Over the last few years, the indefatigable chickadee has been telling a story about the marriage (heh) between outbreeding and modernity. In fairness to her, the approach she takes is informational, not polemical, and that conclusion is mine, not (necessarily) her's. But it's difficult not to come to that pithy conclusion regardless.
My childish infatuation with the ancients aside, I like modernity. It's not all good, though--ennui, atomization, ethno-masochism--and, apparently, the relinquishing of any sort of serious national sovereignty, solidarity, or identity. Taking the citizenship standards index values* from a post derived from World Values Survey responses and correlating them with consanguinity rates (defined as second-cousin or closer), both at the national level, yields a statistically significant positive correlation of .59 (p = .003) among the 23 countries for which both consanguinity and WVS data are available. That is, the more inbred a country is, the more restrictive the attitudes of its population are on the issues of immigration and citizenship. Conversely, the more outbred a country is, the more its inhabitants tend toward unrestricted open borders.
If you'll allow me to shamelessly quote myself:
mankind humankind. I suppose I should be smart enough to know better--the inverse correlation between estimated average IQ and citizenship standards scores for the same 23 countries is a statistically significant .70 (p = .0002) at the national level. The higher the country's IQ, the more likely its people are to wave the huddled masses on through.
* See here.
** Calculated by obtaining the simple, unweighted averages of all studies reported at consang.net.
My childish infatuation with the ancients aside, I like modernity. It's not all good, though--ennui, atomization, ethno-masochism--and, apparently, the relinquishing of any sort of serious national sovereignty, solidarity, or identity. Taking the citizenship standards index values* from a post derived from World Values Survey responses and correlating them with consanguinity rates (defined as second-cousin or closer), both at the national level, yields a statistically significant positive correlation of .59 (p = .003) among the 23 countries for which both consanguinity and WVS data are available. That is, the more inbred a country is, the more restrictive the attitudes of its population are on the issues of immigration and citizenship. Conversely, the more outbred a country is, the more its inhabitants tend toward unrestricted open borders.
If you'll allow me to shamelessly quote myself:
The paradox presented here for many like myself is that the places inspiring the warmest feelings and that I would like most to live in are the places that tend to put the least effort into maintaining what they have. It's tragic.Or maybe I'm just a retrograde troglodyte covetously trying to keep to and for myself what my ancestors rapaciously stole from the brotherhood, er, and sisterhood, of
* See here.
** Calculated by obtaining the simple, unweighted averages of all studies reported at consang.net.
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