Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition Read online

  Individualism and the

  Western Liberal Tradition:

  Evolutionary Origins,

  History, and Prospects

  for the Future

  Kevin MacDonald

  Kindle Direct Publishing Edition

  Copyright © 2019 Kevin MacDonald

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 9781089691488

  Preface

  Chapter 1: Recent Population Genetic

  Research

  Three Distinct Population Movements

  in Pre-historic Europe

  Percentages of Admixture of WHGs, EFs,

  and I-Es

  The Pitted Ware Culture of Coastal

  Scandinavia

  Further Evidence for North-South WHG

  and EF Genetic Clines

  Selection for General Cognitive Ability

  and Physical Traits

  Genetic Differences within Contemporary

  Europe Mirror Geography

  Sex-Chromosome Data

  Conclusion

  Chapter 2: The Indo-European Cultural

  Legacy: Aristocratic Individualism

  Indo-European Culture

  Technological Advances

  Domestication of Horses

  Sophisticated Wagons

  The Secondary Products Revolution

  Social/Cultural Practices

  The Militarized Culture of the

  Indo-Europeans

  Reciprocity as a Trait of I-E Culture

  Breaking Down Bonds of Kinship

  The Rewards of Military Success

  Indo-Europeanism as a Free-Market,

  Individualist Culture

  Sippe and Männerbünde

  Aristocratic Individualism in Ancient

  Greece

  Aristocratic Individualism among the

  Germanic Peoples after the Fall of the

  Western Empire

  How Ethnically Cohesive Were

  Germanic Groups in Late Classical

  and Early Medieval Europe?

  Conclusion

  Appendix to Chapter 2: Roman Culture:

  Militarization, Aristocratic Government,

  and Openness to Conquered Peoples

  The Indo-European Roots of Roman

  Civilization: The Military Ethos of the

  Roman Republic

  The Roman Family

  Roman Public Religion

  The Aristocratic, Non-Despotic

  Government of Rome

  The Openness of Roman Society:

  Social Mobility and Incorporating

  Different Peoples

  Plebeian Upward Mobility

  Upward Social Mobility of Incorporated

  Peoples

  Conclusion: Rome as a Failed Group

  Evolutionary Strategy

  Chapter 3: The Northern Hunter-Gatherer

  Legacy in Europe: Egalitarian Individualism

  Egalitarianism as a Distinguishable

  Component of Western Culture

  The Ecological Argument for the

  Individualism of Northern

  Hunter-Gatherers

  The Social Complexity of Northern

  European Hunter-Gatherers

  Egalitarianism as a Fundamental Trait of

  Northern Hunter-Gatherers

  Exogamy as Characteristic of Western

  Marriage

  Love as Central to Western Marriage

  Psychological Differences between WEIRD

  People and the Rest

  Social Exchange and Altruistic

  Punishment

  Other Psychological Tendencies of

  WEIRD People

  Moral Reasoning

  Cognitive Differences

  Conclusion

  Chapter 4: The Familial Basis of European

  Individualism

  Marriage in Western Europe: Some Basic

  Differences

  Descriptive Data on Family Patterns in

  Northwestern and Southern Europe

  Characteristics of the Moderately

  Individualist Family System of

  Northwest Europe

  Dating the Origins of the Individualist

  Family

  Disadvantages of the Individualist Family

  Contextual Influences Proposed as

  Causing Moderate Individualism

  Moderate Collectivism in Southern

  Europe versus Moderate Individualism

  in Northwest Europe

  Egalitarian Trends in Northern Europe

  Northwest European Non-Manorialized

  Areas

  Germanic versus Irish Kinship

  Germanic Kinship

  Irish Kinship

  The Ethnic Argument

  State-Supported Extreme Individualism in

  Scandinavia

  Conclusion

  Chapter 5: The Church in European History

  Implicit and Explicit Processing:

