Japan
is robotizing not only manufacturing but also the service sector (Wikicommons -
Michael Ocampo)
In
my last two posts I argued that South Korea has embraced not only ultra-low
fertility but also mass immigration. In this, it has more in common with
Western Europe and North America than with neighboring China and Japan.
China
is out of step with Western immigration policy for understandable reasons: it
is only now exhausting its reserves of cheap labor and, furthermore, has
problematic relations with the West. But those reasons hardly apply to Japan—a
Western ally with fewer and fewer people of working age. Yet that country has
been going its own way on immigration, just as it has in other areas, notably
automation and robotization.In the
West, robotics research is a low priority, except for military applications. In
Japan, it is a high priority and has the stated aim of staving off immigration:
"Japan's
push for automation has historically been driven by political and social
resistance to large-scale immigration by non-Japanese, rooted in the idea that
there would be a deep cultural incompatibility with such immigrants," says
Grant Otsuki, a lecturer in cultural anthropology at Victoria University of
Wellington.
"In
contrast, robots are generally seen as compatible with tradition and culture,
or at least 'neutral', and therefore more acceptable than immigrants."
(Townsend 2019)
Robotic
beings have a good image in Japan, as shown by a spate of movies where a shy
boy falls in love with a female android: Chobits
(2002), Cyborg She (2008), and Q10 (2010). In contrast, we see a darker
image in Western movies, such as the Terminator
series, Ex Machina (2015), and Blade Runner (1982 and 2017).
Keep
in mind that culture is upstream from policy. If you think movies are made only
to provide entertainment, you probably also believe that newspapers serve only
to cover the news and that advertisements are used only to sell a specific good
or service. Culture is an effective way to shape future policies.
South Korea and
Japan: different responses to the same demographic crisis
The South Korean
response
Although
South Korea and Japan face the same demographic crisis, i.e., an aging society
and a low birth rate, they have responded in very different ways. South Korea
has greatly liberalized its immigration policy, both in law and in enforcement
of the law. Since 1997 the country has opened up its labor market to guest
workers and has relaxed enforcement to the point that half of all migrants are
undocumented (Moon 2010).
Song
(undated) sees a link between the beginning of large-scale labor immigration to
his country and the IMF bailout of 1997. However, the "Memorandum on the
Economic Program," written by the South Korean government in response to
the IMF, says nothing specific about immigration. There is only a promise to
implement "labor market reform" and take "further steps to
improve labor market flexibility" (IMF 1997). Perhaps other promises were
made off the record.
To
gain support for large-scale immigration, the government began to promote
multiculturalism from 2006 onward:
But
the South Korean media also began to host fervent discussions of
multiculturalism. In 2005-2006, the number of articles on the topic tripled
from previous years. The media shift was echoed by a change in policy from the
top, initially driven by President Roh Moo-hyun. The campaign then crossed
ministerial divisions and party lines, surviving the changeover from the
liberal Roh administration of 2003-2008 to the more conservative administration
of President Lee Myung-bak. Lee's government sought both to persuade the public
to embrace immigrants and to promote integration by educating new foreign-born
brides in the intricacies of Korean culture. The Ministry of Gender Equality
and Family simultaneously started a campaign to persuade the public to accept
multiculturalism. Immigration commissioners and the presidential committee on
aging set multiculturalism as a national priority to combat a maturing society.
South Korea was to become a "first-class nation, with foreigners" — a
phrase echoed throughout government documents and speeches. (Palmer and Park
2018)
Watson
(2010) ascribes this new policy to the neo-liberalism that has dominated both
the Right and the Left, particularly since the IMF bailout of 1997:
For
the conservative government, South Korean nationalism and democracy is
fundamentally tied to the doctrine of neo-liberalism. Neo-liberalism refers to
the flow of economic migrant labour and mobile global capital. This global
environment also requires government policies to attract foreign migrants and
workers into South Korea's economy and society.
Multiculturalism
is a state-led response to these global changes. The policies of
multiculturalism define the present and future economic, security and cultural
national strength of South Korea. Critics suggest that, in fact, the GNP
regards multiculturalism as an instrumental policy of increasing national state
power in this global environment. (Watson, 2010)
The
GNP is the Grand National Party. It dominates the political right and resembles
mainstream Republicanism in the United States:
The Japanese
response
Meanwhile,
Japan has been much less willing to open its borders, despite being East Asia's
primary destination for foreigners. Its illegal immigrant population has actually
declined through stronger law enforcement, and legal immigrants have been
mostly overseas Japanese from Latin America. Last year, however, its parliament
passed a law to bring in foreign workers for jobs in construction, agriculture,
the hotel industry, cleaning, and elder care. Initially, 500,000 were slated to
come over the next five years, but the total was cut to 345,000 (Denyer 2018;
Nikkei 2018; Shigeta 2018).
