I voted yes, and I consider this a no-brainer for anyone “dont les yeux sont en face des trous” (“whose eyes line up with the holes [in their face]”), as they say in French-speaking Europe.

In the year 2003, every academic whose eyes line up with the holes sees that intelligence is mostly inherited. In the coming years it will be demonstrated, in addition, that completely apart from “intelligence,” various other important behavioral characteristics of ethnic groups and races are also at least partly inherited. Again, these others do not amount to “intelligence” per se, but involve behavoral manifestations separate from it.

Ideally, ethnicity-changing measures like the 1965 Immigration bill would not have been rammed down people’s throats against their will until these pertinent questions had been scientifically explored. Those who wish there to be no “premature” discussion of these topics until all scientific research has settled the question must first put “on hold” those measures, like the 1965 bill, which threaten irreversible and undesired-by-the-population changes if allowed to continue in force pending firm scientific conclusions. Otherwise, “premature” discussion is fair.

This sort inquiry into questions of inherited ethnic and racial characteristics isn’t mean or immoral unless put to mean or immoral uses by mean or immoral individuals. Ethical individuals will use any knowledge resulting therefrom for the benefit of everyone without exception.

There’s nothing immoral in sensing that the beloved cultural heritage and tradition one holds dear might be depend partly on ethnicity and therefore in questioning governmental policies
having the potential to eradicate a particular ethnicity’s predominant position in a society.

Just as in meteorology small average-temperature changes on the order of, say, two degrees one way or the other are said to have the potential to cause drastic climatic changes, perhaps seemingly small ethnic-genetic changes in a population have correspondingly great potential in regard to that society’s outward cultural and social characteristics.

What’s NOT racist about this topic is that it applies to all ethnicities and societies that exist without exception, and therefore favors none above any other.

Would the civilizations of Europe and China most likely have turned out quite differently if the genetic endowments of their peoples had been reversed?

I really don’t like this poll question. I agree with the notion, that to some extent, the quality of a civilization depends on the genetic endowment of the people who inhabit it. But as for the poll question, what is your point? Can one civilization be objectively proven to be better than the other? As for genetic endowment, every study of intelligence, or scholastic aptitude, that I read suggests that Asians are intellectually superior to Europeans. So are you asking if superior genetic endowment yields superior civilization, or vice versa?

I am really troubled by this poll question, and it raises serious doubts in my mind about the open-mindedness and objectivity of its author.

I really just don’t know what the answer is to this one. I voted no partly to play devil’s advocate and partly because while I think genetics does play some role, I think historical experience, geography, climate and religion play a greater part. I’m open to the possibility that I am totally wrong though.

“Can one civilization be objectively proven to be better than the other?” — anon

Yes. “By their fruits shall you know them”. While the Chinese certainly have a truly great civiliastion that is in some respects comparable to the West’s, others clearly do not. Much of Africa comes immediately to mind, and the multiculturalists claim that African “civilisation” is equal to European civilisation (or Chinese for that matter) does not in my opinion bear close scrutiny. Not all civilisations are equal.

Anonymous says that “the quality of a civilization depends on the genetic endowment of the people who inhabit it,” but also says that asking people whether they think that genetic endowment has made a difference in how two great civilizations have evolved “raises serious doubts … about the open-mindedness and objectivity” of the questioner. I don’t understand.

“[A]s for the poll question, what is your point? Can one civilization be objectively proven to be better than the other?” Anonymous

I don’t see this poll question AT ALL as aiming at any ranking of civilizations according to which are “better.” On the contrary, the question seems utterly neutral in that regard. Can anonymous see that every society on the planet might have members who are interested in the answer to this question as it might relate to their own society?

Anonymous should be troubled by the question. What else could he be—as the victim of unrelenting, intense, and comprehensive propaganda (lies) by almost all politicians (the ruling elites) and major media outlets (outlets that frame the issues of public debate) and by most educators and capitalists. That he is a victim of brain washing is evidenced by his irrational thought: he thinks that asking questions is close-minded. Irrational thinking can be a byproduct of suppressed distorted thoughts. The question might pass near a subconscious taboo of his and of modern America. Let us see what the hidden taboo is and determine whether it is rational. (I have no psychology training.)

One way to get at a suppressed thought so that we can examine its rationality is to keep asking what and why. For example, what specifically is troubling about the question? Well, what specifically is troubling about that? Et cetera.

