Courtesy of Subrealism, a new study (abstract linked here, with lots of interesting related studies below) on how the caring hormone oxytocin promotes ethnocentrism. Liberals fell in love with oxytocin for a while. Give a guy a snort of it, and he will blindly trust others, regardless of threat, and give them the shirt off his back. I think to Liberals, it held the promise of being some sort of modern day Soma, allowing Liberals to create other Liberals out of the mean, distrusting Conservatives. (Coming soon to a spiked food supply near you.)
We discussed Oxytocin briefly here, especially its role in promoting high-investment parenting and monogamy. Now comes evidence that oxytocin also promotes ethnocentrism and in-group loyalty. So yes, you will trust, and you will sacrifice, but you will also tend to do it for your in-group, while screwing over your out-group. It’s very common sense – if you evolved to sacrifice for strangers blindly, you would end up culled over time. But if you evolved to sacrifice a little to bring your in-group success, someone else, from outside your in-group, would be the one to get culled.
Sooner or later, Liberals will have to confront that the science shows clearly, either you love your own in-group more than strangers, or you truly love no one at all. Of course if you understand r/K, you know, love is not platitudes, or giving your neighbor’s stuff away to foreigners. It is just in-group loyalty, in full bloom. You can’t have love, without disregard for others – this isn’t mean, or cruel, or wrong – it is just how the world works. It is just how humans work. Either you are loyal to your own, or you are loyal to no one but yourself. Or, put another way, if you are loyal to everyone, you are loyal to no one.
I love the last line of the abstract.
“These findings call into question the view of oxytocin as an indiscriminate “love drug” or “cuddle chemical” and suggest that oxytocin has a role in the emergence of intergroup conflict and violence.”
Oh, the horror. The horror.
