Comments to anthropologist Peter Frost:
* One interesting aspect of the punishment of criminals in the Sinosphere is a concept of shared familial responsibility. If a person committed a crime, not only the criminal himself would be punished, but often his entire family or clan would also be punished (stripped of rank, enslaved, have wife and children “confiscated,” etc.). This might have contributed to the relative lack of warmth in East Asian families — they tend to be hawkishly vigilant, constantly on the lookout to discover and reprimand family members and relatives (especially subordinate ones) for suspicious activities or even minor social faux pas. Presumably, individuals who treated their kinsmen harshly and who were susceptible to shaming by said kinsmen would leave significantly more descendants than individuals who either left their kinsmen up to their own devices or were thick-skinned and immune to their kinsmen’s heckling. The amount of paranoia and animosity toward family members that I have observed in many of my East Asian friends is quite shocking.
* East Asia has produced its fair share of high-trust environments, and indeed this is part of why East Asian business has been successful in many cases. The rotating credit associations for example that were instrumental in raising capital of Asians in the US to start businesses depend on a high degree of mutual trust. In fact analysts of “Asian values” produce solid evidence of high trust environments in East Asia. And Europe itself has been far from exempt in pursing clannishness for protection and help. The Irish are a prime example of clannishness at work, a phenomenon contributing much to their political success in places like the US. Likewise Italian Americans have at times been marked by mutually suspicious clannishness, particularly along regional and even intra-regional lines (Sowell- Ethnic America).
Frost writes: I’m sure Finns have high IQs, as do Russians, but the genes that influence intellectual capacity are not the same as the ones that influence latent aggressiveness, violence aversion, and anger threshold. Genes don’t come in packages marked “Good stuff” and “Bad stuff.” In any case, personal violence is not universally considered to be “bad.” In many cultures, violent males are admired and considered to be role models.
Russians aren’t Chechens, but in comparison to Western Europeans they show a stronger tendency toward familialism and defence of their families against perceived threats or insults. From my observation, when Russian men are with each other, they are more likely to engage in mildly aggressive behavior with each other or with strangers to see how far they can go. I’ve repeatedly seen this kind of brinkmanship in perfectly sober Russian men.
* …White southerners also exhibit a behavioral profile that corresponds more to what we see in less pacified human populations, e.g., greater importance attacked to “honor” and “face”, familialism, etc.
* The universe is neither moral nor immoral. We have imposed morality on an amoral world, under the influence of advanced religions like Christianity. Previously, notions of “good” and “evil” were based on Who-Whom. If something was good for me and my people, it was “moral.” If it was bad for me and my people, it was “immoral.” Christianity revolutionized morality by making it absolute and universal.
