5. Conclusion
Reviewing the body of evidence, it seems probable that the early arrival of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, as a result of Europe’s high level of genius, would appear to have significantly reduced the degree to which Europe is ethnocentric. Firstly, it reduced stress and mortality salience and so religiousness and, secondly, it would appear to have set off a process of dysgenics, meaning that ethnocentric and religious instincts would be less strongly selected for. However, we have noted that religiousness is still associated with fertility even in this context, though intelligence is negatively associated with fertility. Accordingly, we would expect civilization to effectively collapse. However, religious people of not especially high intelligence would be the survivors and these people would also, likely, be relatively ethnocentric.
Chapter Eleven
Why Did Different Ethnicities React Differently in 2015?
1. Introduction
Why is it that some countries or groups of countries appear to be more ethnocentric than other countries? Why has Europe’s so-called ‘refugee crisis’ evoked such different responses in different nations and in different sub-groups within these nations? This study provides us with some fairly clear answers to these questions. As we have seen, positive and negative ethnocentrism do not inter-correlate, meaning they have substantially separate causes. Below we outline the key causes.
2. Positive Ethnocentrism
(A) Religiousness
Positive ethnocentrism is negatively associated with atheism. In other words, countries that don’t believe in God are less likely to be positively ethnocentric. It may be that this is a reflection of national atheism levels and low positive ethnocentrism having a number of common causes. However, as we have discussed, it seems more likely that belief in God, and often the accordant belief that your people are blessed by God, augments positive ethnocentrism. It may also be that these countries have fewer spiteful mutant genes.
(B) Low National IQ
Low national IQ predicts high levels of positive ethnocentrism. On the one hand, it may be argued that low IQ makes us more instinctive and we are likely to have a group-selected instinct towards positive ethnocentrism. Kahneman (2011), for example, has argued that logical thinking is a form of effortful control that allows us to see the world objectively and move beyond our instincts. On the other hand, this may be a function of low-IQ societies being very stressful to live in, because they tend to be poor, unstable and corrupt (see Lynn & Vanhanen, 2012). As we have seen, stress induces positive ethnocentrism.
(C) Poverty
The second of the two possibilities, above, is evidenced by the fact that poverty is significantly positively associated with positive ethnocentrism as it would likely make people stressed and instinctive. This is evidenced in data on GDP and per capita income.
(D) Mortality Salience
This stressor also predicts positive ethnocentrism, as evidenced in the significant relationship between infant mortality rate and positive ethnocentrism.
(E) Low Median Age
In essence, young societies are more positively ethnocentric. Indeed, factor analysis by Dutton et al. (2016a) found that this was the biggest single predictor of national differences in positive ethnocentrism. This may be because a relatively young age, and a society having a relatively young age, is associated with a series of factors which would predict generalized ethnocentrism. A young median age would tend to imply a high birth-rate and a low life expectancy. These traits are associated with societies that have high levels of poverty, low levels of socioeconomic development and low average IQ. Certainly stress and mortality salience, as well as low IQ, have been shown to be associated with elevated levels of positive ethnocentrism at the individual level. In addition, poorer countries, and lower-IQ countries, tend to be more religious than wealthier countries, and religiousness has been shown to be associated with elevated levels of positive ethnocentrism. So, it may be that a cluster of factors that are associated with positive ethnocentrism are also associated with a country having a low median age, possibly explaining this result.
As discussed, cousin marriage was close to reaching significance as being positively associated and was significant in terms of a desire to fight for the country. This is likely because societies that practice cousin marriage lack sufficient trust to develop large states. Their states are tribally divided but they will defend themselves against the likely genetically more distant outsiders. As noted, this implies that a small gene pool would predict positive ethnocentrism. It may be that both cousin marriage and extreme religiousness relate to positive ethnocentrism because a common factor underpins them all, such as a specific position on the r–K spectrum.
3. Negative Ethnocentrism
(A) Fast Life History Strategy
We found a number of gene forms and highly genetic characteristics which we associated with fast Life History. These, in turn, positively predicted high levels of negative ethnocentrism. Not only does this evidence the veracity of the sociobiological model of ‘ethnicity’ but it is an important conclusion in itself. Indeed, factor analysis by Dutton et al. (2016a) found that this was one of the single most important contributions to national differences in negative ethnocentrism.
(B) Religiousness
More religious countries were more negatively ethnocentric. This is understandable in terms of the foreigner being perceived as somehow less godly and also in terms of religiousness being associated with low levels of mutation.
(C) Cousin Marriage
Factor analysis also revealed that this had an important unique contribution to understanding national differences in negative ethnocentrism. As we have discussed, it can be seen as the product of a fast Life History, would reduce the gene-pool into distinct tribes, and would evidence low levels of trust. Accordingly, it would elevate negative ethnocentrism.
