That’s why I urge Ashkenazi Americans to rethink these issues pronto before it is too late if it isn’t already. Working class Americans of all ethnicities need influential friends in Washington, on Wall Street, in our elite Universities and in the mainstream media Right now no one in any of those places is looking out for the interests of average Americans. This is not going to end well.
Benjamin @ ”That sounds like an accusation. How dare you imply I’m liberal-minded. :)”
Only if it is open to liberal discourses extremely simplistic.
Benjamin @ ” I wouldn’t generalize about all black people any more than I’d generalize about all white people. I honestly don’t care if American blacks have showcased their culture. I think it is hard to even say what their culture is. For centuries, African Americans didn’t have a separate independent culture. The culture they have today is an American mutt culture.
The main thing that interests me is how unique is the history of African Americans. No other group in American history had such drastic changes forced onto them. They didn’t even have control over their own marriage and breeding patterns. Their lives were controlled which forced entirely new patterns. To my mind, that is an experiment like no other.”
Generalize because I’m talking about groups. Whenever I speak to groups, you and any other generalizes. You even like to generalize about certain groups of white clanish Apalacchia (that sounds Italian, I wrote that wrong, anyway, I’m not willing to fix it, but I’m willing to write this piece useless, useless to debate).
Ow, wait I’ll take my handkerchief and start crying this sad story
buaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
His narrative is focused on the passivity of black people, which seeks to instill so again blame the white man. I swear to you, I believe that even the evil white men are able to see culture and dignity wherever.
Well, they saw, look at the American Jazz … I am firmly convinced that the Jazz had not a 100% contribution of black people, but it sure was a good part.
You should, as a good hbd curious, try to understand why black people are not able to manage their own lives. We should also address to try to understand why the white man today is paralyzed on crucial issues to survival and even when this spell will continue to have an effect.
Benjamin @ ”I basically agree. I have no idea what it ultimately means. It just offers a clue that there is something atypical about their collective behavioral tendencies.”
What happens with blacks is that they are a mixture of low psychoticism and extroversion with clanishness archaic style. Most clanish people are more introverted and have high psychoticism. Look at the Orthodox Jews, the Amish, the Mennonites. Are all sullen and half obsessed with rules and religious orders.
Hbd chick showed that.
It seems that the mental disorders (aka, eccentric personalities) is present at the extremes of human reality.
(continuing the above line of thought)
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities indeed!
Read the whole thing here.
I know hbd*chick isn’t as big as I am on the importance of ideas as causative agents. But ideas interact with genes in important ways in this world. In my opinion anyway. :)
Luke Lea
“I know hbd*chick isn’t as big as I am on the importance of ideas as causative agents.”
The northern euro outbreeding started as an idea so i guess a compromise position would be ideas that create culture-driven genetic change :)
Benjamin @ ”Supposedly, the average African American has %22 European genetics and %10 of African Americans have more than %50 European genetics. So, 1 in 10 US blacks are more European than African. That seems extremely significant to my mind. I don’t know what impact it would have culturally. It might depend on which specific European genetics those are.
(…)
The Scots-Irish are particularly important in considering American black culture. I have noted previously that the Scots-Irish are more middling on the clannish scale, despite the culture of honor. It may have to do with their being border people, unlike the Highland Scots and the Irish. I would guess that American blacks are also more middling and yet with certain clannish traits that they have retained from their Southern cultural heritage.”
In this case I can not infer something deeper, but I’ve seen somewhere that black Americans are from pre-Islamized regions of the Atlantic coast of Africa. Note that the blacks who came to Brazil for example, came mostly from Angola and other Portuguese colonies. I see the black American as much more aggressive and expansive that the black Brazilian. It also appears that black Americans are higher than the Brazilians, but then I do not know if the mixture may have influenced Amerindian. The selection of the slave type is also important as to North America were selected the most healthy and strong while for Latin America selection was less intense and more widespread, and select more them with passive personality.
@luke – “I know hbd*chick isn’t as big as I am on the importance of ideas as causative agents.”
