6 ms·

It's a game-changing paradigm when you put it in perspective to most other contemporary non-Western societies where kinship, long-term friendships and intergene

It's a game-changing paradigm when you put it in perspective to most other contemporary non-Western societies where kinship, long-term friendships and intergenerational family obligations are forming the fabric of society. In the west, individuals are much more autonomous and that enables more effective social associations where people are gathering in groups based on their levels of competence, interests and views.

zozbot234 6y ago
Of course the idea has plenty of merit; I'm just saying that social scientists have been aware of it for a long time, and it's a bit strange to describe it as "new". See e.g. [0] which is cited in the wiki article on cousin marriage. [0] Woodley, Michael A.; Edward Bell (2013). "Consanguinity as a Major Predictor of Levels of Democracy: A Study of 70 Nations". Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 44 (2): 263–280. doi:10.1177/0022022112443855. S2CID 145714074.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  I think perhaps "new" to the mainstream specifically. While book is ~700 pages, about ~200 of that is end notes and the bibliography: the author [1] is simply collecting all the most recent findings in one place and putting forward a thesis to the public that seems to have a bit of a consensus in academia. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Henrich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Henrich
bserge 6y ago
That sounds nice and all, except "kinship, long-term friendships and intergenerational family obligations" is still forming the fabric of western societies and up to as late as the 1960's (and even later), most people were not freely able to "gather in groups based on their levels of competence, interests and views". Western liberalism and individual freedom is really a very recent development. Just 100 years ago, people were being forced to work on ships, in factories, on farms, in wars and 3-4 generations living in one home was normal. Just 60 years ago, many people were heavily discriminated against and had little freedom. Imo, these "more effective social associations" just lead to an increase in mental problems and perhaps ultimately, to the unraveling of such societies. Long term *ships are good, the focus on hyper efficiency just means more and more people are being left behind, and groups simply have no idea what other groups are thinking or how to work with them. See all the antimaskers, antivaxxers, authoritarian supporters. All dismissed as stupid/irrelevant and considered a minority by the other side. And vice versa. The reality is different, but there's such a disconnect that no one knows how to fix this.
- crankyoldcrank 6y ago
  >Just 100 years ago, people were being forced to work on ships, in factories, on farms, You know those jobs are still necessary, right? Still exist? People are just as forced into them now as they were in 1920 especially outside the developed world. You're complaining that life in antiquity was hard and attributing it to a failure of society. What if it's just the nature of reality that life is hard, brutish, and short, and the slice of modernity we've enjoyed briefly for the last half century has been a reprieve offered by liberalism? Also how do you even bundle anti maskers and authoritarians in one sentence? Anti maskers aren't telling people not to go to church or visit their families, or to die alone. The authoritarians are on the other side, like Mr Andrew Cuomo. He's the one literally persecuting Jews in New York for practicing their beliefs in a way that is politically unfashionable due to a disease with a 99.9% survival rate. You might disagree with them but anti maskers are anti authoritarian. They are literally fighting authority.
  - bserge 6y ago
    It's not much of a consolation, but "forced" back then meant "no other options" (except death). People were Shanghaied onto ships, forced to work for someone else for little to no pay, or because they simply had debts, and they had no state-mandated rights. Lots of people have sacrificed their lives to give us a better one. I'm only from an ex-USSR country, and I've never been to countries worse off, but from what I read, workers rights have taken hold pretty much everywhere. The anti-maskers/pro-authoritarians part was in reply to "people are gathering in groups based on their levels of competence, interests and views". Yes, everyone gathers in their own groups with narrow views, and they don't have to live or even communicate with people who have different views. So they don't even try to understand the opposing point of view. It's automatically just them "being dumb", "just wrong" or "fake news" or whatever. It might make for more effective social associations in the short term, but I don't see how it's sustainable in the long term. It's the same exact type of divide that exists between the wealthy and the rest.
- bluetomcat 6y ago
  Indeed, the pre-1960s working class was in a much less privileged position, but liberalism was still important among those at the higher end of the social ladder – the intellectual, scientific, entrepreneurial and political elites. A child from a wealthy upper-class family whose father owned a cotton factory would first receive high quality education, and then would, for example, become a credible scientist or an engineer. Post-WW2, the working class was largely replaced by a well-off middle class, and that created other problems in itself.
User23 6y ago
Repeated inbreeding within the 4th degree of kinship[1] is observably dysgenic too. A society's breeding mores have genetic as well as cultural effects. In fact the two are so closely intertwined I don't believe they can be practicably separated. [1] Degrees are counted by how many nodes in the tree have to be traversed upward to reach the nearest common direct ancestor. For example siblings are second degree since the two siblings share a common ancestor. An uncle and nephew would be 3rd degree, first cousins 4th degree, and so on.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  As the Spanish royals found out, problems tend to arise when your family "tree" is actually a circle. * https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/inbreeding-and-the-downfall-of-the-spanish-hapsburgs https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/inbreeding-and... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Spain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Spain
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  Some of the highest levels of cousin marriage are found in the Middle East. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_in_the_Middle_East https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_in_the_Middle_... This must have some serious negative effect on the societies there, especially when done for 50 consecutive generations.
  - Hitton 6y ago
    Of course it does. British Pakistanis are 13 times more likely to have children with genetic disorders than the general population. And everyone knows why is that. https://www.muslimcouncilofamerica.org/cousin-marriage-among-muslims/ https://www.muslimcouncilofamerica.org/cousin-marriage-among...
- Meandering 6y ago
  It's weird how human behavior mirrors scientific basis without pre-existing knowledge. It seems Roman Law required, exactly, 4 degrees of familial separation. "Roman civil law prohibited marriages within four degrees of consanguinity[44] but had no degrees of affinity with regards to marriage." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest#Antiquity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest#Antiquity (Top of third to last paragraph in section)
gumby 6y ago
> It's a game-changing paradigm when you put it in perspective to most other contemporary non-Western societies where kinship, long-term friendships and intergenerational family obligations are forming the fabric of society. "most other contemporary non-Western societies?" You are a rare anthropologist to make this assertion. Both endogamy and exogamy are common across the globe, and have been for millennia. I think this book excerpt overstates the case.

