(Part II of two)
Europe and the U.S. are both being overrun with illegal immigrants from the South. We recently asked the question, 'Why?' One answer, we've found, could be the former's higher levels of Future Orientation. This ability to fully conceive of and plan for the future creates societies that are the envy of the world.
But we also argue that a second quality is drawing the masses to Euros' doors. We call this trait Commonweal Orientation. Where it is found in abundance, safe and prosperous societies seem to flourish. So what is it, and why has it been so unevenly distributed on Planet Earth?
I. Low Commonweal: A character sketch
For those of us born in high-trust societies, it may come as a surprise that low commonweal orientation, also known as low trust, clannishness, or amoral familism, is anything but rare--globally, it is not the exception but the rule.
1) Low-trust: Don't be a sucker
Let's hear it from the horse's mouth:
a) Semitics
Via HBD Chick, Marjorie Miller explains the Israeli concept of 'freier':
A freier, in Israeli eyes, is a shopper who waits in line to pay retail. It is a driver who searches for legal parking rather than pulling onto the sidewalk with the other cars. ... The fear of being a sucker turns driving into a bumper-car competition and makes grocery shopping as trying as arm wrestling.
... 'In London, the culture is to give way, be a gentleman, don’t compete,’ said Peri, the former editor. ‘But an Israeli is the opposite. If you are stronger, why should you give way to someone weaker? In a debate, the British will say, 'You have a point.' In a debate here, no Israeli will admit he has been persuaded to change his mind. That shows weakness.’
Americans often find the Israeli attitude intolerably rude. Israelis, meanwhile, find Americans to be the biggest freiers of all. They are naive idealists. ... Americans are perceived as innocents who follow the rules and who believe a person will actually do what he promises to do. ‘An American is willing to trust until someone proves to be untrustworthy,’ Shahar said. ‘Israel is much more like the rest of the world, where the basic assumption is that people . . . should not be trusted until proven trustworthy.’
The ugly Israeli: 'You will sell me chocolate. ... You are my worker, I paid money for you!' (video at link)
David Pryce-Jones, who lived many years among the Arabs:
'Public welfare' is a concept without meaningful application [in the Arab world]; there is no common good. Generosity is suspect as a ploy for advantage. Idealism and sincerity are penalized. Self-sacrifice is akin to lunacy or martyrdom.
The garbage-strewn rooftops of Cairo
David Lamb, after three years in Cairo:
But here's the curious thing: While Egyptians are content to live in filthy, battered buildings, the insides of their homes are always immaculate. ... When I asked friends if anyone had ever considered a neighborhood block association or an owners' association to clean up common areas, they would chuckle and say "Oh, THAT would never work here." No doubt it wouldn't. My friends did not feel that their responsibility extended beyond their own boundaries.
b) Persians
… When we first came to America in 1972, my father was amazed at the way Americans waited in line at Disneyland. No complaints, no cutting. In Iran, we have zerangi, a concept that loosely means “cleverness.”
... Most, if not all the time in Iranian culture and society, a zerang person is seen in a positive light ... For example, a person who knows how the American legal system works and is able to work it to his or her advantage is zerang. A person who is resourceful in business and has made something of himself is zerang. ... It does not stop here; a person who is able to wittingly cheat people, companies, businesses, governments of money is zerang and an idol for many Iranians. ...We Iranians, although outwardly criticize corruption, internally glorify it and wish to master it.
c) Iberians
Brazilian social anthropologist Roberto DaMatta has observed the stark contrasts between his countrymen's behavior within the family circle and without. In sum:
If I am buying from or selling to a relative, I neither seek profit nor concern myself with money. The same can happen in a transaction with a friend. But, if I am dealing with a stranger, then there are no rules, other than the one of exploiting him to the utmost.
Lawrence Harrison, who spent decades working in Latin America, has identified what he calls the 'attitude system typical of Hispanic America':
[…] a limited radius of social identification resulting in a lack of concern for the interests and well-being of people outside the family, and for the society as a whole; the generalized absence of trust throughout the society; absence of due process, […] low incidence of organized group solutions to common problems; nepotism and corruption; tax evasion; absence of philanthropy.
He cites Argentine Mariano Grondona, who claims familism can chip away at 'the lesser virtues,' or
'daily small antisocial acts such as the indiscriminate disposal of trash in vacant lots and gutters.'
The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset says 'the most widespread and dangerous characteristic of modern Spanish life' is called 'particularism':
Among normal [sic] nations, a class that desires something for itself tries to get it by agreement with the other classes. . . . But a class attacked by particularism feels humiliated when it realizes that in order to achieve its desires it must resort to these organs of the common will.
Chronicler of Spanish mores Fernando Diaz-Plaja once spoke of a encounter in Madrid with a young boy cutting in line at a bus stop to reserve spots for him and his mother:
The fault wasn't [the boy's]. His parents, his older brothers, his uncles had taught him that society is a jungle and that you don't get anywhere unless you think only of yourself.
2) High-trust: Living among the suckers
If 'non-freier' / 'zerangi' is the norm on Planet Earth, then what is the exception?
a) English
...the English sensitiveness to the 'laws of things'--the law of the road, the law of the sea, the law of the hunting field. ... the English are the teachers of the world, not merely in their quickness to perceive these natural laws, but in their cordial and sincere obedience to the restrictions which they impose upon each individual for the good of the whole.
Each Englishman is his own regulator. ... The need of outside safeguards or guarantees of any kind is therefore less urgently felt than in other countries. The average level of honesty in English civil life is singularly high, as is shown in the usual disregard for detailed precautions against fraud or deceit.
... No bureaucracy in the world can vie with the English Civil Service in its devotion to the interests of the country. ... it owes much also to that instinct for co-operation, that objectivity, that absence of self-seeking, of vanity and of personal passion which are typical of the whole race.
b) Scandinavians
Denmark, called 'the happiest place in the world,' is said to be singularly high-trust:
The second pillar of happiness is a high level of trust between people, even for a stranger on the street, according to Wiking. This could be a spillover effect from people's high level of trust in the government, which is underpinned by a low level of corruption. "We have a belief that our democratic institutions protect us and that the state... wants what is good for us,'' he said. ... "Danish society is more cohesive. The quality of social relations is somewhat stronger'' than in the rest of Scandinavia, Wiking said.
Pre-immivasion, corruption was so low in Sweden they didn't even have vocabulary for it. From Simona Pattioni, via HBD Chick:
The Swedish language does not have an appropriate word for clientelism, and when journalists refer to clientelism in other countries, they usually have to add that this is a practice where politicians exchange favors for political support. Yet, on the whole, the practice of clientelism is relatively unknown in Sweden. Evidence from scientific research suggests that the Swedish bureaucracy works in a relatively universalistic manner.
c) Japanese
Francis Fukuyama on the Japanese:
Consensus comes about relatively easily in Japan. ... Networks based on reciprocal moral obligation have ramified throughout the Japanese economy because the degree of generalized trust possible among unrelated people is extraordinarily high. ... Something in Japanese culture makes it very easy for one person to incur a reciprocal obligation to another and to maintain this sense of obligation over extended periods of time.
The low-trust have thus told us in their own words how they operate. But what does such a trait look like, scaled up to the level of a society? And why are the people that create these societies so tempted to try to get away from them? We shall start with anecdotes, then take a look at the numbers.
II. Low Commonweal Orientation: The Macro
'Building a better life for my family' often means fleeing the corruption and fraud which flower among the low-trust. For some concrete examples of what these millions of people are running from, we shall look at 1) political corruption, 2) civil service corruption, 3) welfare fraud, 4) tax fraud, 5) education fraud, and 6) the 'lesser virtues.'
In addition, we shall see not only how the low-trust operate at home, but also how they operate when we let them into our high-trust enclaves.
Tour d'horizon...
1) Political corruption
a) Political corruption--At home
In nepotistic countries, political fraud is not so much a mark of shame as a national sport. Sub-Saharan Africa may be one of the most flagrant examples, as they struggle to survive while leaders live high on the hog:
In total, French authorities believe that [Congolese] President Sassou-Nguesso and his family spent 60 million euros [!] on luxury items and property in France over [2005-2011]. ... a former family aid noted that Denis “changes shirts three or four times a day and boasts that he never washes them and uses them as Kleenexes.”
... in 2007 it was revealed that he had spent $400,000 on hotel bills during two visits to New York. Members of his entourage, which on one occasion took up 44 rooms in the historic Waldorf Astoria hotel, reportedly drank Cristal champagne and charged tens of thousands of dollars of room service. ... Meanwhile, back home in the Republic of Congo, more than half the population lives on less than $1.25 per day.
Aid money meant for the poorest often disappears:
At least €1 billion of EU aid poured into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in recent years went down the drain, auditors say. Looking at €1.9 billion worth of 16 aid projects in the vast, troubled, country between 2003 and 2011, it said: "Fewer than half of the programmes examined have delivered, or are likely to deliver, most of the expected results." ... He said the EU in 2005 also helped to equip and train a police force of some 1,000 officers, "but when we came down there and checked [in 2012], … we could find no trace of it."
But aid money going up in smoke is hardly unique to Africa--some of the wealthiest on the planet engage in this sport as well:
An estimated €120 billion is lost to corruption each year throughout the 27 member states, the EU commissioner for home affairs Cecilia Malmstrom has said. “In public procurement, studies suggest that up to 20 to 25 percent of the public contracts’ value may be lost to corruption,” said Malmstrom on Tuesday. ... the worst offenders in public procurement cases are Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Italy, Romania and Slovakia.
Low-trust and high-trust peoples simply don't look at things the same way:
Shivpal Singh Yadav is in charge of housing and construction in northern Uttar Pradesh state, ... "If you work hard, you can steal a little, but don't behave like bandits," the Press Trust of India quoted Yadav as saying at the meeting in Etah town, about 124 miles from capital Lucknow.
Yadav and Papandreou: Two peas in a pod
As in India, so in Greece:
One of the biggest [scandals of post-EU Greece], involving the leader of the Public Power Corporation in 1986, apparently elicited the following response from then-Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou : '[…] he made a joke of it saying that he had no problem if an official "makes a little gift to himself," provided that the amounts not be outrageously high.'
Latin America, which has thrown off decades of military dictatorship and embraced representative democracy, remains plagued with endless corruption scandals at the very highest levels of government, as can be seen today in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Peru .
Under a cloud of suspicion: Latin American leaders recently embroiled in scandal
(Presidents of Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, Parliament Speaker of Venezuela)
b) Political corruption--Abroad
Low-trust societies create political corruption. But what happens when large chunks of their populations leave and set up shop in high-trust countries?
Boasting a population that is 97% Hispanic, more than half foreign born, and 40% illegal, the Los Angeles County, Calif., incorporated city of Maywood has achieved the Reconquista goal. It is now as lawless and chaotic as any place in Mexico. Maywood was the first California city with an elected Hispanic City Council, one of the first “sanctuary” cities for illegal aliens, ... Council meetings were conducted in Spanish.
... Charges of corruption and favoritism led to one recall of city council members and threats of more recalls are heard to this day. ... Today, Maywood is broke. Its police department dismantled along with all other city departments and personnel. Only the city council remains.
As goes Maywood, so goes South Gate:
Today, South Gate is 93 percent Hispanic. ... Nearly half of South Gate’s population was born outside of the United States, and 80 percent of the town’s residents speak Spanish at home.
In 1997, Albert Robles won the race for city treasurer and began collecting an annual salary of $69,000. Meanwhile, he had seen to it that his friends and business associates were awarded city contracts worth millions. ... his political opponents were not faring nearly as well. City councilman Henry Gonzalez was shot in the head but survived the wound. Another political rival had his car firebombed. The crimes remain unsolved.
Britain too has been importing low-trust immigrants as fast as it can, and importing their political culture as well:
The move comes amid findings that "almost all” the cases of large-scale electoral fraud in England since 2000 have occurred in areas with large Pakistani or Bangladeshi communities. ... The report by the Liverpool and Manchester team found both communities shared "a wide range of vulnerabilities, which may make them susceptible to becoming victims of electoral fraud”.
