What are the potential problems associated with interracial relationships?
by Majid83
29-05-12
Relationships between men and women of different ethnic groups have been a controversial subject for many decades, but have now become widely accepted, and anyone who would dare to question whether this increasing trend towards marriage between people of different ethnic groups is a good idea is stigmatized as a right-wing extremist.
In this essay I do not intend to cast a moral judgement on exogamous relationships. I also do not seek to decide for individuals whether they should marry outside of their own ethnicity or not. Instead, I seek to alert people to certain problems that emerge as a result of relationships between different ethnic groups, on an individual scale and for different ethnicities as a whole. I intend to focus on the problems that are not immediately apparent to people, and skipping the more obvious ones.
Exogamous relationships became an increasingly important issue as a result of changes brought about by the industrial revolution, which made migration and communication between different ethnicities increasingly easy. For the centuries before then, endogamy has been the norm. Our increasing trend towards secularisation also helped to remove certain barriers towards exogamous relationships that were created by religious prohibitions. Hence, exogamous relationships have become a controversial issue for communities that have survived as minorities for centuries without being assimilated.
Exogamous relationships lead to religious radicalism
Many feel a responsibility to their ancestors to ensure the survival of their people through the modern era, as opposed to being assimilated into one or more numerically larger ethnic groups. If the ethnic group in question is seen as being a socially dominant ethnic group in our society, those amongst them hesitant to endorse exogamous relationships are decried to be racists.
An example would be the Jewish community, whose more conservative members are seeking to take action to preserve the Jewish community now that it is faced with a 50% intermarriage rate in the United States, of whom two thirds of the children are not raised as Jewish by some estimations.1 Interestingly enough, it could be argued that exogamous marriage will not so much lead to the extinction of the Jewish people, but to a cultural shift towards extremism amongst Jews.
Those Jews who engage in intermarriage with non-Jews tend to be more liberal in their outlook on life, and their families are unlikely to be very Orthodox Jews. On the contrary, amongst Ultra-Orthodox Jews, intermarriage with non-Jews is extremely rare, and hence such Jews are likely to become proportionally more representative for Jewish people as a whole.
The same is likely to happen amongst adherents of other religions, with more liberal Muslims being more likely to marry non-Muslims and hence raising their children as secular. Hence, we can expect exogamous relationships to increase the division between conservative and progressive people, as progressive people become part of a global culture, while conservative people remain part of their own communities.
Like most other aspects of human personality, religious outlooks on life are partly environmentally and partly genetically determined. Part of this environmental factor is the family situation, as growing up in a religious household increases the chance of an individual growing up to be very religious as well.
Hence, it is interesting to note that more fundamentalist members of a religion are now more likely to have a high number of children than more liberal believers, with a prime example being Orthodox Jews. It should be noted that the trend towards exogamous marriage of liberal members of a religion increases this genetic and cultural trend towards religious fundamentalism, as before, liberal and conservative partners in a same-faith relationship were forced to come to a consensus on the number of children they would have.
As an example, we could expect that a liberal woman would be willing to have children, but would insist to her conservative husband that they should wait until she has finished her education, reducing the total number of children in the relationship. Instead, we now see that as a result of exogamous marriages, people of the same religion now tend to marry other orthodox members of the religion. Hence, with no more need to come to a consensus with a liberal partner, fertility of such orthodox religious people can now rapidly increase to whatever level their situation allows.
Black single women, Asian single men
Currently, 70% of black women are unmarried.2 A great reason many black children grow up in single parent households is because black women simply can't find dedicated husbands. Part of the reason for this is because many black men who make good husbands do not marry black women but instead marry outside of their race. Interracial marriage rates are higher for black men than for black women. In black-white marriages, black men and white women are overrepresented. In Black-Asian marriages, the numbers are even further skewed towards Black men and Asian women.
Studies have shown that black men and Asian women are rated as most attractive by the opposite gender, while black women and Asian men are rated as least attractive by the opposite gender. White men and women are seen as intermediate in attractiveness.3 This makes sense when considering that black people tend to have more robust facial features when compared to Asian people, with white facial features being intermediate.
Hence, interracial marriage is leading to black women being forced to raise children on their own, while Asian men find themselves involuntarily remaining bachelors. Before our modern migrations towards other continents, people of every race were forced to marry people of their own race, as they would likely never meet anyone of a different race. Now we are faced with a large problem, that white people are willing to conveniently ignore, as they are intermediate between Asians and sub-Saharan Africans on the scale from femininity to masculinity.
