Cultures and Conservatism
Conservatism as a political movement sees the individual as an avatar of their cultivar and optimizes for intergenerational fitness and cultural agency. In contrast, progressivism as a movement atomizes the individual and focuses on intragenerational quality of life and individual agency. That said, “conservatism” is not really one cohesive group as we often think of it but rather the manifestation of a number of hard cultural strategies optimized to protect intergenerational fitness.
Drives to Conservatism
Values Driven: This form of conservatism occurs when a cultivar encourages positions on specific issues that nudge adherents toward conservative political factions. The Catholic position on abortion, the LDS Church’s former position on gay marriage, and the Muslim prohibition on alcohol all provide great examples of this. All three of these prohibitions lower freedom and quality of life within a generation but increase intergenerational fitness.
Disposition Driven: This form of conservatism is driven by a cultural aversion to change and “causing a fuss.” A great example of this can be seen in Swiss culture, in which some Cantons did not allow women to vote until 1991. The Swiss will aggressively enforce a “don’t cause a fuss” culture through social shaming, with neighbors coming to our hotel room multiple times during our last visit to the nation because we “laughed too loud.” Famously, one woman was denied citizenship because she put bells on her cows, which annoyed local residents.
Utopian Driven: Utopian-driven conservatism exists with the goal of creating a paradise that is only achievable if everyone within their community is able to live by a certain aesthetic. The Puritan branch of Calvinism, the Anabaptist movement, and ISIS present archetypal examples of this drive. When these cultures are symbiotic with the wider societies they inhabit, they typically isolate themselves and attempt to build walled-off paradises.
Dominating versions of such cultures (see: “Roles in Multicultural Ecosystems” on page 460) manifest as some of the most violent and aggressive of all cultivar varieties. A Calvinist-derived cultivar (the Independents) serves as a great example of this through Oliver Cromwell and The New Model Army, though obviously ISIS serves as a salient modern example.
When not dominating, these cultivars are often some of the most outspoken advocates for laissez-faire governance at the state level. The typical goal of this advocacy is not to loosen the religious restrictions and totalitarianism of their local communities but to protect them from outside interference. While they can be thought of as advocating for cultural agency, they are not fighting for the individual agency of members within their culture.
Conservatism and Communism
Almost all cultures are communist within their communities and even more so within family units. In such settings, resources are granted to each according to their needs and taken from each according to their ability. Often more conservative cultures are the most communist on micro scales. The difference between conservative hard cultures and actual communists is the extent to which they trust state institutions to run things better than they do—or at least to not be a threat to them. The more an individual trusts their own community to be fair and well run, the less they will trust a government to interfere and the more “conservative” they will appear.
We cannot overstate just how socialist many conservative-seeming hard cultures can be on an in-group level. Consider how Anabaptists often build houses and pay medical bills for fellow community members, and how Evangelical groups donate food to those in need through things like soup kitchens. To some extent, when a government starts running alternatives to these services, it robs cultures that provide them of a significant conversion pipeline and mechanism for enforcing their values, which explains some opposition to government-run iterations of these services (as we mentioned earlier, government-run orphanages killed Shaker culture).
Conservative vs. Progressive Child Rearing
When you inspect debates over child rearing through the lens of conservatism being the manifestation of an optimization around intergenerational cultural fitness and progressivism as an optimization around intragenerational quality of life and individual agency, then you can see the key goal of progressive child-rearing is to allow children to become “whoever it is they want to be” whereas conservative child rearing places specific expectations on kids. This comes up a lot in public discussion about us (your gentle authors): Progressively minded individuals see the expectations we place on our kids as a form of abuse. There is no use trying to please people who hold such an extremely different cultural perspective.
Immigration and Conservative Values
Historically, opposing immigration made a lot of sense for cultural groups looking to maintain intergenerational fidelity (as lowering immigration reduced external cultural competition as well as competition over state services). At the same time, immigration is an act of immediate individual agency, which makes it appealing to progressive groups. While the situation has long been clear cut, it has become significantly more nuanced in modern times. Immigration is only as partisan as it is today due to blind momentum.
Suppose you are an ethno-cultivar (an ethnically homogeneous cultural group) keen to protect itself. Surely policies against immigration will yield the best protection … right? Actually, the ethno-cultivars at the most risk in the world today are often those which most effectively prevent immigration (Korea and Japan serve as two salient examples here). In contrast, ethno-cultivars that have successfully staved off birth rate collapse in the face of rising education and prosperity tend to occupy highly diverse environments (consider Jews, some Arab Muslims, and some White American Christian cultivars).
Furthermore, ethno-cultivars that relocate from homogeneous, low-immigration zones to multicultural, high-immigration zones (each with relatively high prosperity and education) appear to enjoy increases in their birth rates. Consider that Korean immigrants to the US enjoy a whopping 0.4! Increase in fertility rates.[[51]](#_ftn51) For an ethno-state with a fertility rate of 0.8, that is insane.
Just looking at a list of developed countries by fertility rate makes this phenomenon blindingly obvious. Countries like the U.S.A., France, and Israel will top that list (all very diverse countries) while monoethnic states will all be at the bottom.[[52]](#_ftn52) This also is not just a case of immigrant birthrate buoying the countries average, the white population in these countries fertility rate also rises higher than their neighboring countries.[[53]](#_ftn53) Nor is this a “white” phenom as it can be seen in Muslim countries as well, with the nearly exclusively Shia Iran (90%-95%) having an abysmally low fertility rate while Muslims in similar economic conditions in the more diverse India have a dramatically higher fertility rate.
It’s entirely understandable for members of a culture to want their taxes to go toward culturally aligned efforts (and therefore to be against immigration). We are just pointing out that this isolationist approach seems to do more harm than good.
The dynamism created by culturally diverse ecosystems is easily measured. For example, one large study of 7,600 London-based firms found that those which had more diverse management teams were more innovative.[[54]](#_ftn54) That is not to say studies never run counter to this claim, especially when looking at narrow, highly derived circumstances (like when a team is being managed poorly),[[55]](#_ftn55) but large meta-studies on the subject consistently find that at least some forms of diversity improve innovation or productivity—and none conclude that diversity hurts.[[56]](#_ftn56) We struggle to even see why this point needs to be argued. Of course a culture sharpened in a competitive environment is going to outcompete one protected from competition.
There are of course times when breakaway states become a necessity—such as when a state or some other group is actively trying to erase your cultivar or prevent its members from practicing their core beliefs (through something like state-controlled and mandated education). In the absence of such adverse forces, it seems optimal for a cultivar to seek to inhibit a diverse landscape.