The main issues highlighted were the influence of the "kinship networks” combined with an absence of mainstream party political activity.
Britons fêted the great milestone of their first Muslim mayor... then promptly disqualified him for massive ballot fraud:
Mr Pickles told the Commons that Mr Rahman had dispensed public money like a “medieval monarch” and oversaw an administration that was “at best dysfunctional, at worst riddled with cronyism and corruption”. He added: “It seems to me that the mayor’s test is, ‘If you’re not actually caught with your fingers in the till, you’re innocent.’ ... If I was the mayor of Tower Hamlets, I would be hanging my head in shame.”
2) Civil service corruption
Political fraud is one thing, but what of the civil service performance among low-trust peoples? In such countries, dealing with functionaries like the police can be a daily exercise in bribery:
In the capital, as well as the states of Mexico, Tamaulipas and Querétaro those stopped by the traffic police pay bribes over 80 percent of the time. While these represent the worst, the national average is just under 70 percent (in only four states is it less than half of the time).
As in Mexico, so in Afghanistan:
“He’s the only honest traffic police in Afghanistan,” said Abdul Hussen Sadeq, a taxi driver. “All the rest are like dogs,” said Hasibullah, another taxi driver, who uses only one name. “Every day they ask us for bribes. If we don’t pay, they take our licenses.”Saboor knows as well as anyone how you make money as a traffic police officer. You accept bribes instead of giving tickets. For a price, you allow trucks to be driven in restricted areas of the city. You charge drivers to park on the street, even where parking is free and legal.
In Russia, traffic cops are so corrupt that millions of drivers have taken to installing dash-cams in order to protect against shake-downs. (Which, incidentally, is why there is so much good footage of 2013's spectacular meteor crash in Eastern Russia.)
The police and military in Cambodia have honed graft to a fine art:
Teuk Thla Market [in Phnom Penh] is a clearinghouse where soldiers, police and occasionally criminals haggle over all things police- and military-related, from footwear to stun guns, and even insignia of rank.
Interviews with buyers and sellers alike reveal a vicious cycle: Government officials in charge of procurement sell state-owned gear [destined for their troops] to vendors. Vendors, in turn, sell it on to other police who flock to the market after finding themselves under-equipped partly because much of the gear intended for standard issue winds up in Teuk Thla instead!
Most African hospitals are desperately short of medicine. But on the streets outside, any type and variety of medicine is readily for sale, most of it pilfered from the hospital pharmacies or diverted before it even makes it that far. Those with money can afford to buy medicines privately; those without--and that means the vast majority of Africans--simply suffer until they die.
Kenyan civil servants have also mastered the art of graft: When the country recently set up biometric testing for all state employees, it was found that 12,000 phantom workers were being paid every month.
In India, civil service corruption is so ubiquitous it's affecting the marriage market:
One civil servant told India Today magazine the Uttar Pradesh state's Public Civil Service Commission had been visited by more than 5,000 families searching for grooms with lucrative bribe income potential. ... families wanted their daughters to marry civil servants because they know they will take home high, tax-free bribe payments. "There is widespread acceptance of graft in the society. No parent gives a damn about monthly salary, all they are concerned about is whether he [the groom] is at a position which allows him to take bribes," he said.
3) Welfare fraud
a) Welfare fraud--At home
The world's poorer countries don't have much in the way of welfare, but where wealth meets familism, all kinds of chicanery abounds, such as on Greece's 'Blind Island':
Zakynthos Island: All this and a government check too
On [Greece's] Zakynthos Island, something like two per cent of the population were registered blind. All was not quite how it seemed, however, ... an astonishing 498 of those 680 were not blind at all - or even partially sighted. But being 'blind' had its advantages - in particular, the €724 paid in benefits once every two months, and a reduction in utility bills. It was a scam which could be traced back to one ophthalmologist and one official, which was estimated to have cost the country €9 million. And, as Angelos discovered, it was only the tip of the iceberg.
b) Welfare fraud--Abroad
One of the hardest things for high-trust Euros to grasp, especially our Scandi hothouse flowers, is how guiltlessly the low-trust are ready to plunder their welfare rolls. Britain, whose homegrown cheating class are no slouches, still manages to roll out the red carpet for the world's welfare scroungers:
In the U.S., our taste for importing health care pros from the low-trust climes has led to an all-you-can-eat buffet of multicult benefits fraud:
Twenty-five [Cameroonian] people were charged Thursday with obtaining at least $75 million in fraudulent Medicaid payments from the District of Columbia government, a series of cases that federal prosecutors said added up to the largest health-care fraud in the city's history. Among those charged was Florence Bikundi, 51, of Bowie, Md., ... she was able to [falsely] bill the city for $75 million in Medicaid .
“This investigation has revealed that Medicaid fraud in the District of Columbia is at epidemic levels,” said U.S. Attorney Machen. “This fraud diverts precious taxpayer dollars, drives up the cost of health care, and jeopardizes the strength of a program that serves the most vulnerable members of our society.”
In fact, one of multiculturalism's greatest successes in the U.S. has been defrauding Medicare. The FBI indictment lists read like an Ellis Island dream. In just the last few years, in addition to the above embassy-linked Cameroonian ring in D.C., we've been treated to a Nicaraguan fraud ring in Florida, a Filipino fraud ring in Chicago, an Armenian fraud ring in New York, a Nigerian and Afro-American fraud ring in Louisiana, separate Iranian and Nigerian fraud rings in Houston, as well as a multi-national Muslim Medicare fraudapolooza in Michigan.
4) Tax fraud
a) Tax fraud--At home
Tax fraud is to some extent practiced everywhere there are taxes, but some peoples seem to take on the taxman with special gusto. The Greeks, they say, have elevated it to high art:
A Daily Mail investigation in 2011 ... described street after street of opulent mansions and villas, surrounded by high walls and with their own pools, which, on paper, were the homes of virtual paupers. They were all allowed to declare their own income for tax purposes - and officially, they were only earning €12,000 - or a paltry £8,500 - a year, below the tax threshold, ... prompting one economist to describe Greece as a ‘poor country full of rich people’.
And, should the taxman rumble this common ruse, it can be dealt with using a fakelaki — an envelope stuffed with cash. There is even a semi-official rate for bribes: passing a false tax return requires a payment of up to 10,000 euros (the average Greek family is reckoned to pay out £2,000 a year in fakelaki.)
b) Tax fraud--Abroad
As mentioned, the Scandis are forever puzzled that the huddled masses they take in are so quick to swindle them:
In 2011 Revenue was commissioned to investigate the extent of tax evasion and possible benefit fraud in 26 Danish residential areas characterized by having ... a high proportion of immigrants and their descendants.
‘I am very negatively surprised by the results. Frankly, it is disturbing and very unsatisfactory that there are such massive problems in complying with laws and regulations on tax, VAT and social services in these 26 critical areas. We will not accept that in some areas of Denmark there exists a kind of parallel economy in which the participants will only reap the benefits of the welfare state, but do not participate in the financing,’ says Minister for Revenue. ‘Revenue are shocked. Evidence suggests that it is not ignorance concerning the rules, but rather deliberate cheating. Regardless of where you were born, you must follow the rules. Tax evasion is antisocial behavior.'
Victor Davis Hanson has watched California's Central Valley slowly Mexicanize, to interesting effect:
How to square this circle between official poverty and misery and the veneer of a well-off general public? There is a vast and completely unreported cash economy in Central California. Tile-setters, carpenters, landscapers, tree-cutters, general handymen, cooks, housekeepers, and personal attendants are all both finding work and being paid in cash. Peddlers (no income or sales taxes) are on nearly every major rural intersection.
... At crossroads, peddlers in a counter-California economy sell almost anything. Here is what I noticed at an intersection on the west side last week: shovels, rakes, hoes, gas pumps, lawnmowers, edgers, blowers, jackets, gloves, and caps. The merchandise was all new. I doubt whether in high-tax California sales taxes or income taxes were paid on any of these stop-and-go transactions.
Illegal immigrants have also been an income tax fraud cash cow, as this case of collecting tax refunds for 15,000 illegal aliens at one address shows.
5) Education fraud
a) Education fraud--At home
Low commonweal means cheating is expected, not stigmatised. In Indian education, it's in many places par for the course:
Cheat sheets climb the walls to help the young test-takers inside (northern India)
At a test center in northern India's Bareilly district, state-appointed inspectors making a surprise visit last month found school staff members writing answers to a Hindi exam on the blackboard. When the inspectors arrived, the staff members tried to throw the evidence out the window.
Sometimes the stories are horrifying. A 10th-grader in Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state, accused his principal last month of allowing students to cheat if they each paid about $100. The student's impoverished family could barely manage half the bribe. Distraught, he doused himself with kerosene and set himself on fire in the family kitchen. He died the next day. In Mumbai, officials said that installing closed-circuit cameras reduced cheating by 20%, but teachers said students in at least one school in the city's Parel neighborhood disabled the cameras by pelting them with rocks.
In China, academic fraud has reached 'epidemic' levels, as exposed by activist Shi-min Fang:
In 1998, after eight years studying in the US, I returned to China and was shocked to see it was deluged with pseudosciences, superstitions and scientific misconduct. From 2000, I started to publish articles on the site fighting scientific misconduct and fraud. ... The majority of cases exposed are plagiarism, the exaggeration of academic credentials and faked research papers, which are endemic in China. ... New Threads has exposed more than 1000 cases of scientific fraud.
b) Education fraud--Abroad
Like their parents, immigrant students from low-trust countries tend to bring their cultural habits with them:
As tens of thousands of Chinese students prepare to study in the U.S., they might reflect on the experience of some of those who went before them. According to an estimate by a U.S. education company, some 8,000 Chinese students were expelled from American universities last year alone – and the main reasons were poor grades and cheating.
A recent online discussion among Australian academics on the merits of their overseas students quickly devolved into mass spleen-venting:
'I attended a major American research university for undergrad and I spent Sophomore year tutoring international students (mostly Chinese). There is no way that any of my tutees had good enough English or academic credentials to get into that university. They struggled hard, and almost all of them at some point offered to pay me to write papers for them. Somehow, they all had really good IELTS scores and shiny prep school transcripts. I'm certain that they had some system in place to cheat on their IELTS exams and probably their pre-college schoolwork too.'
'Oh how I love the Chinese and Indian students in my Chemical Engineering program. Two were caught with cameras in a test, both still in school. Constantly cheating, constantly ducking any real work, plagiarism in every [expletive] assignment.''Not just Chinese students either, the other day my girlfriend had 2 Middle Eastern guys approach her after class asking her to do their homework for cash. I've seen international students write entire tests on their arms and get away with it. It's pretty disappointing.'
6) The 'Lesser Virtues'
a) The 'Lesser Virtues'--At home
What Grondona called 'the lesser virtues' are often little respected among the low-commonweal.
In such countries, Westerners used to order on the roadway can be in for a rude awakening. 'How to drive in India' seems to be an oeuvre all its own; we shall take Jalopnik's as representative of the genre:
Lanes: Meaningless stripes on the ground. Ignore at all times, or actually treat with contempt.
Oncoming traffic: Don't even worry about it. Driving right into the path of another driver is fine. Just make sure to make an action-movie escape at the last minute to keep things exciting. People will be offended if you don't.
Horns: A good Indian driver honks his horn while attempting any risky maneuver, such as driving pretty much anywhere at any time.
Lights: Based on the drivers I was with, headlights are for the weak and if you turn them on then you'll be letting darkness know it won.
Pedestrians: They'll happily walk right in front of a car doing 100 KPH without thinking twice.
Vehicle Load Limits: Three tons of quarried rock under a huge tarp on a van? Sure! Two couches on a bike? Have at it. A bull and a stack of tires on a moped? Why not?
