From my review in The American Conservative of The Rule of the Clan: What an Ancient Form of Social Organization Reveals About the Future of Individual Freedom by Mark S. Weiner:
How can present-day societies of status evolve into modern societies of contract, to use Henry Maine’s famous distinction? Weiner commends the example set by the liberal professions—especially his own. And while Weiner may be biased, there are numerous recent examples of law professionals providing heroic role models, from the brave Italian prosecutors who took on the Mafia in Sicily two decades ago to the Pakistani prosecutor recently assassinated on his way to charging that unhappy country’s former dictator.
Still, Weiner’s book raises more disturbing questions than it answers. For instance, how do we know that clannishness isn’t the wave of the future?
While Weiner emphasizes the positive benefits of modern states, they triumphed mostly because they were better at total war. As the years go by, though, the bravery of the men who sacrificed themselves for their countrymen at Gettysburg or the Bulge seems less replicable. Likewise, some of us old-timers remember when space exploration was expected to become “the moral equivalent of war.” The Enterprise’s Captain James Kirk was modeled directly upon the Endeavour’s Captain James Cook, that symbol of meritocratic advancement from farm boy to explorer of the Enlightenment.
In a mostly peaceful and earthbound 21st-century, however, why not instead connive to advance your family at the expense of your fellow citizens? Thus, the immigration debate is being conducted in the press as if the entire “citizenist” notion of Americans having responsibilities to their fellow citizens just because they are their fellow citizens is unimaginable.
Read the whole thing there.
Posts
66 comments:
Kinism or citizenism?
How about kinizenism?
tribrant society.
The thing is about wasps was even when they were for their own kind, it just so happened that their style, manner, and culture wasn't tribrant.
They had the bread but not the spread. So, Wasp-American came to be spread with the sauce of other groups.
Consider the "US citizens" who were born in the US to foreign parents, who have lived their whole life outside of the US, many in countries and environments hostile to the US, especially Islamic ones. Are we in any way responsible for them, do we owe them any duties, must we put our blood and treasure at risk if they are in danger? This is madness.
As to the general topic, please see Banfield's "The Moral Basis of a Backward Society".
The AmConMag's commenters are a rather strange bunch. Half of the comments on Steve's article appear to consist of accusations of racism. They are much more PC than, say, NRO readers. I don't read the magazine often, but I assume that this is because of a general leftward drift of the mag. How has Buchanan and Taki's creation strayed so far from its original mission?
Nevertheless, I must agree with some of the commenters that Steve uses the topic of tribalism to launch into a discussion of stuff that is not really about tribalism. For example, the fact that Obama has benefitted from his "racial status" is not because blacks are a powerful tribe. Blacks get perks because intensely non-tribal whites think that it's the right thing to do. If and when more clannish groups -- say, Indians, Chinese, Middle Easterners -- get to be gatekeepers in America, blacks will lose their privileges.
Talking of certain clans
http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Polls-Israelis-want-US-Europe-to-attack-Syria-but-against-IDF-intervention-324787
"Captain James Cook, that symbol of meritocratic advancement from farm boy to explorer of the Enlightenment." But Cook had an unfair advantage - his father was a Scot.
"...the English embody an extreme degree of nuclear-family orientation."
Except for the upper classes. All elites are extended family-oriented. If a victorious chieftain refused to force his kids to marry advantageously, to work as a team, his lineage dropped out of the elite. The old European aristocracies combined Germanic genetics with Middle Eastern notions of family life. I remember the Bushes being described as WASP Corleones - same phenomenon.
Northern Europeans used to live on standalone family farms, isolated homesteads. The local climate couldn't support high population density with available technology. In contrast, Mediterraneans and Middle Easterners lived in villages. Who exactly would have inhabited a typical Northern European family farm? A nuclear family.
For example, the fact that Obama has benefitted from his "racial status" is not because blacks are a powerful tribe. Blacks get perks because intensely non-tribal whites think that it's the right thing to do.
Clearly influencing and manipulating other people is a kind of tribal power.
Anon 3:44,
The mix of comments you see on that site is indicative of the editorial line not necessarily the readership as a whole. They censor a lot of critical/hostile opinion. As one might expect, considering that several of them are crypto leftists by any definition.
The AmConMag's commenters are a rather strange bunch.
Interesting euphemistic use of "strange" there.
Bless their hearts.
America's three most famous astronauts have been Scottish Americans from the Midwest. John Glenn is from Ohio, Neil Armstrong was from Ohio, and James T. Kirk was born on March 22, 2233 in Riverside, Iowa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_T._Kirk
(While Kirk's ethnicity is not discussed in the story, James is a common Scottish given name, and Kirk is a Scottish surname.)
Scottish Americans from the Midwest are less than 2% of the population. What are the odds? Coincidence? Or are HBD factors at work? Discuss.
World War P?
"Pedophile Alliance: An Uncomfortable Past for Gay Rights"
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/gay-activists-in-germany-silent-on-alliance-with-pedophiles-in-1980s-a-919119.html
"In the 1980s, gay rights groups in Germany formed an alliance with pedophiles who advocated the legalization of sex with minors. It's a dark period few care to talk about now."