Those
numbers are still much lower than the 2.4 million foreign workers currently in
South Korea, a much smaller country in size and population. In addition,
Japan's guest workers will be paid the same as Japanese doing the same work
(Denyer 2018). This is in stark contrast to South Korea, which has the largest
wage gap between local and immigrant labor in the OECD (Hyun-ju 2015).
Japan
is still criticized for not opening up enough. One example is this Washington Post article, whose author
warns the U.S. against becoming another Japan:
Now,
to be clear, Japan is a wondrous nation, with an ancient, complex culture,
welcoming people, innovative industry — a great deal to teach the world. But
Japan also is a country that admits few immigrants — and, as a result, it is an
aging, shrinking nation. By 2030, more than half the country will be over age
50. By 2050 there will be more than three times as many old people (65 and
over) as children (14 and under). Already, deaths substantially outnumber
births. Its population of 127 million is forecast to shrink by a third over the
next half-century. (Hiatt 2018)
Robotization
may make life easier for Japan's growing numbers of elderly but will it pay for
their pensions? Mind you, the same sort of question could be asked about
low-wage immigration to the U.S.
Why is Japan so different?
A
key reason seems to be a high degree of cultural autonomy and a correspondingly
high degree of cultural isolation. The term "isolation" might seem
strange for a country that does so much importing and exporting. Nonetheless,
manufactured goods are not the same as beliefs. The latter are distributed not
via shipping containers but through shared language and through shared
discourse spaces in academia, entertainment, and the media.
Poor knowledge of
English
English
has become the language of globalism, and knowledge of English correlates
worldwide with public acceptance of core globalist beliefs. In Japan, English
is not widely used or understood, even among the well-educated:
Although
English is a compulsory subject in junior high and high school in this country,
Japanese still have a hard time achieving even daily conversation levels.
According to the most recent EF English Proficiency Index, the English level of
Japanese is ranked 35th out of 72 countries. The top three are the Netherlands,
Denmark and Sweden, which are all northern European nations. Among Asian
countries, Singapore is placed sixth, Malaysia 12th, the Philippines 13th,
India 22nd and South Korea 29th. Japan places between Russia and Uruguay.
(Tsuboya-Newell 2017)
Sullivan
and Schatz (2009) found that attitudes toward learning English correlated
negatively with patriotism (defined as positive identification and affective
attachment to one's country) and positively with nationalism, internationalism,
and pro-U.S. attitudes. Here, "nationalism" is defined as
"perceptions of national superiority and support for national
dominance"—what Steve Sailer has dubbed "Invade the world, invite the
world!"
Relative isolation
of academia
Academia
can propagate a new discourse in several ways:
-
by inculcating it in young adults
-
by acting as a trusted gatekeeper that serves to distinguish between
"correct" and "incorrect" discourse.
-
by mobilizing scarce intellectual resources for the development and
dissemination of "correct" discourse.
New
forms of discourse, like globalism, cannot easily penetrate Japanese colleges
and universities by means of overseas-trained leaders. Unlike the case in many
other Asian countries, educational authorities prefer to select future leaders
from within, attaching little importance to foreign experience and credentials
for promotion within the system (Yonezawa et al. 2018, p. 235). Foreign-born
professors are hired mostly for teaching English language and literature.
Relative isolation
of policy makers
This
relative isolation is true for Japanese in general, including policy makers.
International organizations, like the IMF, have little input into public
policy, in large part because Japan's debt is almost wholly Japanese-owned.
This economic independence has been a longstanding characteristic of Japan and
enjoys support not only from the political left but also from the political
right:
In
Japan, unlike many of the social democracies resisting capital movements, the
most important political opposition came not from organized labor and a
political Left anxious to prevent capital flight and to protect the welfare
state; rather, it came from nominally "conservative" politicians;
many bureaucratic agencies, including the MOF; and protected, cartelized
sectors of the economy, including banks, securities houses, and insurance
firms. (Pempel 1999, p. 911)
In
the West, globalism coopted first the Right and then the Left. That process is
still at an early stage in Japan.
Conclusion
I
would like to conclude with three points:
-
Japan will be a nice place to visit during the troubled 2020s. The same decade
will see South Korea become more and more like the West, especially the United
States—in keeping with stated policy goals.
-
English is the language not only of globalism but also of anti-globalism. Just
as Japan will move toward globalism more slowly than the West, it will also
move away more slowly ... when that time comes. As for South Korea, it will
enter a period of polarization, perhaps violent polarization.