Driving politely is one thing, but not throwing trash in public is another one of the 'lesser virtues' that can make a big difference. From Allan Wall, expat in Mexico:
Here in Mexico, people toss out litter with reckless abandon. You can see it everywhere—on vacant lots, roadsides, even in irrigation channels. ... The Mexican equivalent of the EPA reported in 2001 that only 53% of the trash in Mexico winds up in officially-designated landfills and dump sites. The remaining 47% is tossed outside “in valleys, roads, vacant lots, bodies of water and clandestine dumpsites”.
After about five minutes, we made our first stop: a road-side garbage dump where cows were feasting on the refuse. We were still in an upscale area, and I asked Kasturi how all this garbage ended up in the streets there. Her answer surprised me.
“My neighbors are purposely dumping it in these streets, and most don’t see anything wrong with their behavior. In India,” she went on, “waste is considered a threat to a person’s dignity and status.” Bangalore instituted door-to-door trash pickup in 2000—a forward-looking program in India at the time. But many residents believe their front door is too close to home to place garbage. Instead, they chuck their waste into these street-side dumps. “Bangaloreans dump their trash in the streets not because they are poor, but because of habit and culture,” said Kasturi. “‘As long as my house is clean,’ they think, ‘what’s the big deal?’”
Some kind souls even try to educate the natives during their travels:
'That said, there is a terrible toss-it mentality in Guatemala. We were recently riding in a mini-van with a young boy (about 12) in the Peten region and when he made a move to toss a small styrofoam plate out the van window. I stopped him and tried to explain that if tosses a plate and everyone else tosses a plate pretty soon the road is ugly and the villages are sick and no tourists come and his dad (a local guide) is out of work. He looked at me blankly ...'
b) The 'Lesser Virtues'--Abroad
It will not surprise us to see that our lower-trust immigrants bring their habits with them when they arrive. Victor Davis Hanson again surveying California's Central Valley:
... California coastal elites may worry about the oxygen content of water available to a three-inch smelt in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, but they seem to have no interest in the epidemic dumping of trash, furniture, and often toxic substances throughout California’s rural hinterland. Yesterday, for example, I rode my bike by a stopped van just as the occupants tossed seven plastic bags of raw refuse onto the side of the road. I rode up near their bumper and said in my broken Spanish not to throw garbage onto the public road. But there were three of them, and one of me. So I was lucky to be sworn at only.
In fact, trash piles are commonplace out here — composed of everything from half-empty paint cans and children’s plastic toys to diapers and moldy food. I have never seen a rural sheriff cite a litterer, or witnessed state EPA workers cleaning up these unauthorized wastelands.
Not just in the countryside, but in the big cities too:
MacArthur Park, Los Angeles
Jose Fernandez looked out his apartment window near MacArthur Park [in Los Angeles] and admitted, in defeat, that he's grown accustomed to the view: Torn couches, dingy mattresses, broken dressers, dusty headboards. ..."I've seen junk stay out there a week, sometimes a month," the 24-year-old said. "Everyone walks by and stares. No one does anything about it."
Hoping to put a stop to the rubbish, the city recently launched a $1-million cleanup effort ... Much of the focus is on the immigrant-heavy neighborhoods of Westlake and Pico-Union just west of downtown. ... Chairs, rugs and other larger pieces block the alleys and sidewalks in a smelly obstacle course that sometimes reaches 10 feet high.
Blogger Logical Meme on his experience in Connecticut:
“I work in Hartford CT … The area of the city where I work, a formerly pristine area in the city`s heyday, is a battle zone representative of urban minority life. ... Hispanics are, by far, the majority constituency.
... The sheer amount of trash and litter thrown everywhere is mind-blowing. On the sidewalks, in the grass, in the road, everywhere. Bottles, cans, candy bar wrappers, styrofoam cups, an endless supply of cigarette butts, empty cigarette boxes, etc… The littering I speak of cannot be characterized as anything less than sheer contempt and disrespect for basic norms of civility and appropriate behavior…
The French too have suffered from their guests' affection for littering. In heavily immigrant Seine-Saint-Denis, to the north of Paris, the government has launched a 5 million euro highway clean-up campaign:
The highways of [majority immigrant] north Ile-de-France have been targeted for clean-up. Garbage has been piling up there due to incivility as well as the gypsy camps dismantled recently, which left huge piles of trash. In some places, veritable open-air dumps have taken over. The prefect of Seine-Saint-Denis has complained to the government, stating, "In far too many places, garbage has become part of the landscape. This cannot go on."
Aside from driving politely and not littering, another 'lesser virtue' which the Teutonics hold dear, and their immigrants seem unaware of, is the art of queuing:
When Israeli-born author Ayelet Tsabari first immigrated to Canada in 1998, a strange sight caught her eye on the sidewalks of Vancouver. Beneath every Canadian bus stop sign, as if commanded by an invisible drill sergeant, citizens young and old automatically formed into neat, ordered lines. “I was wondering, ‘Why are people standing like that?’” she said.
And the phenomenon is not only baffling to Israelis. Ms. Tsabari described bonding with an Iraqi friend over the “foreign and strange” practice. But from Russia to China to Italy to the entire Middle East, there are billions of people around the world who are genuinely confused by the penchant of English-speaking peoples to constantly form into queues.
The low-trust and the high-trust, then, seem to operate on a different civilizational frequency. Can we be surprised that forcing such peoples to live cheek-by-jowl has caused friction?
III) Commonweal Orientation: The Numbers
It is tricky to guage commonweal orientation in numbers. Self-reporting surveys are generally used, such as Transparency International's Perceived Corruption Index, the World Economic Forum's survey of businessmen, the legendary World Values Survey, or the work of cross-cultural values researchers such as Geert Hofstede, Robert House, Shalom Schwartz, or Fons Trompenaars.
We've published some maps, graphs, and tables on the question in our piece about Teutonics.
As the World Values Survey has just released its 2014 data wave, we've decided to dive in and see what the numbers can tell us. In the spirit of Ronald Inglehart's world values maps, and with all the caveats that apply, let us see what the world's people are saying about trust levels in their countries.
(Note: Country clusters are color-coded as Nordic, Germanic, Anglo, Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, East Asia, Latin America, Muslim Middle East, South Asia, S.S. Africa)
(click images to enlarge)
1) General trust level
As a tentative proxy for general trust, we took two questions.
- "Do you think most people would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance, or would they try to be fair?" (WVS) (1-10 where 1 = "people would take advantage," 10 = "people would try to be fair" -->; Respondents who said "1" only)
- "How much do you trust people you meet for the first time?" (WVS) (1-4 where 1 = completely, 4 = not at all -->; Respondents who said "4" only)
2) Trust vs. Familism
Does familism correlate with trust? As a proxy for the former, we used the statement
- "One of my main goals in life has been to make my parents proud." (WVS) (1-4 where 1 = agree strongly, 4 = disagree strongly -->; Respondents who said "1" only)
- "Do you think most people would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance, or would they try to be fair?" (WVS) (1-10 where 1 = "people would take advantage," 10 = "people would try to be fair" -->; Respondents who said "1" only)
If familism and trust can both be used as tentative proxies for 'commonweal orientation,' we could pit them against other factors:
3) Corruption vs. Familism
- Transparency International Survey Perceived Corruption Index (1-10 where 1 = very corrupt, 10 = very clean -->; entire spectrum shown)
- "One of my main goals in life has been to make my parents proud." (WVS) (1-4 where 1 = agree strongly, 4 = disagree strongly -->; Respondents who said "1" only)
Data source: Familism, Corruption
4) Corruption vs. Trust
- Transparency International Survey Perceived Corruption Index (1-10 where 1 = very corrupt, 10 = very clean -->; entire spectrum shown)
- "How much do you trust people you meet for the first time?" (WVS) (1-4 where 1 = completely, 4 = not at all -->; Respondents who said "4" only)
Data source: Trust, Corruption
5) Cost of crime on businesses vs. Familism
- "In your country, to what extent does the incidence of crime and violence impose costs on businesses?"(World Economic Forum survey) [1 = to a great extent; 7 = not at all] (entire spectrum of 1-7 shown)
- "One of my main goals in life has been to make my parents proud." (WVS) (1-4 where 1 = agree strongly, 4 = disagree strongly -->; Respondents who said "1" only)
Data source: Familism, Cost of Crime
6) Infrastucure vs. Familism
- "How would you assess general infrastructure in your country?" (World Economic Forum survey) [1 = extremely underdeveloped; 7 = extensive and efficient] (entire spectrum of 1-7 shown)
- "One of my main goals in life has been to make my parents proud." (WVS) (1-4 where 1 = agree strongly, 4 = disagree strongly -->; Respondents who said "1" only)
Data source: Familism, Infrastructure
7) Electricity Supply vs. Familism
- "In your country, how would you assess the reliability of the electricity supply (lack of interruptions and fluctuations)?" (World Economic Forum Survey) [1 = not reliable at all; 7 = extremely reliable] (entire spectrum of 1-7 shown)
- "One of my main goals in life has been to make my parents proud." (1-4 where 1 = agree strongly, 4 = disagree strongly -->; Respondents who said "1" only)
Data source: Familism, Electricity
There are many caveats to be taken with such self-reporting surveys, but they can still help us to see things in ways mere anecdotes cannot. We present them here without further analysis, but in the hope that they can be of use to those looking for more empirical data.
IV. Commonweal Orientation: The origins
Having looked at the anecdotes and the numbers, let us consider the possible origins of this phenomenon.
As to the 'why,' it cannot be stressed enough that out-group emnity is the historical norm in all populations. We come from small hunter-gatherer groups; our oldest and deepest instincts are 'trust closest family; be ready to kill all others.' (Rushton, Diamond) As E.O. Wilson says, 'the selection pressures of hunter-gatherer existence have persisted for over 99% of human genetic evolution.' This is our common genetic heritage. So how did we get from 'kill all outsiders' to 'welcome all outsiders and, why not, even let them kill us'? The long path to our pathologically high-trust present is still a mystery. Some possibilities:
1) Agricultural revolution
Many researchers believe the very first large farming settlements (of which there is evidence going back to at least 7500 B.C.) were probably violent places, and that the first social controls mandating out-group cooperation were born here. Cochran and Harpending:
Farming led to elites, and there was no avoiding their power. … The old-style, independent-minded personalities that had worked well among hunter-gatherers were obsolete. ... Since the elites were in a very real sense raising peasants, just as peasants raised cows, there must have been a tendency for them to cull individuals who were more aggressive than average, which over time would have changed the frequency of those alleles that induced such aggressiveness.
In addition, the act of farming itself could have led to new traits:
Agriculture itself, and the particular form it took in state societies, must have selected for personalities that can only be called bourgeois, characterized by the traits that make a man successful rather than interesting. ... It takes a certain type of personality—with traits including patience, self-control, and the ability to look to long-term benefits instead of short-term satisfaction—and natural selection must have gradually made such personalities more common among peoples that farmed for a long time.
2) Lower inbreeding
Steve Sailer, in his 2003 'The Cousin Marriage Conundrum,' was the first journalist to succintly point out the problems of 'democracy-building' where cousin-marriage is prominent:
By fostering intense family loyalties and strong nepotistic urges, inbreeding makes the development of civil society more difficult. ... Extended families that are incredibly tightly bound are really the enemy of civil society because the alliances of family override any consideration of fairness to people in the larger society.
As far as economic consequences, Turkish researcher Melike Bildirici has led several studies searching for links between economic success and consanguinity (Bildirici et al. 2009, 2010, 2011). He asserts that
The countries that reached the highest development levels banned consanguineous marriages in the 19th Century […] According to our opinion, consanguineous marriage is a significant impediment to economic development.
No one has done more to try to pick apart the biological 'why' of low-trust peoples than HBD Chick. Her online research on the history of cousin-marriage is unmatched. Consult her blog for a wealth of data on inbreeding around the world. (See also JayMan's detailed sum-up.) Also note where cousin-marriage is the strongest today, and how many of these places are pumping immigrants into Teutonic countries:
(Our work on the question can be found here.)
