Really? And who exactly is telling us this?

Giving Bigotry a Chance
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/325/

Misunderstandings of Kin Selection and the Delay in Quantifying Ethnic Kinship
http://www.mankindquarterly.org/samples/SalterMQXLVIII-3.pdf

Whose sock puppet is Chris B?

And doing so does imply that the traditional, common understanding of culture is an illusion since this understanding posits that culture is extra-genetic, non-material, freely determined, etc. This understanding distinguishes between culture and beaver dam building or any other aspect of animal ethology.

I don’t see how “stochastic” phenotypic expression is relevant here, since it still implies a genetic determinism at odds with traditional common understandings of culture.

I agree with your general point in a general way. Rigour is the very last thing you’d want to sacrifice in such circumstances. However, this…

“Positing that culture is genetically determined or simply an expression of genes is another way of saying that what is commonly understood as “culture” doesn’t exist at all. That there is no such thing as “culture”, it is simply an illusion, etc.”

…reads like nonsense. Positing culture as extended phenotype does not dematerialise it in any meaningful way. On the contrary, it provides a much more cogent expression of its origin and nature. Fire is not a gift from Prometheus. Rather, just as beavers build dams, humans build cultures. The actual illusion is not “culture” but “human nature”.

The caveat here being the fact that phenotype ‘determination’ is inherently a stochastic process. That offers us only so much wiggle room though, and it seems to me like you’re close to trapping yourself in what I would call a sui generis fallacy. Namely, that ‘unique’ occurrences must have ‘special’ explanations.

“Reproductive strategy” has a specific meaning in sociobiology. You can take a genetically determinist position and say that “All morality and all philosophy and all ideology and all religion” are genetically determined or expressions of genes, but it’s just inaccurate and sloppy to say that they are a “reproductive strategy”.

Positing that culture is genetically determined or simply an expression of genes is another way of saying that what is commonly understood as “culture” doesn’t exist at all. That there is no such thing as “culture”, it is simply an illusion, etc.

Cultures have a far ranging influence. The ancient Greeks are the perfect example of this, Germanic peoples are very different than the Greeks but the heritage of the Greeks got passed on never the less. The core of western culture and tradition is Greek, not funny hats and animism. Ancient Greece itself was hardly a monoculture, for building communities it’s about being local and tight knit. In spite of everything wrong with it and a long history of prog experimentation, the military retains a very distinct culture and set of traditions. A woman who wasn’t a military brat marrying an officer is in for a much bigger culture shock than if she marries a second generation Chinese dude.

The ethnic thing is important, but it’s more of a compatibility thing, genetic predisposition to certain aspects of culture and heritage. I’d take a Taiwanese with a rightwing family history over a WASP with a leftwing family history. If both families share core values there already exists a culture and heritage to support it. It’s also worth noting the breakup of India into India and Pakistan, they’re ethnically identical, ideology is powerful stuff trumping ethnic loyalty making it more important. Identitarians tend to forget this.

Identitarianism isn’t just about genes. It’s about culture and hertitage. If I have children with another anglo, my children are anglos, and know what they are and what their culture is and they inherit that culture. They become a projection of myself and my people into the future. If I hang out with other anglos, I understand them and have a huge shared library of culture and ways of thinking going back thousands of years. If I hang out with and have children with chinese for example, we can have only the crudest relationships and our children can only have the crudest heritage.

Thedes matter. People know their own and want to associate with them, which is why we get self segregation. Denying this and pretending like we can erase everyone’s identity with a clean conscience is insane.