-
Japan shows that the Western model of modernity is not the only one, or even
the best. The Western model is a product of specific circumstances,
particularly the presence of a large rentier class that feeds on growth while
doing little to make growth sustainable. At home and abroad, our rentier class
continually pushes for high rates of growth through expansion of the money
supply, through mass immigration, and through rapid exploitation of resources
that are either non-renewable or slowly renewable.
Japan's
slow-growth model is problematic in other ways, but it promises to be more
sustainable in the long run.
Song,
H-J. (undated). Immigration Policy in
South Korea & Japan - A Comparative Perspective Theoretical framework.
University of Tsukuba. International and Advanced Japanese Studies. PowerPoint
presentation http://japan.tsukuba.ac.jp/09225Song.pdf
Sullivan,
N. and R.T. Schatz (2009). Effects of Japanese national identification on
attitudes toward learning English and self-assessed English proficiency. International Journal of Intercultural
Relations 33(6): 486-497 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0147176709000236
By
mid-century, immigrant workers will be almost as numerous as native-born
workers (AINZ 2016)
Readers
took exception to a population forecast in my last post: children of mixed
parentage will make up a third of all South Korean births in 2020 (Lim 2011).
Yet in 2015 they made up only 5% (Lim 2017). From 5% to one third—is that
possible in only five years?
This
forecast was tangential to my argument. Ultimately, the rate of population
replacement is less important than the final outcome. All the same, this
forecast seems to me plausible because South Korea's population is changing at
an accelerating rate. There are three interacting reasons:
Logarithmic
increase
The
increase in births of "multicultural children" is logarithmic, and
not linear. In 2015, such children numbered 207,693 and more than half were
under 6 years of age (Wiki- Multicultural Family in South Korea 2019). This
factor, alone, will cause the annual number of such births to double or even
triple between 2015 and 2020.
Declining
fertility of native-born women
The
total fertility rate declined from 1.25 births per woman in 2015 to 0.98 in
2018 (Steger 2019). The rate of decline is probably higher for native-born
women. In addition, fewer of them are of childbearing age. These two factors
are together driving down the total number of births. In one year alone, from
2017 to 2018, the birth rate fell by 8.6% (Steger 2019).
Shift in sources
of foreign brides toward high-fertility countries
Initially,
many foreign brides were ethnic Koreans from northeast China, where the total
fertility rate is even lower, only 0.75 births per woman (Wang 2018). The
ethnic mix is now shifting toward brides from Southeast Asia, where TFRs are
three or four times higher: Philippines: 3 births per woman, Vietnam: 2 births
per women, Indonesia: 2.1 births per woman, Cambodia 2.5 births per woman.
So
will "multicultural children" make up 33% of all births in 2020?
Forecasts can be wrong, but I don't think this one will be far off the mark. On
the one hand, the annual number of such births seems to be more than doubling
every five years. On the other hand, the total number of South Korean births is
falling sharply.
By the way, that
forecast doesn't include labor immigration
Please
note: this is not the whole story of population replacement in South Korea.
There is also labor immigration, which will become more and more important
demographically:
[...]
The government has brought in an immigration policy that actively embraces
immigrants. Last year, it formulated it in the low birth rate and aging
measures and economic policy direction. It will actively accept immigration and
solve various economic and social problems such as lack of population.
Immigration policy will be in full swing after 2018.
[...]
According to the data from the Korea Immigration Policy Institute, a steady
influx of immigrants is needed to increase the potential growth rate by 1
percentage point. In 2020, there will be 4,994,000, and in 2030, 9,927,000. In
2035, 10,864,000 people will be needed, a quarter of the total working
population of 41.75 million. In 2050, 16,116,000 people will be needed. In
2060, there will be 17,224,000 people—only 4 million people less than the
domestic workforce (21,865,000 people). (AINZ 2016)
It’s
not clear whether these immigrants and their children will be entitled to
citizenship or will always be guest workers. In the end it doesn’t really
matter. They will become a permanent presence in South Korea.
Can South Korea
overcome its fertility crisis?
Fertility
rates can rise, just as they can fall, as one commenter noted:
[...]
there's no reason to think native Korean fertility is going to stay at such a
low level indefinitely. Birth rates go up and down and yearly TFRs are just a
snapshot. A number of European countries had fertility drop to very low levels
and have seen their TFRs increase significantly, though usually not to
replacement. Czech Republic, Romania, Russia and Georgia all come to mind.
(Georgia's fertility is now at replacement actually, thanks to their church.) I
could see South Korean fertility following that pattern.
Yes,
fertility rates can rise, but vigorous action is needed to make them rise. I'm
not convinced that such action will be sufficient in South Korea's case.
