Jonathan Schulz, Duman Bahrami-Rad, Jonathan Beauchamp, and Joseph Henrich write,
the institutions built around kinship and marriage vary greatly across societies (21–23) and that much of this variation developed as societies scaled up in size and complexity, especially after the origins of food production 12,000 years ago (22, 24–29). In forging the tightly-knit communities needed to defend agricultural fields and pastures, cultural evolution gradually wove together social norms governing marriage, post-marital residence and ingroup identity (descent), leading to a diversity of kin-based institutions, including the organizational forms known as clans, lineages and kindreds (21, 27, 30). The second insight, based on work in psychology, is that people’s motivations, emotions, perceptions, thinking styles and other aspects of cognition are heavily influenced by the social norms, social networks, technologies and linguistic worlds they encounter while growing up (31–38). In particular, with intensive kin-based institutions, people’s psychological processes adapt to the collectivistic demands and the dense social networks that they interweave (39–43). Intensive kinship norms reward greater conformity, obedience, holistic/relational awareness and in-group loyalty but discourage individualism, independence and analytical thinking (41, 44). Since the sociality of intensive kinship is based on people’s interpersonal embeddedness, adapting to these institutions tends to reduce people’s inclinations towards impartiality, universal (non-relational) moral principles and impersonal trust, fairness and cooperation. Finally, based on historical evidence, the third insight suggests that the branch of Western Christianity that eventually evolved into the Roman Catholic Church—hereafter, ‘the Western Church’ or simply ‘the Church’—systematically undermined the intensive kin-based institutions of Europe during the Middle Ages (45–52). The Church’s marriage policies and prohibitions, which we will call the Marriage and Family Program (MFP), meant that by 1500 CE, and likely centuries earlier in some regions, Europe lacked strong kin-based institutions, and was instead dominated by relatively weak, independent and isolated nuclear or stem families (49–51, 53–56). This made people exposed to Western Christendom rather unlike nearly all other populations.
Pointer from Tyler Cowen, who tells us how politically incorrect the paper is by saying that he expected (but did not find) a Steve Sailer citation. This paper should be catnip for the IDW.
Possibly related, but not as controversial: I did a podcast with Russ Roberts recently (it may or not already be up) on the theme that human beings are social. I argue for the importance of culture, based in part on my reading of Henrich. Compared with animals, for humans the ratio of culturally learned behavior to innate behavior is extremely high. This is important, in my view.
Almost certainly related: The Origins of English Individualism, by Alan MacFarlane.
I’m not sure the piece is politically incorrect – at least based on the excerpt you’ve provided. Consider the statement:
“Intensive kinship norms reward greater conformity, obedience, holistic/relational awareness and in-group loyalty but discourage individualism, independence and analytical thinking.”
Presumably, this is the sort of mindset the left needs to foster in order to establish and maintain socialist societies, which are largely based on the ancient tribal model.
On the other hand, the following sentence is a bit more controversial:
“Since the sociality of intensive kinship is based on people’s interpersonal embeddedness, adapting to these institutions tends to reduce people’s inclinations towards impartiality, universal (non-relational) moral principles and impersonal trust, fairness and cooperation.”
The left rejects impartiality (e.g., the idea of “blind” justice) and belief in universal moral principles, so no problem there. However, while the left believes strongly in cooperation, fairness, and trust, they do not believe in extending them beyond one’s own class (tribe). The left needs an “other” to hate.
In 1947, a sociologist named Carle C. Zimmerman published a book called “Family and Civilization,” with, as I understand it, a similar thesis about the influence of the Catholic Church on the decline of kin-based social structures in Western Europe. I realize that anything published that long ago would be considered to have been superseded by now, but I still was surprised to find that Zimmerman is not even cited in the footnotes to this paper.