I don't disagree with the premise, but it's startling the degree to which this could only be written right now.
Just a short time ago, the right was the ideology of sexual repression, censorship, and law and order; the left was about free love, free expression, and letting groups settle their differences without state interference (gang wars...).
That this framework is so transient - or rather, so obviously created as a cudgel or justification for this political moment, rather than reflective of more durable characteristics of left vs right - makes me question its utility, and the authors' dedication to it outside of the present circumstances.
Yeah, the article is right that there is some dispositional element to left vs right. But over time (and even between countries) it is not particularly stable. Most of the left vs right attitudes better explained by two parties competing for the median voter than appeals to overarching psychological traits.
I would argue that this is due to the Left/Right divide being the bigger part of “domestication”. In keeping the population focused on culture wars that do not directly affect economies and instead attempt to enact social changes which feel impactful due to optics, the Left and Right are further able to pass law as and act on economic policy that benefits their personal goals without the public being as aware.
It is far easier to conduct a population when you control for their infighting, rather than allowing for them to have a middle ground with which to ally themselves around and demand of their heads of state.
I think the domestication hypothesis can explain your apparent counterexamples where the right does the ‘domestication thing’.
• Sexual repression: the right is less tolerant of difference, and is more rigid about sexuality in particular. Domestication is associated with having sex for fun and bonding rather than reproduction (e.g., in bonobos).
• Censorship: the content of censorship matters. Leftwing censorship is protective of the vulnerable (prosocial), something that is associated with the domestication syndrome insofar as it expresses a softer, prosocial, affiliative tendency. Rightwing censorship is about cracking down on disrespect for authority etc.
• Law and order: domestication is associated with a decline in social structures based on dominance hierarchies (and hence violence/displays of aggression). It is also associated with lower fear, and it is fear that drives the love of authority and adherence to norms of strict obedience.
The political coding of attitudes towards COVID policy is interesting. It was a complex issue with many values at stake which didn’t all pull in the same political direction (e.g., high value on security [and fear of pathogens] is associated with the right, predicting that they would be pro-lockdown, but they are also more individualistic, predicting opposition). So I personally know a lot of conservatives who were pro-lockdowns and lefties who were anti-lockdown. But the issue got swept up into partisan politics and many people fell in line if they were already partisan. How did it get sorted? I’m not sure, and there was bound to be a degree of chance and contingent political strategizing involved. But it seems to me that the core leftist motive for masks, lockdowns, vaccination, etc. has to do with protection of the vulnerable which is in line with the domestication hypothesis. Once a position like that is adopted by a political tribe, the values of that tribe that associated policies undermine are simply overlooked or denied or rationalized for the sake of consistency (e.g., ‘but lockdowns exacerbated inequality and made corporations wealthier!’, replies: ‘that’s unfortunate but was a necessary cost to protect our vulnerable’, or ‘the alternative would have been terrible for those poorer people who couldn’t switch to working from home’, etc.).
I don’t disagree with the facts you’ve stated, but it does seem that you’re pulling a familiar tactic for the unsupported arguments. While stating that the following are generalizations and there are myriad exclusions, you’re not listing any of them. Someone reading could read this and say “yes… but the exceptions would be…” but the more likely case is a reader would go through it and come out thinking your proposed ideas without equivocation or any hint of exceptions/exclusions.
Most of the examples listed for Leftist thinking are offered with implicit arguments, which you yourself have covered on your YouTube channel as being a fallacious way to argue, or worse an attempt to sway thinking in hopes of garnering support for an otherwise unsavory cause. Additionally, while you’re addressing how domestication can be ranked on a scale of left/right, you provide no examples of Rightist thinking.
While I’m not certain of studies which dictate it, as someone who has moved from a major city (NYC) to a smaller “city” with a population of only 80k, i can say that the population diversity drastically drops off. Coastal cities provide easier ports of immigration, and overall sentiment to newcomers in middle America is (anecdotally, i should add) much lower. Even as someone who is white-passing, the second i am heard speaking Spanish people look to me as if I’ve been deceptive. Casual racism and general dislike of other cultures is easier to catch when people believe “you aren’t one of them”, and I’ve caught this quite often.
