A Letter from a Grandfather to his Genes, Part 4

Read Part 1 here.
Read Part 2 here.
Read Part 3 here.

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

It depends on how much “harmony” you would settle for. To achieve the harmony of an ethnically homogeneous nation, you would need more than just a common language. Immigrants would also have to love, accept, and thoroughly learn the host culture, and then intermarry over and over so that any distinctive physical features receded or blended. And they would probably have to forget their ancestral history, so that they wouldn’t end up with dual loyalties.

It is very true that in economically well-off countries such as Canada, in contexts that force many different peoples to brush up against each other daily in factories, universities, schools, etc., there are innumerable instances of harmonious interethnic relations. Things are so harmonious, in fact, that these countries are still merrily promoting multiculturalism year after year, and show no sign of desisting in their invitations to people around the world to “come on over.” Increasingly, however, there are voices to the contrary. The evidence points to a loss of community and mutual trust among citizens as the ethnic homogeneity of a territory is lost. Special interests in control of immigration policy have, in effect, given away the farm.

There are important things to note about multiculturalism. Particularly fascinating is the fact that Jews have arguably been the most vociferous of its advocates in the West, but are ferociously against it when it comes to their own state of Israel. Wonder why? Guess.

Second, multiculturalism has never been the subject of a referendum wherein a majority of the citizens of a country could declare themselves in favor of it—with or without their consent being fully informed as to the possible or likely consequences. Africans were brought to the United States by a small minority of people—e.g., plantation owners—who wanted cheap labor. The result may be good American jazz, but it has also been a long history of miserable racial tension and conflict.

Employers looking for cheap labor are still encouraging more illegal migrants from Mexico. Now “La Raza,” as many Mexican Latinos call themselves, is planning a takeover of the American Southwest. At the present rate of demographic change, they are likely to be a majority in California and several other states before long. They will then have avenged the earlier American takeover of what was once Mexican territory. And their ethny will be dominant. In anticipation of this, many whites are now moving out of California. Regardless of the legal justification for any of these political moves, it should be evident that not all the human beings involved have the same attitude toward these events; that is because they have different psychological “interests.” People the world over can have an interest in moving to economically prosperous lands, and they often succeed, because the majority populations in those lands are not organized effectively to control immigration. Some countries of the West have now probably reached the point of no return, of never being able to stop immigration, and thus prevent another “tragedy of the commons”: alien ethnies will now want to promote further immigration of their own people, so that there will be even less chance of avoiding the overexploitation of a territory’s resources.

Meanwhile, in, e.g., Toronto, various immigrant groups vie with the Hell’s Angels for the highest homicide rate. Jamaican blacks argue that they aren’t the only murderers, that homicide certainly is not in their genes, and that they shouldn’t be racially profiled; their detractors don’t really care whether it’s poverty, genes, or culture: They just wish the Jamaicans would go back to Jamaica. They don’t say that publicly, because such political incorrectness can be prosecuted as a “hate crime.” Then there are the twenty-plus years and 130 million dollars it took Canada to try to prosecute the allegedly Sikh perpetrators of the 1985 Air India crash (only one was finally convicted), thanks in part to ethnic barriers to collecting evidence. Recently Muslim immigrants have demanded the introduction of elements of “sharia” (Muslim law) into the Canadian legal system, while other immigrants screamed that they had just fled sharia. Other Canadians have preferred a more traditional separation of church and state…or full public financing of private Jewish schools…or a Christian imposition of the “right to life” against abortions.

Isn’t multiculturalism wonderful? Well, it is, if you are one of the immigrants who successfully made it to Canada or the U.S. (either recently or in an earlier era), especially if you fled conflicts in the old homeland. Immigrants are mainly looking for improved living conditions, and are not too concerned with their acceptability to host ethnies beyond avoiding serious hostility. Upon arrival, most seem to coalesce around preceding members of their own ethny. Even the aboriginals, who came in several waves, probably did not ask permission from previous waves—any more than did the much later Europeans. The point, for the moment, is not which ethny was right or wrong, but what happens when they all find themselves under the same roof. Multiculturalism, beyond a modest cultural variety in restaurants and the like, is not attractive to those who fear that their political and other cultural ways will be challenged or, sooner or later, overwhelmed and displaced by incompatible mores.

