Interesting essay! Early Americans, and subsequent immigrant groups in the 19th century who arrived in America from western Europe brought with them lived traditions of lower “d” democracy that long predated mass voting systems, communal decision making bodies, rotating magistracies, guild self-governance, peasant assemblies, and village councils. Western Europe, especially northwest of the Hajnal Line, had long-standing local democratic institutions, such as England’s Borough Corporations, which let communities to elect their own officials, manage markets, and control local law enforcement and taxation, sometimes centuries before universal suffrage. These structures taught that democracy is fundamentally about distributed authority, self-rule, civic participation, and local discretion, not just a periodic vote. Those structures, which were deeply integrated with decision making in the major societal spheres, were economically, scientifically, and governmentally beneficial, an those processes of those democratic governance structures themselves, through participation in them, intellectually/cognitively improved people and communities
Current day Western countries have maintained the vote but dismantled the institutional structures that made real democracy possible, its like systems that retains the symbols of democracy but are almost void of its substance. And this isnt actually necessary, despite what we've been told America had very robust structures in these regards until WW2, it was literally technically-mechanically a democracy, and even after that it took decades for them to fade, the world is not so much more complex than it was in the 1930s, if anything, the mass rollout of computers and telecommunications technology has made things overall simpler. And we were better run when we were a democracy
We have an illusion of democracy — what some call a "managed democracy." In some ways, this is worse than outright dictatorship, since most people feel that their opinions are being heard and considered.
"Northwest Europeans are inclined toward a more universal and absolute conception of morality."
See Fig 5 in "Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle", Adam Waytz, Ravi Iyer, Liane Young, Jonathan Haidt & Jesse Graham, Nature Communications 2019 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12227-0. The right graph depicts the outer moral circles of liberals extending far beyond those of conservatives. The above principle regarding Northwest Europeans seems to be continued or extended in liberals, at least within the (study 3a) survey of 131 U.S. residents.
Conservative moral circles were much more likely than those of liberals to extend only as far as circles 4 and 5 of the following 16:
(1) all of your immediate family,
(2) all of your extended family,
(3) all of your closest friends,
(4) all of your friends (including distant ones),
(5) all of your acquaintances,
(6) all people you have ever met,
(7) all people in your country,
(8) all people on your continent,
(9) all people on all continents,
(10) all mammals,
(11) all amphibians, reptiles, mammals, fish, and birds,
(12) all animals on earth including paramecia and amoebae,
(13) all animals in the universe, including alien lifeforms,
(14) all living things in the universe including plants and trees,
(15) all natural things in the universe including inert entities such as rocks,
(16) all things in existence
Liberals' moral focus extended much further (or at least this is what the answered, who knows how they actually behave?) as far as 14 to 15. Also, the intensity of liberal moral focus was somehow measured as 20 while that of the conservatives was weaker: 12.
Fig 3, from a different study, illustrates the same pattern - liberals tend to abhor parochialism and nationalism, instead focusing on all humanity, possibly with distrust or hatred of their own culture.
With the capture of universities by liberals since the 1970s - and now the mainstream media and many governments - this moral reach extremism shifts most of the focus away from family and the people who share the person's country of residence and seeks to care about all living things, not only on Earth. Performative exposition of this moral extremism is greatly facilitated by social media, with its highly effective policing among friendship and workplace / professional groups, disadvantaging (including cancelling) those who challenge this extremism or fail to chant its dictates as is required of members of the liberal tribe.
"Increased capacity for affective empathy and guilt proneness". "Continual need to reduce one’s burden of guilt."
Wokeness spreads via social media, mainstream media and universities: Person is made to feel guilty for being white, wealthy, non-disabled, non-gay/lesbian/trans etc. etc., Christian (not an adherent of a non-Western religion etc. and is offered a path to relieving this guilt. (In Christianity the guilt is relieved by God, who the person must first have complete faith in.)
The path involves righting the wrongs of the world. In wokism, this is the only thing that matters. It is more important than truth. Whatever seems to fight perceived oppression must be true. The world is composed of oppressors, victims and victims' allies - the latter who my find themselves with the identities of the oppressor classes, but who admit their guilt and try to make amends.
