I got hung up on China, even though it's not the point here. I find it fascinating that China would consider male offspring superior, when their female offspring have a higher chance at upward social mobility. I guess social preferences tend to come from the top down, so the plight of underclass men would not be relevant in the predominant tastes.
Daughters traditionally marry out and join the husband's family. Sons are a better insurance policy for old age. It's an asymmetry which has profound impacts.
In Decline of the West (1917), Oswald Spengler predicted that Europe would hold “the sterile male and the unfruitful woman.” He predicted that children would no longer be needed because there wouldn't be a reason for their existence. It should be no surprise that fatherhood itself, as opposed to motherhood, is essentially rudderless and lacking in meaning within our era.
We are on the verge of hitting another major divergence. This time self directed. With genetic engineering, cyber augmentation and complete transcendence of biological substrate
Another excellent exploration of the human evolutionary process (and a slower explanation for those who couldn't keep up with the faster/briefer description).
There is a wrinkle I did not get into, in that some early states were associational rather than autocratic. Such states could still have an exploited class, but their elite dynamics could be rather more open. You get such governments in the Mediterranean, MesoAmerica, parts of Africa, northern India. They could not grow beyond city-state level until the development of representational government. The latter being, of course, a development of the most “Indo-European” of the civilisational centres, medieval Europe.
Just a heads up, your link in this sentence appears broken: “The point is, as the UN put it, to replace the children the locals are not having with foreigners.”
Islam is not peaceful. Much of the point of jihad is to export the propensity to violence polygyny creates—“those people over there have women, steal theirs”.
One of the funnier social media phenomena is some Middle Eastern guy doing an ancestry test and being weirded out about being 5% Irish. Let’s talk about the Norse slave trade …
The mawālī weren’t slaves, so much as clients. But the Muslims did incorporate children of slaves by Muslim fathers into their community, and the slave warrior system was highly meritocratic. So was the devşirme (boy tax) system for most of its history.
I got hung up on China, even though it's not the point here. I find it fascinating that China would consider male offspring superior, when their female offspring have a higher chance at upward social mobility. I guess social preferences tend to come from the top down, so the plight of underclass men would not be relevant in the predominant tastes.
Daughters traditionally marry out and join the husband's family. Sons are a better insurance policy for old age. It's an asymmetry which has profound impacts.
In Decline of the West (1917), Oswald Spengler predicted that Europe would hold “the sterile male and the unfruitful woman.” He predicted that children would no longer be needed because there wouldn't be a reason for their existence. It should be no surprise that fatherhood itself, as opposed to motherhood, is essentially rudderless and lacking in meaning within our era.
Yes,
6
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
Thanks for fascinating excursion in anthropology.
We are on the verge of hitting another major divergence. This time self directed. With genetic engineering, cyber augmentation and complete transcendence of biological substrate
Another excellent exploration of the human evolutionary process (and a slower explanation for those who couldn't keep up with the faster/briefer description).
I really appreciate this work. Thank you. It pairs well with https://ajrklopp.substack.com/p/the-indo-europeans-and-the-resurrection?r=17itk0&utm_medium=ios.
There is a wrinkle I did not get into, in that some early states were associational rather than autocratic. Such states could still have an exploited class, but their elite dynamics could be rather more open. You get such governments in the Mediterranean, MesoAmerica, parts of Africa, northern India. They could not grow beyond city-state level until the development of representational government. The latter being, of course, a development of the most “Indo-European” of the civilisational centres, medieval Europe.
Brilliant and very interesting as usual.
Just a heads up, your link in this sentence appears broken: “The point is, as the UN put it, to replace the children the locals are not having with foreigners.”
Ta, fixed. This is the link.
https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/unpd-egm_200010_un_2001_replacementmigration.pdf
Islam is not peaceful. Much of the point of jihad is to export the propensity to violence polygyny creates—“those people over there have women, steal theirs”.
One of the funnier social media phenomena is some Middle Eastern guy doing an ancestry test and being weirded out about being 5% Irish. Let’s talk about the Norse slave trade …
The mawālī weren’t slaves, so much as clients. But the Muslims did incorporate children of slaves by Muslim fathers into their community, and the slave warrior system was highly meritocratic. So was the devşirme (boy tax) system for most of its history.
Though Muslim slavery also produced one of the greatest slave rebellions in history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanj_Rebellion