Interracial brain drain
Studies have found that people of Asian and Ashkenazi Jewish background have higher IQ scores on average than people of European background, whom have higher IQ scores on average than every other ethnic group not yet mentioned. This creates the potential for a brain drain, as immigrants from African to Europe are likely to be on average more intelligent than their average countrymen.
A similar effect can be found in the US, where successful Native Americans and African Americans are likely to seek to marry outside of their own race, to escape communities plagued by alcoholism, crime and poverty, despite them being the best hope for these ethnic groups to solve those problems. When most successful Native Americans marry outside of their own race, other Native Americans are left with little choice but to follow suit. The same of course goes for us ex-Muslims. By marrying people who did not grow up in Muslim households, we are ensuring that our ethnic groups will remain Islamic for all of eternity.
Low IQ children
I will readily admit that this is the most sensitive issue discussed in this article, but it has to be discussed, as it may be the most important issue. As mentioned earlier, psychologists agree that ethnic groups differ in their average IQ. Amongst psychologists, opinions differ in regards to the source of the difference, but a significant number of experts in the field believe that at least part of the difference is genetic in origin.
One piece of evidence commonly given by these psychologists is that people of different races have children that regress towards different means. Regression towards the mean means that when measuring an extreme variable, a second measurement will tend to be closer to the mean. In the case of IQ, it means that highly intelligent black parents, are likely to have children with an IQ closer to the average black IQ, while amongst white parents with the same IQ as the black parents mentioned earlier, the IQ would be closer to the white IQ.
What this means in practice is that children born to high IQ black parents, tend to have lower IQ's than children born to low IQ white parents.6 The reason for this is because when someone has an IQ that is far higher than the average for his ethnic group, the chance is far higher for his blessing to have been caused by the environment than by his genetics.
Hence, the implications for people from high IQ ethnicities are that marrying a high IQ individual of a low IQ ethnicity is no guarantee that the child will be as blessed as the parent. Let us take as an example, a Caucasian man with a 100 IQ who marries a black woman with a 105 IQ. The average IQ of their children can be expected to be on average below 100, as the high IQ of the black woman was likely largely caused by her environment, which may be difficult to recreate.
Hence why people used to look not just at the person they wanted to marry, but their family as well to determine whether they would lead to gifted children. If the family of your partner does not have a high IQ as well, be ready to face the issue of raising children that are unable to live up to the expectations you and your partner had for them.
Paternal investment is tied to genetic similarity of the offspring
In nature, men can not be sure of the paternity of their children. Hence, men are genetically programmed to go by people's looks to judge whether they are genetically related to them, and hence should be helped in the form of resources and protection. In the case of children, this means that children who look more like their father receive more resources and more investment from the father. A study in Africa found that the survival chances of a child increase if the child resembles its father more.4
This may be one reason why humans maintain many aesthetic abnormalities that might seem like a net negative. A man with a unique nose or chin that might not flatter his appearance may notice the same abnormality in his children, and hence feel assured of the fact that he is raising a child that is his direct offspring, and if not, at least the offspring of one of his peers. Hence such aesthetic defects are not filtered out of the gene pool, because they help men to determine the paternity of children. It is not uncommon for some families with certain genetic abnormalities (an extra finger for example) to question the paternity of a child born without the abnormality.
Hence, a problem arises with interracial children. Nobody will deny that interracial children tend to look pretty. Their facial features are average, which makes their faces pretty. However, to ensure paternal investment, a child should ideally share the quirks of its father. It tends to be more difficult to identify the similarity between an interracial child and its father.
Besides the difficulty of identifying whether the child is related to its father, the child simply isn't very closely genetically related to its father. In a community with low genetic diversity (the Amish or Ashkenazi Jews for example) a man having a child with a woman of another ethnic group is likely to be genetically closer related to his cousin or his neighbour, than to his own child! Hence, from an evolutionary point of view, should we be surprised that men who have a child with a woman outside their own ethnic group are unlikely to invest a lot of time and resources in the child?
