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Could biology be the end of Nationalism?

Jamshyd

Jamshyd

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I just heard an ad on the TV downstairs. It is something about genetics testing for ancestry.

Anyway, even before this ad, I've been fully aware that even now, DNA geneology is becoming increasingly popular. Assuming an ethno-biological map is completely constructed and all people get DNA-profiled, would that become a turning point as to how people imagine their identities?

In other words, a genetic link to a specific land really becomes a literal manifestation of the word "autocthony". Would this overpower linguistic and religious ties?
 
Eventually, yes I believe so. The arbitrary notions of nationalism would be replaced in identity by us choosing our own biological formulations. I think of it as an overall positive event that will have problems initially, but is essential to evolution continuing.
 
it would be mighty cool to find out your entire gene line though ;)

maybe im related to Genghis Khan? who knows.
maybe johnny depp is my long lost thrice removed uncles granddads mothers cousins relative...

i hear they are making meat in test tubes now!
(i see more actual news on BL than anywhere else tbh)
seems genetics is popular amongst men in white coats now
 
A geneticist by the name of Luigi Cavalli-Sforza already did something a lot like this decades ago. He basically quantified the amount of genetic variation between most of the world's ethnic groups. He's the one who made it clear that all the indigenous inhabitants of the British Isles were very closely related, and more related to each other than to any mainland European peoples. Ditto to the peoples of the Levant. He's the one who settled it once and for all that the Kalash are not Greek, and the Ainu are not European. (Both are very distinct genetically, and have probably lived where they live for an incredibly long time.)

Meanwhile, the British-Irish and Jewish-Palestinian conflicts continued unabated, and the Japanese government to this day insists that the Ainu are part of the Japanese Race, no more no less. My point is, nationality and ethnicity exist more at the level of conscious social interaction, than at the level of genetic variation. In fact, I think the genetic distinctiveness seen in any ethnic group is a product of, not a progenitor of, centuries of uninterrupted cohesiveness, either by geographic isolation or a social code that really serves the ethnic group well. In Taiwan, one can find rural villages where every inhabitant has the Pacific-Islander looking face (and presumably DNA) of a Taiwanese Aborigine, but none has any memory of being anything but Han Chinese.

Ethnicity is simply a product of collective human will. People become one ethnicity because they wanted to be one ethnicity, and accepted each other's membership in this newfound identity. They choose to trace their history to the same key 'founders', to interpret their subsequent history in a similar way, and they collectively choose a similar path of hope and striving for their group's future.

The founding of the US -- and all the present nations of the Americas, in fact -- are all living proof that nationality and ethnicity can be (nay, ARE) created ad hoc by human will, and not by inevitable factors of common descent and genetic similarity.
 
i would love the end of nationalism, but i strongly doubt that this would be the means of it. genetic testing is extremely limited in its availability and interest. secondly, the scale by which one would like to assess ancestry will inevitably vary from person to person.
 
This would just prove we all came from Adam n Eve!!

In all seriousness, the people who are the most religiously indoctrinated are also the most fervent nationalists (or as well call them here in the States 'PATRIOTS!').

You had those in the 1960's who truly believed we're all God's children, mankind all descending from two people, and yet they labeled black people as inferior.

Even modern day Christians who believe in creationism, they aren't jumping at the idea of inviting an Afghan (vice versa as well prbly) over for dinner even though they both believe in the Adam n Eve concept.
 
Max Power said:
In all seriousness, the people who are the most religiously indoctrinated are also the most fervent nationalists
Click to expand...

This is a property of the present day United States that doesn't necessarily hold true in other countries. One needn't be religious at all to be fervently nationalistic or tribalistic. In my experience, a large percentage (perhaps a majority) of Zionists are Jewish atheists. Also, in the US, most of the Founding Fathers were not men of faith., but you could hardly claim they weren't patriots.

That said, you do bring up a valid point, Max: religion and patriotism are similar in that they both provide an individual with belonging, collective purpose, and direction in life. They both appeal to people who crave stability, reassurance, and a feeling of specialness. But different varieties of each vary considerably as to how good they are at providing these things, such that an individual schooled in a certain strain of nationalism might feel no additional need for religion, or vice versa. For example, I've long noticed that being Japanese and proud of it, seems to meet all the needs that Americans usually turn to religion for. At the other end, I've never met a Baha'i who's had any use for nationalism of any kind.
 
