By • 12/11/09
So far my series of articles on a philosophy for the pro-white movement has proceeded without a thesis. Readers may have been frustrated by my remarks about liberalism, conditional rights, and so forth because they didn’t know what I was driving at. So with the next few articles, I will set out my thesis. I will explain what is wrong with white racialism today and propose a better approach.
Ask a typical white nationalist the reason for his political views, and you will most likely get an answer along the following lines:
We must preserve the white race because of our ethnic genetic interests. Members of races share genes with each other, just as members of families do, and it is the purpose of every living thing to multiply the number of its own genes. So we should love our race for the same reason that we love our families. All races have a natural instinct to work in their racial interests, and all races except for whites act on this instinct. Whites have left their natural tribalism behind because of the corrupting forces of modern life and multiculturalist propaganda, but unless we work to maintain our race against others, we will be destroyed.
Call this a statement of “ethnic nepotism theory,” derived from the work of writers like J. Phillippe Rushton, Frank Salter, Jared Taylor, Kevin MacDonald, and Steve Sailer. The basic idea is that the ethnic bond is an extension of the family bond. According to kin selection theory, which is well established in behavioral biology, humans, like other organisms, evolved to favor their close relatives because family members share genes. Since our co-ethnics (members of the same ethnicity as ourselves) also share genes with us, loyalty to our race is as instinctual and moral as loyalty to our families.
However reasonable it appears at first blush, ethnic nepotism theory (ENT) is certainly untrue. Even worse, it fatally distorts our understanding of ethnicity and race and even tends to justify and encourage evil. As one example, ENT partisans view suicide bombing as a natural extension of our love for kin, a link that disastrously confuses the most natural and wholesome of human behaviors with the most demented insanity. (I am not claiming that ENT partisans intend to encourage evil, merely that their theory does so.)
ENT is responsible for endless amounts of mind-numbing commentary. For most white nationalists, anything that tends to serve “white ethnic interests” is right and anything that counters these interests is wrong. Such a crude and nakedly self-interested framework of moral evaluation does not lead to illuminating writing. The harm done by ENT does not stop at white nationalism, as the inclusion of Steve Sailer in the list above indicates. Though a fervent believer in ENT, Sailer is no white nationalist, and most of his numerous and enthusiastic fans are not either.
If we are to place the pro-white movement on rational and moral grounds, there are two things we must recognize. First of all, our instincts for nepotism stop at our kin, probably going no further than cousins. The ethnic bond is not an extension of the family bond; rather, these affiliations have different sources and natures. People did not evolve to be ethnic nepotists, but what I will call “kindividualists,” whose purpose in life is to advance their own interests and those of their kin. Since our co-ethnics would have been our primary competitors for mates and resources throughout the history of our species, directing altruism towards co-ethnics would have been a path to genetic extinction, so it is at best highly implausible that any instinct for ethnic nepotism evolved.
Though the word is new, kindividualism is far from a novel theory of human motivation. Rather, it is the established wisdom among behavioral biologists, a category that includes evolutionary psychologists, who study human behavior from a Darwinist standpoint, and students of animal behavior. ENT partisans view it as a great injustice that mainstream behavioral biologists have ignored them and declare that political bias on issues of race must be the reason.1 However, the more likely cause of this neglect is that ENT is implausible on theoretical grounds and unsupported by the empirical evidence.
Second, since people are kindividualists, they have no reason in the abstract to be concerned about the fate of their race. Rather, people will be concerned about issues of race only to the extent that these issues affect their own self-interest and that of their kin. Therefore, arguing that some races are more prone to crime or less moral than others is a good way of attracting people to the pro-white movement, as crime and morality affect an individual’s quality of life. However, the idea that we ought to preserve our gene pools because they are inherently precious, which is Frank Salter’s thesis in On Genetic Interests, is likely to strike people as sociobiology gone mad, as indeed it is.
Explaining what is wrong with ENT and replacing it with a better theory of ethnicity requires more than one article. This article will define the basic fallacy at the heart of ENT through an examination of the nature and evolution of kin altruism. Humans are kindividualists because this strategy maximizes inclusive fitness better than either pure individualism or broader forms of altruism like ethnic nepotism. Future articles will examine particular applications of ENT in greater detail, evaluate how well the theory accounts for the facts about human behavior, and put forth an alternative theory of ethnic phenomena.