"In July 1981, the gay interest magazine "Rosa Flieder" published an interview with Olaf Stüben. Stüben was one of the most infamous pedophiles in Germany at the time. As a writer for the leftist newspaper Die Tageszeitung, he openly advocated for people to accept pedophilia as healthy and moral.
In the magazine interview, Stüben is asked why it should be acceptable for adults to have sex with children and youths. He talks of quickies with young boys, and declares it backwards to maintain the taboo around inappropriately touching children. "Childlike innocence is an invention of the bourgeoisie of early capitalism," Stüben says.
The interview in "Rosa Flieder" was not a one-off lapse. On the contrary -- in the 1970s and 80s, numerous gay-oriented magazines brazenly promoted sex with children, even running pictures of naked boys. The magazine "Don" presented five sympathetic reports on the experiences of pedophilic men. The headline read, "We're not child rapists!""
legalophobia vs xenophobia.
Amnasties are legalophobic for they wanna undermine the law to push their agenda.
Self-loathing Jews aren't the problem.
Today, it's self-aggrandizing and self-worshiping Jews. Too many of those types these days.
Northern Observer says:
August 21, 2013 at 12:01 pm
Sailer writes a nice essay and blows it all in his conclusion. If we are to take the idea of tribalism and clan politics seriously in America than we need to admit that the most dominant clan in America is the Southern White Conservative tribe.
OK, no point in joining that conversation.
@Anonymous of 9/1/13, 3:44 PM:
Blacks get perks because intensely non-tribal whites think that it's the right thing to do.
It's kinda wild to think about this scenario, which might occur often:
A white person (let's call him "John") says something that is mostly heard by other white people. These white people consider what John said to be racist towards non-whites. John is fired from his job by his white boss. Many of John's white friends, former co-workers, and former clients refuse to associate with him. The (mostly white) masses equate John's name with evil and bigotry. Outside of the fringe, John is basically done for.
Meanwhile, the few non-white people who read/heard what John said and were offended by it forget about it within a few days. No non-whites are otherwise affected.
Less often (but more absurdly) John has a non-white spouse and kids who are negatively impacted by the stigma placed on John by all those other white people. Like, for example, if John's last name is Derbyshire.
So Unz leaves and now you're back? I thought you guys were bros.
Weird batch of commenters. They seem to skim and hazard a guess at what you are probably saying.
Doubts about Citizenism? I have my doubts, too. The American population is too large o sustain a single direction or identity, particularly in view of stronger pre-modern cultures like Judaism, or racial identities like Blackness or Hispanic-ness.
Up to a certain size cultures can coalesce and create a grand identity in which race and (erstwhile) ethnic identities are subsumed. The Civil War turned the United States from a plural to a singular. The First World War we reunified by exterminating the German identity. The Second World War also re-created an American identity.
We were a fluke, however. There is no USSR any longer. There is no Yugoslavia. There is no Austria-Hungarian Empire. There is no British Empire. They were all illusions and simmering underneath all of them were a host of sub-identities that ultimately shattered them.
After 60 years of peace and a centripetal Progressive ideology of crushing dominant cultures, our welter of sub-identities are ready to reassert themselves. And they will.
I hope it will be peaceful, but I doubt it will. They will press their boot ever more firmly into our faces until everything explodes.
I suspect that WASP's will be the last group to embrace tribalism because they won't feel the pains brought on by a non-white majority and globalization until after everybody else has. Western Europeans are the least equipped for living in a low trust nation, but it won't take long for most to realize that their power and influence is dwindling and form strong bonds with their co-ethnics and fellow Whites. It's the WASP's I encounter who are still living in an illusory 1950's USA demographics bubble. They haven't yet internalized what changes are afoot, and what a projected 2050 America will be like for themselves and their posterity.
I'll back off a little from the comment I posted on that article, that clan, ethnie, and race are all essentially different categories. Ethnie maybe is pretty much like clan, whether or not they belong in the same category. I don't know enough anthropology to say. I doubt that Steve Sailer does either.
But I stand by what I said about race being essentially different from either ethnie or clan (or family).
How has Buchanan and Taki's creation strayed so far from its original mission?
Ron Unz? I think that pretty much explains it.
For what it's worth, my personal preferences:
Best The American Conservative incarnation: the current one, by far. They take their slogan, "ideas over ideology," seriously.
Best Ramones album: Rocket To Russia.
Huh Daniel Larison has one idea Russia good Usa bad. One idea is de facto an ideology. Noah Millman literally has nothing to say about anything other than Shakespeare and Rod Dreher contra Gross is the founder of his own ideology, crunchy conservatism. Ideas 0 Ideology 3. Alan Jacobs god bless him has so few ideas he has to take a hiatus every three months. Hiatus 2 ideas 0. I'm not sure who would win in a round robin between hiatus and Shakespeare. Maybe when you read TAC through your peripheral vision the ideas pop out like on one of those 3D posters.