Rather than volunteer for missionary or aid work in third world countries, and rather than donating a crippling proportion of one's income to those who suffer at the hands of the patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism etc. a popular approach to lightening one's burden of guilt is to make the world a better place by the socially visible method of blasting stuff out on social media (usually by copying someone else's material - the real go-getters make up their own for extra Brownie points) which makes those who should feel guilty, actually feel guilty. That is a good day's work and the blaster goes to sleep feeling less guilty.
So the woke mind virus spreads - some kind of guilt pyramid selling or chain letter cult arrangement. https://quillette.com/2025/05/26/plotting-lives-of-quiet-contentment-victimhood-modern-fiction/ mentions ". . . the intense, sentimental, and paternalistic desire to empathise with the imagined suffering of unknown victims." Note the value attached to casting one's moral net greater and greater distances.
"This impulse seems to dominate much of today’s literary fiction. Ideology has seized the gatekeepers of serious literature -writing instructors, editors, publishers, and writers themselves - and whole swathes of the human experience are being neglected as a result."
Women and girls tend to have a greater proclivity for excessive guilt and focus on perpetrators vs. victims, not least because they are physically and economically vulnerable, and despite the efforts of men who love and protect them, are still all too frequently harmed and killed by other men.
To cut across three millennia in a few sentences: Successful, stable, productive, internally harmonious and at a country level robust societies developed by authorities culling violent men and breaking up clannishness by way of discouraging cousin marriage, which also improved genetic outcomes and fostered hybrid vigour from wider and presumably better choices of mates. Christianity, with its inbuilt guilt (born in sin) and its socially positive focus on generosity and forgiveness, continued the trend and resulted in the formation of higher trust societies in which complex innovation and commerce flourished.
Now, the same socially and likely genetically driven proclivities for guilt and expanding the love and care of the moral circle wider and wider has led the liberal part of Western societies to cause, or at least tolerate and celebrate, mass immigration of people who have nothing genetically or socially in common with Western societies and who to a very significant degree are at odds with Western civilisation. This is now to the point where the social cohesion which enabled Western WEIRD societies to flourish, is being destroyed, probably forever, within a generation.
Sydney Harbour Bridge marchers were not only trying to defend the Palestinians from genocide, but some were apparently calling for the dissolution of Australia. I recently saw a video of a 20-something woman in the USA, who I guess identifies as indigenous, calling for the destruction of the USA, or beyond that Canada, since she refers to the continent derisively as "Turtle Island". Sorry, I can't find it in my bookmarks now.
Both "liberals" and "conservatives" have been manipulated in the name of universal moral principles. Many pressure groups understand, consciously or unconsciously, that guilt is the Achilles heel of Western societies. In a post-Christian context, feelings of guilt are especially prone to abuse, since there are no longer any mechanisms to deal with them. They simply accumulate.
In the worst-case scenario, this continual guilt-mongering will lead to voluntary self-destruction. People will become convinced they are inherently evil, and such a firmly held conviction can have only one outcome.
"Mechanics of Moral Expansion - How Social Justice Became the Universal Justification for Expert Control
"Over the past several decades, 'social justice' has evolved into becoming a universal solvent for expanding expert oversight into every corner of human experience. What began as calls for addressing systemic inequalities has become the most reliable mechanism for installing new layers of bureaucratic control, compliance regimes, and gatekeeping authorities across society. . . .
"The pattern is unmistakable - and ubiquitous. Identify any sphere of human activity, frame existing practices as potential sources of injustice, and suddenly there exists both moral justification and a practical ‘requirement’ for a new ‘expert’ body to review, regulate, and change that activity per unchallengeable standards."
Monarchies, theocracies and dictatorships are likely to be inherently corrupt with respect to whatever direction would best serve the citizens. However, democracies are prone to insidious corruption from direct influence (pharmaceutical and armaments industries) and the actions of highly effective "intelligence" agencies of other countries and of the country itself.
