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)?
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.
"...On the other hand, socially conservative men and women are more likely to get married early in life and have lots of children with one partner. This strategy would be disrupted by a more "sexually open" society (which offers more opportunities for infidelity and abandonment) and thus conservatives are incentivized to make society as sexually restricted as possible..."
That's where your premise kind of goes off the rails. You are half correct. Progressive men and women do seek to deregulate restrictions to permit their behavior, as you detailed. That's not a revelation. Their behavior is only possible with less restrictive laws. If abortion is illegal, if contraception is more difficult to obtain, they must in fact be personally responsible. It absolutely impacts their behavior.
However, why would socially conservative men and woman need to legislate their values to avoid "infidelity and abandonment?" Simply because a "more sexually open society" presents those options? Isn't society already more sexually open than conservatives would prefer now? Isn't that the whole point of being conservative? Would they even be considered conservative if they had to worry about things like infidelity and abandonment based on societal standards?
Unlike the less conservative group, who cannot operate within the confines of more conservative laws, who must then relax these laws in order to conduct their behavior, It is always possible for the more conservative group to regulate behavior wthin the confines of less conservative laws.
This isn't rocket science... if you are the kind of person that takes five safety measures in a situation that requires only one, nobody is going to tell you that you can't adopt the other four safety measures. It's always possible to be even more safety conscious. However If you are a person that prefers to take zero safety measures, by law you still need to observe the one mandated safety measure. That person has a vested interest in legislating that safety measure out of the rules. The other person doesn't need to make the other four rules part of the law in order to follow them personally. If he stumps for the more restrictive rules it's not because he needs them to be enforced for his own good. It's because he cares about society adopting those rules for their own good. For the good of society at large.
By this logic, people who support seatbelt laws only do so because they are afraid that without them they would be getting killed left and right in traffic accidents. As if they need the law to make them wear their seatbelt, and without it they would be helpless to buckle up, like a drooling idiot...
It is only the less conservative members of society that require restrictions be lifted to deregulate behavior. Nobody who practices conservative behavior secretly and subconsciously encourages regulations because they cannot regulate themselves or because they fear infidelity and abandonment.
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)?
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.
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.
"...On the other hand, socially conservative men and women are more likely to get married early in life and have lots of children with one partner. This strategy would be disrupted by a more "sexually open" society (which offers more opportunities for infidelity and abandonment) and thus conservatives are incentivized to make society as sexually restricted as possible..."
That's where your premise kind of goes off the rails. You are half correct. Progressive men and women do seek to deregulate restrictions to permit their behavior, as you detailed. That's not a revelation. Their behavior is only possible with less restrictive laws. If abortion is illegal, if contraception is more difficult to obtain, they must in fact be personally responsible. It absolutely impacts their behavior.
However, why would socially conservative men and woman need to legislate their values to avoid "infidelity and abandonment?" Simply because a "more sexually open society" presents those options? Isn't society already more sexually open than conservatives would prefer now? Isn't that the whole point of being conservative? Would they even be considered conservative if they had to worry about things like infidelity and abandonment based on societal standards?
Unlike the less conservative group, who cannot operate within the confines of more conservative laws, who must then relax these laws in order to conduct their behavior, It is always possible for the more conservative group to regulate behavior wthin the confines of less conservative laws.
This isn't rocket science... if you are the kind of person that takes five safety measures in a situation that requires only one, nobody is going to tell you that you can't adopt the other four safety measures. It's always possible to be even more safety conscious. However If you are a person that prefers to take zero safety measures, by law you still need to observe the one mandated safety measure. That person has a vested interest in legislating that safety measure out of the rules. The other person doesn't need to make the other four rules part of the law in order to follow them personally. If he stumps for the more restrictive rules it's not because he needs them to be enforced for his own good. It's because he cares about society adopting those rules for their own good. For the good of society at large.
By this logic, people who support seatbelt laws only do so because they are afraid that without them they would be getting killed left and right in traffic accidents. As if they need the law to make them wear their seatbelt, and without it they would be helpless to buckle up, like a drooling idiot...
It is only the less conservative members of society that require restrictions be lifted to deregulate behavior. Nobody who practices conservative behavior secretly and subconsciously encourages regulations because they cannot regulate themselves or because they fear infidelity and abandonment.
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.