A Letter from a Grandfather to his Genes, Part 1

Editor’s Note: The following essay is a slightly revised version of one that appeared in print in The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 1 (Spring 2005). For ease of online reading, it is presented here without notes, which can be found in the archived version of the print edition. I should, however, mention that Dr. Hilton’s argument is heavily indebted to Frank Salter’s theory of Ethnic Genetic Interests presented in his On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity, and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration. This is the first of five parts.

Explanation

These thoughts on “nationalism” were put on paper for the benefit of several young relatives who have misunderstood or been puzzled by my position on certain family and political issues.* Arguing about individual bits of a puzzle without an overall framework has been a waste of time and emotion. So I’ve tried to give, first, a brief overview or “manifesto,” followed by several specific explanations. Perhaps these considerations will help others faced with critics unfamiliar with the biology of human nature.

Here’s a thought: You either like your own people or you don’t. If you don’t, well, too bad, and we’ll get back to you in a minute. But if you do like your own people—that is, your own children, family, extended family, clan, tribe, or ethnic group, hereinafter called your “ethny” or nation (and we’ll get back to these words, in a minute, too)—this memorandum offers some considerations concerning life on this planet that today, oddly, many people and conventional wisdom seem to ignore. You may also appreciate the fact that our planet contains many other cultures and ethnies/nations, whose continued existence you might also be in favor of in accordance with today’s quasi-ideology of “bio-diversity.” That is, if you claim to love and respect other cultures, races, or ethnies as well as your own, you would do nothing to destroy or unduly change them. You would then be a “universal nationalist.”

Most people ought to be able to answer quite easily, when asked, “Yes, I would like to see my own people and culture continue to exist, not disappear,” or else, “No, my people and culture are not worth saving—I couldn’t care less if they vanished from the face of the earth.” To favor the continuation (the non-disappearance) of one’s people does not mean that one wouldn’t like to see improvements in flawed individuals (and who doesn’t have a few flaws?) or find some way of keeping flawed individuals from sabotaging the cause. One might like to see improvements in certain cultural details or personality traits common in one’s group, and the eugenic elimination of nasty genes wherever feasible. But such improvements would not be intended to remove either the major cultural traits or the vast majority of the characteristic genes that one’s people carry around and reproduce each generation.

Now then, if (and only if) you do not want your people to disappear, wouldn’t you necessarily have to favor the following policies?

First, you would favor a protective/defensive “nationalism” in regard to your own extended family and ethny. This need not be to the exclusion of commerce and other valuable reciprocal relationships with other families, other peoples, other ethnies. There is no good reason why your nationalism can’t be thoroughly compatible with other nationalisms and even synergistic with them—at least, or especially, if there is provision for some sort of regulatory-adjudicative body and police force to prevent any one ethny from being unduly predatory and pounding the stuffing out of its neighbors. Predation was not always irrational, as long as the odds were good that your side would win out and claim all the booty. But predators have to worry about their victims taking revenge (as in “terrorism”). No one likes to be the loser in a war, and in today’s wars often everyone is the loser, not least because wars pollute and interfere with depolluting the planet. Genocide, the slaughter of an ethny in its entirety, or its complete assimilation into another ethny, is analogous to the extinction of any species of plant or animal.⁵ Just as “biodiversity” is regarded as potentially beneficial across the animal and plant kingdoms, so, arguably, is human diversity in particular. One never knows when or how another culture or ethny may turn out to benefit one’s own, but if they go extinct, they are lost forever. Maybe there are some cultures that you detest, but maybe you should hold your nose and hope that they survive, too—someplace.

Second, you would want at least one territory, including a homeland, for your own people and culture as the easiest, most practical way to protect your ethny from being swamped by other ethnies. With a territory for every ethny, each is then responsible for not overloading its carrying capacity. The territory need not be large, e.g., a Swiss canton. Most of today’s cities contain micro ethnic enclaves (however vulnerable to invasion) along with areas that are heterogeneous.

Third, you would want at most a very modest amount of immigration into your territory, along with tourism, to provide exposure to alternative and possibly better cultural ways, without being forced to adopt them. Guest workers can provide extra labor when needed. Notice that most people can’t get past an all-or-nothing statement of the issue: You either allow immigration or you don’t; they can’t think in terms of “a little, but not a lot.”

Fourth, at most a very modest amount of intermarriage with other ethnies to counter the genetic effects of too much inbreeding, or to achieve other eugenic goals, e.g., to have smarter kids.

Fifth, you would need some sort of group structure or community (with rules, customs, laws, etc.) designed to help achieve the above goals.

Sixth, group structure and community would, for many people, be handicapped without a full embrace of the spiritual world, which, in essence, seems to be a conscious and unconscious acceptance of and celebration of the “sacred,” i.e., of the extreme importance of certain aspects of our lives, both social and physical, and a devotion to the quest for paradise in this best of all possible worlds. Nowadays, of course, any spiritual or religious dogma that is contrary to the findings of modern science, typified by the antipathy of some Christian and Muslim doctrines to the idea of biological (Darwinian) evolution, will likely alienate the most talented of one’s people. This antipathy has obscured what is surely the most sacred priority imaginable, the survival on this planet of one’s people, however defined: one’s “sacred nation.” What is sacred is essentially what is vitally important. Rituals that are sacred are those that surround important milestones in life (birth, marriage, death, etc.) and that promote successful negotiation through these stages of life.