In addition, low intelligence seems to predict important aspects of negative ethnocentrism, as does stress. In addition to these we have observed the possible salience of specific gene variants and ethnic diversity.
4. Group Differences in Ethnocentrism
We have found there to be clear race differences in ethnocentrism. South Asians, Arabs and North Africans are more ethnocentric than Europeans. Though they lack pride in their often artificial nation states, they are strongly willing to fight for their communities. It would seem that the two interrelated reasons for this are cousin marriage and religiousness. These factors cause them to be both more positively and negatively ethnocentric than are Europeans. We have also observed that Sub-Saharan Africans are higher in negative ethnocentric behaviour than Europeans. Their high negative ethnocentrism would be predicted by a fast Life History Strategy. Any higher positive ethnocentrism — though we did not find this — would be predicted by a relative lack of societal development, meaning that they are canalized into small tribes of strongly interrelated people, rendering it in their genetic interests to act altruistically for the good of the tribe, at least in contrast to certain aggressors who are relatively genetically distant. We also noted that Northeast Asians are higher in both positive and negative ethnocentrism than Europeans. This would appear to be because the extreme harshness of the environment has rendered them much more strongly group selected.
Europeans, we have noted, seem to be uniquely low — in comparison to other races — in positive and negative ethnocentrism. A feasible reason for this is that they had traded a strategy based around ethnocentrism for a strategy based around producing genius. This has allowed them to be highly inventive and thus expand and dominate other peoples. As long as the benefits of this genius strategy have been strong enough to outweigh the negative impact of low ethnocentrism then this strategy has worked in terms of expansion. However, industrialization has meant that a number of factors have conspired to ensure that the European ethnocentrism is too low for the strategy to work any longer. The collapse of Natural Selection has led to greater genetic diversi
ty, meaning that Europeans are less genetically interrelated than they used to be. Low Natural Selection, along with decreasing stress and mortality salience, has also led to the collapse of organized religion and rise of maladaptive ideologies which are actively against the genetic interests of Europeans. Greater ethnic diversity within European societies has led to reduced levels of trust. And to this, the relatively high intelligence of Europeans — combined with low levels of stress — makes them extremely low in evolved instincts.
If we return to the stark difference in how Eastern Europe reacted to the ‘Great Migration’, in comparison to Western Europe, we start to understand the difference. Eastern Europe has been industrialised for a smaller amount of time, meaning smaller gene pools, it is poorer, mortality salience is higher, it is a more stressful place to live, many parts of Eastern Europe are relatively religious or, at least, ideologically nationalistic as a reaction against Communism, and there are low levels of ethnic diversity. In addition, many Eastern European countries have never been expansionist. They have adopted a much more ethnocentric strategy based around Herder’s ideal of the ethnic group and its bonds of blood. Eastern Europe is, in many ways, what Western Europe was before World War II, preserved under permafrost.
5. Conclusion
At the moment, this study is limited by the relatively small sample size pursued by the World Values Survey and the fact that alternative sources have not asked questions that can be understood in terms of national differences in ethnocentrism. However, we have surveyed the causes of individual level differences in ethnocentrism and found that many of these are still significant factors in terms of group level differences even in spite of the relatively small sample of countries.
It would appear that modern day Europe is extremely low in positive and negative ethnocentrism and we have set out the reasons why. In addition, Europe is increasingly allowing into its borders people who are extremely high in ethnocentrism as predicted by their high levels of religiousness, low median age, their practice of cousin marriage, low average intelligence, and (likely) relatively low mutational load. We have noted that the ethnocentric strategy will, eventually, tend to dominate all other strategies in the battle of group survival. Alternate strategies can also work, such as the development of large and highly inventive coalitions, but these cannot last if they promote ideologies which are actively to the detriment of their genetic interests, as is happening with Political Correctness, which actively promotes the effective destruction of European people. Accordingly, we can cautiously predict that, if there is no radical geopolitical change, the power of peoples who are relatively deficient in ethnocentrism, such as Europeans, will decline, while the influence of relatively ethnocentric peoples, such as the Northeast Asians and the Muslim world, will rise. But, as we have seen, evolution does not stop and, with the collapse of Europeans, they are likely to become more religious and more ethnocentric, as these are selected for under harsh conditions and are associated with the stress of harsh conditions.
Charles Darwin commented in 1871 in The Descent of Man: ‘A tribe including many members who, from possessing a high degree of the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes, and this would be natural selection’. This seems not only to be highly accurate but also highly relevant for European people today. They are low in ethnocentrism and, under certain conditions, this will lead to their being displaced by groups that are higher in ethnocentrism than they are. We are now living under these conditions. But it will be the collapse of their civilization and power that will likely lead, many years hence, to their becoming more ethnocentric once again.
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