Rabbits, Wolves, and Politics
What r/K Theory teaches us about culture and politics
Last I spoke on this topic, I introduced readers to r-K Theory, a big-picture, biological theory that explains why animals evolve and behave the way they do, which is dependent on whether or not there are plentiful or scarce resources in their environment. Let me provide a quick review:
When resources are scarce over a long time, animals tend to develop K-behavior that requires higher intellect and cultivates social skills like rank, order and communication. They develop monogamous mating habits and invest a lot of time and energy in raising a few offspring. They are competitive and defend their territory and they are loyal to their group. Like wolves, they are all about the Quality of the individual, where only the most fit get to pass on their DNA.
When resources are plentiful over a long time, animals develop r-selected behavior with opposite traits. That is, they have lower intellect, little to no social skills, and they especially avoid competition. They tend to be promiscuous and noncommittal in raising offspring. Like rabbits, they mate early and often, resulting in large Quantities of offspring, which is how they pass on their DNA.
People are born as a K-selected species, in fact, our K-selected behavior has built the whole of civilizations throughout the world, especially in the American West. But now that most of the hard work is done, we now live in a culture where resources are plentiful, everything we need is within our grasp, and our lives are much easier. As r-K theory predicts, our culture is changing to exhibit more “r” behavior. It is also an excellent tool for explaining why Liberals and Conservatives behave and think so differently.
Furthermore, these differences have resulted in measurable biological changes in recent brain studies. The amygdala, a part of the brain that determines threat level in your surroundings, is larger for Conservatives, while smaller and less developed in Liberals. The reason it’s smaller is because if we are raised with plentiful resources and life is easy, there are fewer challenges in life to stimulate and develop our amygdala. Our “threat meter” has not been exercised.
Now that everyone is caught up with the basics of r-K Theory, let’s apply this to politics.
The most obvious trait in r-selected behavior is an avoidance of competition. This is easy to confirm as Liberals tend to hate the competitive nature of free market capitalism because it creates winners and losers. They prefer an economy where the playing field is level, so they pass laws that effectively take wealth from winners and give it to losers. Our progressive tax codes, government welfare programs, and dumbing down education are examples of how Progressives try to level the playing field by limiting competition.
With Gun Control, can it be more clear that gun regulations only serve to limit the ability of victims to compete, to fight back in criminal situations? And that most gun regulations are inventions of the Left?
When Liberals try to shout down conservative speakers on a college campus, it’s because they can’t or won’t compete in the battleground of ideas and debate. For this same reason, Liberals are right now censoring thousands of Conservatives on social media. If they can’t win, they silence them.
In War, when Liberals are in control, they reduce arms, cut military spending, constrain our soldiers by restricting the rules of engagement, and they prefer central control in making big decisions, which takes more time and reduces our ability to compete and win.
Remember how the Islamic caliphate expanded tremendously under Obama because of his aversion to letting our soldiers compete. There are many interviews of soldiers who confirm that his rules of engagement would not allow our troops to fight at night, would not allow engagement unless they were first fired upon, and any lethal decision had to travel up the chain of command and back down again before targets could be eliminated.
When Trump came along, he gave the decision-making power back to the officers in the field. He built up the military with better equipment and gear, stockpiled ammunition which was in short supply, and he increased pay for military personnel so they had the incentive to stay in service. He then unleashed the real power and capabilities of American technology and warfare. The result was the complete destruction of the caliphate in a few short months, which allowed many of our troops to come home. This is the difference between an r-selected, rabbit leader, versus a K-selected wolf leader.
So when political decisions don’t seem to make sense, ask how it limits or restricts competition and you will start to see a pattern.
A recent example: On Biden’s first day in office he signed an executive order to suspend, and probably cancel the Keystone XL pipeline. This doesn’t make sense. Pipelines are the best and most efficient means of transporting oil. They are carbon neutral, unlike trucks and trains, and several studies under Obama showed that they have no long term impacts on the environment. So why did Biden do this, aside from giving environmentalists a gift? He did it because he doesn’t want America to be so competitive in the energy industry. He rather level the playing field by buying energy from other countries. He doesn’t want America to be the competitive winner that Trump made us, so he’s undoing his successes.
Likewise, killing the XL pipeline immediately kills tens of thousands of jobs, which makes it harder for Americans to compete for their livelihoods. Those effected families who had high paying jobs will be struggling again instead of winning. Rabbits don’t strive to win, they strive to just get by, because they don’t like competition, and Biden wants you to live in the world the way he sees it.
The second trait in r-selected behavior is promiscuity. It’s clear that our culture has become more promiscuous over the decades. Girls especially, are sexualized much younger than they used to be. With the advent of birth control pills, suggestive advertising, easily available pornography, and the youth culture, with their provocative music and twerking (grinding, humping); this all accentuates the problem.