According to HBD Chick's theory, the most familistic, low-commonweal peoples on the planet today are those with the longest histories of inbreeding, and the high-commonweal folks are those who stamped out cousin marriage first. (See also JayMan.)
3) Selection pressures in Western Europe
Drawing on Mitterauer, Todd, Clark, and others, HBD Chick has also argued that the Germanic 'core' of Northern Europe underwent a series of unusual selection pressures (see her outstanding piece here, also JayMan and Peter Frost). Among them were Church-imposed outbreeding and manorialism, which seem to have fostered nuclear families and individualism, commonweal-orientation, civicness and less violence.
For England in particular, Gregory Clark argued that breeding had its effect:
Generation after generation, the rich had more surviving children than the poor, his research showed. That meant there must have been constant downward social mobility as the poor failed to reproduce themselves and the progeny of the rich took over their occupations. “The modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the Middle Ages,” he concluded. As the progeny of the rich pervaded all levels of society, Dr. Clark considered, the behaviors that made for wealth could have spread with them. (Nicholas Wade via Steve Sailer)
Farming + ending cousin-marriage + manorialism + bourgoeis fertility = Commonweal orientation? No one can say, but the historical evidence is intriguing.
4) Other factors
Other factors affecting commonweal orientation have been proposed. We mention a few:
a) Highlanders vs. Lowlanders
Peter Frost:
Male combativeness is especially strong in highland pastoral societies beyond the reach of State control. ... If highland pastoral societies represent one end of this behavioral continuum, the other end seems to be the low-lying farming societies of east and southeast Asia, where State formation, rice farming, and sedentary life favored collectivism over individualism and a general pacification of social relations. Rice farming seems to have been a pivotal factor: water use and maintenance of irrigation networks requires peaceful and orderly cooperation among all community members.(See also HBD Chick, Flatlanders vs. Mountaineers.)
For pastoralist groups (especially nomadic ones) in arid or mountainous climates, out-group emnity seems stronger. Tribal groups remain small, and frequent mobility means attention to constant danger. Martial values become widespread and highly prized in the group. Military might and aggressiveness are emphasized; feminine values like cooperation, compassion, compromise become dangerous to the survival of the group. Outsiders are perceived as potential threats. (See Steve Sailer on the dangers of letting immigrants from such places into your country.)
b) Communism vs. Capitalism
Many have argued that the long-term effects of communism have had a devastating effect on commonweal orientation in countries where it was practiced. Peter Pomerantsev:
Keep your mouth shut!
Imagine if you grew up lying. Not a little bit, for convenience, but during every public moment of your life: at school, at work, at social events. You had to lie to survive, because the punishment for telling the truth was the loss of your academic or professional career, or even prison. For Russians who came of age before 1991, this is the only way they know. The mature generation grew up with this behavior during the later years of the Soviet Union.
There is no clear path towards commonweal orientation. Combinations of any or all of the above can only be considered possible ingredients in the cake, and are offered not as the final word on the subject, but as ideas worth exploring.
* * *
We have proposed two major reasons why the global South is today pouring into the global North: Future Orientation and Commonweal Orientation. Where these two traits are found on Planet Earth, the lights stay on, hot and cold potable running water flow on demand, the grocery stores are full and the jobs abundant. One can renew a passport, see a doctor, or speak to a cop without being asked for a bribe. People queue patiently for buses and put their litter in the bin. For us these are banalities; for the third world they are little miracles. Miracles which serve as a siren song to the world's dissatisfied.
But the outgroup-altruism which makes our nations so desirable may very well be on its way to killing us. When a family starves its own children in order to feed the neighbors', that family can safely be said to be on the road to extinction. As for the newcomers, as they start to replace us, all the things that drew them here will unfortunately slowly cease to exist.
Europeans left Africa and today, 60 years later, Africans are giving us their verdict on colonialism: Bring it back. Only this time, you needn't come to us. We'll come to you. Please, we beg you, let us live in a place where we can again be governed by Europeans. That, dear reader, is the 're-colonization' of which the title speaks.
Our love for the outsider has now metastasized into a blind embrace of the world's poor, of whom there are half a billion who would very much like to come enjoy what we've created. Are we ready to take them all in? Are we able? Has the West's outgroup altruism reached the tipping point--could we truly be on the cusp, as Thilo Sarrazin says, of 'abolishing ourselves?' Or will Euros be able to again wrest control of the sinking ship their countries have become?
Previously:
62 comments:
Another exceptional article. I was greatly impressed by the resourcefulness of the first part - and the second part is again well researched and well presented.
There is nothing much I can add really. My original comment included an anecdote of aspects of the area where I live in England and the kinds of changes taking place now that it comprises around 40% "Pakistani heritage" people. I decided to remove it because it was pretty long and boring.
In summary, although things are not all that bad compared to what it could be, it seems to be another race to the bottom when it comes to things like cleanliness, orderliness, trust, lack of corruption etc.
Times are changing, and not really for the better with these kinds of things. I just expressed a tale relating to litter and how, when it has dropped to a particular threshold, the indigenous people eventually tend to give up, give in, because it is futile to continue to care.
That was one interesting and educational article.
An enormous amount to digest and ponder. Your work is greatly appreciated.
Just a quick heads-up on a little broken link in the 4th last paragraph. The 'Commonweal Orientation' link gives you a 404.
Thank you.
Excellent as usual, M.G.
The section and subsection labels are fubar, though.
In both I(1) and I(2) the headings go a, 2, 3.
In II(1) the sole subheading is 1b. Where is 1a?
Same with II(3), II(4), II(5), and II(6), except that the subheading for II(5) is 4b.
Etc. ...
My first time by this blog and this well-argued post deserves a wide audience. I have encountered much of the content before but your synthesis is superior to any other I have read.
In the question:
"If 'freier' and 'zerangi' is the norm on Planet Earth, then what is the exception?"
...it looks like there should stand 'non-freier' instead of 'freier'.
John Derbyshire--
I am laughing out loud at the amazing pagaille in the numbering, I really outdid myself this time (racing against the clock). All has now been fixed, as well as the other formatting mistakes that were pointed out. Many thanks for the corrections!
BritishActivism--
One of the greatest pleasures for me on this blog is reading the personal anecdotes that commenters share. I assure you that no such anecdote is too 'long' or 'boring' and I humbly ask you to re-post the original one, I'd be sincerely interested to read it and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Thank you.
ES3--
Thanks so much for stopping by and for your kind remarks. I hope you'll be back again, my normal posting schedule is about once a month, but I've been on break this summer.
Another tour de force, MG. Things are happening so fast now that's it's hard to imagine the positive and unique traits of our civilization, like future orientation and commonweal orientation, surviving for much longer.
I've never seen the mainstream media and their SJW foot soldiers so cocky in their anti-white triumphalism than in the wake of the dead-Syrian-boy-on-the-beach story. They've basically forced our worthless leaders, from Merkel to Cameron to Harper to Obama to Abbott, to accept practically unlimited numbers of phony 'refugees', and are now spiking the football in our collective faces.
Where is the pushback? Where is the skepticism? Even so-called conservatives are wiping away tears and welcoming this invasion with open arms. Because if there's one thing that apparently everybody can agree on, it's that the West needs more Muslims (and Africans and Central Americans etc). Our pathological altruism has turned into a suicidal death-wish seemingly overnight.
Ironically, we risk everything that makes our societies attractive to the invaders by facilitating their invasion. One of those things is a solid credit rating. Of the 196 sovereign nations in the world, only 16 have an AAA credit rating from at least one of the Big 3 ratings agencies (Standard & Poor's, Moody's, and Fitch). The ones with an asterisk have a Triple-A rating from all three agencies.
1. Australia*
2. Austria
3. Canada*
4. Denmark*
5. Finland
6. Germany*
7. Liechtenstein
8. Luxembourg*
9. Netherlands
10. New Zealand
11. Norway*
12. Singapore*
13. Sweden*
14. Switzerland*
15. United Kingdom
16. United States
Fifteen of the eighteen Teutonic nations (83.3%) have an AAA rating. The only Teutonic nations not to are Belgium, Iceland and Ireland. Singapore is the only country out of 178 (0.6%) in the rest of the world to have a Triple-A rating. But it's actually even more lopsided than that. 585 million out of 600 million people living in the Teutonic nations live in a Triple-A country, or 97.5%, while only 5.5 million people out of 6.7 billion in the rest of the world live in such a country, or less than 0.1%.
Syria, along with a few dozen other basketcase nations throughout the Third World, is considered such a credit risk that none of the Big 3 even assign it a rating. And what is a nation other than the sum of its people? So I don't see how the importation of millions of Syrians and other Third Worlders into the Teutonic nations will be conducive to maintaining our rock-solid credit ratings, though Singapore will probably be OK.
Either we elect some leaders with backbones, or every time some unfortunate kid drowns trying to invade our countries the invasion will only accelerate, fueled by the crocodile tears of the anti-white Left. And we risk losing more than just our credit ratings, we will lose everything.
So it's time for Trump, Farage, Wilders, Petry, Strache, Åkesson et al to step up and condemn these phony 'refugees' and demand an end to this invasion. And it's well past time that the peoples of the West rise up and throw out our treasonous ruling class and elect some patriots who might--MIGHT--be able to salvage at least something of our once-great civilization.
jeppo--
Nice to see you. This:
585 million out of 600 million people living in the Teutonic nations live in a Triple-A country, or 97.5%, while only 5.5 million people out of 6.7 billion in the rest of the world live in such a country, or less than 0.1%.
...is astounding to me. I knew the Teutonics dominated the top credit rated countries, but I had no idea it was that extreme.
Even so-called conservatives are wiping away tears and welcoming this invasion with open arms.
It is amazing. Even moreso since no fault is being placed on this grossly, revoltingly irresponsible father. He'd been living and working safely in Turkey for three years, and instead of applying for asylum, he decides to take his two kids and wife on a perilous and illegal sea voyage where only the men (no women or kids) have life jackets. (!) Word from his relatives in Canada (which turned down his first asylum bid) is that he wanted to 'get his teeth fixed' and 'find a better paying job' (he was working construction in Turkey). In other words, an economic migrant. One who sacrificed his entire family just because he wanted to jump the queue. He should be pilloried in every press outlet, instead he's being lauded as a hero. We are through the looking glass.
The major problem, of course, is that no one is making an effort to separate real war refugees (a small minority) from economic migrants (almost everybody, certainly all the black Africans). This is clouding the issue in the public's mind. Khadafi said if we took him out this is exactly what would happen, and he was right on the money.
And it's well past time that the peoples of the West rise up and throw out our treasonous ruling class and elect some patriots who might--MIGHT--be able to salvage at least something of our once-great civilization.
Small reactions are starting, not very pretty ones I'm afraid, but this is after all a low-grade war being waged on Europans by their leaders: Germans have begun burning down refugee welcome centers, Italians have been blocking refugee buses, and Hungarians started attacking the migrants camping out at their train stations. Again, no one can condone violence, but seeing how far the average Euro has been pushed, these ugly reactions shouldn't come as a surprise. And it's only going to get worse.
Thanks as always for your interesting comments.
MG,
This was another enjoyable and well-researched article, but I search in vain for the answer to "How should policy change?" teaser that you provide. Most of your audience, if not all, is probably thoroughly sated with charts and graphs; what would be truly interesting for your next post would be something more speculative, in which you describe specific responses to the problems you've frequently brought up. Something as simple as, "No more social welfare, starvation of the non-producing is an acceptable option," would at least be a starting point. You've certainly done your part in compiling the research; I'm sure everyone here would agree that you've earned a space to suggest policy proposals.
