More thoughts. The evolution of a word

 

Are you assaulting me because I’m White?

How do you react to this poster? Is it antiracist or racist? Why?

The word “racist” is so common today that you may have trouble imagining a time when neither the word nor the concept existed. Yet such a time did exist, and not so long ago.

The first appearances of this word seem to date to the 1920s, in both English and French. At that time “racist” was a translation of the German völkisch and, as such, referred to the “blood and soil” nationalism so prevalent in Germany and in other countries that looked to Germany as a model (Taguieff, 2013, p. 1528). It remained a rather esoteric term during the interwar years, being narrow not only in its range of meaning but also in the political spectrum of those who used it—essentially the left, if not the far left.(1)

All of this changed with the Second World War. At first, the word “racist” was used mainly in postwar Europe—as part of the effort to root out ex-Nazis and their collaborators. Bit by bit, however, it became more widely used elsewhere, particularly in the contexts of race relations in the United States and colonialism in Africa and Asia. It also began to appear in the emerging context of Afro-Asian immigration to Western Europe. “Racists” were no longer Nazis. They could in fact be people who had valiantly fought against Nazi Germany.

Yet there were certain unspoken limits. By and large, this word was not directed against non-Europeans. Even today, it just doesn’t sound right when applied to a man with brown or black skin, no matter how intolerant he might be. A racist should at least look like a Nazi.

Besides becoming broader in meaning, this term also became less descriptive and more pejorative. It took on a highly emotional intent, even more so than words like “bastard!” or “liar!” Pierre-André Taguieff describes this transformation:

[…] over the last thirty years of the 20^th century, the word “racism” became an insult in everyday language (“racist!” “dirty racist!”), an insult derived from the racist insult par excellence (“dirty nigger!”, “dirty Jew!”), and given a symbolic illegitimating power as strong as the political insult “fascist!” or “dirty fascist!”. To say an individual is “racist” is to stigmatize him, to assign him to a heinous category, and to abuse him verbally […] The “racist” individual is thus expelled from the realm of common humanity and excluded from the circle of humans who are deemed respectable by virtue of their intrinsic worth. Through a symbolic act that antiracist sociologists denounce as a way of “racializing” the Other, the “racist” is in turn and in return categorized as an “unworthy” being, indeed as an “unworthy” being par excellence. For, as people say, what can be worse than racism? (Taguieff, 2013, p. 1528)

What can be worse than racism? The question would have been incomprehensible a hundred years ago—and not just because the word didn’t exist yet. The underlying concept didn’t exist. People did not consider it sinful to prefer the company of their kith and kin. Nor did they consider it unfair to judge non-kith and non-kin by a higher standard. Such individuals existed outside one’s moral community and could not be trusted to the same degree as someone within it. So where’s the unfairness? And where’s the sin?

Note 

1. The first author to use the term raciste seems to have been Leo Trotsky in his work Histoire de la revolution russe (1930), in which he applied it to traditionalist Russian slavophiles. During the late 1930s, and with the rise of Nazism, it became much more negative than the German term it had originally translated, so much so that a German anti-Nazi, Magnus Hirschfeld, introduced it into German for his work Rassismus. His book then appeared in English translation under the title Racism (1938). This was the first appearance of the term “racism” in the title of a book, and it was really at that point in time that it entered the language of academics and political activists (Taguieff, 2013, p. 844; Wikipedia, 2013).

References 

Taguieff, P-A. (2013). Dictionnaire historique et critique du racisme, Paris: PUF.

 

Wikipedia (2013). Racisme - Étymologie

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racisme#cite_note-10

 

 

Thoughts on the Paris spring

Antifa badge (Norway). Antiracism is now part of a legally enforced system of values and norms. Its followers are surreptitiously becoming the underlings of authority, even to the point of becoming a secret police that does the regrettable but necessary “dirty work.” (source)

 

Something is happening in France. Will this “Paris spring” end up like the Prague Spring of 1968? Or more like the Velvet Revolution of 1989? One thing is sure. There is a greater willingness to speak out on various taboo subjects, one of which is race and racism.

This may be seen in a soon-to-be-published book, Dictionnaire historique et critique du racisme, which shifts the spotlight of critical analysis from racism to antiracism. Its editor, Pierre-André Taguieff, chooses his words carefully. As he points out, “antiracism” is not just a word but also a norm, and one cannot objectively describe a norm without offending those who feel bound by it. To be objective is to blur the distinction between Good and Evil.

Pierre-André resolves this dilemma by arguing that antiracism has violated its own stated norms. It has abandoned its original values of doubt, debate, criticism, and free enquiry. It has moved out of the academy and into the police department. It has become the antithesis of what it once was.

He describes this reversal, and why it came about:

[Since WWII] Western antiracism has taken the form of an ongoing anti-Nazism, or of a neo-anti-Nazism in search of "neo-Nazis" who are believed to carry the racist ideology. Hence the temptation to "Nazify" all phenomena perceived as being racist, beginning with nationalist movements of whatever sort. Shaped by anti-Nazi activism, the antiracism of the 1950s to 1970s was governed by the conviction that racist views [thèses racistes] were errors due to ignorance or to the power of prejudices, errors that scientists could and must rectify after denouncing them. When not a villain, a racist could be only an ignorant person, a man who was misleading himself or who had been misled. The good news of antiracist activists could be summed up in one sentence: racism was not in any way “scientific.” Antiracism was defined ideally as a fight that the Enlightened were waging against the darkness of ignorance or false ideas—the historical incarnation par excellence being the racism of the Nazis and the racism of colonial regimes (during the era of decolonization). This antiracism, incarnated by the authorized discourse of biologists (and geneticists in particular), has thus long dominated antiracist practices since the first UNESCO declarations in the early 1950s. “Scientific” antiracism embraced an ideal that flowed from rationalist humanism: through instruction and education, we shall create a world where, with the disappearance of errors, prejudices, and illusions, racism will survive only as an archaism, a relic of the past, a past we have fortunately transcended.

