A Descent into Genetic Descent

More on EGI.

The following analysis is based on autosomal DNA, which constitutes the vast bulk of the genome and is the focus of what we typically consider to be ethnic genetic interests (EGI), and is not concerned with NRY and mitochondrial DNA, which are mostly irrelevant to EGI.

Critics of EGI from the Left and the Right (e.g., HBD) often focus on (unjustified) distinctions between genetic relatedness based on direct genealogical relationships (identity by descent) and genetic relatedness independent of direct genealogy (identify by state), such as belonging to the same ethny. Of course, as I’ve stated previously, identity by state is usually just a form of identity by descent that is based on very distant descent, but for the sake of my initial argument here we can consider them to be separate entities. 

Critics of EGI aver that adaptive fitness, and related inclusive fitness (what we do to achieve adaptive fitness; e.g., by assisting kin), only applies to (close, familial) kin, thus only applying to identity by descent, and does not at all apply to identity by state (i.e., to unrelated co-ethnics).  Salter refutes this by citing Hamilton’s modification of the original formulation of inclusive fitness, but let us evaluate the problem from another perspective.

Consider the genetic relatedness of a person, such as yourself, with their descendants. How do you relate, in this genetic sense, to your posterity? With each subsequent generation removed from self, not considering effects of independent assortment and recombination in meiosis, genetic relationship (identity by descent) with genealogical kin is halved. Now, properly considering the aforementioned meiotic processes complicates the situation, so actual relatedness may be somewhat greater or lesser than a two-fold change; however, the reality of a continuous diminishment each generation remains. Thus, at some point, after several centuries, genetic relatedness by genealogical kinship descent (identity by descent) will approach zero. That’s assuming your familial line continues; if it does not, obviously identity by descent will be cut down to absolute zero at the point the line of familial descent ends. But, in any case, at some point, identity by descent in the genealogical sense will become vanishingly small (if it exists at all). However, and this a key point, identity by state will remain, assuming your familial line has not suffered significant admixture with genetically alien stocks. And, even more important, this identity by state will be approximately equivalent to that of unrelated co-ethnics (assuming such co-ethnics exist and have also not suffered significant alien admixture, and also taking into account normal processes of genetic drift and selection that are expected events that occur with all evolved organisms).

Thus, if we assume no significant ethnoracial admixture of your genealogical line of descent, or of your ethny, and if we simply consider overall genetic relatedness, now without making any unnecessary distinctions between identity by descent and identity by state (after all, identical gene sequences are identical, regardless of their origin), then, at some point, your genetic relatedness to your distant posterity will be equivalent to that of a random, unrelated (non-kin) co-ethnic. If your line of descent actually suffered from significant admixture (and your ethny did not), then your distant kin may actually be less genetically similar to you than a random co-ethnic. But in either case, a random (unmixed) co-ethnic will not be any less genetically similar to you (in any meaningful sense) than is your distant genealogical kin (if any exist). This endpoint may be delayed by familial inbreeding (which would depress fitness by other mechanisms), but, eventually, this ultimate endpoint will be reached.

So, does adaptive fitness, and related inclusive fitness, simply “peter out” after several centuries and thus only applies to genealogical kin close to you in time?  Is adaptive fitness therefore self-limited and thus one should only care about a few generations of posterity and ignore what happens after that time (*)?  What justification is there for that view?  What is the specific endpoint?  When kin relatedness reaches that of the background population? Does that mean you have no adaptive interests at all at that point? Really? Why are identical gene sequences from descent at that point privileged over identical gene sequences by state? Does that make objective sense? Or can we dismiss the artificial distinction of identity by descent vs. identity by state and recognize that you would still have adaptive interests (for your posterity and for your co-ethnics) at that time? These would be your interests in (unmixed) co-ethnics to whom you are more genetically similar compared to other populations, and thus this identity by state allows you to exercise inclusive fitness on behalf of these future co-ethnics (that would include any [unmixed] distant kin who would be genetically more or less indistinguishable from the co-ethnics) by engaging in activity in your lifetime that will secure the well-being of your future ethnic kin?  And if the well-being of your ethnic kin in the future is important, then their well-being today certainly is as well (the former depends on the latter, does it not?). Even if today's unrelated ethnic kin are a less concentrated store of genetic similarity than are your immediate kin, there are many more of the former group, and if you want their future well-being to be assured, you need to act on their behalf today.

So, either the critics of EGI have to assert that adaptive fitness only applies to a certain number of generations of kinship, and thereafter is meaningless – which in the long run of evolutionary time means it is completely meaningless (which would go against neo-Darwinian theory and make inclusive fitness activity a long term waste of effort) – and that identical gene sequences are somehow different based on their origin (even though they are identical) OR the critics need to admit the validity of EGI. They need to admit that adaptive fitness, exercised through inclusive fitness mechanisms in pursuit of genetic interests, can apply to co-ethnics (present and future) as well as to genealogical kin. They need to admit that genetic interests apply to genetic identity by distant descent (identity by state) as well as genetic identity by close kin (recent descent; i.e., identity by descent). They need to acknowledge that at some point, genealogical relatedness becomes so dilute that (unmixed) genealogical kinship conflates to co-ethnic relatedness (and if the genealogical kinship is heavily admixed it may exhibit genetic relatedness less than that of unrelated unmixed co-ethnics).

Again, EGI is self-evident. I state that because it is objectively true.

*Another related issue – consider how the Left and Right would respond to someone who states – “I don’t have children and I don’t care what happens after I die, so I don’t care about the environment or anything else that affects the future of humanity.” The Left and Right would respond that this self-centered person has a common interest in humanity; the person is human and is in this manner linked to the interests of humanity as a whole. Putting aside that this view is inconsistent with Left/Right “song and dance” about identity by descent vs. identity by state, we can ask – if we have common interest in the well-being of humanity as whole, then why don’t we also have a common interest in the well-being of our particular ethny? Why do we agree that we have interests in self, family, and humanity, but are then supposed to skip over our interests at the level of ethny? Are all these anti-EGI arguments simply a tactic to ensure that Whites do not organize to defend and promote their collective group interests? It does seem to be the case. I do not see why Whites need to accept such a transparently obvious attempt to delegitimize their group interests.

Lawrence Again, 11/21

A moral turd.

As a preface, I want to say that, to me, anyone who participates at the blog of anti-WN Jewish HBDer Unz is an enemy of the White race and is a moral turd. I have been alerted that Lawrence, over at that selfsame Unz blog, has attacked me; I’ll briefly respond.

Finally, at the risk of trying the reader’s patience, let’s take a look at @FvS (comment 9) who links to the blog of Ted Sallis – basically a glorified comment account in which a rather unhinged…

Just like Greg Johnson with his “mental illness” pathologization of critics. That seems to be a common trope of these types.

…White Nationalist veteran spews the bitterest vitriol against everyone he reads…

Everyone?  Salter?  Lowell?

…only from the safety of a no-comments-allowed blog where his victims cannot take him to task and puncture his delusion of being right about everything.

See my position about comments below.

Follow the first link, and you will Ted’s vehemently insulting reaction to my post on White Nationalism, in which he accused me of being an “ethnic fetishist” for Nordics with an “ethnic animus” to Southern Europeans (both tendencies I despise) on the basis of a single offhand comment about racial admixture that he twisted out of its proper context. 

That reminds me of when Arthur Kemp, in response to some criticism on my old Legion Europa blog, denied that he was a Nordicist. I suppose that Madison Grant wasn’t a Nordicist either. This Lawrence, following Sallis’ Law to the letter, talked about “racial admixture” in Southern Europe (ignoring evidence of such in Northern Europe) in the context of it being superfluous to his (typically long-winded and rambling) “argument,” and is then disturbed about being called out on it.  If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck….I don’t know, if Lawrence “despises” those “tendencies” then he might stop invoking those tendencies in his “writing” – particularly at the blog of someone known to indulge in those “tendencies.” The best way not to enable “tendencies” that you allegedly “despise” is to – surprise! – not enable them.

