MartyrMade

[Speaker to Animals]

The middle class is a genetic phenomenon. It was the result of genetic adaptations gained in the aristocracy over the course of a thousand years of internecine warfare, and then those genetic adaptations dispersing into the cities and countryside each time collapse occurred and part of the aristocracy was demoted to merchant class or worse. Future planning, putting your children's welfare before your own, etc. is middle class behavior. It's genetic. The rest of humans do not naturally do this. It's just not normal for them. That's not to say they don't love their children. They obviously do. But you are not going to to find many Africans living their lives as if their children's future are the entire purpose of their labor. They have different adaptations entirely. They are tribal. They put their tribe first.

The move from tribalism to non tribal social organization happened in multiple ethnic locations - China, India, the Middle East and Europe roughly in parallel... European civilization achieved a balance of political organization that allowed checks on executive power, institutions that allowed free markets and free speech and effective rule of law... this in and of itself broke the tribal nobility and allowed the rise of the middle class... in fits and starts...

What genetic mechanism out of the 100 or so odd genes that account for human genetic variation are you proposing to explain this dude?

It's a crazy theory you are tossing out there.

Africa never developed the factors to break from tribalism for a bunch of reasons... much to do with jungles and deserts and lack of interconnectedness... for whatever reason it didn't happen... they are cribbing from western success and will take some time to get there... and then reap the harvest and the burden of what comes along...

It's not just escaping tribalism. There are specific genetic adaptations that make the middle class possible.

East Asians have some different adaptations altogether.

European and East Asian peoples are the only people who are able to maintain these kinds of technological civilizations on their own. Nobody else has been able to do it.

It's not my theory, btw. It's a theory in human genetics and demographics.

[Speaker to Animals]

The root of what DrY is saying really comes down to civic nationalism: the belief that social structures and culture are independent of genetics, and anybody can simply adopt cultural forms and socio-economic structures and practices to duplicate western civilization.

I used to believe this pretty strongly at one time. Reality does not bear this out, however. Our cultural values, social and economic structures, western scientific method, laws, and everything else that goes into making western civilization are hardly some closely-guarded secret. Africans have access to the Internet. They have access to all this information. They still cannot duplicate it because it is not in their nature to behave in a similar fashion as us or form social structures in the same way that we do.

Western civilization, in my opinion, has two variants: before and after the Malthusian trap was breached. Before the Malthusian trap was defeated, we constantly had population booms followed by declines and semi-collapse. It was like natural process of expansion and contraction. Then we suddenly developed a middling class and we broke out.

The true secret to Western Civilization's rise is what we now call the middle class. Most of the scientists, technological innovators, cultural producers, etc. are middle class westerners. You won't have the same level of development in a society where there are a few elites and lots of plebs.

The middle class is a genetic phenomenon. It was the result of genetic adaptations gained in the aristocracy over the course of a thousand years of internecine warfare, and then those genetic adaptations dispersing into the cities and countryside each time collapse occurred and part of the aristocracy was demoted to merchant class or worse. Future planning, putting your children's welfare before your own, etc. is middle class behavior. It's genetic. The rest of humans do not naturally do this. It's just not normal for them. That's not to say they don't love their children. They obviously do. But you are not going to to find many Africans living their lives as if their children's future are the entire purpose of their labor. They have different adaptations entirely. They are tribal. They put their tribe first.

There is a ton of information and persuasion packed in here. But break it down some more please.
Firstly, lets agree that there is a constant nurture/nature dynamic at play with any people, right? Sometimes you can't even really quantify the degree as to which is more and what percentage and so on, and sometimes you maybe able to reasonably be sure of the degree. In any case, this shit changes by the year and new scientific "studies, stats, and idk archaeological evidence" etc.

Explain the role of the Malthusian trap (im aware of what it is) and how and why it affected Europeans more without factoring into the equation the geography/climate/other things besides genetics. Also, and this is important , tell me how 1000 years is enough time to make a so called evolutionary adaptation with meaningful/measurable differences...and can you link some legit intelligible to a lay person science on that claim...it could be about something else besides what you are arguing. Essentially I didn't think genes worked that way and I know a lot of stuff is up in the air now b/c of the narrow understanding we have of epigenetics so...