This faith that racism will inevitably wither away seems to have evaporated. Antiracist activism has gone from historical optimism to anthropological pessimism. If the racist is no longer an ignorant person but rather a villain, and if he is defined by his impulses or negative passions (hate, aggressive intolerance, etc.), then the evil is in him, and his case seems hopeless. The antiracist’s task is no longer to lead the "racist" towards goodness, but rather to isolate him as a carrier of evil. The "racist" must be singled out and stigmatized. The task is now only to make him powerless by imposing legal penalties, at the risk of reestablishing ideological censorship and limiting freedom of expression.

[…] With racism being illegal and illicit, and with antiracism now part of a legally enforced system of values and norms, antiracists have also ceased to stand for criticism and questioning. Through a related process, antiracist organizations are no longer functioning as an opposition to authority. They are surreptitiously becoming the underlings [auxiliaires] of authority.

[…] As the fight against racism becomes increasingly State-owned and professionalized, many antiracists have lost their status as freethinkers who oppose authority, and antiracism has taken on the face of repressive policing. Is there not a risk that the hyper-legalism of contemporary antiracism is leading it into hyper-conformism? Are antiracists forsaking the Sorbonne for the police department? Are they drifting away from the fight for justice and truth, preferring instead the dreary hunt for delinquents who say or write the wrong things? (Taguieff, 2013)

Like Pierre-André, I was once involved in the antiracist movement. Like him, I deplore the totalitarian turn it has taken. I am less sanguine, however, about the prospects for returning it to its original values. Once antiracism had secured a monopoly over intellectual discourse, it no longer needed to engage in intellectual debate, and its priority naturally became one of maintaining this monopoly. Why should antiracism now jeopardize its privileged status by engaging in self-criticism and allowing debate, or even doubt? To be true to its original values? But those values were situational, a compromise between long-term goals and the realities of the moment. Circumstances change, and it’s not at all unusual for an ideology to go from a libertarian stage to a totalitarian one.

Yes, the reverse can also happen … sometimes. In such cases, however, the real reason is not a desire to return to original values. It’s a growing conviction, particularly among the intelligentsia, that something has gone terribly wrong and that a change in direction is imperative. Typically, the only way to legitimize the new direction is to make it seem consistent with original values. 

This was the case with the short-lived Prague Spring:

Those who drafted the Action Programme were careful not to criticize the actions of the post-war Communist regime, only to point out policies that they felt had outlived their usefulness. For instance, the immediate post-war situation had required "centralist and directive-administrative methods" to fight against the "remnants of the bourgeoisie." Since the "antagonistic classes" were said to have been defeated with the achievement of socialism, these methods were no longer necessary (Wikipedia, 2013)

That strategy worked well enough inside Czechoslovakia. Outside, not so well. The Prague Spring was brutally crushed by the other members of the Warsaw Pact. For the next twenty years, that country’s leaders, like those elsewhere in Eastern Europe, maintained the status quo by making consumer goods more available (at the cost of a growing mountain of debt) and by controlling intellectual dissent more effectively.

Which scenario will play out in France? An abortive Prague Spring or a more promising Velvet Revolution? Much will depend on what goes on in the minds of our antiracist friends. When I ask them about the need for debate and self-criticism, I typically get a blank look. Debate? What is there to debate? Criticism? What is there to criticize? Most of them prefer to think in terms of stricter control and surveillance. If France, or any European country, does abandon globalism, or simply moves away from it, they will be clamoring for intervention by an outside power. Just like in Prague, 1968.

References

Mahler, T. (2013). Taguieff : le racism a son encyclopédie, May 9, Le Point, pp. 2-4

Taguieff, P-A. (2013). Dictionnaire historique et critique du racisme, Paris: PUF.

Taguieff, P-A. (2013). Réflexions sur la « lutte contre le racisme. », May 7, Le Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/pierreandre-taguieff/lutte-contre-le-racisme_b_2915909.html?utm_hp_ref=france

Wikipedia (2013). Prague Spring

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring

 

Cultural modernity and behavioral modernity

 

Where’s the beard? And the headscarf? In this photo from the 1980s, the Tsarnaevs look secular and modern (Source: Paris Match)

Much has been made of radical Islam and its role in shaping the mental makeup of the Tsarnaev brothers. During their formative years, however, they were scarcely even nominal Muslims. Although their father was Chechen and their mother Avar (another Caucasus nationality), the language spoken at home was Russian, and their culture was the secular and increasingly Westernized one of late Soviet society. At that time, the cultural referents were largely those of the 1980s: heavy metal, New Wave, and Michael Jackson.

Religious radicalization would not begin until much later, after their family had emigrated to the U.S. and specifically in 2008 when the older brother, Tamerlan, stopped drinking and smoking and started attending a local mosque (Wikipedia, 2013).

Already, however, Tamerlan was having problems with anger control. In 2007, he confronted a Brazilian youth who had dated his younger sister and punched him in the face. In May 2008, his other sister said her husband was cheating on her and beating her up. Tamerlan flew across the country to "straighten up the brains" of his brother-in-law. Although his future American wife converted to Islam and started wearing a hijab in 2008, her conversion did not prevent domestic fights in which he would "fly into rages and sometimes throw furniture or throw things." In 2009, he got involved with another woman, allegedly assaulted her, and was arrested for aggravated domestic assault and battery (Wikipedia, 2013). In 2010, as an aspiring boxer, he entered his opponent’s locker room before the fight to taunt him and the man’s trainer (Sontag et al., 2013). In addition to his bad temper, Tamerlan had other behavioral problems. After his marriage, he stopped working and lived off his wife (who had to put in 70-80 hour weeks as a home health aide) and Massachusetts welfare services (to the tune of over $100,000). “He wasn’t really willing to work. That in my mind made him an unsuitable husband. She worked like crazy for him” (Fisher, 2013).

Failed assimilation?

The Boston bombers are often presented as a case of failed assimilation. In reality, they and their family had already been assimilated into modern secular culture. This was, of course, the authoritarian modernity of the Soviet Union, which severely repressed premodern patterns of behavior, i.e., religion, vendettas, child marriage, seclusion of women, etc. The Soviet Union also dealt harshly with what results when premodern impulses are expressed in a modern social setting, namely “hooliganism” and “parasitism.” By emigrating to the U.S., the Tsarnaevs entered a much freer environment that would eventually enable them—first Tamerlan and then other family members—to return to a cultural system that could bring some control back into their lives.