This led me to conclude that he was intellectually dishonest, but I also speculated – either irreverently, or charitably, depending on your perspective – that he could also be “intoxicated”, “semiliterate”, or “retarded”. This resulted in the outraged huffing and puffing that you see in the second link…

So, Lawrence engages in ad hominem “vitriol” and then is disturbed when there is a response.  Who is a soft, thin-skinned bully?

… – for Ted has developed a soft, thin skin in the padded cell of his insulated blog, and like a stereotypical bully, is not used to being hit back with anything like his own habitual ferocity.

All that Johnson–like pathologization aside, long-time readers of this blog know why I don’t have a comments section on my blogs. I’ll repeat my reasoning for new readers. First, my previous experience at sites such as Majority Rights leads me to have a low opinion of the worth of many, perhaps most, comments, which often lower the tone of the blog and often descend into flamewars (see Lawrence’s own hysterics). Moderated comments I see as somewhat dishonest, as one can always censor effective responses against your position and/or “ban” critics as does Johnson. Second, and more important, there are issues of time and of opportunity costs. Unlike many “movement” freaks, I have a life outside activism. Unlike Quota Queen grifters, I support myself and do not depend on “D’Nations.” I’m not earning anything – much less $340,000 in one year as “executive compensation” – for running my blogs.  I have to budget my time and effort accordingly.  Producing my own material is more time effective than spending time reading and answering comments. Considering how much time is wasted responding to flotsam and jetsam such as Lawrence (who does not lack forums to answer me, as you see), I think my stance on comments is prudent. Call that “the padded cell” of my “insulated blog” if you wish but I’m not changing my policy.

I also have long noted in my 20+ years of commenting on the Internet that when Nordicists behave with "ferocity" and use "vitriol" that is all well and good and often praised, but in my case, I'm "unhinged" and suffering from "insanity" (defamation from Lawrence and Johnson, respectively). You can read into that what you will.

The third linked post on Salter is more reasoned, but still exhibits the same basic intellectual dishonesty (or, if you prefer, “self-deception”). Ted is basically moving the goalposts, setting up a rigid distinction between Salterian prescription and description – i.e. between the theory of EGI-adaptive behaviour, and the reality of actual human behaviour – that is all but impossible to distinguish in most parts of Salter’s On Genetic Interests. 

Not true. Salter usually was careful about that. Did Lawrence read the book? If so, is he challenged with respect to reading comprehension?

Technically, of course, it’s possible to defend Salter in this way – like a Renaissance astronomer before the Inquisition – by saying that theory is theory, reality is reality, and the former just posits more or less accurate hypothetical models of the latter. But this is downright disingenuous if you are Ted Sallis, who has written elsewhere about the need to capitalise EGI into “biopolitics”...

Disingenuous? Not at all. This argument from Lawrence is particularly stupid. The whole purpose of argumentation is to change human behavior to agree with your position. People do one thing today. I want them to do something else tomorrow. The former is descriptive; the latter is prescriptive. What’s the problem?  Even worse for Lawrence's criticism – the behavior that I am trying to change is something that in the past was more in line with what I am prescribing. The behavior is therefore changeable, it is malleable, it can be altered. I want Whites to behave in a more ethnocentric manner (that they have done in the past). That they are currently displaying a different behavior does not invalidate my prescription (to argue otherwise is an error derived from the is-ought fallacy)

What it looks like to me is a classic setup for a motte-and-bailey fallacy. 

No, it is not. I am not conflating more and less controversial positions and defending the former by invoking the latter. I am making distinctions between things that are in fact distinct, and clarifying core concepts from peripheral, sometimes irrelevant comments (e.g., the Bantu issue).  If anything, Lawrence is doing a reverse “motte and bailey” – cherry picking isolated more controversial comments to invalidate the core thesis that is less controversial and that is based on genetic realities and sound evolutionary theory.

When we try to pin Salter down on his statements about Bantu immigrants and drowing children…

What is “drowing?” In any case, the fact that Lawrence keeps on harping on this Bantu thing reinforces my suspicion that he either hasn’t read Salter’s book or read it very superficially and is instead depending on second-hand HBD/leftist criticism, which often focuses on this single cherry picked sentence to invalidate Salter's entire carefully argued book.

I can’t speak for Salter, but it seems to me that he invoked the Bantu example as an extension of Haldane’s comment about saving siblings or cousins from drowning – basically extending Haldane’s family example to an ethnic one. It was a rhetorical device, a single sentence, and to obsessively focus on it suggests that the focuser is being dishonest. 

Ted whisks his guru off to the “motte”, by telling us that Salterian “adaptiveness” is purely theoretical…

Purely theoretical? I never said that. Lawrence is lying. I merely said that the SPECIFIC Bantu example that Lawrence obsesses about is theoretical and not meant by Salter to be something he’s telling people to do. See my comment:

The actual context of the statement is that it follows an intricate discussion of population genetics and genetic kinship and Salter is clearly theoretically (“it would appear to be”) speculating on adaptive behavior in an objective sense. He does not expect, or advise, e.g., that a person will strap a torpedo on their back and swim out to blow up a migrant boat while at the same time ignoring their own child drowning.

This comment about "theoretically" is specifically and only about the Bantu statement (as is clear from the context of that quote). It is not an assertion that "Salterian adaptiveness" as a whole is merely theoretical. As Salter writes, his prescription for "adaptiveness" could be actualized via (bold font in original):

…political activity and inexpensive but repetitive acts of favouritism shown to ingroup members. Favouring many individuals at low per-unit cost also helps overcome the free rider problem.

Back to Lawrence:

…and is mediated through various “proximate proxies” for EGI in practical life. 

I never said that in the sense that it MUST be mediated that way – if often is, but can also be directly (which is optimal) mediated through smaller-scale actions (e.g., anti-immigration activism instead of stopping those Bantus in the water).

Okay…so let’s say we assume that humans have evolved a crude predilection for people with similar external characteristics to themselves, which originates as a proxy for EGI as theorised by Salter…

I NEVER stated that. In fact, I have for years argued that there is NO need to argue for the evolution of anything. I have argued endlessly that the evolution of altruism or ethnic nepotism is NOT required.  All you need is conscious rational decision making to pursue genetic interests.  For example - It is an objective fact that Englishmen are genetically more similar to French than to Nigerians.  Now, an Englishman can look at that fact and decide that his interests are served by helping the French to resist African immigration. Another Englishman can state that he doesn’t care, or, in typical High Truster style, he helps the Africans. The former action is adaptive, the latter is not.  No evolution of anything is required. See the addendum below. Salter writes about his prescription for pursuing EGI:

...to think responsibly about ethnic affairs requires more deliberation and systematic fact-finding than is necessary in the personal realm.

That's conscious and rational "deliberation and systematic fact-finding" not some sort of "evolved...crude predilection for people with similar external characteristics to themselves."

The idea that all human behavior is strictly evolved and genetically determined is something out of HBD (that Lawrence apparently believes has validity), not from Salter or myself.

...but in practice can be ‘hacked’ by anything from linguistic similarity to political similarity to cultural similarity. 

No, it are proximate interests that can be “hacked.”  EGI cannot be “hacked” because genetic similarity is what it is – which is why focusing on ultimate interests rather than proximate ones is superior.  See this. 

Back to Lawrence:

And then let’s say we make this the basis for a milquetoast conservative proposal to force non-white immigrants to adopt local language, culture and customs, since as far actual human beings are concerned one type of similarity is more or less as good as another. Presumably, at this point Ted will come storming out into the “bailey”, to tell us why we should be modelling our real-life behaviour on the underlying EGI instead of the non-genetic proxy.

Indeed I will so storm out, because the cultural approach has (directly) nothing to do with EGI. This fellow has a complete misunderstanding of both Salter’s work and of my perspective on it.  Everything that he’s saying is essentially completely wrong.  Strawman arguments everywhere.

Now that we understand these sleazy hand-waving tricks..

Childish ad hominem.

…let’s look at the fourth linked post on MacDonald. Once again, Ted whisks his guru..

