Parable of the Reluctant Familist

On Familism, Universalist Individualism, and Radicalization

Later posts will explain this analogy fully, and provide all the relevant facts on which it is based. Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

Let's say you (your name is Paul) work at a large formerly extended family (The Wicks) firm - which specializes in providing security services for the entire village. A few decades ago the Wicks became convinced that favoring family members in hiring was deeply immoral. In childhood you read Jesus' words in Matthew 12:48-50: "But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother" - and figured that this belief was religious. To some extent it was, but as you read into the family lore you realize that it underwent a special eugenic breeding program that tried to extend the moral sentiments that used to be reserved for the family to the whole world.

Of course, from an outsider's perspective (and from that of long-departed Wick great...-grandparents), this might seem strange or unnatural; but why should they not feel as they are? If they lack any innate sentiment that they should prefer blood relatives over people who merely share their values and habits; who are you to tell them they are wrong? You, yourself are a Wick and never thought this was strange.

But then something strange happens. I'll now tell a few stories, and you can tell me at which point you start to suspect that the Wick family's supposed universal individualism is driven not by a desire to expand the love to all deserving creatures but by a particularly nasty strain of self-hatred.

Story 1
Max Burns applies for a security job and tests slightly better than a distant relative on the intelligence test you use for hiring, but you find that his family (but not him) has a long history of bank robbery and other impulsive crimes. Most of these robberies were carried out in really stupid ways and your relative who administers exams for the local school notes that Burns children tend to test poorly. When you mention this, he volunteers that yes clearly there are issues with his family but that he's not like them and all he wants in life is the chance to establish himself as a normal honest citizen. He doesn't even think of himself as a Burns anyway.

You share this information with your family, and they decide that they are satisfied with his answer and hire him. You support this decision enthusiastically for you have always admired those who are willing to make a clean break from awful cultures.

Story 2
- Same as story 1, except when you mention this the man gets offended and insists that as most of his family members have never robbed banks; and some of your relatives have there is no difference whatsoever between your two families. You must be a Familist, how dare you! He notes that this is a breach of your interview contract which insists that you are a non-Familist organization and hints that if you do not hire him, he'll sue you.

Your family accepts the (never coherently made) argument that base rates should not be considered. He didn't choose to be born in his family, so it would be wrong to penalize him for it. Max is hired.

Story 3
- Same as story 2, except you now discover that Max despite not being a criminal himself lobbies for the release of, or reduced sentences for his criminal relatives. He celebrates even when related murderers get off. He demands that would-be victims who killed relatives in self-defense, spend the rest of their lives in jails. Curiously he only does this when the defenders are non-relatives themselves.

He insists a) that they were imprisoned unjustly (even as the evidence under which they were imprisoned is crystal clear) and b) to the extent that they did anything wrong it's the natural consequence of living in a Wick supremacist society (which to be fair, Burns once did) that hasn't paid enough compensation for their sins. Of course, the Wicks have done a lot of paying, and it is in part because of this that Burns who live near Wicks live more affluent lives than Burns in any other part of the world. You can almost appreciate how a person would embrace conspiracy theorizing rather than admit the truth about a relative (wait, I thought you were a non-familist?) except that of course the truth matches perfectly with his personal experiences around his relatives.

Max has lived around both relatives and non-relatives, been stolen from, heard of, or witnessed thefts several times, and nearly every single time it's been a relative doing the stealing. Somehow, this never enters into his public assessment of the relative virtues of his family vs. others, what side he'll take in disputes, or whether he should identify loudly and proudly as a Burns.

You have to take a flight before the hiring meetup, but you note all your concerns in an email and expect that obviously, no one could seriously consider hiring Max.

When you come back, you realize that not only has he been hired; but a committee has met to decide whether you should be fired. "Max scored well on the test after all, how dare you suggest we should favor a lower-scorer" they say. "Do you not understand we are a meritocracy"? "Do you not understand that you are advocating for that most evil of ideas? --- Familism!"