As explained in detail here, modern evolutionary biologists take a “gene’s eye” view of natural selection.2 Genes are replicators, meaning that it is in their nature to make as many copies of themselves as possible. Consequently, organisms are fundamentally competitive and selfish. Though some altruistic behaviors can and do evolve, organisms naturally vie to out-reproduce other organisms. The types of aggression that are a familiar staple of wild-life shows are outcomes of this competition: think of male deer locking horns during mating season and male lions fighting for dominance over a pride. The capacity of organism to reproduce is called its “fitness”; generally speaking, genes will spread through a population if they cause their carriers to have greater average fitness than competing genes do.
Genes increase the fitness of organisms through adaptations, or innate, species-typical physical or psychological traits. For example, sensory organs like eyes and ears are adaptations that enable organisms to perceive and understand their environment. Psychological adaptations, such as sexual attraction and parental love for offspring, are commonly referred to as instincts.
In order to understand what is wrong with ethnic nepotism theory, it is crucial to understand that not all genes that increase fitness result in adaptations, but only genes that cause organisms to be more fit than their competitors, or optimal strategies. For example, say a species of animal can eat either tree leaves or grass; both behaviors increase fitness because both forms of food are nutritious for the animals. However, if leaves are twice as nutritious as grass and all other factors are equal, genes that cause leaf-eating will tend to win out over those that cause grass-eating, and the animals will become a leaf-eating species because leaf-eating is the optimal strategy.
In biological terms, an altruistic behavior is one that causes a fitness cost to its bearer and brings a fitness benefit to its recipient. Giving someone money is altruistic because it reduces the altruist’s capacity to provide for his offspring and increases the recipient’s. Genes that cause altruism are normally not adaptive—that is, they lower fitness rather than increasing it. However, genes for altruism can be adaptive when they are directed at kin because kin share genes. Siblings share 50 percent of their genes, as do parents and offspring. Uncles/aunts share 25 percent of genes with their nephews/nieces, as do grandparents with grandchildren. Thus aiding your sibling to reproduce can be adaptive: after all, two nephews are equivalent to one child of your own. “Kin selection” is the process that leads to the evolution of kin altruism, which I will also call “nepotism” when this term is more suitable.
As specified by W. D. Hamilton, the biologist who first formalized the concept of kin selection, altruism towards kin is adaptive when the following rule is true:
rB > C
r is the coefficient of relatedness, or the percentage of shared genes, B is the benefit conferred on relatives, and C is the fitness cost to the altruist. Since siblings are 50 percent related, altruistic behavior is adaptive if the fitness benefits to the other sibling are more than twice the cost to the altruist. For example, if one brother is has abundant food and the other has none, it is usually adaptive for the first brother to give the latter some. Since the first brother has more food than he needs, the fitness cost of giving away food is small, but the fitness benefit to the other brother is enormous if it keeps him from starving.
We saw above that fitness designated an organism’s capacity to reproduce itself. However, kin selection shows that there is more to natural selection than individual fitness because gene replication also depends on our ability to promote the reproductive success of our kin. Hamilton invented the term “inclusive fitness” to designate the sum of the individual’s own reproductive success plus his effects on the reproductive success of those who share genes with him.3
It is crucial to understand that Hamilton’s rule does not describe a sufficient condition for the development of kin altruism, but only a necessary one. That is, the rule merely tells us which behaviors increase inclusive fitness, not which ones are optimal. Consequently, not all behaviors that meet Hamilton’s condition will evolve, only behaviors that outcompete alternatives.4
Kin selection has proved one of the most fruitful theories in the history of social science and the science of animal behavior. Evidence is abundant that humans and other animals direct altruism at kin and that this altruism is effective in increasing the inclusive fitness of altruists.