Detailed analysis suggests that the fertility rate is so low because many young
adults are trapped in "nonregular" jobs that offer little stability
and no benefits, particularly maternity or parental leave. They are nonetheless
expected to meet traditional preconditions for family formation:
Our
analysis also indicates a very limited scope for future fertility increase in
Korea, especially because larger families have almost vanished. [...] The low
fertility will be sustained by irregular work contracts among younger people
and a combination of unfavorable labor market conditions for women with
families and the persistence of traditional gender roles and expectations
regarding their family roles, household tasks, caring for dependent members,
and childrearing. (Yoo and Sobotka 2018)
The
example of South Korea suggests that social conservatives may be wrong in blaming
the West's fertility crisis largely on the decline in traditional values and
the rise of alternative sexual lifestyles (single motherhood, gay marriage,
etc.). These factors are much less important in South Korea. Furthermore, an
argument can be made that some traditional values are doing more harm than good
in the current economic environment, both in South Korea and in the West,
specifically the idea that parents shouldn't start a family until one of them
has secure employment. In most cases, that precondition will never be met.
The
main problem is thus twofold: 1) young adults increasingly have precarious
employment and are postponing childbearing until their situation becomes
sufficiently stable; 2) the culture in general has shifted away from the family
and toward employment as the ultimate meaning of life.
Young
South Koreans should explore alternative means of gaining income and accept the
idea that family life can be just as rewarding as work life. This will be difficult
to do, however, if the South Korean government pursues its commitment to
globalism. Young adults are increasingly thrown into competition with poorly
paid foreign workers, either through outsourcing of employment to low-wage
countries or through insourcing of low-wage workers for "3D jobs"—dirty,
dangerous, and demeaning (Mundy 2013).
Employers
are in fact incentivized to bring in foreign workers. South Korea has the
largest wage gap of OECD countries between local and immigrant labor, and the
gap remains even when one controls for differences in work skills (Hyun-ju
2015). This use of immigrants to do "work that Koreans won't do" has
the perverse effect of increasing such employment while reducing employment
that can support a family.
Wang,
M. (2018). For Whom the Bell Tolls: A
Retrospective and Predictive Study of Fertility Rates in China (November 8,
2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3234861
Mid-term exams at a South
Korean middle school (Wikicommons - Samuel Orchard)
South Korea opened up to
mail-order brides a quarter of a century ago. Most are from Southeast Asia
(Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia), although some are ethnic
Koreans from northeast China. Men outnumber women in South Korea, as they do elsewhere in
East Asia, and the male surplus is even larger in rural areas because of the
many women who move to cities for employment (Park 2011).
As a result, 472,390
"multicultural marriages" were performed between 2000 and 2016 (Lim
2017). In 2005, the peak year, 13% of all marriages involved a foreign-born
bride. This way of finding a bride has been especially popular in rural areas,
where 40% of all couples are mixed (Park 2011). The offspring of these
marriages "are expected to number over 1.6 million by 2020, with a third
of all children born that year the offspring of international unions" (Lim
2011). In rural areas, this proportion is expected to be half of all children
by 2020 (Park 2011).
Such children will increase
both in absolute numbers and proportionately for three reasons. First, they are
born mostly in rural areas, where incentives for childbearing are relatively high.
Second, their mothers come from cultures where fertility is likewise relatively
high. Third, Korean women have a very low fertility rate: only 0.98 children
per woman in 2018.
South Korea is thus on track
for rapid demographic replacement. This change is interesting not only because
of its rapidity but also because it is happening in a country that differs
considerably from Western Europe and North America in history and culture.
Negative effects cannot be blamed on slavery, colonialism, or other chickens
coming home to roost. Until the twentieth century the country kept to itself, to
such a point that it was called "The Hermit Kingdom." There then
followed Japanese rule, American occupation, and devastating war. Not until the
1980s did South Korea become truly advanced, and affluent.
So can South Korea change its
population and remain advanced and affluent? This question is all the more
relevant because the country has only one natural advantage in the global
marketplace: its human capital.
Academic failure
In general, children of mixed
parentage do badly at school: "The drop-out rate among mixed-blood youths
is estimated at 9.4% in elementary schools and 17.5% at the secondary level,
compared with less than 3% among ordinary Korean youths" (Kang 2010).
This poor performance is
usually put down to the mother's poor language skills. "Because their
mothers have difficulty in speaking and writing Korean, these children may be
making slow progress in language development in comparison to the Korean
children" (Kang 2010). If this explanation is correct, such children
should do worse in subjects that demand much social interaction and language
use. Conversely, they should do better in subjects that require abstract
skills, like mathematics, or memorization of names and dates, like social
studies. This is, in fact, the pattern we see in children of East Asian
immigrants in North America.