Similar to the problem of the child not resembling its father, in exogamous relationships, the child's personality is unlikely to resemble its father's personality. Personality is at least partly genetically determined, and evidence has shown that, even after accounting for similarity due to gender, race, economic status and common ancestry, patterns of genetic similarity can still be found between close friends.5
Exogamous marriage leads to genetically heterogeneous communities
Through exogamous marriage, the community as a whole becomes genetically heterogeneous. This is obvious, and doesn't have to be explained any further. What does need to be clarified is why this is a problem in a community.
The issue is very similar to the issue in my previous point, but it applies on a communal level, as opposed to an individual level. People are willing to sacrifice their own well being for that of people in their community, if their community shares a lot of genes with themselves. Communities that are genetically homogeneous watch out for their own members, as group-cooperation becomes a very successful survival strategy. In a genetically heterogeneous community (the United States for example) there is little reason from a Darwinian perspective to sacrifice your own well being for your peers.
We notice this in countries where people have recently been force-fed the multicultural experiment. Middle class people increasingly ask themselves why they should pay high taxes to maintain the welfare state. Similarly, people have little incentive to use resources sparingly, because they are taking resources from people who are genetically dissimilar to them, as opposed to people who are similar to them.
From a Darwinian perspective, would you rather rob your brother or your cousin, if forced to choose? This is what goes on in our society today. As communities become less homogeneous, the people in those communities become less supportive towards each other. And hence, as a result, communities do not take care of themselves any more. Solidarity is replaced by insurance companies. Health care has to be formalized, as neighbours become unwilling to ensure the elderly woman living next door doesn't walk around in confusion outside. Society breaks down, and people begin to care about just themselves and their nuclear family.
Conclusion
There are also arguments in favour of exogamous marriage, which I do not seek to deny. As an example, Europe may see exogamous marriage as a solution to their multicultural crisis, by abolishing multiculturalism through assimilation. Furthermore, beneficial genes such as resistance against malaria and HIV and tolerance of high altitudes can spread through the human gene pool through exogamous marriage.
However, we rarely hear the arguments against exogamous marriage, as we as a society have moved towards endorsing exogamous marriage, while the arguments against exogamous marriage in practice tend to exceed those in favour of it.
However, this poses a problem for people who have fallen in love with spouses of different ethnicities. A good solution to this problem is for society as a whole to create the type of conditions in which this dilemma does not emerge to begin with, through nationalism. People of different backgrounds and shared culture and history should seek to live together, as it has many benefits beyond just preventing the problems outlined above.
However, it should be noted that we should move further beyond just nationalism based on race or ethnicity. The problem lies deeper. Humans evolved to marry kin, and live with kin. Society should be tribal in nature, with people holding allegiance to their extended family, and marrying within their extended family.
This is how traditional societies around the world have lived for centuries in peace and stability. Castes have historically not been seen as a source of oppression as they are seen today due to individualist propaganda, but as a source of support. No man is an island, and every man is dependent upon his family to take care of him and defend him. Such a situation is more desirable, and better aligned with our human instincts than a situation in which government and corporations take over tasks that were once reserved to families.
Lastly, I understand that this essay is inevitably offensive, and I have tried to treat this issue in a sensitive manner. I do not wish misery upon any ethnicity or race, nor do I carry ill wishes towards people for any characteristics that they did not choose themselves. Instead I simply seek to live in the type of society in which every family can live in alignment with the type of lifestyle in which the human species evolved and in which I believe it will feel most comfortable.
References
1 - http://articles.latimes.com/2003/sep/11/nation/na-jews11
2 - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903454504576486492588283556.html
3 - http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0031703
4 - http://www.anth.uconn.edu/degree_programs/ecolevo/offspring_resemb.pdf
5 - http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110117/full/news.2011.23.html
6 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpmlqtnrec8
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Technology destroys Tradition
Technology destroys Tradition
by Majid83
05 - 05 - 12
The greatest failure of conservatives has always been their inability to connect cause and effect. Conservatives throw temper tantrums against modernity and the erosion of traditional values, and seek to combat the rising tide by attacking the excesses of modernity, but their only successes consist of the delaying of bills that will inevitably pass.
As an example, conservatives will protest abortion clinics, "satanic music", genetic engineering of humans and other organisms, gay marriage and pornography, without seeking to address the causes of these new developments. Hence they are continually wasting their energy attacking symptoms of modernity without understanding the underlying causes.
They fear that gay marriage will lead to the end of the sacred character of marriage. This despite their own political leaders cheating on their partners, with the most shameful example being Newt Gingrich who divorced his wife after she was hospitalized.
