The NewYorkBetaTimes, of all the flaccid media organs!, reports on a study that finds genes play a major role in primate social behavior.
Social behavior among primates — including humans — has a substantial genetic basis, a team of scientists has concluded from a new survey of social structure across the primate family tree.
The scientists, at the University of Oxford in England, looked at the evolutionary family tree of 217 primate species whose social organization is known. Their findings, published in the journal Nature, challenge some of the leading theories of social behavior, including:
– That social structure is shaped by environment — for instance, a species whose food is widely dispersed may need to live in large groups.
– That complex societies evolve step by step from simple ones.
– And the so-called social brain hypothesis: that intelligence and brain volume increase with group size because individuals must manage more social relationships.
By contrast, the new survey emphasizes the major role of genetics in shaping sociality. Being rooted in genetics, social structure is hard to change, and a species has to operate with whatever social structure it inherits.
If social behavior were mostly shaped by ecology, then related species living in different environments should display a variety of social structures. But the Oxford biologists — Susanne Shultz, Christopher Opie and Quentin Atkinson — found the opposite was true: Primate species tended to have the same social structure as their close relatives, regardless of how and where they live.
One by one, the shibboleths of the post-Enlightenment Left crumble into dust, their lies scattering like tumbleweed on the purifying desert winds.
The Old World monkeys, for example, a group that includes baboons and macaques, live in many habitats, from savanna to rain forest to alpine regions, and may feed on fruit or leaves or grass. Yet all have very similar social systems, suggesting that their common ancestry — and the inherited genes that shape behavior — are a stronger influence than ecology on their social structure.
Genes a stronger influence on social structure — aka culture — than the environment? Now who was it said something similar not too long ago on this very outpost of mortifying truths? Ah, yes:
Culture does not spring up out of the ground unseeded, like a summoned monolith. Human genetic disposition seeds the ground and creates culture, unleashing a macro feedback loop where culture and genes interact in perpetuity. Those “cultural judgments” [feminists] so recoil from are actually subconscious reinforcements of ancient biological truths.
Great crops of corn, I hate to toot my own horn, but goddamn… strike up the band!
The fact that related species have similar social structures, presumably because the genes for social behavior are inherited from a common ancestor, “spells trouble” for ecological explanations, Joan B. Silk, a primate expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in a commentary in Nature. Also, the finding that there has not been a steady progression from small groups to large ones challenges the social brain hypothesis, Dr. Silk said.
The Oxford survey confirms that the structure of human society, too, is likely to have a genetic basis, since humans are in the primate family, said Bernard Chapais, an expert on human social evolution at the University of Montreal.
Think about the radical implications this study *should* have on public policy. (I say “should” because the old guard will work tirelessly to smear anyone who dares draw the arrow from human genetic predisposition to informed social policy.) If it became commonly accepted knowledge that genes play a major, maybe even predominant, role in how human population groups organize socially, sexually and economically, then in one fell swoop the following canons would be reduced to the dung heap of exposed lies, alongside such luminous repositories of sacred thought as geocentrism, Freudianism, Communism and the theory of buying chicks stuff on the first date in hopes of sex:
– redistribution (in any form) for any means other than intergroup pacification
– feminism
– egalitarianism
– rational actor economics
– multiculturalism
– laissez-faire libertarianism in heterogeneous societies
– unrestricted immigration
– ideologies with cultural conditioning theories as their centerpiece
– exported democratization
– cheap chalupaism
The strawmen armies will, naturally, come marching out in force to cow anyone from waving this study in the air like a beacon to guide the free thinkers through a battlefield shrouded in choking gas, mud and fog. I have neither the time nor the patience to deal with them all here, but for a few exceedingly trite and trollish objections.
“Apes aren’t humans.”
Funny how the pro-evolution Left is so quick to highlight the gulf between apes and humans when it suits their agenda. Apes aren’t humans, but apes are our closest cousins. From them we can learn much about ourselves, if not everything.
“Genes aren’t destiny. Our fates aren’t predetermined.”
Reductio ad absurdum. Genes aren’t destiny, but they are significant constraints on destiny. For instance, (and to use a very obvious example), a man with a genetic predisposition to criminality can have his unobstructed destiny to inflict pain and suffering on others severely altered by a long prison stint. But remove that environmental influence, and his genetic impulse resumes primary ownership of his behavior. So while we don’t have exact destinies given us at our birth from which we may never stray, we do have paths laid before us that are closer to, or further from, alignment with our natural genetic proclivities. The rockier the path, the stricter the environmental or cultural controls needed to keep us trundling along it. The smoother the path, the looser the controls needed.
“Ok, genes may play a role, but humans share 99.whatever% of their genes.”
Great. We also share 99% of our genes with mice, but no one would mistake a man for a mouse. Unless he’s named H. Schwyzer. That .whatever% of genes we don’t universally share makes for a lot of difference.
“Humans can adapt.”
Correction: Humans can adapt more or less easily. And sometimes, not at all. Public policy should be that which encourages the construction and maintenance of a prosperous national environment that puts as few stressors on its citizens’ store of ability to adapt as possible.
Within my lifetime, I would love to see the self-evident truths encompassed in this post recognized and embraced by the elite. But it’s looking more and more like that is a pipe dream. Instead, traitors and liars will drag us down into the dark, murky abyss before they surrender their pride.
[crypto-donation-box]
