Is The Arab Brain Incompatible with Democracy?
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171.9357
Summary
No Arab country has ever had a stable democracy for more than a century, and yet, there are 22 countries in the Middle East and North Africa that are democracies. Is this a coincidence? Is it some sort of weird coincidence? Or is it something more sinister?
Transcript
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hello simone today we are going to be talking about one of those controversial topics that i
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just walked into by accident we were on another episode and i was like well you know no arab
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country has a stable democracy or ever has and i just threw this out there because i was like
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just in my head when i thought about it i was like yeah i can't think of any arab majority
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country that has a stable democracy and then i was i re-watched myself saying that and i was like
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wait that cannot conceivably be true there are 22 arab majority countries the the the region is one
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of the oldest you know in terms of civilization in human history yeah has there literally never been
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a single democracy in this region that lasted more than one human lifetime and the answer is
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no there really hasn't been no the longest democracy ever was in this region was lebanon
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and it lasted for a period of 32 years 30 oh my god not even and that was the longest the next longest
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was 11 years for tunisia other than that not a single country has had a democracy last more than 10 years
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and give me one this isn't like there are 22 countries in this region now to understand how
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absolutely effing insane this is let's contrast this with northern european countries right you can say
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okay okay how weird is it really for countries that are arab majority to never have had democracy
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if you look at the 14 northern european countries in the world today all over the world not a single
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one of them is in a democracy oh god like this is one of these things where you got to be like
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this is not like random odds or something like that you know this is not like oh we we rolled the
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dice and we just you know weren't sure or something like that so so you could now say okay malcolm
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okay malcolm i know what you're getting at this is some sort of a muslim thing and i'm gonna say
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actually no the majority of non-arab majority muslim countries 35 out of the 40 total non-arab
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majority muslim countries yeah are democracies no way whoa okay yeah because i mean like 90 percent
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of arabs are muslims but then not almost like actually maybe not even a majority of muslims no
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most muslims are not arab so yeah okay yeah they might be semi-democratic systems but like if you're
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talking even full democracies it's still the majority of them that are democracies which makes it even
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crazier that the arab majority countries haven't had a single period of democracy in their entire
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history and and and then you can say you know you go to ai about this and and and because i've tried
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to like talk this through as ai okay and it gives me like terrible answers to start right like at first
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like what of course of course colonialism caused this no no first of all the majority of latin america
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now which was all colonized is democracies at this point you know all over east asia there are heavily
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colonized areas that are democracies there are areas of africa that far worse things happen to that
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happen to the arab countries in terms of colonization yeah their democracies i actually got curious about
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this point and decided to look into it and of the 14 never colonized countries seven are democracies
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and seven are not of the countries that were at some point in their history colonized 43.8 percent
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are democracies so the probability that you're going to be a democracy does not appear to be
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considerably impacted by whether or not you were colonized there's there that's that's that's not
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the answer okay and the ai then said well it's war there's just so much war in that region and i said
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excuse me europe went through two world wars which was much heavier conflict over a much you know
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more condensed time period but still like extended like the war war war war war was the two world wars
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um and most of its democratic institutions stayed intact yeah so it's it's it's not muslim it's not it's not
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it's not islam it's not colonialism yeah it's not instability right and then it comes to me it goes
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well it's dutch disease so for people don't know dutch disease i don't know what this is is when you have
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too much wealth from a single income source like oil and that leads to consolidation of power and it makes
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it more likely that you're going to have a like oh but not all arab countries are super wealthy
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yeah i was like okay but what about the nordic countries that are super wealthy and are
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there have been plenty of instances of countries with touch disease not becoming autocracies and there
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are plenty of arab countries that don't have dutch disease so that's clearly not an explanation either
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okay this i just need to like audience if if you're like bad with like statistics or coin flips or
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something like that and you're just like oh it's a it's a weird coincidence no this isn't a weird
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coincidence this demands explanation you can't have a coin flip 22 times over
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millennium or let's just say democracy is being popular is new over centuries never land democracy
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you can't have that all right and and note here people can be like well you know there weren't that
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many democracies historically and i'm like actually there are a lot of democracies historically you can
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go back to the ancient greeks and you can go back to other weird semi-democratic systems you had
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throughout europe at various periods or in in small like islands over various periods i think malta was
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a democracy at one point but anyways it's something there's various countries have been democracies
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at some point those don't exist anywhere in arab history so this brings us to questions that are
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difficult okay yeah the first is could it be genetic so so the question here is do we know of some species
