Born Radical?

[Tao_Equus]

Found this story and thought I'd float it here :
BBC NEWS | Magazine | The search for the 'political' gene

Maybe I'm not a free radical after all

[Paladin]

"Political views are memes not genes," he says - meaning that politics is more about the transmission of ideas within society, rather than an inherited characteristic.
Dr Hamer says there "might be some minor contributions from heritable personality traits but most of the variance is cultural".

I tend toward this idea more; my family has been conservative going back several generations. My sister and I often marvel at how our values ( and remember a meme is also known as a value system) differ so greatly from the rest of the family.

[gp1628]

I dont see it quite like that. What Ive witnessed is a persons determination to NOT be their parents. In many different little ways that seems to create a back-and-forth toggle with each generation finding more similarity to their grandparents or sometimes great-grandparents depending on how clanish the upbringing was.

I see it in names going back and forth between unusual naming, and kids who hated their unusual names shifting back to more normalized ones, then the ones with my-too-average name shifting back to unusual naming of their kids.

I see it in many families with religion choices. Maybe not specifically the religion but back and forth between mainstream and alternate religions (or sometimes racial history religions)

I see it in little things like numbers of pets, emphasis on crafts, music, drinking, hunting, camping, exercise in general, love of debate vs preference for more diplomatic solutions, etc.

[Tao_Equus]

Yup, you are both making sense to me. The truth is we are complex and there is not a set pattern just general themes that motivate and inspire...or not. You can often generalise but its never hard to find an exception.

Tao

[Paladin]

I would be interested to see if there are genetic propensities toward modes of thinking that might lead one to one political or religious outlook. The tendency toward provincial, black and white thinking for example.Identifying with reward/punishment memes as opposed to more abstract thinking that sees depth and breadth in an issue. It doesn't seem to be a matter of intelligence because there are so many on both the left and right who are quite bright but have chosen a different value system.