Whenever you do come around to those, I'd like you to consider a sizable problem from which all of the very many "race realist" perspectives now seem to suffer: Zionist influence. The mid 1800s, counting at the least from Marx, set the stage for the atrocious blank-slate policies from which we now all suffer, including the blind neoliberal restructurings of African governments and technologies. There's been a clear globalist/Zionist influence running through world history, from the archetypical French Revolution, to the many other European revolutions of the mid 1800s, to the World Wars, Cold Wars, and Terror Wars. This pattern is confirmed domestically, as feminism, LGBTQPZ rights, workplace diversity, et cetera, was primarily funded from the same ethnic sources.
What is troubling, then, is to see how those same sources--Zionist Semites--have begun, in the early twenty-first century, to promote race realism, white nationalism, and an end to PC culture and blank-slate-thinking. Old-style CIA university agents like Steven Pinker may have helped the movement get started, but it's being massively fostered now on the internet, as Zionist Semitic groups champion something that should, in theory, be their worst enemy--white nationalism.
Any student of history, then, should--like Woodrow Wilson--tread extremely carefully in pursuing an ideological path that the Bernard Baruchs of the world have so thoughtfully nurtured. (See, e.g., my Culture of Transcendence.)
* were primarily funded, oopsie.
Even moreso since no fault is being placed on this grossly, revoltingly irresponsible father. He'd been living and working safely in Turkey for three years, and instead of applying for asylum, he decides to take his two kids and wife on a perilous and illegal sea voyage where only the men (no women or kids) have life jackets. (!)
I have become so cynical about such things (especially between "African-Americans") that now I just shug and say what I understand that many big-city police officers now say: "NHI". (No humans involved.)
Khadafi said if we took him out this is exactly what would happen, and he was right on the money.
Was it Sailer who coined the phrase "Hitler's revenge" for the third-world onslaught into the first? This is Khadafi's revenge. Both prescient, both either ignored until it was too late... or followed as manuals to destroy the societies of the West.
Jeppo - it's a little spergy of me, and it doesn't change your underlying argument, but I can't see anyway to shoehorn all the countries you term Teutonic into any workable definition without leaving out Finland. A definition that works for every country but Finland is this: 'A Teutonic country is one where the majority of the inhabitants are White, and the majority speak a Germanic language as their first language.'
Leave out the race requirement and you include countries like Jamaica, Barbados and possibly South Africa. Leave out the language requirement and it becomes difficult to decide between 'core' Germanic countries (Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Austria and Liechtentein), historical buffer countries that are mixed Franco-Germanic (Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland), a country that was approximately conquered by Germanic language and culture (Ireland) and the vast exception that constitutes the Anglosphere.
To include Finland, one has to start toying with the notion of 'culturally Germanic,' which is vague, and leads to difficulties, certainly with the place of Ireland, somewhat with Belgium, and so on. I would argue that Slovenia and probably the Czech Republic are at least as 'culturally Germanic' as Ireland. Better to stick with race, mother tongue and simple majority; Finns won't mind - they are ferociously independent anyway.
Question for readers to ponder: which country of 'my' 17 is likely to be the first to no longer meet one or the other or my two criteria?
High Arka--
Thanks for your comment.
...what would be truly interesting for your next post would be something more speculative, in which you describe specific responses to the problems you've frequently brought up.
I've long said I believe good policy is 90% knowing what's going on, and 10% knowing what to do about it. I'll admit my affinities run toward the former. My fondest wish is that some of the data compiled here makes it onto the right policymaker's desk one day after the great anti-blank-slatist awakening. The rest is not hard.
On legal immigration: Our own past is replete with sensible policy; Euros have only lost their moorings recently. We once enjoyed the U.S. Immigration Act (1921-1965) and the White Australia Policy (1901-1973); we may again someday. Or there are current templates we could copy, from hyper-restrictionist Japan to points-based Canada.
On illegal immigration: Simply enforcing our current laws would go far to fixing things. Again, look at our past: Operation Wetback was not so very long ago! Where there's a will there's a way.
On refugees: Again, why not simply enforce current law? In France, 95% of rejected asylum seekers never leave the country nor are they deported. The U.S. has untold numbers of phony asylum seekers walking about freely. This is a breakdown of law and order that should be easily set right, with actual adults at the wheel.
Thanks MG. I should note that Hong Kong and the Isle of Man also have AAA ratings, from Standard and Poor's and Moody's respectively, but neither one is a sovereign nation.
@John Hostetler,
I would argue that the Swedish minority in Finland has been so instrumental to the historic development of the nation, and that modern Finland is so closely tied to the other Scandinavian countries through the Nordic Council, that Finland should be grandfathered into the Teutonic group even though it's technically a majority Finno-Ugric nation.
Finland was part of Greater Sweden for something like 659 years, and even after it was transferred to Russian control Swedish remained the sole official language for the next 50 years. Swedish-Finns have played a leading role in all aspects of Finnish life, from politics to the military, the arts and sciences, business and trade, literature, architecture, music, sports etc, arguably even more so than the Finnish-Finns have. The Swedish-Finns have their own parliament and other institutions, so I think there's a legitimate case to be made that Finland is actually a bi-national state, even though Swedish-Finns are only about 6% of the population.
Think of the Teutonic world as divided into a core and a periphery. The racial, linguistic and religious core is Nordic, Germanic and Protestant (Scandinavia, Germany, Holland and Britain). The periphery are the linguistic and/or religious outliers (like Finland, Ireland, Belgium, etc), and the Anglo settler societies. But I think there are plenty of cultural similarities that tie all these nations together as a single, recognizable whole. Call it the Teutonic sub-civilization of the Greater West.
John Derbyshire at VDare linked to this comment thread here:
http://www.vdare.com/posts/was-great-grandpa-totally-wrong-about-nordics
He writes "Jeppo’s “Teutonic” needs some qualifying. “Anglo-Celto-Teutonic” would be better, and even that doesn’t really encompass the Finns, whose ancestry has a significant East Asian component."
Actually, Teutonic is MG's term, I'm just borrowing it. But is there a single term that everyone can agree on when describing this group of nations? Nordic? Too exclusively Scandinavian. Germanic? Even though English is a Germanic language, people don't usually call the English-speaking countries Germanic. Teutonic? Possibly too associated with Germany alone. Northern European? Too geographically vague--does it also include, say, Russia?
Northwest European? Still kind of vague. Writers like Peter Frost, Jayman and HBD Chick use this term to refer to all the nations west of the Hajnal Line, including France and most of Italy, Spain and Portugal. Anglo-Celto-Teutonic? That's a mouthful, but I think it's getting close. Anglo-Germanic? I think this term might best describe this group of nations. If people hear 'Anglo-Germanic', they will probably instinctively understand that it includes the United States and Austria, New Zealand and the Netherlands, etc. I'm not sure that any of the other terms are so self-explanatory.
Mr Derb also echoes John Hostetler in questioning the inclusion of Finland in the 'Anglo-Germanic' world. Well, if we take it as given that the core of this world is Nordic, Germanic and Protestant, then Finland is Nordic, partly-Germanic and Protestant. Two-and-a-half out of three ain't bad ;)
Another way to look at the 'Anglo-Germanic' world is to divide it into four linguistic groups. Finland, on account of its long history under Swedish rule, it's hugely influential Swedish minority, and the status of Swedish as a co-official language, belongs with the Scandinavian group.
English: UK, Ireland, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand
German: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein
Scandinavian: Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland
Dutch: Netherlands, Belgium
High Arka--
(cont.)
If I may respond to the second point by citing your 'Culture of Transcendence' piece you bring up:
...one set of wealthy elites promotes "Black Lives Matter," while another set of genetically similar wealthy elites promotes racial realism, segregation, and outright race war.
Referring to Mencius Moldbug, Ron Unz, and Daniel Greenfield as 'elites,' on a par with those who run the major media outlets, Hollywood, Wall Street, and K Street? That seems a bit of a stretch.
...wealthy Jewish commentators scold whites about having lost their willpower to deal with third world invasions, the destruction of white wombs by sex-crazed black and Muslim men, the feminization of Europe and America by gays, and the inherent necessity of Israel-style border controls, segregation, and internal race purges.
I guess I just don't see what's so sinister here. No group is a monolith, wouldn't the law of averages say there will be some Jews who are sincerely concerned with Euro survival? (Not saying I even agree with these policy proposals, but theoretically.)
Even explicitly anti-Jewish groups have followed this trend, borrowing Jewish arguments to rationalize Mexican expulsion, Caucasian inbreeding, and "sending all the ooks back to Africa."
Again, I don't at all see how these are 'Jewish arguments.' They are ancient instincts hard-wired into every group in human history. Out-group enmity is the norm, today's out-group adoration the exception (confined largely to NW Euros). Nearly all ethnic Euros thought this way, even the Progressives, not so very long ago.
The growing acceptance of racially-based argumentation, and the gradual waking-up of the DWLs [Disingenuous White Liberals?], is an astroturf movement created by Zionism, just like the Great War, feminism, and the 1965 Immigration Act.
While I'm a fan of Kevin MacDonald's work, this tendency to ascribe to Jews every nefarious development in Western history is, to me, redolent of the Afro's belief that his failures in life are due to Whitey 'keeping him down.' While Jewish influence cannot be contested, Euro pathological altruism would be flourishing if no Jew had never existed on planet earth. On this point, I suspect, you and I part ways completely. I also suspect neither will be able to bring the other over to his way of thinking, which is fine. I thank you again for taking the time to comment.
John Hostetler--
We had quite a debate about the question in the comments section of 'There's Something About Teutonics,'! Looking back, I see you were there. If I may quote your very apt comment:
John Hostetler said...
I'm reasonably certain that Finns are not significantly different from Swedes genetically, and I'm a little surprised that that would not be common knowledge here. But I'm willing to be proven wrong.
Finns, Russians and a few others are a little closer to the old Steppe stock than some nearby groups, which might make them a little less amenable to third world invasion: less pathological altruism. However, the genetic distance is very small.
From the viewpoint of the invaders, it could be that some groups, most exemplified by the Swedes, are at a unique sweet spot in their genetic and culture history where they have all the conquering wealth of their Steppe ancestors, all the trust, cooperation and equality of hunters, and all the susceptibility to gentling of a farming people. Not so sweet for the Swedes anymore though.
That tiny genetic difference the Finns have may reflect this a little, but I suspect the difference is mostly cultural.
I did take a broad definition, including cultural, for 'Teutonic,' which many don't agree with (and they have good arguments). But I think the culture aspect is an important one.
As for this:
which country of 'my' 17 is likely to be the first to no longer meet one or the other or my two criteria?
Based purely on her small population size and seemingly unquenchable thirst for 'exotic' newcomers, I'm going to go with Sweden on this one. But I'm ready (and would like) to be convinced otherwise!
I have to say, Charles Martel, Vlad the Impaler, and Remember the Alamo. Caucasoids carved up the globe for centuries, including viciously throwing back dozens of centuries of Mongoloid and Semitic invasion. It was only with the advent of the Fed and the BIS, and the resulting mandatory multiculturalism, that whites began acting this way--extremely recently, in a historical sense. Ergo it's not genetic.
Along with that came the Freudian term "pathological altruism," a term crafted to slip the blame onto the victim, kind of like "Stop hitting yourself."
Whites produced the most aggressive, protectionist, foresighted, self-interested cultures in the world, regularly assaulted by, then identifying and purging themselves of, crypsis-practicing parasites. Whites might surely be considered genetically more generous or altruistic than other cultures, but their largesse was not before so deliberately to their own detriment. The Pharisee-hosting Romans may have gotten lazy, imported slaves to do their manual labor, and taken foreign wives, but they didn't make it illegal to speak of Roman superiority. It took a heavily-infected Brussels and District of Columbia, and trillions of dollars of ceaseless media campaigns, to bring the world's whites to where they are today, and that shows how resilient white genes were to the idea of "pathological altruism."
Amerinds did not invent the gun, but they became very good at using it to shoot white settlers in the U.S.A. Similarly, Jews did not invent the printing press, the television, the computer, or the internet, but they became very good at using those devices to spread their message. 18th century white pioneers were not "pathologically bullet-absorbing," and 21st century whites are not "pathologically altruistic."