Added to this is the fertile ground our populations provide for social manias such as man-hating feminism, the trans-activist shit-fest, BLM and overestimating the benefits of mass exotic immigration. These are driven in large part by an innate proclivity to guilt and self-hatred, as well as a search for meaning and purpose in life, and a tribe to belong to as religions are jettisoned due to the increasingly obvious falsity of their theologies.
We thought we could free ourselves from religion by creating a society of "self-determining" individuals. Unfortunately, we still have an innate need for moral guidance, and many people will prey on that need.
Authoritarian regimes seem to do a better job of preserving the existing moral norms. Since they already have power, they don't want to jeopardize their hold on power by changing the population they rule over. If anything, they tend to discourage change.
Look at North Korea. It was initially far more radical than South Korea in its social policies. Over time, however, it became more and more conservative. Today, the North is more traditional than the South in terms of preserving Korean culture. In two or three decades, the South will be barely recognizable as Korean.
Hmm, that would argue for adopting the Roman Catholic faith, which affords the formal ritual of Confession to expiate an individual's sense of guilt. The Anglo-Catholics within the Anglican communion offer Confession, but few use it, possibly because a married priest is perceived as more likely to gossip.
In the current political context, it wouldn't be a good idea to promote confession, either within the existing churches or as some kind of post-Christian morality. The potential for abuse is too high.
I would say, conservatives extend to point 6 and 7 - if you include moral norms of the group, rather than everyone. All remaining points are just the liberal brain malarkey, as they scold nonbelievers in support of this nonsense with vehemence.
"...dispensations in the second degree – that is, those for first cousins – remained confined to the high nobility and to unions deemed to be in the public interest. In the more distant third and fourth degrees, however, the granting of dispensations was relatively common during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. And over the course of the eighteenth century’s second half, the ranks of those who desired to marry a cousin or sister-in-law – that means, in close degrees – grew increasingly larger and gradually came to encompass all social milieus. "
Great post, thank you. MacDonald had similar debate with Henrich. It is doubtful Henrich will change his mind, as it would mean invalidating most of his career. Yet, he is clearly wrong.
I'm so confused was marrying cousins ever a norm isn't it seen as genetically disgusting what's the genetic value of it inbreeding leads to a increase of bad mutations it fixes a phenotype and reduces genetic diversity.
I wasn't it was ever a norm unless a extreme bottle neck but even then over subsequent the mutations build up again
Cousin marriage is normal among MENA populations. It seems to have become popular before Islam, particularly among elite individuals who were worried about marrying someone with "tainted" ancestry (e.g., a slave ancestor). Since people know their own family tree better than that of others, it's "safest" to marry a close relative.
There are other explanations. Marrying a relative may help keep money in the family, for instance.
Certainly! Here's a revised and grammatically correct version of your text, with improved clarity, flow, and structure while preserving your original meaning and tone:
---
Yeah, that’s a poignant point. I suppose it’s a presentist fallacy to judge modern actions through the lens of my meta-ethical framework and my knowledge of Darwinian selection—something I know to avoid in breeding. But historically, nepotism and dynastic thinking were deeply ingrained, especially in places like Bangladesh. That, I think, strengthens the argument for foreign aid incorporating embryo selection.
I’ve seen recent estimates suggesting average IQ is as low as 74, but I suspect it’s more likely around 84. The problem is, most of these figures come from PISA data—which shows the strongest correlation—but there’s little actual genomic evidence. The rest is inferred from twin studies. So I’ll keep things conservative and go with 84.
Cultures with such cognitive profiles struggle to sustain democracy. Instead, they tend to devolve into populism and poor economic outcomes.
My model leans toward Reinderman’s framework:
Cognitive capital → institutional frameworks → gaps in markets → incentives → consumer demand (global and local) → innovation capital → compound growth over decades→global inter connected caiptailism.
That’s what builds wealthy societies. Unfortunately, without embryo selection, this cycle can’t begin—if you lack the foundational cognitive capital, you’re more likely to vote for bad policies, which further stifle genetic potential and create a vicious cycle.