zozbot234 6y ago

Of course the idea has plenty of merit; I'm just saying that social scientists have been aware of it for a long time, and it's a bit strange to describe it as "new". See e.g. [0] which is cited in the wiki article on cousin marriage. [0] Woodley, Michael A.; Edward Bell (2013). "Consanguinity as a Major Predictor of Levels of Democracy: A Study of 70 Nations". Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 44 (2): 263–280. doi:10.1177/0022022112443855. S2CID 145714074.

throw0101a 6y ago
I think perhaps "new" to the mainstream specifically. While book is ~700 pages, about ~200 of that is end notes and the bibliography: the author [1] is simply collecting all the most recent findings in one place and putting forward a thesis to the public that seems to have a bit of a consensus in academia. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Henrich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Henrich

bserge 6y ago

That sounds nice and all, except "kinship, long-term friendships and intergenerational family obligations" is still forming the fabric of western societies and up to as late as the 1960's (and even later), most people were not freely able to "gather in groups based on their levels of competence, interests and views". Western liberalism and individual freedom is really a very recent development. Just 100 years ago, people were being forced to work on ships, in factories, on farms, in wars and 3-4 generations living in one home was normal. Just 60 years ago, many people were heavily discriminated against and had little freedom. Imo, these "more effective social associations" just lead to an increase in mental problems and perhaps ultimately, to the unraveling of such societies. Long term *ships are good, the focus on hyper efficiency just means more and more people are being left behind, and groups simply have no idea what other groups are thinking or how to work with them. See all the antimaskers, antivaxxers, authoritarian supporters. All dismissed as stupid/irrelevant and considered a minority by the other side. And vice versa. The reality is different, but there's such a disconnect that no one knows how to fix this.