12. Why isn’t everyone nationalistic?

a. Individualism

b. No nation

c. Attachment to one’s ethny is overridden

d. Fear of offending others

e. Deception

Clarifications:

a) Individualism

The self-sufficient individualist feels that he can achieve happiness on his own; any form of nationalism may seem like a giant, oppressive handicap, given all the anticipated time and effort expended in in-group activities. People vary for constitutional reasons on nearly every imaginable biological trait, including personality and motivational factors. Thus attachment to a group can be expected to vary as well. Demanding role requirements can make it difficult to herd many people into a cohesive ethnic grouping; not all roles are equally attractive to or suitable for every person. Good leadership is rare. Most humans are easily frightened sheep. So if there is a military or paramilitary role to be played, only a few reasonably macho males are likely to volunteer to take the necessary risks. The fighters in the IRA and UDA in Ireland are hardly random samples of their populations. Ironically, such “hard men” are sometimes not even supported by many members of their people who later benefit from their sacrifice, e.g., pacifists terrified of violence, true Christians who invariably favor turning the other cheek, devotees of Gandhi, or people who object (on principle or out of fear of retaliation) to their own nationalists’ theft of land and resources from other groups, and so on.

b) No nation

It might not be clear who one’s people are because of mixed ancestry, so that one is an isolate among other ethnies; or one’s “people” consist of a mix of equally salient and historically conflicting groups, such as half-Jewish and half-Arab, or half-African and half-British, that lends itself to identity conflicts or ambiguities. The more mixed our perceived ancestry, the more diffuse should be our conception of our people, unless people with the same mixed ancestry can get together to form a new ethny, e.g., the “Métis” of western Canada (a mix of aboriginal and French ancestry), or the growing coalition of half-Jews. At one extreme, there are people whose ancestry is so incredibly complex that apart from humanity as a whole, they don’t feel especially close to any single present-day ethny. Ethnicity for such “isolates” ought to be pretty much meaningless—unless, of course, they are somehow discriminated against by people who do belong to a specific ethny and regard them as outsiders. But apart from their immediate family, it ought to be hard for them to form strong bonds to any particular large grouping—compared to, say, the average Croat, whose ancestry is more homogeneous. There are naive idealists, often (erstwhile) communists, who recommend as much mixture of ancestry as possible. They urge this, first, because they see ancestry as unimportant: marry whomever you like. But often they see vast amounts of intermarriage as an antidote to war or other vicissitudes of ethnic competition, an inadvertent recognition that ethnic homogeneity is indeed meaningful. What would be the result? While one batch of multiculturalists is joyfully mixing their children’s ancestry, other batches will be sticking to the path of homogeneous ethnicity, with all the competitive advantages that accrue to especially cohesive groups. The isolated idealists will gradually be squeezed to the margins, perhaps under some form of exploitation or even “slavery” (just think of the millions of unprotected Russian and Eastern European women who are currently being forced into prostitution [“white slavery”]), if not eventually lost to the forces of natural selection. Inter-group relations may not be inevitably competitive, at least to the point of unpleasantness, but they sometimes are—in which case, who is likely to win, or at least to successfully defend themselves?

c) Attachment to one’s ethny overridden

It can be overridden by a lack of pride in one’s people, or by a dislike or hatred resulting from a harrowing family or group life. Nearly any motive can be overridden by other more urgent needs and motives. Not everyone is hungry at suppertime. Hunger is obviously a “biological need,” but can easily be overridden by an exciting television program.