I’m actually very critical of MacDonald on my blog, but I believe his work on the Jews is sound.

…off to the safety of the “motte”, this time by expanding the concept of “group evolutionary strategy” to be as nebulous and unfalsifiable as possible. Now, according to his rules, we must include practically any type of group behaviour under the definition of a group evolutionary strategy – whether it is collectivist or individualist, endogamous or exogamous, evolutionarily beneficial or evolutionarily disastrous.

Lawrence apparently does not understand the distinction between a definition and a hypothesis; while the latter needs to be falsifiable, the former does not.  I provided what I see as a perfectly reasonable definition of a GES:

...the manner in which a group of people (however defined) interacts with each other, with other groups, and with the environment, to affect, positively or negatively, the continuity of the group. 

You may like that, dislike it, consider it “nebulous,” but it is a definition, not anything that requires falsification.  An example of a falsifiable hypothesis would be, e.g., “Judaism is a GES based on X,Y,Z that enhances the fitness of Jews while depressing the fitness of the host peoples among which Jews live.” That is a hypothesis concerning a defined entity (GES). That hypothesis is falsifiable and not, in my opinion, “nebulous,” but one in any case must distinguish between it and a simple definition. An analogy would be with “military strategy," which is defined as:

...a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals.

That is a definition, perhaps “nebulous,” but it is not a hypothesis requiring falsification.  On the other hand, stating “A military strategy similar to that of the German strategic approach to WWII will inevitably lead to defeat because of X,Y,Z" is a hypothesis. See the difference?  Lawrence would no doubt tell us that military strategy is “a set of ideas implemented by military organizations that must result in victory” – and since one can easily cite examples of failed military strategies then we must conclude that the concept of a military strategy has been “falsified” and that it doesn’t exist. If you a priori define something as leading to success in all cases, then falsification is essentially guaranteed. His "reasoning" is thus exposed as ludicrous.

Now, to be fair, something like this definition of a group evolutionary strategy is actually provided by MacDonald in PTSDA. I didn’t use it in the post, because it is contradicted elsewhere…

Very convenient. Look, I don’t care what definitions MacDonald uses, and whether or not he contradicted himself. I care about my definition, which I see as more logical and comprehensive.  More importantly, note that Lawrence himself now classified GES as a “definition.”  Attention you idiot – a definition does not have to be falsified.  It merely needs to effectively describe that which is being defined.

One must applaud Mr. Lawrence for his accomplishment - his writing makes, by comparison, Heidegger seem succinct, Greg Johnson honest, and Jim Goad introspectively self-aware.  My sincere congratulations.

Addendum

The whole argument that "ethnic nepotism cannot exist because it could not have evolved" was the same nonsense as what Ingo Brigandt was saying years ago.  It can be answered by pointing out that ethnic nepotism exists and has long existed, and groups that practice it prosper.  Second, see modeling such as this.  

Third, it doesn't have to be a specific behavior that evolved, but a general domain cognitive mechanism (e.g., we didn't evolve to use computers, but our general intelligence allows us to do so, etc.).  Whatever theoretical people make (likely the same as Brigandt and GNXP in more layman's terms), the fact is that ethnic nepotism exists. Even Brigandt admitted it is evolutionarily beneficial to help ethnic kin, he just doesn't think it is possible because it "didn't evolve" - a ludicrous and illogical argument. See my quote below. 

Of interest to the GNXPers is Brigandt’s confused article: “Brigandt, I. (2001) “The homeopathy of kin selection: an evaluation of van den Berghe's sociobiological approach to ethnicity.” Politics and the Life Sciences 20: 203–215.”  There he attempts to explain why ethnic nepotism is not adaptive.  The problem is that it boils down to Brigandt’s definition of a behavior being adaptive if it evolved.  He asserts that ethnic nepotism could not have evolved because various population groups were isolated from each other during their evolution; hence, there was no selective pressure for ethnic nepotism.  Therefore, given that circumstance, ethnic nepotism could not have evolved; thus, it cannot be adaptive.

Putting aside the argument of whether ethnic nepotism could have evolved, the problem here is a semantic one; that is, defining “adaptive.”  If we wish to define “adaptive” in the sense that Brigandt does, then he may be correct, given that caveat of the footnote below.  However, let’s look at this quote by Brigandt from the same paper (Dawkins, Malloy, and all the “cake eaters,”take note):

True enough, it is an evolutionarily better strategy to spend beneficial behavior towards fellow ethnics than towards outsiders, because you are more closely related to them.

Well, yes. That, in one sentence, is a reasonable summary of Salter’s *prescriptive* argument.  Indeed, herein lies the problem, in that Salter (and I) would define adaptive as “an evolutionarily better strategy” -  a strategy independent of whether or not it has evolved or not.

To add to the confusion, Brigandt follows that sentence with:

But this fact does not indicate that this kind of behavior will evolve (rather than egoism or other behavioral patterns) independent of cost/benefit considerations.

First of all, this is somewhat contradictory, in that cost/benefit considerations come to play in the “evolutionarily better strategy,” so there really is no reason to a priori assume that the behavior is taking place independent of such considerations.  That’s absurd. Brigandt harps on that even the “better strategy” may be “maladaptive” – confusing meanings of adaptive – because of “cost/benefit” considerations.  Again – these considerations are part and parcel of the “better strategy.”  He keeps on talking about the “evolution of altruistic behavior” which is NOT relevant to EGI (see above). 

In Defense of Group Evolutionary Strategy

An argument in defense of the concept.

This essay is a defense of the concept of a group evolutionary strategy (GES).  In contrast to various long, rambling, and incomprehensible essays unfortunately extant on the Internet, I will be more succinct and comprehensible. I will first define GES, clarify some basic issues, and then discuss implications for MacDonald's idea of a Jewish GES, in toto constituting a general defense of the GES concept.  An addendum will briefly discuss the problem of over-extending the GES idea.

With respect to humans, a GES is simply the manner in which a group of people (however defined) interacts with each other, with other groups, and with the environment, to affect, positively or negatively, the continuity of the group. As humans are evolved biological organisms, and group continuity can imply genetic continuity, a GES has an evolutionary dimension, hence the “E” in “GES.” All of this is (or should be) straightforward and easy to understand, even by non-specialists.

A GES can be stable or unstable, to varying degrees. A GES does not imply stability, hence the “negatively” mentioned above. For example, the Shaker movement was an example of an unstable GES that negatively affected the biological fitness of its members. You will notice that that movement is no longer extant.  In contrast, Amish society is a more stable GES and is still extant today. Thus, a GES does not imply anything about the success of a group; the existence of unstable, maladaptive GES does not invalidate the overall GES concept. One critical response to this definition of GES may be to invoke MacDonald’s comment of:

…in order to qualify as an evolutionary strategy, genetic segregation must be actively maintained by the strategising group.

My own response is that I disagree with MacDonald here. What MacDonald actually refers to in that quote is one component of a stable and adaptive GES.  However, with respect to the broad definition of what a GES could be, genetic segregation is not fundamental.  What about Gypsies?  In the cultural sense they are segregated, and do not typically freely intermarry, but they have absorbed, at least in the past (as have Jews), significant genetic material from outsiders. Historically, in this case, "genetic segregation" was not always “actively maintained.” One can also envision GES that are unstable and maladaptive, encouraging assimilation and panmixia.

Further, a GES could fall anywhere on the individualist-collectivist spectrum. A group being hyper-individualist is not an invalidation of the GES concept; it is not an absence of GES, but is itself a GES. It may be adaptive or maladaptive under particular circumstances. For example, a moderate degree of individualism can be adaptive for a society that is able to safeguard its uniqueness by preventing immigration influx of more collectivist peoples and by defending its territorial integrity from invasion; in this case, individualism could foster innovation and greater achievement and economic productivity, all of which would enhance the competitiveness of the group. Of course, extreme individualism that would lead to an erosion of the defensive measures stated above would likely be maladaptive. 