I hope Anonymous will not be offended if this seems patronizing. I lack the time and talent to prepare a more tactful comment. Perhaps it will be helpful to mention that we all share and struggle with many of the same taboos. Anonymous’s good fortune (and mine) is that he is indeed anonymous and can learn if he chooses to.

Greetings from anonymous.

First of all, let me apologize for posting anonymously in my first response. I see now that forcing you to address me as anonymous clutters your responses, and our conversation should not be cluttered with such messiness. I should not have posted anonymously.

Second, I don’t think Jim Kalb understands my concern. I do not object to the question “Does the average genetic endowment of a population contribute to the quality of the civilization that it develops?” Nor do I object to the question, “Do Europeans have a better genetic endowment than Chinese?” Nor do I object to the question “Did Europeans develop a better civilization than the Chinese?”

What I object to is ambiguity in the question. “Would the civilizations of Europe and China have been quite different if the genetic endowments of their peoples had been reversed?” The question only makes sense if you assume the genetic endowment and/or civilization of one group is superior to the other group. Some 92% of the respondents so far have chosen yes or no without KNOWING what they were voting on. They made ASSUMPTIONS on what they were voting on.

So I ask you, Jim, if indeed you are the author, should readers of VFR make assumptions regarding the average level of achievement of various groups, or should the assumptions about those groups be stated explicitly in the discussion?

Mr. Haffner writes:
“The question only makes sense if you assume the genetic endowment and/or civilization of one group is superior to the other group.”

I don’t see how that follows; and even supposing it DID imply a reductionist linear scale of better/worse rather than the infinite phase spaces of one civilization compared to another’s, it wouldn’t follow that the question itself implicates the objectivity of the asker.

I saw the answer as obviously yes. Far smaller changes than the one postulated would change the history of both civilizations dramatically (e.g. the premature deaths of Confucius and Plato), so clearly one so large would also imply profound changes.

Mr. Haffner specifically addresses Mr. Kalb, and I don’t mean to interrupt that dialogue. I wish only to say, as a peripheral observer watching from the sidelines, that I’m baffled by Mr. Haffner’s interpretation of the poll question as intending to ask which civilization is “superior” to which. I see no such intent in the poll question and I simply cannot imagine how it is that he sees one.

To go just a bit further:

“I do not object to the question, ‘Does the average genetic endowment of a population contribute to the quality of the civilization that it develops?’ “

[It would be better to change “quality” in that formulation to “characteristics” or some word that lacks dual meaning, so as to avoid an implication of “value-judgement.” Note that the poll question was a million miles from that formulation invented by Mr. Haffner.]

“Nor do I object to the question, ‘Do Europeans have a better genetic endowment than Chinese?’ Nor do I object to the question, ‘Did Europeans develop a better civilization than the Chinese?’ ”

[It’s nice to know Mr. Haffner doesn’t object to them. Too bad nobody’s asking them or anything even remotely resembling them, and too bad no one whose articles or posts I’ve ever read on VFR would EVER ask those specific questions.]

“What I object to is ambiguity in the question. ’ Would the civilizations of Europe and China have been quite different if the genetic endowments of their peoples had been reversed?’ The question only makes sense if you assume the genetic endowment and/or civilization of one group is superior to the other group.”

[This conclusion of Mr. Haffner’s is so far wrong that I cannot even come up with a way to illustrate WHY it’s wrong, to do which usually requires at least SOME SEMBLANCE of a plausible connection between a premise and a false conclusion, a conclusion one can then show by illustration to be unjustified. Here there isn’t even that. Mr. Haffner’s position is just mind-boggling, is all that can be said.]

I also find the exact wording of the question a bit awkward, but once you get over that the meaning of it seems to be pretty clear: What would European civilization be like if Chinese rather than whites had lived in Europe for the last 5,000 years or so, and what would Chinese civilization be like if if whites rather than Chinese had lived there for the last 5,000 years? The underlying idea the question is getting at is straightforward: to what extent is a civilization the expression of the racial characteristics of the creating people? Those who think that only geography and climate matter, would answer that Chinese living in Europe would have created a civilization exactly like the one that whites, in fact, created, and they would believe the converse (the obverse?) for whites in China. I find it impossible to believe that, so I voted yes.

The social psychologist William McDougal in the 1920s posed a similar question: if every child born in Britain were replaced at birth by a child born in Italy, and then raised by British parents, and if British children were placed in Italy in the same manner, then, over the ensuing generations, would there be a change in the respective cultures of the two countries? He thought there would be. Genetically based differences of temperament and mentality would make a difference.

