Musings on Culture from a Darwinist Perspective

I am not sure what prompted this, but lately I have been thinking about the cultures of countries from a Darwinist perspective. More specifically, I have been thinking about North American and Australian cultures relative to each other and the European countries that so many of our immigrants came from.

If genetic selection leads to behavior, then it seems to me that immigration/emigration influences gene pools. So, what characterizes those who are most likely to immigrate? Those factors must be both social and personal:

• Conditions in the home country must not be to the immigrant's liking. So, I would expect that those who are poorer, who have less access to the cultural definition of success, who have value systems at odds with the majority culture, etc, to be the ones most likely to immigrate.
  
• They must have the means to immigrate. Early history, this was the indentured, condemned, enslaved and the well-to-do. Current conditions probably favor the middle class, as they have the money to travel without being in an economic hierarchy, those whose locality allows physical travel, and those able to access social networks. Legal immigrants probably come in 2 groups: those with means and those with social networks. Those with both means and networks are probably those who are most likely to come directly. Those with means but fewer destination social networks are probably those who can afford to come for education and then stay. Illegal immigrants probably come from a different combination of groups: locality and networks that allow them to find and arrange for transportation and integration into the community.
  
• Personalities that are risk takers, more action oriented, and more comfortable away from family and location of origin. Our current policy also selects those who are more likely to be intellectually bright and educated. Emigrating requires a willingness to take on the unknown, to give up that which you know for chances in an unknown set of conditions. There are probably hundreds to millions who face the same conditions as the emigrants, but who never leave the conditions that prompted emigration. These individuals are probably more risk adverse, more passive (or more external locus of control), and/or more attached to people and place. Those traits that lead to at least modest success in the home culture are those that are most likely to allow the accumulation of capital necessary for travel.
  

If these are true, then I would expect that the genetic pools of Europe and North America to have developed differential levels of these traits. Since the US, for example, is predominately populated by immigrants, it should have a higher genetic disposition for risk taking, etc. And because emigrants contribute less, on average, to the gene pool of the home country, Europe should have experienced a decrease in the genetic predisposition for risk taking.

Of course, that just talks about the genetics. The social factors are probably just as important, but it is intriguing to think about how immigration/emigration could influence the genetics of population groups.

A singer to love

Susan Boyle's performance on Britain's Got Talent is so spectacular. Now there is the kind of music I want to be able to buy!
Of course, part of the hype is that she doesn't look like the expected star. Far as I am concerned, that is an indication of why we are missing great voices in today's music industry - looks count too much, voice too little. What I want to know is when the CD comes out.

You only miss it when its gone.

So I had a hernia in my belly button. No big deal to fix, except I am one of the people to have a side effect from the mesh and the result is that they fixed the mesh problem by removing it and the hernia by removing the bellybutton.
I never thought about my bellybutton. I don't particularly use it, except, as my brother pointed out, for storing lint. So removing it did not seem like a big deal. Right.
Surgery wasn't fun. The site hurts but is healing well. But everytime I look in the mirror, my stomach looks weird and I feel like an alien in a bad science fiction movie. You know, the one where the only way to tell the alien from the people is by the lack of a bellybutton.

Its just weird. I think I miss my bellybutton...

It's Only Money!

There comes a time when you really have to wonder what in the world anybody's thinking, at least the people who get to make decisions. The federal government has spent $350 billion of the bailout money. And they didn't spend it where they thought they were going to, mainly because Congress didn't seem to see fit to provide an oversight or restrictions on how it was spent.

So last night, I'm watching television news (the News Hour on PBS) and they show one of the leading Republican senators talking about how they don't want to release the next 350 billion because, after all, it wasn't spent the way they thought it ought to be last time. Gee, you think? why on earth would President Bush and his administration possibly have done it the way you thought they'd might? You didn't bother to put in place any restrictions on how it was spent or to tell him to how to do it the way you wanted it done. And this is the president has lied about everything since he got into office -- did you think he was going to change his spots overnight?.

So now we have a new president coming in, and Congress thinks maybe they should've done something different and so with going to start now? They're crazy! The barn is on fire, the horses are burned, the money you spent to put out the fire got spent on something else, so now you're going to delay medical treatment for horses? It's much too late to develop qualms now.

Might as well give the new administration a chance to prove whether they're better/more honest than the prior one. After all, it's only money...

Sun Dogs

this morning on the way in to work I saw the most amazing pair of Sun dogs. We don't get the very often around here and I have never seen a pair with complete rainbow arcs. I wish I had a camera, so I could show you what they look like. But I didn't, so I'll content myself with saying that they were the most amazing things I've seen in a long time. The rainbow arcs stretched all the way from the horizon to about 45° above the Sun, say a quarter of the circle surrounding the sun. You had the feeling that if you could just keep your head at the right angle, you could see a full rainbow circle. I think I was the only one who really paid any attention to it; it would be nice if we all took little more time to appreciate the beauty around us.