I presume to believe that I am not alone among traditionalists and conservatives in having a distaste for the modern city. Not only are they dirty, loud, obnoxious, crime-ridden, vice-infested, and often have the sanitary rating of a septic tank, but they tend to be places that bring out the worst in their residents. The larger the city, the worse they seem to be. It is almost as if cities act as focal lenses for the innate sinful nature of mankind, taking it and amplifying it synergistically whenever huge numbers of people are aggregated together in such close proximity.
Yet, as a classically-minded student of Western history and civilization (I would classify myself as a “Neo-Ciceronian” if I absolutely had to identify with an “ideology”), I find this view to be at odds with how our forbearers thought of cities.
For instance, in his oft-quoted but ill-translated dictum, Aristotle said that “man is a political animal.” This translation is unfortunate because it gives the modern observer, especially Americans who are often and unfortunately ignorant of classical thought, an incorrect sense of what Aristotle meant. He did not mean that man is at his fullest when he’s arguing about abortion on an internet forum or voting for which candidate from the Republicrat Party will (mis)represent him in Congress. A more correct translation of Aristotle’s statement would be that “man is a creature of the polis.” The polis, often called the “city-state,” was the focal point of classical Greek life. As such, it was more than just a location in which people aggregated to live their separate lives. Instead, the polis was a living, breathing organism. It was a community in which man not only lived his private life, but in which he was practically compelled to lead a public existence as well. In classical Greece, a man who refused public participation and led an exclusively private life was looked down upon. He was an idios, from which we derive our own term “idiot.” People who did not have a poleis culture, which included many of the peoples that the Greeks thought of as barbarians, and even rustic Greeks like the Thessalians, were viewed as being malformed and incomplete.
The Romans had a similar view of things. Cicero (and surely his opinion must count for a lot!) lauded cities as beneficial and fulfilling for mankind, for much the same reasons as did Aristotle and other Greek thinkers. To be a citizen of a city of free men (municipia) made you a fuller person than the rustic provincial non-entity. And ultimately, this was why the highest aspiration for the upward-mover in the Empire was to be able to participate in the legal fiction of being a citizen of the city of Rome, even if one never actually laid eyes on it during one’s lifetime.
This dichotomy in my own mind – a distaste for the cities I see around me, but the reverence for “the city” in our classical heritage – has gnawed at the back of my mind for quite a while. But then the resolution of these contradictory impulses came to me. The difference between the two lies in their differing aspects of “community”, the one being based upon our Traditional sense of community and identity, the other being directly opposed to it.
As should be inferred from the comments above, classically-speaking, cities were not simply large aggregations of people. They were viewed as communities. They shared a commonality not only of culture and language and religion, but of purpose and direction and will. Or at least that was the idealized view of them, even if ancient cities departed from this to varying degrees in practice. What one person did for the community affected everyone else. The heroes like Pericles provided benefits to all the citizens of Athens. The traitors like Alcibiades caused great harm to them all.
As Jeff Culbreath said (even if in a bit different context), “The nature of tradition is that it is lived in community.” Traditional life requires community because that is what allows individuals to live together without resorting to become wards of the external state or becoming competing elements within a society that only serve to rip it apart from the inside out. Community is what allows the family to prosper. Community engenders bonds of loyalty, purpose, and reciprocity. Community is what allows society to enjoin the “gentle persuasion” of stigma and social pressure against those who deviate too grossly from traditional modes and patterns, instead of using the “violent persuasion” of the force and power of the state. Community is what allows each member to work with and persuade others towards a common end without falling either into dictatorship of ochlocracy. It is not surprising that the most successful genuine republics (among which the United States would not be included, for we ceased to be a genuine republic by 1865) have been those with a strong sense of community and common purpose.
