‘Genes vs. Culture’

George Rebane

This is the title of a landmark essay on the American condition by Lawrence Mead, Professor of Politics at New York University, published in the March/April 2022 edition of Chronicles, flagship publication of the Charlemagne Institute.  Continuing the work of Charles Murray et al, Professor Mead makes the case that “conservatives face a juggernaut determined to transform society in the name of equity. In order to fight it, they must have the courage to state the truth: There are real differences, both genetic and cultural, between races and sexes.”

The essay presents a compendium of information about the racial and cultural differences inherent in the people who today populate the United States.  Almost everything that is cited is currently censored in today’s land of the free and home of the brave.  That we compliantly accept this is ongoing evidence of the country’s continuing decline toward autocracy cum tyranny.

When I wrote ‘Equity Denies Reality’ and also submitted it to The Union, its publisher told me in so many words that the subject was too hot to be handled in our rapidly bluing Nevada County.  It would generate way more heat than light, and besides, our publisher’s own worldview did not countenance the presentation of such government data - not all that the government gathers and archives is suitable for sheeple fodder.

The main thesis this forbidden research and recorded data supports is that we are a variegated citizenry in an historical melting pot that has yet to melt into a homogenous amalgam when it comes to individual propensities and capabilities which are identifiably and unambiguously still distinguished by genes and culture.  Denying this, and making it public policy to lie about it over the past fifty years has done untold harm to our e pluribus unum work in progress.

I strongly recommend both Murray’s Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America (2021) - source of graphic - and Mead’s ‘Genes vs. Culture’ in order to understand the quantitative details about the nature of our divisions, and how today's Left seeks to capitalize on these as we march toward the Great Divide or the global Great Reset.

Comments

[scenes]

It seems to me that there are two intermingled stories here.

. That there's such a thing as 'forbidden' knowledge or studies. I'm right tired of that concept and wish the censorship of thought would abate for a while.

. 'Race' in the 19th C. European context (black, white, red, yellow, some other people in Australia) is kind of a non-starter for understanding the thing. You'd think that some data experts with no dog in the fight would take a whole buncha DNA and various sorts of ability measures and apply a bit of machine learning to the problem. Who knows what would pop out and if stupid (or smart) people had a similar phenotype, that's fine with me.

Naturally, people tend to bunch up by appearance. Look at the politics in any prison. That just strikes me as the logic of Darwinism on a mass scale. You could argue that only insane people reject ingroup favoritism, but for all I know that's just the logic of hybrid vigor at work...although there's always the mystery of just how gracile males benefit.

[George Rebane]

scenes 1246pm - I would use the term 'intertwined', but you are right the two are 1) proscription of certain kinds of politically incorrect research and reporting, and 2) making public policies under the assumption that we are all the same when it comes to intelligence and gumption. It's worth reading both Mead and Murray on how the evidence supports differentiation. It is on that basis that the debate should be allowed and aired to see where we come out.

[scenes]

"It's worth reading both Mead and Murray on how the evidence supports differentiation. "

I just flipped through the book to get a sense of the argument.

While I'm willing to accept that there are subgroups of humanity, possessing different physical traits who show different abilities and behaviors, the cohorts used (white, asian, african) are silly. Most 'black' people in the US have a large 'white' ancestry, there's a bundle of different sorts of asians, people from southern Europe are not Swedish although they think of themselves as 'white', Africa has huge gene diversity.

Heck, even 'white' people are a fairly new concept. From my understanding, you only have to go back 5k-8k years and you have 4 non-related groups who then interbred (basically a northeast and northwest hunter gatherer groups, Levantine farmers, and (I think) Persian farmers).

To me, Murray reads like a sociologist or political scientist (a contradiction in terms) rather than someone extracting any kind of real knowledge.

I was going to say 'science', but most scientists appear to be political scientists anymore.

Now, if someone took the database at 23&Me and combined it with intelligence scores and criminal activity, they might have something. God knows what. Maybe redheads really don't have souls.

