Ethnogenesis

The greatest realignment of all

I sing of arms and the man, he who, exiled by fate,

first came from the coast of Troy to Italy, and to

Lavinian shores – hurled about endlessly by land and sea,

by the will of the gods, by cruel Juno’s remorseless anger,

long suffering also in war, until he founded a city

and brought his gods to Latium: from that the Latin people

came, the lords of Alba Longa, the walls of noble Rome.”

-The Aeneid

America has always been a contradiction. Its founding was based on a compromise with various ethnic subcultures that were allowed general autonomy while under a national ethos. The Catholics immigrating to Maryland had little in common with the Puritans of Massachusetts, but the nature of frontier life and the realities of political necessity made strange bedfellows. Eventually, they found themselves under the same umbrella.

After the war for independence, there was no common enemy, and this basic disconnect became obvious. A first attempt at a political union, The Articles of Confederation, gave primacy to individual states for fundamental governance such as levying taxes and regulating trade. The Constitutional Convention, originally supposed to patch the Articles, was a radical departure from its original goal. The new Constitution forced open commerce between the states and monopolized numerous powers, such as currency and trade, under the purview of the Federal Government. Still, the promise of Federalism has always been that only the necessities of governance that could not be done effectively by the individual states would be controlled by Washington D.C. Contrary to popular thought, the original idea of rights such as freedom of speech and religion was to allow states to establish their own religions and their own speech codes, not blanket national freedom. As American identity evolved, so did these principles.

Because of this, moving through states would feel like entering a new nation, with different customs, religions, and heritage. Still, fundamental ideals permeated through early American society. The North became enmeshed in trade and the idea of egalitarianism, while the South germinated their own hierarchy, aristocracy, and traditions.

While there are different ideas of what ethnicity means, the Wikipedia definition is ethnicity is fairly decent (though I do not know what is meant by “social treatment”).

An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people who identify with each other based on perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include a people of a common language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, religion, history, or social treatment. 

Taking this definition, it’s reasonable to conclude out of several colonies, two unique ethnicities were born. The North was culturally and spiritually separated from their European roots with an aggressive humanist philosophy and mercantile mindset interested in production. There was the germination of a religious fervor to spread their ideals throughout the world. The South was far more insular, more enmeshed in thoughts of social stability and maintaining their cultural practices. Inequality wasn’t a flaw to be fixed, but programmed into Nature itself. These two completely antithetical ethnicities will have trouble coexisting in the same government, and soon the barrel of the gun concluded the conflict. 

While the South kept to traditions allowed by the federal government after the Civil War, they slowly erode. This state accelerated after World War II, where the Southerners fought alongside Northerners in peace, and a generation of soldiers saw themselves as Americans before Southerners. As time passed with increased social upheavals and federal use of hard power, the distinct customs and philosophy of the South have been diluted to the extent there is less and less difference between the two geographic areas. They lost much of their distinct ethnicity, and was largely assimilated into an American monoculture. 

The contradiction of America that publicly proclaims the virtue of maintaining one’s core identity in a new land while creating policies utilizing soft power (and sometimes hard) to force assimilation and cohesion into a general national heritage is apparent throughout our entire history. It’s clear that powers in America have bred some of the most fanatical ideologues that have ever roamed the earth, and only the naturally disagreeable nature of the American people and vast swaths of land have kept them in check. 

Conservatives pontificating how immigrants just need to assimilate has always been a coping mechanism. Neither side has had an interest in limiting immigration for ages, and it’s a ploy to pretend they care about maintaining cultural coherence. Immigration was only stopped for forty years in the early 1900s because recent imports committed terrorist attacks against the people in control of mass immigration. Also, no one has managed to stem the evolution of the inherent and increasingly radical national mythology. 

As America made its transition from nation to empire, the internal contradictions manifested. Now we were supposedly a unified nation with a democratic government tasked to care for the interests of said nation, but the federal government became more than willing to spend vast resources and men for clear imperial goals. The cares and interests of the actual people receded as they became viewed as solely resource extraction units for the elite class. Now you’re more likely to get American aid if you are a Ukrainian than a North Carolina hurricane survivor.

The American empire has become a powerful acid designed to dissolve traditional ethnic bonds, internally and externally, as seen from the cultural imperialism in places as far as Eastern Europe. Mass media and communications have created a psychic weapon that was immediately understood by intelligence services and wielded for their interests. The peaceful monoculture America achieved before social upheavals in the 1960’s was largely won through material prosperity, low immigration, and a television in every suburban home. There’s no returning there. The prerequisites don’t exist anymore, and will never exist again. 