It is exactly this that is missing from the modern American city. Think about what our cities are today, even the relatively well-functioning ones. They are simple aggregations of large numbers of people who are yet largely disconnected from each other. The people of Boston or San Francisco or Atlanta have no commonality of purpose. They have no unspoken yet very real bonds of loyalty and affection uniting them. They are the very essence of the idiotes of classical Greece, men and women whose sole loyalties are to themselves and their immediate families and the instant gratification of their desires, with no thought of their communities as a whole. Even in cases where ethnic enclaves may exist which create a small semblance of community, this extends only so far as the ethnic boundaries lay – they certainly do not unite these cities into “political” wholes in the Aristotlean sense.
As such, it is little surprise that such cities are riven with crime (after all, you don’t rob or murder people you feel bonds of love and loyalty toward). No wonder these cities need the heavy hands of militarized police to keep their denizens in check. Are we surprised that they’re dens of iniquity and vice, when there are no social pressures from any community of Tradition to govern the baser impulses of these people?
How did this aberrant style of city come about? It occurred as a result of the Industrial Revolution and the social upheavals in labor and the movement of populations from the countryside to the cities that happened as a result. People left their traditional communities – places where their grandparents had lived where their grandparents had lived – to become atomized cogs in the industrial machinery that drove the rise of automated, bank-financed corporatism. Cities in the classical era and the Middle Ages existed, and many were quite large, but within them, everyone who was not a criminal or an outcast had a place of dignity and relevance and respect and worth. In the industrial city, man became an expendable gear; if one breaks, replace him with another one who just floated in from the countryside. Ultimately, the problem is not the advance of the technology itself, but of the failure of social man to guard against the commoditization of human beings in a way that never could and never did occur in traditional society.
The question then is, what can we do about this, if anything? Really, there’s nothing we could do about the state of our cities, short of nuking them and starting over. But as Traditionalists, we can seek to regenerate outlets for traditional society within the machine, at a demotic level. Start with the family, not just the nuclear, but the extended family. Work to create a sense of community with your neighbors. Seek to drive toward common purpose with those of a common culture. Build this around the churches, which in addition to meeting the spiritual needs of the people, have also served the practical roles of transmitters of social purpose and organizers of traditional society. Understand that, unlike what many of the libertarian “rugged individualists” may say, “community” does not mean “communism”. Community is not a dirty word. Community is the heart of our traditional culture. We can recover that culture when we recover that community. 
Excellent piece, and pleased to see the reference to Mr. Culbreath.
That line about the “commoditization of human beings” – that was very sharp. But it also got me thinking about slavery, that form of human commoditization that did exist in traditional communities.
Just about every civilization across most of human history practiced slavery in some form or another. I think your point in this piece offers an answer to one of the deep questions about slavery.
Why is it that some cultures like those of American and Haitian blacks have remained so dysfunctional long after they were freed from slavery, while others have not? The Greeks enslaved one another, after all. What was different?
Perhaps the answer, or a large part of the answer, lies in the ‘industrialization’ of plantation agriculture. Household slavery, practiced across the face of the Earth by thousands of cultures, is personal, even intimate. Household slavery doesn’t work you to death. Slaves and masters live together, they get to know one another personally. In a certain way, the slaves become a part of the master’s family. It’s not free or fair, but there is a sort of community there.
Plantation agriculture, on the other hand, does exactly what the Industrial Revolution did to urban workers. It made the slaves cogs in a machine. A master who owns two hundred field slaves does not get to know them. They don’t spend time under his roof. They wouldn’t even see him most of the time, they’d be dealt with through overseers.
And field slavery works people to death. Not only would there be no community between masters and slaves, but it would be hard for there to be any sort of community between the slaves as well.
It’s hard to form close attachments when the people you know are just fellow cogs who might be replaced without notice on any given day. It’s hard to fill the shoes of a proper husband or father when you hardly get to spend any time with your family. It seems the basis for a culture of self-interest and detachment from any concerns beyond one’s own survival and self-enrichment. Put that mentality into a situation of poverty and the outcome is rampant criminality. And the cycle emerges, with rampant crime dragging down, driving off, or destroying any attempts at legitimate enterprise that could offer a way out.