I don’t dispute the fact that cities promote an inter-group tolerance and collectivist thinking, though (as an example of exclusion) this may also be tied to the consistent exposure to others plights. People are condensed into smaller spaces, further dependent on group purchasing of goods (room mates and combined family living), and the increasing cost of housing in major city areas could be argued to also lead to this dependency on one another. There is also a prevalence of Religion as a means of community grouping, rather than labor/work outside of major cities, which can also play a role.
While inter group tolerance would lead to support for LGTBQ+ rights, the premise of chimps (read simps) masturbating in isolation was pretty funny, as it leaves the entire incel community and the growth of online communities vs IRL social communication. People are less sexually active now than they have ever been, yet pornography is more accessible now than it has ever been. I don’t have studies to confirm this, but I’m sure i could find in quick searches (as could anyone). A lack of social skill could be arguably attributed to the left, but only insomuch as hierarchical and primitive male mating patterns could be attributed to Red-pill communities being more aligned with the right. The amount of young males searching for a way to “not be wrong” is terrifying, and i think that is a major failing of society overall (both in left and right providing no valid outlets for males to adapt in healthy and confident ways).
To say the left supported masks because they are in line with domesticated thinking and being more docile would be akin to saying the right participated in January 6th because they’re aggressive and prone to rage. While on some level you might be right, there is far more nuance and context to cover than a blanket statement like this. To be clear, i disagree that the left supported it for demotivated reasons (more likely that it’s due to prevalence of effect on lower socio-economic status demographics, and the group tolerance mentioned earlier), and i also don’t agree that the right was involved in Jan6th due to aggression or rage susceptibility (just needed an example of a poor blanket argument). If anything, Jan6th and the right are aligned insomuch as the Right requires a strong male figure, and is conditioned to individualism as well as a fetishization of Coups. This doesn’t excuse it or mean that Jan. 6th wasn’t an attempted Coup, mind you.
Overall, i would argue that major cities lead to a more group-minded, collectivist, and redistributive thinking. The difficulty for me with your argument as posed is that this seems to be proposed as a domestication/indoctrination of the human species to become mouth-breathing Pugs, where once we were wolves… this isn’t the case. Even wolves are family oriented creatures and the premise of the Alpha wolf was a myth that the originally study author has long attempted to disprove upon further evidence, as said wolves were examined in captivity and exhibited abnormal behaviors.
My major disagreement with the article Is the tone of LGBTQ+ support, feminist support, collectivist thinking, and redistributive thinking being something that is not beneficial to society at large. There should be no taxation without representation, there should not be an alienation of peoples but rather an expansion of them. I fully agree that there are issues with male testosterone and a solution needs to be found, but this can sooner be remedied by finding healthy ways to restrict access to pornography and better socialize young men from an early age without attempting to denigrate them for past issues with behavior they weren’t even alive for. Chauvinist-revivalists like Andrew Tate show only too well that males are looking for an outlet to find confidence, and we’re failing them.
Again, purely anecdotal evidence on my part, but the exclusions as you have admitted they exist in your argued points deserve to be highlighted if they are to be appropriately considered. I don’t see how that would differ from the generalizations made prior to, or in conjunction with a statement of facts involving bonobos and chimps here, which felt more an attempt to “Jordan Peterson” a connection where one doesn’t exist, while explaining something that might be true under a different context.
I have long wondered what explains the urban-rural political divide, and this hypothesis seems to be a strong contender. You have USA and Italy as examples--do you happen to have examples of non-White nations such as South Africa, Nigeria, Japan or China? I ask because I mildly expect (I am probably wrong) that it is a phenomenon of White nations that follows from the ancestral history of Whites partly as migrant hunters and partly as fixed settlements. As migrants, they would more often come into contact with foreign tribes, and friendly diplomatic interaction would be a better gamble. But, as fixed settlements, they would need to err on the side of violence to defend themselves against conquest and to conquer. This may be true of Asian ancestors, also, though I am not sure.
The epigenetic literature is pretty sketchy outside of extreme famines. The notable differences seem to be better explained by cultural/environmental differences.
If you want to make an epigentic argument, you’d also need to show significant physical and Hormonal differences between populations ( teeth size, sexual dimorphism, testosterone levels). Especially considering that differences in testosterone levels between populations only weakly correlate with actual aggression, with environment explaining much of the remaining differences (men in Tijuana and Toronto don’t have that large testosterone differences but the cities have vastly different murder rates).