Incidentally, where do you think the term "pathological altruism" came from? It came from the cultural elites who turned, in the early 2000s, the internet's heretofore completely marginalized neo-nazi forums into a massively popular, borderline-acceptable HBD stance, of which we're both now the beneficiaries. Much as 20th century feminists were permitted to deliver talking points that certain figures had made culturally acceptable years earlier, 21st century HBD bloggers are now delivering talking points that certain figures made culturally acceptable years earlier.
And those very powerful cultural elites--even when not billionaires--possessed a number of interesting qualities, such as the ability to take a completely anti-PC message and make it palatable to major media organizations. They also shared the genes of the Ashen River. So even though they are not Board members at Facebook, they possess a massive cultural power that makes them "elites."
<3
Excellent summary of the clash between the WEIRDO and clannish worlds! I meant to get to this earlier, but in any case, readers definitely need to also see:
The Rise of Universalism
National Prosperity
I'll have more to say shortly.
As for the causes, it's clear that only HBD Chick's theory and the forces it describes serve as the deciding factors. Agricultural selection was certainly important in domesticating man, but most of the clannish societies discussed here (like for example in the Middle East) have long histories of farming, so that's not what did the trick. As well, Clarkian selection occurred elsewhere, likely all across Northern Europe (including the Northeast) and in East Asia. Only cousin marriage avoidance along with manorialism seem to fit.
Sarrasin -> Sarrazin
I do not understand your conflation of "Iberians" with Latin America. You present a few anecdotes about Spain and Argentina under their category, and almost entirely from there, whenever discussing "Iberian" derived nations, it is about overwhelmingly non-white latin american countries (that would undoubtedly be worse off with their white populations). For what it's also worth, Brazil's european groups are heavily non-Iberian, including 5 million germans.
"I meant to get to this earlier, but in any case, readers definitely need to also see:"
How could they not see? More often than not, whenever I come across one of your comments, it's basically link spam to some of your blog posts.
Hello, MG and all.
"585 million out of 600 million people living in the Teutonic nations live in a Triple-A country, or 97.5%, while only 5.5 million people out of 6.7 billion in the rest of the world live in such a country, or less than 0.1%."
Well then it's obvious that Triple-A credit ratings are racist, right?
I mean, who are Teutonics/N/NW Europeans to decide that economic systems work best when they're not riddled with corruption? I mean, it's not like the rest of the world's people are screaming to come to these racist, imperialist, colonialist, judgmental societies and...
...oh, right.
I'd suggest to JayMan and HBDChick that they analyze another possibility for what shaped N/NW European genome.
Take a look at the usual maps of the Hajnal Line. For instance:
https://jaymans.wordpress.com/2015/06/24/200-blog-posts/democracy-index-europe-2012-hajnal-line/
What is the biggest thing you see, west and north of the Line?
Hint: it's not land.
Read the Prose and Poetic Eddas sometime. You will find a nearly fully formed psychological, social, arguably modern, and human sense that well predates the arrival of agriculture in the North.
If I were looking for the cause of a genomic tendency toward forward time orientation, deferral of gratification, cooperation/common weal orientation, and higher IQ...
...I would look to maritime peoples. Any dimwit can tend a flock or herd (see the Kalevala stories of Kullervo). But seafaring poses severe selection challenges to any people or individuals engaged in it. Especially when the seafarers in question lived at the edge of perpetually moving ice.
Analyses of human history are generally done by landlubbers.
Sorry, MG, I forgot to sign my comment as Mikke.
"...I would look to maritime peoples. Any dimwit can tend a flock or herd (see the Kalevala stories of Kullervo). But seafaring poses severe selection challenges to any people or individuals engaged in it. Especially when the seafarers in question lived at the edge of perpetually moving ice. "
Like the arabs, polynesians, indonesians etc.?
I wouldn't rely on a collection of poems in claiming northern europeans have been the way they are longer than thought. There's no shortage of ancient societies with prominent literary works that reflect moral sensibilities that weren't exactly widespread. The British were a good deal different even a few centuries ago.
Anon--
It's hardly controversial to consider Latin America largely an extension of Iberia, at least as far as the elite is concerned. The Brazilian (DaMatta) and Argentine (Grondona) social scientists I quoted in Part I surely think so. Those running things are of mainly conquistador blood (the famous 'pigmentocracy'), and these places are linguistically, religiously, culturally, politically Iberian. In any case Part I merely gave a snapshot of how some low-trust peoples describe their own cultural tendencies, and was certainly not meant to be exhaustive or to encompass every Latin American citizen in its scope.
The anecdotes given about Latin Americans in Part II were not meant to reflect only the actions of 'Iberians;' sorry if I gave that impression. The Mexicans and Central Americans flooding over our southern border today are of course largely indigenous natives with little or no European blood. I in no way meant to attribute their clannishness and low commonweal to 'Iberian-ness.' That implication would only be attached to the scandals surrounding Kirchner, Bachelet, Nieto, et al.
Re: No Spanish / Portuguese in Part II: I had to cut about half the original anecdotes--or this would have been book-length--of which a few were about Spain (such as this article claiming 1700 active corruption inquiries and €40 billion lost per year). If I leaned more heavily on Latin America, especially Mexico, it's because the mainly American readership here is likely to be concerned about the habits and culture those immigrants may bring with them. No obfuscation was sought.
JayMan--
This is an excellent piece, I've now added a link to the post, as well as to Peter Frost's piece . I also really liked Staffan's piece but couldn't find a place for it.
To be honest I felt I should get Pinker in here somehow, but having read all gazillion pages of 'Better Angels,' I was a bit disappointed by his unwillingness to touch the 800-pound gorilla of varying outgroup-altruism levels between ethnicities. (Though the notion that the printing press led to outgroup empathy was a new one for me.) I did thoroughly enjoy the book though, especially the tales of our medieval torture habits (human and animal) of which I was ashamedly naive.
As far as causes go, I remain agnostic and open to pointing out as many possible paths as I can find. Guess I'm 'wired' that way. ; )
Mikke--
Very nice to see you. I'll admit I hadn't thought about the seafaring angle at all. Herders vs. farmers yes, highlanders vs. lowlanders yes, the hoe vs. the plow yes, seafarers vs. landlubbers no. If you have any links to articles or studies about that I would be very happy to have them!
"It's hardly controversial to consider Latin America largely an extension of Iberia, at least as far as the elite is concerned. The Brazilian (DaMatta) and Argentine (Grondona) social scientists I quoted in Part I surely think so. Those running things are of mainly conquistador blood (the famous 'pigmentocracy'), and these places are linguistically, religiously, culturally, politically Iberian. In any case Part I merely gave a snapshot of how some low-trust peoples describe their own cultural tendencies, and was certainly not meant to be exhaustive or to encompass every Latin American citizen in its scope."
I looked up those two on your blog, and I would question how much you can extrapolate whatever behavior of the Brazilian elite back to Portugal/Spain. The elite are quite different from the general population, and that's bound to introduce friction. Nevermind they've been heavily separated from eachother for centuries.
M.G.:
Great work as always.
I realize this might be outside your usual purview, but I'd still enjoy getting your take on two related questions.
This migration/invasion is not exactly being welcomed; the "welcoming" is now state policy. Moreover, it's a hemisphere-wide massmind delusion, Western nation after Western nation, all monolithically falling in line - even though a kid with a pocket calculator who can't even spell 'demographics' can do the math and foresee the disaster ahead.
Thus - since this stopped being about cheap labor or automatic voting blocs some time ago - why is it happening? Who could possibly benefit from this?
And, natch: how does it stop? Assuming it still can at this point.
"even though a kid with a pocket calculator who can't even spell 'demographics' can do the math and foresee the disaster ahead"
Surprisingly this isn't true. People really do not understand the demographic facts or the biology of what is inevitable.
People at the lower end of the economic scale are focused on earning money; they don't concern themselves with the bigger picture and are not educated in geography and demography. They work, socialise or attend to their children, wash their clothes for work, and sleep. There is no time to ponder the state of humanity.
Professionals have the education to understand but not all professionals understand biology. Professionals have money for spare time but professions tend to require long hours and are very competitive and so energies are spent keeping on the career ladder, micro-politics etc. A professional who did ponder demographics would dismiss the obvious because it is associated with far-rightness which would destroy their career.
If just one of these factors was broadcast through media so that it became widespread knowledge, the opinions of most people would switch over night:
1. the population and projected propulation of Africa
2. what is FBD marriage?
3. how does hair and eye colour vary?
4. the history of slavery world-wide
5. who invented what?
6. how were modern America and Australia developed from wilderness?
That's what I think anyway, from working with people on low income and having family on high income. I've been ranting about this for years to my mother (who is an old school human geographer and still sees cultures as essentially 'different') and apparently my sister (a doctor) has recently expressed interest in my lunatic ideas about population movements. Sadly, even if the educated wake up, there's no going back now.
But thanks to this excellent site, we have a documented account of where it all went wrong.
Oh, and I forgot the obvious:
7. What percentage of the global population is ethnically European?
If you asked the European 'man on the street', I think he would come up with something like 60-70%.
Ragno--
why is it happening? Who could possibly benefit from this?
The ten million dollar question! Everyone seems to have a different answer.
Moreover, it's a hemisphere-wide massmind delusion, Western nation after Western nation
I wouldn't go so far as to say 'hemisphere-wide.' The current 'refugee' debacle in Europe shows it clearly: This ethno-masochism appears to be Teutonic (or 'Anglo-Germanic' or 'ethnic NW Euro') problem. The strongest resistance to the current invasion is coming from 1) Eastern Europe and 2) (lesser extent) Mediterranean Europe.
Anywhere you find ethnic NW Euros, you see this ethno-suicidal urge to welcome in as many outsiders as possible, the more 'exotic' the better, coupled with a strong shame about white 'privilege' / superiority / competence. It is, I believe, historically unprecedented. I wish I better understood it. I suspect there's both a genetic cause (becoming 'wired' for outgroup empathy to a pathological degree) as well as environmental (massive cultural shift since the 1960s, even more intense since the 1990s).
How does it stop? I honestly fear either in slow collapse of the host society, or in blood.
I hope to explore this question more in a coming post. Thanks for posing it.
Anon--
I think your comment's right on the money. The gatekeepers in media and education seem to hold the keys here. The average joe 'knows what he knows' from being fed it every day at school and on the 6:00 news.
I grew up in a progressive home, with progressive 'wiring' I'd even say, and never questioned most of the indoctrination until well past the internet came along! It was a shock to say the least, and frankly humiliating, to realize how much nonsense I'd been fed, and how easily I'd believed it. (but I'm educated! and skeptical!) The fact is that no one is immune from believing pretty lies, and I think the internet has been vital in breaking through a lot of this brainwashing. For the moment we on this side of the blogosphere remain marginal, yet the pendulum may be swinging back. We shall see.
"The gatekeepers in media and education seem to hold the keys here."
Exactly--that's where the pathological altruism comes from. Both the behavior itself, and the stockholm-syndromish term by which HBD bloggers define it, were provided by a certain quite specific set of genes. Since at least the purported time of Jesus, humans in the Middle East and Europe have confronted the issue of cultural Pharisees. That's over two thousand years--and now, we have smartphones delivering those same messages.
It's exceedingly difficult for normal people to learn to "see" post-racial fantasies for what they are. It's also exceedingly difficult for HBD people to expand their HBD analysis beyond the very limited scope, "Third worlders are less future-oriented."
Imagine that, to another group, you are the inferior set of genes. Imagine that this other group can see not just in terms of short-term future (one or two lifetimes), but in terms of the genetic future of thousands of years of lineage. The Ashen Nazis are doing this right now, passing a "marshmallow test" that the rest of us are failing: they are laying the groundwork for keeping Euros battling Arabs and Afros for another futile two thousand years, while leering creditor-priests skim the cream of slothful survival.
