A New Theory of Western Civilization

Of course the idea has plenty of merit; I'm just saying that social scientists have been aware of it for a long time, and it's a bit strange to describe it as "new". See e.g. [0] which is cited in the wiki article on cousin marriage.

[0] Woodley, Michael A.; Edward Bell (2013). "Consanguinity as a Major Predictor of Levels of Democracy: A Study of 70 Nations". Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 44 (2): 263–280. doi:10.1177/0022022112443855. S2CID 145714074.

That sounds nice and all, except "kinship, long-term friendships and intergenerational family obligations" is still forming the fabric of western societies and up to as late as the 1960's (and even later), most people were not freely able to "gather in groups based on their levels of competence, interests and views".

Western liberalism and individual freedom is really a very recent development. Just 100 years ago, people were being forced to work on ships, in factories, on farms, in wars and 3-4 generations living in one home was normal. Just 60 years ago, many people were heavily discriminated against and had little freedom.

Imo, these "more effective social associations" just lead to an increase in mental problems and perhaps ultimately, to the unraveling of such societies. Long term *ships are good, the focus on hyper efficiency just means more and more people are being left behind, and groups simply have no idea what other groups are thinking or how to work with them.

See all the antimaskers, antivaxxers, authoritarian supporters. All dismissed as stupid/irrelevant and considered a minority by the other side. And vice versa. The reality is different, but there's such a disconnect that no one knows how to fix this.

Repeated inbreeding within the 4th degree of kinship[1] is observably dysgenic too. A society's breeding mores have genetic as well as cultural effects. In fact the two are so closely intertwined I don't believe they can be practicably separated.

[1] Degrees are counted by how many nodes in the tree have to be traversed upward to reach the nearest common direct ancestor. For example siblings are second degree since the two siblings share a common ancestor. An uncle and nephew would be 3rd degree, first cousins 4th degree, and so on.

> It's a game-changing paradigm when you put it in perspective to most other contemporary non-Western societies where kinship, long-term friendships and intergenerational family obligations are forming the fabric of society.

"most other contemporary non-Western societies?" You are a rare anthropologist to make this assertion. Both endogamy and exogamy are common across the globe, and have been for millennia.

I think this book excerpt overstates the case.

Nothing more dangerous then males aged 16~30 in their physical prime sexually frustrated and access to weapons.

I that includes a very narrow form of polygamy. In particular, that men are the only ones allowed to take multiple partners. In a form of polygamy where everyone gets to take multiple partners it is exactly the opposite. Everyone is always available to form bonds with whom they want. This notion of being "taken" in marriage is what breaks polygamy.

It's an upside down logic to think that low status men cause war. Yes, they do have more incentives to go to war, there is a correlation, but this doesn't mean it's the cause. I'd bet that in every such situation the root cause of war is the hunger of power of the top leadership. They could deliberately impose even worse imbalance and use the "hate force" of low status men as a destructive energy in a war. This is what Russia does nowadays, I believe.

I wasn't really thinking about single men destabilizing a society. Just an idea that mixing genes up more in children may be good for that society, and that anything that reduces this mixing may be unhelpful to a society.

I see both monogamy and preventing cosanguinity as examples of actions that could increase this mixing.

Your theory requires us to believe that low status men are more capable of starting wars than the high status men who actually run society.

Incel anger is a real thing, but incels are not building warships or running munitions factories.

The causation could easily go the other way.

In most societies, males are typically sent out to war because males can easily have more children than females since they don't have go go through a period of pregnancy, so a society that sacrifices its males on high risk high reward activities can rebuild faster than if it sacrificed females instead. This is why typically you see male soldiers, raiders, and explorers.

But as a result, more warlike societies tend to have less males in the population than females because the males keep getting sent out to die. Remaining females now have less potential mates to choose from, so polygamy becomes socially acceptable to ensure more people get a share of the economic rewards those surviving males bring back.

So you could easily flip this around and say that it's not polygamy that causes war. Rather, war causes polygamy, and polygamy is a reward for the few male "winners" that survive to bring home the loot because now they have less genetic competition.

This model of warfare reducing the proportion of males could also explain why most societies have tended to be patrachical. Scarce males means each males has more bargaining power. In return for the economic loot they bring back, they could demand more say in the household than their counterpart or counterparts. Stretch this population imbalance over a few centuries and you get a patrachical society.