The point is that not only can individualism be part of a GES, but in certain circumstances it can be adaptive. However, the general MacDonaldite paradigm that collectivists (often) outcompete individualists tends to be valid, particularly in a globalist, “small-world” environment in which different peoples are in constant contact (either within or between states), and that is quite different from the original environment of evolutionary adaptiveness (in which individualism developed and was adaptive). While all of that is true, it does not invalidate the GES concept (even for very individualist Western societies). Indeed, one can even say that a conscious decision to dispense with any pretense of a GES – e.g., a borderless, stateless anarchy of completely atomized individuals – is itself a GES (at least when the decision is originally implemented), albeit a very unstable and maladaptive one.

The Jews, particularly from the original MacDonaldite perspective, have been cited as a prime example of a successful GES.  This has received criticism not only from the Left and/or Jews and/or philo-Semitic cuckservatives, but, interestingly enough, from members of the Gentile Far Right, particularly those who espouse anti-scientific, anti-materialist, anti-evolutionary, and anti-rational paradigms. 

One criticism of the Jewish GES concept is the “high outmarriage rate” of (American) Jews. However, the fact that there is extensive Jewish outmarriage does not invalidate the concept of a Jewish GES. I have long ago pointed out that a Jewish outmarriage rate of ~50% is actually lower than expected when compared to European-American outmarriage rates for groups of similar size. So, this rate of Jewish-Gentile intermarriage is actually reflective of resistance to assimilation, and reflective of at least partial adherence to a Jewish exclusivist GES, rather than a repudiation of it.  As well, the idea of some degree of “permeability” of Jewish society may be beneficial to a Jewish GES if it decreases “anti-Semitism” while at the same time maintaining a more “pure” and ethnocentric Jewish core group. Intermarriage entangles Gentile interests with those of Jews, also decreasing hostility to Jews, and, from a biological standpoint, allows Jews to “steal” Gentile genes of utility, such as those coding for phenotype, to allow for greater mimicry of the host population. Needless to say as well, outmarriage allows the Jewish core to shed less ethnocentric, less committed Jews, increasing the ethnocentric and collectivist nature of the core group. To the extent the core group for the most part rejects hybrids, the intermarriage would be mostly one-way gene flow from Jews to Gentiles.  Note that this is not inconsistent with the idea of “gene stealing,” as I stated that this involved mostly (not completely) one-way gene flow, and those genes obtained from the more limited Gentile to Jewish gene flow could be subject to selection within the Jewish core group, amplifying the frequency of those genes without necessarily reflecting a concomitant increase in overall Gentile genetic ancestry within the Jews core group.

Besides the issue of Jewish-Gentile intermarriage, some will cite various examples of how Jewish behavior does not seem to be in accordance to what we could reasonably assume are long-term Jewish interests (although one wonders if we make an error in interpreting Jewish interests through the lens of a European-derived raciocultural mindset).  Such people would argue - "but actual Jewish behavior in America can be viewed as counter-productive to Jewish interests, such as the importation of people genetically different from, and hostile to, Jews."

I have actually dealt with these issues long ago (as with the breathless attacks on “Salterism” we observe individuals who believe that their “analyses” are somehow something new and fresh, in contrast to the reality that these issues have been repeatedly discussed and debated in the past). It is possible, but not definite, that the Jewish GES is no longer stable and adaptive in the environment of today’s America – an environment in large part created by the Jewish GES itself (so if the Jewish GES is no longer adaptive, it has itself to blame). Even if that is the case, it does not invalidate the general concept of GES (for the reasons explained above; i.e., a GES does not have to be stable or adaptive), nor does it invalidate the idea that the Jewish GES was in fact adaptive for most of its existence (albeit constantly provoking reactions from the host peoples that have had negative impacts on Jewish fitness, possibly compensated for by promoting Jewish continuity by inhibiting assimilation). Further, even if the Jewish GES is currently self-destructing, it will take European-derived peoples and the West down with it. Thus, we observe that many of the attacks against GES conflate to strawman arguments.

In addition, a GES does not have to be some conscious, grand plan – that is another strawman argument.  No one is saying that every Jew gets a pamphlet at birth - a condensed Protocols of the Elders of Zion for example - to guide them in their lives to follow the Jewish GES. In some cases, a GES may be at least in part a conscious planned decision by group leaders; more often it may just be an emergent property of mass group behavior, in some part inherited, in some part due to culture, tradition, history – with flexible strategizing in different contingencies, particularly for the more conscious aspects of the GES. A GES need not be rigid for all time; adaptiveness implies the ability to meet the new requirements and novel challenges of environmental change.

Another issue is that people need to understand that discussion of GES should not be purely descriptive but, more importantly, also prescriptive. Discussing whether or not a people have, or do, follow a particular GES is not as important as discussing what GES our people should pursue.

Addendum

Things can of course be taken too far and that usually occurs when academics fall in love with their own theories and try to shoehorn all of reality into the parameters of a hypothesis or a paradigm. For example, the idea that national GDP should roughly correlate with the intelligence of the national population is fairly straightforward and reasonable, and has some data in support; the problem occurred when Lynn et al. became obsessed with the idea and tried to explain every degree of difference in development and achievement as deriving from heritable IQ differences (in some cases, IQ being wrongly “estimated” rather than directly measured, coupled to factually wrong inventions, re: population genetics) – with of course certain favored populations, like the Chinese, getting a “pass” for a relative lack of achievement through an unprincipled exception invocation of environmental influences (i.e., effects of communism). Likewise, the broad idea of group evolutionary strategies has explanatory power; unfortunately, MacDonald started to extend that idea into bizarre HBD-Nordicism, and stretching facts to fit into some overarching theory of heritable group differences to explain even relatively shallow differences in national behavior.  In both cases, instead of following the scientific method of hypothesis falsification, we instead observe cherry picking, hand waving, obfuscation, and “just so stories” to defend ideas that have run long past supporting data (and in fact have run into a wall of falsifying data).  These errors and excesses however do not invalidate some of the core ideas that in their broadest interpretation have so far survived critical analysis. Just because the idea of group evolutionary differences in intelligence and behavior has been over-interpreted does not invalidate the core concept.

Odds and Ends, 10/31/21

In der news.

Happy Halloween!

In general, I am sympathetic to MGTOW. Of course, it should not be taken to extremes; if you happen to find a good White woman, then go for it, but MGTOW is superior to many common alternatives: the beta orbiter, the angry incel, the henpecked husband (or boyfriend), the yellow fever enthusiast, the groveling white knighter, and the gamester who modulates their entire persona to appeal to milady.

One "movement" riposte to MGTOW is - if you take the attitude that White men should stay aloof and force White women to improve, then non-White men will simply step in and fill the gap. To which I reply - do we really want any White woman who would be willing to bed mud? And, further, these non-White men are unlikely to be behaving like most of what is listed above; again, MGTOW doesn't have to be "radical," but can be a "take it or leave it" attitude that avoids groveling (a trait mostly seen in thirsty White men).

And as an aside, White American men (justifiably) disgusted with White American women to not have to turn to waifu in the event they decide to go the relationship route. They can try to wait for a better specimen (some do exist) or, if opportunity arises, try a European immigrant, optimally from an Outer Hajnal region (as long as you are not being exploited for a green card).

But MGTOW is always a useful default position.

Continuing on its path to alienate White ethnics, Counter-Currents runs the work of radical Nordicist (and plagiarist) "Andrew Hamilton."

The tragedy of covid-19 is likely merely a harbinger for the future problems for humanity due to China.  Who knows what future plagues will arise in that pestilential hellhole?  What are horrors will be generated there, including those derived from technics stolen and copied from the West?  If anti-human, dangerously sentient AI is ever developed, China would be a likely source. Further, some sort of genetically engineered plant or animal that, once released (by accident or intent), would result in untold ecological damage, also would be most likely to originate in China.  The combination of some degree of intelligence, the ability to steal and copy the science and technics of others, zero morality or common sense, Tropical Colored sloppiness and incompetence, arrogance that mixes superiority and inferiority complexes – all of that and more makes the Chinese a continuing dire threat to the existence of all humanity.  Nixon shall forever be cursed by future generations (if any survive) for vetoing Soviet plans to nuke China.