There are people who are nationalistic without calling themselves “religious,” but to exclude the spiritual is to ignore the enormous fulfillment which a focus on the spiritual can provide for many people in matters of success, love, tragedy, and death, and in encouraging a healthy and cohesive community. A major problem historically has been that so much that characterizes well-known religions seems contrary to common sense, irrational or silly (some concepts of the hereafter), maladaptive (the “promiscuous” altruism of some Christians), hypocritical (“Onward Christian Soldiers”), unnecessarily hazardous to outsiders (Zionists, Crusaders, Taliban), and therefore unnecessarily alienating. For many of us, they also originated in foreign lands, in people and cultures that lived in different times, ecologies, and circumstances. Surely all this can be improved upon.

An incidental note: To say that you favor the above policies doesn’t necessarily imply anything about what you are personally prepared to do about them, only that you would necessarily favor them if you want your people to be protected. E.g., you might be too busy, distracted, discouraged, or lazy to do much about them. Maybe you’re so far along in your life that you can only hope others will do the job. Encourage them.

So, in brief, that’s about it. However, thanks to a half century or so of massive ideological campaigns against the relevance of biology for human social relations, any defender or critic of nationalism should become familiar with a few essential understandings. Perhaps the following will help.

_____________________

FAQs

In which we address a number of misunderstandings or frequently asked questions.

1) What is meant by “our own people”?

2) What is biological kinship all about? Why is it such a strong glue?

3) Why aren’t the nearly 100 percent of our genes that everyone shares more important than those few that vary?

4) Why is kinship “relative”?

5) Doesn’t nationalism promote wars between ethnies?

6) How do we reach reciprocity from “might-makes-right”?

7) Doesn’t nationalism inspire a feeling of superiority that is used to justify dominating other ethnies?

8 ) What is the relationship between reciprocity and kinship?

9) Why would anyone doubt the relationship of family or extended family to ethnicity and nation?

10) Why aren’t cultural differences the reason for nationalism?

11) Doesn’t the success of multiculturalism show that having the same ancestry is not necessary for a harmonious society as long as people speak a common language?

12) Why isn’t everyone nationalistic?

13) How do you explain the fact that a major football rivalry for Tunisia seems to be with another North African country, Morocco, rather than with countries that are much more distantly related?

14) What’s wrong with interracial marriage?

15) How do you decide how much immigration to have?

16) How can a small territory (enclave, ghetto, neighborhood) control immigration?

17) What do you mean by group structure?

18) Should everyone be a nationalialist?

___________________________

1. What is meant by “our own people”?

This can vary all over the lot. Situations differ in how salient they make certain degrees of closeness among kin. A holiday may focus our minds on immediate family, while a family reunion could bring together a large collection of people with the same last name. A war can make us concerned for our whole ethny or nation (e.g., Irish Catholics or Serbs or Jews) as it is aligned against an enemy nation. Note that we often belong to associations such as a flying club, or a labor union, or to a management team. But we’re mostly concerned here with groupings that are based on some degree of biological kinship, which seems to be an especially powerful glue for group formation, rather than common economic or other interests. American workers tend to resent their jobs being outsourced to “fellow” workers in Southeast Asia or to illegal immigrants: Where is the worker solidarity there?

2. What is biological kinship all about? Why is it such a strong glue?

Most people around the world understand something about the importance of “blood,” or family, as a primary source of help, backup, love, and social cohesion, a fundamental basis for sociality. Several sharp minds managed to convince many gullible minds to the contrary, during the twentieth century, but fortunately their forces seem now to be in retreat.

Common sense tells us that a first and very natural impulse for most of us (with due allowance for abnormal individuals or situations) is the promotion of our own lives and self-defense. Thanks however to important insights by biologists (see, e.g., Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, for an introduction), it is now clear that we share many of our distinctive genes (the all-important DNA strands that are blueprints for proteins out of which human beings are constructed) with kin. (Note: We are talking about only those distinctive genes [“alleles”] that can vary across humans, not the vast number—well over 90 percent of our genes—that all of us have in common.) If the recent insights are correct, the ultimate meaning of life, and the raison d’être for any altruism and social cohesion at all, is the promotion of our distinctive genes along with the others. The way DNA gets perpetuated is by building a body that looks and acts in ways that lead to reproduction of those same strands of DNA molecules. No reproduction, no more DNA. Thus, one way of promoting this reproduction is by helping our kin as well as ourselves. One sees this dramatically in the ultra-cooperation between identical twins—who share all their genes with each other. It can also be seen in the considerable social cohesion exhibited by small, ethnically homogeneous societies such as exist in Iceland. Given their degree of within-island, yet non-incestuous, marriage, the average Icelander has the equivalent of over a thousand siblings in the community, if one considers that she will likely share at least a few of the Icelandically distinctive genes with each of the several hundred thousand people in Iceland. Add them all up—that is, across all the individuals with whom she shares at least one—and it makes perfect sense that Icelanders should be cohesive: helping other Icelanders would be like helping all those virtual siblings. Genetic commonality means a certain amount of commonality of interest. Common interest is a basis for trust, since insofar as people want the same thing for each other, they are unlikely to betray each other.

Read Part 2 here.