  How Ideology Motivates Behavior

  Ideology and Social Controls Supporting

  Monogamy in Western Europe

  The Papal Revolution: Establishing the

  Image of the Church as an Altruistic

  Institution

  The Papal Revolution: The Church’s

  Power Over Secular Elites

  Medieval Ecclesiastical Collectivism

  Social Controls and Ideology Maintaining

  Socially Imposed Monogamy

  Policing Sexual Behavior in the Middle Ages

  and Later

  Ideologies Promoting Monogamy

  Conclusion

  Effects of Monogamy

  Monogamy as a Precondition for the

  European “Low-Pressure” Demographic

  Profile and the Industrial Revolution

  Monogamy and Investment in Children

  Christianity in Opposition to the Ancient

  Greco-Roman Aristocratic Social Order

  Christianity in Post-Roman Europe

  The Church in Pursuit of Power

  The Church’s Ideology of Moral

  Egalitarianism as an

  Instrument of Furthering Its Power

  Church Policy in Opposition to the

  Power of Extended Kinship Groups

  The Church’s Encouragement of

  Diverse Centers of Power

  Christianity and the Rational Tradition

  of the West

  The Realism Versus Nominalism Debate

  Christianity and Post-Medieval Europe

  Conclusion: The Church Facilitated but

  Did Not Cause Western Individualism

  Chapter 6: Puritanism: The Rise of

  Egalitarianism Individualism and

  Moralistic Utopianism

  Puritanism as a Group Evolutionary

  Strategy

  John Calvin’s Group Strategy

  Puritanism in New England

  Puritan Families

  Child-rearing Practices

  Intelligence and Emphasis on

  Education

  Puritan Names as Ingroup Markers

  Community Control of Individual

  Behavior: Puritan Collectivism

  Was Puritanism a Closed Group

  Evolutionary Strategy?

  Decline of Puritan Group Boundaries

  The Puritan Revolution in England

  The Puritan Revolution in the United

  States

  Nineteenth-Century Puritan-Inspired

  Intellectual Trends: Secular Versions

  of Moral Utopianism

  Transcendentalism as a Movement o
f

  Puritan-Descended Intellectuals

  Prominent Transcendentalists

  Orestes Brownson (1803–1876)

  George Ripley (1802–1880)

  Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888)

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1802–1882)

  Theodore Parker (1810–1860)

  William Henry Channing (1810–1884)

  Transcendentalist Activism on Behalf

  of Social Justice

  Transcendentalism: A Summing Up

  The Uneasy Association between

  Anglo-Saxon Individualism and Ethnic

  Identification in the Nineteenth Century

  Self-interest and Liberal Ideology

  Other Liberal Nineteenth-Century

  Intellectual Currents

  Libertarian Anarchism

  Liberal Protestantism

  Academic Cultural Determinism

  The Secular Left

  The Period of Ethnic Defense: 1880–1965

  Conclusion

  Chapter 7: Moral Idealism in the British

  Antislavery Movement and the “Second

  British Empire”

  The Wider Context of the Age of

  Benevolence

  The Psychology of Altruism and

  Moral Universalism

  The Personality System of Empathy

  Moral Idealism and the Ideology of Moral

  Universalism

  Philosophical Antecedents

  Empathy and Abolitionism

  Empathy and Ideology in Opposition to

  Slavery: Quakers, Evangelical Anglicans,

  and Methodists

  Quakers

  Evangelical Anglicans

  Methodists

  Puritanism as a Prototype of the Age of

  Benevolence

  “The Second British Empire” in the

  Nineteenth Century: A Kinder, Gentler

  Place

  The Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica

  and Its Supporters in England

  David Hackett Fischer on the “Second

  British Empire”

  Free Speech in the United States

  and New Zealand

  The Affective Revolution in England:

  An Ethnic Hypothesis

  The Ethnic Origins and the Decline of the

  Aristocratic Ethos in Britain

  Conclusion

  Chapter 8: The Psychology of Moral

  Communities

  Social Identity Processes as an Adaptation

  for Moral Communities

  The Role of Empathy in Moral

  Communities: Altruism—and

  Pathological Altruism

  Controlling Ethnocentrism: Implicit and

  Explicit Processing

  Implicit White Communities

  Managing White Ethnocentrism: The

  Problem with Non-Explicit White

  Identity

  Race Differences in Personality

  Some Basic Personality Systems

  The Behavioral Approach System (BAS)

  The Love/Nurturance Pair Bonding

  System

  Prefrontal Executive Control (PEC)

  Richard Lynn’s Race Differences in

  Personality: Whites as More Generous

  and Empathic than Other Races

  Life History Theory

  Psychological Challenges to Developing

  an Explicit Culture of White Identity

  and Interests

  Self-interest and the Anti-White

  Infrastructure

  Social Learning Theory: The Consequences

  of Not Dominating the Cultural High

  Ground

  Benefits and Risks of Conscientiousness

  Cognitive Dissonance as a Force of

  Psychological Inertia

  Psychological Mechanisms for a White

  Renaissance

  Being Aware of Impending Minority Status

  Triggers White Ethnocentrism

  Expressions of Anti-White Hatred Promote

  White Ethnocentrism

  Social Identity Processes

  The Extremism of Scandinavian Culture:

