I’ve written about evidence that we like to live and work with those similar to ourselves, though there is still some substantial uncertainty about the mixture of culture and genes in the understanding of “similar to ourselves.” I’ve also written of my strong belief that this world, our universe seen in light of God’s purposes, is the story of the formation of the Body of Christ. As I see it, that Body is Christ’s brothers and sisters, similar to ourselves and dissimilar, united in an image of the truest community; as God is Father and Son and Holy Spirit in one God, so the Body of Christ will be a multitude of human beings, including the human nature of the Son of God, united in that one Body. In this sort of community, each person or Person retains their individuality while sharing fully in communal acts and thoughts and feelings.
Okay, so that taken care of, there is some more evidence coming in that we can detect those who are genetically similar to us and prefer to cooperate with those most similar to us. In this article, Genetic Similarity Promotes Cooperation: Study of Simple Organisms Reveals Preference for Those Who Resemble Themselves, we read:
In a dog-eat-dog world of ruthless competition and ‘survival of the fittest,’ new research from the University of Leicester reveals that individuals are genetically programmed to work together and cooperate with those who most resemble themselves.
A tendency for similar individuals to cooperate selectively with one another, even if they are not close relatives, can evolve spontaneously in simple organisms. This may help to explain why cooperation is so widespread in nature, the study suggests.
The modern world has had much in the way of education programs and other efforts to suppress that inborn tendency of organisms which evolve under conditions of cooperation so that they cooperate best with those similar to their own selves. I suspect there are a variety of very complex genetic and epigenetic mechanisms to further strengthen this tendency in social animals, such as wolves and men, and those mechanisms would be scattered across a variety of loosely linked genes, hormonal and other biochemical responses of egg-laying or live-bearing mothers, and perhaps other aspects of our reproducing selves. I might claim there has been an ongoing effort by those who have exaggerated our individualistic characteristics, the Liberals — both the intellectually coherent Classical Liberals and the somewhat scatterbrained and improvisational Collectivist Liberals, to suppress such tendencies, nativist or exclusionary or whatever term you wish to use.
At my other blog, no longer active but still existing, I wrote about this issue with regard to the work of a scholar, Robert Putnam, who deals more with the cultural aspects of human social life, though the genetic and cultural aspects aren’t really fully separable, to say the least. In Networks of Public Spaces Rather Than One Square, I wrote back in 2007:
There’s been a buzz of sorts on parts of the Internet because of a major study written by a pro-diversity liberal, Professor Robert Putnam of Harvard. That study indicates there are some serious problems with diversity. He thinks, or maybe hopes, those problems to be of a short-term nature. There might be other ways than a simple choice between a cosmopolitanism that melts down local communities or at least renders them ineffective and a return to tribalism.
There’s an overview article on Putnam’s study at The Downside of Diversity. The article begins:
“It has become increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.
“But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam — famous for Bowling Alone, his 2000 book on declining civic engagement — has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogeneous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.
“`The extent of the effect is shocking,’ says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist.
“[Michael Jonas, Boston Globe, as published in International Herald Tribune on August 5, 2007]”
It’s not healthy, not in moral nor emotional nor mental terms, to try to fix reality by overriding it. We should be trying to form that Body of Christ, the greater and most inclusive possible human community, by being honest about our instincts and moving on to broaden the scope of our ways of thinking and our ways of acting, not by overriding instincts which are good in a limited way. The overriding of instincts which are good but too limited is more likely to end in moral confusion or even outright moral disorder.
We have to learn how to work towards changes which will take place over generations rather than rushing into rapid reforms within the scope of some 5-year plan of either a Socialist or Collectivist Liberal bureaucrat. Modern do-gooders tend to be a lot like those Californians of the common jokes, somewhat bubble-headed and “wanting it all and wanting it now.” The problem we now face is that objective developments in history and misdirected human efforts have done a lot of damage to the human communities in which our better behaviors and thoughts can develop so that we cooperate well with those like us, leaving open that possibility of expanding the scope of those better behaviors and thoughts. We’ve done damage even to our instincts to do good in limited communal contexts in our self-righteous efforts to mold everyone to be good to everyone.