People also vary in how hunger driven they are, some becoming obese, others anorexic. It’s the same for ethnic cohesion. Individualism, the desire to go it alone, love of solitude—all these tendencies may be somewhat heritable (so that if one identical twin were like that, it’s a good bet that the other twin of the pair is similar). Ask them to behave like a hive of Hutterites or Hasidic Jews and they will instantly feel suffocated and run for the door.

Unfortunate family experiences, or the feeling that one’s own people are a bad lot, can prompt a search for another ethny/culture with which to gradually acculturate and eventually assimilate through intermarriage (e.g., Princess Diana’s attraction to the warmth of Egyptian culture).

Serendipitous, wonderful experiences with an out-group can, especially if following upon earlier misery, inspire hope for a new and better life, a feeling of paradise found. This is what many emigrants hope for and, if found, can lead to a desire to change their ethny and assimilate, or else to frustration if the host ethny is not as welcoming as had been hoped.

Family ties can be overridden by romantic/sexual attractions. But imagine the bind if the respective ethnies are at loggerheads, e.g., a mixed Serbian and Muslim couple in Bosnia during their internecine strife. Imagine their offspring torn in two by pressures from both sides. Such unfortunates must surely feel impelled to just clear out of that part of the world to find solace elsewhere. Hence the effort seen in so many ethnies to prevent their offspring coming in too close contact with out-groups during life stages important for mate choice. Again, think of “honor killings” in which a woman is killed by her father or brother for having contravened the marital choice rules designed to maintain family cohesion where such cohesion is felt to be absolutely crucial for success in life. Such people know instinctively that it’s not just a matter of maintaining cultural compatibility but, in addition, has to do with the degree of trust that comes from optimal kinship and from obeying a family’s chief decision maker. “Optimal” here refers, also, to the fact that one shouldn’t marry someone too closely related, either, since too much inbreeding (as in incest, or the equivalent with small endogamous tribes) courts the hazard of genetic defects. See FAQ #14 re interracial marriages.

d) Fear of offending others

A person with friends in out-groups might sense that professing a nationalism of his own would conflict with such affections. But need that be the case? After all, a powerful love for one’s own parents needn’t prevent anyone from having friends and lovers outside one’s own family. A reunion that is fundamentally one of family ties on Thanksgiving or Christmas has never prevented families from inviting all manner of friends and acquaintances home for at least some of its celebrations. Having one’s own family as a first priority does not preclude positive relations with any other person, or even other species of animal and plant.

Still don’t think such prioritizing is necessary? Well, again, think about whom you would turn to when in severe difficulty? Do you have the backup of people you can trust? Who will take responsibility for you during severe illness and old age? Or are you all alone to fend off whatever sort of gang you are up against? Whom would you try to save from falling off a cliff when the choice is among individuals varying in kinship to you? Please try your best when doing this mental exercise to equate these individuals on variables other than kinship, such as how nice they are as persons, how healthy they are, their age. Try out different combinations. Your sister vs. your cat; your sister vs. a chimpanzee; your sister vs. your cousin; your father vs. your uncle, a fellow Icelander vs. a Swede; a fellow Icelander vs. a Vietnamese; etc. Which choices are easiest to make? Why?

e) Deception

The most vehement criticism of nationalism often comes from members of a minority ethny who are cleverly attempting to reduce the competitive power of other, larger ethnies by reducing their cohesion. Make nepotism, nationalism, or any kind of in-group appreciation “politically incorrect” enough and an ethny’s nationalism is sabotaged. To override kinship is nothing new. In the past, children have been induced to denounce their parents for not being communist enough or religious enough. It’s all very ironic if the people doing the criticizing, e.g., Jews, are themselves highly and cohesively nationalistic. But it’s a neat trick if they can pull it off.

Religious doctrine can override kinship by, in effect, deceiving a person into treating out-group members as if they were kin: “We are all brothers under the skin,” they might say, when of course literally this is patently untrue. Christianity may have succeeded so well in such sleights of hand in part by creating a confusion between an altruistic spirit of reciprocity vs. altruistic sacrifice in which one’s own people are, in effect, handicapped.

To be concluded . . .