The real danger lies not in the data itself, but in how people use it. People take statistical averages and make sweeping meta-ethical claimslike saying, “On average, an African American is more likely to have an IQ of 85.” But there are also many white individuals at 85 IQ, and those statistics can be weaponized to justify racist policies. The data isn’t inherently racist; it’s how we choose to interpret and act on it that matters.
I hope all is well Peter! I read that the banning of cousin marriages was started in the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire by Emperor Justinian I, in the 6th century AD. This Byzantine Christian ecclesiastical law became the norm that discouraged consanguineous marriages. These bans were reinforced and expanded over time, especially under the influence of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which prohibited marriages between blood relatives up to the seventh degree — including first and second cousins.
Would you say this effect of reducing kinship ties had a positive effect on social pacification and increased economic activity in places like Constantinople and its large population? Did this behaviour pass from East to West church, before the more expansive marriage bans were introduced in the 8-9th centuries AD in the West?
As I understand it, Justinian's reforms went no further than existing restrictions under Roman Law, i.e., banning of marriages with first cousins. As for the Eastern Orthodox Church, it never went further than banning marriages with second cousins (and even that ban is no longer enforced).
I've come around to the opinion that avoidance of cousin marriage is more an effect than a cause of WEIRDness.
Social pacification - by the time of Late Antiquity, the populations of the Roman Empire had been pacified for several centuries. This was in fact a complaint of military authorities: most Romans lacked the will and ability to fight.
Kinship ties - The Byzantine authorities recognized that familialism and nepotism were obstacles to social and economic progress. They thus tried to ensure merit-based appointments and a fluid elite structure. Unlike the case in Western Europe, titles weren’t hereditary, and the emperor could elevate or demote individuals at will. This acted as a check on entrenched familial power.
Nonetheless, these measures were only partially successful and, in some cases, may have made things worse. For instance, the lack of formal succession laws led to frequent coups and civil wars, often driven by rival dynastic claims.
Joseph Heinrich can't read lol. Rejection of cousin marriage, polygamy and concubinage (all of which are allowed and common in the Bible) was already the norm in Pre-Christian Northern Europe, as Ancient Roman documents and DNA studies clearly point out.
this is nonsense. Concubinage and polygamy was extremely frequent among germanic elites – Charlemagne had at least one concubine, as did most patriarchs in the Norse sagas. Cousin marriage was probably allowed but not frequent.
The aDNA evidence indicates that polygyny was rare in Europe as far back as the Neolithic transition:
"Another cultural change that is thought to have taken place in Europe during the Neolithic transition is a shift from polygyny to monogamy [61], [62]. In fact, several Neolithic burials [55], [58] show evidence of nuclear families, which may reflect a monogamous marriage system. A shift from polygyny to monogamy would have the effect of decreasing male variance in reproductive success, since more males would now be able to mate, and consequently would increase Nm. This could result in a signal of population growth in NRY data that would be more recent compared to that observed in mtDNA and is exactly what Dupanloup and colleagues [63] have argued and found. Our results are in good agreement with theirs. Indeed, we found that th increased in males but not in females as we moved away from the Near East"
Rasteiro, R., & Chikhi, L. (2013). Female and male perspectives on the neolithic transition in Europe: clues from ancient and modern genetic data. PloS one, 8(4), e60944. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060944
Interesting essay! Early Americans, and subsequent immigrant groups in the 19th century who arrived in America from western Europe brought with them lived traditions of lower “d” democracy that long predated mass voting systems, communal decision making bodies, rotating magistracies, guild self-governance, peasant assemblies, and village councils. Western Europe, especially northwest of the Hajnal Line, had long-standing local democratic institutions, such as England’s Borough Corporations, which let communities to elect their own officials, manage markets, and control local law enforcement and taxation, sometimes centuries before universal suffrage. These structures taught that democracy is fundamentally about distributed authority, self-rule, civic participation, and local discretion, not just a periodic vote. Those structures, which were deeply integrated with decision making in the major societal spheres, were economically, scientifically, and governmentally beneficial, an those processes of those democratic governance structures themselves, through participation in them, intellectually/cognitively improved people and communities
Current day Western countries have maintained the vote but dismantled the institutional structures that made real democracy possible, its like systems that retains the symbols of democracy but are almost void of its substance. And this isnt actually necessary, despite what we've been told America had very robust structures in these regards until WW2, it was literally technically-mechanically a democracy, and even after that it took decades for them to fade, the world is not so much more complex than it was in the 1930s, if anything, the mass rollout of computers and telecommunications technology has made things overall simpler. And we were better run when we were a democracy
We have an illusion of democracy — what some call a "managed democracy." In some ways, this is worse than outright dictatorship, since most people feel that their opinions are being heard and considered.
