Successful societies?

Successful societies?

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Published on November 4th, 2009, 12:40 pm
Rift: Sciences

An interesting paper in the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology

The author, Gregory Paul, concludes

Utilizing 25 indicators, the uniquely extensive Successful Societies Scale reveals that population diversity and immigration correlate weakly with 1st world socioeconomic conditions, and high levels of income disparity, popular religiosity as measured by differing levels of belief and activity, and rejection of evolutionary science correlate strongly negatively with improving conditions.

i.e. the more strongly religious a society is and how strongly it rejects evolutionary science, the less successful it is.

Now which is the cause and which the effect is uncertain, it's quite possible that living in a dysfunctional society, with poor or inaccessible health care, a large disparity in wages and no social safety net, encourages belief in a supernatural guardian, or the converse could be true. But there should be some encouragement to improving social conditions as a way to improve rationality. Scared people don't think straight. (which does sound like a concise summary of the right wing strategy)

So is it the religious whom most likely succumb to to lack of benefits of a unsuccessful society or is it the non-believers whom suffer the most because of it?

Yeah, importing your population works really well. The decline of many European countries is already pretty much irreversible.

What a nasty little racist video.

That 'outbreeding' slur has been spread against every immigrant/minority group in the States too. Irish, Chinese, Mexicans

Well, you know ethnic cleansing has a long, storied tradition to it.

I wonder if BHL will feel the same way about this article: Red States May Be Outbreeding Blue States

The reality is that in every society, poor, uneducated and religious people have more children. As soon as women are educated and have basic freedoms, the birthrate declines. This is abundantly evident with American Catholics who's women overwhelmingly reject papal pronouncements on birth control and have a birth rate close to other Americans. Invariably when there are high birthrates in a wealthy society it's due entirely to religious influences, the Mormons being a prime example.

In a poor society children are a insurance plan and having many insures against higher mortality and provides a retirement income. In a wealthy one children are an expensive investment.

In evolutionary terms it's the difference between fecundity or parental investment as a strategy. Elephants practice parental investment, rabbits fecundity.