Most of the fears and concerns of conservatives are fully justified. Modernity is eroding traditions and values that have existed for hundreds of years. Marriage can no longer provide the certainty it once gave us, and neither can religion, employment, family and neighborhood. All of these would once last you a lifetime, but are now as exchangeable and temporary as the cell phone in your pocket.
Many conservatives react to this widespread uncertainty by reinventing their religion, in an attempt to create an environment and a mindset that can block modernity out of their lives. Ultra-Orthodox Judaism, Salafism, and Fundamentalist Baptism are modern movements without the historical tradition they claim to posses. Salafists may claim to emulate the rightly guided companions of the Prophet Muhammed, but their leaders derive their intellectual inspiration from a 20th century Egyptian man named Sayyid Qutb.
All three of these religions have in common that they have gone through a constant centuries long evolution. As their environment changed, the religion adopted. As an example, when the Jews found themselves living in Europe, their original tribal religion become a scholarly religion. Similarly, Islam evolved from its barbaric origins, obvious to anyone who is not blinded by personal ideology or belief, into a religion that incorporated an intellectual and metaphysical tradition.
However, with the dawn of the Industrial revolution, the changes demanded of religion by modernity became so large that the actual survival of many religions became threatened. As an example, almost every religion incorporates a creation myth, none of which are fully compatible with the 19th century formulation of evolution, or the scientifically established age of the earth. Similarly, the development of reliable birth control, abortion and treatment for sexually transmittable diseases meant that traditional attitudes towards sex and marriages were no longer as self evident as they were when these attitudes developed.
One logical reaction to this newfound crisis was to proclaim that the apocalypse was upon us. The newfound crisis is a test of faith, and all but the few most devout ones will lose their religion and suffer as a result of it. This leads to such apocalyptic sects as the Jehovah's witnesses, whose track record includes multiple failed predictions of the end.
Others sought to reconcile their faith with the continually increasing demands put upon it by modernity, not realizing that with every step their religion descends further into irrelevance, with their prophet turning into little more than a sockpuppet for the modern ideology of egalitarian humanism who happened to be centuries ahead of his time.
If modern society comes to the conclusion as a result of horrific genocides and the development of nuclear weapons that warfare is no longer a tolerable option, scripture can be quote-mined in search of statements preaching peace and egalitarianism.
The religious concede that God did not create humans 6000 years, but "guided" evolution. Scientists encourage them into this pathway by telling them that religion and evolution are compatible and many Christians believe in Evolution. Eventually, these same Christians who bought the first step are required to profess that organism did not evolve through guided evolution or "intelligent design", but came about by naturalistic Darwinian selection as a result of mutations that were random as opposed to guided. Eventually those same Christians are forced to concede that the first cell was the result of a series of chemical reaction that favored the development of increasingly longer self-replicating molecules that can spontaneously arise, given the right conditions, which existed in many different places in the universe.
They are then forced to concede that humans have an imperfect design that might as well be fixed by scientists in the coming decades through gene-therapy and pre-implantation embryo selection. They went from "Homosexuality is a sin" to "Homosexuality can be treated" to "Homosexuality is an impulse that can can be resisted" to "Gays should not marry" to "Gays should not adopt children". In the coming decades, they will be forced to step over to "Gays should not be allowed to use genetic technology to create a child that has two biological fathers".
Intelligent and honest Christians look ahead, see that the end of the line is Naturalistic Atheism, drop out and intellectually shield themselves from the modern world. Intelligent but dishonest Christians try to remain vague about their religious beliefs to themselves and anyone who questions them about them. Their religious faith is a pillar of certainty that they hold on to, that they do not seek to destabilize by defining it and hence exposing it to scrutiny. It goes without saying that the certainty this pillar delivers is continually shrinking as well. What defines modern Christianity is the continual struggle against personal disbelief, which is an element that played a negligible role until recent times, and hence, technology changes the very nature of what it means to be religious.
Those same conservatives who choose to oppose the concessions demanded of them by modernity have a habit of feeding the very machine that demands these concessions of them. They profess a faith in unlimited economic and technological growth, without ever questioning whether economic and technological growth create the very conditions that erode the values and traditions that they seek to maintain.