"Northwest Europeans are inclined toward a more universal and absolute conception of morality."
See Fig 5 in "Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle", Adam Waytz, Ravi Iyer, Liane Young, Jonathan Haidt & Jesse Graham, Nature Communications 2019 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12227-0. The right graph depicts the outer moral circles of liberals extending far beyond those of conservatives. The above principle regarding Northwest Europeans seems to be continued or extended in liberals, at least within the (study 3a) survey of 131 U.S. residents.
Conservative moral circles were much more likely than those of liberals to extend only as far as circles 4 and 5 of the following 16:
(1) all of your immediate family,
(2) all of your extended family,
(3) all of your closest friends,
(4) all of your friends (including distant ones),
(5) all of your acquaintances,
(6) all people you have ever met,
(7) all people in your country,
(8) all people on your continent,
(9) all people on all continents,
(10) all mammals,
(11) all amphibians, reptiles, mammals, fish, and birds,
(12) all animals on earth including paramecia and amoebae,
(13) all animals in the universe, including alien lifeforms,
(14) all living things in the universe including plants and trees,
(15) all natural things in the universe including inert entities such as rocks,
(16) all things in existence
Liberals' moral focus extended much further (or at least this is what the answered, who knows how they actually behave?) as far as 14 to 15. Also, the intensity of liberal moral focus was somehow measured as 20 while that of the conservatives was weaker: 12.
Fig 3, from a different study, illustrates the same pattern - liberals tend to abhor parochialism and nationalism, instead focusing on all humanity, possibly with distrust or hatred of their own culture.
With the capture of universities by liberals since the 1970s - and now the mainstream media and many governments - this moral reach extremism shifts most of the focus away from family and the people who share the person's country of residence and seeks to care about all living things, not only on Earth. Performative exposition of this moral extremism is greatly facilitated by social media, with its highly effective policing among friendship and workplace / professional groups, disadvantaging (including cancelling) those who challenge this extremism or fail to chant its dictates as is required of members of the liberal tribe.
"Increased capacity for affective empathy and guilt proneness". "Continual need to reduce one’s burden of guilt."
Wokeness spreads via social media, mainstream media and universities: Person is made to feel guilty for being white, wealthy, non-disabled, non-gay/lesbian/trans etc. etc., Christian (not an adherent of a non-Western religion etc. and is offered a path to relieving this guilt. (In Christianity the guilt is relieved by God, who the person must first have complete faith in.)
The path involves righting the wrongs of the world. In wokism, this is the only thing that matters. It is more important than truth. Whatever seems to fight perceived oppression must be true. The world is composed of oppressors, victims and victims' allies - the latter who my find themselves with the identities of the oppressor classes, but who admit their guilt and try to make amends.
Rather than volunteer for missionary or aid work in third world countries, and rather than donating a crippling proportion of one's income to those who suffer at the hands of the patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism etc. a popular approach to lightening one's burden of guilt is to make the world a better place by the socially visible method of blasting stuff out on social media (usually by copying someone else's material - the real go-getters make up their own for extra Brownie points) which makes those who should feel guilty, actually feel guilty. That is a good day's work and the blaster goes to sleep feeling less guilty.
