It’s all in the Genes

Plain facts.  Excerpts presented. Emphasis added.

Read this.

Establishment Lie:

Environment is everything; nurture (or lack of it) is the key.

Truth:

Now, one of the country’s top psychologists and behavioural geneticists, Professor Robert Plomin, of King’s College London, offers an emphatic conclusion. 

It is drawn from 45 years of research and hundreds of studies. He says the single most important factor in each and every one of us — the very essence of our individuality — is our genetic make-up, our DNA.

The basic building blocks of life that we inherit from our parents are what determine who we are — not how much they loved us, read us books or which school they sent us to.

And this, by extension, must also apply to ethnic and racial differences.  All the societal manipulations in the world won’t make a Negro into a Dane.

DNA accounts for at least half the variance in people’s psychological traits, much more than any other single factor. Put simply, ‘nature’ trumps ‘nurture’ every time, and not just marginally, but by a long, long chalk. 

Our DNA, fixed and unchangeable, determines whether we have a predisposition not just to physical traits — from how tall we are to how much we weigh — but also to our intelligence and our psychology, from a tendency to depression to having resilience and grit. 

Plomin’s revolutionary conclusion — outlined in a challenging and thought-provoking new book, Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are — is a game-changer, he claims, with far-reaching implications for psychology and for society.

Chicago-born Plomin’s startling conclusions come from two of his long-term studies. Over the course of 40 years, he tracked 250 adopted children in Colorado along with the birth parents who gave them their genes, and the adoptive parents who raised them. After moving to London in 1994, he launched a 20-year study of more than 12,000 pairs of twins. 

From these studies, it was possible to unravel the relative importance of genes as opposed to environment when it came to their development.

Millions of pieces of data were amassed from the parents, teachers and the children themselves, about psychological traits such as hyperactivity and inattention, talents such as school achievement and the ability to learn languages, and physical characteristics, such as the propensity to put on weight and become obese. 

From all this, he found overwhelming evidence that adopted children are similar to their birth parents, not the parents who raised them. Identical twins (ie, from a single egg and therefore with the same DNA) develop much more similarly to each other as compared with non-identical twins (from separate eggs and with different DNA). 

The conclusion was clear — DNA makes us who we are. In the long term, the environment you grow up in has little impact on the way you turn out.

In fact, what really matters in such situations is our genes, because it is our genes that determine how well or badly an individual deals with such setbacks. And whether we’re resilient to life’s catastrophes or cave in is determined by our DNA, too.

Why shouldn’t the same apply to population groups?

In fact, Plomin argues, there are genetic influences in virtually everything we do. Those differences determine how we perceive and interpret the world we grow up in, and how we modify our behaviour accordingly. 

As his research developed over the years, Plomin was taken by surprise by the all-pervasiveness of genetic influences he discovered in almost every aspect of human behaviour — even down to being a nice person or not.

Altruism, caring and kindness are components of what personality researchers call ‘agreeableness’, and for years it seemed logical to him that these traits had to be the result of the environment we live in and the influence of those around us. 

But his research showed this was not the case. Being nice is also something in our DNA. The same goes for grit and determination. Nurture and example do not teach some children to be tougher than others, their genes do.

Consider differences between population groups in these traits.  Sorry, you cannot cherry pick and only apply these findings to atomized individuals.

All this leads Plomin to a conclusion that is hard to take: the family, he tells us, far from being the monolithic determinant of who we are, the bedrock from which we learn and grow, actually makes little difference to our personalities and the way we turn out.

The same applies to societies and races.

‘Each child is their own person genetically. We need to recognise and respect their genetic differences. If we go against the grain, we run the risk of damaging our relationship with them.’

Let’s rewrite:

Each race is their own population genetically. We need to recognise and respect their genetic differences. If we go against the grain, we run the risk of damaging our relationship with them – and risk damaging ourselves trying to fight Mother Nature.

Schools, he says, matter in that they teach basic skills such as literacy and numeracy. They also dispense fundamental information about history, science, maths and culture. But choice of school makes very little difference to a child’s achievement. 

‘Genetics is by far the major source of individual differences in school achievement.’

As any multiracial society should be aware.

The same principle applies in the debate about private and state schools. If, as Plomin claims, schools have little effect on individual differences in achievement, then those 7 per cent of parents who pay huge sums to send their children to private schools in the belief that it will give them an advantage may well be wasting their cash. 

Plomin writes: ‘Expensive schooling cannot survive a cost–benefit analysis on the basis of school achievement itself.’ 

If your genes fit, you’ll do well; and, if they don’t, no amount of cash can change the abilities you’re born with.

Negroes don’t perform badly because their schools are “bad.”  Their schools are bad because they’re the students in them.

Not that the influence of our DNA is confined to our early years when we’re growing up. 

Indeed, Plomin shows that it gets stronger as we get older. More and more, we revert to type. Yes, other factors impact on us, such as our relationships with partners, children and friends, our jobs and interests. All contribute to give life meaning.

Which is why “Head Start” gains and other nonsense dissipate over time.

The same applies to anyone with a genetic propensity to depression, learning disabilities or alcohol abuse.

‘Genes are not destiny,’ says Plomin. You don’t have to succumb.

Perhaps, but you have limited options to change course, dependent upon your genetic blueprint.

It’s also good, he argues, that we can know our limits — those things that our DNA just won’t let happen, however hard we try. 

Plomin quotes with approval the observation of American comedian W.C. Fields: ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no use being a damn fool about it.’

Can we then give up attempting equal outcomes on the basis of race?

Plomin’s radical new world may force us to bow to our genetic limits but, on the plus side, it will encourage us, like Alastair Cook, to do the best we can with the talents we’ve been given.

Some folks can land on the moon, others can layup basketballs.  It’s all in the genes.

Three implications of this story:

1. The predictive value of gene pool to phenotype correlations will be greater for populations than for families, since the intra-family variability in phenotypic expression – due to the “meiotic lottery” – would tend to be averaged out over the millions of people making up typical ethnies.  Thus, one could more reliably predict phenotypic expression from the allele frequencies in the genepool when considering (large) populations.

2. Significant and long-term improvements in various psychometric performances would require genetic change – and the most rapid and directed approach to achieve this change (other than futuristic gene editing) would be via eugenics.


3. This all underscores the mendacity of globalist shills who tell us that people who lose their jobs due to free trade, outsourcing, immigration, and automation can simply be “educated” and “retrained” to perform the more challenging, information-based “jobs of the future.”  No, that middle-aged coal miner is not going to become the next Bill Gates or Elon Musk (and, besides, some of these “advanced jobs” will themselves be eventually lost to the same processes that have hollowed out the American [blue collar] working class and middle class).