Evolutionary Advantage of Emotional Volatility

[cosmocreator]

I've observed Mediterraneans to be emotionally volatile. And I'm talking of the ones not mixed with UP. Southern Italians, Arabs to East Indians, when put in a group together are very excitable, emotional. Any idea of the evolutionary advantage to this as compared to the more calm cool-headedness of Northern Europeans?

[Stríbog]

It helps to vent the stress from living in that unbearable climate?

[hardcorps]

One idea I read: Light-eyed and fairer-skinned peoples don't need to be as emotionally demonstrative, or gesticulative, because their immediate emotional reaction is evident in the shifting size of their pupils and skin reddening etc.

Darker skinned/eyed types retain the need to use hand signals and more emphatic verbal communication in order to get their point across.

These different communication styles are probably at least some cause of Northerners being distrustful of the (apparently) histrionic Med, whose eyes they can't read. Southerners, OTOH, view with suspicion the (apparently) non-demonstrative nature of the Northener.



Also: Protestantism is probably less encouraging of emotional demonstrativeness, as a rule.

Certain people have stated here that Meds have smaller brains on average - I would be interested in details. (On topics like these I hate talking about Meds as one monolithic group. I am NOT 'anti' white, unmongrelised Med.) In any case wherever one finds lower IQs one should expect less ability, along with less desire, to control basic knee-jerk emotional reactions.

Stribog might be right too! I imagine Meds have probably evolved greater sweating ability in response to the heat. Perhaps they have also evolved a greater general emotionality in order to vent heat-related frustrations. It's amazing how having an appropriate mental state can actually give one greater physical endurance - 'mind over matter.'

[Hans]

I’ve noticed this also but was afraid to speak about it thinking it’d just cause a divide. Anyways, I would consider myself in between. Either way you put it, both extremes annoy me to hell. I think Southern attitude tends to be, very generally speaking, to take charge of the group no matter if they are qualified for it or have even thought the group’s situation through. When a group is given a problem, they are the first to voice their opinions and have a hard time seeing another’s point of view. On the other hand, the extreme Northerners attitude seems to be much more quiet and gentler. These people are like the Libras of the zodiac. They will sit back and think things through extensively. Many times, they will sit back and learn from the Southerner/leader of the group and library everything he does right and wrong in order to one day overtake him…which never happens. Why? Because they don’t know how to stand up for themselves! They let people walk all over them. Sometimes I think of them as humble Asians that are constantly bowing and forgiving themselves in the hopes you approve of them.

I like to sit back and think things through but then I have the guts for confrontation when I want to make my idea a reality.

When put into a group, I guess it could be said that I wait for the first mistake to be made before taking charge.

[Conquistador]

I have noticed also that many Meds(Mediterranean Proper), for instance tend to talk and talk without end. It annoys the **** out of me a lot, listening to them yapping their mouths off without end. :dots One reason out of many why I prefer to hang around Atlanto-Mediterraneans whenever and wherever I can find them. As for me, I like to talk, observe, talk, observe again, talk, and then take advantage.

[Azdaja]

Charles Morris had an amusing theory on this.

It was his opinion that the mediterraneans developed/evolved out of negroes. Like negroes, meds tend to be impulsive and excitable. Yet the med character also contains an advanced form of this emotionalism: creativity and artistic talent.

The Hallstatt Nordics developed/evolved out of mongoloids, and share the mongoloid traits of industriousness and rational thought. But as with the meds, the Nordic mind also contains a higher form of these attributes, represented by his superiority in the spheres of science and all modes of concrete, analytical thinking. Also, the Nordic lacks the 'bee-hive' mentality of the mongoloid. That is, the Nordic has an awareness of himself as an individual and not merely part of some human collective.

Morris maintained that it was only when these two groups mixed together and produced that type of man which he (as an obvious advocate of British Imperialism) seems to associate with England, that a truly high form of civilization was made manifest.
I assume that the 'higher man' of Morris is either the Keltic Nordic or North Atlantid, or both.

Of course this type of thing has to be taken with many grains of salt, just like the writings of someone like Gunther. In both cases anthropology is being used to justify the political views of the author, and thus the 'conclusions' of such an author must be held suspect.

It still makes an interesting read, though.