American DNA

In his post-Star Wars VI book series, The Thrawn Trilogy, Timothy Zahn introduces Admiral Thrawn as the heir to the empire (also the title of the first book in the series).

Thrawn does not possess the typical dark-side magic of his predecessors.  He is, however, a strategic and tactical military genius.  He is able to formulate battle plans by looking at the art generated by an opponent.  During battle preparation, he would pull up holograms of paintings, pottery, architecture and sculpture, and based on linearity, dimensionality, complexity and several other criteria, make battle plans and decisions.  I was always intrigued by the idea, but it is really no different than what is currently attempted by psychologists, only instead of using art to make causal predictions, they re-create a past and the interpretation of past events.  You can picture the prototypical psychoanalyst saying to a client, “Tell me about your mother….”  Societally, we have had no problem with this even though it implies determinism at the expense of free will.  What we hate is someone telling us that we are or will act a certain way because of our upbringing, ethnicity, education and any other descriptive life predicate, unless we are looking for an excuse for destructive behavior.  Then we claim victimhood.

On a scale of “hard-to-escape” influences, we rank physical DNA as the very hardest.  Large noses, flat feet, stubby fingers, fat thighs and narrow lips can all be surgically improved, but they will get passed on to future generations no matter how much money is spent on cosmetic surgery.  Next on the hard-to-escape influences scale is immediate family culture.  Although escapable to a degree, family styles and culture seem to be carried on for generations.  Easiest of all to escape is generational culture, right?

How many generations does it take for ancestral behavior traits to wash out of a behavioral DNA pool?  Several, according to Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers, Tipping Point and Blink.  Gladwell claims that cultural DNA is relentless in its influence. Recently, PJTV’s Bill Whittle did a fantastic video segment on his own ancestry and its influence in his life.  Check it out HERE.

Assuming that there is generational directionality, this country stands unique among any other I can think of.  If you lived in France, England, Scotland, Germany or any other European country in the 18th century, America might have been an option for you if you fit the the criteria.  Here is the short list.

• You felt that there was little upward mobility in your current situation
• You felt oppressed (probably by government)
• You were ambitious
• You were willing to work hard and sacrifice

What was NOT required:

• Wealth
• Higher education
• Family Connections
• Political aspirations

Consider the Emma Lazarus poem placed the at base of the Statue of Liberty:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lighting, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door”

Suppose that you had the chance to discover a new continent or large island and you wanted to populate it with the people who would give its inhabitants the best chance for prosperity and happiness.  Would you recruit the wealthy,  the scientists, the professors or the politicians? Who would even think of recruiting the homeless, the poor, the tempest tossed and the wretched refuse.  It sounds like a recipe for failure.  And yet, the key that makes it all work is the “yearning to breathe free” line.  Really, I can think of no better population strategy for our new civilization than to seek out those who yearn to “breathe free,” but that is not the topic of this post.

The result of Lady Liberty’s invitation is that there was a harvesting of freedom-loving masses from Europe to the United States (even before it existed as a country).  Europe may have seen this as a boon.  After all, the smart, educated, wealthy people, the politicians, actors, athletes, land owners and business leaders stayed and the lower classes left.  The great irony is that the freedom-loving attribute is by far the most successful prosperity promoting attribute.  Even education must play second fiddle to the love of freedom in the prosperity orchestra.

My argument is that freedom-loving genes are a part of our collective sociological DNA, much more so than you will find in Europe.  I also argue that freedom and equality, both noble pursuits, cannot co-exist.  They are sworn enemies and when one increases, the other necessarily diminishes.  So, in Europe, where there is less freedom-loving sociological DNA, you will see a more tepid response to efforts toward equality than you will in the United States.  This is, to a large degree, why there is so much resistance to universal healthcare in the US and so little of it in Europe.  If freedom and equality were placed at either end of a continuum, your average European is okay with the pendulum swinging much further to the equality side of the continuum than the average US citizen.

Introducing John Galt

Galt is Ayn Rand’s fictitious hero in Atlas Shrugged. He is Rand’s voice as she advocates her socio-philosophical Objectivism. In Atlas Shrugged, societal decline, as defined by Rand, led to a separation of people into two camps, the producers and the moochers. (SPOILER ALERT) Galt and others are star producers and, one by one, Galt recruits the remaining producers into a retreat from society at large in favor of a cloister-like enclave in the Colorado mountains. Once the producers are gone, the moochers self-destruct. “Going Galt” is the process of refusing to participate in a system where one is penalized for one’s virtue, which is production.

Galt Popularity

So why should we care about John Galt or Ayn Rand? The graph below shows how “John Galt” is trending as a Google search term.

Interestingly, the above graph shows trending among internet searchers in the United State.  Google Trends does not even have a graph for the search term “John Galt” from UK, French, German or any other European based internet searches.  Had Rand written Atlas Shrugged for a European market, she would have had a difficult time selling books in the thousands.

Rand and Galt are becoming more relevant mostly due to the wealth shift from producers to moochers..

The pendulum swing to the left or toward equality is going to meet with stiff and increasing resistance at least partially due to social DNA.  Consider California, arguably the most equal state in the union.  Demographically it is the least European state.

• 42.3% White (not including White Hispanic)
• 36.6% are Hispanic or Latino (of any race)
• 12.5% Asian
• 6.7% Black or African American
• 2.6% Multiracial
• 1.2% American Indian

Contrast that with Utah who’s population is nearly 92% posterity of European refuse.  Utah also leads the nation in Google searches for John Galt.  I have not looked at it very hard, but I suspect a statistical correlation between European populated states and those with more diverse demographics and equal versus free states.

Disclaimers

I make no value statements about the relative superiority of equal or free states.

I make no claim that any individual in particular will follow the inclinations of societal DNA.

Conclusion

I have made some broad assumptions here.  One reader pointed out that Maine and Rhode Island are equality trending states and yet very European.  Serious study would require definitions for equality and freedom.  It would take more work than I am willing to invest.  I wrote this to inspire thought and comments from you.  So, go ahead.  Tell me what you think.