It is easy to see why, in most circumstances, a kindividualist strategy, in which organisms direct some altruism towards kin, beats out a purely individualist strategy, in which organisms reproduce as many times as possible without directing altruism at kin. Parental care of offspring, the most common and strongest form of kin altruism in the animal world, evolved to protect offspring from threats to their life and health, such as an adverse climate, predation, and parasitism.5 Consequently, birds invest energy and resources in building eggs and caring for them; adaptations for mammalian parental investment include gestation, lactation, and provisioning for offspring once they are born. In humans, parental care serves the additional purposes of allowing the maturation of our large brains and training the intelligence that distinguishes our species.6
Other forms of kin altruism, such as those between siblings, also raise inclusive fitness. Perhaps the primary benefit of kin altruism is that it facilitates the formation of cooperative relationships. Cooperation can emerge among non-kin through a process known as reciprocal altruism in which one organism directs altruism at others in the expectation that this altruistic act will be reciprocated to the greater benefit of the altruist. Thus a hunter might share his catch with his village in the expectation that another hunter will also share food on a day when he is lucky. However, networks of reciprocal altruism among non-kin are fragile because of the free rider problem: organisms make out best when they cheat in the reciprocal altruism game by accepting the benefits of altruism and refusing to reciprocate. Indeed, the ability to detect and punish free riders is crucial to the stability of cooperative networks.7
Kinship facilitates the formation of cooperative networks because it reduces both the benefits of cheating and the costs of being cheated: if you cheat your brother, half of your own genes suffer; if your brother cheats you, half of your own genes benefit. For this reason, cooperation outside of kinship is rare in non-human animals.8
Humans also preferentially associate and cooperate with kin. Cross-culturally, kin are more likely than non-related individuals to take each other’s sides in disputes, offer emotional and material support, help each other in catastrophic circumstances and combat, work for each other without expectations of payment, share food, and help out with childcare.9 These cooperative alliances are so common that kinship has been called “the backbone of human social structure.”10 The adaptive benefits of such cooperation are obvious.
This is not to say that relations among kin are purely harmonious. Except in the rare case of identical twins, all humans are genetically different from each other, so they are all competitors. Even close relatives like siblings and parents/offspring compete with each other.11 Nevertheless, because of relatedness, conflicts of interest among kin are relatively easy to solve. In circumstances in which parental investment and cooperation raise inclusive fitness substantially, there is a strong incentive to solve these conflicts.
Certainly, kin altruism is directed at siblings and offspring, but how far does it go? Did we also evolve to be altruistic to our second or third cousins? It is here that ENT partisans part ways with the rest of their colleagues. Although I know of no mainstream evolutionary psychologist who has tried to define the boundary at which kin altruism ends in humans, they have found the majority of kin altruism in 50 percent and 25 percent related kin, especially parents/offspring, siblings, and grandparents/grandchildren.12 Except for the ENT partisans, I know of no evolutionary psychologist who believes that kin altruism extends to second cousins or more distant relatives. The conventional wisdom then seems to be that kin altruism is unlikely to extend beyond cousins, who are 12.5 percent related, and perhaps not even beyond 25 percent related kin.
The conventional wisdom is quite well supported. There is a sharp drop-off in kin altruism as relatedness decreases and little evidence of kin altruism even among cousins. For example, a study of bequests in wills found that, of beneficiaries who were blood relatives, 85 percent were siblings or children, but only 11 percent were nephews/nieces, and one percent were cousins.13 Another study found that experimental subjects were no more willing to help their cousins than their non-kin friends, although they were more willing to help siblings.14 The same drop-off is evident in animals as well. Among primates, there is ample evidence that altruism is directed at offspring by parents, and weaker evidence that it is directed at siblings and grandchildren. However, evidence that kin altruism extends beyond 25 percent related kin is “almost non-existent.”15 For these reasons, in this article, the term “kin” will apply only to individuals who are related to each other as cousins or more closely; “distant kin” will refer to individuals who are less than 12.5 percent related.
While mainstream behavioral biologists find it unlikely that nepotism extends beyond kin, ENT partisans argue that it extends to whole ethnic groups, or “ethnies” consisting of distantly related individuals. Frank Salter defines ethnies as:
concentric clusters of encompassing populations, such as tribe, regional population, and geographic race. An ethny is typically “a named human population with myths of common ancestry, shared historical memories, one or more elements of common culture, a link with a homeland and a sense of solidarity among at least some of its members.”16
The first ethnies were small bands of related families and tribes that distinguished themselves from other ethnies by shared territory, language, culture and ritual. Today ethnic groups, like Italians, Bantu, or Malaysians, number in the millions and occupy vast territories.17 Research on population genetics has established that members of self-designated ethnic groups differ genetically from each other, so ethnies are very large, extended, inbred families. ENT partisans believe that this relatedness creates an altruistic bond among co-ethnics that is a weaker version of kin altruism.18
A brief explanation of the concept of relatedness is necessary to understand ENT, as well as my own argument against it. Human beings across the world are almost genetically identical. According to the most common estimate, humans share 99.9 percent of their genes, so it is only a tiny fraction of genes that create differences between individuals and ethnies. Relatedness among kin is calculated relative to the base population that kin belong to. Among any base population, there will be a small amount of genetic variance. If two random English people have a child, they will share half of the genes that vary in the base population in addition to all of the genes that do not vary, and this is what is meant when we say that parents are 50 percent related to their offspring.19
ENT is founded on the fact that there are significant differences in relatedness among different ethnies. In fact, relative to sub-Saharan Africans, the relatedness of two Englishmen is approximately the same as the relatedness of a child to its parents relative to the base population from which the parents are drawn.20
Because of genetic differences between ethnies, the logic of kin selection applies to relations between members of ethnies. Therefore, it increases an individual’s inclusive fitness to aid co-ethnics when one’s ethnicity is in competition with another. Salter uses the example of competition over territory. The influx of allo-ethnics (members of other ethnic groups) into an ethny’s territory, whether through military invasion or immigration, reduces the amount of the territory available to the ethny: “Thus it would appear more adaptive for an Englishman to risk his life or property resisting the immigration of two Bantu immigrants to England than his taking the same risk to rescue one of his own children from drowning.”21 In short, we have “ethnic genetic interests” in working for the good of our ethny.
