Egalitarian Ethnogenesis
Cultural selection.
Americans are highly migratory. If you went back more than 100 years, you would find that most Americans were not born in the same town as their grandparents. If you went back 400 years, this would be even more certain. The vast majority of Americans originate from Europe, Mexico, Africa, or Asia. Very few people are natives, and most of the natives who do live on reservations were relocated there at some point in the last 200 years.
Europeans, Asians, and Africans are much less migratory. For example, pick a random town in France. In that town, you may find French people whose parents, grandparents, and even great grandparents grew up in that town.
However, at some point, everyone comes from somewhere else. Consider the country of Germany. In the year 1000 AD, large parts of east Germany and Austria were inhabited by Slavs. Those Slavs migrated into that region during the great migration period, in the 5th century. After the Germans reconquered and recolonized those regions, they went much further. On the eve of the Second World War, one million Germans lived in Russia, one million in Poland, with millions more in Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and France. Most of this migration occurred after the Protestant reformation, accounting for 20 million Germans.
Prior to the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, up to 10% of France's population was Huguenot. The resulting wars of religion led to the mass expulsion of up to a million protestants, largely to Germany. Unlike in Germany, where Lutheranism became the dominant religious form in the north, in France Protestantism was highly associated with class, and led to the conversion of a large portion of the nobility.
If you were a German farmer in the 18th century who had migrated to eastern Europe, you would buy property with your fellow colonists and set up a small village. German farming villages might have a population of 200. Germany's 9th largest city in 1500, Vienna, only had 20,000 people. In both cases, 90% of people would be married between the ages of 15 and 29.
Using the population of Gaza as a modern analog for pre-industrial populations, 50% of the population would have been children (under 18). Around 15% of the population would be in the marriageable ages, 15 to 29. The remaining 35% would be above 30.
Using American data on the share of men married, we can estimate that if 90% of 30 year olds were married, then 60-70% of 25 year olds would be married, and 40% of 20 year olds would be married. Since women married at least 2 years younger than men, we can assume that at least 40% of 18 year old women would be married.
For simplicity sake, we will use the linear equation [y=.0454545x-0.418182] to model the percent of married women, per year. Since only 15% of the population would be ages 15-29, again for the sake of simplicity, we will assume that there are two individuals in each year, or exactly one woman, in this model.
In a village of 200 people, on average, there would be, at any given random time, 6 unmarried women between age 15 and age 29. This does not allow for a high degree of selection. In the case of Vienna in the year 1500, which was a major city, only had 20,000 people. Assuming the same exact population pyramid, there would be a total of 600 unmarried women between 15 and 29 in the entire city of Vienna. In the case of Paris, which was the largest city in Western Europe in 1500, with a population of 200,000, there were a whopping 6,000 married women.
I will interrupt this thought experiment to bring you to the present day. Tinder allows for 100 swipes per day. Meanwhile, back in medieval Paris, the most handsome and rich man in the city is scouring every avenue for unmarried women. He is interviewing, selecting, and testing them. In the present day, you do your swipes, and over the course of a month, you’ve swiped on 3,000 women. Not only do you have access to this technology, but you can also choose to live in any one of America’s 125 cities with a population over 200,000.
Europe’s population is over 12 times larger in 2024 as it was in 1500. However, the population was much less dense, more rural, and more agricultural. Europe actually has more “medieval Paris” sized cities than America: 349. So while Europe’s population has only increased by a factor of 12 since 1500, its number of major cities has increased by a factor of 349.
Why does this matter? Imagine living in a completely rural area, dotted with small villages. Each of those small villages only has 6 unmarried women. If you, an exceptional Bachelor, an athlete, a genius, a man of brilliance decide to begin your search for a wife, your options will be limited. On the other hand, if you live in a city, your options expand by 1,000 fold. Therefore, it is not only than marriage options have increased by a factor of 349 in the last 500 years, but actually that marriage options have (effectively) increased by a factor of many thousands.
Calculating the actual increase in selective capacity is not as simple as multiplying the number of 200k cities by 1,000, since some of these cities are even larger. Moscow, with 13 million inhabitants, has 390,000 unmarried women, making the selective capacity 65,000 times larger than that of a medieval village.