I mean they refuse to print any perspective from one whole side of the foreign policy debate. It's pretty rich to say Charles Beardian stay off their lawn Fortress Americanism isnt an ideology. When you publish only articles sympathetic ro that view you are ideological. I mean forget neo-cons, TAC woudn't even publish someone with Derbyshire-like views on foreign policy.
You like the new version because all the posters that embarass you here are kept away by the noxious leftism. I honesty can't grasp how you think there is some glut of ideas over there. I mean RJ stove can be interesting I guess.
That said Rod does favorably link to Sailer and stands up for him something very few else do. Honestly shocking for such a milquetoast beta.
Matt Buckalew
"I suspect that WASP's will be the last group to embrace tribalism because they won't feel the pains brought on by a non-white majority and globalization until after everybody else has."
Wasps have victory mentality. Tiny Britain ruled as great power of the world and spawned US, Australia, Canada, and etc.
America became the biggest power in the world. Wasp elites took power for granted and got into magnanimity mentality. Too much power leads to complacency. Also, it leads to the moral vanity of representing the 'civilizing mission'. So, it becomes sensitive to criticism of its hypocrisies.
Chinese, in contrast, in the past 200 yrs saw defeat, humiliation, mass deaths, wars, revolutions, and etc visit China. So, they learned to take nothing for granted.
But even before Europe and Japan invaded China, Chinese remember the invasions from the north, and indeed China had been overrun by Mongols and Manchus. So, Chinese never felt so invincible and mighty as Wasps.
But China traditionally felt secure in three respects. The superiority of their culture, the great size of China, and huge population of China.
So, even Mongol and Manchu invaders got swallowed up.. in the way that small Italy could not swallow up the Germanic and Hun invaders.
But even this complacency was blown out of the water when even more civilized and dynamic West came crashing in with such force that the Chinese really feared losing their nation forever.
Some sought to drive out the West, some sought to learn from the West, and some sought to collaborate with the West. In the end the nationalists/communists prevailed, and Chinese have been in angry 'paranoid' mode since.
On the other hand, Chinese girls in the US don't seem racially loyal in any way and prefer to go with white guys, indeed even more than white girls go with Negroes.
Daryl Hannah once made a movie called Clan of the Cave Bear. She probably regrets that now.
"We were a fluke, however. There is no USSR any longer. There is no Yugoslavia. There is no Austria-Hungarian Empire. There is no British Empire. They were all illusions and simmering underneath all of them were a host of sub-identities that ultimately shattered them...
...Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?"
Matt Buckalew, thanks for that excellent reply. I mostly disagree with it, especially the part about Alan Jacobs, but very well said.
No posters here embarrass me. I do think that many or most of the commenters at iSteve are retards. (I don't remember it being like that till the last few years.) I think the commenters at TAC are relatively good - much fewer retards, and the retards are politer - but retarded comments don't embarrass me, unless they're my comments.
On my other point, I take your silence as agreement that Rocket To Russia is the best Ramones album ever.
Mike Judge is the prophet of our times.
Good observations, Steve.
Game theory tells us that if a faction of the population is habitually ethnocentric to the point of favoring their own and excluding others in all commercial, political and social life, whilst the remainder of the general population does not, then the ethnocentrists will utterly dominate and eventually wipe out the atomists. Simple and inenvitable as that. No ifs and no buts. The only defence available to the atomists is to likewise adopt a rival, reactive ethnocentrism, and hence an evolutionary arms race ensues in which the manifestations become nastier and nastier. Or war of anhiliation.
The political classes of most western nations have the desire and ambition of abolishing all controls on immigration whatsoever. This proposition can scarcely be doubted by anyone who has made a study of the subject. (Incidentally, the main motivation seems to be the desire to look "clever" in the eyes of economists). Now, it so happens that the keenest and most determined immigrants to the west are from nations in which the nasty geno-centric arms race has waged for literally thousands of years - with all the intendent hereditary behaviors that can be predictably imagined from such a vicious milieu. Thus western politicians are importing untold disaster and misery onto the nations they are supposedly charged to defend.
"Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do".
Fair enough that was too personalized of a response. not that i really have any room to be handing out lessons on tone, but your response sarcastic as it may be is at leas smarmy than alot of your posts.
i have to completely disagree with you and the quality of commenting isteve's is far superior to TAC which is just a bunch of left wingers and Sullivan fans congragulating themselves about how open minded they are. The comments never really progress beyond the original post. this is especially evident on Larison's comment pages where you get 13 "nailed it Larison but you didn't bash bush enough" and maybe 2 "nailed it but next time more Mossad." I think if you compared the habitual isteve posters to the habitual TAC posters the superior quality here would be apparent. Alot of anonymous posts are just venting at least mine are when I post anonymously. TAC simply edits those out. That said if TAC were to brand themselves as an explicitly anti-war/ limited national defense magazine tomorrow most of my complaints would disappear. Agreeing with Robert Taft on one thing hardly makes a magazine conservative.