ENT partisans interpret many human behaviors as adaptations to promote ethnic genetic interests, including ethnic identification, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, ethnic competition over territory, and ethnic segregation and self-assortment. Frank Salter has offered evidence that people preferentially direct altruism towards co-ethnics over allo-ethnics. In a study conducted in Moscow, he and his colleagues found people were more likely to give to co-ethnic than allo-ethnic beggars.22 Other evidence of altruism towards co-ethnics comes from the fact that ethnically homogenous states are more likely to have generous welfare policies than heterogeneous ones are.23
Rushton has argued that heroic self-sacrifice in warfare is an adaptation to promote ethnic genetic interests. Discussing Muslim suicide bombers, Kamikaze pilots, and other soldiers who have gone to certain death in warfare, Rushton says, “people have evolved a ‘cognitive module’ for altruistic self-sacrifice that benefits their gene pool.”24
According to Rushton’s genetic similarity theory, discussed in detail here, kin and ethnic nepotism are effects of a more general adaptation to act altruistically towards those who are genetically similar to us. We judge genetic similarity by phenotypic similarities, such as conservative attitudes or blond hair, and act altruistically towards those who are similar to us. In addition to ethnic phenomena, Rushton cites similarities between friends and sexual partners as evidence of this adaptation. GST is broader than ethnic nepotism theory because Rushton believes that altruism can be directed towards our genetic similars even if they are not related to us. Indeed, he makes clear that this adaptation sometimes works across ethnic lines.25
The idea behind ethnic nepotism, then, is that, since relatedness causes altruism among kin, it ought to cause altruism among co-ethnics. Nothing seems more reasonable than this inference at first blush. However, a simple thought experiment will demonstrate that nepotism has to stop somewhere and that the validity of this inference is much less obvious than it initially appears.
Let’s say the following rule were true: nepotism is proportional to relatedness, so the more genes organisms share, the more altruistic they will be towards each other. The world created by this rule would be very different from the one we live in. After all, humans share 99.9 percent of their genes, so there would be no reason to behave substantially more altruistically towards one person than another—an Englishman might be a tenth of a percent more generous to his brother than to a Bantu. The universal brotherhood of man would reign, and the good of every human in the world would be almost as important to us as our own.26
And there is no reason to stop at human beings. Humans share 95 percent of genes with chimpanzees. By the logic of genetic similarity theory, humans ought to behave almost as altruistically towards chimpanzees as to their own relatives. We are 70 percent related to mice, so we would be quite chummy with them as well, rather than trying to kill them when they invade our property.
This mistake is so common that biologists call it “Washburn’s fallacy” in honor of the man who first made it. What Washburn’s fallacy tells us is that there has to be a threshold beyond which nepotism no longer operates. The question at stake in the debate over ENT is where that threshold lies—at kin or at the ethny?
We saw above that there is little evidence for kin altruism even among cousins. Why should this be? And why is ENT implausible from the point of view of evolutionary theory?
The answers to these questions lie in the cost/benefit logic of altruism. As noted above, conflicts of genetic interest exist even among kin, so altruism towards kin can be genetically costly. Solving conflicts among kin is relatively easy though, and humans have had a strong incentive to solve them due to the fitness benefits.
