Dilution of cultural traits over time

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

If you'll allow me to babble incoherently for a bit,

There's this idea I've had in my head for a while, first thought up as an explanation for the failure of communes but I think also useful in studying former colonies.

Suppose you've got a society formed by a group of people. This could be a commune, a town of pioneers, or an entire colony that becomes a nation. Whatever it is, there are people who enter, and suppose that these people generally share some traits.

Now, we often see explanations (maybe not in academia, but casual history fans) of how such and such nation or region of a nation has certain traits because the people who settled it had those traits, and traits are perpetuated both genetically and culturally. However, the distinctiveness of a nation does seem to wane over time. Things like the American pioneer spirit, or the Yankee ingenuity, or the commitment of a bunch of sex pervert free love communists to their commune.

Well, it stands to reason that, maybe, in a population there will naturally be, short of deliberate eugenics, a certain distribution of personality traits. And people may select into a society, bringing certain of those traits, and the presence of those traits may skew that distribution (due to genetics, to culture) a bit for a while, but over the generations the normal range of personality will reassert itself as more people are born and raised who do not share that particular archetype.

So, it can be expected that anytime a new society is founded it will have exaggerated features of whoever settled there, but it can also be expected that the society will overtime lose its unique character.

I don't know if any of this is thought out enough to have been worth sharing.

 

[Fetish Roulette]

Have you ever read Albion's Seed?

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Have you ever read Albion's Seed?

I haven't read it but I have read American Nations, so I have a secondhand familiarity with its argument. It's a huge influence on how I view the United States, competing nationalities that don't (with the sort of partial exceptions of Yankees and Southerners) recognize themselves as distinct but instead perceive themselves as being the "correct" interpretation of what American culture is.

American Nations basically just takes Albion's Seed and makes a less academic, more pop history argument that the Lowland South is two distinct things (Tidewater and Deep South), adds a discussion of Dutch/French/Spanish America, and explains how those original colonial cultures developed into the cultures we find west of the Appalachians. (Understanding that West Coast Americans are Yankees enthused with the individualism of the American Heartland makes way more sense than the little-brain "lol coasts are librul" take that doesn't apply at all to the Atlantic Coast south of Washington DC.)

Thing floating in my mind is that, aside from also having national pressures to assimilate to the dominant "nation" (Midwest) or the coalescence of the nations into more similar blocs (everybody against the Yankees/West Coast), the regions should become more similar to one another just by virtue of the original reason for their differences being long removed. That is, I think if Group A develops Trait B, then Trait B will go away over time unless its reinforced because of the population diversifying over time.

 

[Prophetic Spirit]

All this Murican talking makes my head dizzy.
But in western world is generally fading over time the cultures of each nation. Fucking globalism.

 

[millais]

The National Socialists may have been on to something with their creed of Blut und Boden.

If the founding population's descendants aren't tied to the land, then gradually some of them are going to migrate out and new people with different traits will migrate in, and then poof, there goes the cultural distinctiveness once the tipping point is reached.

 

[Queenfaggo]

Every country on earth used to have its own unique culture and traditions. Then globohomo was born and every western country just became the same: boring and monotonous. No matter where you go, you see gloomy indians, brown people and asians, even in countries that used to be white. The people obsessed with diversity really only want everything to be the same. It's like some borg type of shit.

 

[ShapelyMutton]

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

The National Socialists may have been on to something with their creed of Blut und Boden.

If the founding population's descendants aren't tied to the land, then gradually some of them are going to migrate out and new people with different traits will migrate in, and then poof, there goes the cultural distinctiveness once the tipping point is reached.

Maybe something like a culture naturally forms around a labor market given necessary conditions of open borders/no segregation/similar language, although those last two things will gradually come about if there is a solid economic reason for the labor market to expand there.

So if a labor market grows (from, say, local farming to a whole nation linked by interstates where people move regularly) the culture will reshape itself around that larger unit.

 

[gang weeder]

Nice schizo rant.

 

[Penis Drager]

What you're describing is basically regression to the mean. It's as much a mathematical phenomenon (law of large numbers) as it is a physical phenomenon (entropy) as it is a social phenomenon (this thread).
When tossing a perfectly balanced coin, there's nothing inherently stopping a run of mostly heads from happening. But as more flips are made, the less that initial run affects the overall outcome unless an external factor is "forcing" heads.
When placing a hot cup of coffee in a cold room, there is a region of the room which is hotter than the rest. But as the flow of energy progresses, the overall temperature will equalize over time unless an external force is artificially keeping the coffee hot and the rest of the room cold.
Even a completely randomized sample of people is likely to share some traits that make them distinct from the general population. But as people enter and leave the set, they will look more and more "average" unless some factor is encouraging or discouraging a set of traits.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

What you're describing is basically regression to the mean. It's as much a mathematical phenomenon (law of large numbers) as it is a physical phenomenon (entropy) as it is a social phenomenon (this thread).
When tossing a perfectly balanced coin, there's nothing inherently stopping a run of mostly heads from happening. But as more flips are made, the less that initial run affects the overall outcome unless an external factor is "forcing" heads.
When placing a hot cup of coffee in a cold room, there is a region of the room which is hotter than the rest. But as the flow of energy progresses, the overall temperature will equalize over time unless an external force is artificially keeping the coffee hot and the rest of the room cold.
Even a completely randomized sample of people is likely to share some traits that make them distinct from the general population. But as people enter and leave the set, they will look more and more "average" unless some factor is encouraging or discouraging a set of traits.