Plantation slavery is also a breeding ground for seething resentment and hatred, the same way that the factories of the industrial era became the breeding grounds for Communism. It bred a resentment that cut both ways, thanks to that disconnect between the masters and the slaves. The slaves resent the masters and come to think of all whites as the master or the overseer – and the masters resent the slaves too, for the only times the slaves draw his attention are the times they cause trouble to him – when they run off, rebel, break into his house and rape his daughter…
Enough generations of that and you have a tradition – something that lingers even when the slavery itself is long gone.
There’s a lot at stake here, and a monumental challenge ahead of us. It is always orders of magnitudes harder to create or recreate something than it is to destroy it.
Very encouraging to see a pro-community article. I have been convinced of this concept ever since I read Michael Bunker’s “Surviving Off-Off Grid”. The Christian community is the only solution to what we see.
Biblically, cities and city dwellers are continuously typified as evil, whereas God’s people were Agrarian/community based.
It seems the Bible, like the article, has two different themes about cities depending on the quality of the city. There are ungodly cities and then there is the “the holy city.”
I expect social dysfunction is strongly connected to race and IQ. Not that it’s the only factor, but if you look at global IQ and culture there seem to be some very obvious patterns. Slavery could have been used, in some cases, as a political and/or economic safety net. Not everyone prefers death when “liberty” is not an option. I’m sure many preferred slavery to dying in the wild or being executed by a conquering tribe or nation. That said, any kind of social systemization that fails to respect the scale of human social function can cause problems with any race or class. Slaves might be especially vulnerable to that.
Demise of community happened with industrialization and urbanization. I liked you proposal for regenerating the sense of community. In order to do that, first we need a good family structure, know the significance of extended family and be altruistic in your community. Having that close-knit community establishes many things especially for children. I like the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child”.
Sadly we now live in a community where older doesn’t mean wiser, humility equal low self-esteem, commodities are more valuable than people and I will never understand this, parents forgetting their
functional role and becoming their child’s confidante. There needs to be a social and functional order.
So I am sorry to say, your proposal seems considerably far-fetched right now. But it is definitely worth a shot.
See, comments like this are why I like Traditional Right so much. This site has folks who are obviously thinking deeply about what they read and hear and see. Coming from Free Republic, it’s like a breath of fresh air.
I would tend to agree with your observations about slavery, and how its “industrialisation” creates a new social system entirely.
In the early stages of the classical civilizations (Greece, Rome until maybe the latter part of the 1st century AD), as you pointed out, slavery was a more personal and intimate matter. I’d thought about this, in fact, when I was writing that only the outcast and the criminals really did not enjoy a part of the community. “What about the slaves?” But I arrived at the same thought you did. And we’re right. Slaves in early classical society, while obviously different, *did* have a place in the community. And it was not necessarily a place without dignity or respect. Many slaves were the tutors of the children of rich men and political leaders. These slaves were vital to their community – these slaves literally played the leading role in passing on the values and culture of the community to the next generation – not a small thing at all. Slaves in these societies could also buy their freedom, or be freed via manumission. This was quite common, common enough that early Emperors felt the need to pass legislation limiting the number of slaves that could be manumitted in a will, and taxing manumission as a way of discouraging it. As with some of Cicero’s later works, it seems apparent that the century before Nero was seeing a steady trend towards an expression of greater human liberty within community. Aborted, of course, by the loons and wackos who got control of the purple starting with Tiberius and continuing until Nerva and then Trajan came to power – but by then, the culture had been irrevocably changed for the worse.
What helped along the industrialisation of plantation slavery in the Empire via the latifundia was the slave-making engine of war. Then, as now, war served as a means of bringing souls into subjection to other souls. Certainly, slaves entered the Republic in large numbers, and it was this presence that cheapened human life and led to their “commoditisation” eventually. Economic trends always lag a bit, but eventually they catch up.