So the woke mind virus spreads - some kind of guilt pyramid selling or chain letter cult arrangement. https://quillette.com/2025/05/26/plotting-lives-of-quiet-contentment-victimhood-modern-fiction/ mentions ". . . the intense, sentimental, and paternalistic desire to empathise with the imagined suffering of unknown victims." Note the value attached to casting one's moral net greater and greater distances.
"This impulse seems to dominate much of today’s literary fiction. Ideology has seized the gatekeepers of serious literature -writing instructors, editors, publishers, and writers themselves - and whole swathes of the human experience are being neglected as a result."
Liberals laud empathy - but only for those who they regard as victims. They have less of it for their conservative opponents than conservatives have for them: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01461672231198001.
Women and girls tend to have a greater proclivity for excessive guilt and focus on perpetrators vs. victims, not least because they are physically and economically vulnerable, and despite the efforts of men who love and protect them, are still all too frequently harmed and killed by other men.
To cut across three millennia in a few sentences: Successful, stable, productive, internally harmonious and at a country level robust societies developed by authorities culling violent men and breaking up clannishness by way of discouraging cousin marriage, which also improved genetic outcomes and fostered hybrid vigour from wider and presumably better choices of mates. Christianity, with its inbuilt guilt (born in sin) and its socially positive focus on generosity and forgiveness, continued the trend and resulted in the formation of higher trust societies in which complex innovation and commerce flourished.
Now, the same socially and likely genetically driven proclivities for guilt and expanding the love and care of the moral circle wider and wider has led the liberal part of Western societies to cause, or at least tolerate and celebrate, mass immigration of people who have nothing genetically or socially in common with Western societies and who to a very significant degree are at odds with Western civilisation. This is now to the point where the social cohesion which enabled Western WEIRD societies to flourish, is being destroyed, probably forever, within a generation.
Sydney Harbour Bridge marchers were not only trying to defend the Palestinians from genocide, but some were apparently calling for the dissolution of Australia. I recently saw a video of a 20-something woman in the USA, who I guess identifies as indigenous, calling for the destruction of the USA, or beyond that Canada, since she refers to the continent derisively as "Turtle Island". Sorry, I can't find it in my bookmarks now.
Both "liberals" and "conservatives" have been manipulated in the name of universal moral principles. Many pressure groups understand, consciously or unconsciously, that guilt is the Achilles heel of Western societies. In a post-Christian context, feelings of guilt are especially prone to abuse, since there are no longer any mechanisms to deal with them. They simply accumulate.
In the worst-case scenario, this continual guilt-mongering will lead to voluntary self-destruction. People will become convinced they are inherently evil, and such a firmly held conviction can have only one outcome.
Thanks for your reply. Minutes after reading it, an email arrived which took me to escapekey's Substack "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.": https://escapekey.substack.com/p/mechanics-of-moral-expansion
"Mechanics of Moral Expansion - How Social Justice Became the Universal Justification for Expert Control
"Over the past several decades, 'social justice' has evolved into becoming a universal solvent for expanding expert oversight into every corner of human experience. What began as calls for addressing systemic inequalities has become the most reliable mechanism for installing new layers of bureaucratic control, compliance regimes, and gatekeeping authorities across society. . . .
"The pattern is unmistakable - and ubiquitous. Identify any sphere of human activity, frame existing practices as potential sources of injustice, and suddenly there exists both moral justification and a practical ‘requirement’ for a new ‘expert’ body to review, regulate, and change that activity per unchallengeable standards."
Monarchies, theocracies and dictatorships are likely to be inherently corrupt with respect to whatever direction would best serve the citizens. However, democracies are prone to insidious corruption from direct influence (pharmaceutical and armaments industries) and the actions of highly effective "intelligence" agencies of other countries and of the country itself.
Added to this is the fertile ground our populations provide for social manias such as man-hating feminism, the trans-activist shit-fest, BLM and overestimating the benefits of mass exotic immigration. These are driven in large part by an innate proclivity to guilt and self-hatred, as well as a search for meaning and purpose in life, and a tribe to belong to as religions are jettisoned due to the increasingly obvious falsity of their theologies.