This phenomenon has been observed not only in immigrant communities of the U.S., but also in those of Western Europe. Islamism has arisen primarily in the relatively free environments of the West, and not in the more authoritarian ones of the Middle East. In many cases, the West has helped radicalize individuals who initially come as students or immigrants and later return to promote Islamism back home. Furthermore, when we in the West intervene to overthrow secular dictatorships in that region—Hussein in Iraq, Mubarak in Egypt, Gaddafi in Libya, Assad in Syria—we unwittingly create optimal conditions for the emergence of radical Islam. We refuse to countenance the possibility that some kind of authoritarianism is necessary to make those societies work. The choice is really whether it will be secular authoritarianism or the ultra-religious kind.

The other Chechen revolution

Another example is Chechnya itself. The first and second Chechen wars (1994-1996, 1999-2000) are usually seen in the West as a reaction to political circumstances, specifically the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the inability of its successor state, the Russian Federation, to maintain political control. The Chechen people thus saw an opportunity to reclaim their independence and took it.

There was also, however, a prior weakening of cultural control that can be traced farther back to the late Soviet period. This was a time when official Communist ideology had become little more than an empty shell and when people began to emulate Western ways. School and parental discipline slowly became more relaxed, under the influence of beliefs that children start off good and are made bad by excessive control.

With the collapse of Communism in 1991, the way was clear for this new vision:

Education reform in the Russia Federation after 1991 was an orchestrated attack on what was now perceived as the ideologically impure Soviet system of education, with its ubiquitous administrative centralization, a bankrupt communist ideology and bureaucratic inefficiency. Hurried attempts were made to Westernize Russian education. […] In Russia, these education reforms represented a radical shift in ideology, knowledge and values and appropriately typified the inevitable outcome of the global Weltanschauung of modernity.

Curriculum reforms and implementation of change in Russia during the early 1990s have been “almost completely permissive” […] The ideas of democracy, humanisation and individuation — the three popular slogans of post-Soviet education reforms, which almost echoed the spirit of the French Revolution — liberty, equality, and fraternity, have successfully challenged the hegemony of Marxism-Leninism in schooling, authority, and curricular control in the teaching/learning process. In subjects’ content and teaching methodology considerably more power at the school-level decision-making has been given to teachers, parents and students. (Zajda, 2005, p. 405)

This was a real cultural revolution, particularly in the Caucasus where “in Chechen families there are very strict rules of behavior with a stern social control” (Mikus Kos, 2009, p. 144). By the 1990s, most teachers had been won over to “modern” notions of child discipline: 

I had an interesting experience working with Chechen and Ingush teachers during the first Chechen war. The prevailing belief was (which was some decades ago the belief in Europe and the USA as well) that all emotional and behavioural problems in children, and even many learning problems, stem from harming influences of the family and that the unique way to cure them was to provide love and understanding to the child. So there was quite a lot of blaming on parents and teachers and feelings of guilt in parents and in teachers who did not succeed in helping children with difficulties and children in distress. When starting to run seminars for teachers from North Caucasus, I was very eager, guided by the best intention to explain that there are biologically “difficult children”, children with temperamental traits which affect the process of socialisation, and that the problems in normal life circumstances are most often the result of interaction between the difficult child and his/her environment, and not only the fault of parents and teachers. (Mikus Kos, 2009, p. 143)

Since the 2000s, discipline has made a comeback under the growing influence of both Islamism and “Putinism.” There is of course the continuing influence of well-meaning Westerners who come to the Caucasus and try to market their own notions of child development, without considering local conditions:

Instead of using existing local knowledge, values and experience, and synthesising them with the new ones, some international trainers bring a well wrapped package of modern concepts and guidelines […] The value of local explanatory models and old practices should be recognised and respected.  Radical changes of paradigm are not working, at least not in practice (Mikus Kos, 2009, p. 144)

A rendez-vous with disaster …

Recent decades have brought a relaxation of external controls over behavior. On the one hand, people from the rest of the world have been emigrating in growing numbers to the West, where behavioral norms are more relaxed. On the other hand, the West has been exporting these same norms to the rest of the world. The situation wouldn’t be so serious if everyone everywhere had the same internal controls over their behavior. But they don’t.

Some societies have gone farther than others along the trajectory that leads to cultural modernity and, in time, behavioral modernity. Wherever strong States have imposed a monopoly on the use of violence, there has been a consequent pacification of social relations, the result being increased trust in strangers and a freer, more open society. This transition also affects the way societies are organized. In premodern societies, the market economy is secondary, being limited to special places at special times, i.e., marketplaces. In modern societies, the market economy is primary and encompasses almost all possible transactions. In premodern societies, kinship is primary, being the main organizing principle of social relations. In modern societies, kinship has little importance beyond the bounds of each nuclear family. The transition from premodernity to modernity in turn leads to a suite of behavioral changes: higher anger thresholds, a more future-oriented time orientation, and a stronger work ethic.

Wherever the social environment has long been pacified, these internal behavioral controls have largely taken over from external cultural controls. Where pacification has been more recent, “correct behavior” is enforced largely through external controls. Not enough time has elapsed to bring behavioral predispositions into line with cultural modernity.

The above analysis may seem unacceptable to most of us. Current discourse allows only two possible causes for the Boston bombings: social exclusion or radical Islam. The “social exclusion” explanation is the weirdest. The Tsarnaevs were accepted as Chechen refugee claimants even though they had spent almost their whole lives outside Chechnya and were in no danger. Tamerlan himself was welcomed with open arms into an American household despite his uncontrollable temper and unwillingness to work. Such indulgence is unusual, and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Tamerlan benefited from an almost pathological fear of seeming to be xenophobic.

The other possible cause, radical Islam, has become the leading explanation, largely by default. But what if Tamerlan had not been radicalized? There would have been no Boston bombings, yes, but sooner or later he would have committed an act of murder or attempted murder (assuming he had not already done so before the bombings) and he would have almost certainly remained a tax consumer, and not a tax payer.

