[ExI] The Catholic Impact (was Re: Origin of ethics and morals)

[PJ Manney]

2011/12/12 John Grigg <possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com>:
> I think that the ban on Christians charging interest for loans, may have
> caused change in the Jewish gene pool, in terms of the selection for
> the type of intelligence that excels at finance.  But then the Jews had a
> strong merchant class dating back to the Babylonians and the Romans.  I
> think if any people have been molded for success by powerful selective
> pressures from within and without, it is the Jews.  I find it painfully
> ironic that Hitler and the Nazi's considered themselves a "master race," and
> persecuted the Jews, when the Jews are a prime example of several millennia
> of intense cultural eugenics at work, with the end result being a people who
> have achieved so much for humanity.

As a resident Ashkenazi (which simply means "German" in Medieval
Hebrew), please allow me to weigh in.  Jews will tell you the
following might have exerted pressures on their culture and gene pool
for increased intelligence:

1) Your above mentioned ban on usury.

2) Your above mentioned experiences in trade.  Jews traveled all over
Europe and Asia as soon as trade routes were established.  They
settled in Europe in the early middle ages.  It's how the Ashkenazim
(a branch of Judaism) as a genetic pool even exist.  A few traveling
traders/bankers married gentile/pagan women.  Supposedly, it's how
many Ashkenazim got red/blonde hair, green/blue eyes, etc.  Someone
should study haplogroups to see if it's true and not just parallel
mutation.

3) Beyond that early intermarriage, we're really inbred!

4) The smartest men in the community had the highest and most
prestigious job: Rabbi.  The first cut was dynastic (the
Cohen/Kohein/Kohanim and Levi families), but they chose the best
scholars from those families to become rabbis.  Scholars were a
prestigious job, too.  They married sought-after women in their
communities and were under biblical orders to be fruitful and
multiply...  ;-)  Otherwise, wealth, jobs and social class were
dynastic.  The top women (and intelligence was valued in women, too --
see #5) married the wealthiest men and had the most children who
survived.

5) I don't know if you've spent much time with Jewish women, but they
were raised to be more than competent -- they had to be dominant.
While the men in the old days were studying and arguing their Torah,
the women secretly ran the businesses, raised the families and kept
the home fires burning, while the men took the credit for a profitable
business, smart kids and well-run homes.  Girls needed intellectual
skills to pull this trick off, so they were taught mathematics,
languages, etc.  And if you had no sons to push into scholarship, you
raised your daughters secretly with advanced schooling.  My
great-grandmother was the youngest of six daughters to a
merchant-banker in Warsaw.  Like her sisters, she spoke 6 languages
fluently, was taught mathematics, economics, science and philosophy.
When her father tried to marry her off to a local aristocrat, she ran
away to the New World, married a poor, but adorable and loving tailor
and used her knowledge to create a real estate business and raise very
smart kids.  And this was not unusual!  So intelligence was valued in
women, not just men.

6) Judaism as a culture reveres learning and analysis in general.
Even regarding their religious writings, there is not a written word
in the culture that has not been argued, debated, analyzed,
reinterpreted, etc. continually for the last 2000 years.

7) Being a persecuted underdog for 2 millennia does wonders for
survival skills, which are linked to intelligence.  I firmly believe:
increased pattern recognition > intelligence > paranoia > survival.
Woody Allen was right: it's not whether you're paranoid.  It's whether
you're paranoid enough.

8) As the perpetual outsider, Jews have had to assimilate local
traditions while preserving their own cultural heritage.  It's this
cultural mishmash and the related practice of synthesizing large
amounts of divergent information that often brings fresh intellectual
and creative insights.  I really think this is a significant reason
why 0.2% of the world is Jewish, but 20% of the Nobel winners are
Jewish.

9) The IQ increase is predominantly found in Ashkenazim, which is
between 50% and 80% of the world's Jews, depending on the source.

There's still enormous debate whether there is or isn't a genetic
component to all of the above and the arguments both pro and con are
sadly rife with political correctness, bigotry, bias, etc.  Pity...

PJ