@grey – “The northern euro outbreeding started as an idea so i guess a compromise position would be ideas that create culture-driven genetic change :)”
yes. (^_^)
i think ideas can be causative agents — and i think sometimes Great Men can be causative agents, too (mohammed, for example — or maybe a better example would be saints augustine and aquinas) — i’m just a little hesitant in believing that ideas really mean what most people think and say they mean. humans are full of
sh*tdeception and, more importantly, self-deception, and i think they (we) very often believe an idea means one thing — or reflects certain things — when it really doesn’t at all.but, yeah, like grey says — sometimes ideas can bring about BIG changes — maybe even the sort of changes hoped for — but NOT in precisely the manner the idea-makers supposed.
@gottlieb – “Most clanish people are more introverted and have high psychoticism.”
i’ve been wondering this. i’ve got NOTHING whatsoever to base that idea on, but it has crossed my mind. dunno.
”i’ve been wondering this. i’ve got NOTHING whatsoever to base that idea on, but it has crossed my mind. dunno.”
I think there are different dimensions of psychoticism, as well as other personality traits that evolve according to demand. So, I see for example that the Arabs seem more extroverted than other clan groups, but tend to be more outgoing with themselves. I also think that the eccentric personalities (aka mental disorders) appear across the human spectrum, but with a tendency to focus on extremes, tending to the class types as Weird (which in itself is quite diverse) and other religions as fundamentalists. As Bruce Charlton spoke about shamans and creativity. (Weird group is always more creative than the group normapath). Orthodox rabbis as well as some Islamic leaders would like the modern shamans, eccentric people with high psychoticism and some narcissistic tendencies.
Anyway, those who are eager to have power and delusions of grandeur.
It all depends on what kind of personality, cognitive style and intelligence you are mixing with high psychoticism. You can have an artist as well as a terrorist.
It’s hard to say whether Wattenberg is motivated by a Trotskyite Neo-Conservative vision of universalism
This is a good point. Even Jews on the right and in the Republican Party tend to be more universalist than right-wing and Republican WASPs and NW Europeans. Republican Jews are more inclined to outreach and inclusion of minorities, women, gays, internationalism, whereas Republican WASPs and NW Europeans are relatively more inclined towards racism, nationalism, isolationism, and Christian theocracy.
Specifically in the case of Wattenberg’s vision of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural United States he overlooks that fact that American Protestants (and, indeed, practicing European Protestants in general!) have consistently been the Ashkenazis best, most welcoming friends in the world.
Jews have been in Latin America for hundreds of years without the scale of violence, pogroms, discrimination they faced in Protestant Europe. Protestantism has traditionally been anti-Semitic. Jewish leadership in advancing non-clannish, universalistic, secular, inclusive politics was critical in making historically Protestant areas inclusive of Jews.
Ted@ ”Jews have been in Latin America for hundreds of years without the scale of violence, pogroms, discrimination they faced in Protestant Europe. Protestantism has traditionally been anti-Semitic. Jewish leadership in advancing non-clannish, universalistic, secular, inclusive politics was critical in making historically Protestant areas inclusive of Jews.”
Ted,
sephardic people Were forced (or” forced”) to change their religion not to be tried by the Inquisition. Therefore, the Jews who moved to Latin America, it seems that there were many, became new Christians.
The modern ashkenazi brazilian jews, for example, are divided by clanish and non-clanish as in US and Europe, many out bred marriages, predominantly with whites.
I believe that jews used your differential ethnic identity to ”mix” with smarter whites and push race mix agenda to white mix with non-whites. Smart. But probably, many jews are mixed with asians here today.
Protestant countries to me seems less ”anti-semitic” if you compare with catholic countries because the capitalistic doctrine of the first combined with natural jewish talent with finances.
Gottlieb,
Hard to follow what you’re saying as your writing is confusing.
Protestant countries have traditionally been anti-Semitic.
The whole “Hey Jews, Protestant countries have been less anti-Semitic!” idea is not even really about Protestant countries in general but more of a statement about the US, where Jews succeeded in an anti-Semitic Protestant environment. It’s used by American anti-Semites as a kind of veiled threat to Jews. Jews succeeded in the US by overcoming Protestant anti-Semitism and fostering a universalistic, secular, inclusive society and political culture.
Ted @ ”Hard to follow what you’re saying as your writing is confusing.
Protestant countries have traditionally been anti-Semitic.”
So i think that i must stop to comment here…
You said:
”’Jews have been in Latin America for hundreds of years without the scale of violence, pogroms, discrimination they faced in Protestant Europe”’
This is not true, exactly the opposite. Jews were forced to adopt the catholicism.
