Thursday, August 31, 2017

Caring For Kin Makes Sense

In the United States, all eyes have been on Houston and the devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey, at least when the media is not having a cow about Melania Trump's footwear or Trump pardoning an elderly former sheriff. Natural disasters like this don't come around very often, it has been a dozen years since Hurricane Katrina and I am starting to think this is going to end up a lot worse than Katrina from an economic standpoint. As of right I think there are 21 confirmed deaths in Houston and the economic cost is going to astronomical. I am glad I don't own stock in property insurance companies.



The outpouring of aid from Americans is incredible. So many people, including me, have donated financially to help (did you see my virtue? I was signaling for ya!). Many others are on location helping out in any way they can. Even evil corporations like Wal-Mart are donating tens of millions in cash and I heard this morning that Wal-Mart has donated 1000 truckloads of stuff to help people out. In other words, we are answering the call of our fellow citizens in their time of need.

But there are floods in Asia even as we speak and from a death toll standpoint they are far, far worse. This is the headline from yesterday from the Independent


If they can confirm 1,200 dead in those three countries, you can bet the real death toll is a lot higher.


But we don't really hear much about that while the news coverage of Houston is wall to wall.

If you buy into the progressive narrative, people in the U.S. caring more about 21 deaths in Texas than we do about 1,200 deaths in South Asia is proof of our White supremacist, racist disregard for brown people. But is that the case?

I don't think so. In Hurricanes Katrina and Harvey alike the people impacted were White and black and mestizo. In 2010 only about a quarter of people in Houston were "non-Hispanic Whites" or as I like to call them "Whites". When Katrina hit New Orleans the White population was only a little higher, around 31-32%. We didn't care, as a people we still poured out the aid in the form of money and volunteering. So why the difference in attention from Houston to South Asia?

The simple answer is kinism. People have a natural and understandable affinity for people that are more like them than for people that are not. If a person is killed in a car accident in Germany, it doesn't really impact me and I probably don't really care about it. If someone dies in an accident in Iowa, that still doesn't impact me but it is much closer to home. If someone I know in my town dies in an accident, it probably impacts me. If it was a cousin? Then obviously that is going to cause a great deal of sadness and warrant a lot of attention from me. That is not racism or xenophobia, it is just simple human nature.

Man has always formed tribes, and family for most humans, especially people in Western civilizations, has always been supremely important. The draw of family is so powerful that even Christ warned that we had to love Him before our own family:
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10:34-37, KJV)
That would have been extraordinary for his audience to hear. We care most for those most like us and that translates to caring for family more than non-family and for neighbors more than strangers.

Do you suppose that when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, and a similar 1,200 Americans died, that people in India, Nepal and Bangladesh cared about it at all or even knew about it? I very much doubt it and I would not expect them to. Why would they care about Americans dying thousands of miles away? On the other hand, when something terrible happens in places like Haiti or Africa who is the first to show up and help? Those awful racist and xenophobic Americans and especially American Christians. Like Rodney Dangerfield we just don't get no respect.

Ethno-nationalism and kinism are not exactly synonymous but they both work on a similar principle. People are drawn to and care most about other people like them. Even fellow believers of different races prefer to worship with people like themselves. I would not be comfortable worshiping in an exuberant black church service just as they for the most part would not be interested in a quiet, contemplative service of the kind that I like that is deeply theological with minimal or no musical instruments. Many Jews want to live in their own homeland governed by fellow Jews and surrounded by other Jews. Immigrants to a new country typically live in the same areas in that country together because we prefer what is familiar. My hope is to someday have the opportunity to live among fellow American Whites in an ethnostate specifically for Whites, as I would argue this country was intended to be. I would wish the same opportunities for other groups, a Jewish homeland for the Jews, a black homeland for the blacks. I like the part of the country I live in now but I would move in a heartbeat to be in a new nation made up of people that share my race, my faith and my beliefs.

Caring more for our kin is one of the most natural responses to the fallen world. We rely on our own blood to care for us and we in turn care for them. It makes no sense to try to create a nation where people with essentially no ties are expected to nevertheless live harmoniously as opposed to competing against and seeking advantage over one another. I want nothing more than to freely live and associate with those I choose to and I want the same thing for all people and wish them the best. In order for that to happen we are going to have to let go of some inaccurate and misguided notions. This country is not going to survive intact over the next 25 years or probably even less. Better to let the people divide ourselves up as we see fit than to devolve into chaos and bloodshed.

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