Not surprisingly, Counter-Currents readers don't understand how natural selection works:

If foreskin is such a bad thing as US doctors claim, then we would have evolved not to have foreskin.

Let's rewrite:

If cancer is such a bad thing as US doctors claim, then we would have evolved not to have cancer.

It's all about relative reproduction and genetic continuity.  That's not the same as quality of life and good health, particularly that past reproductive age (yes, I know men can reproduce throughout their lifespan, but, throughout history, particularly when people had shorter lifespans, male reproduction was typically manifested in youth).

Note that I'm not arguing for or against removing foreskins, merely commenting on "movement" ignorance.

America is madness. Here's the thing, any "movement" that was a REAL movement could leverage issues like this to galvanize White support. Instead, we get gibbering about Savitri Devi and onanistic frenzies over Vikings in the year 1021.

The Quota Queens are guilty of political malpractice.

Torba:

This past week I have felt the presence of the Holy Spirit overwhelm me to the point of tears, fear, and trembling. It was absolutely surreal and incredible. I can’t even find the words to describe it.

I instantly became distinctly aware of God’s presence, love, grace, and glory. More importantly I became aware of how utterly unworthy I am of it. I remember praying “Lord have mercy on me a sinner” over and over again. This was followed by a flood of peace and joy.

Delenda est Christianity.

At least the HBDers are not hiding it - they want us ruled by China.

TA and the JQ

Lessons from the world of bacteria for answering the Jewish Question (JQ).

Can the following hypothesis be part of the solution to the Cofnas conundrum, the issue of “right-wing” Jews and the idea that not all Jews go into anti-White activity? True enough, the "good Jews" are relatively few in number, and there are many, many more anti-White, leftist Jews (even controlling for “anti-Semitism”), but the Stephen Miller types demand an explanation. Therefore, what can we say about Cofnas' idea that as long as an entity is not explicitly "anti-Semitic," high-IQ Jews will rise to prominence solely due to their ability, not because of any Kevin MacDonald-style explanation? If one rejects Cofnas' hypothesis, as I do, given the tropism of most Jews toward destructive behavior, and the self-interested nature of (relatively rare) Jewish "good" behavior, is there an alternative? Is there another possibility, one that rejects Cofnas' perspective, but which also looks at the JQ from a fresh evolutionary perspective, using an example from biology that MacDonald did not consider in his work on this subject? Can we look to nature for a model to explain why Jews get involved in different sides of every issue, and why some Jews seem to oppose the destructive activities of their co-ethnics? Let us consider together.

See this, on the toxin-antitoxin (TA) system in bacteria. Bacteria can carry plasmids, which are circular, extrachromosomal pieces of DNA that encode genes. In the TA system, consider a plasmid that carries one gene that codes for a stable toxin protein that can kill the bacteria and another gene that codes for an unstable antitoxin protein that prevents the toxin from killing the bacteria. As long as the plasmid replicates and is inherited into bacterial daughter cells (bacterial cells produced when the original bacteria replicate), all is well for the bacteria. The unstable antitoxin, being continuously produced by the plasmid, protects the plasmid-carrying bacteria from the stable toxin. But if the plasmid is not inherited by the bacterial daughter cells, those daughter cells will not have the protective antitoxin produced by the plasmid, since the plasmid is no longer present. Since the antitoxin is unstable, and thus rapidly degraded, if there is no plasmid present continuously producing it, the antitoxin is not there to protect the bacteria from the toxin. Why is the toxin still there when there is no plasmid present to produce it?  Remember - it is stable. Thus, even though the toxin is also not being produced in daughter cells that lack plasmids, because it is stable, it will still be present in those cells at levels that are high enough to kill the bacteria (i.e., when the original plasmid-containing bacteria replicate, the stable toxin is still there to be passed down to the daughter cells even if those daughter cells do not inherit the plasmid).

Any bacterial daughter cell that does not contain the plasmid will be killed by the left-over stable toxin. This ensures that the plasmid must be present; there is selective pressure for the plasmid to be retained because without it the bacteria die. Thus, the TA system forces the bacteria to become “addicted” to the plasmid; by producing the stable toxin, the plasmid ensures that only through its (genetic) continuity can the bacteria survive.

Likewise, Jews produce stable cultural and biopolitical toxins (memes, multiracialism, etc.) for their host societies. Thus, the continuous presence of “right-wing” Jews, with their unstable efforts to detoxify the destructive culture produced by their co-ethnics, is required; their efforts are required for societal survival.  Jews in general produce the stable toxins, while a subset of Jews produce the unstable anti-toxins that attempt to mitigate the effects of the toxins produced by Jewry, toxins produced by what James Bowery termed “Jewish virulence.” For example, Jews as a group promote mass migration into White lands, which is a stable toxin manifested through long-term sustained Jewish efforts, while a few "right-wing" Jews then step in, as does Miller, providing a short-term effort (anti-toxin) to address the demographic and cultural damage of the Jewish toxins.

As long as the toxins are present, the anti-toxins are needed; hence, Jews force the host to maintain a Jewish presence in the hope that one set of Jews can at least temporarily mitigate the damage done by other Jews. Thus, “right-wing” Jews are a temporary solution to the stable, intractable problem caused by Jews in general. Of course one does not have to assert that all of this is always planned and intentional; in some cases, it can be an emergent property of complex Jewish behavior. However, in some cases it may in fact be intentional (even if only at some generalized, incoherent, "hive mind" level).

Therefore, Jews ensure their continuity in their host societies because the host believes it requires one set of Jews to deal with the problems from another set of Jews. Further, the host society, or at least its elite class, becomes “addicted” to the abilities and expertise of Jews and does not wish to deal with the problem by simply ridding itself of the parasite. Indeed, the host may wrongly consider the parasite to be a beneficial, mutualistic symbiont. In addition, even if the parasite is removed, if the cultural toxins are stable they may still remain in the host society even after the parasite is gone. Therefore, the cultural and biopolitical damage done by Jews may remain even if Jews are expelled from society; the question remains if the host alone can repair the damage. If they cannot, or merely believe that they cannot, then the host will maintain the Jewish parasite in the hopes that the parasite, or one fraction thereof, will undo (at least some) of the damage it created.

And if the host does decide to get rid of the parasite, and even if they can, by themselves alone, repair the parasite's damage, then they may be attacked by another host desperate to defend its own faux-"beneficial" parasites (World War II can be viewed through this lens). Of course, the extended phenotype paradigm comes into play here as well; host behavior can be viewed as the extended phenotype of the parasite and the parasite’s genome. Indeed, the various behaviors at play here are too complex to be modeled by just one biological paradigm.

There is no doubt that there can be different permutations of this scenario, and as stated, the TA scenario itself is only one part of the problem.  And, even when looking at the human TA-like scenario itself, there can be some differences to the bacterial situation, human societies are much more complex. One can argue that Gentiles can provide their own anti-toxins – is National Socialism an example?  But then we go back to the issue of multiple paradigms - National Socialism in the Hitlerian sense was destroyed by the Allies acting as extended phenotypes of the Jews. There is a lot going on here. 

Let us consider National Socialist Germany again from the TA hypothesis perspective. One could argue that the assistance of Jewish atomic scientists (anti-toxin) could have helped Germany win the world war ultimately caused, in the last analysis, by the pernicious effects of the Jewish presence in Germany and in the White world as a whole (toxin). What about other examples? Jews brought the toxin of communism to Russia - a stable toxin that lasted for decades and resulted in incredible levels of suffering and death - while providing unstable anti-toxin assistance to the USSR via continuing attempts to subvert the West during the Cold War (complicated by the defection of some Jews to American neoconservatism). In addition, Jewish atom bomb spies provided some help (anti-toxin) to the Soviet Union that their co-ethnics helped to create (toxin). We have already considered the situation in America, as "right-wing" Jews are considered by some Whites to be anti-toxin "allies" in the fight against the problems (mass immigration, the "civil rights" agenda, "woke" ideology, multiculturalism, cultural anti-Whiteness, etc.) caused by the toxic Jewish presence in America.