crankyoldcrank 6y ago
>Just 100 years ago, people were being forced to work on ships, in factories, on farms, You know those jobs are still necessary, right? Still exist? People are just as forced into them now as they were in 1920 especially outside the developed world. You're complaining that life in antiquity was hard and attributing it to a failure of society. What if it's just the nature of reality that life is hard, brutish, and short, and the slice of modernity we've enjoyed briefly for the last half century has been a reprieve offered by liberalism? Also how do you even bundle anti maskers and authoritarians in one sentence? Anti maskers aren't telling people not to go to church or visit their families, or to die alone. The authoritarians are on the other side, like Mr Andrew Cuomo. He's the one literally persecuting Jews in New York for practicing their beliefs in a way that is politically unfashionable due to a disease with a 99.9% survival rate. You might disagree with them but anti maskers are anti authoritarian. They are literally fighting authority.
- bserge 6y ago
  It's not much of a consolation, but "forced" back then meant "no other options" (except death). People were Shanghaied onto ships, forced to work for someone else for little to no pay, or because they simply had debts, and they had no state-mandated rights. Lots of people have sacrificed their lives to give us a better one. I'm only from an ex-USSR country, and I've never been to countries worse off, but from what I read, workers rights have taken hold pretty much everywhere. The anti-maskers/pro-authoritarians part was in reply to "people are gathering in groups based on their levels of competence, interests and views". Yes, everyone gathers in their own groups with narrow views, and they don't have to live or even communicate with people who have different views. So they don't even try to understand the opposing point of view. It's automatically just them "being dumb", "just wrong" or "fake news" or whatever. It might make for more effective social associations in the short term, but I don't see how it's sustainable in the long term. It's the same exact type of divide that exists between the wealthy and the rest.
bluetomcat 6y ago
Indeed, the pre-1960s working class was in a much less privileged position, but liberalism was still important among those at the higher end of the social ladder – the intellectual, scientific, entrepreneurial and political elites. A child from a wealthy upper-class family whose father owned a cotton factory would first receive high quality education, and then would, for example, become a credible scientist or an engineer. Post-WW2, the working class was largely replaced by a well-off middle class, and that created other problems in itself.

User23 6y ago

Repeated inbreeding within the 4th degree of kinship[1] is observably dysgenic too. A society's breeding mores have genetic as well as cultural effects. In fact the two are so closely intertwined I don't believe they can be practicably separated. [1] Degrees are counted by how many nodes in the tree have to be traversed upward to reach the nearest common direct ancestor. For example siblings are second degree since the two siblings share a common ancestor. An uncle and nephew would be 3rd degree, first cousins 4th degree, and so on.

throw0101a 6y ago
As the Spanish royals found out, problems tend to arise when your family "tree" is actually a circle. * https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/inbreeding-and-the-downfall-of-the-spanish-hapsburgs https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/inbreeding-and... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Spain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Spain
inglor_cz 6y ago
Some of the highest levels of cousin marriage are found in the Middle East. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_in_the_Middle_East https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_in_the_Middle_... This must have some serious negative effect on the societies there, especially when done for 50 consecutive generations.
- Hitton 6y ago
  Of course it does. British Pakistanis are 13 times more likely to have children with genetic disorders than the general population. And everyone knows why is that. https://www.muslimcouncilofamerica.org/cousin-marriage-among-muslims/ https://www.muslimcouncilofamerica.org/cousin-marriage-among...
Meandering 6y ago
It's weird how human behavior mirrors scientific basis without pre-existing knowledge. It seems Roman Law required, exactly, 4 degrees of familial separation. "Roman civil law prohibited marriages within four degrees of consanguinity[44] but had no degrees of affinity with regards to marriage." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest#Antiquity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest#Antiquity (Top of third to last paragraph in section)

gumby 6y ago

> It's a game-changing paradigm when you put it in perspective to most other contemporary non-Western societies where kinship, long-term friendships and intergenerational family obligations are forming the fabric of society. "most other contemporary non-Western societies?" You are a rare anthropologist to make this assertion. Both endogamy and exogamy are common across the globe, and have been for millennia. I think this book excerpt overstates the case.