But this is not the pattern we
see in children born in South Korea to non-Korean mothers: "Their
favourite subjects are music/painting/physical education (42.6%), while they
dislike math (38.1%), social studies (19.2%) and Korean (12.7%)" (Kang
2010). The learning deficit seems to be strongest in those subjects that
require the most abstraction and memorization.
Moreover, a study conducted
over several months found that these children do not have language problems
that can be traced to deficient learning at home from their mothers: "This
study revealed that multicultural children did not exhibit any difficulty in
communicating with others in everyday Korean but that they had varying degrees
of academic vocabulary mastery" (Shin 2018). So the problem is
not with learning of normal spoken language at home but with learning of
specialized terminology at school. The study's author concluded: “This finding
then raises the questions of why the simplified discourse about multicultural
children's deficiency in Korean has been easily accepted as true in society and
who benefits from the (re)production of the idea that they need special care,
particularly regarding Korean language instruction” (Shin 2018).
Non-compliance with social rules
Koreans are expected to show a
high level of compliance with social rules. These rules may apply to everyone
(e.g., wearing seatbelts) or only to students (e.g., no smoking, mandatory hand
washing). Compliance seems to be weaker in children of foreign-born mothers,
as suggested by lower rates of hand washing and wearing of seatbelts and higher
rates of smoking (Yi and Kim 2017).
Suicidal ideation and suicidal attempts
Children of mixed parentage
are more likely to contemplate and attempt suicide, but this seems to be
related more to decreased self-control than to increased depression or stress.
Kim et al. (2015) concluded: "There was no significant difference in the
levels of depression, self-reported happiness, and self-reported stress between
adolescents from multicultural and monocultural families. However, suicidal
ideation and suicidal attempt were significantly higher in adolescents from
multicultural families."
Violence and hyperactivity
Children of mixed parentage
also show higher levels of hostility, fear, anxiety, and anger (Moon and An
2011). Between the ages of 5 and 12 years they are more likely to engage in
hyperactive behaviors, as rated by their teachers (Park and Nam 2010). Finally,
between the ages of 11 and 13 years they are more prone to delinquency and
aggression (Lee et al. 2018).
On the other hand, Yu and Kim
(2015) found higher incidences of violence at school and non-compliance with
rules (smoking, drug use, alcohol use, sexual activity) only in children of foreign-born fathers and native-born mothers. Children of foreign-born
mothers and native-born fathers were behaviorally similar to children of native-born mothers and native-born fathers. It is true that the other studies lump
all “multicultural” children together, making no distinction between those with
foreign-born mothers and those with foreign-born fathers. However, the second
group is much smaller than the first—too small to explain the differing results.
This may be seen in the study by Yu and Kim (2015), which had 88 binational children of foreign-born fathers versus 622 of foreign-born mothers.
The findings of Yu and Kim
(2015) also run counter to the standard acculturation model. A child normally
has a stronger bond with its mother than with its father, so a child should
better assimilate Korean behavioral norms if its mother is Korean than if its
mother is non-Korean. But here we see the reverse.
Conclusion
The most robust finding is
that children of mixed parentage do poorly at school. The reason is commonly
said to be poor language skills, yet the pattern of academic failure is
actually the opposite of what that explanation would predict. Moreover, these children
seem to have no trouble with everyday spoken Korean. Their problem is with
specialized vocabulary that is normally learned at school and not at home.
Children of mixed parentage also
seem to be less compliant with rules and more prone to violence and
hyperactivity. This was the finding of three out of four studies. The
underlying cause may be weaker mechanisms for self-control, self-discipline,
and internalization of social rules. This factor may also play a role in the higher
incidences of suicidal ideation and suicidal attempts.
In the academic literature, these
findings are explained in terms of normal versus abnormal development. Children
of mixed parentage are said to develop abnormally because they are more
interested in music and physical education than in math. Their higher levels of
violence and hyperactivity are explained the same way.But what if they had been assessed in their
mothers' home countries? Would they still seem so abnormal? On a global level,
few societies expect the degree of academic nerdiness that Koreans expect of
themselves.
Better research is needed. My
first suggestion: provide data on ethnicity. It’s not enough to distinguish
between "native-born" and "foreign-born." A foreign-born
mother could be an ethnic Korean from China who has more in common with a
native-born mother. There may also be significant behavioral differences among
binational children depending on which Southeast Asian country the mother comes
from. The relevant factor is really ethnicity and not place of birth.
This factor may explain why
children are less violent when they have foreign mothers and Korean fathers
than when they have Korean mothers and foreign fathers. The foreigners are
ethnically different in the two cases. In the first case, they are Southeast
Asians. In the second case, they are either U.S. servicemen or migrant laborers
who come not only from Southeast Asia but also from South Asia, Southwest Asia,
and Africa.