So, protestant countries developed different type of anti semitism than catholic countries.
Protestants ”segregated” jews and catholics forced the jews to convert its religion.
@Ted
On a scale going say
clannish -> nationalist -> universalist
where would you place yourself?
[…] norm. HBD chick has on her blog built a strong case for her theory that the observed variation in clannishness between cultures may be partially explained by recent human evolution in response to different […]
[…] This is a map of our current best guess of the rates of historic inbreeding across Europe and parts of the Near East. This map is a guestimate, and is not derived from direct measurements. However, it visualizes what areas we think are the most and least inbred, based on these regions’ histories and other pieces of evidence we have. The colors roughly correspond to HBD Chick’s 11-point clannishness scale: […]
[…] are one, have very strong internal blood ties between group members, and display many of the patterns of clans such as holding grudges and engaging in feuds. If you’re a Westerner, consider Scottish feuds […]
[…] to one that accentuated “smaller household units” might indicate a rise in clannishness. hbd* chick‘s working definition of clannishness […]
[…] – difficult to define, but i know it when i see it: – clannishness defined – clannishness – where do clans come from? – where do emmanuel todd’s family types come from? – […]
[…] in the UK could bring up salty assimilation problem thoughts. If cousin marriage leads to more clannishness, the entire representative democracy experiment looks even dumber in retrospect. Cultural […]
[…] veneer lurks not only selfishness and a potential Dark Triad personality, but also some form of clannishness. Not the in-your-face violent Middle East clannishness, but a smart and sophisticated (this sample […]
[…] here | hbd* chick clannishness defined | hbd* chick big summary post on the hajnal line | hbd* […]
[…] if the trait of clannishness or tribalism, the tendency to be loyal to your own group, is more common and cautiousness is less […]
I suspect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience is the individual trait inversely related to group clannishness/tribalism (it is also positively associated with liberalism).
@graafderaaf:
Uh huh… :
Predictions on the Worldwide Distribution of Personality | JayMan’s Blog
[…] THE ABOVE POST MIGHT BE A LITTLE OVERSIMPLIFIED, SINCE HBD CHICK HERSELF HAS RESPONDED TO THIS POST ON TWITTER MAKING A FASCINATING DISTINCTION THAT I NEED TO LEARN MORE ABOUT. SHE STATES: it’s outbreeding + time (for selection to work), not just outbreeding. see rocket analogy here. […]
[…] know if this inbreeding has occurred for enough generations for selection to work, which HBD chick feels is important. HBD also teaches that behavioral traits are highly genetic, especially in adulthood. Blogger […]
[…] clannishness is (and i reserve the right to alter this definition) a set of behaviors and innate behavioral traits and predispositions which, when found in a population, result in the members of that population strongly favoring, in all areas of life, themselves, their family members — both near and extended, and even closely allied associates (esp. in clannish societies which are not arranged into clans), while at the same time strongly disfavoring those considered to be non-family and all unrelated, non-allied associates. – HBD chick, “Clannishness Defined” […]
[…] here | hbd chick clannishness defined | hbd chick big summary post on the hajnal line | hbd chick medieval manorialism’s selection pressures | hbd […]
[…] reason is the nature of NW European regard for others. In most societies across the world (i.e., clannish ones), there are weak and highly conditional attitudes towards reciprocity. The primary targets of […]
[…] Of course, being an old race can probably be negated if there’s a lot of cousin marriage, which brings us to HBD Chick’s theory, that ethnic groups that historically engaged in a lot of cousin marriage are more clannish, which she defines as: […]
If the topic interests you, you might also be interested in reading Hsu: Clan, Caste and Club, which is available online through Questia. It compares and contrasts extra-familial social grouping in India, China and the U.S.
The intense socialization that is devoted to developing these attitudes makes me dubious about the claim that it is in any way genetic.
[…] In this great article by hbd chick, her definition for clannishness is: […]
[…] to one that accentuated “smaller household units” might indicate a rise in clannishness. hbd chick‘s working definition of clannishness […]
[…] if not literally clan based. Clannishness, as HBD Chick and I use the term, doesn’t mean literally based on clans. Viscous societies selected for viscous behaviors – low-trust in strangers, particularism, […]
[…] here | hbd* chick clannishness defined | hbd* chick big summary post on the hajnal line | hbd* chick the middle ages « hbd* chick (2011) year-end […]