Lastly, i think its a bold claim to say a father and mother in South America, Africa, or the islands would care about their infants less than their tribe. Based off what evidence are you making that claim? Just draw things out a bit more if you will. I think most women would sacrifice everything for the infant including their tribe. IF we are painting with broad strokes here...which we obviously are.

First of all, I did not say people in Africa do not love their children. I said they do not live their lives as if most of their labor is for the betterment of their offspring. That's a European middle class adaptation. Some of them might choose to do this, but they don't have the genetic predisposition to it like we do.

The basic gist of the theory is this: from the close of late antiquity until the escape from Malthusian traps in the 17th century, Europe was stuck in periods of cycles whereby food yields would cause populations to boom, then resources ran out, followed by famines and decline, repeat. If you read a book titled Secular Cycles, by Peter Turchin, he explains this process very well. One of the phases towards the end of a cycle involved a credentials boom where many new titles of nobility were created followed by the inevitable internecine conflict between the aristocracy over dwindling resources. The surviving losers of those conflicts lost land (often titles as well) and ended up in the cities where they married their sons and daughters off to the wealthy merchant classes.

Now, if you consider that for a thousand years, the aristocracy of Europe was more than anything else concerned with the establishment, preservation, and expansion of their dynasties, the families that succeeded longterm over the centuries were those who were predisposed to future planning and naturally putting the advancement of their offspring first as one of their overriding goals. That, in a nutshell, is middle class values. But whenever people with those genetic traits lost power, their fallout resulted in those genetic adaptations spreading amongst the new merchant class in the cities. As the merchant class grew, those genetics also spread out into the countryside.

The Malthusian Trap was defeated because people who naturally sacrificed for the sake of future planning, and put the welfare of their children before almost anything else, tended to have the resources to make it through a famine without losing children. These people were able to produce more children than those who did not possess those adaptation, in general and over time. Once critical mass was reached, the middle class evolved (called middlings for that period). Education became pivotal for the advancement of your progeny. Thus, you would see examples like a humble country doctor in Berkeley England inventing vaccines that saved countless human lives. You saw technological advances in rural England that drastically increased food yields so that, as long as we have these middling adaptations, we will constantly innovate to stay ahead of the trap.

As long as we maintain those adaptations..

[GloryofGreece]

The root of what DrY is saying really comes down to civic nationalism: the belief that social structures and culture are independent of genetics, and anybody can simply adopt cultural forms and socio-economic structures and practices to duplicate western civilization.

I used to believe this pretty strongly at one time. Reality does not bear this out, however. Our cultural values, social and economic structures, western scientific method, laws, and everything else that goes into making western civilization are hardly some closely-guarded secret. Africans have access to the Internet. They have access to all this information. They still cannot duplicate it because it is not in their nature to behave in a similar fashion as us or form social structures in the same way that we do.

Western civilization, in my opinion, has two variants: before and after the Malthusian trap was breached. Before the Malthusian trap was defeated, we constantly had population booms followed by declines and semi-collapse. It was like natural process of expansion and contraction. Then we suddenly developed a middling class and we broke out.

The true secret to Western Civilization's rise is what we now call the middle class. Most of the scientists, technological innovators, cultural producers, etc. are middle class westerners. You won't have the same level of development in a society where there are a few elites and lots of plebs.

The middle class is a genetic phenomenon. It was the result of genetic adaptations gained in the aristocracy over the course of a thousand years of internecine warfare, and then those genetic adaptations dispersing into the cities and countryside each time collapse occurred and part of the aristocracy was demoted to merchant class or worse. Future planning, putting your children's welfare before your own, etc. is middle class behavior. It's genetic. The rest of humans do not naturally do this. It's just not normal for them. That's not to say they don't love their children. They obviously do. But you are not going to to find many Africans living their lives as if their children's future are the entire purpose of their labor. They have different adaptations entirely. They are tribal. They put their tribe first.

There is a ton of information and persuasion packed in here. But break it down some more please.
Firstly, lets agree that there is a constant nurture/nature dynamic at play with any people, right? Sometimes you can't even really quantify the degree as to which is more and what percentage and so on, and sometimes you maybe able to reasonably be sure of the degree. In any case, this shit changes by the year and new scientific "studies, stats, and idk archaeological evidence" etc.