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species that order themselves differently based on within the same species based on minor genetic
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differences and it's like actually we do like within most great eight great ape species and we'll go
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into this in a bit like our closest genetic dissident well not dissidents but relatives you will see
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with regional variations which which correlate with genetic variations different ways of structuring
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their tribal structures you know you might have women on top you might have men on top you might have
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larger structures you might have structures where dominance changes are handled this way versus
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this way this appears to be in part cultural and in part genetic so if we see this in monkeys you
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probably see it in humans as well and i note here that when people are like how dare you say this
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horrible thing you know that these people are different i'm like yeah but think about how many people
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you killed by being unwilling to admit this when you tried to force iraq to be a democracy well
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i'm also thinking i mean so to be an arab it's it's an ethno-linguistic identity so i think maybe we're
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also looking at the magnification of not just genetic heritage but also a choice to lean into that culture
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so you're not just looking at people who may have arab like tribal roots in in their lineage but also
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people who have chosen to maintain arab language and arab identity because it is not it's not a it's not
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a racial group it's not like you check arab hold on it's it's a it's an ethno-linguistic identity it
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is not racial my point though is that that would make this effect even stronger because when you're
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combining both genetics and opt-in culture you're looking at something a lot stronger than if you're
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only looking at culture or genetics in isolation well so i was actually asking ai this because i
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was so it says basically it's both but yeah you're you're right but so i was looking at ai on this to
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understand exactly who the arabs are right like yeah where did they come from and why might they be so
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different from other groups at a at a genetic level or an ethno-linguistic level and the thing to note
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about arabs is they were the group like i wasn't sure if they like joined up with the muslims early
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on or the muhammad like you know basically the desert nomads and it's like no they are the desert
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nomads yeah they are the desert nomadic group as it spread out yeah i mean to be to be arab you need
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common arabic language shared cultural features and historical tribal links which so absolutely
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there's a genetic component like and that's a big part of it you know i don't i don't have tribal
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links even if i grew up speaking arabic it would be very difficult for me to say that i was an arab
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but yeah i mean it's it's it's i still think it's super important to point out that this is people who
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like it's it's more than just being for example white because i'm not like leaning into white culture
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for example you know walking around in birkenstocks with my socks on or something i i am
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just you know just genetically white whereas like if you're arab it's because you're like
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really leaning into your genetic heritage so well and this genetic heritage is very very very unique
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and distinct yeah super distinct like it actually is is offensive it sounds to say it on surface level
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i can't be really surprised by this tendency because if you are choosing to lean into this
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ethnolinguistic identity that came from tribal cultures like tribal cultures and democracy aren't
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exactly compatible well actually we're going to talk about this because the question is is why
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do arabs suck so much at democracy but clan-based cultures which have a lot of similarities to tribal
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based cultures don't seem to struggle with democracy as much you know whether it's the irish
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or the backwoods people or the scottish why why don't they have problems with democracy in the way
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that the arabs do if the answer is just tribalism and and note that what we're basically in a fight
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their form of tribalism is very different than these forms of tribalism the the the the reason
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why arabs are so unique is they had this desert nomadic tribal groups which you've got to keep in
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mind how effing weird the genetic pressures on this group were yeah historically speaking no other group
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underwent anything like this for as long as the the environmental pressures alone are so unique
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compared to how other civilizations developed arabs include the bedouins that's like what a lifestyle
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i mean i guess they were like mongolians who lived kind of similar nomadic so yeah the mongolians are
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the only group i can think of having any similarity to this but essentially it was a a very what if it
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was a species you would call them an extremophile species totally and we we've often mentioned this
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means that they specialize in an extreme condition it's sometimes extremophile species not species
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extremophile ethnic groups when they get their act together and eventually interact with
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non-extremophile ethnic groups they have developed so uniquely that the non-extremophile ethnic groups
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just basically get creamed by them this has happened yeah i mean when we think about the way that we
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want to genetically modify and culturally shape our future descendants we want to become extremophiles
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we are not extremophiles right now we want to create an extremophile ethno in the far north yeah
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yeah yeah but but the what i mean come on the far north is a jumping off point for space but whatever
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yeah if you're like when has this happened in human history where an extremophile ethnic or cultural
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group ended up encountering a non-extremophile ethnic group and was just like oh shoot these these
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techniques we've built to live in these incredibly harsh conditions just make you no threat to us at
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all well it's not just with the arab explosion which was huge like arabs basically conquered i i think
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at least half as much as rome did at the at the the height of their empire after like muhammad took