Your piecemeal "rediscoveries" of older philosophies are to their service. That is why Moldbug was allowed to reach you. Rediscovering the spirit of Charles Martel will merely duplicate the back and forth that produced the Dark Ages, the Hundred Years' War, and the twentieth century.
Now, it may be possible that I'm trying to teach particle physics to a pygmy, as one of you might put it, and that the Nazis are right, and I should just give up on this material world. But here I am, for at least a minute or two.
<3
"it may be possible that I'm trying to teach particle physics to a pygmy"
It may be actual because I don't understand what you're saying.
"That is why Moldbug was allowed to reach you."
I encountered the DE in about 2012 and was amazed to find bloggers, who were writing otherwise quite insightful stuff about social evolution, embraced M in guru-style. I think there was a choice. I don't see that choice being available to the man-on-the-street reading soundbites about Middle-Eastern conflicts.
" Rediscovering the spirit of Charles Martel will merely duplicate the back and forth that produced the Dark Ages"
From reading a bit about the DA I understood it may have been more of a Domestic Age. In the UK much development of market towns took place and it is generally agreed to have been something of a UK golden age in metallurgy crafts.
But, "passing a "marshmallow test":
I agree that focusing on colour is an own-goal. Sure there are differences between northern and southern europe in terms of both genetics (vis the on-going debates about EEF and ANE)and culture. I once sat down to dinner in south Italy to be told that this was the first time some of the guests had sat at table with a north european. But there are certain underlying principles of life that both north and south europeans adhere to and the variation in how those principles are executed has imo given the whole of european culture the ability to self-reflect and learn from history - hence the repeated cylce of Classic/Gothic/Baroque in architecture.
East europeans I meet seem interchangeable with north europeans once the effects of their different cultural* post-war history are accounted for. By which I mean that their underlying tendency is towards being task-orientated. Despite the greater extension of families amongst East Europeans nevertheless one gets the impression that family commitments are not routinely factored into the working day. *Culturally, those I have met seem to appreciate high-trust public space once they understand that it is on offer.
Of course there's an element of choice. When Boasian anthropology began to infect western universities, professors faced the choice of going along with diversity, or of leaving the university, taking up other jobs, and being considered quacks who wouldn't be allowed to publish articles, books, or talk to the media. Moldbug's work (and that of others driven by the same forces) has followed the same pattern: a charismatic Chosen rhetorician suddenly gets a lot of attention by expressing arguments that have always been around (as MG so ably shows us nearly every post), but have been considered improper to focus attention on theretofore.
Perhaps you're not familiar with racial philosophy and nationalism in the very early days of the internet, or prior to the internet--it was there. Moldbug's arguments were all there. They weren't expressed as cleverly, but they were there, and all the massive forces of society were arranged against them.
What has characterized Moldbug and those like him--like Marx, Freud, Boas, Herzl, et cetera--is the mysterious forces of mass attention that worked in concert to get so many millions of people to begin paying attention to him during a short span of time, prior to which the exact same information was considered absurd or untouchable.
Whence does that power come? Is it simply a random thing? Did 40% of America suddenly wake up sometime in, oh, 2008, and decide, "Let's give racial realism a try?" Not at all. In fact, the media has deliberately begun to emphasize some of the more ridiculous aspects of feminism, racial equality, and in ways similar to how Disney made the dweeby, ancient Avengers abruptly popular nationwide, and Soros made a corrupt Chicago machine politician abruptly popular nationwide, Moldbug gained the aura of tacit acceptance that was nurtured, Trayvon by Trayvon, into a movement that now has Donald Trump being treated more seriously than Ross Perot. I'm not saying that's good or bad--I'm just saying it took a lot of planning to cause those things to happen.
If you have trouble imagining society's direction being sculpted that way, consider the pre-2006 U.S. housing bubble. In that situation, banks, newspapers, television stations, internet sites, and private individuals across the entire country engaged in a coordinated effort to push the virtues of home ownership, depress loan standards, cover up fraud from the state to the federal level, and downplay or ignore dissenting voices.
Or, consider the deliberate, massively coordinated way that the western European perspective on male homosexual acts was changed over the past couple decades. That, like the construction of the housing bubble, evinces coordination from the grand to the subtle--from producing Philadelphia to having small-town TV stations subtly introduce more positive images of background homosexuals.
Now, those very same institutions that equated sodomy to marriage, and that told Europeans that black people would make up 50% of physicists and engineers once the 1980s were over, are suddenly beginning to allude to the possibility that there may be something to racial realism. One hundred years later, do you think they have your interests at heart?
Arka, I'm still not sure what you're arguing. Is it that, HBD is part of a planned strategy or, that Euro-centrism is part of a planned strategy?
Great post as always.
"why is it happening? Who could possibly benefit from this?"
People who benefit from divide and rule e.g. the sociopathic element among the current ruling elite.
This is most obvious in the EU. The individual nation states have lots of checks and balances so the sociopaths created a new transnational layer over the top with no checks and balances at all and then slowly but surely transferred all the power from the nation states to the EU. They are near the end game now where they have to come out in the open but know the native populations will rebel so they intend to turn them into a minority first.
In the US they've been doing it the other way - turn the white population into a minority first and then once complete they can remove all the checks and balances.
.
"Exactly--that's where the pathological altruism comes from. Both the behavior itself, and the stockholm-syndromish term by which HBD bloggers define it"
Weak but wide altruism is one way to describe all the above behaviors - and that kind of behavior has visibly good consequences.
It's only made pathological by media manipulation.
The bad guys would never make up something that was good about white people. They might take the end result - the pathological version after media manipulation - and try and treat that as the thing but they'd never include the good part.
"3. how does hair and eye colour vary?"
I'm pretty sure everybody is aware of how this varies. Is this something like "the fact that white people have more than one hair and eye color is an incomparable blessing and we must do everything to preserve it"? I don't know about you, but I think just about every population in the world with uniform hair/eye color got along just fine without finding out other colors exist (and if you ever read first contact accounts with whites, often though those traits were ugly, including east asians.) Nevermind how easy it would be to sustain those traits with simple genetic engineering, or how those traits would hardly disappear with race mixing. Australoids can also exhibit two-toned hair colors that are absent in europeans, but I don't think any white people (or any other race) are going to lose sleep over the fact they're missing out on that.
Dear Anonymous at 16/9/15 4:01 PM,
You asked, "Arka, I'm still not sure what you're arguing. Is it that, HBD is part of a planned strategy or, that Euro-centrism is part of a planned strategy?"
Yes indeed. Those things, in and of themselves, are fine. They are fine now, they were fine two hundred years ago, and they were fine fifty years ago. They were even fine in 1980. The question is, "Why were cultural elites completely shutting out HBD & Euro issues for a certain time period, and only now permitting it to regain some traction?"
Is it because, after two thousand years of exploitation by international bankers, Euros are finally waking up for the first time ever? Highly unlikely. Far more likely--a 2015/2015 chance, actually, if you compile the evidence as the years C.E.--is that international bankers are permitting this kind of dialogue for the same reason they always have: to foster profitable nationalist wars.
Most of the passion in HBD blogs is directed at SSA inferiority, with its concomitant social destruction. Sure, that's statistically true. But the reason that Afros and Euros are engaged in this atrocious fantasy right now is because of the tag-team duo of Chosen and crypto-Chosen "Islamic" slave traders in service to their genocidal desert god, exploiting idiot Euro Christians with way too much misplaced altruism. If Euros take the fight to Afros or Hispanics, it will serve the Chosen in the same way that the Napoleonic or World Wars did.
The evidence is pretty clear that, if left on their own in Africa, Africans would be no danger to anyone except each other. Their continental inability to mine, craft, produce, and repair advanced weaponry might even leave them without firearms after a few decades. Lacking Zionist-inspired colonialism, they wouldn't even have the wrecked boats they're using to traverse the Mediterranean.
Yet, they're this big problem, now, and they're in Europe and America, and not happy about it. Why do Euros keep sending them weapons? Why did Euros send them weapons in the first place? Why were they in Europe and America in the first place? The Chosen, the Chosen, the Chosen--the intellectual vanguard of civilizational destruction. This great danger that we all face now is that the Chosen have begun making it permissible, in bits and pieces, to criticize Hispanics and Afros again, and to "see" some of the statistical differences between world populations. Before very long, as in every other Chosen-influenced society for two thousand years, Euros are going to be asked to purge their countries of everyone foreign. Many Euros, and many others, will die. The only people who will be safe will be the crypto-Chosen who, with new surnames and endless nationalities and panic rooms, allowed the great dialogue to begin focusing on race realism in the 21st century.
Arka, thanks, that's pretty clear! It's not that I'm not aware of different standpoints in the debate just that I'm not always clear who's arguing from which. "Lacking Zionist-inspired colonialism, they wouldn't even have the wrecked boats they're using to traverse the Mediterranean." What a bitterly amusing remark. But, in my limted reading, I had the impression that Templar funds kick-started colonialism - Henry the Navigator etc. Also, what do you say about the view that the 'inspiration' is Anglo-Zionist?
Dear Anonymous,
We've come upon an interesting juncture here--you've seemed to agree with me that "colonialism" (presumably of the latter variety) is indeed Zionist inspired. To which I'll remind you, it wasn't actually Zionists carrying out the majority of what we think of when we say "colonialism." Yes, they owned many of the slave ships, and financed many of the companies, but primarily, it was various European, then American, powers who were the formally named parties behind the arming of Africa and the Middle East.
Today, we can see the Muslim invasion of Europe, and the Mestizo invasion of the United States, and we can also follow the money to identify the essentially Zionist policies that have created these things, from the world governmental federations (Balfour, UN, EU, NATO, NAFTA, etc.) to the direct genetically-based media lineage that created the invasion laws in 1965 America and 2000s Europe.
Our interesting juncture is to connect those things, which we can see even today, to the same forms of colonialism that we saw in the ancient world. The first bloody, incredibly wasteful European crusades were paid for and agitated for by a cabal of international bankers who:
1) Drew their social legitimacy from genocidal desert gods;
2) Bribed European heads of state to enlist the tax coffers and young male populations of Europe to invade Jerusalem;
3) Encouraged all of western and northern Europe to band together under a single multiculturalist system of world governance;
4) Accepted the slaughter of small-time diaspora Jews in exchange for arms and manpower being thrown against Arabs.
I don't mean to stir up a controversial discussion about how many popes were or weren't Jewish, or how the Ashkenazim Peter stirred up the funds to create the first version of the EU in a private financial Federal Reserve in Italy. Nor do we need to focus on how dozens of different forms of Judaism and Christianity blended together in Roman territory, providing an environment ripe for crypsis while Ashkenazim financiers fostered the non-white invasion of "guest workers" that destroyed the white Empire. We could even look at the dynamics of Templar funding, the predecessor propaganda campaigns that financed the Templar, and the ways that European thrones--like modern executive positions--were handed out to well-behaved goyim willing to make "middle eastern policy" part of their campaign platforms. Those topics are certainly interesting, and can be tracked over two thousand years just as readily as Sub-Saharan African progress in physics or European progress in technological innovation.
More importantly than those kinds of specifics, though, we can use our statistical knowledge of modern trends to give us a general idea of what things were like for those Euros. It would be foolish to expect randomly-selected Chinese-American linebackers to outperform randomly-selected African-American linebackers, and it would be similarly foolish to presume that Zionist use of European biological fodder didn't appear until 1948.
Arka, thanks again for elucidating. What you write is not new to me but it's not something I've considered for a while because, since there is so much to learn about politics in 2015, and machinations since 1948, my mind is at full capacity. If the thesis dating back so far is indeed accurate, it must be the most fantastical history never told. So fantastical that I can't imagine it ever being told. But maybe one day it will be.
You are an international treasure.
I say it with all seriousness.
"As for the causes, it's clear that only HBD Chick's theory and the forces it describes serve as the deciding factors."