I would not be so quick to dismiss selection for domestication. We have been executing criminals for thousands of years, but warfare is the 20th century killed aggressive men by the million.
Also, these days what was once tolerance seems more like aggressive demands for acceptance, and even primacy.
I have thought of this before, and you missed out libertarians, whose rallying symbol is literally a wild animal with the slogan "Don't tread on me."
If domestication can be described as the biological inhibition of reactive aggression then libertarians show the least such inhibition. If it is instead described as the (male) tendency towards system thinking rather than empathy, libertarians have the highest proportion of males and show the most analytic thinking style. If domestication is instead defined as conformity and obedience to authority, libertarians still show the least such tendency.
This is not necessarily a good thing. Wolves have been much less evolutionarily successful than their domesticated cousins - but conservatives are still a kennel of crew cut dogs compared to the libertarian lone wolves.
Its close but my theory of bio-politics explains it better. As BQ decreases (biological quotient), desire for redistribution increases, as the individual is less capable of looking after themselves and more group-dependent. As BQ increases, so too does desire for inequality, as this conserves resources for the nore capable individuals. Domestication is just a trait associated with leftism because of its weaker, more docile profile. Low BQ is a better description. https://windsorswan.substack.com/p/the-general-factor-of-biology
Its interesting.. It could be a preventative measure against attempts at redistribution, I think the 2nd Am. says something about preventing government tyranny. Alternatively, it could be simply based more on rural/urban divides more than left/right wing divides. We need data for other countries, because American voting is largely divided on racial lines which might explain voting patterns better (and whites in cities vote largely according to public opinion, as most people are risk averse). Regardless, its not a critical point because the defining feature of left v right is equality v inequality, which suggests that people who want equality are the people who need it most. It is based on biology, which is a more scientific concept than domestication, which is hard to define and measure. This post explains it pretty thoroughly: https://windsorswan.substack.com/p/normie-spectrum-disorder
Voting in the USA is less and less along racial lines. That may be one reason for the amped up rhetoric of systemic racism. The Democrats are trying to hold minorities in their coalition.
I don't disagree with the premise, but it's startling the degree to which this could only be written right now.
Just a short time ago, the right was the ideology of sexual repression, censorship, and law and order; the left was about free love, free expression, and letting groups settle their differences without state interference (gang wars...).
That this framework is so transient - or rather, so obviously created as a cudgel or justification for this political moment, rather than reflective of more durable characteristics of left vs right - makes me question its utility, and the authors' dedication to it outside of the present circumstances.
Yeah, the article is right that there is some dispositional element to left vs right. But over time (and even between countries) it is not particularly stable. Most of the left vs right attitudes better explained by two parties competing for the median voter than appeals to overarching psychological traits.
I would argue that this is due to the Left/Right divide being the bigger part of “domestication”. In keeping the population focused on culture wars that do not directly affect economies and instead attempt to enact social changes which feel impactful due to optics, the Left and Right are further able to pass law as and act on economic policy that benefits their personal goals without the public being as aware.
It is far easier to conduct a population when you control for their infighting, rather than allowing for them to have a middle ground with which to ally themselves around and demand of their heads of state.
Good observation.
I think the domestication hypothesis can explain your apparent counterexamples where the right does the ‘domestication thing’.
• Sexual repression: the right is less tolerant of difference, and is more rigid about sexuality in particular. Domestication is associated with having sex for fun and bonding rather than reproduction (e.g., in bonobos).
• Censorship: the content of censorship matters. Leftwing censorship is protective of the vulnerable (prosocial), something that is associated with the domestication syndrome insofar as it expresses a softer, prosocial, affiliative tendency. Rightwing censorship is about cracking down on disrespect for authority etc.
• Law and order: domestication is associated with a decline in social structures based on dominance hierarchies (and hence violence/displays of aggression). It is also associated with lower fear, and it is fear that drives the love of authority and adherence to norms of strict obedience.