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like a bunch of warring desert clans and was like you know i bet if we stopped warring with each other we
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could take over the world and i think a lot of people would have been like no that's crazy
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but he did it but we also also like the if we could just stop warring like imagine if
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scottish people got to that point no that's that's basically what happened with the vikings
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is they were like bro it's so much easier to kill like the mainlanders than it is to kill other vikings
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yeah like let's just go do that every every summer and so the vikings did that and they were basically
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completely unstoppable for a pretty big period i think like a hundred years or something
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maybe this is what's happening with the the generally conservative coalition that has risen
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is because the left has fallen prey to so much internal infighting you know they're just like
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what if we just got along for a little while what if we just no that is literally like what the
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pro natalist movement is like religious extremists and like pro tech people being like
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what if we stopped fighting each other for just a little bit and raided all these juicy farms
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no that's just too much winning too much winning too much winning but but it's not just that you
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also you know you mentioned the the step people this repeatedly happened with them they lived in
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incredibly hard step conditions they they would encounter other groups like as we saw with the
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various step people invasions of both europe and china where they would just absolutely no one could
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stand against them so this is something that happened a few times but one of the times it happened
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was with the arabs and so this was an incredibly unique group and i think that to just to treat
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them like they're like oh well they're near the persians so they're kind of like the persians it's like
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no they're not or or they're you know adjacent to like pakistan so they're kind of like pakistan
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yeah that's like it's acting as though like scottish clans are like basically the same as english farmers
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no yeah i mean and culturally and this is the thing you don't need to be that genetically distant
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to be in the ways that genetics interacts with culture very different yeah because you have to
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think about the selective pressures that lead to successful reproduction and passing on of your
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genetic and cultural heritage in each of these different environments you know if you are in a
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tribe-based culture in a super harsh environment the things that will make you successful
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in reproducing and having kids and raising them successfully and having them do that in turn
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are going to be very different from a more urban civilization-based culture that lives just like
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50 miles away it's obviously going to change outcomes and and and traits so but there's another
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big thing okay okay because i was i was going through and i was trying to like a grok this myself and i was
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thinking everything i know about local geopolitics and everything like that
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why arabs and arabs only why not other muslims what is at play here what is at play here
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saudi arabia saudi arabia is a major reason why this is the case okay why saudi arabia is a very very
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very very very wealthy monarchy saudi arabia is filled with arabs and the saudi arabian royal
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family believes believes uh not not just for you know shits and giggles but with like real good
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reason that their lives and future could be at risk if a democracy ever establishes itself within other
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arab countries because the saudi arabian royal family sees the arab cultural groups as being essentially
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their dominion and since nobody really has the money to push back on them and and then you could
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be like well who might have the money to push back on them well the qataris or the uae could have the money
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to push back on them but both of those countries are also monarchies um so the more money a country has
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within the arab peninsula the more like like from dutch disease or from you know capturing oil the more
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so you have this small collection of incredibly stable monarchies within the region sort of led by
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saudi arabia no saudi arabia is in conflict with the qataris a lot but both of them agree that they don't
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want non-monarchies establishing themselves in the region the same with the uae because if you are a
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monarch i mean imagine the way the monarchs felt in europe when they saw the french revolution happening
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like we have a lot of letters about this they were freaked the f out they were like bro this is bad
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like this could come here we need to make this look bad we need to frame this as bad we need to stop
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this from happening so you have a situation where because you do have among and for cultural reasons
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among the economically most productive areas of the region stable monarchies that have a vested
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interest in preventing anything other from a monarchy from existing so whenever one of the other
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countries that because it doesn't have as much dutch disease might be able to have a revolution and
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create something other than a monarchy yeah attempts at that it's stamped down by the saudis and their
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allies and so if we're going to go to four specific examples of this you have bahrain 2011 saudi-led
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gulf corporation council forces invaded to quash pro-democracy protests preserving the sunni monarchy
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against the shiite majority uprising this was framed as countering iranian influence but effectively
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halted democratic movements egypt 2013 saudi arabia provided billions of dollars in aid to back the
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military coup against president muhammad marsi muslim brotherhood linked stabilizing adal fatah
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al-sizi's authoritarian rule reports describe this as part of a counter-revolutionary strategy to roll back
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arab spring given 2015 the present saudi military intervention against houthi revels seen as
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iranian proxies has prolonged chaos preventing stable governance democratic or otherwise and