My second suggestion: do not
frame the issue solely in terms of "acculturation." i.e.,
insufficient learning by children of Korean culture, particularly the Korean
language. This is not to say that acculturation is never a causal factor, but
rather that it is assumed to be the only one, even to the point of
misrepresenting reality.
Yes, culture does matter, but
it interacts with other factors, including genetic ones. Humans everywhere have
had to adapt to their cultural environment—more so, in fact, than to their
natural environment—and this has been no less true for the Korean people. To
survive in a highly complex and demanding culture, they have had to acquire
certain mental capabilities:
- high cognitive ability (mean
IQ of 106)
- high self-control
- high degree of compliance
with social rules
- low time preference and,
correspondingly, strong future-oriented thinking
- strong inhibition of
violence, which can be released only if permitted by social rules
All of these mental capabilities
have moderate to high heritability and are no less real than the more visible
aspects of the human body, like gender, skin color, and body height. They exist
because they have enabled Koreans to survive and flourish in a specific
cultural environment
The Korean people have
achieved a high standard of living through their knowledge, foresight, and
self-discipline—qualities that are the outcome of a long process of
gene-culture coevolution. Generation after generation of their ancestors have had
to adapt to the demands of a harsh cultural environment, this adaptation being bought
at a high price: the success of some individuals and the failure of many more. This
is why Koreans traditionally revere their ancestors.
All of this has been gained
through much effort over many generations, but it can all be lost in one or
two. To do or to undo—which do you think is easier?
Kim, J-M., B-G. Kong, J-W.
Kang, J.-J. Moon, D.-W. Jeon, E.-C. Kang, H.-B. Ju, Y.-H. Lee, and D.-U. Jung.
(2015). Comparative Study of Adolescents' Mental Health between Multicultural
Family and Monocultural Family in Korea. Journal
of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 26(4): 279-287. https://www.e-sciencecentral.org/articles/SC000022127
Lee, J.S., J.M. Kim, and A.R.
Ju. (2018). A structural analysis on the effects of children's parentification
in multicultural families on their psychological maladjustment - comparison
with children in monocultural families. Journal
of the Korea Institute of Youth Facility and Environment 16:117-130. https://www.earticle.net/Article/A329970
Moon SH, and H.J. An (2011).
Anger, anger expression, mental health and psychosomatic symptoms of children
in multi-cultural families. Journal of
Korean Academy of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 20(4): 325-333. https://synapse.koreamed.org/DOIx.php?id=10.12934/jkpmhn.2011.20.4.325
Park, J.H., and J.S. Nam
(2010). The language development and psychosocial adjustment of multicultural
children. Studies on Korean Youth. 21:129-152.
Yi, Y., and J-S. Kim. (2017).
Korean Adolescents' Health Behavior and Psychological Status according to Their
Mother's Nationality. Osong Public Health
and Research Perspectives 8(6): 377-383. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5749486/
Shin, J. (2018). Minority
youth's mastery of academic vocabulary and its implications for their
educational achievements: the case of 'multicultural adolescents' in South
Korea. Multicultural Education Review
10(1): 35-51, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2005615X.2018.1423539
Yu, J-O, and M. Sung Kim.