As some examples, the car, much favored by modern conservatives, allows people to drive to the supermarket. Hence, local stores receive too few customers to maintain themselves, forcing them to close. Hence, more people are forced to go to the supermarket, and hence, more local stores close. Youth who used to drink in their own local bar now prefer to go to the larger café in the city. Hence, they disappear out of sight of their neighbors, who don't know the local youth anymore and feel threatened by them.
The television leads to neighbors who do not know each other, with the computer going a step further and leading to family members that don't know each other. Conservatives see their marriages fall apart and conclude that a ban on gay marriage may help to turn the rising tide.
Seeing the uncertainty brought about by the end of social class, conservatives encourage their children to go to college in an attempt to secure a higher place in the modern meritocracy. Being highly educated, the children become unwilling to carry out the jobs that society is capable of offering them, as they were promised they could do something they wanted by parents who were desperate to climb the social ladder. Easy communication with the homeland and rapid transportation mean that immigrants can now come in to fulfill the jobs that were once carried out by working class people who are now shoved into offices.
Conservatives see crime rates rise as their neighborhoods become "multicultural". They decide to feed into the machine by demanding stronger law enforcement. Disputes that would once be solved by families now become solved by police, as even loud music or a ball kicked through a window now require the intervention of law enforcement. As a result, loyalty to any family members outside of the direct nuclear family serves no genuine purpose anymore, as families are no longer reliant upon themselves for protection.
Similarly, a demand to an end of nepotism and political dynasties in favor of the merciless competition of the individualist meritocracy helps to eliminate loyalty between family members. Uncles can no longer carry out mutually beneficial favors to their nephews by inviting them into a corporate hierarchy.
Technology is the anathema to everything that is sacred. It is capable of dismantling religion by shredding those very elements of human existence of the transcendental mystery that once made us bow down before a power that is greater than us. Through sex education, birth control, pregnancy tests, hospital births, prenatal ultrasounds, in vitro fertilization and soon "designer babies", it manages to desecrate the miracle of human birth. Through evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, biology, pedagogy and behavioral techniques it is rapidly desecrating the miracle of the human mind.
Is it any wonder that the only people who have managed to keep traditional values intact are those who have kept their traditional lifestyle intact?
The question that conservatives should ask themselves is what price they are willing to pay to maintain the values and traditions that they hold in such high esteem. If you value monogamy and life-long pairing, would you be willing to accept a few cases of syphilitic insanity and disfigurement as the cost to maintain such a life style, or would you prefer to eliminate the "punishments" that promiscuity inflicts? If you value strong family ties, are you willing to keep your children home instead of sending them to elementary school? Are you willing to accept family feuds and nepotism?
The conservatives that realize the difficulty of issues such as these tend to choose for a middle of the road solution, one which is reasonable, although inevitably requiring new concessions on the side of the conservative. Consider for example, the bioconservatives. Bioconservatives oppose the genetic modification in any of the organisms present on our planet.
It is now possible e to screen fertilized eggs for certain genetic variations before their are implanted into the womb. This would allow us to eliminate serious genetic problems from our children, but can just as easily be used to choose characteristics such as hair color, skin colors or facial appearance. Bioconservatives tend to oppose all such procedures.
On some issues, the bioconservative can easily expect majority support of the people. As an example, a bioconservative who opposes allowing parents to choose to have a white skinned child through pre-implantation genetic diagnosis would receive majority support. Bioconservatives who oppose allowing parents to use such procedures to only have children of normal intelligence would have it a little more difficult. Finally, bioconservatives who oppose allowing parents to use such procedures to only have children free of deadly genetic mutations (such as an inherited risk of breast cancer), stand no chance in the public debate.
Yet, every genetic variation that the bioconservative allows parents to consciously choose in their children, inevitably increases demand to allow more genetic tinkering. As an example, if severe intellectual disability (Down syndrome for example) can be eliminated, there will be greater pressure on people whose children suffer mild intellectual disability to prevent their children from being born. Similarly, if Huntington's disease can be eliminated, those with a predisposition to Alzheimer's disease will feel a greater pressure to eliminate those genes from their offspring as well.
Reasons for this increasing pressure include the fact that a spouse with a disposition to Huntington's disease might now be considered the worst possible option for a lifelong relationship. However, when Huntington's disease has been eliminated, those with a genetic disposition to Alzheimer's disease might become the new "worst possible option" for a lifelong relationship.
