ADVANCED CHILDREARING
“The secret as to why England and not France or Germany spawned the Industrial Revolution first goes back to England’s advanced childrearing in its smaller medieval households, not to any ecological advantage.” – Lloyd deMause
Referring to: David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1998, pp. 213-230.
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-06 04:59:00 UTC
NATURE, NURTURE AND CULTURE
Three causal axis.
Our genes and in-utero development. Our family structure, child rearing, and pedagogical methods. Our informal and formal institutions.
One of the most problematic cognitive biases is the tendency to take a single axis of causality – a single explanation – and to apply anywhere and everywhere. It’s the ‘ideal type’ bias.
But human beings are causally dense creatures. And behaviorally plastic creatures. Because the combination of memory and the ability to plan (reason) allows us to forecast the future, and adapt to it proactively. If we are successful, some of the biases in our memories and planning can become incorporated into our genetics. If our plans become successful, they are carried between overlapping generations by imitation and memory.
Further, as creatures who find patterns between different stimuli, we are unable to separate ideas into neat drawers. They bleed into each other. As such we have explicit memories (knowledge) that we possess intentionally, we have habitual memories (knowledge) that we realize varies from group to group. We have unconscious associations and habits and value judgements that we take as physical properties of life, but can at some point become aware of and aware of their variation. We have metaphysical value judgements that CAUSE much of our unconscious biases. And we have genetic differences in our moral intuitions, and cognitive abilities that are the result of both genetic and in-utero experiences.
Nearly all food habits are the result of regional necessity and economics. Almost all clothing habits are the same – the development of excellence in one minor technology or another as a demonstration of status. Almost all family habits are very similar at the same level of economic development. Childrearing seems to have as great an impact as does family structure.
Rituals and religions are a complex topic but our knowledge of the social, political and economic reasons. We know why feasts, military tactics, the problem of uniting tribes, and the problem of constraining power, and in some places, the problem of resigning to difficult environments, found the idea of scriptural religion useful in a social context by transferring the family hierarchy to the ether.
Our genetic makeup is different BECAUSE of these factors. Or rather, some minor biases in our genetic makeup interplayed with these cultural ‘genetics’ and the two together brought us to where we are today.
When we argue that genetics is ‘all there is’ or culture is ‘all there is’ we are just confusing the Nature, Culture, Nurture argument further. we are making the same mistake that the ‘nurturists’ do but from the opposite end of the spectrum.
Since we know that Nature, Culture and Nurture are three extant causal axis, then a simple application of Ockham’s razor for any demonstrated human behavior prevents us from being people wearing tin foil hats. All our behaviors are the product of these three axis.
Cheers
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-06 04:17:00 UTC
DO YOU REALLY WANT A GOVERNMENT THAT CLOSES PARKS TO PUNISH YOU?
Do you really want police departments to have military vehicles, military arms, and swat teams?
Do you really like being farmed like farm animals?
If you do. THen you’re welcome to it.
But those of us who don’t. Well. We’re going to have to eventually do something about it.
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-05 10:33:00 UTC
http://drjamesthompson.blogspot.com/2013/10/loci-number-and-group-difference.htmlDAMNED STATISTICS: SORRY BUT THE MYTH OF GENETIC DISTANCE IS FALSE.
Probably too technical for the FB audience but here is a paper on, and discussion about, how the ‘lie’ that two people within a group are more diverse than people across groups is an intentional deception.
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-05 10:27:00 UTC
A QUICK REWRITE OF THE DARK ENLIGHTENMENT PRINCIPLES
(Comment: Steve Sailor likes to pick on libertarians and “Aspergys” as socially clueless. I kind of reject that. The Rothbardians are just ‘wrong’. But the Rothardian movement is moral and ideological, not ratio-scientific. It’s a rebellion movement. And there are good uses for rebellion movements. The protestant movement is the best example. Fundamentalism is an exceptionally effective means of resistance in no small part, because like ideology, religion can be counter to reason and therefore uncriticizable.
LACK OF ECONOMIC CONTENT
Libertarians place economic capital ahead of moral capital. Conservatives place moral capital ahead of economic capital. And, as I’ve been arguing, I think that the conservatives are right. We may not have been able to prove that a century ago, but I think we can now. We have enough evidence from a multitude of studies of morality, trust and corruption around the world. And it’s pretty hard to argue with. Without the right institutions you cannot have the right norms. Without the right norms you cannot produce the right economy. Without the right economy you cannot MAINTAIN the right institutions. The circle is pretty challenging to maintain across generations, which themselves are cyclical.