Boys too, are influenced by a culture that encourages them to not commit to relationships. The cool guys are promiscuous and brag about their conquests. The result is a culture with higher rates of single parenthood, higher divorce, and the destruction of families. These are the results of r-selected behavior and psychology.
The third trait is lower investment in raising offspring. Why is it that more and more children are being raised by people who are not their parents? More companies are providing day care, ages for preschool are dropping, there are more after-school programs and more latch-key children than ever; there’s no doubt we invest less quality time with our children.
One reason divorce used to require two signatures was because our culture valued two-parent homes, so there was less divorce. But today, people can get divorced on a whim whether the spouse agrees or not, and the children suffer.
To top this point off, what says more about how we devalue children than abortion?
The forth trait in r-selected behavior is an inability to comprehend real threats. Since Liberals have an underdeveloped threat meter, they tend to believe that everyone is just like them. So, for example, they believe that Islam is a peaceful religion (it’s not) because Liberals are themselves mostly peaceful and noncompetitive.
They believe that passing out “don’t touch me” bracelets to Swedish women is a real solution to fix the 1500% increase in rape crimes perpetrated by Muslim immigrants. They simply don’t understand the threat because Swedes have been coddled by their cradle to grave socialist culture.
When Progressives don’t understand real threats, they believe dictators can be reasonable, when in fact they repeatedly lie and break promises. They believe that doing business with China will result in China becoming more capitalist and free. In reality China’s actions are progressively more authoritarian: clamping down on Hong Kong, building work/prison camps, oppressing Muslim Uighurs, threatening African countries for their natural resources, indebting other countries with unfair banking practices, making military threats in the Pacific, and surveilling all their citizens. China has a Social Credit Score system (which America is adopting) which can limit commerce, travel and communication for the Chinese people. But Liberals tend to overlook all that because they don’t understand the real threats of Communism.
Even now, Biden is removing Trump’s successes that were keeping the CCP in check and forcing more fair trade. These are gifts to the CCP, not Americans. Likewise, the Democratic Platform calls for a new federal department with 100,000 employees dedicated to surveilling and tracking Americans. They will say it’s for your own good, for the sake of safety regarding Covid-19, but the result is the same. These communist ways are not threatening to the Left because they don’t understand the threats to begin with. If communism brings the equal distribution of misery, that’s just fine. The playing field has been leveled. That’s the goal for rabbits.
The similar attitude is expressed when terrorists fly planes into buildings. A person with an underdeveloped threat meter, a Liberal, would say things like, “Why do they hate us? What have we done to provoke them? We’re all good people; if they just had jobs they wouldn’t be so mad.” Go watch old media footage after 9/11. They were saying this stuff all the time.
A normal person with K-selected behavior and psychology would have no concern, not even a thought, for the terrorist’s feelings or lack of a job. He only responds to the evil action of an enemy; so he competes head-on with a great deal of intention to eliminate the threat. It’s different thinking that results in different actions.
A Progressive’s inability to understand a threat and their aversion to competition is the reason that Obama wouldn’t call a terrorist a “terrorist” and why Democrat mayors tell their police to stand down in the midst of 6-months of riots in Democrat cities.
They encourage illegal immigration, which imports more rabbits from other Socialist “rabbit” cultures. And giving them government handouts (the ultimate in plentiful resources that encourages r-selected behavior) is their assurance that they will remain rabbits who will vote Democrat.
So, as you watch the news and analyze political decisions I challenge you to apply r-K Theory by asking these questions:
Does that decision or action promote or diminish competition?
Does it provide incentives to be more or less promiscuous?
Does it reward or punish family values and children?
Do conflict decisions come from accurately considering real threats in the world?
Understanding r-K Theory will help us understand the stupidity in the news and why our traditional American culture is in decline. Our plentiful environment and easy life is transforming us into a culture with more r-selected behavior and therefore, it’s infecting our politics.
Here’s a couple things we can do to push back this decline.
- Stop coddling our children and start giving them more responsibilities. Don’t protect them so much that their amygdalae won’t develop. (I cover this at length in How Not to Raise a Snowflake.) A healthy “threat meter” is necessary for success in life.
- Vote into office more K-type individuals who are not afraid of competition, who understand real threats, and stand up for traditional American values like hard work, personal responsibility, freedom of choice, strong family structure, truth, honesty, life, liberty, and the right to pursue individual happiness.
America’s success, and indeed the world’s, will depend on whether we can push back the tide of r-selected culture and political norms. We must stop thinking like rabbits, acting like rabbits, and voting like rabbits. We must not be rabbits or else America’s light and her ideals of liberty, justice, and truth will fade into darkness.