Similarly, through genetic modification of plants, scientists will be able to announce that they could save millions of lives worldwide, if only it weren't for those "bioluddites" who oppose genetic engineering. Hence, all that the modernists will have to do is shout an increasingly greater death toll which is blamed on those who oppose modernity. This is what happens to be the case with the Trojan Horse of Golden Rice. Bioconservatives are fooled into destroying their own credibility by using the wrong type of arguments when first confronted with Golden Rice, by claiming that Golden Rice is ineffective as it produces too little of the newly introduced nutrient. When the new version comes out, Bioconservatives successfully destroyed their own credibility by having to change their argument.
Although my case study, the bioconservative, is without a doubt a very special subspecies of conservative, his problem can be extrapolated to that of other conservatives as well. He isn't resisting the train of modernity. He is sticking his feet in the sand as he is being dragged along by the train, while progressives shout at him, encouraging him to climb aboard to make his trip less painful for him.
It is for this reason that the definition of a modern conservative is a person who seeks to maintain that which he has already lost.
An effective conservative has to flat out state that he opposes mankind's attempt to reshape his universe in his image. An effective conservative upholds that before humans through the Industrial revolution amplified their power over nature, a self-regulating order existed that was created by nobody (or, alternatively, God), chosen by nobody, but created a certainty and a stability to which humans and other organisms could adjust with a minimum amount of pressure. The Industrial revolution and the societal changes that grew out of it destroyed the equilibrium that existed before it and through the use of psychology and biotechnology is now preparing to wipe away the last remnants of the old order that existed before it.
Conservatives should draw the distinction between the natural spontaneously arising order in the absence of modern technology, and the man-made (though uncontrollable), self-augmenting, self-regulating order that is the product of industrial civilization. Conservatives should firmly ally with the former if they seek to maintain the value pattern and traditions that grew out of it.
by Majid83
05 - 05 - 12
The greatest failure of conservatives has always been their inability to connect cause and effect. Conservatives throw temper tantrums against modernity and the erosion of traditional values, and seek to combat the rising tide by attacking the excesses of modernity, but their only successes consist of the delaying of bills that will inevitably pass.
As an example, conservatives will protest abortion clinics, "satanic music", genetic engineering of humans and other organisms, gay marriage and pornography, without seeking to address the causes of these new developments. Hence they are continually wasting their energy attacking symptoms of modernity without understanding the underlying causes.
They fear that gay marriage will lead to the end of the sacred character of marriage. This despite their own political leaders cheating on their partners, with the most shameful example being Newt Gingrich who divorced his wife after she was hospitalized.
Most of the fears and concerns of conservatives are fully justified. Modernity is eroding traditions and values that have existed for hundreds of years. Marriage can no longer provide the certainty it once gave us, and neither can religion, employment, family and neighborhood. All of these would once last you a lifetime, but are now as exchangeable and temporary as the cell phone in your pocket.
Many conservatives react to this widespread uncertainty by reinventing their religion, in an attempt to create an environment and a mindset that can block modernity out of their lives. Ultra-Orthodox Judaism, Salafism, and Fundamentalist Baptism are modern movements without the historical tradition they claim to posses. Salafists may claim to emulate the rightly guided companions of the Prophet Muhammed, but their leaders derive their intellectual inspiration from a 20th century Egyptian man named Sayyid Qutb.
All three of these religions have in common that they have gone through a constant centuries long evolution. As their environment changed, the religion adopted. As an example, when the Jews found themselves living in Europe, their original tribal religion become a scholarly religion. Similarly, Islam evolved from its barbaric origins, obvious to anyone who is not blinded by personal ideology or belief, into a religion that incorporated an intellectual and metaphysical tradition.
However, with the dawn of the Industrial revolution, the changes demanded of religion by modernity became so large that the actual survival of many religions became threatened. As an example, almost every religion incorporates a creation myth, none of which are fully compatible with the 19th century formulation of evolution, or the scientifically established age of the earth. Similarly, the development of reliable birth control, abortion and treatment for sexually transmittable diseases meant that traditional attitudes towards sex and marriages were no longer as self evident as they were when these attitudes developed.
One logical reaction to this newfound crisis was to proclaim that the apocalypse was upon us. The newfound crisis is a test of faith, and all but the few most devout ones will lose their religion and suffer as a result of it. This leads to such apocalyptic sects as the Jehovah's witnesses, whose track record includes multiple failed predictions of the end.