[Don Bessee]

Government racism -

NYC top health official refers to White women as 'birthing people,' calls Black and Hispanic women 'mothers'
NYC official's comment came as progressive politicians and entities have begun referring to mothers as 'birthing people'

https://www.foxnews.com/us/nyc-top-health-official-refers-to-white-women-as-birthing-people-calls-black-and-hispanic-women-mothers

;-)

[scenes]

I was just considering how unsatisfying the 'race' v. intelligence thing is.

It's an easy book to write. Take a bunch of stats that include reported race, make scatter charts, fill in some text, profit.

The people who want to believe that it's all impossible come up with the same counterarguments. It's lack of fathers! It's low income! It's diet! It's prejudice! All stated with 100% certainty. Not to mention how it's pretty hard to measure cognitive ability, although I think reaction time is a good approximation. (maybe reaction time testing should be done in a job interview).

I can see a few values here. The first is controversy, and that's always fun. Next might be using it all as a scaffolding to understand just what/where intelligence is...if an Ashkenazi (wait, why is there 'nazi' in there?) Jew is smarter than an Indigenous Australian on average (a hatefact, but likely a dead nuts certainty) how exactly are they different? The third value would be as cheap first cut in a selection process, unfair but simple. You don't even have to know why it's the way it is.

In terms of that last one, just imagine the possibilities at a highly instrumented company like Google. You know darned well that they've run their employment stats through The Big Machine, didn't like the results, and wave away anything they don't like. That's bound to be a specialized sort of person after all, not just tolerably smart but able to take arbitrary orders and type away for 12 hours a day. Under President-for-life Sam Brinton, we can expect a lot of knobs to be attached to that selection process. At some point I expect that Google employees will be vat-grown.

[George Rebane]

In this universe things are more likely to be different than indistinguishably identical. And that applies literally to any kind of categorical grouping you care to identify or assign. Murray's four groupings were collected from the most populous supersets identified by the Dept of Commerce, and corroborated by the self-selection into the broad groups. As I understand from the reporting, the attribute based stats were developed from government data. The bottom line is that today it is very easy to both assign individuals into the four groups (or for that matter, into any number of defined categories), and in the same vein, today powerful data pattern extraction tools exist to also predict with remarkable reliability the aggregate behavior patterns of people in arbitrarily defined categories. The 'we're all basically the same' dog will no longer hunt - starting with the double helix and moving up, readily detectable differences exist everywhere. The political problem is how to stop people from doing the detecting and publishing their results.

[Scott O]

I've read Murray but not Mead. Murray's groups are not silly - they are real. He is looking at the world, not just the US. I think my view is that we just cut to the chase. What is the prevalent over-arching sort of society that most people in the world want to live in?
It's the society that was brought into being primarily by white euros. For better and for worse.
And the white euros aren't the smartest.
It's a matter of nature and nurture. In other words - a lot of what you were born with and a lot of the culture of your 'tribe' along with the ethics and attitudes of your close family unit.
It would be easy to say that my attitude is self fulfilling as I'm describing my own background but looking around, I see all sorts of people that do not have my kind of lineage now living the kind of life that I live. Just because I'm descended from white euros doesn't make me any better than any one else and at the same time doesn't make me guilty of anything I haven't personally done.
The AmerIndians had this place (north America)for eons and all they managed was a stone age sort of existence. They had all the usual human ideas of war and abuse of power and enslaving other humans but they never managed to figure out much technology. Neither did the Africans or the Aborigines. The Asians had the smarts but looking at their history we find they managed to strangle the technology baby in the crib several times due to power struggles and fear of change disrupting the status quo.
So - it's clear that there are different sorts of people in the world and that they have enough collective difference of some sort to have had widely different sorts of living conditions and technological achievements.
The idea that these groups can now be intermixed and be expected to all come out the same is a fools errand.

[scenes]

GR: " The political problem is how to stop people from doing the detecting and publishing their results."
Scotto: " Murray's groups are not silly - they are real"

I mostly think that at this point it's just a dance where everyone knows the steps.

