But while these theories help explain why the seemingly diverse convictions within the right-wing and left-wing mind-sets hang together, they don’t explain why they are tied to geography. The historian David Hackett Fischer traces the divide back to the British settlers of colonial America. The North was largely settled by English farmers, the inland South by Scots-Irish herders. Anthropologists have long noted that societies that herd livestock in rugged terrain tend to develop a “culture of honor.” Since their wealth has feet and can be stolen in an eye blink, they are forced to deter rustlers by cultivating a hair-trigger for violent retaliation against any trespass or insult that probes their resolve. Farmers can afford to be less belligerent because it is harder to steal their land out from under them, particularly in territories within the reach of law enforcement. As the settlers moved westward, they took their respective cultures with them. The psychologist Richard Nisbett has shown that Southerners today continue to manifest a culture of honor which legitimizes violent retaliation. ... Admittedly, it’s hard to believe that today’s Southerners and Westerners carry a cultural memory of sheepherding ancestors. But it may not be the herding profession itself that nurtures a culture of honor so much as living in anarchy.
All right! I'm beyond delighted to read this -- to know that there are other fans of Pinker, Fischer, and Nisbett out there! Have you read _Bound Away_ yet? (It's the companion volume Fischer promised at the end of _Albion's Seed_; it doesn't deal with slavery alone, but with Virginia in general.)
Expressed this lucidly, I almost feel that the exception is those without a culture of honor, not those with one -- that the North and not the South is the odd one. After all, while it's hard to drive off land, it's perfectly possible to burn buildings and loot crops... unless the farmers can band together into militias more powerful than the invading army, which the North certainly does.
My anecdotal experience as a Southerner living in the North was that everyone cared about conformity and hierarchy (including seeing where you were in the hierarchy), and was hostile to the South's combination of a hot temper and a live-and-let-live outlook. But you don't want hot heads or amiability in a territorial militia, and you do want a lot of concern with hierarchy; otherwise your militia will be uncontrollable.
You wouldn't happen to be in the Seattle area, would you? I'd love to get together, and to have the chance to talk about these sorts of things in person.
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/10/pinker-takes-crack-at-exp...
But while these theories help explain why the seemingly diverse convictions within the right-wing and left-wing mind-sets hang together, they don’t explain why they are tied to geography. The historian David Hackett Fischer traces the divide back to the British settlers of colonial America. The North was largely settled by English farmers, the inland South by Scots-Irish herders. Anthropologists have long noted that societies that herd livestock in rugged terrain tend to develop a “culture of honor.” Since their wealth has feet and can be stolen in an eye blink, they are forced to deter rustlers by cultivating a hair-trigger for violent retaliation against any trespass or insult that probes their resolve. Farmers can afford to be less belligerent because it is harder to steal their land out from under them, particularly in territories within the reach of law enforcement. As the settlers moved westward, they took their respective cultures with them. The psychologist Richard Nisbett has shown that Southerners today continue to manifest a culture of honor which legitimizes violent retaliation. ... Admittedly, it’s hard to believe that today’s Southerners and Westerners carry a cultural memory of sheepherding ancestors. But it may not be the herding profession itself that nurtures a culture of honor so much as living in anarchy.