This
I had wondered some of why communes like Oneida Community and hippie communes failed to survive beyond a generation or two, and the conclusion I came to was this "regression to the mean," though I didn't think of it in those terms, and then saw this in a broader scope with any settler colony. But yeah, in this case it's like the creation of the original set is using weights, so you've got one mean, but selection into the set is different from being randomly created (immigrating vs being born), so the community regresses to the mean of whatever set it was originally drawn from. Which in the case of a commune means that it has enough normal children be born and raised that the commune can't sustain itself.

 

[Mega Man II Intro - GB]

I haven't read it

You should read it I was actually going to recommend it to you but I went to bed or something. So that's two recommendations. Pick it up. It's well-written and has interesting details.

I think, with regards to your argument of traits being "lost", it's not so much that as it is the society changes so that such traits are no longer of use. How many loners do we have today who just want to be left alone to focus on their one thing? Used to be those young White men could be inventors or artists or explorers. But nowadays we're undereducated, there are few schools for real art, and everything's been explored. And even if that weren't true, we're drained of motivation by a society set up to belittle and discourage us. Consider that most of our ancestors were farmers and yet small scale farming is virtually impossible these days outside of an expensive hobby. It's in our blood but how can we do it? So there's a general malaise as a result of the industrial revolution, tech revolution, and cultural marxism.

Regression to the mean isn't as "conclusive" as you might think because there's an awful lot of mean. Western civilization has incredible diversity of roles when it's functioning well. A thriving middle class basically means everyone with motivation can pursue their own interests, leading to a diverse economy that deals in a wide range of products. The opposite of the plastic sterile world the globalists have created where the goal of so many millions is to have the same possessions as everyone else.

Picked up (pirated) American Nations, I will add it to the queue.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

You should read it I was actually going to recommend it to you but I went to bed or something. So that's two recommendations. Pick it up. It's well-written and has interesting details.

I think, with regards to your argument of traits being "lost", it's not so much that as it is the society changes so that such traits are no longer of use. How many loners do we have today who just want to be left alone to focus on their one thing? Used to be those young White men could be inventors or artists or explorers. But nowadays we're undereducated, there are few schools for real art, and everything's been explored. And even if that weren't true, we're drained of motivation by a society set up to belittle and discourage us. Consider that most of our ancestors were farmers and yet small scale farming is virtually impossible these days outside of an expensive hobby. It's in our blood but how can we do it? So there's a general malaise as a result of the industrial revolution, tech revolution, and cultural marxism.

Regression to the mean isn't as "conclusive" as you might think because there's an awful lot of mean. Western civilization has incredible diversity of roles when it's functioning well. A thriving middle class basically means everyone with motivation can pursue their own interests, leading to a diverse economy that deals in a wide range of products. The opposite of the plastic sterile world the globalists have created where the goal of so many millions is to have the same possessions as everyone else.

Picked up (pirated) American Nations, I will add it to the queue.

It's been on my reading list for a long time, I just haven't gotten to it yet, in part because it's very long.
American Nations is very good, but aside from it being pop history and not academic (though very useful in how he gives a map at the county level of "nations," I've even used it in statistical research) the guy's analysis (which is basically just a summary of the regional cultures and then a basic review of American history using the gimmick of referring to things by their "nation" as a way to reinforce his point) becomes increasingly deranged as he gets closer to the present-day until it completely falls apart into libtard ranting and raving. I see this happen a lot with historians, they can be perfectly reasonable about events before 1900 but as soon as it becomes something within living memory their opinions become completely worthless. That's the one big downside to Woodward's work. (In his case it's, as you might expect, sucking off Yankeeland/Left Coast and rabid hate of Deep South.)

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Okay, another instance of regression to the mean.

Every Communist movement starts out promising freedom to all the minorities, but then they tend to wind up turning on them and becoming their persecutors. Soviets and Chinese, specifically, used coalitions of minorities (ethnic, religious, sexual) but wound up becoming intensely nationalist and traditionalist.

Why?

Well, I've seen different arguments that focus on the personality of the leadership (Stalin), ideas that the change is necessary to keep the society functioning well, and other such, but another one I came up with is this. When the revolutionary movement first takes over, it is a thing that heavily selects from people who actually have that ideology. Once it is in control, though, the government needs to broaden its membership to include a lot more normal people. This gives those people a say, so the ideology becomes watered down and starts to reflect what the country wanted to be anyways.

In a modern setting, this is why I think that if the Left ever got a dictatorship over America it would swiftly be turned into a de facto White supremacist regime run by Bubba.

 

[YourFriendlyLurker]

American pioneer spirit

I know that Amercans like to shit on their country, it's kinda national sport, but from the non-American pov this particular trait didn't dillute, it evolved. It gets a certain type of person to go fuck knows where and basically settle on new continent an ocean away. The first settlers were exactly that kind of people. Hundred of years ago the US was established, people didn't need that kind of "pioneering" spirit anymore, there was nothing to conquer any more. However, it you look at various new trends (good and trash whatever), cultural, scientific and other developments, the majority of it goes from the US. Maybe that the pioneer spirit you look for, though a bit different as time have passed.

Another example is Russia. Russian people are probably the most pro-imperialistic people you can find on this planet. They have been like that when they conquered Siberia or expanded the USSR. Recently I read memoirs of some Russian classics who lived during the tsars, and it's all about building the empire, there are takes like "Japan is pretty but fuck Japan, those islands should be Russian". Even high-level commie like Lenin couldn't break it, eventually he had to accept it and Stalin used it in full. What you see now in Ukraine is the very same shit, it's Russians suddenly remembering that they should build a zikkurat an empire.

The point of the word vomit above, is that imo traits do not dillute, they evolve, and sometimes even come to surface in full bloom.