I don’t see how the question raises the issue of superiority or level of achievement at all. It only asks about differences. For example, in China they emphasize family more and the individual less than in Europe. In Europe there is more of a tradition of free public life than in China. Chinese painting concentrates more on landscape, European on the human figure. And so on. All these differences might simply reflect geography, climate and historical happenstance, or they might also to some extent reflect different average innate behavioral tendencies. To suggest that is to suggest nothing about level of achievement.

Perhaps I am placing too much emphasis on the word REVERSED, which infers that one population or the other must be “in front.” While I am not obsessed by that issue, I did find the original question difficult to answer without some clarification in that regard. Consequently, I find interpreting the poll results to be difficult as well.

I am looking forward to the next poll question.

Thanks.

“Perhaps I am placing too much emphasis on the word REVERSED, which implies that one population or the other must be ‘in front.’ ” — Steve Haffner

Mr. Haffner, would European civilization have been quite different if someone had waved a magic wand a long time ago and replaced European people’s genes with Chinese genes, and would Chinese civilization have been quite different if someone had waved a magic wand a long time ago and replaced Chinese people’s genes with European ones?

Yes. I believe that they would both be different.

I don’t see the question as superiority or achievement, but even if it did, such a question would not necessarily be illegitimate. To deny that a civilization cannot be superior to another seems to be qualitatively no different to the nihilistic dismissal of the very concept of civilization.

Of course the histories of China and Europe would have been very different if their genetic endowments had been reversed. How they differ, however, would depend on when that reversal was engendered. The aggregate and constituent genetic endowment of the Chinese and Europeans has not remained constant over the last 5 millennia since Civilization emerged. Genetic drift and bottlenecks, emigration and immigration, miscegenation, differential fertility, inbreeding, disease and war cause continual genetic change. The present Egyptians, Greeks and Romans are not same breed as the Egyptians who designed the Great Pyramid, 5th century BC Athenian citizens, or Roman Patricians of the same period; the Ancients were of a different order of genius, along with a superior vigour and great longevity. Similarly, the majority people of the Anglo-sphere countries are a pale imitated of antiquity. The Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain had a far larger brain size than modern Britons, and Cro-Magnon man larger still. For centuries and in areas millennia, Catholic celibacy amongst intelligent clergy denied ability to be perpetuated; later the transformation of warfare from knightly guilds to mass conscript armies drew upon and then slaughtered the most able, while sparing the unfit; finally, modern liberalism has deceived the most able women to forsake motherhood for careerist ambition, while sponsoring the breeding of the underclass.

In contrast, civilization in the Orient developed later, in the middle 2nd Millennium BC. Strong evidence suggests the Indo-European tribes populated the Asian steppes. For over 15 years archaeologists have been unearthing undeniably Caucasoid mummies from the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang China, many over 4000 year old, and some clearly Nordic. Rather than the Chinese civilization emerging independently, Caucasian proto-Indo-European speaking nomads of the open steppe may have brought the wheel and metalwork to the China, through interacting and hybridizing with local Mongoloids, a bringing of knowledge and injection of blood to forge a civilization that has evolved unbroken to the present day. Chinese social institutions built on innate potential. Intellectuals were spared from warfare and along with other capable and wealthy perpetuated their genes through concubines, while the poor could often not afford a single wife. Such eugenic effects may explain the present higher Oriental intelligence, around 106, compared to the ethnically similar North American Indians and Inuit’s who have IQs around 90, a level that might have been the general Mongoloid intelligence in prehistory. It also explains the relatively low intelligence of South East Asians and the Philippines, who are of part Mongoloid extraction, and why East Asians are not found at the highest IQ levels and have a more narrow IQ distribution – their innate limit can only be raised so much.

To conclude, civilization in Egypt, Greece and Rome, was a result of high genetic capacity, and the failing of this capacity - ethnically foreign immigration, decline in fertility and lineage, miscegenation - in each case was a cause as well consequence of decline. Likewise, the flowering of civilization after the Dark Ages followed the injection of vigorous Teutonic blood, into England, France, Spain and North Italy. The Oriental civilizations raised themselves to their present level through initial contact from the West and the development of Eugenic social institutions and practices and the maintenance of ethnic homogeneity. In the West only the Jews have been able up until now to keep their genetic capital by maintaining their ethnocentrism. Gradual decline has become freefall, as Western and now global genetic capital is savaged by the virus of modern liberalism.