To simplify this problem, we will assume that the average medieval peasant lived in a town, not quite as large as Paris, but not as small as was actually the case. If we say that the average individual lived in a town of 2,000, then the average number of unmarried women would have been 60. We will consider this as the average medieval baseline, although it was likely significantly lower and closer to 6, especially for the average peasant. Today, approximately 25% of Europeans live in a 200k+ city, each of which has 6,000 or more unmarried women. Multiplying by 349 gives 2 million unmarried women, but multiplying each city’s population by 3% and summing the total brings us to over 5.5 million unmarried women. Dividing this by 349 again gives 16,000, meaning that for 25% of Europeans, they have access to a potential marriage pool of up to (on average) 16,000 in their city. By comparison, this was only true for less than 0.03% of Europeans in the year 1500.
To reiterate, it is not sufficient to say that, “the European population has increased by a factor of 12. Therefore, the selective capacity of Europe has increased by 12.” At the very least, the increase of 200k+ cities by a factor of 359 establishes a baseline of the increase. More accurately, the ratio of 25% to 0.03% (the percent in 200k+ cities in 2023 vs 1500) gives an increase by a factor of 833.
To put this in perspective, in a standard distribution, less than 1% of the population has an IQ above 137. In a room of 6 random people, the chance of at least one of them being 137 IQ or above is 6%. In a room of 100, it is 64%. In a room of 1,000 people, it is 99%. Instead of using IQ, we could substitute any personality trait: risk taking, facial symmetry, neuroticism, openness, height, or athleticism. The point is that, if you only have 6 people to choose from, your chances of being able to selecting for elite standards is slow (6%), whereas if you have 1,000 random people, it is almost certain that you will be able to select for elite levels of competence in whatever trait you are looking for.
One of the problems with looking for geniuses in small villages is that villagers were often illiterate, due to lack of education. The increase in literacy over the last 500 years has resulted in the Flynn effect, where between 1500 and 1950, every attempt to test or measure average intelligence resulted in higher scores, year over year.1 As literacy in Europe achieved its maximum possible levels, the “raw” intelligence of each individual was “exposed.”
In 1524, Martin Luther wrote An die Ratsherren aller Städte deutschen Landes (1524), which demanded compulsory schooling for the purpose of Biblical literacy. The was enacted in Württemberg in 1559 and in Palatine Zweibrücken in 1592, for both boys and girls, and in Strasbourg in 1598.
Scotland passed the School Establishment Act in 1616, which helped to promote Scotland's unique Calvinist Presbyterian religion. The Congregationalist pilgrims enacted the Massachusetts School Laws beginning in 1642. These schools were religious in nature.
Public secular education began in 1748 in Prussia, and was later expanded to all of Germany in 1871. Fichte's Reden an die deutsche Nation (1806) emphasized the importance of education for the development of German national identity, which was seen to be “lacking” among the masses.
In America, “public schools” operated much as “public universities” do today — like “public universities,” they were funded by the state, but were not free, and required tuition. Since “public schools” were not free, activists like Horace Mann promoted a tuition-free version known as “common schools.” In 1852, Massachusetts became the first state to introduce compulsory universal public education. This system spread to all other states of the union before lastly being introduced to Mississippi in 1918.
What Martin Luther began in in 1524 was completed in 1918, and the effect was to make basic literacy universally accessible. Children with extreme cognitive disabilities are still unable to read, but literacy was not longer contained behind a paywall.
As education became universal, variation traits, such as intelligence, became “exposed.” The term “exposure” implies that there is a raw, hidden potential within every individual, which can only be revealed through the full exploration of that latent power. For example, a child who would be a genius, but who was never taught to read or write can never display their genius, and by the time they are an adult, they will lose the plasticity of the brain to learn anew. If each child is assured a bare minimum of education, then the result is that each adult’s inherent capabilities will be more readily apparent.
In other words, as education universalizes, the level of intelligence which is outwardly visible (such as vocabulary size, mathematical ability, musical ability, artistic ability, or abstract reasoning skills) will be less environmentally determined and more genetically determined. A highly stratified society with little social mobility will educate the wealthy and leave the poor in ignorance. A society of universal education will bring out the best in the best, no matter their origin, and will expose the mediocrity of the elite.
As “outward intelligence” become more correlated with genetics, those who select partners based on intelligence will be more likely to be selecting on the basis of genetics rather than on the basis of environment. To understand the difference, imagine a man who wants a Southern wife. He wants the Southern accent, Southern cooking, and Southern hospitality. None of these things are genetic, but are entirely culturally transmitted. His children may culturally Southern as a result, but a process of cultural selection in this way has no eugenic effect.