Throughout history, Jews were expelled from one nation after another, because of the stable toxicity they created, and because that toxicity continued after they left, foolish elites, "addicted" to the presence of Jews, would invite the Jews to return, in order to provide unstable anti-toxin help to undo the toxic damage originally done ("help" typically performed, for example, by attempts to revitalize the economy through Jewish banking and money-lending, which created even more toxic problems, and thus requiring even more attempts at anti-toxic "remedies"). We observe the historical narrative of Jews always being on both sides of an issue, with the preponderance of effort toward activities harmful to the host society and a few Jews attempting to be "helpful" - toxin and anti-toxin. We always observe one set of Jews providing "solutions" to intractable problems introduced by the overall Jewish presence in the host society.

Therefore, there is utility for the TA=JQ analogy. Scientists state that host-parasite co-evolution is fundamental to life. The evolution of the White host has been significantly altered and deformed (Yockey's culture pathology) by the Jewish parasite.

Hopefully, others can comment on this hypothesis, attempt to test it, to either falsify it or defend and extend it if it survives attempts at falsification, and if it proves useful, with explanatory power, students of the Jewish problem can incorporate it into a greater understanding of the JQ.

Instinct and the Racial Soul

A hypothesis.

With respect to the idea of a Jungian “racial soul,” consider my work on the idea of an “empirical racial soul,” with speculation about possible biological mechanisms.  See this.  Also see this.  Finally, also see this.

One needs to consider the inherited behavioral trait of instinct in this context (emphasis added):

A feedback process driven by experience is required for these simulated synaptic levels to settle into optimal states. Extensive training is typically required before an ANN can perform at a high level. A similar process of experience-driven synaptic modification enables every cognitive and motor skill that people acquire through learning.

Instinct appears to preset synaptic connections to “adult” values during embryology. That is to say, the genes that are responsible for constructing the synapses as part of the neural networks that mediate instinct appear to also set their functional properties to optimal excitatory or inhibitory levels that replicate what would have been achieved if the network had gone through a rigorous and comprehensive developmental learning phase. DNA appears to code for final “adult” synaptic values in the case of spiders where instinct seems to dominate their behavior. Genetics appears to exert a lesser but still noteworthy effect in what are called biologically prepared behaviors such as our fears of heights and the dark.

The ability of DNA to present properties of individual synapses across complex neural networks explains how behaviors can be inherited. This explains how spiders can weave complex webs shortly after hatching. It also explains why dogs and cats behave differently. Genetic variation explains individual behavioral differences—or in other words, why spiders of the same species may behave somewhat differently, or why individual dogs and cats differ temperamentally.

Thus, the idea can be summarized as follows. When an animal learns, there are changes in its neural network that “fixes” that learned behavior in the physical structure of its brain and nervous system. Instinct is inherited behavior; the changes in the neural network that would have occurred via learning are instead encoded in the DNA so the animal is born with the analogous changes in the neural network already there. Instead of the changes requiring a process of learning, the changes are thus present from the start, encoded in the DNA and expressed in a neural network that allows the animal to express a behavior without needing to have first learned it.

Is a “racial soul” encoded in a similar manner?  Is it possible that gene-culture evolution during a population's ethnogenesis results in certain (“stereotypical”) behaviors being encoded, in a heritable manner, affecting human neural networks, so that members of different ethnies behave in particular ways without needing to learn those behaviors?

Or perhaps it is more subtle – it may not be so much that specific human ethnoracial behaviors are strictly inherited – although some basic ones may well be – but that the potential for such behaviors are encoded.  Thus, at an individual level, a member of group X may have an inherited greater tendency to express particular behaviors in the context of certain environmental cues than would a member of another group, and when one looks at large numbers of each population, the mass effect results in stereotypical group behaviors. Or, perhaps, members of certain groups have a greater tendency to be able to learn certain behaviors than other behaviors, as compared to members of other groups. Or maybe, most likely, it is a combination of all of these possibilities - rigid inherited behaviors, potentialities expressed in particular environments, increased ability to learn certain behaviors, all combined with differences due to variation in IQ and in a general ability to learn as well as in behavioral differences that may be inherited, learned, cultural, etc.

That which is labeled a “racial soul” would be those components most similar to that of animal instinct, and inherited in a similar manner, persons being born with certain neural network changes and patterns that would otherwise need to be learned. There’s some rigidity with that, but also some plasticity as well, all modulated by general intelligence and behavioral patterns.

Factual Truth vs. Practical Truth

Live not by lies – Aleksander Solzhenitsyn.

In the last section (“ethics”) of On Genetic Interests, Salter discusses the distinction made by David Sloan Wilson (in reference to religion, but the concept is generally applicable to varied memes, paradigms, and beliefs) of factual truth vs. practical truth. Factual truth is what is in accordance (to the best of our ability to determine) with objective reality, it represents the results of empirical materialist inquiry. Practical truth is what people may believe, often regardless of facts and of objective reality, which may be adaptive to believe even if false. Thus, the relevant quotes from Wilson, in more detail than what was quoted by Salter, can be found reproduced here:

Rational thought is treated as the gold standard against which religious belief is found so wanting that it becomes well-nigh inexplicable. Evolution causes us to think about the subject in a completely different way. Adaptation becomes the gold standard against which rational thought must be measured alongside other modes of thought. In a single stroke, rational thought becomes necessary but not sufficient to explain the length and breadth of human mentality, and the so-called irrational features of religion can be studied respectfully as potential adaptations in their own right rather than as idiot relatives of rational thought…If there is a trade-off between the two forms of realism, such that our beliefs can become more adaptive only by becoming factually less true, then factual realism will be the loser every time...Factual realists detached from practical reality were not among our ancestors. It is the person who elevates factual truth above practical truth who must be accused of mental weakness from an evolutionary perspective.

At first glance, Wilson seems correct. This, of course, as stated above, doesn’t only apply to religion. Yockey’s Imperium is inspiring to many, including myself, and promotes some Whites to act in an adaptive fashion in defense of their Race-Culture, despite the reality that much of the book can be considered “”irrational” practical truth rather than empirical factual truth.  See more here.

Myths about the history of a people, nation, race, etc. may fall into this category, beliefs in the goodness and superiority of your people, even if not based on reality, may fall into this category – indeed, many memes, paradigms, and beliefs could in theory be adaptive even if false and nonsensical.

But if you look at this issue more closely, if you consider net effects, costs vs. benefits, the situation in modern society, and the pitfalls of basing adaptive fitness on irrational beliefs and falsehoods, one begins to see flaws in Wilson’s argument. The initial superficial acceptance of Wilson’s assertion falls into question once one more fully considers its implications.

Consider the following:

• Assume that the adaptive fitness of your people is dependent on practical truth X.
• Practical truth X is false; it is contrary to factual truth.
• Enemies of your people’s adaptive fitness expose this falseness to your people, destroying their faith in X.
• Therefore, with X delegitimized, adaptive fitness suffers and your people are endangered.

Nietzsche’s “God is dead” essentially dealt with the collapse of hardcore Christian religious faith in the West under the concentrating light of science and free intellectual inquiry. The resulting nihilism has in part led to a crisis of confidence in the West, depressed birthrates, and promoting surrender in the face of militant Islam. Some say we need a revival of the Christian faith to battle this, but that is like trying to put the toothpaste back into the tube.  And there are other problems with Wilson's approach, particularly with respect to religion, as the next section of my essay will illustrate.

Alternatively, an enemy of your adaptive fitness and that of your people may twist practical truth X into a meme that is now openly destructive of that adaptive fitness, a distortion of X made easier by the reality that X is false and has no objective grounding in factual truth. Another possibility is that X was originally based on something truly maladaptive, but was modified by your people to become adaptive, but now is leveraged by enemies of your people's adaptive fitness to be maladaptive once again. Think of how (Christian) religion can be used to promote mass immigration and other maladaptive choices to White populations, even if religion has been in the past adaptive at a national level, and may still influence fitness on the individual and familial levels.