The political coding of attitudes towards COVID policy is interesting. It was a complex issue with many values at stake which didn’t all pull in the same political direction (e.g., high value on security [and fear of pathogens] is associated with the right, predicting that they would be pro-lockdown, but they are also more individualistic, predicting opposition). So I personally know a lot of conservatives who were pro-lockdowns and lefties who were anti-lockdown. But the issue got swept up into partisan politics and many people fell in line if they were already partisan. How did it get sorted? I’m not sure, and there was bound to be a degree of chance and contingent political strategizing involved. But it seems to me that the core leftist motive for masks, lockdowns, vaccination, etc. has to do with protection of the vulnerable which is in line with the domestication hypothesis. Once a position like that is adopted by a political tribe, the values of that tribe that associated policies undermine are simply overlooked or denied or rationalized for the sake of consistency (e.g., ‘but lockdowns exacerbated inequality and made corporations wealthier!’, replies: ‘that’s unfortunate but was a necessary cost to protect our vulnerable’, or ‘the alternative would have been terrible for those poorer people who couldn’t switch to working from home’, etc.).
I don’t disagree with the facts you’ve stated, but it does seem that you’re pulling a familiar tactic for the unsupported arguments. While stating that the following are generalizations and there are myriad exclusions, you’re not listing any of them. Someone reading could read this and say “yes… but the exceptions would be…” but the more likely case is a reader would go through it and come out thinking your proposed ideas without equivocation or any hint of exceptions/exclusions.
Most of the examples listed for Leftist thinking are offered with implicit arguments, which you yourself have covered on your YouTube channel as being a fallacious way to argue, or worse an attempt to sway thinking in hopes of garnering support for an otherwise unsavory cause. Additionally, while you’re addressing how domestication can be ranked on a scale of left/right, you provide no examples of Rightist thinking.
While I’m not certain of studies which dictate it, as someone who has moved from a major city (NYC) to a smaller “city” with a population of only 80k, i can say that the population diversity drastically drops off. Coastal cities provide easier ports of immigration, and overall sentiment to newcomers in middle America is (anecdotally, i should add) much lower. Even as someone who is white-passing, the second i am heard speaking Spanish people look to me as if I’ve been deceptive. Casual racism and general dislike of other cultures is easier to catch when people believe “you aren’t one of them”, and I’ve caught this quite often.
I don’t dispute the fact that cities promote an inter-group tolerance and collectivist thinking, though (as an example of exclusion) this may also be tied to the consistent exposure to others plights. People are condensed into smaller spaces, further dependent on group purchasing of goods (room mates and combined family living), and the increasing cost of housing in major city areas could be argued to also lead to this dependency on one another. There is also a prevalence of Religion as a means of community grouping, rather than labor/work outside of major cities, which can also play a role.
While inter group tolerance would lead to support for LGTBQ+ rights, the premise of chimps (read simps) masturbating in isolation was pretty funny, as it leaves the entire incel community and the growth of online communities vs IRL social communication. People are less sexually active now than they have ever been, yet pornography is more accessible now than it has ever been. I don’t have studies to confirm this, but I’m sure i could find in quick searches (as could anyone). A lack of social skill could be arguably attributed to the left, but only insomuch as hierarchical and primitive male mating patterns could be attributed to Red-pill communities being more aligned with the right. The amount of young males searching for a way to “not be wrong” is terrifying, and i think that is a major failing of society overall (both in left and right providing no valid outlets for males to adapt in healthy and confident ways).
To say the left supported masks because they are in line with domesticated thinking and being more docile would be akin to saying the right participated in January 6th because they’re aggressive and prone to rage. While on some level you might be right, there is far more nuance and context to cover than a blanket statement like this. To be clear, i disagree that the left supported it for demotivated reasons (more likely that it’s due to prevalence of effect on lower socio-economic status demographics, and the group tolerance mentioned earlier), and i also don’t agree that the right was involved in Jan6th due to aggression or rage susceptibility (just needed an example of a poor blanket argument). If anything, Jan6th and the right are aligned insomuch as the Right requires a strong male figure, and is conditioned to individualism as well as a fetishization of Coups. This doesn’t excuse it or mean that Jan. 6th wasn’t an attempted Coup, mind you.
Overall, i would argue that major cities lead to a more group-minded, collectivist, and redistributive thinking. The difficulty for me with your argument as posed is that this seems to be proposed as a domestication/indoctrination of the human species to become mouth-breathing Pugs, where once we were wolves… this isn’t the case. Even wolves are family oriented creatures and the premise of the Alpha wolf was a myth that the originally study author has long attempted to disprove upon further evidence, as said wolves were examined in captivity and exhibited abnormal behaviors.