In this latter respect, Tamerlan was not unusual. If we examine immigrant communities of similar backgrounds, their work ethic tends to weaken as they become more and more assimilated. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Turkish population in Germany had a labor-force participation rate higher than that of native Germans. Now, as we enter the 2^nd and 3^rd generations, the picture has completely reversed: 40% unemployment in Berlin and other cities; welfare dependency three times the national rate; and an average retirement age of 50 (Caldwell, 2009, p. 36). This is the paradox we see with many non-European immigrants: the more they become assimilated, the more different they become. They shed the cultural controls that formerly kept their behavior in line.

What, then, will be done? Nothing, probably, other than that the U.S. will become more and more a society under surveillance. One thing that used to make American society so exceptional was its high level of personal security and personal responsibility. Americans didn’t have to fear being sucker-punched by some guy with a problem. They didn’t have to closely monitor the body language and facial expressions of anyone they happened to meet. And they didn’t have to worry about other people abusing their trust and generosity. In other countries, people do. And that’s a big reason why those countries are less productive and, hence, less wealthy.

References

Caldwell, C. (2009). Reflections on the Revolution in Europe. Immigration, Islam and the West, Doubleday.

Fisher, M. (2013). The Tsarnaev family: A faded portrait of an immigrant’s American dream, April 27, The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/feature/wp/2013/04/27/the-tsarnaev-family-a-faded-portrait-of-an-immigrants-american-dream/?hpid=z1

Mikus Kos, A. (2009). Psychosocial programmes can also diminish or destroy local resources, in E. Baloch-Kaloianov and A. Mikus Kos (eds). Activating Psychosocial Local Resources  in Territories Affected by War and Terrorism, IOS Press.

Sontag, D., D.M. Herszenhorn, and S.F. Kovaleski. (2013). A battered dream, then a violent path, April 28, The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/us/shot-at-boxing-title-denied-tamerlan-tsarnaev-reeled.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

Wikipedia. (2013). Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzhokhar_and_Tamerlan_Tsarnaev
 

Zajda, J. (2005). “The educational reform and transformation in Russia,” in J. Zajda (ed). International Handbook on Globalization, Education and Policy Research, Springer.

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/1-4020-2960-8_26#

 

Where do those tensions come from?

 

Home sweet home in the Scottish borderlands. This was one of the last regions of Britain to be pacified and brought under State control. People lived in fortified homes where the second floor could be reached only by an external ladder that could be pulled up. The stone walls were up to 3 feet thick. (source – photo owned by Les Hull)

I first went to elementary school in a largely English Canadian neighborhood of Scarborough. Schoolyard fights were only occasional, and there was almost always a good reason. My family then moved to a largely Scotch-Irish town in central Ontario. There, the schoolyard fights were a daily occurrence, and they seemed to happen for no reason at all. I eventually found out the reason … something to do with “respect” or rather the lack of it.

We like to think that people everywhere respond to situations more or less as we do. If the response is anger—red boiling anger that can kill—we assume there must be a very good reason. Otherwise, the person wouldn’t be so angry.

Hence the puzzlement over the Boston bombers. What drove them to such an act? Had they been treated badly? This was the conclusion reached by Justin Trudeau, the recently elected leader of the Liberal Party of Canada:

But there is no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded. Completely at war with innocents. At war with a society. And our approach has to be, where do those tensions come from? (The National, 2013)

Actually, the Tsarnaev brothers were hardly excluded from American society. Tamerlan married the daughter of a well-off American family and lived in their spacious home. Sure, if you look hard enough, you may find evidence of exclusion. There must have been slights and indifference, perhaps jokes about his first name, but such things don’t cause normal people to kill.

“Normal” is a relative term. In other societies, people do kill for apparently trifling reasons. In Les damnés de la Terre, Frantz Fanon discusses male violence in Algeria, particularly the lack of restraint and the apparently trivial motives:

Autopsies undeniably establish this fact: the killer gives the impression he wanted to kill an incalculable number of times given the equal deadliness of the wounds inflicted.

[…] Very often the magistrates and police officers are stunned by the motives for the murder: a gesture, an allusion, an ambiguous remark, a quarrel over the ownership of an olive tree or an animal that has strayed a few feet. The search for the cause, which is expected to justify and pin down the murder, in some cases a double or triple murder, turns up a hopelessly trivial motive. Hence the frequent impression that the community is hiding the real motives. (Fanon, 2004, p. 222)

This behavioral pattern begins early in life. Parents seek not to suppress it but to channel it in the right direction, i.e., defense of the family:

In Algerian society for example, children are raised according to their sex. A boy usually receives an authoritarian and severe type of upbringing that will prepare him to become aware of the responsibilities that await him in adulthood, notably responsibility for his family and for the elderly. This is why a mother will allow her son to fight in the street and will scarcely be alarmed if the boy has a fall or if she sees a bruise. The boy of an Algerian family is accustomed from an early age to being hit hard without whimpering too much. People orient him more toward combat sports and group games in order to arm him with courage and endurance—virtues deemed to be manly. (Assous, 2005)

This pattern of behavioral development doesn’t differ completely from my own. The difference is largely one of degree. But there’s also a difference in kind: the violent male as an independent actor who fights for himself and his immediate family. For “normal” boys in Western society, male violence is legitimate only when done under orders for much larger entities: the home team, the police, the country, NATO … Everywhere else, it is evil, criminal, and pathological.

This schizophrenic attitude to violence was the subject of the Milgram experiment. You’ve probably heard of it. Assistants are told to administer ever stronger electric shocks if a subject fails on a learning task. About 65% of the assistants—the real subjects of the experiment—will increase the shock intensity up to the top end of the scale, even when the pseudo-subject pleads for cessation. Yet the same assistants act very differently if the decision is theirs. Only 1.4% of them will, on their own initiative, increase the shock intensity up to the top end of the scale (Milgram, 1974)

You may not have heard, however, that this finding holds true only for societies like our own. When the Milgram experiment was done with Jordanian assistants, they were just as willing as Americans to inflict pain under orders (62.5%). But they were more willing than Americans to inflict pain when no orders were given, with 12.5% of them delivering shocks right up to the top end of the scale (Shanab & Yahya, 1978).