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ensuring yemen remains a failed state rather than a potential democratic model broader arab spring
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countering saudi arabia funneled funds to autocrats in jordan morocco and oman to buy off
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protesters with subsidies while supporting crackdowns in syria and lebanon analysts argued that this
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created a democracy-free zone in the gulf's orbit with saudi petrodollars enabling regimes to weather
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economic pressures that might otherwise force reforms and i noted you know when i was going over this
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with the ai they don't need to focus on non-arab countries as much because they are not seen as
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really being similar to them so saudi influences geographically and culturally bound to the arab sphere
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where shared language history and institutions e.g. arabs being amplifies leverage iran as a non-arab
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shiite power operates as a rival axis syria hezbollah etc resisting saudi meddling through its own
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proxies saudi iranian rivalry has even in indirectly bolstered iran's theocracy by framing reforms as
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saudi-backed threats non-arab muslims e.g turkey and indonesia are outside this orbit turkey's democracy
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albeit flawed persisted despite ottoman legacies and indonesia's post-1998 transition faced no saudi
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interference recent ex-discussions echoes this noting saudi efforts to prevent democracy and
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arab natives as a survival tactic so i will note that it is in part artificial which is created in
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part by the dutch disease of the region and the friendships and power plays of the regions focused
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around the saudis that are doing this not as some sort of big conspiracy but it's an existential
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freak out in the same way that many european monarchs freaked out during the french revolution
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they're just doing what they have to do yeah to not die playing the you know in in books the the noble
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power games of nobles because i read a lot of romance manga these days are framed always you know in
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this sort of underhanded but but but you know sort of romanticized way but the reality is a lot of the
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the power plays of nobles is preventing democracy and a lot of the power plays of the monarch is
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preventing the nobles from getting more power the aristocracy from getting more power now let's go to
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the question of tribalism because the tribalism was in this region is very unique while tribalism exists
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globally e.g. clans in somalia or scotland it's more pervasive and politically salient in arab context
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reshaping everything from family loyalty to state building this stems from bedouin nomadic roots where
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survival depended on kin alliances in harsh deserts contrasting was more settled in urbanized non-arab muslim
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societies islam moderated pre-islamic tribalism e.g. emphasizing umam and asabab something or group
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solidarity but in arab lands it fused with it creating a hybrid structure that prioritized and
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extended clans over national identity so in arab societies tribes quabila are core social units
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often tracing patrilineal descent to ancient ancestors e.g. quamish in saudi arabia or quares in
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saudi arabia families are extended and hierarchical with loyalty to clan elders of a writing state
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institutions this fosters patronage wasta where jobs votes and resources flow through tribal networks
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undermining merit-based democracy in places like yemen or libya tribal federations act as quasi-states
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vetoing central authority exposts highlight this noting arab's pride and patrilineal lineage
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spanning centuries and larger extended families non-arab muslims tribalism is present but diluted
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or transformed in indonesia kinsip is bilateral by both parents both parents alliance matter with
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village-based not nomadic structures emphasizing community harmony over clan rivalry and has
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bradaria brotherhoods similar to tribes but they're more caste-like and integrated into feudal systems
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allowing electoral competition turkey's ottoman legacy shifted towards centralized bureaucracy eroding
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tribal power iran emphasizes persian nationalism over tribes among kurds and balak overall non-arabs of
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weaker asabi enabling stronger national institutions and civil societies that support democracy this
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difference explains why non-arab muslims often score higher on social trust metrics per world value
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surveys so note here arab muslims also score very low on social trust and and then when i yeah if you
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don't have high social i don't know though we don't have very high social trust in the u.s do we and we still have
00:23:38.260
well yeah we'll get to that okay the ottoman context so the ottoman had the millet system
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when they ruled these territories primarily for religious minorities christians we're all about
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that bring back the millet system people granting them autonomy and personal law and taxation to
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maintain loyalty was out full integration in arab provinces e.g his iraq they layered this with tribal
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pacts appointing sheiks as intermediaries to collect taxes and provide troops avoiding direct
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confrontation with somatic groups this system worked because imposing centralized control on
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tribes often backfired leading to revolts it preserved tribal autonomy which later hindered
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post-ottoman nation states now on note here this is what we should have done in iraq we should have
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done a millet system there are too many competing ethnic and tribal groups within the region that just
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have no interest in getting along with each other this also this this extremely tribalist framing
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also explains why israel was able to essentially curb stomp dramatically larger better funded and
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more technologically advanced arab armies because they were a culturally and ethnic unified tribe
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so and when they just related to this differently if you go back to like the seven years war the
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yom kippur war many people see israel and they think of those wars as if israel today was fighting those
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wars you know the technological and economic powerhouse that israel is oh yeah but it was not
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yeah it was not that it had it had worse equipment than the forces that were up against it they were
