Fascinating, thanks. What do you think are the reasons for the differences in these two mating strategies? For example are there underlying personality factors that tend one towards being a ring bearer? Is it inevitable that as long as both progressives and Conservatives exist you will have these two different mating strategies ( since political orientation it seems to be heavily correlated with underlying personality)?
Great questions. Sociosexual orientation is a personality trait that would predict this stuff pretty well. It's basically just assessing how open to casual sex somebody is. I know there's some research looking at sociosexual orientation and political ideology but I'm not that familiar with it. To answer the last question, yeah I think it's basically inevitable, at least for the foreseeable future. These differences are probably moderately heritable (like almost everything else) and aren't going away any time soon.
Welcome back, Brett. Nice post. Glad you're allowing comments now.
This brings to mind Cioran's aphorism "Genealogy of Fascism" (he, like you, was heavily influenced by Nietzsche) in his "A Short History of Decay." The start of it as follows:
"In itself, every idea is neutral, or should be; but man animates ideas, projects his flames and flaws into them; impure, transformed into beliefs, ideas take their place in time, take shape as events: the trajectory is complete, from logic to epilepsy . . . whence the birth of ideologies, doctrines, deadly games.
Idolaters by instinct, we convert the objects of our dreams and our interests into the Unconditional History is nothing but a procession of false Absolutes, a series of temples raised to pretexts, a degradation of the mind before the Improbable. Even when he turns from religion, man remains subject to it; depleting himself to create fake gods, he then feverishly adopts them: his need for fiction, for mythology triumphs over evidence and absurdity alike. His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse. There is no form of intolerance, of proselytism or ideological intransigence which fails to reveal the bestial substratum of enthusiasm. Once man loses his faculty of indifference he becomes a potential murderer; once he transforms his idea into a god the consequences are incalculable. We kill only in the name of a god or of his counterfeits: the excesses provoked by the goddess Reason, by the concept of nation, class, or race are akin to those of the Inquisition or of the Reformation. The ages of fervor abound in bloody exploits: a Saint Teresa could only be the contemporary of the auto-da-fé, a Luther of the repression of the Peasants’ Revolt. In every mystic outburst, the moans of victims parallel the moans of ecstasy. . . . Scaffolds, dungeons, jails flourish only in the shadow of a faith—of that need to believe which has infested the mind forever. The devil pales beside the man who owns a truth, his truth. We are unfair to a Nero, a Tiberius: it was not they who invented the concept heretic: they were only degenerate dreamers who happened to be entertained by massacres. The real criminals are men who establish an orthodoxy on the religious or political level, men who distinguish between the faithful and the schismatic..."
It continues from there, but already too long. See page 10-11 if you want to read the rest:
Under your system of morality, how can you say anything is good or evil, right or wrong? You cannot condemn any action. You can only have preference (“I prefer that you don’t murder me”). The very word “morality” becomes nonsensical. You can never say that one civilization or society’s moral code is superior to another.
The plummeting birth rates in industrialized countries are a clear sign that the freewheelers are in charge. This will bring our demise if the ring-bearers don´t take over.
Sexual morals are a big part of it, but I think views on children are still the big driver. Do you like children or not?
I can imagine a world where people in favor of abortion achieved the same TFR as people that opposed it, and in that world I would say it was a disagreement over sex and the timing of children.
But in our world people who support abortion have much lower TFR then those that don’t (especially if you control for class).
There is also the correlation between support for abortion and denigration of “family values”.
Overall, it just seems to be a dislike of kids and a not wanting to be inconvenienced by them (either your own kids or anyone else’s).
This is why something like IVF has no salience for anyone (only a minority of people opposed to abortion in all cases oppose IVF). Abortion opposition really is just good vibes about kids, and IVF makes kids so it’s good.
Fascinating, thanks. What do you think are the reasons for the differences in these two mating strategies? For example are there underlying personality factors that tend one towards being a ring bearer? Is it inevitable that as long as both progressives and Conservatives exist you will have these two different mating strategies ( since political orientation it seems to be heavily correlated with underlying personality)?
Great questions. Sociosexual orientation is a personality trait that would predict this stuff pretty well. It's basically just assessing how open to casual sex somebody is. I know there's some research looking at sociosexual orientation and political ideology but I'm not that familiar with it. To answer the last question, yeah I think it's basically inevitable, at least for the foreseeable future. These differences are probably moderately heritable (like almost everything else) and aren't going away any time soon.
Welcome back, Brett. Nice post. Glad you're allowing comments now.
This brings to mind Cioran's aphorism "Genealogy of Fascism" (he, like you, was heavily influenced by Nietzsche) in his "A Short History of Decay." The start of it as follows:
"In itself, every idea is neutral, or should be; but man animates ideas, projects his flames and flaws into them; impure, transformed into beliefs, ideas take their place in time, take shape as events: the trajectory is complete, from logic to epilepsy . . . whence the birth of ideologies, doctrines, deadly games.
Idolaters by instinct, we convert the objects of our dreams and our interests into the Unconditional History is nothing but a procession of false Absolutes, a series of temples raised to pretexts, a degradation of the mind before the Improbable. Even when he turns from religion, man remains subject to it; depleting himself to create fake gods, he then feverishly adopts them: his need for fiction, for mythology triumphs over evidence and absurdity alike. His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse. There is no form of intolerance, of proselytism or ideological intransigence which fails to reveal the bestial substratum of enthusiasm. Once man loses his faculty of indifference he becomes a potential murderer; once he transforms his idea into a god the consequences are incalculable. We kill only in the name of a god or of his counterfeits: the excesses provoked by the goddess Reason, by the concept of nation, class, or race are akin to those of the Inquisition or of the Reformation. The ages of fervor abound in bloody exploits: a Saint Teresa could only be the contemporary of the auto-da-fé, a Luther of the repression of the Peasants’ Revolt. In every mystic outburst, the moans of victims parallel the moans of ecstasy. . . . Scaffolds, dungeons, jails flourish only in the shadow of a faith—of that need to believe which has infested the mind forever. The devil pales beside the man who owns a truth, his truth. We are unfair to a Nero, a Tiberius: it was not they who invented the concept heretic: they were only degenerate dreamers who happened to be entertained by massacres. The real criminals are men who establish an orthodoxy on the religious or political level, men who distinguish between the faithful and the schismatic..."
It continues from there, but already too long. See page 10-11 if you want to read the rest:
https://www.studocu.com/ph/document/university-of-the-east-philippines/english-literature/a-short-history-of-decay-pdfdrive/32704087
Under your system of morality, how can you say anything is good or evil, right or wrong? You cannot condemn any action. You can only have preference (“I prefer that you don’t murder me”). The very word “morality” becomes nonsensical. You can never say that one civilization or society’s moral code is superior to another.
I’ve written about these issues at length in other articles. Not going to rehash here.
The plummeting birth rates in industrialized countries are a clear sign that the freewheelers are in charge. This will bring our demise if the ring-bearers don´t take over.
Sexual morals are a big part of it, but I think views on children are still the big driver. Do you like children or not?
I can imagine a world where people in favor of abortion achieved the same TFR as people that opposed it, and in that world I would say it was a disagreement over sex and the timing of children.
But in our world people who support abortion have much lower TFR then those that don’t (especially if you control for class).
There is also the correlation between support for abortion and denigration of “family values”.
Overall, it just seems to be a dislike of kids and a not wanting to be inconvenienced by them (either your own kids or anyone else’s).
This is why something like IVF has no salience for anyone (only a minority of people opposed to abortion in all cases oppose IVF). Abortion opposition really is just good vibes about kids, and IVF makes kids so it’s good.