[ExI] Asabiyyah

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

Nations differ in the quality and degree of social cohesiveness.
Traditional tribal societies have very strong kin loyalty, especially where
endogamous marriage is practiced but very weak bonds to non-kin. They say
"Me and my brother against my cousins, me and my cousins against the
world". More evolved societies, especially the ones west of the Hajnal line
and the ones comprised primarily of their blood descendants, tend to have a
more atomized familial life, and yet their large-scale organization is more
integrated and better functioning. There appears to be a trade-off between
the asabiyyah that binds the clan, giving its warriors the strength to
fight to the death, and the more abstract bond among Westerners, that gives
them the ability to peacefully cooperate.

I wonder what is the specific biological mechanism involved in generating
this social organization difference. Is it a different sensitivity to early
social imprinting? Is it based on detection of genetic differences by
smell? Is it simply a matter of intelligence? I never found any references
to mechanistic, genetic and biochemical research on this subject, although
there is some arm-waving evo-psych speculation in some corners of the
internets.

The billion-genome genetic research of the next 50 years will no doubt shed
some light on this issue.

Rafał
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