Obviously, we make the case here that politics is just like r and K-selection in nature. Provide free resources to a population, and the best way to reproduce is the r-selected reproductive strategy, most easily seen in the bunny-rabbit. If you avoid competition and conflict, mate promiscuously, single parent, sexualize offspring early, and show no loyalty to in-group, you can quickly turn free resources into offspring. Basically, every tenet of the Liberal ideology is embodied in the r-selected reproductive strategy, because that is what it is – and evolved Darwinian psychology designed to exploit free resource availability.
In nature, as resources grow scarce, the optimal strategy changes to the K-selected strategy, and individuals will become aggressive/competitive, monogamous, they will rear offspring in a two parent family, they will sexualize offspring later, and they will show high loyalty to in-group. This allows them to focus all of their energy on producing a few superior offspring who can out-compete the offspring of their peers, and survive the savagery of a battle for resources. If one wanted to see this Darwinian psychology in nature, one could look to the wolf. Clearly the biological foundation of Conservatism, this reproductive strategy apparently arises through a mix of genetics, and a variability in dopamine signaling due to diminished resource availability.
In humans, we have made the case that it would appear our neurobiology can adapt our psychology somewhat on the fly, to changing resource availability – unlike most other organisms. Give us free resources, and we won’t be able to figure out why immigrants from all over shouldn’t be free to come here, and enjoy free resources themselves.
But let resources become scarce, and the knives will come out, as our psychologies shift to a more K-type, Conservative psychology of competitiveness and aggression. The transition from r to K is not nice when it happens, especially for the r’s. Woe unto those peacnik idiots trapped in an environment where one must compete for resources or die. It doesn’t end well, if they cannot adapt, and become a K-type Conservative.
Greece has always been farther along the r-to-K transition than we are, and for that reason it will prove useful to watch their situation. What is seen there, will probably be seen everywhere, as r turns to K in the coming years and decades.
Sure enough, viewed from space, the Greek population is beginning to look exactly like any other population would, as resources begin to grow scarce. Competitiveness, in-grouping, aggression, and even, I will bet, parental investment will increase, as promiscuity, pacifism, and stupidity will wane. I view these articles with a strange mix of fascination, and illogical calm, probably borne of a rank ignorance of all the bad which could come of this when it happens in America.
Matt Bracken is a former Navy SEAL, and author of several fictional books exploring how a civil war might unfold in the US (If you are interested, you can see their pages on Amazon here
Matt has written an interesting free piece, which you can find here. It is an example of the type of chaos which might erupt right after our economic system fails, and the welfarites stop receiving their free stuff, as well as an analysis of what might crop up to combat it. It basically comes down to Rodney King style riots organized as social media flashmobs, probably taking over traffic intersections, with the welfarites doing what they please, both to acquire resources, and just generally make everyone suffer the same misery they are experiencing. Add in an ad-hoc group of neighborhood patrol/mobile vigilante sniper teams which will rise to try and stop them, and you have the whole thing.
It’s an interesting piece, but I find it even more fascinating, because it highlights to what degree we have all been programmed by the media to not be able to comprehend the real world of violence that can occur in a collapse, on a fundamental level. In this post, I highlighted the reaction of a victim of the Colorado shooting, who said that he never saw violence as real, until he saw it first hand. Violence had become something harmless that he heard about on TV, or saw in a movie. He just assumed it didn’t really happen to people, and wasn’t something you needed to worry about – until he found himself in that theater, and heard the gunshots and smelled the gunsmoke. Suddenly he was shocked to find violence was real, and it was nothing like he would have imagined it. Up to that point, his amygdala didn’t flag violence (of all things to not flag), as a threat, because it had never encountered it. The neural pathways just weren’t there, because he had never seen it firsthand.
As I read Matt’s piece, I realized I was instinctively viewing it as an unlikely fantasy, absent any realistic, logical assessment of its merits. Then I stopped, and considered how he was right – Bosnia had been so cosmopolitan only to end up a sniper’s paradise. Beirut had been the Paris of the Mideast, filled with a wild, decadent nightlife, before becoming so tribalized and war-torn. France today has wolfpacks of young Muslim predators who venture out to riot, loot, and burn at will, before returning to neighborhoods which the police don’t dare set foot in. Britain had it’s own Lord of the Flies moment recently, and the economic collapse hasn’t even begun there – yet. And now Greece is seeing citizens run around with ambassador knives, stabbing immigrants in their asses wantonly, without any law enforcement interference at all. If fact, the government’s official response is to begin deportations of the illegals.
Given the immorality of an American underclass which enjoys stealing earned resources from those above them through governmental fiat, and suddenly mobs of the poor, using free cellphones and social media to coordinate attacks and avoid legal consequences, combined with some Americans declaring it war and responding violently, looks like a reasonable extrapolation of future events.