Back to the question of why American and Haitian blacks haven’t really succeeded, even though they’ve been free of slavery for over a century and a half…I have to admit that my answer would, at least in part, tend towards the direction that MacGyver pointed to in his comment. There’s also the factor that black folks really and genuinely do have a different culture than white Americans, and they have largely refused to assimilate to the larger Anglo-Saxon culture of our nation. This makes them, for better or for worse, at a disadvantage. The IQ disparity doesn’t help, but I think it could be overcome if black Americans were more willing to assimilate.
Yes – and American blacks at least appear to have chosen to exchange one form of slavery (to plantation owners) for another (to the government).
Speaking of IQ, I’d been wondering what the general view about human biodiversity was here at TR.
Thank you, Sir.
The irony? I’m not even Catholic. And not only am I not Catholic, but I actually don’t even *believe in* any universal church.
You’re right – it is far-fetched. But who knows? Given enough time, and as the failure of the “modern” world becomes increasingly apparent, maybe it’ll become less so? We all know that social changes have to start somewhere. 40 years ago, sodomite “marriage” was pretty far-fetched, too. So we shouldn’t give up hope!
Interesting how Paul and the other apostles started with the cities first in their evangelism, eh? Granted, a lot of it had to do with that being where larger numbers of people were at one time, but I wonder if it indicated some latent sense that the city-folk really needed Jesus in a bad, bad way…?
Like with many things, man’s imitations on earth completely fail to reflect the glory of what God has created and prepared. Our cities can rarely hope to even approach the glory of His city.
It varies. I’m professionally involved in biological sciences and am a big proponent of HBD. I think our blood explains our behavior. Bill Lind doesn’t care about HBD. He doesn’t deny racial reality, but he’s ultimately a cultural conservative and that’s it.
“40 years ago, sodomite “marriage” was pretty far-fetched” TRUE!
Add that to my list of degradation and we both know changes are happening but definitely not towards the right path.
I am a proponent of HBD as well, but I disagree with you, your blood doesn’t explain your behaviour, your environment explains your behaviour.
But you are a believer of a supreme power but just not in any organized religion/church?
Great contribution. Human society is complex and attempting to pin the explanation for anything that large on a single factor is an inherently doomed effort.
I think that’s actually a big reason for the prevailing stupidity of today’s ‘social sciences’ – their self-conception as sciences. Their forced application of the scientific method to history and human behavior makes it all about proving that a single factor (their hypothesis) is really the one and only significant reason for why something happens. All other factors must be reduced to a ‘controlled variable.’ Research is considered to be a failure if it doesn’t arrive at that single conclusion where one factor is the dominant explanation.
This mentality feeds into promoting all sorts of stupid ideologies, but when the prevailing ideology within academia is progressivism and cultural Marxism, it contributes the most to them.
Hence, for example, colonialism is the single explanation behind any sort of dysfunction in any modern third world country, and there are no other factors considered worth exploring. No two places in the world have the same history or had an identical colonial experience or are in identical circumstances today – but the ‘scientific method’ implores researchers to arrive at a single universal explanation nonetheless.
There’s doubtlessly a lot more going into the cultural state of blacks in the United States than the explanation of slavery I gave above – but one particular reason I think that factor deserves attention is the contrast between blacks in the United States and certain peoples in Africa like the Igbo of Nigeria, in terms of community.
Nigeria is very much a poor and dysfunctional country – let’s cover that right away. The Igbo, however, are an impressively resourceful, driven, and enterprising people. Read about the Nigerian civil war of the 1960s in which they attempted to secede and form the nation of Biafra – and were quite sadly defeated by a starvation blockade. They were immensely resourceful, spirited, and self-reliant – and the strength of community among them is clearly a reason for it, along with the value they placed on education and enterprise. At the time of their independence, something like half the continent’s professionals and scholars were Igbo, and Igbo students are among the highest performing immigrant students – of any race – in places like the UK today.