Matt Buckalew
That should read: a lot less smarmy
Matt Buckalew
Anon @11:29
> Game theory tells us that ... ethnocentrists will ... dominate ... the atomists
Citation needed. Not that I do not believe you, but rather I am interested in the subject. I always thought about it too, but couldn't work out the math myself, nor find anything clear. Any link to a, preferably publicly available, article, with proofs (or actual findings if simulations etc methods used)?
Anonymii wrote:
"> Game theory tells us that ... ethnocentrists will ... dominate ... the atomists
Citation needed. Not that I do not believe you, but rather I am interested in the subject. I always thought about it too, but couldn't work out the math myself, nor find anything clear. Any link to a, preferably publicly available, article, with proofs (or actual findings if simulations etc methods used)? "
I'd be interested in this too. Only problem is if you don't think economics is well understood as a science, well...
Garbage in, garbage out.
But you could program a simulation. But you would have to ASSUme to get a model to implement. And then that model could be argued about till the cows come home.
Still someone would bite. Funny thing is, I hear of physicists who will do something like this, outside their fields all the time. Computer programmers, who would presumably be better at it, never seem to be intellectually interested enough to step outside the box.
Maybe I'm wrong, it'd be very interesting for a mathematician too look at this problem, maybe it could be treated like a predator/prey problem.
I think it would also be interesting to look at the history of these kinds of societies. Seems like American society did a good job of assimilating the european cultures that practiced this kind of thing (celts, eastern europeans?).
But what is the track record with people like Gypsies, and well Jews?
There are cousin marriage cultures lite, and then there are hardcore like Indians and Middle Easterners. If they go 100 years without assimilation, given the disparity in population growth rates, I'd say the Atomists have defeat written in the genes. Just a guess though.
Also, consider cases like the R and K selection societies. You can do the same kind of thing.
Plus I'd like to break it to "the Atomists," I pay attention to stories and trends about scientific research.
Are you guys aware that science in this country is pretty much becoming a Chinese thing, with a smattering of Indians?
Where exactly is the intellect expressing these days? Lucrative financial or legal masturbation on Wall or K Street?
"[W]hy not instead connive to advance your family at the expense of your fellow citizens?"
Six words:
Hilliary
Chelsea
Jeb
George
Robert
Edward
Mongol and Manchu invaders were colonizers in a way that Western and modern Japanese invaders were not. The Mongols and Manchus wanted to live in China.
Actually, the Japanese were kinder and gentler versions of the Manchus. The population of China fell by 10% during the Manchu conquest of China, whereas its population never stopped increasing during the Sino-Japanese War. The Manchus massacred entire Chinese cities when they resisted. The queue massacres alone killed hundreds of thousands.
Daniel Larison actually has two topics that he posts on: That the U.S. should give other countries whatever they want (espeically Russia but also China and Iran) and that the Republicans are stupid.
It is amazing that someone who the left holds up as a brilliant conservative writer makes the same posts day after day: quote a sentence or two from someone that Daniel does not like and then call that person stupid.
It is amazing that Daniel can make ten posts about Syria without mentioning President Obama. That is because his commenters will tear him apart if Daniel writes anything bad about President Obama.
"...and hence an evolutionary arms race ensues in which the manifestations become nastier and nastier."
It is my opinion, this blog is dedicated to preventing this arms race - I feel it is a humane position. The paradox is, why go to all the effort if we all know that in the end evolution will make that decision. But this conclusion is not written in stone, maybe cooperation rather than violence will triumph, and the country's ethnic composition is irrelevant.
I'm no philosopher, but I cannot see how evolution isn't fatalistic; any arguments to the contrary,that I've read so far,perplex me. Aren't races all just strains of the same virus? I'm afraid I might come across as a troll or a goth kid in a pot-fueled rap session, but this is the level where my IQ has limited me.
Citizenship is obsolete, Steve. The nation state is dead. If you´re moneyed enough, and part of the transnational elite, you can secure basic rights most everywhere. Your wealth and physical integrity are guaranteed by armed goons.
If you don´t belong to this group, you´re just a peon, a peasant, only good to be worked and taxed to death. If uppity, you´re liable to be deported, or your area could be flooded with imported peons, further diminisihing your status and income.
We´re no longer citizens and our nations no longer exist. we might as well face it.
re: "Northern Europeans used to live on standalone family farms, isolated homesteads." Glossy
For those interested read this book (a novel):
Warwolf: A Peasant Chronicle of the Thirty Years War, Hermann Lons, Tr. Robert Kvinnesland.
Dan Kurt
"Game theory tells us that if a faction of the population is habitually ethnocentric to the point of favoring their own and excluding others in all commercial, political and social life, whilst the remainder of the general population does not, then the ethnocentrists will utterly dominate and eventually wipe out the atomists. Simple and inenvitable as that. No ifs and no buts."
Not so. The ethnocentric group has to be talented and skilled. Gypsies were very ethnocentric, but what society did they gain control of? Italian-Americans were more tribal that most ethnics, and they rake in some cash through organized crime, but they lagged behind many law-abiding and 'atomic' ethnic groups. We still have Chinatowns, and Chinese/Americans have made significant strides, but they are far far far from dominating the US.