Explain the role of the Malthusian trap (im aware of what it is) and how and why it affected Europeans more without factoring into the equation the geography/climate/other things besides genetics. Also, and this is important , tell me how 1000 years is enough time to make a so called evolutionary adaptation with meaningful/measurable differences...and can you link some legit intelligible to a lay person science on that claim...it could be about something else besides what you are arguing. Essentially I didn't think genes worked that way and I know a lot of stuff is up in the air now b/c of the narrow understanding we have of epigenetics so...

Lastly, i think its a bold claim to say a father and mother in South America, Africa, or the islands would care about their infants less than their tribe. Based off what evidence are you making that claim? Just draw things out a bit more if you will. I think most women would sacrifice everything for the infant including their tribe. IF we are painting with broad strokes here...which we obviously are.

First of all, I did not say people in Africa do not love their children. I said they do not live their lives as if most of their labor is for the betterment of their offspring. That's a European middle class adaptation. Some of them might choose to do this, but they don't have the genetic predisposition to it like we do.

The basic gist of the theory is this: from the close of late antiquity until the escape from Malthusian traps in the 17th century, Europe was stuck in periods of cycles whereby food yields would cause populations to boom, then resources ran out, followed by famines and decline, repeat. If you read a book titled Secular Cycles, by Peter Turchin, he explains this process very well. One of the phases towards the end of a cycle involved a credentials boom where many new titles of nobility were created followed by the inevitable internecine conflict between the aristocracy over dwindling resources. The surviving losers of those conflicts lost land (often titles as well) and ended up in the cities where they married their sons and daughters off to the wealthy merchant classes.

Now, if you consider that for a thousand years, the aristocracy of Europe was more than anything else concerned with the establishment, preservation, and expansion of their dynasties, the families that succeeded longterm over the centuries were those who were predisposed to future planning and naturally putting the advancement of their offspring first as one of their overriding goals. That, in a nutshell, is middle class values. But whenever people with those genetic traits lost power, their fallout resulted in those genetic adaptations spreading amongst the new merchant class in the cities. As the merchant class grew, those genetics also spread out into the countryside.

The Malthusian Trap was defeated because people who naturally sacrificed for the sake of future planning, and put the welfare of their children before almost anything else, tended to have the resources to make it through a famine without losing children. These people were able to produce more children than those who did not possess those adaptation, in general and over time. Once critical mass was reached, the middle class evolved (called middlings for that period). Education became pivotal for the advancement of your progeny. Thus, you would see examples like a humble country doctor in Berkeley England inventing vaccines that saved countless human lives. You saw technological advances in rural England that drastically increased food yields so that, as long as we have these middling adaptations, we will constantly innovate to stay ahead of the trap.

As long as we maintain those adaptations..

Have you read Farwell to Alms: A Brief Economic History. If not what do you think of this book from the synopsis? He comes to a different conclusion but address much the same things.
https://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Alms-Ec ... ll+to+alms

[Speaker to Animals]

Why are some parts of the world so rich and others so poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution--and the unprecedented economic growth that came with it--occur in eighteenth-century England, and not at some other time, or in some other place? Why didn't industrialization make the whole world rich--and why did it make large parts of the world even poorer? In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark tackles these profound questions and suggests a new and provocative way in which culture--not exploitation, geography, or resources--explains the wealth, and the poverty, of nations.

Countering the prevailing theory that the Industrial Revolution was sparked by the sudden development of stable political, legal, and economic institutions in seventeenth-century Europe, Clark shows that such institutions existed long before industrialization. He argues instead that these institutions gradually led to deep cultural changes by encouraging people to abandon hunter-gatherer instincts-violence, impatience, and economy of effort-and adopt economic habits-hard work, rationality, and education.

The problem, Clark says, is that only societies that have long histories of settlement and security seem to develop the cultural characteristics and effective workforces that enable economic growth. For the many societies that have not enjoyed long periods of stability, industrialization has not been a blessing. Clark also dissects the notion, championed by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, that natural endowments such as geography account for differences in the wealth of nations.