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dramatically larger than israel they all attacked surprise on a holiday nonetheless just to you know
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really f with them they they really should have lost i think like in in in some battles they were
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outnumbered like a hundred to one and they still won and the the large reason why people factor this in
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is extreme tribalism among the attacking groups they they saw the other groups that were attacking
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alongside them even from within their culture as being as different from themselves as as the israelis
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were in many cases and more than that within this tribal arab structure the secondary thing is
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huge amounts of class divide the generals would not have seen the forces serving under them as fully
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human often no they were just numbers they're just like you attack and i tell you what to do and i'm
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no this is a an aristocratic if you you have we have aristocratic muslim friends okay i have aristocratic
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arab muslim friends the way that they see the the poor who live under them i'm i'm not even saying it's
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with animosity or anything like that it's they're a different type of human than them it's a society and
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social structure that is much more comfortable with true aristocracy than jewish culture is the jewish
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generals would have seen the people fighting under them not as numbers but as you know mothers and
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fathers and brothers and and and people that they prayed alongside and everything like that where you
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wouldn't have had the same relationship between the the higher ups and i know this this this this sounds
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bad but it's just the way arab society is structured and it has been since the time of muhammad
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is much more hierarchical much higher power distance some societies are just way higher power distance than other
00:27:04.660
societies and was in these societies it's not even seen as like a bad thing like if you're from a low power
00:27:10.260
power distance society you get mad that anyone would ever see themselves as that degree of above
00:27:17.620
you because that's what being in a low power distance society is about yeah if you are in a
00:27:22.900
high power distance society this stuff can seem bizarre to you so for example peru where we operate
00:27:28.900
our company the fairly high power distance society and we had a problem where when we were trying to
00:27:33.780
replace one of the managers we had an entire team say that they would quit rather than take
00:27:40.500
a promotion that wouldn't happen in the united states it just wouldn't somebody's gonna take
00:27:46.100
that promotion good you know and if no it wasn't like they were mad or protesting the person being
00:27:51.860
fired everyone thought the person had done a bad job it was more like they were like i don't want
00:27:56.900
that level of like the way that they saw being at that higher level was that they would be blamed for
00:28:03.940
more things going wrong and they would have to do more work so they were like screw that
00:28:08.180
yeah i don't want that even if it meant you know higher pay more control very much i'm lower cast
00:28:14.340
and i'm happy about being lower cast why would i watch all the problems of the nobility they have
00:28:18.980
to manage so much i'm so glad i'm not an alpha yeah it was terrible it was it's not even a really
00:28:27.380
it's not the craziest high power distance society so even yeah we couldn't even deal with that
00:28:32.580
although we've gone also to even lower power distance societies and been kind of creeped out
00:28:39.300
by them and how i'm like don't you know i'm better than you like i love yonta like all that yeah i get
00:28:45.940
creeped out by like like scando societies they they do not so they they to me feel like a communist
00:28:54.980
it's like can't you just admit that some people are like better at things than other people like
00:28:59.140
they have this rule in the law of yonta though the tall wet grass gets cut you know don't don't
00:29:04.580
grow higher than the other grass you know that's a huge negative thing within this cultural group
00:29:09.060
and i find that to be really gross and like antagonistic to on it just like it it it it
00:29:14.100
stops people from pursuing exceptionalism and doing really amazing things which annoys me because i want
00:29:21.940
people to be exceptional in whatever ways they can uniquely be exceptional yeah so what we're noting here
00:29:27.780
is we're also not like extremely low power distance people either yeah but the the the that's that's
00:29:33.300
a part of this level i think this is all to say though that tolerance for power distance probably
00:29:38.500
has some intuitive genetic component to it as well that like we on a very intuitive level seem to
00:29:45.540
want to like vomit in the face of both higher and lower power distance yeah there's probably a genetic
00:29:50.660
component to this as well yeah yeah and that there seem to be very intuitive and instinctual responses
00:29:58.180
to different forms of governance as well that for some people's just like this is not and it's not
00:30:03.460
for me the technology power distances can provide different advantages for different groups it appears
00:30:11.300
that these days economically low power distance or at least medium power distance is the the most optimal
00:30:17.300
and high power distance is very bad for economic development but you know that this is neither here
00:30:23.140
nor let's continue with how in other ways their their tribal system is different patrilineal lineage
00:30:28.180
tracing many arabs recite their ancestry back 10 generations plus often to pre-islamic figures and
00:30:33.460
even biblical ones like adam an anecdote from iraq a man claimed his family had used tribal records
00:30:39.140
kept by sheikhs or oral traditions to trace back to adam via abraham emphasizing tribal purity and status my
00:30:45.940
family has one of those by the way tracing back to adam when when his family ever said all you need
00:30:50.340
to do is trace to a biblical figure and then it's very easy to trace back just so people know you
00:30:54.580
don't go all the way back to adam you just go to like charlemagne which i'm descended from and
00:30:59.940
then from charlemagne because we all these famous figures have and you trace back because it was just
00:31:04.180
charlemagne dot dot dot adam is that what you're saying by the ancestor i have in common was elon musk
00:31:09.540
charlemagne yeah i have a bunch of more recent famous ancestors but some cultures care a lot
00:31:16.020
about ancestry and clan cultures care a lot about it and tribal cultures care a lot about it so this
00:31:19.780
is something i share with them note here that this pride isn't just it's not just pride it's also
00:31:24.500
functional lineage determined for marriage irritability inheritance and alliances in contrast
00:31:29.300
to nuclear families elsewhere arab extended families alahi include uncles cousins and in-laws
00:31:34.660
as core decision makers with elders holding veto power cousin marriages bent am these these are the
00:31:40.660
preferred marriage to a family's brother sorry a father's brother's daughter is common up to 50
00:31:46.740
in some regions reinforcing tribal bonds and keeping wealth internal anecdote in bedouin communities
00:31:52.740
grooms tribe displays power at weddings by firing guns in the air signaling protection for the bride
00:31:58.340
as she joins a new tribe oh that's a sweet tradition i i guess that would come from another
00:32:02.980
clan-based culture being like oh yeah this is we're the signaling that won't protect you but from what
00:32:08.260
the other tribes in the region because again they are descended from regions where there was constant
00:32:12.660
tribal conflict tribal protection ikawani brotherhood non-kin can be adopted via ikawah
00:32:19.220
granting full tribal rights anecdote from yemen a man sought refuge with sheikh jabor jin gabal
00:32:25.300
becoming his quote-unquote brother after the Sikh's death the man's plea at the grave
00:32:29.700
you gave me brotherhood now your sons forsake me prompted the sons to honor it poetically quote
00:32:36.420