Sharia Muslims are insular but I don't see them controlling any part of America.
Jews have been an exception because they weren't merely ethnocentric but very smart and ambitious.
Also, the secret to Jewish power is the duality, especially among liberal Jews.
Ultra-orthodox Jews are far more ethnocentric than liberal Jews, but the latter are far more powerful.
The duality of Jewishness balances atomistic individualism with ethnocentric consciousness. Thus, Jews produced many mavericks, innovators, revolutionaries, experimenter, pioneers, and etc. in many fields, indeed people who've wandered outside of the Jewish ethno-comfort zone, and this was even more so prior to WWII and Holocaust. Many Jews in Germany and US sought to assimilate almost totally, even converting to Christianity and changing their names. Yet, they were very successful and powerful. The assimilationist strain of modern Jewish history is well-illustrated in Szabo's film SUNSHINE.
If a people are only ethnocentric, they shut themselves off to talents of other people and other markets.
Jews have thrived in sports industry, music industry, movie industry, and etc. because they were willing to work with anyone--whites, blacks, homos, etc--to create products. Jews are smart but they cannot run/jump and most of them don't have the physical features of, say, Cary Grant and Clint Eastwood. So, they worked with black athletes and white movie stars.
But Jews have also been very careful to keep the core power among themselves. In business, law, and brain power--the core areas of power--, Jews don't have to rely so much on non-Jews since Jews have the best brains.
If a Wasp or Italian-American law firm excludes Jews and only hires its own kind, it would suffer by lack of top Jewish talent.
But if a Jewish law firm mainly favors Jews while excluding most others, it won't suffer much since Jews do make the best lawyers. In brain power, Jewish community has an over-surplus of that stuff, and in the end, brains control the body.
Kinism vs citizenism is really kinism vs kinism-by-other-means.
Citizenism in today's America is essentially white kinism since slowing down non-white immigration will favor white power and the GOP, the white folks' party.
If whites were, say, 20% of the population while the rest were non-white and if most immigrants, legal or illegal, were white, whites would likely favor more immigration and amnesty for illegals(or invaders) while non-whites will prefer citizenism that calls for sending white illegals back to their white native lands.
So, why can't we be more honest in these matters? Because honesty is about the truth, and truth is often 'ugly'. Or, it seems 'ugly' ever since mankind invented the notion of 'angels'.
Ever since mankind invented the notion of angels or 'better angels of our nature', people wanna hide their base/basic desires with high-sounding notions and phrases. It's like people hide their naked bodies with pretty-looking clothes.
So, even though much of history has been driven by the animal instinct for power, the justification has usually been angelic rationale of higher ideals.
So, even though Mexicans want more brown power, they yammer about 'diversity' and 'equality'.
And even though white cons want more white power, they speak of the primacy of the law and the sacredness of the Constitution.
They are driven by animalism but explain themselves through angelism.
It's like that character Angel in THE WILD BUNCH. He is totally for his people, his village, and etc. He will even rob other villages and towns to take the loot back to his village. But he pontificates like he's for some higher ideal. He's an animal named 'angel'.
Of course, we can't be purely animalist since we'll have WW III, IV, V, VI, and etc forever. We do need ideals and rules in the globalist age of WMDs and nuclear weapons.
But we can't be purely angelist either since human nature and power politics simply do not spring from higher ideals but from animal drives for power.
So, we need a kind of balance, and that is something like animgelism.
"More civilized? I really doubt the West was more civilized than China."
Western folks ended slavery, didn't bind their women's feet, didn't boil cats alive, didn't skin dogs alive, didn't sell their daughters to sex slavers, and etc. when they intruded upon China in the 19th century.
Chinese have a great civilization but they were not civilized in terms of being civil. They were civilized in a Leviathonish way: ruthless and cruel.
Confucian scholars did put on refined airs, but it was superficial stuff. They ruled as cruel tyrant who choppy choppy heads if people no good at obey master.
"The Chinese are not a lucky people, and they know it."
Both. China was both extremely lucky and unlucky. Its relative geographical isolation meant Chinese would stretch out and take over a huge territory. And its vast population was a buffer against invasion.
But China's insularity also prevented it from learning from others, and this made it fall way behind to the West.
re: "More civilized? I really doubt the West was more civilized than China" ANON 9/2/13, 12:50 AM
I have never forgotten something told during a discussion out of class by a Professor about China. Off hand he said that the most brutal society in history was China because its brutality went on and on and on for thousands of years (and perhaps it still is on going). He said that the losers in Chinese society died off--no one lifted a finger to help them. Men with no prospects could not marry, could not "pull themselves up by the boot straps," and perished as did similar un-skilled, un-wanted women. Without a family, a family with EVERYONE in the family working tooth and nail, those solitary individuals (and those unlucky, unsuccessful families) descended into oblivion. As I see it now, he was describing a multiple thousands of years pitiless march of culling of the left side of the Bell Curve in China. Is this a civilized society? It may be a successful one, however. The West is doing the opposite now by institutionalizing Welfare and immigration of the unfit and thereby supporting the enlargement of the left side of its Bell Curve and we call that civilization but one destined to fail I think.