Others sought to reconcile their faith with the continually increasing demands put upon it by modernity, not realizing that with every step their religion descends further into irrelevance, with their prophet turning into little more than a sockpuppet for the modern ideology of egalitarian humanism who happened to be centuries ahead of his time.
If modern society comes to the conclusion as a result of horrific genocides and the development of nuclear weapons that warfare is no longer a tolerable option, scripture can be quote-mined in search of statements preaching peace and egalitarianism.
The religious concede that God did not create humans 6000 years, but "guided" evolution. Scientists encourage them into this pathway by telling them that religion and evolution are compatible and many Christians believe in Evolution. Eventually, these same Christians who bought the first step are required to profess that organism did not evolve through guided evolution or "intelligent design", but came about by naturalistic Darwinian selection as a result of mutations that were random as opposed to guided. Eventually those same Christians are forced to concede that the first cell was the result of a series of chemical reaction that favored the development of increasingly longer self-replicating molecules that can spontaneously arise, given the right conditions, which existed in many different places in the universe.
They are then forced to concede that humans have an imperfect design that might as well be fixed by scientists in the coming decades through gene-therapy and pre-implantation embryo selection. They went from "Homosexuality is a sin" to "Homosexuality can be treated" to "Homosexuality is an impulse that can can be resisted" to "Gays should not marry" to "Gays should not adopt children". In the coming decades, they will be forced to step over to "Gays should not be allowed to use genetic technology to create a child that has two biological fathers".
Intelligent and honest Christians look ahead, see that the end of the line is Naturalistic Atheism, drop out and intellectually shield themselves from the modern world. Intelligent but dishonest Christians try to remain vague about their religious beliefs to themselves and anyone who questions them about them. Their religious faith is a pillar of certainty that they hold on to, that they do not seek to destabilize by defining it and hence exposing it to scrutiny. It goes without saying that the certainty this pillar delivers is continually shrinking as well. What defines modern Christianity is the continual struggle against personal disbelief, which is an element that played a negligible role until recent times, and hence, technology changes the very nature of what it means to be religious.
Those same conservatives who choose to oppose the concessions demanded of them by modernity have a habit of feeding the very machine that demands these concessions of them. They profess a faith in unlimited economic and technological growth, without ever questioning whether economic and technological growth create the very conditions that erode the values and traditions that they seek to maintain.
As some examples, the car, much favored by modern conservatives, allows people to drive to the supermarket. Hence, local stores receive too few customers to maintain themselves, forcing them to close. Hence, more people are forced to go to the supermarket, and hence, more local stores close. Youth who used to drink in their own local bar now prefer to go to the larger café in the city. Hence, they disappear out of sight of their neighbors, who don't know the local youth anymore and feel threatened by them.
The television leads to neighbors who do not know each other, with the computer going a step further and leading to family members that don't know each other. Conservatives see their marriages fall apart and conclude that a ban on gay marriage may help to turn the rising tide.
Seeing the uncertainty brought about by the end of social class, conservatives encourage their children to go to college in an attempt to secure a higher place in the modern meritocracy. Being highly educated, the children become unwilling to carry out the jobs that society is capable of offering them, as they were promised they could do something they wanted by parents who were desperate to climb the social ladder. Easy communication with the homeland and rapid transportation mean that immigrants can now come in to fulfill the jobs that were once carried out by working class people who are now shoved into offices.
Conservatives see crime rates rise as their neighborhoods become "multicultural". They decide to feed into the machine by demanding stronger law enforcement. Disputes that would once be solved by families now become solved by police, as even loud music or a ball kicked through a window now require the intervention of law enforcement. As a result, loyalty to any family members outside of the direct nuclear family serves no genuine purpose anymore, as families are no longer reliant upon themselves for protection.
Similarly, a demand to an end of nepotism and political dynasties in favor of the merciless competition of the individualist meritocracy helps to eliminate loyalty between family members. Uncles can no longer carry out mutually beneficial favors to their nephews by inviting them into a corporate hierarchy.
Technology is the anathema to everything that is sacred. It is capable of dismantling religion by shredding those very elements of human existence of the transcendental mystery that once made us bow down before a power that is greater than us. Through sex education, birth control, pregnancy tests, hospital births, prenatal ultrasounds, in vitro fertilization and soon "designer babies", it manages to desecrate the miracle of human birth. Through evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, biology, pedagogy and behavioral techniques it is rapidly desecrating the miracle of the human mind.
