How Genetic Changes Explain Why the West is So Utterly Polar

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That seems like eugenics to me. I have a fear of eugenics.

He's also a genetic determinist who's ignoring that it's perfectly possible to grow up in different worlds within one country, like, say, the US. Britain. Germany. Even in a tiny country like Austria, you can grow up in Vienna, or grow down in some small town, to paraphrase Lou Reed.

And he's oblivious to how polar western society used to be. Remember when fascists were demonstrating openly and faeces were thrown at them, in Britain, and a huge riot broke out? That was 1936.
Or when the Hugenots were slaughtered in 1572?

So, capitalism has convulsed lately, and the fault-lines of the 20th century have returned.
Socialism - the last big economic idea that spread globally within less than a century - is back, after it was briefly thought to have gone, because capitalism had adopted some of its ideas (and subsequently dropped them again).
And, as someone somewhere wrote, fascism is the socialism of the poor - fascism is back as well.
In other words: fewer people are believing moderate measures or neoliberal management without substantial changes to the framework can fix things. So they're picking the side they are leaning towards a bit anyway and off we go.

I'd refer you back to the twins study in the Atlantic article.


Yeah, it actually seems more of a return from unnaturally good times back to the normal flow of history.


At the same time it's also center center-left technocrats who aren't having children. That's probably something we want to focus more on fixing somehow.

Center left technicrats? Oh, you mean, culturally "left", as in "liberals". ... Maybe all we need to fix is the angle from which we view things: people who are making a living taking advantage of some amount of opportunity to gain a moderate amount of wealth under a system that punishes them first socially, then financially for having children aren't having children. I wonder why.
Whereas people who are not taking advantage of social opportunities in the same way (or who aren't under pressure to do so) and therefore do not get punished in several ways at once still are having children.

Since left and right are poor descriptors for the factions at twitter-war with each other, maybe left-right-and-center isn't a good categorization here either?

It might be a bit like this - if you have high intelligence, care about how the world works, and want to make it a better place through non-utopian means, you'll be a very busy person whose taking very few shortcuts. People who are willing to take shortcuts or who either don't care about making the world a better place (only lip-service it) or have utopian fantasies where they just have to do action x or get rid of x group in power are able to do better for a couple reasons a) fewer time and availability constraints and b) from my description of them they're already more cautious and less limbic, which pretty much sets them up to lose the procreative fitness race.

Another problem to tack on to the above when thinking it from the male side - you aren't really 'bold' or showing 'alpha' traits unless you're throwing your head and neck under the sword, ie. being willing to fall on it for the sake of getting five or six kids into the world by different moms and penning checks from an apartment for the rest of your life. This seems to echo something in nature where if you aren't willing to just to about take your own life to get your seed out then you're unworthy to get your seed out. That's perhaps part of where we really need to think about how we're training young men and women to think about life and about each other, ie. the best educated generally fail the hardest.

I think of this as yet another way where our incentive structures are having consequences that could only have been written deliberately if people in power wanted to torch the society they live in to feed their kids. My best guess is that this is just nature sort of pulling us back to where it wants us which is closer to our animal baseline and so it'd be a bit like a genetic correction - ie. away from intelligence and closer to limbic orientation to life where religious fundamentalism, hyperfecundity, and violence are all perfectly fine.

"There's no such thing as society, only individuals and their families" - Margaret Thatcher

It's the official rules, man!

Yeah, neoliberalism can love a donkey.

I was going to type a real response but then I passed out laughing at the thought that this level of 'polarity' is unique to 'the west' now or at any time in history. Because as we all know [sarcasm goggles] "the west" has always been known for: unity, political moderation, understanding of those who do not share your views or background, and general genetic special-ness.

Not to mention that this whole thing activated my eugenics gag-reflex.

You're virtuous. TY for sharing.