my father heard you from the grave and bids us to protect you even in hell sorry even to hell i
00:32:42.100
guess you wouldn't say a father in hell even to hell illustrates a shabby unbreakable loyalty beyond
00:32:48.100
blood now what i actually noted is at first i was like yeah but if this is the case then why do clan-based
00:32:58.020
structures like if tribalism with a huge factor here why do clan-based structures like the scott
00:33:03.380
or or the irish or the backwoods american michael the ska scots oh the scots i thought that you were
00:33:10.180
like trying to imply that the music genre was like some kind of ethnic group and i was like is this a
00:33:14.580
thing please irish and the backwoods people again like the redneck greater appellation cultural group
00:33:19.460
that i'm from and simone's from these are all clan-based cultural groups where you really focus on the
00:33:24.500
clan you don't have extended networks of friends you you you are like this is what matters it is my
00:33:29.140
clan that matter and and then i started thinking about it and i was like oh actually they adopted
00:33:35.380
democracy kind of late compared to other people within their regions ireland really only adopted
00:33:41.060
democracy because they were conquered by britain and then they kept the democracy after the revolution
00:33:46.580
but they were pretty effing late to democracy scotland was earlier to democracy but scottish
00:33:53.460
democracy was really quite defensive against the english structure they were like how can we get
00:33:59.220
the maximum number of clans on board with what we're doing and if you look at the backwood cultures
00:34:05.140
even as they lived alongside like american democracy they often would have alternate democratic
00:34:12.340
structures locally that were in competition with the american democratic structures so the regulators
00:34:17.300
are a good example of this they form their own police forces in local government i'm checking to see if
00:34:23.220
appellation cultures in the u.s have lower rates of voting oh that'd be interesting but basically the
00:34:29.780
difference between these two groups has to do with how they relate to larger hierarchy the the
00:34:38.100
scottish group in the greater appalachian group what did you learn simone you just did a i learned
00:34:43.380
something face they do have lower rates of voting and the 2012 presidential election only 55 of the
00:34:49.060
voting age population in appalachia cast ballots compared to 60.5 naturally or sorry nationally
00:34:56.100
they do and across multiple studies yeah whoa yeah young voter participation can be even lower
00:35:04.980
yeah no very interesting okay yeah so maybe there's just something that like if you're in
00:35:08.980
if you have clan-based roots maybe you're a little less into democracy in general whether you're actually
00:35:14.740
an arab or not hold on because they have within every one of these regions created very stable democratic
00:35:22.020
systems eventually and so the question is is why in these regions was particularly scottish and and the
00:35:30.420
greater appalachian backwards cultural tradition both are related to each other like they're basically
00:35:34.900
scottish descendants they're called scotch-irish but that was because they were the scottish
00:35:38.180
scott's irish to conquer the irish but they're still scottish so they're it's it's confusing there
00:35:45.700
in albion seed david hackett fisher often refers to them as borderland cultures rather than scott's
00:35:52.820
irish since it's kind of not yeah it's not the best descriptive it's not the best descriptive but
00:35:57.620
anyway the point being is both of these groups are technically the same and they actually seem to take
00:36:01.300
to democracy pretty quickly and so the question is is why did they take to democracy quickly and the
00:36:07.220
answer comes from looking at the motivations on the ground level as they decided to either fight
00:36:14.020
in revolutions for democracy or as they decided to form the initial like presbyterian communities
00:36:19.860
which are really sort of proto-religious democracies as opposed to the more authoritarian
00:36:25.380
catholic or anglican structure which comes to is basically closer to a monarchistic way of of
00:36:31.860
organizing a church and the answer is because they have an intense hatred of authority which is not
00:36:39.300
seen in the muslim countries in the muslim version of tribalism was in these clan-based structures it was
00:36:46.340
the clan is first and anything that tries to mess with the clan or touch the clan or interfere with
00:36:52.580
the clan's autonomy is something that you need to fight against and so if democracy looked like the
00:36:59.220
form of government that would mess with them the least or impose the least external impositions on
00:37:05.060
them they're gonna fight for it basically small government extremists whereas the in in the early days
00:37:11.780
at least whereas in the islamic countries it's quite different the loyalty to tribe is also loyalty to
00:37:19.460
tribal alliances and a tribal alliance network which fundamentally undermines the democratic state
00:37:26.660
because it acts as an alternate to the democratic state yeah it undermines it yeah 100 percent worse
00:37:32.660
it's really bad when you combine it with islam because as if you're in the backwoods cultural
00:37:39.620
tradition and somebody comes and they say you need to live this way or that way i'd be like on who's
00:37:46.500
effing authority yeah yeah and and they'd be like oh well you know on these this rich coastal elitist
00:37:54.500
authority i'm like i'm sorry no but if you go to to the tribal groups in muslim regions they say
00:38:01.380
on who's authority and it's oh this this theocratic leader you know this muslim leader and they're like
00:38:07.380
oh of course and these these muslim leadership communities and you're like what what about like
00:38:11.700
the scottish region and stuff like that like why didn't that fall to this and this is what
00:38:15.780
the presbyterians were the presbytery system right they'd say like on whose authority and they'd be
00:38:20.660
like you know well this anglican bishop right or this catholic bishop and they'd be like well who the
00:38:26.900
eff appointed him and they'd be like well some rich guy in rome and they're like well i don't i don't
00:38:32.500
care about him we should be voting on this you know or they'd say the king in england and they'd be
00:38:37.620
like what the heck does he have to do with with god you know we should we should we should be we
00:38:42.500
should be making this more local you know sort of ground up and so i think that this fundamental
00:38:48.740
difference between the two cultural groups is why democracy works within these types of clan-based
00:38:55.060
structures while more slowly than under the more feudal english structure and i.e in the english
00:39:03.460
structure when you go to these early periods you would have a loyalty to your your like region's
00:39:10.340
sort of lord over family or or local clan whereas in the irish scottish and backwoods areas it was
00:39:18.180
clan overlord but within the muslim areas it is tribal network over basically everything else because the way
00:39:27.540
that you advance your clan is through the tribal network and then in addition to that it's don't
00:39:34.500
disappoint you know your local religious leaders who sort of manage the tribal network of alliances
00:39:40.820
and tell you when they're telling you what to do they tell you well this is why this is what you do
00:39:46.020
right yeah all this is getting me to think about how i mean first i saw this in a very limited capacity
00:39:52.740
how context really really matters when it comes to governing formats like communism works really
00:39:58.340
really well on a very small community or family level like our family is communist and all of our
00:40:05.060
chickens have communist names and it makes sense and it works perfectly communism 100 works and has
00:40:10.900
been tried and is tried every single day on the family level for millions and millions and millions
00:40:14.820
yeah i mean my kids don't work and i give them a portion of my income you know from
00:40:19.140
to each according to their needs from each according to their ability exactly and but
00:40:22.980
now i'm i'm thinking that you this this podcast this conversation has got me thinking about how
00:40:28.260
maybe also democracy really only thrives in certain contexts and we need to just be aware of that
00:40:34.580
that like communism isn't inherently bad you just need to apply it correctly democracy isn't inherently
00:40:40.420
good or bad you just need to apply it correctly and very clearly in many it doesn't work for
00:40:47.380
everyone and if you attempt to apply it to a group that is not adapted for it yeah you're gonna have
00:40:52.740