We thought we could free ourselves from religion by creating a society of "self-determining" individuals. Unfortunately, we still have an innate need for moral guidance, and many people will prey on that need.
Authoritarian regimes seem to do a better job of preserving the existing moral norms. Since they already have power, they don't want to jeopardize their hold on power by changing the population they rule over. If anything, they tend to discourage change.
Look at North Korea. It was initially far more radical than South Korea in its social policies. Over time, however, it became more and more conservative. Today, the North is more traditional than the South in terms of preserving Korean culture. In two or three decades, the South will be barely recognizable as Korean.
We evolved to seek out the Father for directions
Hmm, that would argue for adopting the Roman Catholic faith, which affords the formal ritual of Confession to expiate an individual's sense of guilt. The Anglo-Catholics within the Anglican communion offer Confession, but few use it, possibly because a married priest is perceived as more likely to gossip.
In the current political context, it wouldn't be a good idea to promote confession, either within the existing churches or as some kind of post-Christian morality. The potential for abuse is too high.
Yes, it could destabilize congregations because married priests will abuse the priest-penitent privilege and gossip.
I was thinking more in terms of political abuse.
- Would you like to confess any feelings of xenophobia?
- No, I'm not a xenophobe.
- Oh, come now. We're all a bit xenophobic, aren't we? You can feel free to speak your mind.
So you speak honestly. A month later, you're debanked. A month after that, you discover you're on a no-fly list.
Such practices would assuredly destabilize congregations. I imagine Roman Catholic priests steer clear of such 'sins.'
I would say, conservatives extend to point 6 and 7 - if you include moral norms of the group, rather than everyone. All remaining points are just the liberal brain malarkey, as they scold nonbelievers in support of this nonsense with vehemence.
What kind of people wanted permission from the Church for a cousin marriage? The ones with outsized estates, like the kings and nobles.
"...dispensations in the second degree – that is, those for first cousins – remained confined to the high nobility and to unions deemed to be in the public interest. In the more distant third and fourth degrees, however, the granting of dispensations was relatively common during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. And over the course of the eighteenth century’s second half, the ranks of those who desired to marry a cousin or sister-in-law – that means, in close degrees – grew increasingly larger and gradually came to encompass all social milieus. "
Lanzinger, M. (2023). Administrating kinship: marriage impediments and dispensation policies in the 18th and 19th centuries. Brill., p. 17. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/87073
see also https://mankind.substack.com/p/quick-take-the-christian-church-didnt
Great post, thank you. MacDonald had similar debate with Henrich. It is doubtful Henrich will change his mind, as it would mean invalidating most of his career. Yet, he is clearly wrong.
I'm so confused was marrying cousins ever a norm isn't it seen as genetically disgusting what's the genetic value of it inbreeding leads to a increase of bad mutations it fixes a phenotype and reduces genetic diversity.
I wasn't it was ever a norm unless a extreme bottle neck but even then over subsequent the mutations build up again
Cousin marriage is normal among MENA populations. It seems to have become popular before Islam, particularly among elite individuals who were worried about marrying someone with "tainted" ancestry (e.g., a slave ancestor). Since people know their own family tree better than that of others, it's "safest" to marry a close relative.
There are other explanations. Marrying a relative may help keep money in the family, for instance.
Certainly! Here's a revised and grammatically correct version of your text, with improved clarity, flow, and structure while preserving your original meaning and tone:
---
Yeah, that’s a poignant point. I suppose it’s a presentist fallacy to judge modern actions through the lens of my meta-ethical framework and my knowledge of Darwinian selection—something I know to avoid in breeding. But historically, nepotism and dynastic thinking were deeply ingrained, especially in places like Bangladesh. That, I think, strengthens the argument for foreign aid incorporating embryo selection.
I’ve seen recent estimates suggesting average IQ is as low as 74, but I suspect it’s more likely around 84. The problem is, most of these figures come from PISA data—which shows the strongest correlation—but there’s little actual genomic evidence. The rest is inferred from twin studies. So I’ll keep things conservative and go with 84.