A brilliant and sobering challenge to the idea that poor societies can be economically developed through outside intervention, A Farewell to Alms may change the way global economic history is understood.

just going by the synopsis, the problem is that culture is downstream from genetics.

[GloryofGreece]

I guess reasonable people could agree that genetics (nature) accounts to somewhere to 50-80% of any specific human characteristic or trait. The problem is no matter what percentage we or anyone can settle on as the "amount" that trait is genetic there will always be worthwhile doubt in the amount the environment/culture/nurture plays in any one specific trait. And there in lies the debate and so we and anyone else can argue over the incalculable amount genetics play in one specific state of affairs.

[Speaker to Animals]

Examples:

Why else do Africans act pretty much the same everywhere they live in large numbers?

Why do European and North American cities generally look the same, and East Asian cities generally look the same?

Why do Asian nations all run on authoritarianism and high-conformity, and European nations generally run on high-trust (unless temporarily overrun by Marxism)?

Even in colonies, Asian cities exhibit the same traits. Singapore began as a multi-racial city-state (mostly white and Chinese). As the Asian population dominated, the city-state became ultra authoritarian. They still have some of the high-trust aspects going on (as does Hong Kong), but authoritarianism is the primary glue that holds the advanced civilization together there.

[Speaker to Animals]

The post-graduate student at that library protest exemplified the differences. This Chinese guy was incensed that these BLM agitators were violating the social norms of the library. We celebrated it because we saw the merit in his values and we liked that he stood up against them. But you didn't see whites tell these agitators to take it outside and stop behaving like animals in the library.

Try doing that shit in a Chinese library and they are likely to harvest your organs.

[GloryofGreece]

The post-graduate student at that library protest exemplified the differences. This Chinese guy was incensed that these BLM agitators were violating the social norms of the library. We celebrated it because we saw the merit in his values and we liked that he stood up against them. But you didn't see whites tell these agitators to take it outside and stop behaving like animals in the library.

Try doing that shit in a Chinese library and they are likely to harvest your organs.

How about a simple IQ argument. Asia = higher...Africa = much lower. IQ not everything but it is the single most correlated personality trait metric that is studied and has been for over 100 years. The next closest correlated character trait attached to "success" is trait "conscientiousness"/Work Ethic. But its a far away second place to IQ.

[DrYouth]

How about a simple IQ argument. Asia = higher...Africa = much lower. IQ not everything but it is the single most correlated personality trait metric that is studied and has been for over 100 years. The next closest correlated character trait attached to "success" is trait "conscientiousness"/Work Ethic. But its a far away second place to IQ.

It may be that our social innovations have liberated the individual to develop higher left brain function (iQ)...
Tribal societies rely on right brain function - loyalty, interconnection, intuition... as the social glue...
Our left brains are not "held back" by this influence.

It's the same phenomenon that keeps individuals from wanting to rise above their fellow tribe members in wealth or intelligence because it makes them feel "apart from" their tribe... Do you know the crabs in the bucket metaphor.

Western cultures have overcome this... we feel no hesitation in outdoing one another... we are in fact driven to outdo one another.

In tribal societies it's tribes that compete... in western culture it's individual that compete.

Hence higher !Q.... but also higher rates of alienation, depression, addiction etc.

We have atomized society to the individual level... with all the pros and cons that go with that.

[Hastur]

One thing we take for granted in the west is our reverence for truth. When I go to Africa or the ME the hardest thing for me is all the lying that goes on. People lie about everything. What they know, what they don't know, where things are, how much stuff costs, what they promise to do and when things are going to happen. lies, lies, lies. And they're not even embarrassed about it.

Individualism, and all the responsibilities and rewards it brings. That is what made us kings. We're always trying to figure stuff out and investigate what makes things work. You can only do that if you lift up truthfulness as the highest virtue. In the far east, they have the constant fear of losing face. To fail in your mission. That has a similar effect but it's not as strong as what we have. They never get full recognition for personal achievements.

Postmodernism is a potentially fatal disease in our culture. It strikes at the core. It's an assault on truth itself. It needs to be burnt out from the body of society.