I keep hearing Hannibal Lecter whispering, 'Doesn't it seem desparately random that the people who took outbreeding to an extreme were the same people with funny hair and eye colours and funny enzymes?'
Hbdchick's research includes the loosening of Germanic tribal ties before the Church mandate.
Alfred the Great was by many accounts something of an intellectual giant with a vision for social development - how outbred was he?
The clergy who introduced cousin-marriage ban, did so with intention to pacify society - where did they get that idea, were they outbred?
Catholic countries often ignored the limits, why were Germanics so compliant?
Isn't it at least possible that outbreeding was a consequence as much as it was a cause?
But to my knowledge the hypothesis only exists in fragmented posts making open objective debate difficult. It would be nice to see the hypothesis written out in old-fashioned 'beginning, middle, end' style and with full open discussion, before it transcends into Grand Theory. Otherwise it is no more scientific than the current liberal ideologies about egalitarianism.
One last thought - the gene pools of outbred and inbred societies were not the same prior to the adoption of marriage customs, were they?
According to this article, the Igbo eschew cousin marriage. They also seem to have higher IQs than most West Africans, and especially populated Barbados, Jamaica, Virginia and Maryland.
Interesting stuff.
Grumpy Old Man--
I think there was supposed to be a link in your comment to an article about Igbos, but I can't see the link--could you re-post it? Thanks.
American Goy--
It is as always a pleasure to see your virtual face in this neck of the woods.
You've put together an excellent article, and I'm glad my link regarding South Gate, California was helpful. The state of affairs in that town still shocks me.
Liberal democracy is often touted by progressive biorealists as a direct benefit of commonweal orientation. Well, if one is inclined to conclude that politicians and citizens don't really control anything beyond a certain scale or size, then liberal democracy seems like a mere side effect of widespread commonweal instincts. Northwest Europeans need to feel that everyone is in charge regardless of the actual reality.
The true benefits of commonweal orientation that make prosperous, advanced, clean and safe societies possible could be:
1. Relatively honest market transactions
2. Functional and trustworthy bureaucracies
Success as a populous modern state would appear to demand those two basic ingredients.
You mentioned NW Euros and their historical out-group derogation. I believe Teutonics very much have a conception of in-group and out-group today. Their tribe, the in-group, is the species itself, or, as they love to refer to it, "Humanity." People with narrower tribal affinities are cast out as an enemy, the out-group: "anti-Humanity." Heritable behavioral traits being environmentally/memetically context-dependent, Teutonics are sort of the ultimate nationalists, waging zealous, brutal campaigns of subjugation and destruction against other forms of nationalism they deem inferior. Perhaps this interpretation is colorful.
Of course, NW European nastiness toward folks who shirk their universalist duties might not be "othering" so much as altruistic punishment.
In other news: Japan bedevils us still! I'm beginning to wonder if the current Japanese population is simply so domesticated (i.e., genetically pacified) that they function as a solid ethnic block on command --- a sheer matter of obedience. I don't know, and I have doubts about Japanese comparing to Danes or Swedes in the docility department.
Thanks for another informative post, M.G.
Cheers.
>Latin America , which has thrown off decades of military dictatorship and embraced representative democracy,
A regrettable turn of events.
I think i have some insights into this as i lived in both Russia and in Israel.
First, i must say that those undesirable cultural traits are extremely wide-spread within some low-trust societies, and are very difficult to change.
Second, most immigrants from countries like Russia, which is certainly low-trust country, assimilate into western culture within 1-2 generations.
Third, while i agree that Israeli culture has some peculiar features (no bus lines, not-being-a-sucker), on vast majority of issues, Israel is unquestionably a western country. There is no widespread bribing and corruption, no nepotism and familialism, no disregard for public property and garbage on the streets, etc. Of course, there are incidents of each of these social evils, but they are not more frequent than in any other western country.
I've had the ideas espoused in this article n the back of my mind a lot lately, since it so embodies the idea of "nordics/"teutonics"/northern and western europeans as being so deeply "high trust" and "altruistic", which I think has been becoming more and more untenable. While that isn't to say there isn't truth to it, I honestly have to roll my eyes more and more at the claims from the HBD set about the nature of northern european societies and how they evolved (which isn't to say they've always come off as more than a little autistic and goofy.)
Because, in recent years, even preceding the migrant crisis, these countries have become absolutely infamous for what amounts to an unmitigated level of self-hatred that manifests in viscerally suicidal immigration policies, crippling PC culture and hate speech laws, celebration of abject sexual depravity, and excuses or cover ups of the most heinous, barbaric and inhuman crimes committed on the part of the immigrants they let in. The things I have seen out of northern/western Europe- but especially Britain, Sweden and Germany- are horrific. The amount of bureaucratic and governmental malfeasance in these countries is astonishing, to say nothing of how many common people tolerate it to outright embrace it. That isn't to say the HBD types who push these theories recognize that there are genuine flaws with the "high trust altruism" of northern european societies, (to the point it's been deemed "pathological altruism" by many), but I don't think it really encapsulates what we're seeing. Bribery and nepotism is obviously corruption, but what do you seemingly endless numbers of foreign child sex slavery rings to go unchecked in your country, to the point of the police and authorities silencing and defaming the victims for fear of "backlash over racism"? (worth noting police in Rotherham also partook in the abuse.) What do you call constantly allowing blatantly grown men posing as child refugees to be allowed in to your country? What do you call political parties in Germany earnestly pushing the idea of allowing recent refugees to vote, IE, a blatant bid at expanding your party's political power, which underlies much of the push for immigrants throughout the western world?
It's not hard to see these things as reflecting a kind of sociopathy either, like Amy Biehl's parents. And while I've lost track offhand, there have been more similar cases of incidents like this, IE, white people who's children/family members have been murdered by members of "oppressed" groups, and yet react to it by seeing the perpetrators as victims and not really at fault. On some level, don't you think there's just something intrinsically pathological about people like this? That they seem incapable of grasping the idea some people are irredeemable or "bad", seem prone to upholding members of out-groups above their own immediate family members even when the out-group murders them? To the point this can manifest on a large-scale, like the "the Scandis being forever puzzled that the huddled masses they take in are so quick to swindle them:"
But it's not just recently either. Unified Germany has been a disaster for Europe and the world as a whole. They've for all intents and purposes ruined the continent three times in 100 years and caused an astonishing amount of chaos internationally. In between the militarism leading up to WWI, the profound nihilism and sexual depravity of the Weimar era, the extreme militarism, genocide, ethnic supremacy etc. of WWII, and now the embracing of extreme neoliberal globalism and seeing themselves as the forefront of the transformation of Europe into "post-nations", is it not inaccurate to say there's something wrong with German culture that's led to these things?
Not like Germany has been devoid of good old-fashion extreme corporate corruption either. See the "Volkswagon emissions scandal" or the recent industry-wide collusion.
So things like this:
"Britain too has been importing low-trust immigrants as fast as it can, and importing their political culture as well:"
Come off as more than a little unaware, since what sort of political culture imported these people to begin with and has continued to do so, along with the immeasurable amounts of "welfare fraud"? Isn't promoting mass immigration to debase your enemies and lower their political clout ("rub their noses in diversity", to quote) a form of "electoral fraud"? And this on top of the digs at non-Northern Europeans- like Spanish "particularism", the procurement on the part of " Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Italy, Romania and Slovakia", and the snark about how Greeks have elevated tax fraud to "high art".
Right, and northern europeans have seemingly elevated to letting foreigners rape and murder their daughters and burning their own countries to the ground (and dragging everyone else down around with them*) to a fine art, to the point some of them have been fleeing for "lower trust clannish" eastern european countries.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/698419/German-family-flees-to-Russia-claim-asylum-Griesbach
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/710723/Hungarian-estate-agents-Germans-migrant-crisis-behind
Makes you kind of question how all of those studies are measuring "corruption." Are they picking up the kind that leads to Rotherham or national suicide in face of overwhelming evidence the policies you're committed to will lead to it?
And I recognize jews play a huge role in all this, but you can't just keep blaming them. What's often lost is how jews have such huge rates of out-marriage, and this is overwhelmingly with whites, and many, many jews are half or quarter. It's fair to say there's tons of whites who have have behavioral/personality traits like jews.
*Worth mentioning this isn't all just Germany. See Britain's "Operation Vegetarian", a biological weapons project that, if enacted, could have potentially been more devastating than any other WWII atrocity, and left large parts of Germany uninhabitable to even animal life for decades.
The man behind this, Paul Fildes, was knighted.
Also, the claim that Sweden had no words for corruption before mass-immigration seems a little unlikely. The passage in question says they lacked an "appropriate word" for clientelism, a common form of corruption, but just one kind. And in the case of "The Deluge" of the mid-17th century, Sweden has shown it's perfectly capable of brutal military conquest well beyond the Viking era, so I don't think anything resembling that and worse is so alien to Sweden. And of course, everything they've been doing for the past 25 years.
That's an interesting conundrum, Anonymous, and even though Britain didn't use its chemical weapons on Germany during the war for the Balfour Declaration, they and all the other supposed altruists during that conflict had no qualms in several instances in the 20th century, for example the bombing of German civilians by British and American forces. It wasn't just the Germans (other whites) that so many whites were willing to be completely aggressive against, but also of course the Japanese during that same conflict.
I know that it might be difficult for someone to consider what variable it is that permits countries to destroy themselves by importing Africans, but also to go out of their way to destroy other whites. I wouldn't normally say this, but on such a honourable blog as this one, which is 100% science-focused and completely open to inquiry, I wonder what that common variable is that dictates which countries whites will be aggressive against, and which they will not. I'm sure that Moshe Golden Miles won't mind us discussing the issue.
I don't think it's entirely accurate to frame the corruption and sociopathy I've noted on the part of northern europeans as something that manifests primarily in intra-ethnic european relations, but that's certainly where we've seen it most prominently in recent times. Though, it's not like Britain has been devoid of periods of severe corruption and low social trust, like the early industrial era. The same was true of the early industrial US. And of course Weimar Germany.
It's also worth noting that Poland stands likely to become the next "advanced" economy and on par with northern/western europe and east asia: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/opinion/poland-economy-trump-russia.html
And if this article is something to go by, the future for much of the rest of eastern europe looks bright, nevermind that it doesn't take into account their aversion to taking in refugees. That's obviously not set in stone, since things might not go so well if they fall too heavily under the auspices of a corrupt, autocratic state like Russia (assuming they don't improve), or if Germany and the EU throw a wrench in things, or if they come to their senses and begin mass deportations and stop taking in refugees. It's also possible that Poland/other parts of eastern europe will hit a ceiling with their development and the differences might be "artificially" exacerbated by the huge intake of third world refugees in western Europe, but I doubt this the least, atleast for Poland, since they are the most functional slavic nation. Though I also doubt this the least for Hungary.
Obviously this is all remarkable considering how most of Poland falls outside of the much-vaunted "hajnal line" (basically the cradle of civilization for HBD nerds) and are more "inbred."
thank you for sharing, it was useful and informative.
Vietnam travel deal
Darwin married his first cousin, three of his sons were members of the Royal Society. Kierkegaard's father married his third cousin, his children were all smart, Sören, of course, a genius. Einstein also had children with a cousin, Eduard was mentally ill, but smart.
This seems to suggest that whatever cousin marriage does, it does not lower intelligence, as Molyneux and Vox Day claim. So this does not explain the low intelligence of muslims in the Middle East and North Africa, methinks. I wish I had some of the intelligence of the guys mentioned, and I'm a alpinid-nordid bastard.
This post has made me angry. I guess it was about 30 years ago I made the local news, picking up trash after some thing, might have been an eco-demonstration. Born in a barn, raised in a sty, they were. I swear. I must have picked up a hundred pounds of soiled diapers just dropped on the ground. There were rubbish bins every ten yards.
I understand the high trust/low trust concept. It's a form of tribalism, and these were folks who believe that only rich folks go downtown, right? I weep.
But I still pick up the damn trash.
Post a Comment