The 'renegade' social scientists publish easily found data, rarely with any digging much beyond that. The social justice people have a two-step, 'NO, THERE'S NO DIFFERENCE' followed by 'THE DIFFERENCE IS BECAUSE OF [insert slavery/income/prejudice/poorly designed test/etc. here].

Of course, the partly unspoken part of all this isn't that it's a study of races, but mostly just trying to show that black people are less intelligent and more criminal than the rest of the world. If you feel pride in your people (if black) or have a huge need to care for black people (if not black), the outrage flows and the dance is complete.

If a person wanted to understand the nature end of the whole argument, I mean really understand it, it would take more work and money than is allowed in the present climate. My guess is that the Chinese will turn up answers first, perhaps in an effort to produce a better factory worker or scientist class.

At a higher level, the real war will be over exerting the power of the state to overcome in-group preference. An army that consists of regiments who not only look alike but are from the same place may well produce better combat efficiency, I haven't seen much to convince me that Diversity is Strength in organization. The Soviets bounced back and forth on whether to encourage nationalism and never really came to conclusion on the thing. I expect that Scott's town will receive it's first busload of Somalian refugees under the Harris administration. 'Bowling Alone' will end up on the restricted books list.

It's hard to overlook the fact that the endgame for the DEI crowd is to program peoples' minds. That's the place you always end up at and requires access to children at a young age with a constant and sophisticated program of indoctrination.

[scenes]

moi: "At a higher level, the real war will be over exerting the power of the state to overcome in-group preference."

Now, having said that, I don't really think that there's a monolithic 'state' with a single goal.

A lot of what is happening is simply evolution at a mass level. The individual might differ, but the hive mind of a batch of related people will (nearly) always be to capture resources and expand. At least if it's a fit hive mind. A lot of what is going on is simply that, genes don't care if you are smart, rich, or peaceful, just that there's more of you.

It's a bummer to see Europeans prune themselves from the evolutionary tree by a combination of low birthrate and pathological altruism, but maybe that's just the way the cookie crumbles. Unless some sort of singularity occurs, demography is destiny.

[Scott O]

scenes - "Of course, the partly unspoken part of all this isn't that it's a study of races, but mostly just trying to show that black people are less intelligent and more criminal than the rest of the world."
If you are referring to Murray, that is a grossly inaccurate statement.
It's one thing to show (easily) that criminality among a certain cohort of blacks (male, young) in our country today is real, but that does not apply to blacks in general historically world wide.
There are 2 separate streams going here. One is a breakdown of current demographics in our country as to poverty, education, crime and so forth as it exists today. The other is a study of the differences of different racial groups world wide.
It is of vital importance not to confuse the 2.
It's my opinion that the largest problem facing folks of a different skin color and culture coming to this country today is an unwillingness to adopt the basic attitudes that have helped to create a healthy prosperous society. Number one is learn the English language. I can't stress enough the importance of a unifying language. The fact that voter guides are printed in God knows how many different languages is a huge red flag that we are in trouble. This doesn't mean you have to give up all of your old culture and forget your native tongue, but if you can't learn to be proficient in spoken and written English it just kills your chance of successful transition. Sadly this is increasingly a problem for our native born as well. A high degree of literacy leads to better thinking patterns and a more truly informed citizenry.
There isn't time for me to go on right now, but this is a good topic that needs to be hashed out by the whole world as well as our country.
Of course not everyone (looking at those in power) wants to have an amicable solution. Stirring the pot and promoting hatred along class and racial lines is a proven winner for despots and authoritarians.
A very good read is A. Sullivan's latest:
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-problem-with-jon-stewart?s=r
The title is somewhat misleading. The article is more about our country's problem with race and the race hustlers making hay out of hate.

[fish]

A bit of gun play closer to me than you last night…..

Since this is a thread about genetics let’s see if “Sailers Law” holds.

[George Rebane]

re fish 912am - Apparently there were multiple shooters this morning in Sacramento, and the kill/wounded ratio was 6/10. Sailer's law would imply that most (all?) the shooters were black. Can we say that Sailer's Law is yet another discriminant in the universe of people patterns?