Dan Kurt
Paradoxically, ethnocentrism may be harmful to the group that is ethnocentric. Whatever can be said about ethnocentrics, it doesn't foster much thought. It's instinctive and about being 'mindlessly' loyal to the cultural order one is born into or living under. It is not consciously controlled and understood but mindlessly followed and adhered to.
So, even though ethnocentrics is most resistant to outside forces, once outsiders learn to manipulate the ethnocentrism, ethnocentric folks can become the biggest mental slaves of outside forces as new masters.
Think of dogs, the most 'ethnocentric' of animals. As descendants of wolves, they are naturally pack animals with mindlessly fierce loyalty to the leader of the pack. So, a dog trained by its master to bark at you will bark at you like mad and even try to bite your behind. But if you gain control of the dog, you can retrain it to serve you totally. Since a dog cannot think and can only follow its master, if the master changes, its loyalty will totally change.
In this sense, it isn't difficult to understand the rise of communism in Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, etc. Though communism is anti-ethnocentric in principle, it spread like wildfire among the most ethnocentric of peoples since people with such outlook are generally mindlessly loyal to those with the power. So, when Bolsheviks associated communism with Russian might, Russians were crazily communist. When Mao said 'chinese finally stood up' and associated communism with national pride, Chinese went wild with a totally alien ideology. And look at the lunatics in North Korea who seem to think communism is as Korean as kimchi even though it's a thoroughly foreign import.
So, paradoxically, the most ethnocentric peoples were most mindlessly accepting of foreign ideas when the elite situation changed. Initially, they were most resistant, but once new elites took over, the mindless masses followed them blindly since ethnocentric masses have no ability to think critically on their own.
We saw this with Japan too. Ultra-ethnocentric Japan was most resistant to US forces during WWII, even saying stuff like they'll die to the last man and woman. But once US replaced the elites in Japan, the Japanese were worshiping McCarthur and full of admiration for America. They turned overnight from total slavishness to the emperor to total slavishness to US rule.
And this may be the weakness of American conservatism. White conservatives are ethnocentric, far more than white liberals. But they are emotional than intellectual, and those who think eventually manipulate those who feel. Once neocons(those who think) took over the GOP and elevated MLK and Zionism as the main principles of American conservatism, white American conservatives seem to think their main ethnocentric duty is to worship the Magic Negro and fight wars for Israel.
So, ethnocentrics isn't enough. We need a thinking ethnocentrism.
-ics can be manipulated by -ism.
EthnocentrICS is a feeling. EthnocentrISM is an idea. As long as white american conservatives allow their ethnocentric feelings be manipulated by others who fashion the -ism, they will be nothing but running dogs that bark or don't bark according to the orders of their new masters.
"Aaron Gross said...
I do think that many or most of the commenters at iSteve are retards."
Translation: Many or most of the commenters at iSteve are gentiles who say things that I don't like.
"Off hand he said that the most brutal society in history was China because its brutality went on and on and on for thousands of years (and perhaps it still is on going)."
But because of the Leviathan state, Chinese brutality favored the diligent sheep over the robust wolves. Those who could diligently work the farm or pass the exams were favored over tough warriors or badass types... and so Chinese brutality favored the geeks and gimps, which is why so many Chinese are physically dorky.
Mongol brutality, in contrast, favored the the tough and rough, and so Mongols came to be bigger an stronger.
"I do think that many or most of the commenters at iSteve are retards."
I agree. That's why all istevers and their kids need affirmative action admission to elite colleges, like what the retardo black kid who got into Berkeley.
istevers all be forrest gumps.
"It is my opinion, this blog is dedicated to preventing this arms race - I feel it is a humane position."
Can we end the alms race too?
'Peace' is often war by other means, and 'giving' is often taking by other means.
Steve, you have been brainwashed by hbd chick. Lebanon Iraq and now Syria are indeed as Stephen J. Sniegoski says, unstable because they are "riven by bitter ethnic, religious, and ideological conflict" but the contending groups do not break down into 'clans' unless you stretch that word to huge groupings like Sunnis, Shites, Alawites, and Kurds. The actual fighting is between groups that are are faithful unto death, or shared fate groups, yet they are not family in any meaningful sense.
I don't go along with the idea that genes for sacrificing oneself for blood relations (which is what clannishness boils down to) are behind the differences between countries. If you read the books about the assassination of Falcone and Borsellino, it was NOT an mafia made up of extended families they were up against at all. And the Scottish clans system was based on feudal landholding as much as blood relatives.
Anonymous at 10:02
"But Jews have also been very careful to keep the core power among themselves. In business, law, and brain power--the core areas of power--, Jews don't have to rely so much on non-Jews since Jews have the best brains.