On the other hand, imagine a man who wants a short wife. If there is malnutrition in society, he might find a short wife who gives him tall children, since her genes for height were not able to express themselves. On the other hand, if society has an equitable distribution of food, then his selection of a short wife is more likely to have genetic consequences for his children.
This is not only true with education and intelligence, or nutrition and height, but it is also true as concerns “culture” and personality. The term culture refers essentially to religion and its secular forms, music, cuisine, art, entertainment, media, and so on. If there are many different subcultures or religious factions within a society, they will influence the expression of a trait. Jews claim that their overrepresentation in education is the due to their religion or their culture, rather than their genetics. Conservatives blame “black culture” or “Hispanic culture” for dropout rates, gang activity, and out of wedlock births. White supremacy or white privilege is said to be a nepotistic, xenophobic cultural force which gives whites an unfair advantage, leading to improved educational, legal, or financial outcomes.
If every child in America was ripped from their parents and stripped of their identity and forced into a “cultural blender,” then these cultural biases which create unfair advantages or disadvantages would melt away. In their place, any differences which remained between adults would emerge as purely genetic phenomenon.
This utopian fantasy of the “cultural blender” can never be achieved, so long as parents have the right to privately educate their children. But even if this ideal is impossible, it represents the vanishing point at the end of a spectrum toward which we are heading.
One way to measure “cultural blending” is to look at regional accents or dialects. One of the greatest regions of dialectal erosion is in Texan, where the Texan accent has been almost completely lost. Across the south, urban areas have lost their linguistic distinctiveness. In the 20th century, this could be explained by radio, television, and also the Highway Act of 1956, which made it much easier to move from one state to the other.
In the 21st century, the internet and social media have accelerated the “cultural blender” to new speeds. Country music is fusing with rap. The barriers to interracial dating are at an all time low. Religiosity is steeply declining.
One of the factors of the “cultural blender” is an already mentioned factor, education. However, earlier, the effect of education was described as “exposing nature or genetic intelligence.” Here, the effect of education is to standardize culture.
Prior to 1910, less than 10% of Americans graduated highschool. After FDR’s 1932 election, that number began to rise exponentially, blasting past 30%, so that by the end of the war a majority of Americans had graduated highschool. Highschool graduation became normalized and mainstream. Cultural events such as “prom” and highschool sports were integral toward the creation of highschool as a “cultural blender.” While many different regional or religious cultures had their own rites of passage, highschool universalized a secular American concept of maturation for the first time.
Today, 53.7% of Americans achieve a degree past highschool, including Associates, Bachelors, Masters, or PhD. Similar to highschool, IQ scores for graduates have been decreasing, which implies that standards have been dropping.
Critics of grade inflation claim that by lowering standards for graduation, America is diluting the value of her educational system. However, if the priority in education is shifting from “intelligence credentialing” to “cultural blending,” then the decrease in IQ thresholds is necessary to sufficiently “blend” the entire population.
The final result of “cultural blending” will be the elimination of selection based on regional, religious, or cultural factors. As a result, the purely genetic factors will be laid bare. In such an environment, neuroticism, openness, intelligence, risk taking, and other traits will be selected for “nakedly,” without cultural differentiators dividing up the breeding pool.
In some ways, this experiment was already conducted in medieval Europe, with aristocracies of British breeding with aristocracies of Ukraine. The result was a higher type which dominated Europe for thousands of years. Now, the experiment has been accelerated due to increasing geographic concentrations, as well as apps like Tinder which create certain “efficiencies” in the dating market.
Summary
The experiment which is now underway can be summarized as follows:
Urbanism, and mass concentration of populations into cities, where an unlimited dating pool allows for a greater approximation of “pure hypergamy,” in contrast to the village model, where the practice of hypergamy is extremely limited.
“Cultural blending,” where the elimination of religious and cultural differences results not in an undifferentiated population, but eliminates all differences besides genetic ones. Such a process cannot, in reality, achieve a “perfectly” blended culture, but the breeding barrier between Catholics and Protestants, for example, has weakened.
New breeding barriers around ideology rather than geographical culture. This increases the heritability of ideology and “stacks” many otherwise weakly correlated traits.
The result is ethnogenesis: the breeding of new types, principally the liberal and conservative type.
Somewhere between 1950 and 1990, this trend began to reverse in the developed world, as we hit “peak literacy” and now biological factors (such as pollution) are degrading peak intelligence.