[fish]

Posted by: George Rebane | 03 April 2022 at 10:03 AM

Haven’t heard any details….. just the raw number George. I think Sailers really applies to individual shooters.

Will continue to wait for the inevitable refinement of the narrative by the legacy “press”.

[Gregory]

two of the dead clubbers were black. may all of them rest in peace and grant their shooter(s) torment.

[Gregory]

at least two were black.

[Scott O]

fish 9:12 - "Since this is a thread about genetics let’s see if “Sailers Law” holds."
Actually it's 'genes vs culture'.
I'll bet culture had more to do with what happened in downtown Sac this morning, but we need to wait until more facts come in.
The 'genes' part of Sailer's Law is simply what you notice right off, but there are underlying causes that are cultural.

[scenes]

" Since this is a thread about genetics let’s see if “Sailers Law” holds."

Is that the IQ one?

"Liberals simultaneously don't believe in IQ and believe their IQs are far superior to the IQs of nonliberals.".

or the Law of Mass Shootings (which seems to involve style points in some circles).

I was trying to hunt up the 'Law' that any metric of human achievement can be spread across a black-brown-white-yellow spectrum going up or down. Dunno how athleticism fits into that.

My working theory is that the concept of 'white' was invented to allow Europeans and their diaspora to share in the achievements of Englishmen.

[fish]

Posted by: scenes | 03 April 2022 at 01:53 PM

Is that the IQ one?

No. His thought was that wherever there is a mass shooting when the killed to injured ratio is small more often than not the shooter isn’t white. To the best of my knowledge he hasn’t fleshed out his theory to any real degree.

In the brief period I have been aware of it, it does seem to be reasonably accurate.

Accurate enough that when we have a shooting I pay closer attention than I used to.

[Scott O]

The lefties call Sailer all sorts of names, but they've never accused him of being wrong.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/sailers-law-of-mass-shootings/

[Bill Tozer]

Don Regan cracked a Greek sailor quip and it sunk his political aspirations on the spot right quick. After Reagan, there was Regan. Of those silly sailor boys.

[Scott O]

I'll post this here:
https://www.studyfinds.org/question-evolution-racist/
"Does questioning the theory of evolution mean you’re racist? Study suggests it does"
Hilarious - Darwin thought Africans were less evolved humans. Racists flocked to Darwin - the NAZIs loved and quoted him.
Of course the article goes a bit sideways into politics:
"In the Middle East, Israeli researchers found a person’s disbelief in evolution made it less likely that they would support peace between Arabs, Jews, and Palestinians."
There are a lot of folks that question Darwin and with good reason. But just wave the 'racist' wand and point it at people you disagree with when you run out of reason and facts.

[scenes]

re: Scotto@5:11PM

I just assume that sociology/psychology studies are mostly shite, filled with the observer's bias. This one always cracked me up.

https://www.psypost.org/2017/06/straight-mens-physiological-stress-response-seeing-two-men-kissing-seeing-maggots-49217

Oddly:

“What is most important to note is that the responses did not differ as a function of self-reported levels of prejudice or self-reported levels of aggression towards gay men,” Blair explained. “In other words, it was not our highly prejudiced individuals who were experiencing a heightened physiological response to the images of same-sex couples kissing, it was everyone in the sample, even those with very low levels of prejudice.”

You just never know. I strongly suspect that they were looking for a different answer.

[Scott O]

scenes 6:04 - hilarious!
I wonder if the author realizes the editor changed the spelling of the last word in the sentence?
Then it switches to : "...the images of same-sex couples kissing..."
Are they young, hot-looking wimmins?
Are their 'chests' exposed?
Asking for a friend.

[Scott O]

scenes 6:04 - further.
Are they aware of the number of people that still are repulsed/upset at SAME sex couples kissing in public?
I still remember a pastor recalling sitting in the pews and putting his arm around his wife and an old biddy behind them smacking his arm with her Bible!
I wonder when the gay/LGBQYXDNHS crowd explains why gay men out perform straight men in income?
The boys who like to perform sex acts on boys dressed like dogs surely aren't hurting for income.