If a Wasp or Italian-American law firm excludes Jews and only hires its own kind, it would suffer by lack of top Jewish talent. "
This makes it sound like there are no smart Goy heads but the much larger Goy Bell curve contradicts that idea.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume 200 million White Americans (IQ 100), 6 million Jewish Americans (IQ 115), Normal distribution at the tail ends of the distribution, standard deviations for both populations of 15. That would give us roughly 32 million White Americans with IQ 115 or higher vs 3 million Jewish Americans with IQ 115 or higher. For IQ 130 or higher it is 4.6 million vs 950,000. For IQ 145 it is 270,000 vs 137,000. For IQ 160 it is 6,340 vs 8,100. If it is only 105, IQ 160 would be 6,340 vs 1,400.”
"Daniel Larison actually has two topics that he posts on: That the U.S. should give other countries whatever they want (espeically Russia but also China and Iran) and that the Republicans are stupid."
I used to love Larison, but I'm getting very tired of his endless blathering about foreign policy. However, I tend to agree with him that we should stop demonizing Russia and cultivate it as a valuable ally.
I have never forgotten something told during a discussion out of class by a Professor about China. Off hand he said that the most brutal society in history was China because its brutality went on and on and on for thousands of years (and perhaps it still is on going).
He probably didn't know anything about China. China was not especially brutal. Most of the Western contact with China came after the Industrial Revolution when living standards dramatically rose far above the medieval standard in the West. From that perspective, every medieval society looked brutal, and China was still medieval.
He said that the losers in Chinese society died off--no one lifted a finger to help them.
China has a long history of hermitage. These "losers" that didn't want to join the rat race but preferred solitary living in the mountains as mystics and poets were actually revered by the society and often lived on alms.
Is this a civilized society?
Civilized means under the centralized rule of civilization. The Roman Empire never conquered all of the West and brought it under its centralized rule, and after the Roman Empire fell, the parts it had ruled were invaded and taken over by the parts of the West that it hadn't managed to successfully conquer. The West was relatively less civilized and this was probably a major factor in it being more dynamic. There is a tradeoff between stability and dynamism and civilization tends to promote stability and suppress dynamism.
Anon, maybe you and Larison are right about cultivating Russia, but the really odious, and I think odious is the correct word, thing about Larison's Russophillia is that it flows directly from his religions sympathies. This from a writer who gets awful close at times to explicitly calling AIPAC a fifth column. It is the blatant hypocrisy that gets me.
Indeed, it is instructive to compare his gung ho support of Russian foreign policy with Dreher, who while very deferential to the Moscow Patriarchate vis-a-vis Pussy Riot, nonetheless has at times taken issue with Russian adventurism.
re: "China has a long history of hermitage. These "losers" that didn't want to join the rat race but preferred solitary living in the mountains as mystics and poets were actually revered by the society and often lived on alms."ANON
If there many Chinese practitioners of hermitage, something I find to be of dubious probability, the fact that they were mystics and poets means that they had to be of the high IQ right side of the Bell Curve.
My professor, who may or may not have known what he was talking about, was addressing the fate of the dull, those of the left side, those to be discarded without a thought.
Dan Kurt
"More civilized? I really doubt the West was more civilized than China."
Western folks ended slavery,
OK, with the bit about slavery, though much of it was in name only until very recently.
didn't bind their women's feet, didn't boil cats alive, didn't skin dogs alive,
They (we) had: Race-based slavery BEFORE it was legally (much less practically) abolished, women forced into prostitution in order to feed themselves and their children (though that could bee found everywhere), hoop skirts, corsets, chastity belts, infant circumcisions (male only), superstitious moralism disguised as science, boiling lobsters alive, veal calves and most forms of factory farming, factory schooling, ritualized child abuse, selling alcohol to natives and opium to foreigners while enforcing prohibition on their own citizens, hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy ....
Chinese have a great civilization but they were not civilized in terms of being civil. They were civilized in a Leviathonish way: ruthless and cruel. Confucian scholars did put on refined airs, but it was superficial stuff. They ruled as cruel tyrant who choppy choppy heads if people no good at obey master.
How was that any different than the West? Take off your cross-shaped rose coloured glasses. China and many other non-western societies may have been brutal to Western eyes, but they were honest as hell about it, and also honest and practical about human nature. The real difference is that in the West, individuals are expected to be regimented machines, but in the East, society itself is the machine.
He said that the losers in Chinese society died off--no one lifted a finger to help them.
No they didn't. Asian societies had a concept called "place" which applied to everyone no matter how humble. It was not a matter of shame to be a peasant or slave, only a matter of poor pay and bad working conditions. There really were no losers.
Left to their own devices, the "brutal" states of China, Japan, Korea, and India developed elaborate famine prevention programs - which included the storage of millions of tons of rice throughout the nation. People still starved once in a while, but pre-Mongol Asia never had an atrocity equal to the Irish Potato Famine.
As I see it now, he was describing a multiple thousands of years pitiless march of culling of the left side of the Bell Curve in China. Is this a civilized society?
The left side of the bell curve was NOT culled, only managed, and confined. And, of course, kept from the seats of power. Rice-growing civilizations literally needed a caste of egghead managers. They also needed dumb peasants to do the actual work. Less democratic, I admit, but more civilized.