As immigration has swamped the country, the push for assimilation in the upper classes has never been more aggressive. It’s why you can talk to a second generation immigrant from Korea and hear the same platitudes, demeanors of speech, and values as an upper class Midwest woman. A question is whether, because of the strong resemblance in mental models, these two people could be considered the same ethnicity.

• Common language - Check

• Culture - Check

• Common sets of ancestry - No, but considered unimportant

• Traditions - No, but considered unimportant

• Society- Check

• Religion - Wokeness

• History - No, but immaterial

Note that blood is a strong component, but it’s not the only factor in what makes a cohesive people. There’s a spiritual contingent. The modern cultural element without the core ancestral connection is unreliable, standing on empty air with no rootedness. While they share some commonalities, they are commonalities of convenience, and do not contain bonds that go beyond immediate interests. As much as the Asian guy agrees with the midwestern girlboss, he won’t sacrifice his life for her, or go to war to keep her safe. It’s a transactional relationship inside a rich person’s club.

Now consider a Lutheran guy from Germany with a wife and three kids and another man of distant German ancestry living next door with the Pride Flag and the “We Believe” sign.

• Common language – Partial (Woke/Corporate English vs. Traditional English)

• Culture - No

• Common sets of ancestry - Yes

• Traditions - No

• Society- Partial

• Religion - No

• History - Yes

They have blood relations, but anything resembling the same spiritual outlook has been detached. Though the blood is there, they exist in different world models. Note that while they both speak English, the symbols and connotations emphasized by their choice of words makes interaction difficult. It’s akin to a 18th century aristocrat reading a Twitter post.

The modern era of rapid change and upheaval is incapable of creating new organic cultural artifacts. The American Empire has tried to implant them artificially, but with little success. No matter how hard it's pushed, very few people are interested in Juneteenth. Other secular federal holidays, such as Labor Day, are just seen as a day off to barbeque. The only successful implant is Memorial day, with elaborate rituals to commemorate those killed in war, and the Fourth of July. Though as general culture has dissolved, so have these holidays been removed of real meaning.

Before, most Americans had deep roots in the original colonies before the nation was even born, and immigrants had a complex history of customs and unspoken rules to navigate. Assimilation happens much quicker now, largely because there's far less culture to assimilate to. Because of our weak cultural bonds, there is heavier reliance on technology and written rules to ensure misunderstandings are avoided and proper conduct is enforced. It's also created a strong mercenary culture, hence the deterioration of social trust, where the types who would usually volunteer their time and money for free in their community stopped, since reciprocation by strangers can no longer be assumed. This incredibly complicated overhead has only been maintained by massive technological infrastructure, creating unprecedented material prosperity.

The final goal of the American Empire’s ideals is the Mass Man, where all ethnic and religious identity is dissolved into a world monoculture. No one has a unique ancestry because every group interbreeds with every other group and any barrier between unique communities is destroyed. It's the idea of total freedom of movement, total freedom from ancestral roots, and total freedom from all cultural presumptions. The ideal of Babel.

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Book of Genesis

Just a coincidence

Ethnicities have been thoroughly assimilated into a larger group or outright destroyed since time immemorial, but never has it been done at the scale of modern times. While it’s been hugely successful, the project is reaching its limits. While people are malleable, much of the differences in the human psyche lies in genetics, and aspects that go far beyond IQ. Some groups have a higher propensity for agreeableness over disagreeability, some for violence over peace, some for long-term thinking over short, and some for community over isolation. These create bottlenecks in creating a one-size fits all society that can fit all these needs.

Americans are in a unique position, as most people have a tenuous relationship with their ancient heritage, if any at all. Once an ethnic heritage fails transmission for a couple generations, it’s near impossible to acquire it back without it becoming a massive LARP. Cultural transmission of one’s heritage is something that is in the air you breathe growing up, and imbued with every aspect of one’s early life. Those who never received from childhood will never be fully assimilated, where a particular ethnicity’s way of thinking is permanently imbued in his psyche.

The Empire also has a rear-guard defense ensuring no organic identities outside of its control advances. Any cohesive group based on interests not conducive to the empire is sought and stamped out with ruthless vigor. Hence why every right-wing group capable of even a whiff of collective action is crushed. They will even jail their own informants in charge of the controlled opposition for not throwing their own colleagues under the bus. Of course, any sort of violence with state approval that limits a people’s ability to congregate safely is passively encouraged.