I don’t know exactly how much it would help American blacks if they were to enshrine the values of a strong community and taking responsibility for themselves like the Igbo – but I don’t think anyone can argue that there wouldn’t be some improvement.
I mean, consider for a second the fact that somewhere between one and two million Igbo were starved to death by the Nigerian Army when it crushed the Biafran uprising. You can certainly imagine that that’d be enough fuel for a grievance industry, demands for reparations, recognition of a genocide, perpetual resentment and hatred of the rest of Nigeria, grounds to make excuses for the underperformance of their current generations.
Except for the fact that there’s none of that. The Igbo moved on. They don’t ask for the world to pity them, they don’t beg for anyone’s assistance – they help themselves.
If only they’d succeeded, we’d have had the chance to see how far they could have gone without the rest of Nigeria dragging them down.
Bottom line – I don’t think black people are doomed to social dysfunction by inherent inclination alone. Stronger values are within their potential and will do something to improve their situation.
Sort of agnostic as to the extent to which IQ differences are nature or nurture. I don’t think I’ve really read enough of the research to be certain one way or another.
I do read the work of some HBD proponents and I read it open mindedly. I’m skeptical of saying it’s all genetics, but I’m no denialist either. The gaps are real and it’s clear they don’t exist because the test questions are racist or any nonsense like that.
You’re a proponent of understanding our differences but don’t think those differences make us different?
The only way I can make sense of it is if he’s saying one’s cognitive potential is genetically determined but how that potential is used is determined by the upbringing and environment.
That’s sort of how I was understanding his comment, too. Maybe because I’m biased since that’d be the position I’d take as well. Each of us is born with our genetics, but how we use them will determine a lot about whether we utilise our full potential, and in the right ways.
You could have a kid born out in the deepest holler in West Virginia who has an IQ of 160. But if they kid never gets the chance to put it to use via higher education, etc., then he’ll just end up being the most successful moonshine runner in Slapahoochie County.
Oh, of course. It’s not that I don’t believe in “organised” religion, I just don’t believe in a *universal* church. My position would be that of strictly “local church only.” When the Scriptures describe “the church” in the New Testament, it is speaking only of local assemblies of believers called out from the larger population and gathered together in these assemblies. This is what the Greek term “ekklesia” means. I don’t see any scriptural call for assuming that the “church” is some worldwide entity, whether visible or invisible. While I can have compassion for believers in China or the Middle East, and can pray for them, I can’t *assemble* with them – which is what a “church” is.
To express more universalistic expressions of Christian community, the NT uses terms like “family of God,” “household of faith, ” etc. These are expressions of all believers, but they’re not the “church” – a crucial linguistic distinction.
Indeed, from a community perspective, the local church is the best and most natural expression of the sort of Traditional community that we ought to see in Christianity. A local church is the folks you can see, and interact with, and help out, and worship with. Christians still ought to have a warm affection of brotherly love for others far away with whom we will one day be joined in heaven, but while I can have compassion and love for believers in some other country, for example, I can’t have a concrete expression of “community” with them.
Agreed, and that’s a very good example about the Igbo, BTW.
One thing I’d say about American blacks is that even though much is made about their lower average IQ (~1 SD below the white mean), this does *not* mean that blacks have to be doomed to some sort of lesser economic or social position. There is a lot more to HBD than just raw intelligence. There are all kinds of skills – social, musical, athletic, interpersonal – in which blacks excel. There are plenty of routes to material success for blacks, if they’re encouraged to take them.
While the IQ disparity may mean that you won’t have that many really successful black doctors, scientists, or engineers, this doesn’t preclude blacks from being successful in sales, public speaking, business, or other fields in which charisma and skills at social interaction are definitely pluses.
