This particularly struck me today:
This is one of the most important topics, right? Well, here is a new and quite thorough paper by Jonathan Schulz, Duman Bahrami-Rad, Jonathan Beauchamp, and Joseph Henrich. Here is the abstract:
Recent research not only confirms the existence of substantial psychological variation around the globe but also highlights the peculiarity of populations that are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD). We propose that much of this variation arose as people psychologically adapted to differing kin-based institutions—the set of social norms governing descent, marriage, residence and related domains. We further propose that part of the variation in these institutions arose historically from the Catholic Church’s marriage and family policies, which contributed to the dissolution of Europe’s traditional kin-based institutions, leading eventually to the predominance of nuclear families and impersonal institutions. By combining data on 20 psychological outcomes with historical measures of both kinship and Church exposure, we find support for these ideas in a comprehensive array of analyses across countries, among European regions and between individuals with different cultural backgrounds.
So I was talking to my daughter about, now that I think about it, the 8th End of My Blackness. In this telling, she was relating, her sense of friction she gets for speaking proper English and a host of other upper-middle-class markers that, to her critics, mark her has 'white'. I repeated my normal 'haters gonna hate', but also added that all she needs to do is actually visit Africa in order to shut most of them up. It's an expensive trip for a stupid reasons, but is one that ultimately such haters must acknowledge. The reason I have observed has primarily to do with what those poor souls lack in cranking up the significance of 'their culture', which is an actually researched family tree. The less coherent family you have the more likely you are to adhere to cultural institutions, ethnic myths and racial unity. That's what I see.
When I was talking to Richard Peete the other night - there's no way we could catch up on 7 years in one evening - we did brush across the same subject. I told him about the time when some Hoteps at City College, back in my school days, reduced some freshman girls to tears. They were some of the first in their families to attend college and were informed in no uncertain terms that they had no idea what their real roots were, and would not be complete or authentic black women unless and until they went back to visit the slave castles and the pyramids. Guess who was organizing such trips, for a not so small fee?
While I am ready to accept the premise of WEIRD psychology, and it certainly makes sense to me, I wonder if the gap between the rule of law and of honor codes, viz Pinker, is so deeply broad. What I mean to ask is how long into a Catholic marriage does it take for kinship circles to fade into obscurity? How many generations out of the 'hood with all your play cousins does it take for one to psychologically adapt to Corporate America's bowling leagues and pizza overtime? I'll be keeping this in mind, as it relates directly to Peasant Theory and the applicability of personality to political narratives.
Oh. Have I not talked about that? Probably not. Here's the gist. If and when America comes apart and delivers government of the quality of Ferguson, MO, then people will abandon democratic institutions and adopt tribal and kinship associations. This is likely in most rank and file cases, to result in honor culture lawlessness and radical autonomy of the sort we love to watch in zombie and other post-apocalyptic dramas. Only in this village scenario with the individual start to matter again, as the individual is being squeezed by a bipolar political conformity that grows more shrill by the year. Hard to say what will correct it. But I am very curious as to how personality works when it comes to the fundamentals of civilized community outside of kinship and tribe.
The thing is, ironically, that most American tribes are voluntary 'civic organizations'. Like the skateboarders, the volunteer firemen, the book of the month club, and the stoners at the liquor store.
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