Is it any wonder that the only people who have managed to keep traditional values intact are those who have kept their traditional lifestyle intact?
The question that conservatives should ask themselves is what price they are willing to pay to maintain the values and traditions that they hold in such high esteem. If you value monogamy and life-long pairing, would you be willing to accept a few cases of syphilitic insanity and disfigurement as the cost to maintain such a life style, or would you prefer to eliminate the "punishments" that promiscuity inflicts? If you value strong family ties, are you willing to keep your children home instead of sending them to elementary school? Are you willing to accept family feuds and nepotism?
The conservatives that realize the difficulty of issues such as these tend to choose for a middle of the road solution, one which is reasonable, although inevitably requiring new concessions on the side of the conservative. Consider for example, the bioconservatives. Bioconservatives oppose the genetic modification in any of the organisms present on our planet.
It is now possible e to screen fertilized eggs for certain genetic variations before their are implanted into the womb. This would allow us to eliminate serious genetic problems from our children, but can just as easily be used to choose characteristics such as hair color, skin colors or facial appearance. Bioconservatives tend to oppose all such procedures.
On some issues, the bioconservative can easily expect majority support of the people. As an example, a bioconservative who opposes allowing parents to choose to have a white skinned child through pre-implantation genetic diagnosis would receive majority support. Bioconservatives who oppose allowing parents to use such procedures to only have children of normal intelligence would have it a little more difficult. Finally, bioconservatives who oppose allowing parents to use such procedures to only have children free of deadly genetic mutations (such as an inherited risk of breast cancer), stand no chance in the public debate.
Yet, every genetic variation that the bioconservative allows parents to consciously choose in their children, inevitably increases demand to allow more genetic tinkering. As an example, if severe intellectual disability (Down syndrome for example) can be eliminated, there will be greater pressure on people whose children suffer mild intellectual disability to prevent their children from being born. Similarly, if Huntington's disease can be eliminated, those with a predisposition to Alzheimer's disease will feel a greater pressure to eliminate those genes from their offspring as well.
Reasons for this increasing pressure include the fact that a spouse with a disposition to Huntington's disease might now be considered the worst possible option for a lifelong relationship. However, when Huntington's disease has been eliminated, those with a genetic disposition to Alzheimer's disease might become the new "worst possible option" for a lifelong relationship.
Similarly, through genetic modification of plants, scientists will be able to announce that they could save millions of lives worldwide, if only it weren't for those "bioluddites" who oppose genetic engineering. Hence, all that the modernists will have to do is shout an increasingly greater death toll which is blamed on those who oppose modernity. This is what happens to be the case with the Trojan Horse of Golden Rice. Bioconservatives are fooled into destroying their own credibility by using the wrong type of arguments when first confronted with Golden Rice, by claiming that Golden Rice is ineffective as it produces too little of the newly introduced nutrient. When the new version comes out, Bioconservatives successfully destroyed their own credibility by having to change their argument.
Although my case study, the bioconservative, is without a doubt a very special subspecies of conservative, his problem can be extrapolated to that of other conservatives as well. He isn't resisting the train of modernity. He is sticking his feet in the sand as he is being dragged along by the train, while progressives shout at him, encouraging him to climb aboard to make his trip less painful for him.
It is for this reason that the definition of a modern conservative is a person who seeks to maintain that which he has already lost.
An effective conservative has to flat out state that he opposes mankind's attempt to reshape his universe in his image. An effective conservative upholds that before humans through the Industrial revolution amplified their power over nature, a self-regulating order existed that was created by nobody (or, alternatively, God), chosen by nobody, but created a certainty and a stability to which humans and other organisms could adjust with a minimum amount of pressure. The Industrial revolution and the societal changes that grew out of it destroyed the equilibrium that existed before it and through the use of psychology and biotechnology is now preparing to wipe away the last remnants of the old order that existed before it.
Conservatives should draw the distinction between the natural spontaneously arising order in the absence of modern technology, and the man-made (though uncontrollable), self-augmenting, self-regulating order that is the product of industrial civilization. Conservatives should firmly ally with the former if they seek to maintain the value pattern and traditions that grew out of it.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
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