Ultimately, as with all individuals however, success will come from having a realistic recognition of your particular skill-set and then acting to utilise it effectively. If a black kid is really smart and shows an aptitude for science, then by all means, steer him towards chemistry or physics (but please, for the love of God, not the social “sciences”!). This may certainly be the case for a smaller proportion of the black kids out there, and it doesn’t warrant some sort of blanket approach to trying to steer every black kid towards the sciences when most of them won’t be able to handle it and/or won’t care for it at all. But, find the individual ability and nurture it.
Another thought I just had re: education. The “modern” educational system is extremely unhelpful to blacks. Classical and Western education for most of our history emphasised not just knowledge, but the development of virtue and wisdom in using the knowledge that was imparted.
“Modern” education in the publik skoolz is simply a years-long, poor quality “document dump,” so to speak. Imparts information (after a fashion), but is now actively hostile to the idea of developing wisdom and virtue. This will not help blacks at all to escape from the mental chains of their past.
BTW Trent, AWESOME picture of Byzantium on the frontis.
Your genetics play a huge role in your morality. The reason why whites are superior morally is because of their rich Christian heritage. This was passed down from generation to generation and it is in our blood. Negroes, on the other hand, have the exact opposite history.
But with all this, I would say it only increases our condemnation if we don’t build upon our inheritance from our fathers. To whom much is given, much is required (Luke 12:48). We will be held accountable to God far greater than the Negro, for not obeying the truth and working righteousness and justice.
Vendetta said exactly what I wanted to. I think anyone given the chance to be successful will be successful. Children that grow up with college educated parents tend to have higher IQ than children of a working class parents within the same race. IQ tests are good measures of innate intelligence, if all other factors are held steady. I don’t presume anything based on appearance, that is very superficial and I am not a proponent of that. I don’t believe in racial superiority based on IQ either.
No your genetics doesn’t play a role in morality; your up-bringing plays a role in morality. No one is born will low morals, they could be born into a family with low morals.Generally Christians have a higher moral than say atheists, only because Christians believe in judgment and are afraid of it. I know a lot of morally worthy non-Christians.
The second thing you said is absolutely true though.
Scientific studies show otherwise. We are not born a blank slate. Everything we are is a product of our ancestors, including talents, abilities, habitual tendencies, etc. Even the Bible spells this out in the text of the ten commandments (the 3rd and 4th generation).
Upbringing plays a big role, certainly. But this does not dismiss genetics. Intelligence, morality, etc. are based on it to an extent. Not totally and hopelessly one way or the other, but our genetics give us a bent toward certain behaviors, whether good or bad. Everyone knows this when they say things like, “you have your mother’s compassion” or “you have your father’s temper”, etc.
“…the least Christian White neighborhood is still a many times more moral place than the most Christian Black neighborhood.”
http://faithandheritage.com/2012/02/a-tale-of-two-cities/
Scientific studies show otherwise. We are not born a blank slate. Everything we are is a product of our ancestors, including talents, abilities, habitual tendencies, etc. Even the Bible spells this out in the text of the ten commandments (the 3rd and 4th generation).
Upbringing plays a big role, certainly. But this does not dismiss genetics. Intelligence, morality, etc. are based on it to an extent. Not totally and hopelessly one way or the other, but our genetics give us a bent toward certain behaviors, whether good or bad. Everyone knows this when they say things like, “you have your mother’s compassion” or “you have your father’s temper”, etc.
“…the least Christian White neighborhood is still a many times more moral place than the most Christian Black neighborhood.”
http://faithandheritage.com/2012/02/a-tale-of-two-cities/
Got it! Thanks for the explanation.
I agree with you to an
extent that genetics cannot be dismissed. But to generalize moral superiority
based on race is wrong.
I don’t believe race makes one morally superior in the eyes of God, regarding sin, but I do believe that in the general morality of a society (that is why it is “in general… not in every case) race plays a significant role. What is right before our eyes cannot be denied.
Can you share with me a general example of why it is wrong to generalize moral superiority based on the race of a society?