As individuals become less related, however, the benefits of directing altruism at them diminish. Suppose you have the choice of giving food either to your sibling or your cousin. Since you are half related to the first and one-thirty-second related to the other, choosing your sibling would bring a fitness benefit that is sixteen times greater than the other option. This being the case, the optimal strategy is simply restrict altruism to close kin.27
Consequently, there is no reason for an instinct for ethnic nepotism to evolve. Consider Frank Salter’s example of preferential giving to co-ethnic beggars. Why would people evolve to give money to co-ethnics when they can maximize inclusive fitness more effectively by just giving whatever money they have to spare to their kin?
The second objection to ethnic nepotism theory is that our co-ethnics have been our most serious genetic competitors. The great majority of people throughout human history have lived in ethnically homogeneous groups, and group members have competed with each other for access to resources and mates. Consequently, a gene for ethnic altruism would have helped out our competitors and thus would have been eliminated from the population in quite short order.
Our social instincts evolved in pre-state societies, and studies of such societies find evidence of fierce competition within ethnies. Since most pre-state societies practiced polygynous marriage, or the marriage of multiple wives to one man, potential mates for men have been scarce, and consequently, men evolved to fight over them, just as other male mammals do. In his classic study of the Yanomamö Indians of South America, who qualify as an ethny by Salter’s definition, Napoleon Chagnon found that fighting over women was endemic to the society. About 40 percent of adult men had participated in the killing of another Yanomamö, and the primary cause of this violence was feuds over women.28 What is true of the Yanomamö is also true cross-culturally. Even in modern Western nations, most homicides can be traced to male sexual competition over women: men kill each other out of jealousy or out of concern for status, which is linked to reproductive success.29
ENT partisans argue that ethnic nepotism would have been adaptive given high levels of conflict between ethnies, and interethnic conflicts certainly have taken place frequently throughout human history. Nevertheless, warfare is just as common within ethnic groups as between them in pre-state societies, if not more so.30 Moreover, warfare is only the most extreme form of competition. Much more common are fights, quarrels, and rivalries among neighbors, who would have been almost entirely comprised of co-ethnics throughout human history.
This is not to say that cooperation does not take place among non-kin. However, such cooperation is motivated entirely by self-interest, according to the logic of reciprocal altruism, and not by concern for the well-being of one’s partners.
Thus because kin-altruism maximizes altruism towards those who share genes with us and minimizes altruism to our competitors, it is a much more efficient means of fitness maximization than ethnic nepotism and would have outcompeted it in the environment in which humans evolved.
The foregoing has argued that no instinct for ethnic nepotism has evolved because our primary competitors have been co-ethnics. The question remains whether an instinct for ethnic nepotism ever could evolve even in circumstances in which allo-ethnics were our primary competitors.
To illustrate this point imagine an ethnically mixed society with no majority ethnicity in which any individual’s primary competitors for mates and resources would be allo-ethnics, although co-ethnics would also be competitors. Since co-ethnics are significantly more genetically related to each other than to allo-ethnics, ethnic nepotism would certainly increase inclusive fitness in these circumstances. However, would it be the optimal strategy?
It is unlikely. In this society, allo-ethnics would certainly be more dangerous threats to one’s genetic interests than co-ethnics, but the latter would be threats all the same. To argue that ethnic nepotism would be optimal in these circumstances is like arguing that a football team should help weaker teams to win because they are less dangerous competitors than stronger teams are. Of course, the optimal strategy for the team is not to help any of its competitors to win at all.
The same type of argument also applies to genetic similarity theory. To paraphrase John Archer’s critique of this theory, “Why help genetic similars when you can help sisters and brothers?”31 By behaving altruistically towards those who share your hair color, you may help out a few of your genes, but by aiding your sibling, you would help out many more, so the optimal strategy is to help your sibling. Moreover, to the extent that a blond-haired person does not share genes with you, he is your competitor, so altruism towards him would be selected against.
In sum, ENT fails because ethnic nepotism, though it may in some cases increase fitness, would never be an optimal strategy. Consequently, it is implausible that any instinct for ethnic nepotism evolved. However, the failure of ENT does not necessarily mean that people possess no instincts for ethnocentrism or ethnic solidarity, as I have elsewhere suggested. Rather, all I am claiming here is that if such instincts did evolve, they did not do so for the reasons that ENT partisans believe they did.
The critique of ENT set out here is a very abstract one meant to apply to all possible applications of the theory. The fallaciousness of ENT will become even clearer when I examine its particular claims in greater detail, as I will do in my next article.