The natural limits of altruism

There has always been a problem understanding the connections between the universal and the particular, the abstract and concrete, the group and the individual, etc. I think the biological origin of social behavior goes a long way in clearing up this problem.

"Liberalism" seems to have arrived by seeing the individual as far more important than the group, and so individual freedom became the great political mantra. But the biological origin of social behavior changes that liberal mantra around because group-selection has precedence over individual-selection, although they work together in a co-evolutionary way: "Within groups, selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals" as E. O. Wilson put it, and there we have the origin of altruism.

Altruism can be understood as the individual best advancing over the long term by concern for the well-being of others, which therefore isn't really selfless. Abstract morals and values regarding concern for others don't come before this natural biology, they follow after and affirm naturalism.

The old idea of the "common good" took for it granted that cities and states were made up of the same homogeneous ethnic groups. Aristotle took that for granted when he spoke of the common good, and so did the Founders of United States, although they were a bit biased toward the individual. The idea of a universal, abstract, individualism was more a modern political sell.

Ancient and modern intellectuals seem to think of altruism, universalism, and groupism as superior to or beyond naturalism.  But when those virtues and values are correctly explained by naturalism they put natural limits on altruism, universalism, and groupism, which are understood as needing the same homogeneous ethnic groups for altruism to actually work. This also supersedes the communist conceptions of a universal atheistic altruism.

The natural limits on altruism correctly limit the pie in the sky, Utopian, universalist, dreams of religious or political liberalism, and gives a solid ground for the political/cultural solution of the ethnopluralism often written about here. A conservative transformation---not revolution---can bring about an ethnopluralism of ethnostates, perhaps carved out of the constitutional separation of powers and states, and protected by federalism. This is the sociopolitical or political/cultural structure most in harmony with ethnocentric and kin-centered real human nature, and the natural limits of altruism.