Read this recently and thought of you, SK,
“For there is no employment that gives so keen and quick a relish for peace as husbandry and a country life, which leave in men all that kind of courage that makes them ready to fight in defence of their own, while it destroys the license that breaks out into acts of injustice and rapacity.” – Plutarch
Thanks for that Titus. The whole city vs. rural thing is one of those things that is difficult to explain in words; but from my experience, many of the Bible’s principles are that way. For me anyway, it is difficult to explain why obedience to God’s command brings a blessing. I think in one sense, you can simply acknowledge the hand of God purposely blessing those who obey him; but on the other hand, I think there are laws built into nature that we don’t understand fully yet (or at least I don’t).
For example, the breakdown of the family resulting in the judgment upon a nation. The city life vs. Agrarian I think has the same laws built into it, if that makes any sense.
IQ isn’t the only difference. There are other factors that determine behavior, such as time preferences, which are 100% genetic. Inner-city (black) schools in America have been given billion in federal funds and special programs to attract good teachers, but black academic achievement has not changed a bit since the 1960s. I understand what you saying, that there are exceptions, but outliers don’t discredit the curve. There are real, scientifically demonstrable differences between the races and we are absolutely kidding ourselves if we think we can overcome them by “giving them a chance”. We have done that. Nothing changed.
Also there are many IQ studies that show black children raised by wealthy caring whites barely increase their scores, if at all.
if you mean black children being raised by caring whites are holding all the factors steady, you are contradicting your own proposal of racial difference. What kind of a mental state is that child going to be, raised by a white person? That is the worst scenario to be testing children in.
“Why it is wrong to generalize moral superiority based on the race of a society?”
because there is no scientific fact to back that statement. Morals are judgments of right and wrong made by an individual. “Race” as you know have many controversial definitions, some see it as strictly superficial characteristics like skin color, hair color, size of their eyes etc. and other see more genetic difference. Genetic differences play a role in medical decisions, nothing else.
Genetic studies have revealed people from different “races” are only slightly more different from each other than they are from people in their own “race.” 90% of human variation occurs within a said “race” and just 10% of human variation occurs between “races” themselves.
How can you tie moral superiority to something superficial? and based on what?
I keep an open mind, so please feel free to prove me wrong.
“How can you tie moral superiority to something superficial? and based on what?”
What is your definition of “superficial”? Scientific studies show there is a definite passing down of sinful habits through family bloodlines. The same goes for talent (on the positive side of things). Are those things superficial?
Blacks who descend from Africa also have much higher testosterone levels; even the females do. And they are much more aggressive as a result. Is that superficial?
Keep in mind that the argument for the genetic component to IQ is also strengthened by the observation that American blacks (~19% white admixture, on average) have an average IQ of 85, while Africans have an average IQ of around 75.
There is nothing contradictory about that.
If the difference in IQ is real then it supports my statement, that it is environmental. Clearly African countries are still developing and Black’s here have the advantage of living in a developed country. It’s not because they have a little admixture of white.
You are saying there is no difference in white parents raising a black kid versus white parents raising their own?
I would say it’s the other way around. Blacks here have benefited from the white admixture, while the blacks in Africa are still developing specifically because they don’t have the average IQ level to really be able to reach a stable, higher level of civilisation.
It’s essentially the same as them raising any adopted child.
Ok Sir, you forced me into reading some informative articles, and I stand corrected. Although I am not in complete agreement but my spectrum has moved from complete disagreement on the subject to a neutral state. Is morality encoded in our genes? Yes to a
certain degree.
I am still holding onto my theory of environmental factors, it retains my open-minded way of thinking. Because everything you look at can be subjective and objective. Everyone you meet has their reasons for the way they are. We are constantly changing,so sometimes it is ok to unlearn what you have learned.
Superficial concerned only with what is obvious or apparent.
I appreciate your humility and, I think we are probably more in agreement than it appears to the naked eye. Indeed there are a lot of complexities to consider.
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