You really need to view the coming collapse in terms of simple biology, or it is wholly incomprehensible to those who have only known a civilized America. When the mice get a surplus of grain due to rainy weather and good growing conditions, they multiply, producing a population explosion while exhibiting a psychology just like Liberalism. Liberalism works fine when those resources are free, but unfortunately, this eventually collapses the ecosystem by consuming all of the food/resources/money/value. Then the mice die back in large numbers, until the population, and the available resources, are in balance.
It’s easy to imagine in mice. For some strange reason though, all of us are designed to think that rule doesn’t apply to humans. Free resources produces population growth and a psychology designed to consume resources freely. This exhausts the resources of the population, producing mortality in the population, due to the shortage. Individuals, faced with mortality, will seize upon any behavior which will stave the mortality off, including violence on others. Can’t happen in humans, though – we will just always be civilized.
The coming economic collapse will be uncharted waters for most of us, and it is a shame. If people knew what was coming, Leftists would have been run out on rails ages ago, and we would view the unproductive underclass as being as much of a threat to civilization as Al Qaida. Our amygdalae would see how bad it is going to be, they would fire off, and there would be no way anyone would pull the lever for a Democrat.
Sadly, before your amygdala catalogs something it must be experienced, or at least spoken of eloquently by an opposition which is unafraid to stand up and call stupidity, stupidity. Absent that, it is just a bad thought, to be forgotten quickly, so the amygdala can quiet itself.
The transition from r to K is always worst for the r’s. It will be even worse in this case, because people are cataloging Liberal disloyalty to America in their brains – namely Liberal desires to import foreigners, for their imbecile party’s benefit, without any regard for the interests of real Americans, and the Liberal’s reflexive support for the unproductive criminal class over the hardworking American class.
Even though such disloyalty is not triggering American amygdalae now, it has been neurologically cataloged, as well as recorded in written/digital form. Once the currency collapses, the resource shortage begins, and people become tribalized and afflicted with the bad mood of shortage, it will be remembered, and the memories will trigger the nation’s amygdalae at that point.
One important point to make note of. The K-strategy is not violent – it is capable of violence. That violent capability is the true foundation of freedom. In America, one of the things which prevents the type of violence we are seeing in Greece, is the will of the K-types to offer equal protection to all. Today, an NRA member with a Concealed Weapons License would act to stop Golden Dawn types from attacking elderly Muslim African immigrants, if we saw it. Likewise most of us would usually intervene to protect even Liberals, such is our attachment to civilization, and the lawful structures of society.
But if the government collapses, and everything goes to hell, that protection will stop. Once danger is all about, and it is all the fault of Liberals, I am not going to be sticking my neck out for the very Liberal traitors who brought the house down. In-groupism will rise again. And Leftists will be on the outside.
It is in such an environment that Golden Dawn-type groups will rise, unencumbered by the restraint of more civilized K-types. If they are not attacking me, my family, my friends, or other Conservatives, I’m not getting involved. The ideal K-strategy will entail having the ability to quickly kill the violent, but not getting involved unless they threaten one’s own. It is how K’s evolved to behave, and it is how they will behave.
Even worse for Leftists, I would bet that once the small groups of Golden Dawn in Greece get the foreigners out of the country, their members’ will have amygdalae that are desensitized to the psychic discomfort of applying violence outside of the law, and fully sensitized to the horrors the Leftists brought about.
At that point, those amydgalae will begin driving them to turn their attentions to the Leftists, and their Ambassador knives will be finding new behinds to stab. Average Greek Conservatives, viewing Leftists as disloyal traitors who betrayed them in the past, really won’t care to get involved. They will leave the Leftists to their fates. Leftists, being cowards, are also not going to run to the defense of their compatriots. Every Leftist will be on their own.
Obviously, this will be a dangerous period. It will not be surprising to see a wave of hardline, anticommunist/anti-Leftist dictatorships rise throughout Europe, with the tacit support, or at least lack of opposition, from indigenous K-types. I don’t support such things, but recognize that in many ways, these forces of psychology at the individual level are like molecules of water in a greater tsunami. We could know where every molecule is going and why, but it wouldn’t allow us to stop the tsunami.
I think it is foolish to think in a nation as innately violent and aggressive as ours, things will be any different from Greece, once the collapse comes. Intellectually, I suspect it will be worse, considerably, even if my amygdala is still telling me it can’t happen.
It will begin with fringe characters, who decide to start dealing in violence, either to take resources, or to prevent the taking of resources. As times goes on, they will become less fringe, and more fact of life – and they will grow in number, as everyone seeks to either take from the productive, or stop the unproductive from taking from the productive.
The true Darwinian pressure one must survive in a K-environment is not shortage, but savagery. That is the foundation of in-groupism. Once the K’s stop caring about whether r’s get attacked, the r’s will quickly disappear into the ether, and often, even embrace the very violent characters who threaten them. The Stockholm syndrome is a Darwinian strategy.
We just can’t really imagine how all of this will not only become possible, but will be unavoidable, because we’ve never seen a time when our society couldn’t just conjure money and free resources out of thin air. As we head into this abyss, it probably pays to remind ourselves, we don’t really know what is coming. But we can take solace in one thing – at least we are not the Leftists.