How would Chechens have responded in the same situation? Or Algerians? Or Scotch-Irish? Male violence has long been viewed differently in different societies. In our own, it is stigmatized, except when done “under orders” by soldiers or the police. Some societies, however, had no police or army until recent times. Every adult male was expected to use violence to defend himself and his family. Yes, you could go to a law court to settle your differences with someone. But even if the court ruled in your favor, the sentence still had to be enforced by you, your brothers, and other male family members. That’s the way things were done. For millennia and millennia.

Gene-culture co-evolution

Humans differ from other animals in that we create a large part of our environment. We adapt not only to a physical environment of climate, landscape, vegetation, and wildlife but also to a cultural environment of our making: codified laws, behavioral norms, religious beliefs, social and political systems, and so on. We shape our environment, and this environment shapes us. To be more precise, it selects the kind of individuals who can live in it.

Initially, all adult males everywhere had to defend themselves and their families, not by paying taxes but by getting their hands bloody. This situation changed with the rise of the State. In other words, some powerful men became so powerful that they could impose a monopoly on the use of violence. Only they or their underlings could use it. Male violence had been “nationalized” and could be used only if ordered by the State or in narrowly defined situations of self-defense.

In this new pacified environment, the violent male went from hero to zero. He became a criminal and was treated accordingly. Society now favored the peace-loving man who got ahead through work or trade. This process has been described for England and other parts of Western Europe by several academics, like Gregory Clark. With the establishment of strong States toward the end of the Dark Ages, and a subsequent pacification of social relations, the incidence of violence declined steadily. Violent predispositions were steadily removed from the population, either through the actual execution of violent individuals or through their marginalization and lower reproductive success. The meek thus inherited the earth (see previous post).

Or rather a portion of it. In some parts of the earth, particularly remote mountainous areas, State control came very late. These are societies in the earliest stages of pacification. Male violence is a daily reality, which the State can only contain at best. Such is life in Chechnya … and elsewhere.

Genetics of male violence  

But is such gene-culture co-evolution possible? How susceptible is male violence to the forces of natural selection? Are some men more predisposed to violence than others? Is this a heritable trait, or something that men pick up from their peers?

A meta-analysis of twin and adoption studies estimated a heritability of 40% for aggressive behavior (Rhee & Waldman, 2002). A later twin study found a heritability of 96%, where the subjects were 9-10 year-olds of diverse ethnic backgrounds (Baker et al., 2007). This higher figure reflected the narrow age range and the use of a panel of evaluators to rate each subject. In the latest twin study, the heritability was 40% when the twins had different evaluators and 69% when they had the same evaluator. By comparison, many of us accept that homosexuality is inborn even though the heritability of that behavior is much lower: perhaps 34-39% for gays and 18-19% for lesbians (Wikipedia, 2013).

The actual neural basis remains to be sketched out. Perhaps a greater predisposition to violence simply reflects stronger impulsivity and weaker internal constraints on behavior (Niv et al., 2012). Or perhaps there is a lower threshold specifically for expression of violence. Or perhaps ideation of violence comes easier. Or perhaps the consequences of a violent act trigger feelings of pleasure. Frantz Fanon noted that the violent male seems to feel pleasure at the sight of blood. He needs to sense its warmth and even bathe in it. There is in fact an extensive medical literature about “abnormal” individuals who feel pleasure at the sight of blood and even wish to feel and taste it, whereas “normal” individuals feel disgust and often faint (Vanden Berghe & Kelly, 1964). Again, words like “normal” and “abnormal” are relative …

All of this may seem incomprehensible to nice folks like Justin Trudeau. Surely, no one in his right mind would enjoy violence. There must be another reason for such horrors. A good reason. A reason that would make sense to nice folks. Because, deep down, we’re all nice folks, aren’t we?

References

Assous, A. (2005). L’impact de l’éducation parentale sur le développement de l’enfant, Hawwa, 3(3), 354-369.

Baker, L.A., K.C. Jacobson, A. Raine, D.I. Lozano, and S. Bezdjian (2007). Genetic and environmental bases of childhood antisocial behavior: a multi-informant twin study, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 116, 219-235.

http://cnpru.bsd.uchicago.edu/PDFs/Baker_2007_JAP_RFAB.pdf 

Fanon, F. (2004). The Wretched of the Earth, New York: Grove Press.

Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to Authority, New York: Harper & Row.

Niv, S., C. Tuvblad, A. Raine, P. Wang, and L.A. Baker. (2012). Heritability and longitudinal stability of impulsivity in adolescence, Behavior Genetics, 42, 378-392.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3351554/  

Rhee, S.H. and I.D. Waldman. (2002). Genetic and environmental influences on antisocial behavior: A meta-analysis of twin and adoption studies, Psychol Bull., 128, 490-529.

Shanab, M.E. and Yahya, K.A. (1978). A cross-cultural study of obedience, Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 11, 267-269.

The National. (2013). Trudeau on Boston bombings, April 17

http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/ID/2380243779/

Vanden Bergh, R.L., and J.F. Kelly. (1964). Vampirism. A review with new observations, Archives of General Psychiatry, 11, 543-547.

Wikipedia (2013). Biology and Sexual Orientation,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation

 

 

The gay germ hypothesis

Incidence of chlamydia, a major cause of infertility. The high polygyny rate among the “female farming” peoples of sub-Saharan Africa may have favored the evolution of STDs. Is this where we should look for the precursor of the hypothetical “gay germ”? (source)

 

Heritability for male homosexuality is low to moderate (30 to 45%). There is thus some kind of genetic predisposition, but it’s weak and may simply be a low degree of pre-natal androgenization. All things being equal, such individuals would still develop a heterosexual orientation.

But all things aren’t equal. Something out there is tipping these individuals over the threshold that separates heterosexual from homosexual orientation. What is it? I suspect there are several causes, including the rising level of estrogens and estrogen-like substances in the environment over the past century (see previous post).

The cause may also be a pathogen that alters its host’s sexual orientation in order to enhance its chances of spreading to other hosts. This is the “gay germ” theory proposed by Greg Cochran (Cochran et al., 2000). It’s interesting, and there are certainly precedents for this kind of psychological manipulation … from zombie ants to rats losing their fear of cats.