My major disagreement with the article Is the tone of LGBTQ+ support, feminist support, collectivist thinking, and redistributive thinking being something that is not beneficial to society at large. There should be no taxation without representation, there should not be an alienation of peoples but rather an expansion of them. I fully agree that there are issues with male testosterone and a solution needs to be found, but this can sooner be remedied by finding healthy ways to restrict access to pornography and better socialize young men from an early age without attempting to denigrate them for past issues with behavior they weren’t even alive for. Chauvinist-revivalists like Andrew Tate show only too well that males are looking for an outlet to find confidence, and we’re failing them.
Again, purely anecdotal evidence on my part, but the exclusions as you have admitted they exist in your argued points deserve to be highlighted if they are to be appropriately considered. I don’t see how that would differ from the generalizations made prior to, or in conjunction with a statement of facts involving bonobos and chimps here, which felt more an attempt to “Jordan Peterson” a connection where one doesn’t exist, while explaining something that might be true under a different context.
Great comment! Thank you for the detailed reply. Will forward onto the author immediately.
I have long wondered what explains the urban-rural political divide, and this hypothesis seems to be a strong contender. You have USA and Italy as examples--do you happen to have examples of non-White nations such as South Africa, Nigeria, Japan or China? I ask because I mildly expect (I am probably wrong) that it is a phenomenon of White nations that follows from the ancestral history of Whites partly as migrant hunters and partly as fixed settlements. As migrants, they would more often come into contact with foreign tribes, and friendly diplomatic interaction would be a better gamble. But, as fixed settlements, they would need to err on the side of violence to defend themselves against conquest and to conquer. This may be true of Asian ancestors, also, though I am not sure.
The epigenetic literature is pretty sketchy outside of extreme famines. The notable differences seem to be better explained by cultural/environmental differences.
If you want to make an epigentic argument, you’d also need to show significant physical and Hormonal differences between populations ( teeth size, sexual dimorphism, testosterone levels). Especially considering that differences in testosterone levels between populations only weakly correlate with actual aggression, with environment explaining much of the remaining differences (men in Tijuana and Toronto don’t have that large testosterone differences but the cities have vastly different murder rates).
I would not be so quick to dismiss selection for domestication. We have been executing criminals for thousands of years, but warfare is the 20th century killed aggressive men by the million.
Also, these days what was once tolerance seems more like aggressive demands for acceptance, and even primacy.
I have thought of this before, and you missed out libertarians, whose rallying symbol is literally a wild animal with the slogan "Don't tread on me."
If domestication can be described as the biological inhibition of reactive aggression then libertarians show the least such inhibition. If it is instead described as the (male) tendency towards system thinking rather than empathy, libertarians have the highest proportion of males and show the most analytic thinking style. If domestication is instead defined as conformity and obedience to authority, libertarians still show the least such tendency.
This is not necessarily a good thing. Wolves have been much less evolutionarily successful than their domesticated cousins - but conservatives are still a kennel of crew cut dogs compared to the libertarian lone wolves.
Its close but my theory of bio-politics explains it better. As BQ decreases (biological quotient), desire for redistribution increases, as the individual is less capable of looking after themselves and more group-dependent. As BQ increases, so too does desire for inequality, as this conserves resources for the nore capable individuals. Domestication is just a trait associated with leftism because of its weaker, more docile profile. Low BQ is a better description. https://windsorswan.substack.com/p/the-general-factor-of-biology
How about support for the second amendment from the right? This is predicted by my model. What about yours?
Its interesting.. It could be a preventative measure against attempts at redistribution, I think the 2nd Am. says something about preventing government tyranny. Alternatively, it could be simply based more on rural/urban divides more than left/right wing divides. We need data for other countries, because American voting is largely divided on racial lines which might explain voting patterns better (and whites in cities vote largely according to public opinion, as most people are risk averse). Regardless, its not a critical point because the defining feature of left v right is equality v inequality, which suggests that people who want equality are the people who need it most. It is based on biology, which is a more scientific concept than domestication, which is hard to define and measure. This post explains it pretty thoroughly: https://windsorswan.substack.com/p/normie-spectrum-disorder
Thanks for the reply.
Voting in the USA is less and less along racial lines. That may be one reason for the amped up rhetoric of systemic racism. The Democrats are trying to hold minorities in their coalition.