[ExI] Asabiyyah

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 12:23 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki <
rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Seeing how easily Westernizers seem to slip into tribal modes, I don't
know. Of course, even this observation seems anecdotal. :)

Isn't there also at least some evidence for sociopathy having a genetic
component? I'm not well read in this, but if it does have a genetic
component, then it seems far more likely there's a continuum of
social/antisocial behaviors and perhaps of ingroup loyalty behaviors that
are partly heritable or partly based on something heritable (that's
specifically focused on sociality as opposed to, say, raw intelligence).
Maybe this is all related.

Evo-psych speculation is all too easy. And I can see the "humans evolved
tribalism during the paleolithic era when they were all avoiding processed
grains and legumes" line being wheeled out.

Regards,

Dan
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http://author.to/DanUst

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