Jamshyd said:
In other words, a genetic link to a specific land really becomes a literal manifestation of the word "autocthony". Would this overpower linguistic and religious ties?
Click to expand...

I don't think so, because ultimately genetic relationships are only meaningful culturally. So linguistic, religious, and other cultural relationships are not separable from genetic relationships. It's one thing to find that you have a genetic link with someone, but that tells you nothing about what your obligations to that person are, what that relationship actually means for how you see yourself, etc. DNA testing will (and has) changed the way that we negotiate our relationships with others and the way we view our identities, but those identities are always outcomes of a process of construction which is not reducible to genetics. It's not as though DNA testing allows us to see the 'truth' of our identities, or to identify the most important or 'real' of our relationships. As MyDoorsAreOpen put it:

MyDoorsAreOpen said:
nationality and ethnicity exist more at the level of conscious social interaction, than at the level of genetic variation.
Click to expand...
 
MyDoorsAreOpen said:
That said, you do bring up a valid point, Max: religion and patriotism are similar in that they both provide an individual with belonging, collective purpose, and direction in life. They both appeal to people who crave stability, reassurance, and a feeling of specialness. But different varieties of each vary considerably as to how good they are at providing these things, such that an individual schooled in a certain strain of nationalism might feel no additional need for religion, or vice versa. For example, I've long noticed that being Japanese and proud of it, seems to meet all the needs that Americans usually turn to religion for. At the other end, I've never met a Baha'i who's had any use for nationalism of any kind.
Click to expand...
I'm going to somewhat disagree here.

I am not sure that the Japanese do not have a need for religion - as shinto is so inextricably tied to the national identity itself, that Japanese patriotism can be seen as both religion AND nationalism. This goes double for Confucianism and Chinese identity - even with my very limited knowledge of chinese culutre, it seems that these two are so enmeshed that one simply cannot separate one from the other.

Or take the example of former Yugoslavia. A Croat is a Catholic. A Bosniac is a muslim. And a Serb is an orhodox christian. They all hate each other equally. Yet the idea of "Yugoslavia" tends to also be entrenched in all of them, leading to a very strange vision of harmony.

As for Bahai', this is still in its infancy. If you look at other, older religions of the same caliber - ones that are not associated with a nationalistic movement- you'll notice that they are actually dwindling in number (I am thinking of Jainism here for example). Manichaeism, once one of the main world religions, is not only dead, but little of it remains. Hinduism and Buddhism, on the other hand, and as noble as we like to think they are, WERE used in one form or another to wage wars.

Btw thanks a lot for pointing out that study. I'd really like to check it out.

satricion said:
I don't think so, because ultimately genetic relationships are only meaningful culturally. So linguistic, religious, and other cultural relationships are not separable from genetic relationships. It's one thing to find that you have a genetic link with someone, but that tells you nothing about what your obligations to that person are, what that relationship actually means for how you see yourself, etc. DNA testing will (and has) changed the way that we negotiate our relationships with others and the way we view our identities, but those identities are always outcomes of a process of construction which is not reducible to genetics. It's not as though DNA testing allows us to see the 'truth' of our identities, or to identify the most important or 'real' of our relationships. As MyDoorsAreOpen put it:
Click to expand...


I see what you and MDAO are saying, but I think you are both forgetting a very important point: that kinship is more often than not defined by blood. What is this "blood"? It is none other than what we call genes today. So although what we attribute to blood may be cultural, the blood itself remains at the very core, and if people were to accept that genetics and blood are one of the same, then genetic clusters would prove to be the ultimate marker of kinship.

I do say this cautiously because, much as I'd like to learn about genetics, I am aware that I know very little of the subject.
 
I agree with you that blood relationships are meaningful. But what I'm saying is that once the blood tie is established, the meaning of that blood tie is cultural. Ie, you have a blood link with someone, but what are your feelings and obligations towards them? DNA testing tells you nothing about this.