But so far there’s no smoking gun. No candidate pathogens have been identified, although some STDs seem to have adapted to non-heterosexual modes of transmission, e.g., the bacterium responsible for bacterial vaginosis, particularly Gardnerella vaginalis, and some strains of vaginal yeast (see previous post).

Another objection is that natural selection should reduce host susceptibility. As Ron Unz (2013) has recently argued:

Cochran and others ridicule the gene model as absurd, arguing that strong selective pressure would have rapidly eliminated any such genes from the population, and this is not unreasonable. But similar criticism could applied to their own model, since genetic susceptibility to the germ would obviously be subject to equally powerful selective disadvantage.

A lot of pathogens seem undeterred by this argument. People die all the time from infections of one sort or another. One reason is that pathogens have shorter generation times and thus can evolve faster than their hosts can. An evolutionary equilibrium will eventually fall into place, but it will be heavily weighted in the pathogen’s favor. There are also limits to what a host can do. If the host’s defense system becomes too sensitive, it will attack not only possible pathogens but also host tissues.

Still, the most catastrophic epidemics tend to burn themselves out, largely because they destroy the pool of individuals they can most easily spread amongst. The Plague of Justinian of the 6th and 7th centuries may have wiped out half of Europe’s population. Then it disappeared. The Black Death of the 14th century killed between one and two thirds of all Europeans. It too disappeared, the last possible outbreaks being in the 18th century. This is not the case, however, with STDs, even in places where the consequences are dramatic, such as Africa’s “infertility belt”:

Africa shares the largest burden of infertility in the world. Estimates indicate that an average of 10.1% of couples experience infertility in Africa, with a high percentage of 32% in some countries and ethnic groups within Africa. An infertility belt” spreading through West Africa, through Central Africa to East Africa has been described. In some countries in this belt, up to one-third of women may be childless at the end of their reproductive lives. (Okonofu & Obi, 2009)

A pathogen would not sterilize one third of the population, generation after generation, unless it had something to gain, as Ron Unz notes. In sub-Saharan Africa, infertility can lead to abandonment of the wife, thus making her a better vehicle for pathogen transmission:

The high prevalence of untreated STD, resulting in increased infertility acts paradoxically to increase rather than decrease the fertility in Africa. Infertility is devastating for an African woman, resulting in divorce and diminished social status that often leads to prostitution. The fear of infertility results in refusal of contraception and early childbearing to demonstrate fertility. (O’Reilly, 1986)

Other separated women owe their status to infertility, which is a frequent reason for being driven from marriage and for being unable to marry […] Nadel […] identified such women as a major source of prostitutes: “Adultery and unchastity count less in her than other women. [The] paramount stigma [is] barrenness itself.” (Caldwell et al.,1989)

The existence of Africa’s infertility belt is generally attributed to a high prevalence of STDs, particularly gonorrhea and chlamydia (Collet et al., 1988), which in turn is related to a high polygyny rate (20 to 40% of all sexual unions throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa), which in turn is related to the low cost of maintaining a second or third wife, which in turn is related to year-round hoe farming and the ability of women to support themselves and their children with little male assistance.

We know that the AIDS virus evolved in sub-Saharan Africa, and it may be that syphilis evolved out of yaws, likewise endemic to sub-Saharan Africa. It may be that this region favors the evolution of STDs; if so, we might best look for the precursor of the “gay germ” there as well, assuming of course that it does exist.

 

References

Caldwell, J.C., P. Caldwell, and P. Quiggin. (1989). The social context of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, Population and Development Review, 15, 185-234.

https://www.soc.umn.edu/~meierann/Teaching/Population/Readings/Feb%209%20Caldwell.pdf

Collet, M., J. Reniers, E. Frost, R. Gass, F. Yvert, A. Leclerc, C. Roth-Meyer, B. Ivanoff, and A. Meheus. (1988). Infertility in Central Africa: Infection is the cause, International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics, 26, 423–428 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0020-7292(88)90340-2

Cochran, G.M., Ewald, P.W., and Cochran, K.D. (2000). Infectious causation of disease: an evolutionary perspective, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 43, 406-448.

Okonofu, F.E. and H. Obi. (2009). Specialized Versus Conventional Treatment of infertility in Africa: Time for a Pragmatic Approach, African Journal of Reproductive Health, 13, 9-11.

http://www.ajrh.info/vol13_no1/13_1_editorial_english.php

O’Reilly, K.R. (1986). Sexual behaviour, perceptions of infertility and family planning in sub-Saharan Africa, African Journal of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 2, 47-49.

Unz, R. (2013). “Gay gene” vs. “gay germ”, April 16, The American Conservative,

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/gay-gene-vs-gay-germ/

 

Pathogen-stress theory

A Paris suburb, on the eve of the French Revolution. The shift to democracy and individualism began under conditions of high pathogen prevalence and long before modern sanitation (source)

Is stress from parasites a major cause of psychological differences among humans? Yes, if we are to believe a popular theory in evolutionary psychology. According to this theory, when people develop in a parasite-infested environment, they behave in a way that reduces their likelihood of infection. They become less curious, less exploratory, and less open to strangers. The result is a cultural system that is less conducive to learning, openness, and tolerance—in short, what we like to call progressive values.

As Thornhill et al. (2010) argue:

[…] the predictions of the parasite-stress model are consistent with the marked increase in the liberalization of social values that began to occur in the West in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., civil rights, women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights, anti-authoritarianism, etc.). In the West, but not outside of it, infectious-disease prevalence was reduced dramatically a generation or two earlier as a result of widespread availability of antibiotics, child vaccination programs, food- and water-safety practices, increased sanitation and vector control.

This theory is used to explain not only cultural differences over time, but also cultural differences over space, i.e., between different human populations:

The parasite-stress model of human sociality provides an evolutionarily informed explanation of why specific human populations inhabiting different parts of the planet (northern Europe versus southern Europe, for instance) are often described by different traits, different values, and different cultural norms.

