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> Before easy transportation, every one local in a society was related one way or another and likely separated from other groups enough for race to count. I don
by hnbad 5y ago
> Before easy transportation, every one local in a society was related one way or another and likely separated from other groups enough for race to count. I don't know how, historically, you can get a more "natural" grouping than that!
Sure but you weren't saying that. You were saying that these groupings were self-reinforcing.
The natural grouping you're describing is based on location, not biology. The biology is a consequence of isolation. And in fact, as the article points out, the biology isn't so clear-cut because even at the subspecies level we have genetic evidence for interbreeding (most famously between "modern" humans and Neanderthals).
This is what's called a motte-and-bailey. You're arguing tribalism is natural and based on biology, but when challenged you retreat to the undisputed claim that tribes existed and that tribes are biologically somewhat homogeneous, rather than defending your initial claim that tribes arise from biology.
You'd have to demonstrate that tribes were historically mostly xenophobic, which just isn't the case. If that were true, we'd expect the exact opposite of what the article describes: clear, distinct branches with minimal interbreeding.
> All large empires that you can name started off as tribes and eventually grew to incorporate others.
Again, that's undisputed. For something to grow it needs to start off small by definition. One could argue about the definition of "tribe" (e.g. pre-empire Rome is generally referred to as a "city state" but the initial settlers were likely part of the Latin "tribe") but that's overly pedantic.
You're trying to argue that politics is based on biological kinship and you're simply not supporting that claim in anything you say. You could have argued about the psychological differences in how we worry about people close to us versus people we don't know in far away places, but even that would only demonstrate tribalism at a social level, not that this tribalism is inherently tied to biological kinship.
- mhuffman 5y agoWell, you misrepresented a lot of what I said, but I will focus on this: > You're trying to argue that politics is based on biological kinship and you're simply not supporting that claim in anything you say. No. What I am arguing is that in ANY group of people, politics emerges naturally. And as a second argument, "close kinship" is the most natural way that people have grouped historically and up to this very day. And throughout history there is no closer kinship than biological relationships to one another. That is it. I am not arguing that race is important for politics to emerge or that people can't group in any way they feel like (Brown fans, eg), or that biology begets politics or anything like that.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoAre the points related in any way? Is there a conclusion drawn from the synthesis of the two? If close kinship means immediate and extended family, then I would agree.
- hnbad 5y agoOkay, so if we just assume everything you state is factual, what's your point in stating it? Politics is an emergent property of social bonds at scale, sure. Families are the smallest social group, sure. Strength of social bonds within a grouping tends to be inversely proportional to the size of the grouping, sure. Blood ties are the strongest, sure. So what? Except you're not even right about biological relationships being all that special. You think you don't have to provide evidence for this because it is "common knowledge" but it's based on ideas like the nuclear family, which are fairly recent inventions. Families used to span multiple generations and include unrelated household members (think maids, farm hands, etc) and prior to that tribes encompassed what we might as well refer to as villages, where biological relation is more incidental than the basis for social bonds. Even as a naturalistic argument appealing to other animals it fails: in many species packs will allow stragglers to join the group and treat them no different than blood relatives. There's some truth to parent-child bonds being special but you're attempting to extrapolate from that to entire social groups and to argue for some kind of historical progression based on it which is nothing more than a just-so narrative.