So again, we see the illustration of the differences between the libertarians and conservatives, as placing different weights on different moral criterial.
THE CURRENT PRINCIPLES OF THE DARK ENLIGHTENMENT
This list is evolving. Conservatives are notoriously challenged because their arguments are even more morally loaded than libertarians. I’ve tried to improve it a bit.
And I’m reluctant for a few reasons. THe first is that conservatives are very leery of our rather analytical language. If we express their morals in propertarian terms they seem to feel like all meaning is lost.
That is the most interesting part of the problem of bringing conservatives into the rational fold.
LIST
– Rejection of The Cathedral. A rejection of The Cathedral in all it’s guises: Totalitarian Humanism, Universalism, Political Correctness, (or whatever other names it goes by, such as Universalism or Political Correctness).
– Particularism.
A rejection of sociological universalism, egalitarianism, equalitarianism, diversity as regressive, and destructive. And a preference for particularism, innovation, and excellence.
– Science.
The use of science and reason as compatible with particularism, as a contrast to the irrationalism of postmodernism that is necessary to provide cover for, and distract from, universalism.
– Evolution.
An acceptance of Darwinian evolution, shunning egalitarian political correctness both from the left and from the Trotskyite right.
– Biodiversity.
An acceptance of human biodiversity.
– BioPolitics.
Particular people’s have varied biological and demographic interests and imperatives.
– Incompatibility:
That human populations are not fungible. They are unique. And therefore, skepticism about mass Third World immigration.
– Political Institutions.
The recognition that there is no single best political order. As Aristotle notes in the Politics, some ethnicities are better suited for totalitarianism, some monarchy; some for aristocracy; others, for participatory forms of government such as the city state.
– Aristocracy:
Freedom and Democracy are Incompatible. Liberty is incompatible with democracy, and democracy leads to mediocrity.
– Uneven Progress: An acceptance of science and futurism as a means to improve at least some peoples’ lives. And a recognition that ‘progress’ will be available only to some, and not the entire human population.
– Religion: Atheistic, Agnostic and with a preference for Ancestral Neopaganism or a form of Christianity that is ethnocentric and particularist.
– Introspection:
The end of ‘White Man’s Burden’ as well as ‘Colonial Guilt’ and ‘White Guilt’. We dragged humanity out of ignorance and poverty kicking and screaming. And, they will never thank us for it.
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-05 10:05:00 UTC
Curt Doolittle shared a photo.
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-05 05:38:00 UTC
CULTURE OR GENES: IT’S A MUTUALLY DEPENDENT PROCESS
(from elsewhere)
I study cooperative institutions they way hbd_chick studies familial institutions. And as such I’m sure that my bias in determining causality is toward cultural rather than genetic factors.
I’ve always been suspicious of suggestions of genetic transmission of those biases that can be transmitted by habits, norms, traditions, myths, institutions, and those that are the product of organizations: family or extended family. Maternal or Paternal. Hunter-gatherer, agrarian, industrial, post-industrial as well as Ritual, temple, church, voluntary civic order.
But the universalist bias in indo-europeans seems to transcend those external forces. We can tell now that we have an interesting combination of :
1) Lower testosterone and therefore lower impulsivity.
2) Lower Impulsivity and therefore longer (lower) time preference.
3) Higher verbal intelligence and therefore hIgher median intelligence.
4) Higher energy levels and higher rates of burning calories, so more action oriented.
This means that our activity is more evenly distributed than more impulsive gene pools.
And our vision of man, as represented in our art, is as beautiful. And our metaphysical objective is to transform nature to our will.
The east asians have much lower testosterone and impulsivity than we do, but lower verbal intelligence intelligence. I can’t find data on their energy levels, but it appears that they are more even-tempered laborers than ‘whites’. Although their vision of ‘man’, as represented in their art is as evil in contrast to nature, which we must submit to.
These factors are not cultural transmissions. They are genetic transmissions. Just how much of that genetic transmission is caused by cultural necessity, and how much it produced that cultural necessity is very hard to determine.
But regardless of FIRST cause, there is certainly a relationship between the two, such that genetic and cultural factors are self reinforcing over time.
As far as I can tell, Gimbutas was right, and the structure of military tactics is the cause of western, northern european, (white) cultural differences. And those differences have been gradually encoded in our genes over the centuries as biases.