(2015). A Study on the Health Risk Behaviors of Adolescents from Multicultural
Families according to the Parents' Migration Background. Journal of Korean Academy of Community Health Nursing 26(3):190-198 https://synapse.koreamed.org/DOIx.php?id=10.12799/jkachn.2015.26.3.190
Aristotle
discussed adaptation by natural selection long before Darwin, yet despite his fame this theory
remained ignored throughout antiquity. (Wikicommons)
Gabriel
Andrade and Maria Campo Redondo have come out with a paper on the ancient
Greeks and how they saw differences between human groups:
Critics
of Rushton and Jensen, and of the very category of race, claim that race is a
social construct that only came up in the 16th century, as a result of overseas
voyages and the Atlantic slave trade. The goal of this article is to refute
that particular claim, by documenting how, long before the 16th century, in
classical antiquity race was already a meaningful concept, and how some Greek
authors even developed ideas that bear some resemblance to Rushton and Jensen's
theory. The article documents how ancient Egyptians already had keen awareness
of race differences amongst various populations. Likewise, the article
documents passages from the Hippocratic and Aristotelian corpus, which attests
that already in antiquity, there was a conception that climatic differences had
an influence on intelligence, and that these differences eventually become
enshrined in fixed biological traits. (Andrade and Redondo 2019)
The
ancients knew about psychological differences between human groups but usually put
them down to the direct action of the climate. This environmental explanation
seemed disproved by black Africans, or "Ethiopians" as they were
called, because they and their descendants remained just as dark-skinned at
northern latitudes. But this example of heritability didn't lead to a theory of
genetics. Instead, black skin was seen as an indelible stain, perhaps due to
divine punishment of Ham (or Cham), the ancestor of the Egyptians and black
Africans, for seeing the nakedness of his father Noah (Goldenberg 2003).This
view appears in a homily by the third-century Christian writer Origen:
But
Pharao easily reduced the Egyptian people to bondage to himself, nor is it
written that he did this by force. For the Egyptians are prone to a degenerate
life and quickly sink to every slavery of the vices. Look at the origin of the
race and you will discover that their father Cham, who had laughed at his
father's nakedness, deserved a judgment of this kind, that his son Chanaan
should be a servant to his brothers, in which case the condition of bondage
would prove the wickedness of his conduct. Not without merit, therefore, does
the discolored posterity imitate the ignobility of the race. Homily on Genesis
XVI
(Origen 2010)
In
general, human differences were attributed to direct action by the environment:
Greek
authors to a large extent believed that acquired characteristics were
inherited. For example, the text On Airs,
Waters and Places considers the people of Trapezus, who had the custom of
artificially elongating their children's heads. The author of this text
believed that this particular practice would make elongated heads in the future
generations, without parents having to artificially do the procedure: "Thus,
at first, usage operated, so that this constitution was the result of force:
but, in the course of time, it was formed naturally; so that usage had nothing
to do with it... If, then, children with bald heads are born to parents with
bald heads; and children with blue eyes to parents who have blue eyes; and if
the children of parents having distorted eyes squint also for the most part;
and if the same may be said of other forms of the body, what is to prevent it
from happening that a child with a long head should be produced by a parent
having a long head?". Aristotle had similar ideas: "Mutilated young
are born of mutilated parents".
Why wasn’t natural
selection understood?
Ironically,
and long before Darwin, the Greek philosopher Empedocles (494-434 BC) came up with another explanation: adaptation
through natural selection. Change initially occurs by accident. If the change
is good, the changed life-form will survive and reproduce; if not, it will
perish. Good changes are therefore kept and bad changes lost. Thus, all aspects
of living matter look "as if they were made for the sake of
something," but this is only illusion. There is no conscious
"maker" of all things. This idea was summarized by Aristotle (384-322 BC):
So
what hinders the different parts (of the body) from having this merely
accidental relation in nature? as the teeth, for example, grow by necessity,
the front ones sharp, adapted for dividing, and the grinders flat, and
serviceable for masticating the food; since they were not made for the sake of
this, but it was the result of accident. And in like manner as to other parts
in which there appears to exist an adaptation to an end. Wheresoever,
therefore, all things together (that is all the parts of one whole) happened
like as if they were made for the sake of something, these were preserved,
having been appropriately constituted by an internal spontaneity; and
whatsoever things were not thus constituted, perished and still perish. Physicae
Auscultationes
2:8, 2 (Darwin 1936 [1888], p. 3)
Aristotle's fame, as well as Empedocles', ensured that this idea would be read and passed on for generations, and
yet it failed to take root in the minds of
classical antiquity. It fell on barren ground. Aristotle himself rejected it, saying that all things must be for an end. Only much later, and
independently, would natural selection be rediscovered.
The
difficulty was not in understanding that humans, like other animals, are
adapted to their environment. That part was obvious. The difficulty was in understanding
adaptation as an indirect process. People more easily understood direct processes:
something changed some people, and that change was passed on to their
descendants. Aristotle himself fell for that idea when he mused that mutilated
young are born to mutilated parents.
This
was the mentality of classical antiquity, and indeed of many people today.
Change implies the existence of a changer, just as creation implies the
existence of a creator. Few people rose above that level of thinking.
Did most people in
classical antiquity think like children?
A
Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget (1896-1980), studied children in his country
and concluded that all individuals go through stages of mental development.
Children go through a "pre-operational stage" when causality is
understood only in terms of conscious intent, specifically animism,
artificialism, and transductive reasoning:
Animism
is the belief that inanimate objects are capable of actions and have lifelike
qualities. An example could be a child believing that the sidewalk was mad and
made them fall down, or that the stars twinkle in the sky because they are
happy. Artificialism refers to the belief that environmental characteristics
can be attributed to human actions or interventions. For example, a child might
say that it is windy outside because someone is blowing very hard, or the
clouds are white because someone painted them that color. Finally, precausal
thinking is categorized by transductive reasoning. Transductive reasoning is
when a child fails to understand the true relationships between cause and
effect. Unlike deductive or inductive reasoning (general to specific, or
specific to general), transductive reasoning refers to when a child reasons
from specific to specific, drawing a relationship between two separate events
that are otherwise unrelated. For example, if a child hears the dog bark and
then a balloon popped, the child would conclude that because the dog barked,
the balloon popped. (Wikipedia 2019)
Piaget
correctly observed Swiss children in the mid-20th century. He incorrectly
concluded that the mind develops at the same pace in all humans (Oesterdiekhoff
2012). Indeed, you need not go far back to reach a time when most individuals
never developed beyond the pre-operational stage. Just go back to classical
antiquity.
