Repressive Society

[andrewducker]

I believe that people have most of their social functioning built in at a genetic level. I recommend reading Stephen Pinker's "The Blank Slate" or John Gray's "Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and other Animals" for an overview of this take on things.

Because of this, I think that much of people's wants and needs is intrinsically part of them. I believe that most cultures try to funnel these inbuilt feelings in ways which protect the society. We take people's natural feelings on (for instance) sex and teach people that these feelings are wrong, or sick or dirty. Now, sometimes there are good reasons for the social structures to exist, and strong historical causes for them, but the fact remains that they are socially imposed on top of the instincts that people have. Frequently the mismatch causes psychological dysfunction, sometimes of a severe nature.

Now, the more free people feel from cultural pressure, the less attention they will pay to the attempts to change their intrinsic nature. Historically speaking, it has only been possible to be free if you were at the top of the heap - and even then you're obviously raised in the midst of the society and strongly imprinted by it. Look at the behaviour ot the Greeks and Romans at their height, or the nobility of Medieval times. More recently, as the general wealth of the populace has gone up, more and more people have been able to free themselves from their fellow man.

Now, obviously, there's been negative sides to that freeing: not knowing who your neighbours are, a feeling of isolation and anomie, no community culture. Of course, to those people who felt hemmed in by their surrounding society this is a good thing. And without those societal rules holding us back, we're more free to act as we wish and follow our instincts.

Of course, I'm overegging this somewhat - we're all very much influenced by our societies, picking up our basic beliefs and our "starter pack" of morals and tastes from there. But it is startling how much society has changed over the last century. Believe it or not, 100 years ago a woman could be arrested in London for wearing trousers in public. 30 years ago they were still using electroshock therapy to try and cure homosexuals in the UK. Now, both of those ideas seem ludicrous. But they only seem ludicrous because we see other people as independent. And people are much more indepedent nowadays because they can be self-supporting.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I haven't read all of Pinker's book, but I've read excerpts and more than one article by him and I'm far from impressed. Not only has no one managed to find any definite proof of genetic determinism of human behavior, but a careful examination of the multitude of human cultures fairly clearly shows that there is a vast possible diversity of ways that humans can related to one another. Factors that influence this include technology, groups size, cultural norms, environment, and possibly genetics.

However, saying that most or even any significant portion of human social behavior is genetically determined is currently a statement of belief that has no basis in fact. If this were not true, then we would most certainly not be adaptable enough to have the truly astounding range of human cultures all be lasting and functional.

Also, arguments about genetic determinism of human behavior are almost never politically neutral - many (if not most) such arguments eventually devolve down to either an attempt to prove that modern Euro-American Society is in some way the most "natural" way for humans to live (especially in terms of supporting some form of bigotry or inequality currently found in Euro-American Culture)

Also one fact that dismays me most with the vast majority of arguments about genetic determinism of human behavior is that the proponents know next to nothing about cultures very different from their own. There was a book published 15 or so years ago called Human Universals where some anthropologists compiled and discussed all of the truly universal human behaviors they could find. The list is not terribly long.

One topic I've followed quite closely has been arguments about genetic determinism of sexual preference. Any cross-cultural study at all clearly reveals that that any genetic contribution to sexual preference is at best very small. Rates of homosexuality in various cultures are vastly different.

For other info on that particular topic, Take a look at thissite - click on the various articles listed under Critiques of "Gay Gene" Studies.

Similar critiques exist for all of the other claims about genetic determination of behavior. An analysis of the political history of such claims (which are clearly connected to the Eugenicist movement of the late 19th and early 20th century) is also useful.

[andrewducker]

However, saying that most or even any significant portion of human social behavior is genetically determined is currently a statement of belief that has no basis in fact.

From what I've read, the results they have are largely taken from similarities in twins that are raised completely seperately, and from examining how different identical twins are from fraternal twins. They've found that identical twins have far more in common than fraternal ones do, and that raising identical twins in entirely different surroundings still leaves them very similar.

for instance, in this article: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/gaygene990422.html which discusses the fact that a gay gene isn't proven by any means, is the following quote:

Twin studies, like those done by Bailey, have fueled the search for such genes. In 1991, he studied the twin brothers of gay men and found that 52 percent of identical twins were also gay, while only 22 percent of fraternal twins were. Among women, 48 percent of identical twins were also lesbian, while the rate dropped to 16 percent for fraternal twins.


If you can think of another way that this can happen than the genetic, then I'd be very interested. I read the critiques, and while some of them were interesting, most of them were politically motivated propaganda. Not surprising on a site that's totally opposed to the idea that being gay might not be a choice.