Cultures with such cognitive profiles struggle to sustain democracy. Instead, they tend to devolve into populism and poor economic outcomes.
My model leans toward Reinderman’s framework:
Cognitive capital → institutional frameworks → gaps in markets → incentives → consumer demand (global and local) → innovation capital → compound growth over decades→global inter connected caiptailism.
That’s what builds wealthy societies. Unfortunately, without embryo selection, this cycle can’t begin—if you lack the foundational cognitive capital, you’re more likely to vote for bad policies, which further stifle genetic potential and create a vicious cycle.
The real danger lies not in the data itself, but in how people use it. People take statistical averages and make sweeping meta-ethical claimslike saying, “On average, an African American is more likely to have an IQ of 85.” But there are also many white individuals at 85 IQ, and those statistics can be weaponized to justify racist policies. The data isn’t inherently racist; it’s how we choose to interpret and act on it that matters.
It's Joseph Henrich, no 'i.'
Corrected. I hate getting names wrong.
I hope all is well Peter! I read that the banning of cousin marriages was started in the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire by Emperor Justinian I, in the 6th century AD. This Byzantine Christian ecclesiastical law became the norm that discouraged consanguineous marriages. These bans were reinforced and expanded over time, especially under the influence of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which prohibited marriages between blood relatives up to the seventh degree — including first and second cousins.
Would you say this effect of reducing kinship ties had a positive effect on social pacification and increased economic activity in places like Constantinople and its large population? Did this behaviour pass from East to West church, before the more expansive marriage bans were introduced in the 8-9th centuries AD in the West?
As I understand it, Justinian's reforms went no further than existing restrictions under Roman Law, i.e., banning of marriages with first cousins. As for the Eastern Orthodox Church, it never went further than banning marriages with second cousins (and even that ban is no longer enforced).
I've come around to the opinion that avoidance of cousin marriage is more an effect than a cause of WEIRDness.
Social pacification - by the time of Late Antiquity, the populations of the Roman Empire had been pacified for several centuries. This was in fact a complaint of military authorities: most Romans lacked the will and ability to fight.
Kinship ties - The Byzantine authorities recognized that familialism and nepotism were obstacles to social and economic progress. They thus tried to ensure merit-based appointments and a fluid elite structure. Unlike the case in Western Europe, titles weren’t hereditary, and the emperor could elevate or demote individuals at will. This acted as a check on entrenched familial power.
Nonetheless, these measures were only partially successful and, in some cases, may have made things worse. For instance, the lack of formal succession laws led to frequent coups and civil wars, often driven by rival dynastic claims.
Joseph Heinrich can't read lol. Rejection of cousin marriage, polygamy and concubinage (all of which are allowed and common in the Bible) was already the norm in Pre-Christian Northern Europe, as Ancient Roman documents and DNA studies clearly point out.
this is nonsense. Concubinage and polygamy was extremely frequent among germanic elites – Charlemagne had at least one concubine, as did most patriarchs in the Norse sagas. Cousin marriage was probably allowed but not frequent.
The aDNA evidence indicates that polygyny was rare in Europe as far back as the Neolithic transition:
"Another cultural change that is thought to have taken place in Europe during the Neolithic transition is a shift from polygyny to monogamy [61], [62]. In fact, several Neolithic burials [55], [58] show evidence of nuclear families, which may reflect a monogamous marriage system. A shift from polygyny to monogamy would have the effect of decreasing male variance in reproductive success, since more males would now be able to mate, and consequently would increase Nm. This could result in a signal of population growth in NRY data that would be more recent compared to that observed in mtDNA and is exactly what Dupanloup and colleagues [63] have argued and found. Our results are in good agreement with theirs. Indeed, we found that th increased in males but not in females as we moved away from the Near East"
Rasteiro, R., & Chikhi, L. (2013). Female and male perspectives on the neolithic transition in Europe: clues from ancient and modern genetic data. PloS one, 8(4), e60944. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060944
Those practices only became somewhat more common after Christianization before declining again around the 1600s