That it would probably be better if Max was retarded given that he will very likely expend his considerable intelligence towards undermining your security services for the sake of his useless relatives; is not commented on.

Story Four:

Same as story three except everyone in the Wicks Family understands that intelligence and impulse control are largely genetic, so it is highly unlikely that any social interventions will improve the condition of the Burns family.

This means:

1) That to the extent that Max maintains loyalty to his family, he will not only have a temporary but a permanent interest in weakening Wick Inc. so that they can steal more effectively ;
2) Max's children will likely be considerably less intelligent than him (regression to the Burns mean), necessitating even more looting on his part to give them a good life. Should he make it far enough within the firm, maybe he'll work towards a special carveout for Burns' kids exempting them from the meritocratic testing regime. He might even succeed at this.

At this point, not only are the Wicks favoring a likely friend (their relative) over an enemy (Max); or if you prefer a different more universalist framing - a presumably moral person (their relative) over an immoral one (Max) they are committing to doing so... possibly forever.

Story Five (Continues from Story Three.)

In story five which takes place decades later, the firm has fully embraced affirmative action policies for all Burns; including ones whose parents weren't even poor or dumb. Even Burns that qualify for prestigious positions in the firm, are promoted far upwards making their de-facto contribution negative value (even before we get to their nepotistic influence). Expressing opposition to this is a fireable offense, and so; even the presence of a small number of Burns serves as a perfect and total selection filter against all Wicks who are simultaneously intelligent and honest.

By this point, Paul, now an old and bitter outcast wonders whether Non-Familism was ever possible. In theory, it should've been possible. How hard could it be to just judge "people according to the content of their character"? What is so hard about hiring Max from Story 1, but not the one from Stories 2 - 4? Now meritocracy is of course on its deathbed, denounced as just another form of Familism by one faction of the company. The other uses the language of meritocracy but regularly makes exceptions to keep a few generally unqualified and regularly traitorous Burns in its ranks so it can defend itself against charges of familism. To be clear there is a tiny percentage of Burns who are both qualified and loyal to meritocratic principles.

Paul looks everywhere for Wicks who would hire Max from story 1 but not Max from stories 2 - 4. But even when he finds these it's clear that story 0 (when the firm was Familist) disgusts them more than stories 3, 4, or even 5. Why? 90% of all the talent the firm ever needed, was within the family to begin with.

Do they not understand what a city without a functional security firm looks like? That the Burns and every other family in it get to live lives far more decent than they ever could otherwise, precisely because this firm was once functional? That even a world in which good Burns are excluded from the firm, is still infinitely better even for Burns than one where the security firm stops working and it's every family for themselves?

Paul suspects that things are even worse than he imagined. Wicks are not universalists at all, their universalism is but a cover for the hatred of each other and themselves. Even a version of universalism that made no distinction between the interests of good people and bad people; even a bizarre transferred extreme familism that explicitly and exclusively valued only the life of Burns would still conclude that the security firm should remain almost entirely Wicks. Now, he once hoped that this was a matter of factual ignorance, and to some extent he still does.

But regularly he comes across a truly small minority of Wicks who'll accept all of the following claims:

1- That Burns are dumber on average than Smiths,
2- That this difference is primarily genetic,
3- That the average smart Burns enthusiastically supports hurting Wicks in the name of dumb Burns,
4- That even smart Burns who are sympathetic to individualism, might feel differently when their children regress toward the Burns mean,
5- That the adoption of special privileges for Burns threatens to seriously impair the firm itself,
6- And that the consequences of this happening would leave everyone worse off;

And these Wicks still reserve their deepest contempt for the nearly infinitesimal group of Wick Familists who think story zero (when the firm was near 100% Wick) was preferable to what came later and should be returned to.

Paul isn't particularly enthusiastic about familism, it doesn't come naturally to him. Yet he is left to conclude that even extreme Wick Familists must be morally superior to their opponents.

After all, what is better?

A person who can love only their family or a person who cannot love anyone at all?