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-05 05:14:00 UTC
(REPOST) THE HIERARCHY OF ARGUMENTS:
Expressive, Sentimental, Moral, Historical, Scientific, Economic, Ratio-Scientific.
I developed this list in order to classify the structure of different political arguments, in the hope that could increase awareness of what makes stronger and weaker arguments, in my ongoing attempt to give conservatives a ratio-scientific means of conducting aristocratic egalitarian arguments.
EXCERPT:
I. DEGREES OF POLITICAL ARGUMENT
——————————————————–
Curt Doolittle’s “Degrees Of Political Argument”*1, from least to most substantive: *1[capitalismv3.com 2011]
1) EXPRESSIVE (emotional): a type of argument where a person expresses a positive or negative opinion based upon his emotional response to the subject.
2) SENTIMENTAL (biological): a type of argument that relies upon one of the five (or six) human sentiments, and their artifacts as captured in human traditions, morals, or other unarticulated, but nevertheless consistently and universally demonstrated preferences and behaviors.
3) MORAL (normative) : a type of argument that relies upon a set of assumedly normative rules of whose origin is either (a)socially contractual, (b)biologically natural, (c) economically necessary, or even (d)divine.
4) HISTORICAL (analogical): A spectrum of analogical arguments – from Historical to Anecdotal — that rely upon a relationship between a historical sequence of events, and a present sequence events, in order to suggest that the current events will come to the same conclusion as did the past events, or can be used to invalidate or validate assumptions about the current period.
5) SCIENTIFIC (directly empirical): The use of a set of measurements that produce data that can be used to prove or disprove an hypothesis, but which are subject to human cognitive biases and preferences. ie: ‘Bottom up analysis”
6) ECONOMIC: (indirectly empirical): The use of a set of measures consisting of uncontrolled variables, for the purpose of circumventing the problems of direct human inquiry into human preferences, by the process of capturing demonstrated preferences, as expressed by human exchanges, usually in the form of money. ie: “Top Down Analysis”. The weakness of economic arguments is caused by the elimination of properties and causes that are necessary for the process of aggregation.
7) RATIO-SCIENTIFIC (Comprehensive: Using all above): A rationally articulated argument that makes use of economic, scientific, historical, normative and sentimental information to comprehensively prove that a position is defensible under all objections.
—–
Cheers
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-05 02:11:00 UTC
(Sentimental Humor)
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-05 02:02:00 UTC
ENGLISH EXCEPTIONALISM: THE NUCLEAR FAMILY, COMMON LAW, CIVIL ASSOCIATIONS, PROTESTANTISM, WIDESPREAD LAND OWNERSHIP.
Emmanuel Todd is getting mainstream attention.
“That English, later Anglosphere, exceptionalism, is very real. That the rise of our language and culture to their current unprecedented dominance – what one commentator terms “Anglobalisation” – is based on a series of properties that are either unique to the English-speaking peoples, or shared only with a handful of kindred cultures in northwestern Europe. Among these properties are the common law, representative government, Protestantism, dispersed landownership, civil associations separate from the state and – of particular interest to these authors – the unusual nature of the family.
“They show that the Anglosphere dispenses with the extended family structures which, in most places, have legal as well as cultural force. In many societies, the peasant family has traditionally been treated as a kind of collective landowner, within which there are reciprocal responsibilities. Children, even in adulthood, have been expected to work on the family plot, receiving board and lodging. Marriages are typically arranged, and daughters-in-law come under the authority of the head of their new household. Even when the law recognizes individual autonomy, custom is often slow to follow.
“The Anglosphere scarcely resembles the Eurasian landmass in its family structures. Our notion of the family is limited and nuclear. Most English-speakers in most centuries wanted to set up home on their own, independently, with just their spouse and children – although economic circumstances did not always allow that aspiration to be fulfilled.
“The notion that the limited family underpins Anglosphere exceptionalism – which draws heavily on the work of the French anthropologist and demographer Emmanuel Todd – is intriguing. I see the cultural difference all around me in the European Parliament. In most Continental states, your social life is largely taken up with your extended family: you have an endless stream of weddings and christenings to go to, sometimes of very distant cousins. Britons and Americans, by contrast, expect to leave their parental home in their teens, either to go to university or to work. We make friends away from home, and they become the core of our social life. Indeed, the word “friend” carries more force in English than in many European languages, in which it is bestowed quickly and generously, but often means little more than what we mean by a Facebook friend. When a Spaniard says of someone “es muy amigo mío”, he simply means that he gets on with the chap.”
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-04 16:15:00 UTC