  Egalitarianism, Trust, Conformity,

  and Consensus Decision Making

  The Special Case of Finland

  Conclusion: The Importance of

  Changing the Explicit Culture

  Appendix to Chapter 8: Recent Cultural

  Deterioration: Some Cultural

  Correlates of the Rise of a New Elite

  The General Cultural Decline in America

  Since the 1960s

  Conclusion: The Transformative Effect

  of the s Countercultural Revolution

  Chapter 9: The Liberal Tradition

  versus Multiculturalism

  Individualism as a Precursor of Science

  And Capitalism

  Individualism as Precursor of Science

  Individualism as Predisposing to

  Capitalism

  What Went Wrong? The New Elite and Its

  Loathing of the Nation it Rules

  Intellectual Movements of the Left Have

  Exploited the Western Liberal Tradition

  The Moral Argument for White Interests

  Conclusion: The Uncertain Future of the West

  Preface

  ____________________

  The origins of this book go back to the early 1980s when I spent a year as an unemployed Ph.D. Armed with the evolutionary theory of sex, I started reading in anthropology and basically found that as societies created higher levels of economic production, wealthy, powerful men were able to control ever larger numbers of women. The interesting thing was that this was not generally the case in Western Europe. This issue led to a number of papers on the establishment and maintenance of monogamy in Western societies (cited in Chapter 5) and ultimately to this book.

  Of course, the fundamental issues have changed over the years. The critical questions now are why the West became so successful (monogamy is part of the story) and, in recent decades, why is it so bent on self-destruction. The short answer to this is individualism, but my attempt to answer those questions requires some long journeys through population genetics, European history and pre-history, and the changing elites in the West, especially after World War II, as well as psychological research. The overall theoretical lens used is evolutionary psychology—I accept the general principle that humans have a set of psychological mechanisms that influence their behavior and that genetic variation is an important contributor to these influences.

  But this is not to imply what is usually disparagingly referred to as “genetic determinism.” Human history is far too complex for explanations solely in terms of genetics. In several chapters I develop the psychological basis for cultural and ideological influences based on research on the higher brain centers—prototypically located in the prefrontal cortex. These mechanisms are incredibly elaborated in humans and, in a very real sense, they are what makes us human. Thus ideologies and social controls influencing human behavior play a central role here, but there is no claim that such influences are a deterministic outcome of human psychology interacting with the social and material world.

  Moreover, human history is littered with contingencies and cannot be predicted or even postdicted in any detail by any theory I am aware of—certainly not by an evolutionary psychology positing only a set of universally available evolved modules as explanatory devices.[1] History is filled with twists and turns, often depending on the outcome of particular battles or political conflicts, themselves influenced by a host of psychological and contextual factors. For example, Chapter 5 discusses the cultural influence of the Catholic Church and the psychological mechanisms underlying this influence, but also the ideologies and social controls so essential to its success during the High Middle Ages. There is a lot of material here on the consequences of the rise of Protestantism in England, but no attempt to provide an explanation o
f exactly why it occurred when it did. Historical accounts have the benefit of hindsight but we are still left with accounts that fall well short of a complete explanation. So be it.

  So how does evolutionary psychology enter in? Essentially the thesis is that ethnic influences are important for understanding the West—that the pre-historic invasion of the Indo-Europeans had a transformative effect on Europe, inaugurating a prolonged period of what will be labeled “aristocratic individualism” resulting from variants in Indo-European genetic and cultural influence (Chapter 2). However, beginning in the seventeenth century and gradually becoming dominant was a new culture labeled “egalitarian individualism,” itself influenced by the ethnic tendencies of northern hunter-gatherers that had remained relatively submerged during the period of aristocratic domination. Egalitarian individualism ushered in the modern world and we are living with its consequences today. As in the outcome of particular battles or political conflicts, the rise of this new people and new culture is not predictable in detail, but we can certainly trace out its consequences in hindsight.

  This book has benefited from interaction with many others over the years. In recent times, I would single out F. Roger Devlin who proofread the manuscript and corrected many stylistic deficiencies. I also want to thank Simon Ström, whose expertise in the area of population genetics was very useful, and Luke Torrisi, whose expertise on Protestant millenarianism contributed greatly to the material on nineteenth-century America.

  1

  Recent Population Genetic

  Research

  __________________________

  This book seeks to present a biologically informed view of Western culture and civilization with a special focus on individualism, a trait that, like all others of interest to psychologists, has a genetic basis.[2] It is therefore appropriate to begin by tracing the genetic history of the West.

  A genetic basis for a trait can evolve via advantageous mutations or via phenotypic plasticity (i.e., change as a result of experience). In an organism with some degree of plasticity, environmental events can result in changes in the phenotype. If this phenotype is advantageous, the organism would tend to accumulate mutations that make the development of the phenotype more reliable and result in genetic influence/control over the trait.[3] This is sometimes labeled “phenotype first” evolution because the genetic changes occur after the trait first appears in the population as a result of plasticity.[4]

  Developmental plasticity allows for a relatively fast route to producing adaptive phenotypes compared to the gradual accumulation of advantageous mutations. Nevertheless, it is now well accepted that evolution via either route can occur well within historical time spans.[5]