Mongol brutality, in contrast, favored the the tough and rough, and so Mongols came to be bigger an stronger.
Mongols were not particularly large compared to the sedentary Chinese and Koreans. Mongol horses were bred for speed, agility, and low food requirements. That meant the horses had to be small, which meant the Mongols themselves had to be small in order to ride them.
China has a long history of hermitage. These "losers" that didn't want to join the rat race but preferred solitary living in the mountains as mystics and poets were actually revered by the society and often lived on alms.
That is quite true. Imagine Protestants, and even post-counter- Reformation Catholics, having that sort of reverence!
The West was relatively less civilized and this was probably a major factor in it being more dynamic. There is a tradeoff between stability and dynamism and civilization tends to promote stability and suppress dynamism.
Finally, someone understands all this.
If there many Chinese practitioners of hermitage, something I find to be of dubious probability, the fact that they were mystics and poets means that they had to be of the high IQ right side of the Bell Curve.
My professor, who may or may not have known what he was talking about, was addressing the fate of the dull, those of the left side, those to be discarded without a thought.
Hermitage was a significant tradition in Chinese society and still persists today:
http://www.amazon.com/Road-Heaven-Encounters-Chinese-Hermits/dp/1582435235
It doesn't matter what the IQ of the hermits were, since they lived solitary, monastic, ascetic lives that were materially less comfortable than the lives of duller peasants.
Anonydroid at 10:02 AM wrote: But Jews have also been very careful to keep the core power among themselves. In business, law, and brain power--the core areas of power--, Jews don't have to rely so much on non-Jews since Jews have the best brains.
Hunsdon wrote: Ah yes, the paradox. When Wasps or Anglo-Celts have their own thing, it's exclusionary and hurtful to exclude the Jews. But when the Jews have their own thing, it's just because they're the bestest, smartest, wonderfulest people ever.
Neat trick, that.
Off hand he said that the most brutal society in history was China because its brutality went on and on and on for thousands of years (and perhaps it still is on going). He said that the losers in Chinese society died off--no one lifted a finger to help them. Men with no prospects could not marry, could not "pull themselves up by the boot straps," and perished as did similar un-skilled, un-wanted women. Without a family, a family with EVERYONE in the family working tooth and nail, those solitary individuals (and those unlucky, unsuccessful families) descended into oblivion.
Actually it was because China wasn't especially brutal for thousands of years that they had such a large population. The Chinese typically had small family sizes - usually about 4 to 6 people per household - which is relatively small for agricultural populations. They had very good agricultural tools and methods for their time, like row farming with plows and seed drills. And they expanded southward to the Yangtze river valley which allowed even more food to be grown due to its warmer climate. 2 to 3 crops of rice could be grown per year. This increased their food production significantly and made life considerably non-brutal, which is why their population grew so large.
During much of the first millenium AD, which was generally a period of growing prosperity, they had an "equal-field system" which was an egalitarian method of land distribution that curbed the concentration of land into the hands of absentee landlords and distributed it to independent peasants.
China was well-managed enough to repeatedly grow their population past what could be fed if China became ill-managed. When things occasionally broke down, famine and disease brought the population down quickly below Malthusian limits. My impression is that big differences between the continents is that Europeans tended to practice later marriage for women (about 25 in England versus maybe 18 in China) and perhaps more women went into celibate religious orders (or the like) in Europe.
re anonymous comment:
Game theory tells us that if a faction of the population is habitually ethnocentric to the point of favoring their own and excluding others in all commercial, political and social life, whilst the remainder of the general population does not, then the ethnocentrists will utterly dominate and eventually wipe out the atomists. Simple and inenvitable as that. No ifs and no buts. The only defence available to the atomists is to likewise adopt a rival, reactive ethnocentrism, and hence an evolutionary arms race ensues in which the manifestations become nastier and nastier. Or war of anhiliation.
The political classes of most western nations have the desire and ambition of abolishing all controls on immigration whatsoever. This proposition can scarcely be doubted by anyone who has made a study of the subject. (Incidentally, the main motivation seems to be the desire to look "clever" in the eyes of economists). Now, it so happens that the keenest and most determined immigrants to the west are from nations in which the nasty geno-centric arms race has waged for literally thousands of years - with all the intendent hereditary behaviors that can be predictably imagined from such a vicious milieu. Thus western politicians are importing untold disaster and misery onto the nations they are supposedly charged to defend.
"Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do".
Food for thought.
My basic understanding of game theory is that games that we find interesting tend not to have one single permanent solution.
For example, is it better to be part of a bigger or smaller polity? George Washington and Benjamin Franklin decided in the 1770s that it was better to be part of a smaller polity than the British Empire and in the 1780s that it was better to be part of a bigger polity than their own individual states. Those judgments have endured, so we honor them. But, those were questions of acute interest at the time because the answers weren't certain.
What's the geeky white girl doing dancing with the gangbangers?
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57601313/blow-up-detroit-boston-mayor-apologizes-for-comment/
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