I, personally, don't care about the politics of the situation, I only care about the science and finding out the facts of the matter. If being gay is genetically based, fine. If it's social in origin, also fine. If, as I suspect the vast majority of things are, it's a mixture of the two, also fine.

The fact that eugenicists were in favour of a theory does not make it bad, any more than vegetarianism is bad because Hitler practised it. A theory is either true or false and no amount of political wishing will change that.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Existing identical twin studies are effectively useless because the sample size is tiny. From what I've read, the total number of separated identical twins who have been available for study is perhaps a dozen or so pairs, which is not a useful sample size. Also, there are questions of just how separate some of these twins are (in the sense that at least some of the studies have been done after the the twins have been back in contact, and given the high social expectations that identical twins will be very similar, I wonder how many of them adjusted their behavior and perhaps (likely unconsciously) even their answers to be more like their twin.

In contrast, we have a wide variety of human cultures where rates of homosexuality are highly variable (from a large portion of the population to very few).

The whole idea of some innate human nature that is twisted by culture is both a vast reification of culture and an assumption that culture is in some way unnatural - it isn't. This is an idea that is largely the product of the late Victorian era, and like many social theories created back then, it is of little worth. One easy example is "maternal instinct".

At least for primates, it doesn't exist. In various primate studies, females raised without access to other primates with young (including females who are raised in environments where they are reasonably well socialized) not only have absolutely no idea how to care for their young (in such cases the young are generally taken away, because if let with their mothers they generally die) but in most cases, the mothers regard their young as little more than a mildly interesting addition to her environment.

For millions of years, primate culture has been necessary to keep these various species going. Generations of mothers, aunts, and other female relatives with young have through both example and through at least some actual teaching, taught young females not only how to care for young, but that they should care for young. Culture is not a human phenomena and it is deeper, more important and more natural than almost any of the naive geneticists doing research on genetic determinism admit.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Also, Bailey & Pillard recruited their twins by advertising in gay publications that they were looking for gay twins to research possible genetic influences on homosexuality. Since the vast majority of the gay population wants to believe in a gay gene, a gay person whose twin was also gay might be very eager to volunteer for this stuudy, feeling that his twin's gayness would help support genetic theories and would thus (supposedly, according to pro-gay-gene people) benefit the cause of gay rights. Whereas a gay person whose twin was straight might feel that this twinship would not be "politically useful" and might thus be less likely to volunteer.

Also, many dozens of gay identical twin studies have been done over the past 75 years and the results have varied all the way from 0% to 100% concordance rates in different studies and every single possible variation in between - and if you line up all the data from every gay identical twin study ever done, it's quite striking to see what an absolute lack of any consistency between studies there's been. You'd expect the majority of studies to start grouping around some consistent numbers, but no such grouping occurs. It's completely all over the map. Bailey & Pillard's study happened to get more media attention in the U.S., partly because it was one of the larger studies done in the U.S. in recent years but mostly just because it happened to come out around the same time as Simon LeVay's "gay brain" claims when the media considered all "gay gene" studies to be a "hot topic." The study is not representative of any larger mass of data. The King & McDonald gay twin study done in Britain slightly more recently found only a 25% concordance rate among identical twins, less than half of what Bailey & Pillard found - the U.S. media just didn't bother reporting on that study at all.

(I found this discussion on my counter and couldn't resist the urge to add my piece.)

[andrewducker]

Cheers muchly. I'm always happy to have more to think about. Now I have to go and do a bunch more reading.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the excellent info, I love your site. It and some of your interesting comments on SWY1974's LJ caused me to add you to my friends list recently.

[andrewducker]

I'd like to make it very clear that I am not 100% genetic determinist. I believe that genetics is a component of our makeup, but I also strongly believe in cultural affects. My point wasn't supposed to be "genetics good, culture bad", but rather "some cultures control more than others, and modern western culture controls less than most, therefore it seems logical to me than people's innate natures will come to the fore more in a modern westwen culture."

Of course, the cultures I'm comparing it to are the vastly repressive ones that (for instance) include female circumcision, or hide their women away or have very strong social rules about everything (see Victorian England or some Islamic countries).

My understanding of psychology shows extremely strong effects from the chemicals floating around in our brains and bloodstream. One of the main causes of which chemicals are where is our genetics. Another is our diet. Another is the situation we're in. All of these have strong effects on who we are.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

The fact that eugenicists were in favour of a theory does not make it bad, any more than vegetarianism is bad because Hitler practised it. A theory is either true or false and no amount of political wishing will change that.

Yes, but at least in both social science and human biology, politics and ideology are at least as important as any possible (if the statement even means anything in this context) "objective" truths. I don't necessarily agree that all objective science is impossible, but I think an objective study of oruselves essentially is. As a result, looking at motive and bias is as important as results when examining any research on humans.