math deaths you know yes in some countries where clearly democracy just wasn't meant to work
00:41:01.380
was doomed to fail from the beginning just like communism on a super large scale in like russia or in
00:41:10.100
this like i think that communism can work on at least a small scale was in some communities
00:41:16.740
absolutely and and we saw this was and with certain levels of technology and post scarcity singularity
00:41:23.380
potentially but here we're talking about the real world what's it no what's the the communist small
00:41:28.740
communes they had in israel kibbutzim but you can't scale it up bigger than that and it's not going
00:41:36.020
to work for every ethnic group and and this is also true of the millet system the millet system may
00:41:41.380
not work for every ethnic group but it doesn't work for arab groups you know more of a persian thing
00:41:46.580
right it was when the persians ruled the arabs and it was how they ruled the arabs ah okay okay
00:41:51.540
and if you're talking about no people of one species couldn't have multiple ways of
00:41:58.820
genetically structuring their society and then here we're going to get to chimpanzees so we're
00:42:02.820
going to go to evidence remains okay okay these groups in africa african regions exhibit distinct
00:42:08.660
social behaviors for example west african chimps are more cooperative in hunting and tool use not
00:42:15.140
cracking with stones while east african groups show more aggressive patrolling and infanticide
00:42:20.020
they okay okay sorry okay and then bonobos often called peaceful compared to chimps warlike
00:42:26.340
structures have matriarchal groups with high social tolerance but this varies regionally e.g more
00:42:32.820
alliances in the congo basin groups genetic studies show minimum fixed so and then overall ape cultures
00:42:39.700
including social structures evolve through a second inheritance system of social learning which
00:42:45.380
functions alongside the dna and sort of reinforces how small genetic differences can create quite big
00:42:52.100
behavior differences in terms of how you're socially structuring a community and i think it can lead to
00:42:58.580
a huge amount of if you look at the number of deaths and dollars spent trying to stabilize an iraqi
00:43:05.220
democracy when i think it was fundamentally impossible to begin with yeah it it you see the horror that comes
00:43:13.540
downstream of not just accepting that some people are different from you yeah it's like giving a
00:43:19.460
medical treatment to someone who won't tolerate it right it's like saying it would be racist to say
00:43:26.020
that black people have different bodies than white people it's like well actually this is something you
00:43:30.820
really need to pay attention to when you're doing like treatments of diabetes or pregnancy because they
00:43:36.740
they're just women and men that's that's a really famous example the yeah well example that even car
00:43:42.020
seats have just like crash tests and whatnot not really been tested on women like women are really
00:43:48.100
a big deal yeah because they're just like it's tested on somebody yeah but like they haven't really been
00:43:52.180
tested on male bodies and or sorry on female bodies like even the first female crash test dummy is
00:43:57.380
didn't emerge until forever ago and still car seats are 100 optimized around male bodies so women are
00:44:02.260
kind of screwed in car accidents women men are more likely to get into car accidents so i'm okay with
00:44:06.740
the design being what it is but there actually is you know ride safer the company that we got this kid
00:44:11.140
harness car seats for for four months they also sell a special car seat harness that you can use to
00:44:17.060
replace male designed car seats especially as a pregnant woman because pregnant women are kind of
00:44:23.220
screwed in car accidents too if they're not wearing the right car seat well so but this could really
00:44:28.500
screw i find the male female difference because broadly like everything different no obviously
00:44:33.380
and like i mean you know we're really big on polygenic scores and a really big problem with
00:44:37.700
most of the polygenic scores out there is like okay maybe this makes sense if you're of especially
00:44:42.900
english or european descent but if you're african if you're east asian like you can't really use this
00:44:49.620
the same way i think that's a lot not a very good analogy because you're just talking about where this
00:44:54.260
stuff has been collected and the point i'm talking about is the denial that we are different leads to
00:45:01.860
really bad outcomes often for minority communities oh yeah a much stronger example of this can be
00:45:09.460
just saying black and white bodies are not different well this causes a huge problem when
00:45:15.460
black women and this is a big problem in the pronatalist movement learn that i think it's literally
00:45:20.660
double like black fertility problems are literally double white fertility problems yeah we i think
00:45:25.620
we did a podcast on this or we talked about it at one point and it was it was shocking it's shockingly
00:45:30.980
high or maybe 50 higher or something but it's really really bad it's it's notable and if you don't
00:45:36.420
tell black women hey you need to prep for this you can lead to really like really screw over them
00:45:44.260
culturally speaking the the other really big one with black people that is super offensive to mention
00:45:50.100
and i'll explain why it's offensive to mention in just a second is black people have shorter
00:45:55.540
child gestation cycles it's about a week shorter for a black child to be born than a white child
00:46:01.860
and you can be like oh i don't understand where this could cause problems it causes a very big problem
00:46:08.900
in interracial marriages because when you have black fathers and white mothers you get no impact from
00:46:15.460
this because the mother's body just carries the baby extra long and and that's good but when you
00:46:20.660
have white fathers and black mothers there was a interesting study on this very you know obviously
00:46:26.820
spicy that showed that the mother's body doesn't know it's carrying a baby that's supposed to
00:46:32.420
gestate ejects a baby that's not quite ready so we give the baby that's a week premature when it's born
00:46:39.220
and you can see this in the statistics of of these children's development like they are
00:46:44.900
developmentally impacted by this as if they had been born a week early and we can attest from
00:46:50.900
personal anecdotal experience that having kids born premature has knock on effects for years yeah we had
00:46:57.300
a kid who was born premature and he's still like in the bottom one percent of of weight and height for
00:47:01.940
his age yeah he's the same size and he wears the same clothes and shoes as his younger sister who is
00:47:08.660
18 months younger than him so yeah yeah so so again this isn't like us being like you know this
00:47:14.740
is something intrinsically bad about black people or interracial relationships it's just a good heads
00:47:19.140
up thing i mean it would be helpful to know like especially but you know if you if you know that you're
00:47:24.340
going to have a kid that's more likely to be born premature you can plan certain things that can
00:47:29.140
help to ameliorate the effects of premature birth it's meaningful right yeah and and if if we are
00:47:35.860
different in some ways you know be aware of how we're different and and be willing to i think
00:47:41.700
within yourself and this is always one of the big themes of our podcast to look within yourself when
00:47:46.900
somebody's saying this is the way that we do things and be like but will this actually because a lot of
00:47:53.140
people are like multi-ethnic right and they're like well how do i know what my you know unique biology
00:48:00.500
wants and i'm like well try to ignore what society tells you and ask yourself like are friends actually
00:48:07.060
an important part of your life do you actually need that do you actually i mean like i'm just talking
00:48:12.260
about like the ways that we're weird right like i don't need to look at my ancestors and see that
00:48:17.940
all of their friends were clan-based or family friends to know that i really don't get that much
00:48:23.780
from social interactions even though i'm told i'm supposed friendship is magic and all that it's not even that
00:48:28.660
you can't you don't get that much it's that we it actively stresses us out we have to recover after
00:48:35.060
yes i don't i'm my wife is my battery it's only being around her you know they talk about like
00:48:39.940
introverts and extroverts it's only being around the clan that i recharge you know it's it's the same
00:48:45.140
you know or or what else you know like sleeping in different rooms right like i don't need to know
00:48:49.380
