XENOPHOBIA, NEOPHILIA, NEOPHOBIA, AND RACISM

If evolutionary psychologists are correct in believing our behavior and conduct has an underlying biological foundation, how does United States culture reflect xenophobia?  The evidence is overwhelming that our behavior has an evolutionary basis. That this is so is intellectually satisfying. When we try to list the identifiable trait such as gregariousness, hierarchy dominance, and xenophobia and look for traces of these things in animals it is obvious that they exist. Geneticists refer to this as genetically well conserved. Anthropologists have defined projections of these “primitive” traits as cultural universals—traits found in “all” cultures. In addition, they have identified cultural traits that are geographically unique or limited without being able to draw a distinct dividing line between them. At this interface, there is a serious problem because people become unreasonable irate if anyone talks about actively shaping human conduct. They immediately bring “social Darwinism” and the implication of survival of the fittest; they invariable refer to the Nazi experience of 1930 through 1944.

The reason this exaggerated irritation is so much nonsense it that culture is obviously a product of social Darwinism; the refinement of social behavior is adaptive in a “natural selection” sense, which is survival of the fittest. A change in behavior takes place and is selected by the society and then subjected to trial and error; if it contributes to survival it is retained and if it detracts from survival it is lost; Herbert Spenser’s interpretation of Darwin’s theory, which is the genome cleansing concept implied by the expression “survival of the fittest”. Of course, there is regression, meaning biology does not like extremes and natural selection will always return or “regress” toward a mean. The matter of subconscious verses conscious selection is a variable that is obviously at play.

Geneticists, those trained in old bone morphology, seem to object to the concept when applied to changes in behavior, which they apparently feel, cannot be due to evolution because the time involved is too short. Regardless, we manifest our genetic foundation of xenophobia in our culture in a number of different ways in as simple as flocks of birds, herds of animals, or schools of fish. We have a propensity not to associate with people we perceive as begin different, which is the concept being expanded in this post. Cats look like cats, chickens look like chicken and dogs look like dogs, but also cats act like cats, chickens act like chickens, and dogs act liked dog.

This phobia associated with gregariousness has recently been associated with the terms ‘neophobia’, which is yin of the yang ‘neophilia’; the fear of “what is new” verses “the love of what is the new”. This is clearly the basis of racism. No one wants to talk about racism in this way, because it means that racism is in our genes and everyone immediately likens it to something physical such as a leg or arm, thinking we cannot change something embedded in our genetic makeup. In truth, behavior is something we can change, which is what the human expanded propensity to learn has done for us. To be realistic, some extremes of behavior we cannot change. However, we have to look at ‘neophilia’ in a general sense; all humans are essentially the same. Neophilia should draw us together and not tear us apart. We all know that there are people we are not compatible with because of their religious beliefs, or language, or other behavior, which are things much more important than skin color. The bottom line is that behavior differences are much more important than physical differences in cultural interactions. If you do not believe this, or are having trouble with the concept of neophilia verses neophila as it applies to behavior, watch the program Lockup on MSNBC.      

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