Furthermore, nationalistic movements often draw upon the idea of blood or genetic relationships in order to justify themselves. Genetic testing isn't going to address this, because it doesn't tell us how far removed from another person we need to be before the genetic link is no longer meaningful. I mean, ultimately we share a genetic link to every other human being on earth. So where do you draw the line between what genetic relationships count and what don't? The answer is cultural and political.
 
Despite the fact that it would be nifty to know everything about where you came from I honestly don't see far back genetic ties to a piece of dirt overriding my ties to where I was born and raised. In this case I think nurture would trump nature. I would feel no obligation to anyone because they are descended from a similar genetic line which runs back god knows how long. I would still feel more of an obligation to the community in which I live currently.
 
People always have opinions :\ - nationalism is just a bunch of opinions dressed up as culture - so people will always find ways to "belong" to some group or other nationalistic/political/whacko/religious etc - Now then ( extra terrerstrial alien) SPACEMEN wouldd get the human race together ( unify or fry people) faster than you could say Huck Finn - the TV guy ought to have realised (extra terrestial alien) SPACEMEN <3 were a better bet than genetics for human integration and should be sacked for incompetence & you ought to watch a better quality of programme.
 
I really look forward to what you're talking about here Jam. I probably saw the same thing on TV (actually I believe I was watching a thing about human evolution on the web) and it's crazy to see how they can trace lineage through mitochondrial dna and y chromosome dna. I am really curious where this technology will go and what my dna could tell me about my history.

As it is, I think nationalism could take awhile to go away. I really hope to see it vanquished someday. There is nothing good about being prideful about one's home if it can run the risk of causing conflict due to xenophobia and other tenancies. Once we realize more and more that we're all just human beings and we need to find a way to propel our species forward rather than continue to murder one another.. maybe we can start seeing some serious progress.

It would be fun to have a biography about yourself which shows your lineage and thus, breakdown of which countries your ancestors came from.. this would really broaden peoples' understanding and interconnectedness.. hopefully.
 
Jamshyd said:
I just heard an ad on the TV downstairs. It is something about genetics testing for ancestry.

Anyway, even before this ad, I've been fully aware that even now, DNA geneology is becoming increasingly popular. Assuming an ethno-biological map is completely constructed and all people get DNA-profiled, would that become a turning point as to how people imagine their identities?

In other words, a genetic link to a specific land really becomes a literal manifestation of the word "autocthony". Would this overpower linguistic and religious ties?
Click to expand...

I'm skeptical, ethnicity is not only about genetics, it's about the shared culture as well, no matter the colour of your skin or the shape of your nose, if you live somewhere long enough you or at least your children will assimilate the culture of where you are, unless you make a conscious effort to keep your culture intact, like the jews do, but then you are still keeping the ethnical paradigm.
 
the only thing that i can see as having a realistic chance at unifying the world is a dramatic shared and common threat. in the absence of a watchmen like scenario, i would say that the more realistic means would be a sudden and unexpected environmental disaster or perhaps even (sadly) a nuclear war.
 
RE OP:
Not at all; cultural identity is far stronger than blood identity, the more so because culture immediately defines you in a way that race or genetics can't, IMO.
 
I would say that genetic lineage will tie into identity only insofar as people mobilize around patterns therein and or exclude others based thereon. Furthermore, the question will be whether groups rooted in genetic lineage will hold any sway in the face of non-genetic social groupings and identities, eg nation, race, and ethnicity.

This will prove unlikely in the near to moderate future, for the above 3 groupings already enmesh with currently well-entrenched power-relations, deep-seated identity-projects, and rich, salient narrative histories of groups' various triumphs, tribulations, and transformations (mythically imagined and historically rooted).

Finally, the afoermentioned non-genetic social identities capture rather well our typical conceptions of macro and meso-level kinship groupings (even if such groupings present partial illusions), so I don't see the competitive advantage of genetically based social groupings; root in biological fact unfortunately doesn't cut it, I'd wager.

ebola
 
I'd say that biology will ultimately end the petty nature of nationalism.

the forthcoming ecological collapse will instill a deep bond for life and its myriad interconnections, reminding all surviving genetic lineages that our unity with the living planet is what really matters and cultural diversity is to be celebrated within the umbrella context of unity...
 
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