whether my ancestors slept in different rooms i know it seems effing insane for a husband and wife
00:48:53.860
to sleep in the same room they're like i mean to be fair though that one's a little weird because
00:48:58.900
i mean in the past everyone kind of piled up on one bed like everyone would be on this bed over here
00:49:03.700
that's not true for different groups and a lot of rural groups that's true for urban populations
00:49:07.860
like a lot of catholic and irish populations that was common for rural populations because land was
00:49:12.100
basically free and all you needed to do yeah he sure wasn't though malcolm come on i watch a lot more
00:49:16.740
like history lifestyle stuff if you if you spend a day just building an extra room you had an extra
00:49:22.660
room if you look at the size so no seriously you have you ever looked at the size of the
00:49:28.340
houses that people used to live in back then i mean i know so like the the colonial houses and
00:49:33.300
this is talked about in albion seed when he talks about the folk ways of architecture that differed across
00:49:37.700
cultures absolutely like puritan culture had kids in separate rooms and when when it was possible yeah
00:49:44.740
yeah yeah i'll ask ai you know what i'll ask ai right now oh yeah you really want to win this
00:49:49.700
one don't you oh oh yeah i want you to have is this because you lost the ethno-linguistic group
00:49:56.100
we'll see oh i miss i miss when we did bets i i don't think i ever took the money from you though
00:50:09.540
did you know by the way i was just thinking about differences between animals and different
00:50:12.420
geographic areas that birds have different accents yes i knew birds had different accents you didn't
00:50:18.420
know birds had different accents i i i knew it only in adulthood i didn't know it as a kid
00:50:27.140
and oh you got this right they were more often single room structures especially in the early
00:50:32.260
stage of the settlement even when they were multi-room structures so the family would still
00:50:35.460
sleep often in the same area because that's the place where it would be warm at night
00:50:38.500
yeah it had to do with heating yeah you're welcome oh if only we were still betting because
00:50:46.980
i would have just made 20 bucks but no you just stopped doing that even after a bunch of times i was
00:50:55.140
wrong you're never wrong simone you're the perfect wife that's what the perfect husband says but i see
00:51:02.100
this is this is what i'm talking about here you don't need to look at your ancestral heritage you can
00:51:05.780
know what works for you yeah because there are always going to be deviations just do what's
00:51:09.860
right heritage what's right but also like i don't i don't think that families piled into one you know
00:51:16.260
they didn't all sleep in the kitchen together because they wanted to they did it because they didn't have
00:51:21.220
a choice so yeah i i'm not i'm not super concerned about that being a an inherited trait
00:51:31.780
i i think our people's tendency to keep moving out to frontiers away from cities away from density of
00:51:39.860
people is a larger indication of why we would enjoy separate bedrooms when given the opportunity and
00:51:46.500
luxury which if it remains even in our time a huge luxury that we use separate bedrooms so you know
00:51:54.420
hello all right have a great day simone and i was gonna start another episode what are we what are
00:52:03.220
we doing for dinner tonight just i guess reheating something or yeah so we have a couple options i can
00:52:09.940
make sourdough it's not whole wheat for you because i mean that would be offensive to you and you can have
00:52:16.420
that with jam or like dip it in curries or we can just do a mystery curry with rice this time you know
00:52:24.580
what i'm gonna do your your sourdough with cheese again and then no i don't i don't have flatbread
00:52:30.980
that would have to be another night i mean like baked sourdough oh yeah you can't cut it and then
00:52:36.580
bake it with cheese oh you just want like a slice of sourdough with cheese on top like uh what's that a
00:52:42.820
welsh rare bit basically i i guess like an open-faced cheese sandwich on chunky sourdough bread
00:52:51.300
yeah but not chunky i mean cut it thinner you you cut it obscenely thick which i think is causing me
00:52:56.980
to become upset at my stomach like you i mean don't you want to don't you want to do like one of your
00:53:01.940
curries or something or do you want okay then let's do a korean rice okay korean rice we'll see what curry
00:53:09.620
surprise you get tonight there's so much to go through like we have to do freezer farming for
00:53:16.100
a long time because i think i just make batches that are too big and then we haven't been disciplined
00:53:20.100
about using them so thank you for because they got better over time so i'm typically dealing with
00:53:24.340
like i don't want to do it yeah throw in some pineapple if there isn't any already yeah okay i'll
00:53:32.980
throw in it to any so it's a booster to any curry for you what if it's a non-pineapple friendly curry
00:53:39.700
oh curry is pineapple friendly really okay you're strange but you did proceed to put jam
00:53:48.740
on the cheesy flatbread last night which was weird it was really good
00:53:56.500
don't you know i mean power to the people you know okay i will proceed with this
00:54:01.460
and i love you very much i love you so much bye bye this is right you got things right
00:54:08.580
you opened my mind to a whole new thing now i'm i'm gonna look at democracy the same way i look at
00:54:13.460
like communism like legit i and i i think that this is a really helpful way to look at governing and
00:54:19.940
that it's a you can't just look at it in the in the format of like is this a you know structurally
00:54:26.180
sound thing you have to look at the substrate to which you're applying it and and are these
00:54:30.820
compatible it's like blood types yeah so anyway thanks that was really enlightening super interesting
00:54:35.940
i'm gonna be thinking about it for a long time i love you i was watching an old like commentary on
00:54:43.700
an old mormon movies one of them was from the 60s and it just stood out to me how weird 1960s woman
00:54:51.300
accent was or like late late like i can't i can't model it i'll try to find a clip i can give to you
00:54:58.500
it just it occurred to me how weird it is you know there are time-based accents oh yeah yeah i know what
00:55:03.220
you're talking about and i realized that if we went back in time it wouldn't just be
00:55:08.340
our colloquial english that would be difficult for people to understand but merely our tonality
00:55:16.580
they would find it really off-putting and weird and i wonder if women in the renaissance
00:55:24.900
era or in the middle ages had really different tonalities like the the 19 like 1970s late 1960s
00:55:34.340
female voice was very childish and high and weird and i i wonder if both men and women in the past
00:55:46.820
had really different ways of i think like if you go back even if even if we went back to like the 19
00:55:53.060
like 20s or 30s i think everyone would immediately be shocked and be like why are you doing the radio
00:55:58.020
presenter voice from like they had that you know that very weird accent a transatlantic accent that
00:56:04.100
was mostly just people in the media profession not mainstream people well people had more
00:56:09.620
differences in their accents back then oh no for sure yeah where you lived would really dictate how
00:56:14.420
you sounded 100 which is cool i feel really bad that we're losing accents although then there's all
00:56:21.380
these people discussing and you can totally hear it especially since we're listening to our kids watch
00:56:25.700
youtube in the evenings when we bribe them with screens so they eat food there is definitely a
00:56:31.860
tiktok accent and a youtuber accent oh interesting oh my gosh they're one yeah come on you know it
00:56:39.140
i i can't have the youtuber accent well i mean no no no no i'm talking like you know clip farmer view
00:56:45.860
farmer but are you saying that they're different the two accents yeah oh interesting yeah and there are
00:56:51.700
different accents for women and men very similar to how like japanese when spoken by a woman or a man
00:56:56.820
sounds very different it's so yeah maybe maybe we're not doomed we're just going to see more
00:57:02.500
subculture based accents and fewer geographically based accents we'll see i am looking this up tick
00:57:12.260
tock versus youtube accents i can't believe come on this must have stood out to you it's such a thing
00:57:18.980
they all sound the same and they start aping each other
00:57:32.580
what's happening here are you beating me in the box am i closing you in no
00:57:37.140
what is this what is this what's that oh are you boxed in are you are you a package now no