Japan VS Europe
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
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You're confusing the world as it is today for what it would/should normally be without all the subversion and fuckery.
The only reason we're seeing idiots propagate more than the intelligent is because of the various fuckery forces at play upon society, because as I briefly mentioned, society is fucking fucked. Almost every hard won tradition and philosophical foundation has been inverted. Idiots don't care about resource accrual, especially with all the welfare programs enabling people like that to survive, despite their idiocy, enabling them to just fuck and make kids. The intelligent are pushed into college and careers, men and women, which takes a lot of time away from finding a mate and making a family, thus reducing the number of kids they have. Welfare is a dysgenics program, taking resources away from the intelligent and giving them to the stupid, making it harder for the former to have kids, and easier for the latter.
Men that are better at prioritizing truth, logic, and reason are better able to fulfill their role as protector and provider. Most people don't see this because they're looking at things how they are, not what it took to get here and understand why. In the past, mother nature would kill off the horrifically stupid (lets go pet that hungry looking bear, lets not store food for winter, lets go jump off that cliff it looks fun, I don't know how to hunt, now I'm starving), meaning only the intelligent would pass on their genetics, improving the stock of the tribe, and molding the species over time. This also highlights another problem with modern society, which coddles people too much, becoming too far removed from nature, insulating the idiots from the necessary consequences of their mistakes, weakening all of us over time.
Men that are smarter are better able to accrue resources, farming, hunting, planning ahead, storing food for winter, learning what is healthy versus poisonous, what plant can be used for what, what animals can be hunted where, and how, and when, and so on ad infinitum. The more resources a man can gather, the better a provider he can be, and the better he'll be able to attract and keep a mate, and raise a family. This also affects the tribes/communities we're a part of. If a tribe is made up of idiots, the tribe will fail/die, or will be defeated/enslaved/killed/etc. by a tribe that's stronger, usually meaning they're smarter (in larger scales this becomes more muddied by other factors).
Women seek out men that are bigger and stronger, because it means they'll be a better protector. Women also seek out men that are good at accruing resources, because it means they'll be a better provider. In modern times, this plays out as women seeking a man that makes more money than them. This is confirmed by modern dating stats, even in the hell 2.0 society we're currently living in.
Society was never meritocratic, was never this place of free competition where the smart did well and the stupid perished.
Group intelligence was likely selected for, except for in places where survival was easy - but this has more to do with geniuses, which different groups valued / protected / allowed for to various degrees, and utilizing people where they're most effective - than it has to do with a game where the intelligent win.
Intelligence was likely only a small part of selective pressure. Though not insignificant, as we can observe in significant differences between groups, but also not the pillar that you seem to imply that it was.
Even 10,000 years ago, and even if you were born in a rational tribe not lorded over and used for personal gain by a sadist, you'd be given your role based on the needs of the tribe, not your abilities - and that tribe would have a leader who's attributes were strenght (ability to sieze and hold power) and empathy (ability to effectively organize his tribe and to predict and diffuse threats), not intelligence. Or not nessecarily intelligence, I don't dispute that intelligence is always useful no matter what.
Does that mean that a tribe doing things intelligently wasn't an advantage? No it means that there were only limited ways to act as a tribe, and group intelligence was coded in the traditions and ways of the tribe. The tribe wasn't dependent on a steady supply of smart people to function well.
And the women of that tribe would mate based on the tribes customs whatever they were.
The individual was never the provider - in the grander scheme of things. The tribe was always the provider.
Same in agrarian societies - selection was more about family, empathy, and strenght (or good looks).
Same in industrial societies. Though here smarts probably started playing a larger role. But still arranged marriages were common, as was marrying whomever was nearest, or was the most economically or politically beneficial for the family to hitch you up with.
The idea of the selfmade man who rises to the top because he's smarter is a modern construction. Even then, success is about risk taking. It doens't matter how smart you are when the path to victory is through taking bets that the majority lose or break even on (or win but not enough to really matter). Wheather on the stock market, or on a trade ship across the atlantic, or as a farmer, or as a restauranteur, or as a soldier.
Of course you're right that regardless of attributes and abilities, the man was expected to provide and protect, and that wealth was always a strong advantage. But this wealth almost always came from family (with some origin years/decades/centuries ago in luck or conquest), and not in entrepreneurial initiative.
You're making the mistake that because there are differing forces (sometimes seemingly conflicting) acting upon individuals and society, that it disproves anything I said. I hope you understand that just because I didn't mention every single force acting upon us, that I don't know they exist, or that I intentionally ignore them. Just because something exists, or happened, doesn't mean it was right. To suggest otherwise is logically fallacious.
Merit as a foundational principle of society is a necessary requirement for society to exist. On the small scale close to nature (no insulating forces), this plays out almost immediately. This is why the weak and stupid don't survive long in the wilderness, and the intelligent are more likely to survive and procreate. This is highlighted more in the early stages of human development. However, the more information that is amassed, the more traditions that are formed around accounting for what works (and what doesn't), the bigger society gets, the more social welfare programs are instituted, the more friends and family that are around to provide support, the more technology that is invented to make what was previously hard now easy, the more businesses that pop up providing services and increasing efficiency, the more insulated we get from our mistakes, the less merit plays a role in the usually immediate reprisal of nature when people act against what is true.
In this way, what you say is partially correct. Merit, seemingly, means less now than what it did earlier in human history, and less so in the large scale than the small. However, the more negative forces that act against necessary meritocracy (affirmative action, race and gender quotas, feminism, destruction of traditions, disregarding philosophical truths, embracing life over truth, prioritizing what feels good rather than what is right, dysgenics programs like welfare, etc.), the less efficient a community becomes (regardless of size), and if the cumulative effects of the negative forces is great enough, or their negative effects degrade the community for long enough, the community will absolutely fail. This can play out in multiple ways. Either the community completely dies out (doesn't happen much nowadays), or is conquered by a stronger competing community, or a competing community (which doesn't make as many mistakes, is closer to truth, is more meritorious, is more efficient, is more stable, better able to achieve, for its constituents and as a whole) overshadows it to the point of effectively conquering it. It can also play out within a society without it dying or being conquered, where people, families, governments, philosophies, businesses, traditions, morals, etc. that are closer to truth can replace those that aren't. Why do you think modern society is failing? It's because we're moving away from that which is true, and embracing things that are wrong. Abandoning merit is only one of the foundational philosophical principles we've abandoned.
Everything you mention in the latter part of your comment is trying to point out the existence of negative forces, or the fact that mistakes were made and didn't mean immediate failure and destruction, in an attempt to disprove what I said, which again, is logically fallacious. Just because people made mistakes, in the past or the present, doesn't mean that it wasn't a mistake.