Americans are also trapped in a vortex of anti-culture that actively tries to crush any unique, intrinsic qualities. You can tell everyone you are a Demi-sexual, but you can’t tell people you prefer the company of your own ethnic group. You can tell everyone you are neuro-divergent, but you can’t live in a neighborhood with only Catholics. There is no organic culture to cling to, and every acceptable fad is a simulacrum of a real innate identity, all transmitted through mass propaganda.

Children raised in this mass culture are enmeshed in material riches and technological wonders that have no identity outside of the screen and their own immediate benefit. This mercenary society has countless skimming operations at every level of production. Where once a handshake was enough to buy a house, a dozen people are now required to pore over every detail of the agreement to get their share of the pie. These inefficiencies stemming from having no common folk, no common customs, and deteriorating trust, and have drastically weakened the ability of The American Empire to keep the prosperity and enforcement necessary to keep things running.

So what happens to a people who have largely lost their old ethnic identity with no reasonable hope of regaining it, surrounded by a society that can’t formulate an ethnos of its own?

They separate, build new communities, and become a new people. Ethnogenesis.

America’s slow but inevitable decline, alongside the decline in standard of living and resistance to mass media will erode their ability to force association, and slowly new power centers will form. You’re already seeing some of this happen in Florida, that has become a conservative fortress with a mass migration of right-leaning people, with California becoming a progressive barricade through foreign immigration. The next great migrations won’t be based entirely on old ethnicities, but on a multitude of factors based on a unique  genetic and cultural temperament. As these barricades form, they will find ways to barricade themselves from outsiders and get needs met through working with their own community.

There’s no doubt in my mind a political organization called “The United States of America” will still exist in a hundred years. There’s also no doubt that practically no one will consider themselves an “American” as everyone splinters off into their own sub-conclaves within the country, except for a few policy wonks in dilapidated Washington D.C. Those relics will still be expounding on American glory fifty years from now, when money flowed like water into the Capitol. Total collapse will not happen, but enough economic contraction will occur that money will be inflated to meaningless numbers or social benefits stripped to the extent that they cannot pay off the parasite classes, who will turn against their once-benefactor. As the state can no longer inflict overwhelming force, new de facto governments will form. 

These Quasi-closed communities will slowly develop their own governing structure, customs, and traditions based on the type of people who enter. People of certain thoughts and temperaments and intrinsic qualities will see benefit in uprooting and entering them. Over time, families will form and marry within the group. A unique society will take root with a common world-model molded since childhood. 

These communities will be a long, complicated mess of compromises that get worked out through implicit agreements, unwritten rules, and practical consideration of the environmental ecosystem they live in. Just like in real life, a piece of paper will be wholly inadequate to tell what they are. It’s just something they will feel in their bones and resist deconstruction.

A community will proudly fly the Rebel Flag, consisting of old Southerners who want to reinstate traditions for a new reality, alongside Midwesterners who have always been entranced by that era. The symbols will be a nod to the past, while the connotations them will look to the future. You’ll have that community alongside an Orthodox conclave. They will find common ground, maintain some economic cooperation and cultural transmission, but will know to mind their own affairs. You’ll see leftist pods in San Francisco, more than happy with all the moral platitudes of the woke America, but also understanding Washington D.C. can not project force to enforce its ideology, and the focus will become more local to maintain themselves.

Over generations, those communities conducive to bringing about economic prosperity, community health, and transmitting their values will thrive. Over a longer period, those that encourage their elite to reproduce will reverse the IQ shredder that is wrecking American society. With time, natural selection will take hold not only on the individual level, but on a societal scale.

They will create their own security and balance exposure to the larger world. They will reproduce, their children will grow up only knowing the new normal, and create great-grandchildren. The personalities and traits of the founders will spread throughout the community, fitting their character in new and unseen ways. The new customs and traditions will be a part of their very being, their genetic legacy a treasure, their world myth Holy Writ.

It will be an age of strife, uncertainty, and terror as these fledgling settlements struggle to survive in a rapidly deteriorating and hostile world. Necessity will force basics such as food to the most advanced technologies currently bought across the globe to be brought home. Alliances will form, social technologies once deemed obsolete will gain new prominence as true privation becomes a possibility. Many will be annihilated, many subverted, many assimilated, but some will survive. 

It will be an age of chaos, an age of uncertainty, and an age of heroes. 

We’re already seeing exciting real-life examples of this, shoots sprouting from ancient earth, which will be explored in subsequent posts.

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