At
that time, the smart fraction was relatively small. Most intellectuals seemed
to be loners. There were no academic societies, no academic journals, and no
indications that large numbers of scholars did, or could, interact with each
other. This point is made in an article on Roman science:
According
to Sarton, who is the foremost living historian of science, "Roman science
at its best was but a pale imitation of the Greek." "The
Romans," he continues, "were so afraid of disinterested research that
they discouraged any investigation the utilitarian value of which was not
obvious."
Reymond
remarked in his "History of Science" that the Romans were never
distinguished for any love or even interest in pure science or abstract
thinking. Virtually the same conclusion was reached by Heiberg, and Fowler made
the interesting observation that even their literature and their philosophy had
a practical object.
[...]
historians of the economic life of ancient Rome have shown that there was a
surprising paucity of inventions. They were not only few in number, but they
lacked originality and were unimportant. (Salant 1938)
The
Roman Empire was organizationally strong but intellectually weak. It depended
on a store of knowledge that had been laid up in earlier times, notably by the
ancient Greeks. This was the prevailing opinion among Roman writers, an opinion
today dismissed as nostalgia for a mythical golden age.
The evidence of
ancient DNA
"Cognitive
archaeology" is a new field that has been made possible by retrieval of
DNA from human remains and by calculation of polygenic cognitive scores from
this DNA (based on alleles associated with educational attainment).
To
date, two studies have used these research tools to chart changes in mean
intelligence. The first study used ancient DNA from Europe and central Asia and
found that the polygenic cognitive score gradually increased between 4,560 and
1,210 years ago (Woodley of Menie et al 2017).
This
finding has been nuanced by a second study, using a sample of ancient DNA that
was much larger and only from ancient Greece. It found that mean intelligence
was initially high in ancient Greece and then began to decline after the end of
the Mycenaean period in 1100 BC (Woodley of Menie et al. 2019). It looks like
intelligence was at first strongly advantageous as humans adapted to increasing
social complexity: farming, sedentism, literacy … Then something made it much
less advantageous.
Mean
intelligence was therefore lower during Roman times in comparison both to Greece
in earlier periods and to Europe in later periods.
Conclusion
So
was Aristotle the Gregor Mendel of natural selection? Not really. Aristotle was
much more famous than Mendel, and his works were read over a much longer span
of time. Furthermore, Mendel's findings had to wait only 35 years before
getting their due recognition. Aristotle's thoughts on natural selection lay
dormant for more than two millennia before their significance was pointed out
to Charles Darwin.
Aristotle
didn't suffer from being insufficiently known. He had a worse handicap,
especially in this case: not enough people could understand his line of reasoning.
He was a lone voice in the wilderness over the many centuries separating him
from Darwin. By Darwin’s time, many more people could understand natural
selection, both in absolute numbers and as a proportion of the population. Even
before The Origin of Species Darwin
had a large audience of thinking people who could answer his questions and
comment on his ideas. Earlier thinkers were not so lucky.
In
the final analysis, the people of classical antiquity failed to understand
natural selection for the same reason they failed to understand economics. They
preferred to imagine cause and effect in simple terms: a person or personified thing
producing a big change over a short time, and not impersonal forces producing
an accumulation of small changes over a long time. They thought like children.
References
Andrade,
G. and M.C. Redondo. 2019. Rushton and Jensen's Work Has Parallels with Some
Concepts of Race Awareness in Ancient Greece. Psych 1 (1): 391-402. https://www.mdpi.com/2624-8611/1/1/28/htm
Aristotle. Physics http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/physics.2.ii.html Darwin,
C. (1936) [1888]. The Origin of Species
and The Descent of Man. reprint of 2nd ed., The Modern Library, New York:
Random House.
Goldenberg,
D.M. (2003). The Curse of Ham. Race and
Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Woodley
of Menie, M.A., J. Delhez, M. Peñaherrera-Aguirre, and E.O.W. Kirkegaard.
(2019). Cognitive archeogenetics of ancient and modern Greeks. London Conference on Intelligence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UES_tpDxz9A
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