I find it remarkable that, as of Sunday night, 23 out of 65 people voting in the poll believe that if people of Chinese race had inhabited Europe and people of the white race had inhabited China, instead of vice versa, the resulting civilizations would not have been different from what they actually are. People of Chinese race inhabiting Europe would have developed Greek civilization, Greek philosophy, the idea of the tragic, the idea of the hero; a man of Chinese race living off the coast of Asia Minor would have written the Iliad; other people of Chinese race living in the Near East would have written the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible, people of Chinese race in Northern Europe would have created the Anglo-Saxon sagas and the Lindisfarne Gospels, then they would have created Romanesque churches and Gothic churches and Renaissance architecture; then they would have developed modern science and the idea of individual rights and elected parliaments and modern democracy, they would have created Art Deco skyscrapers and Hollywood and Jazz and Rock ‘n’ Roll.

In other words, according to over a third of the participants in the poll, the racial characteristics of people are utterly irrelevant to their psychological characteristics and thus to the sort of culture that they create.

“I find it remarkable that, as of Sunday night, 23 out of 65 people voting in the poll [voted no].” — Lawrence Auster

I suspect part of the stumbling block for some thinking people, in regard to seeing the sorts of “inborn differences” in question, is that they automatically assume that any recognition that inborn differences exist will lead inexorably to injustice, or worse, perpetrated by some groups on others. Thus, it’s as if certain thinking individuals do not *permit* themselves to see the presence of inborn differences. If I’m right, then this also explains why this sort of person believes that those who claim to see such differences are mean, “racist,” or otherwise evil.

The last sentence in my post above should have read,

“If I’m right, then this also explains why many of the people who think this way believe that those who claim to see such differences are mean, ‘racist,’ or otherwise evil.”

I think Unadorned is right, which raises the question why so many people are so convinced that recognition of differences means injustice.

I’d attribute that conviction to one of our usual hobbyhorses at VFR, the denial in modern thought of transcendent essences like “human nature.” If there are such things then individuals who differ in important ways nonetheless have mutual bonds and common interests simply by reason of what they are, because they participate by nature in something larger that includes both. If there are no such things then individuality becomes absolute, and if Bushmen are different from Eskimos the difference is an absolute unbridgeable chasm that soon becomes an opposition.

I voted no because genetics of a large number of people is no more of a factor in development of a civilization than many other influences.

Catholic thought, for instance, is highly reflective and logical, while its evangelical counterpart is manichaen, nonreflective and distrustful of logic as the dominating influence.

What is the far greater difference on the nature of a civilization and its development, Chinese genetic endowment vs. European genetic endowment, or Catholic vs. evangelical?

The influence of Islam and Mongolian culture was far more influential on the drastic changes to the eastern empire than was the genetic endowment of its people and the influx of Mongolian blood.

Georgia was as western as any country prior to the Mongolian invasion, but has never recovered because of outside cultural influences and Islam, if genetics was the dominating influence, it should have recovered its western culture.

Athens and Sparta were very similar in genetic endowment, yet only Athens produced our foundation of western thought. The states were very different because of culture, not genetics.

In short, although genetics does play a role, it is insignificant in comparison to other influences, and civilizations turn out quite differently not because of genetics, but because of religious, philosophical and outside cultural impact.

European civilization may have turned out differently in some manner if Europeans had Chinese genes but it would have been radically different without Athens or Rome, let alone its religious influences. What had a greater influence on the development of European civilization, the black plague or genetics? Or Filioque or genetics? Blood played its part, but no more so than a myriad of other influences.

Singling out blood gives it undue impact on the development of European civilization. The influence of Plato & St. Augustine, or St. Thomas & Aristotle is a no-brainer, as Unadorned puts it, but genetic endowment is just another influence.

F. Salzer writes:
“Blood played its part, but no more so than a myriad of other influences.”

I suppose my initial yes answer was to the actual question, not the spirit of the question. In point of fact if you changed the scent of Cleopatra’s soap then Western civilization would be unrecognizably different. That is how contingent our actual history is.

But I suppose the spirit of the question was about the weighting of the specific influence of genetics compared to other things. I think it is an important factor (one of many), and would vote the same way (yes). I would vote that way even if we somehow artificially inserted someone just like Plato into the right place and time in that alternate history.