Re: Totally new theory on evolutionary origins of conservatism and

On Oct 18, 6:35 pm, "'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank" <lfl...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 18, 6:10 pm, rob...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

It may turn out that how conservatives and liberals chose sides over

You may have noticed Hibbing's work on how conservatism and liberalism
are highly heritable traits

My parents are both Reagan Republicans.

I'm a communist.

Explain, please.

No wonder your publisher thought you were nutty.  (shrug)

================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Editor, Red and Black Publishershttp://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com

So were mine. Heck, I voted for Reagan.

1st: in case you (like a maddening amount of other people) missed it,
I was referring to how SOME of our political nature is genetic, spread
GENERALLY across our population - not within 10 country miles of how
people (also maddeningly) translate this into the idea that EVERYONE'S
political leanings are ALWAYS DIRECTLY inherited from your parents--
without exception.

Just Google Alford & Hibbing’s study. Democrat and Republican aren't
all that concurrent with conservative and liberal. Just look at
Harpending's study and try to envision a 100 fold adaptation rate
change caused by human culture and square that with the idea that
unlike agriculture's effect on lactose tolerance or diabetes, human
culture has left us all with identical social instincts.

On a grander scale, take a look at Pinker's "blank slate" video on
ted.com - genes govern far much more than we think.

Speaking of communists, when you look at the extreme ends of our
political spectrum, you describe the division that started the human
cultural explosion. This was when memes (tools, language, art, etc.)
became more powerful than just genes. Fascists were gene focused,
driven by primal urgings. They murdered millions of OTHER people to
get rid of "enemy genes". Communists murdered millions of THEIR OWN
people in order to cleanse the population of bad memes. Conservatives
are gene focused, they have 41% more children and abhor anything that
lowers expansion of genes, such as birth control or homosexuality.
Liberals are cultural, "meme focused" they don't care about your skin
color, they care about your ideology. These may be anecdotes, but I
found dozens of them, and they all point in one direction.

One thing that both the "hereditarians" and the "blank slaters" both
missed was how much of our nature comes from random genes. They don't
necessarily breed true, but they cascade down generations like dice -
hence the change from generation to generation, but always going back
to the same themes - such as ingroup and hierarchy versus
egalitarianism (Jonathan Haidt has a great video on this on TED).

One would think that in an era where numerous authors are making
sweeping claims about how genes make up every other part of our
personality, the idea that the "Big Bang" of human culture 60,000
years ago left a noticeable imprint on our social instincts (the real
power of which comes from generations of subltle pressure) would be
almost ho hum by now. Instead people seem to recoil from even thinking
of the concept. Could it be perhaps they don't want to think that
their own personal politics, guided by the height of reason could
somehow be sullied by primal or simply ancient genes? I am reminded of
Carl Jung's remarks upon his 60 year failure to get man to look at the
primal jungle still existant in his inner mind. There are great
evolutionary explanations for this sort of thing too.

.

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