Yet another scenario could be as follows. Imagine that rejection of science leads to short term enhanced fitness; a people that rejects science, and embraces the most irrational religious beliefs, reproduces better than others (there are data supporting higher fecundity for the religious and/or for those less educated and/or for those with lower IQs). Very well. That may work in the short term. But what if the population is faced with some sort of existential catastrophe that could have been prevented, or could be effectively dealt with, by science, and the rejection of science results in the population’s diminishment or possibly even their extinction? What if they are conquered and enslaved, possibly exterminated, by a competing people who accept science and are skilled at technics? 

It would seem therefore best to have practical truth that significantly overlaps with factual truth; it is best for your practical truth to have a firm grounding in objective reality, or at least to be at least minimally defensible based on some degree of concordance with facts. 

Let us again consider Imperium and other work from Yockey. Actually, much of the most “irrational” and nonsensical aspects of that work have minimal effect on the work’s main message; further, the most key aspects of the work could be viewed as defensible in light of objective reality and/or are issues that are independent of truth vs. falsehood and are a matter of choice and will. Thus, I do not believe that support for Yockey’s work necessarily invalidates the points made in this essay. The importance of factual truth remains even with Yockey's work.

Attempting to build an infrastructure of adaptive practical truth on the weak foundation of irrational, objectively untrue, and/or unproven memes leads to an instability that puts adaptive fitness in potential future peril. The danger that discovery of the falsehood of the practical truth can be used to delegitimize the adaptive fitness, the genetic (and other) interests, based on that practical truth, will always exist. That does not seem to be an evolutionarily stable situation.

But what about arguments that a reliance on practical truth has indeed evolved, proving its evolutionary stability and effectiveness? 

We no longer live in the same environment that our ancestors evolved in. Practical truth independent of factual truth becomes more and more unstable in a world full of flexible strategizers, hostile to you adaptive fitness, who have access to the Internet, with facts available instantly and instant global communication to spread those facts and to invalidate your practical truth. Even before the Internet, there were other forms of mass communication and even before that, books, schools, and intellectuals, all of which were targeting the falsehoods possibly inherent in practical truth. 

A major objective of the Sallis Groupuscule is a the formation of a Far Right with a firm basis in objective reality, embracing science and technics, compatible with intellectual inquiry, and striving to get practical truth to converge on factual truth to the extent possible.  I object to rigid dogmas of the Far Right and, in general, the equally rigid identities we have of Right vs. Left (e.g., if you are of the Right, you have to be a “Flubro” hostile to public health measures against covid-19) and of the fixed identity of the "movement" (you have to believe in HBD “race realism” or Nordicism or whatever). I want to promote flexible thinking, evaluating ideas on their own merits, while at the same time still being adaptive.

Thus, the issue of factual truth vs. practical truth is of great importance to my political work in all of these endeavors.

Racial Proximity Theory

New paradigm.

To oppose HBD-Nordicist theories about “Hajnal lines” and “high trust northern hunter gatherers” (I suppose these days “steppe ancestry" is even more important to these types than is WHG), I suggest a new theoretical paradigm for intra-European differences in ethnocentrism – Racial Proximity Theory.

Consistent with my Occam’s Razor ideal that one should not over-complexify theories, and should instead aim for the most direct and simple ideas that have sufficient explanatory power (*), Racial Proximity Theory is indeed more simple than its competitors.

Thus, I suggest that European groups whose ethnogenesis took place farther away from non-Whites, i.e., a greater geographic distance from Afro-Asia, would tend to exhibit relatively less inter-racial hostility but relatively greater intra-racial hostility; in contrast, European groups whose ethnogenesis took place closer to, or at, the periphery of Europe, geographically close to Afro-Asia, would tend to exhibit greater inter-racial hostility than intra-racial hostility.

Thus, Northwest Europeans had an ethnogenesis relatively more isolated from contact with non-European groups and in their case hostile contact with outgroups were for the most part with other Europeans. Here, we would suppose that Northwest Europeans would tend to have a weakened negative response to non-White, non-European, peoples, since there has been little selective pressure and adaptive value in identifying and opposing radically different peoples. On the other hand, there has been selective pressure in identifying and opposing peoples who are similar but distinct.

On the other hand, Southern and Eastern Europeans have been, historically, on the “front lines” in conflicts with Afro-Asia, and thus there has been selective pressure for identifying and opposing radically different peoples. There was also selective pressure for identifying and opposing similar but distinct peoples as well, since Southern and Eastern Europe had conflicts with other Europeans as well as with the Global South.  So, there may be relatively greater overall ethnocentrism in Southern and Eastern Europe, but with most of it targeted toward non-Whites.  In contrast, the relatively lesser ethnocentrism of Northwest Europeans is disproportionately targeted against other Europeans; hence in Northwest Europe we observe tearful welcomes for Afro-Asiatic migrant invaders coupled to sneering contempt for the “greasy wogs” of Europe’s South and East.

Thus, Racial Proximity Theory is asscoated with the relative amount of ethnocentric hostility toward racial (and sub-racial and ethnic) outgroups in nearest geographic and historical proximity. Another example would be the (“Outer Hajnal”) Irish, who seem relatively ethnocentric for Northwest Europeans, but who reserve their primary animus toward the English (and Scots-Irish) with whom they’ve feuded for centuries. Here, with Ireland in Europe’s extreme northwest, and with virtually no historic contact with non-Whites or even with many other more distant European groups, Irish hostility is primarily aimed at (“Inner Hajnal”) Northwest Europeans. The more isolated a group's ethnogenesis, the more likely that their ethnocentrism is targeted to their closest immediate neighbors. The behavior of the (Irish) Kennedy family in America is instructive as well - “sticking it to the Anglos” with mass immigration, thus favoring non-Whites.

It is theoretically possible that the opposite is true – one could suggest that those evolving closer to more alien groups would be more “resistant” to them and would be less "triggered." But that is not consistent with actual ethnic behavior. And we must distinguish between simple “fear/threat” responses (such as amygdala activation), and triggers of more complex and actualized ethnocentric responses (or the lack thereof).  It may well be that Northwest Europeans do have a larger “fear” trigger response to non-Whites than do Southern or Eastern Europeans, but if the former still exhibit xenophilia to non-Whites, then the “fear” response is not what we should be measuring here. We need to instead look more for markers of ingroup/outgroup identification, complex behavioral responses to outgroups, etc. We are therefore considering pathological altruism vs. ethnocentrism rather than “fear” triggers per se.

Another possible objection to this theory is that ingroup vs. outgroup is more "digital" and discrete than "analog" and continuous, more of an “all or nothing” response. This objection would assert that Northwest Europeans are simply less ethnocentric in general and that the identity of the outgroup doesn’t matter. This, however, doesn’t match actual ethnic behavior – the welcoming attitude of Northwest Europeans to the Global South contrasted to their sneering hostility toward other Europeans.  One could, for example, contrast German hyper-xenophilia for Afro-Asiatic migrants, Turks, etc. with their contemptuous hostility toward, e.g., Greeks during the debt crisis. That is just one example of many. There is a very strong “narcissism of small differences” behavioral pattern among ethnies that enthusiastically welcome the most alien of peoples but who at the same time shun fellow Europeans. “Polish plumbers” led to Brexit, but Rotherham leads to more Commonwealth immigration. The enthusiasm of some Nordicists for Asians may fit this pattern as well.

If we assume that this is an inborn trait and not merely cultural, one could evaluate differences in behavior and/or brain activity in psychometric testing scenarios exposing persons (including children) of different ethnies to various outgroup “threat” subjects.  But the details of actual testing of the theory is beyond the scope of this post (a post that is theoretical in nature) and it is not my area of expertise. Others would be better suited to devise legitimate tests of the hypothesis.

*This is where clueless critics of Occam’s Razor go wrong when they complain that “the simplest ideas are not always correct” – implying that Occam's Razor is about always going for the simplest theory in every possible context. No, it is instead about not multiplying entities beyond necessity – emphasis on the word necessity. If theory A is more complex than theory B, but A effectively describes the phenomenon and B does not, then obviously we should go with A.  But if A and C both explain the phenomenon, but C is much more complex than A, with all sorts of superfluous add-ons, then this suggests that A is more likely (not definitively, but more likely) to be the better explanation. The more parsimonious explanation that can explain the phenomenon is more likely to be true compared to one that is unnecessarily complex.  

Innate Tendencies

Food for thought.

I remember reading a comment at some "movement" site (maybe it was Counter-Currents, I don’t recall) in which a commentator was making a point about different environmental archetypes associated with various population groups. To paraphrase, it was something like “Northern Europeans have the archetype of the forest, Southern Europeans have the rocky shore, MENA peoples have the desert, etc.”

Let us consider together. There is at least some superficial plausibility here. Let us assume it has validity. That such preferences can have a cultural basis is fairly straightforward. But does it go deeper?  My impression is that the person writing the comment implied innate (genetic) tendencies, inborn heritable preferences of population groups toward environments that they find congenial to their authentic selves, possibly associated with the concept of racial memory. This could be related to the concept of a “racial soul” that I discussed here, with suggestions of possible biological mechanisms underlying the phenomenon.

This may not be as far-fetched as it may initially appear (especially as it may initially appear to people marinated in the “blank slate” doctrines of the Left). Spring affords ample opportunities to observe animal life in the routines unfolding for them in their new year of life (that is, when they are not dodging Stronza’s “bullets flying everywhere"); these are for the most part activities driven by instinct, by patterns encoded in the brains, the neural networks, of these animals.  The bird and the nest, the spider and the web, the field rodent and its burrow - that is not conscious thought but genetically encoded instinct.

By analogy, can certain environmental preferences be encoded within the human brain, in the minds of varied ethnies, due to the characteristics of the environments in which ethnogenesis of each group occurred? Thus, the Celts and Germanics prefer the forest, the Latins and Greeks prefer the shore and the beckoning sea, the Slavs prefer the steppes and plains and fields, the Semites prefer the desert, TROPICAL peoples such as sub-Saharan Africans and East Asians prefer jungles and rice paddies, and so forth.

That this is not merely culture and not merely childhood exposure to certain environments is suggested by the observation that these preferences seem to continue over the generations even under the novel environmental context of America.  One can consider also where groups tend to settle in the Diaspora – although that can complicate matters (for example, if people tend to settle in American environments that most closely resemble their preferences, then it will be difficult to detangle genetic and environmental factors, since each generation is being exposed from birth to the pre-selected environment. Thus we observe gene-culture co-evolution). One can test results of inter-group admixture and how this affects preferences, and whether where someone lives is influenced by, and/or influences, these preferences.

In this sense, it may be understandable that some types foam at the mouth over Tolkien and “being snug in your hobbit hole in the forest,” while others view that as insipid stupidity. Innate preferences. To each his own I suppose.  One must be careful though not to confuse specific innate preferences with political and metapolitical themes appropriate for all White people.

Race and Movement News, 5/28/20

It's Der Rasse and Der Movement.

Very cognitive, very elite.

But, but, but…I thought we were all the same (emphasis added):

Vitamin D insufficiency is more prevalent among African Americans (blacks) than other Americans and, in North America, most young, healthy blacks do not achieve optimal 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] concentrations at any time of year. This is primarily due to the fact that pigmentation reduces vitamin D production in the skin. Also, from about puberty and onward, median vitamin D intakes of American blacks are below recommended intakes in every age group, with or without the inclusion of vitamin D from supplements. Despite their low 25(OH)D levels, blacks have lower rates of osteoporotic fractures. This may result in part from bone-protective adaptations that include an intestinal resistance to the actions of 1,25(OH)2D and a skeletal resistance to the actions of parathyroid hormone (PTH). However, these mechanisms may not fully mitigate the harmful skeletal effects of low 25(OH)D and elevated PTH in blacks, at least among older individuals. Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly apparent that vitamin D protects against other chronic conditions, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and some cancers, all of which are as prevalent or more prevalent among blacks than whites. Clinicians and educators should be encouraged to promote improved vitamin D status among blacks (and others) because of the low risk and low cost of vitamin D supplementation and its potentially broad health benefits.

Coulter leads the way!  To Dinesh’s bedroom?  In Trump We Trust!  Coulter leads the way indeed.  Here’s one example, submitted without further comment.

Please compare this...

...with this.

Der Movement, Der Movement, Der Movement marches on.

Behold HBD-Nordicism (TOO comment excerpt):

I believe all the world’s peoples could do worse than to adopt the US Constitution for themselves. But that type of order depends upon a high level of both individualism and social trust, which are sadly lacking among most non-Anglo-Nordics (and esp most nonwhites), and which are greatly attenuated by coercive geographical and political integration with nonwhites. IOWs, the American Order was designed for Anglo-Nordics, and would have worked very well with them alone as the citizenry. The more genetically and ethnoculturally distant the peoples we have admitted into the Union, the greater has been the sacrifice of individual rights and liberties for the Old Stock, and the worse has been the functioning of the country.

Certainly!  That’s why we need to ditch folks like (smothered with a pillow) Scalia, who understood nothing of the US Constitution, and embrace folks like LBJ, whose “civil rights laws” were the epitome of individualist freedom.

Note to readers of EGI Notes: Who has been telling you that Der Movement has NOTHING to offer to “White ethnics?” Whenever shabbos sud stepandfetichits get involved in Der Movement, it never goes well for them. Four examples, in chronological order: Patler, Tommasi, Sallis, Conte.  Polignano counts as “half” here, a half-sud stepandfetchit; the rest I suppose would be a horrendous hibernian stepandfetchit.  Speaking of the latter – what ever happened to Michael O’Meara?

Let’s embrace those individualist Swedes…or not (emphasis added):

Swedish mentality seems to have two opposing tendencies: one towards individualism and the other towards collectivity. The explanation for this is the different meaning that can be given to the concept of individualism. Swedes seem to need social autonomy strongly and not to be dependent on other individuals, such as neighbors, relatives, employers, and so on. At the same time, Swedes seem to need collective support for their opinions. Collective solutions are a hallmark of Swedish society and dominate Swedish politics. Survey data are used to illustrate this theme empirically.

MacDonald weeps.

Seriously though, the ethnies much beloved by Der Movement combine the worst aspects of individualism and collectivism. When it comes the need for collective ethnocentric action in defense of ethny, then they are radical individualists.  When it comes to the need to defy societal political correctness, then they are conformist collectivists.  Somehow though, that is the epitome of all that is admirable. Hmmm...the “Anatolian farmer” cringing subhumans seem to be a bit saner, but what do I know?

To write this after Dutton exposed Rushton demonstrates how completely shameless the “race realists” are.

Interesting, interesting.  Brimelow’s pushy rudeness is astounding.  How about letting Taylor finish his sentences?    Note Taylor is in communication with Red Ice.  I’m shocked, shocked I say. Taylor likes the “private sector,” on “principle.”  Another shock.  Naivete?  Shocked thrice. Ludicrously optimistic?  Quadruple shocked.

I note no discussion of why Brimelow earned $180,000+ compensation in one year, according to the 2018 Form 990.  

Trump - silly?  I thought he was “the last hope for White America?”  Down the memory hole, it seems.

Well…Taylor remembers the “latrine flies” jibe from Derbyshire.  Why is Derb a speaker at the conferences, then?

Immigrant workforce – like Brimelow?

How is “White advocate” not poltroonery?  I am also disgusted how Brimelow and Johnson are redefining “White nationalism” to merely mean “defending White interests.” No, you affirmative action DISTORTERS, White nationalism is a movement that considers White racial identity as the highest form of nationalist identification – Our Race Is Our Nation, putting race above ethnic and nation-state identities.  That’s White nationalism.