[…] parasite prevalence also is expected to predict other forms of political liberalism. For example, democratization is accompanied by the liberation of women from the tradition of masculine social control, which manifests in an increase in women’s civil rights and political representation (Inglehart, 2003; Wejnert, 2005; Welzel, 2007). It follows from the parasite-stress model that this form of liberalism should be more pronounced within populations that have a relatively low prevalence of parasites. It is. Across many countries of the world, parasite prevalence correlates negatively with national indicators of gender equality (Thornhill et al., 2010)

Several objections come to mind. Liberalism goes back long before the 1960s. Think of the American and French revolutions. Think of the abolitionists, the chartists, and the suffragettes. These were genuine mass movements that caught the imagination of ordinary people, and not just the elites. Yet they occurred at a time when young men and women routinely died from pathogens under conditions like those of the developing world today. And those conditions persisted well into the 20th century. It really wasn’t until the interwar years that doctors began to cure more people than they killed.

The parasite-stress model has been re-examined by Hackman and Hruschka (2013) with respect to the United States. They confirm that pathogen prevalence correlates with collectivism, strength of family ties, homicide, child maltreatment, and religious commitment. These correlations, however, hold true only for sexually transmitted diseases. Non-STD infections show no correlation with the above behaviors. Moreover, the STD correlation may simply be a side effect of lifestyle choices. As the authors note: “A life history model can explain these ambiguous results by treating STDs as an outcome of faster life history strategies rather than a driver of behavioral adaptations.” Indeed, the data are best explained by two variables: early childbirth and race, i.e., non-Hispanic white American, Hispanic American, or black American:

Our two-component measure [early childbirth and race] showed that across race categories, teenage birth rates are predictive of three-generation households and proportion of the population living alone. We conclude that these findings are inconsistent with the PST [pathogen-stress theory], but fit well with an alternative model based on life history allocations. (Hackman and Hruschka, 2013)

Parasite-stress theory reverses cause and effect. Pathogens are less prevalent in those human populations that have integrated principles of modern hygiene into their lives. Those same populations have also adopted other aspects of behavioral modernity—pacifism, individualism, reduced importance of kinship, etc. More broadly speaking, the construction of freer, more open societies cannot happen without certain psychological predispositions: first, higher anger thresholds and less willingness to use violence as a means to settle personal disputes; second, a time orientation that allocates more resources to the future and fewer to the present. Evidently, if you’re more oriented to the future, you’ll avoid choices that may lead to illness and early death.

This point may seem obvious, yet it’s surprising how unobvious it seems to some people, especially those, like evolutionary psychologists, who should know better. How come? Keep in mind that elite approval is necessary for advancement in society, particularly for academics who work amidst offspring of the elite and who help legitimize the dominant social agenda. To gain acceptance for their own pet ideas, academics unconsciously, or consciously, sign on to the elite's agenda.

As Thornhill et al. (2010) note: “[…] public health initiatives are most likely to have additional consequences for societies (e.g., promotion of civil liberties and egalitarian value systems).” Here, the academic is no longer pretending to be a disinterested observer. The role is more like that of a cheerleader … or worse.

References

Barkow, J.H., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (eds.) (1992). The Adapted Mind. Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hackman, J. and D. Hruschka. (2013). Fast life histories, not pathogens, account for state-level variation in homicide, child maltreatment, and family ties in the U.S., Evolution and Human Behavior, 34, 118-124.

Thornhill, R., C.L. Fincher, D.R. Murray, and M. Schaller. (2010).  Zoonotic and Non-Zoonotic Diseases in Relation to Human Personality and Societal Values: Support for the Parasite-Stress Model, Evolutionary Psychology, 8, 151-169.

http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/EP08151169.pdf

 

The Parsis

A Parsi woman in traditional costume, painted by Raja Ravi Varma (source)

The Parsis are renowned for achievement in many areas of life—trade, education, philanthropy, and popular culture. Yet they number only about 100,000 in the entire world (Wikipedia, 2013). What qualities made them so successful? The most often-cited ones are their thrift, foresight, skillfulness, and sense of initiative. The Wikipedia entry notes:

While the British saw the other Indians, "as passive, ignorant, irrational, outwardly submissive but inwardly guileful" (Luhrmann 1994, p. 333), the Parsis were seen to have the traits that the colonial authorities tended to ascribe to themselves. Mandelslo (1638) saw them as "diligent", "conscientious" and "skillful" in their mercantile pursuits.

But why do they have these qualities? Before the British arrived in the early 17^th century, the Parsis were living in farming communities in western India, apparently like many other Indians. Centuries earlier they may have been merchants and traders, but by the time the British came there was little in the cultural environment to support a mercantile lifestyle, at least no more than for other Indians in similar communities.

Did these qualities become embedded through gene-culture evolution? This possibility is evoked, in passing, by anthropologists Greg Cochran, John Hardy, and Henry Harpending while discussing the intellectual performance of Ashkenazi Jews:

Since strong selection for IQ seems to be unusual in humans (few populations have had most members performing high-complexity jobs) and since near-total reproductive isolation is also unusual, the Ashkenazim may be the only extant human population with polymorphic frequencies of IQ-boosting disease mutations, although another place to look for a similar phenomenon is in India. In particular, the Parsi are an endogamous group with high levels of economic achievement, a history of long-distance trading, business and management, and who suffer high prevalences of Parkinson disease, breast cancer and tremor disorders, diseases not present in their neighbours. (Cochran et al., 2006)

Parsi-specific neurologic diseases are listed in a screening study:

We designed a questionnaire to rapidly screen a community of 851 people (Parsis living in a colony in Bombay, India) for possible neurologic diseases. […] One hundred and sixty-three people were identified by this questionnaire as possibly having neurologic disease. Neurologists later examined these 163 people and found that 80 of them actually suffered from at least one of the neurologic diseases of interest (positive predictive value = 48 percent). The most common neurologic disorders were peripheral neuropathy (32 cases), essential tremor (13 cases), stroke (12 cases), Parkinson's disease (six cases), and epilepsy (four cases). (Bharucha et al., 1987)

Although some of these genetic diseases, especially Parkinson’s, greatly reduce life expectancy, mean longevity is actually higher among the Parsis than in most human populations (Ravindran, 2011).

Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending explain the presence of these diseases as a side effect of strong natural selection over a relatively short time scale. Selection was for “rough-and-ready” solutions that came with a cost. Over a longer time scale, and with continuing selection, these bugs would have eventually been ironed out.

The conventional explanation attributes these diseases to a founder effect, i.e., the Parsis are descended from a small group of individuals and are thus more likely to diverge, genetically, from other humans. In short, the smaller the founder group, the less it will genetically represent the source population, and the higher will be the incidence of certain genetic diseases. By way of illustration, if you pick five Smarties from a box of Smarties, they’re much less likely to be a representative cross-section than if you empty out half the box.

But are the Parsis descended from a small founder group? According to tradition, their ancestors fled from Persia to western India when Muslim Arabs invaded their native land in the 7th century. Once settled in India, they had no further contacts with their fellow Persians for several centuries. Meanwhile, they married only amongst themselves and avoided intermarriage with the local Indians.

This narrative is incorrect, however, on two points. Although the Parsis have been endogamous for some time, there was at first intermarriage with the local population, essentially between Persian men and Gujarati women. Y-chromosome and mtDNA studies indicate that paternal lineages are largely Persian and maternal lineages largely Gujarati (Qamar et al., 2002; Quintana-Murci et al., 2004).

It’s also questionable whether the Parsis are descended from a single wave of refugees. The Persians ruled Sindh in western India for several centuries before the Islamic conquest, and their traders had probably already become established in ports along India’s west coast. This initial community may have later taken in waves of refugees fleeing the Islamic conquest of Persia (Wikipedia, 2013).

The historical record is clearer when the British arrived in the early 17th century. At that time, the Parsis were living in farming communities across Gujarat, and it was only then that many moved to Bombay to seek opportunities for trade and work with the British East India Company. Their economic ascension was rapid. While in 1700, "fewer than a handful of individuals appear as merchants in any records; by mid-century, Parsis engaged in commerce constituted one of the important commercial groups in Bombay" (White 1991, p. 312).

It’s possible that the Parsis had been merchants several centuries earlier. They may have then been stripped of their mercantile livelihood as punishment for supporting local Hindu rulers when the Muslims overran western India in the 11th to 13th centuries:

For years and years, the Parsis lived in perfect peace and harmony; they increased in number and dispersed in small knots over the whole of Guzarat [Gujarat]. The Mohammedan conquest at first did them harm. They had sided with the Rana against the Sultan of Ahmedabad; after the storming of Sanjan , they had much to suffer from their new rulers, and the Sacred Fire was moved from place to place. (Menant, 1901, p.134)

At present, we simply don’t know enough about Parsi history to understand what social and psychological characteristics may have been favored during the long centuries between the arrival of this community in India and its encounter with the British from the 17th century onward. We might be able to reconstruct this history from genetic data. Indeed, a “Parsi Genome Project” was launched with much fanfare a few years ago, but it now seems to be stalled for lack of funds (Phadnis, 2012).

Whatever eventually happens, such research may become a race against time. You see, the Parsis are dying out. They have long had high rates of late marriage and non-marriage, and both trends have worsened in recent decades. By 1980-82, their total fertility rate was already down to 1.12, i.e., half the replacement rate. By 2000, it was 0.94. The latest data, from 2001-2006, indicate a total fertility rate of 0.88 (Patel, 2011).

That’s even lower than Japan’s fertility rate. And, unlike Japan, the Parsi community cannot afford to lose a few million people. A recent Parsi novel, Family Matters, highlights the growing sense of foreboding:

“Demographics show we’ll be extinct in fifty years. Maybe it’s the best thing. What’s the use of having spineless weaklings walking around, Parsi in name only.”

[…] Extinct, like dinosaurs. They’ll have to study our bones, that’s all.

[..] “If, if, if,” said Dr. Fitter. “If we are meant to die out, nothing will save us.”

“Yes,” said Inspector Masalavala. “But it will be a loss to the whole world. When a culture vanishes, humanity is the loser.” (Mistry, 2002, pp. 46, 385, 388)

And when a people vanishes, the loss is even greater. A culture can at least be preserved in books, videos, and the like.

References

Bharucha, N.E., E.P. Bharucha, H.D. Dastur, and B.S. Schoenberg. (1987). Pilot survey of the prevalence of neurologic disorders in the Parsi community of Bombay, Am. J. Prev. Med., 3, 293-299.

Cochran, G., J. Hardy, and H. Harpending. (2006). Natural history of Ashkenazi intelligence, Journal of Biosocial Science, 38, 659-693

Menant, D. (1901). Zoroastrianism and the Parsis, The North American Review, 172, 132-147.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/25105117

Mistry, R. (2002). Family Matters. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.

Patel, D. (2011). Understanding Parsi population decline in India: A historical perspective, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre, Mumbai.

http://zoroastriansnet.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/2011-05-understanding-parsi-population-decline-in-india-nehru-centre.pdf

Phadnis, S. (2012). Avesthagen in a freeze as funds dry up, May 29, The Times of India,

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-05-29/india-business/31886941_1_villoo-morawala-patell-salary-avesta-good-earth/2

Qamar, R., Ayub, Q., Mohyuddin, A., Helgason, A., Mazhar, K., Mansoor, A., Zerjal, T., Tyler-Smith, C. et al. (2002). Y-chromosomal DNA variation in Pakistan, American Journal of Human Genetics, 70, 1107–1124.

Quintana-Murci, L., Chaix, R., Wells, R., Spencer, B., Doron M., Sayar, H., Scozzari, R., Rengo, C., Al-Zahery, N. et al. (2004). Where West Meets East: The Complex mtDNA Landscape of the Southwest and Central Asian Corridor, American Journal of Human Genetics, 74, 827–845.

Ravindran, N. (2011). The art of longevity, April 5, India Today

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/reasons-why-parsis-live-longer-than-indians/1/134703.html

White, D. (1991). From Crisis to Community Definition:The Dynamics of Eighteenth-Century Parsi Philanthropy, Modern Asian Studies, 25, 303–320

Wikipedia. (2013). Parsi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsi