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Read the following passage and answer the THREE questions that
follow.
This fluidity and situational dependence is uniquely human. In other
species, in-group/out-group distinctions reflect degrees of biological relatedness, or what
evolutionary biologists call “kin selection.” Rodents distinguish between a sibling, a
cousin, and a stranger by smell—fixed, genetically determined pheromonal signatures—and
adapt their cooperation accordingly. Those murderous groups of chimps are largely made up of
brothers or cousins who grew up together and predominantly harm outsiders.
Humans are plenty capable of kin-selective violence themselves, yet human group mentality is
often utterly independent of such instinctual familial bonds. Most modern human societies
rely instead on cultural kin selection, a process allowing people to feel closely related to
what are, in a biological sense, total strangers. Often, this requires a highly active
process of inculcation, with its attendant rituals and vocabularies. Consider military
drills producing “bands of brothers,” unrelated college freshmen becoming sorority
“sisters,” or the bygone value of welcoming immigrants into “the American family.” This
malleable, rather than genetically fixed, path of identity formation also drives people to
adopt arbitrary markers that enable them to spot their cultural kin in an ocean of
strangers—hence the importance various communities attach to flags, dress, or facial hair.
The hipster beard, the turban, and the “Make America Great Again” hat all fulfill this role
by sending strong signals of tribal belonging.
Moreover, these cultural communities are arbitrary when compared to the relatively fixed
logic of biological kin selection. Few things show this arbitrariness better than the
experience of immigrant families, where the randomness of a visa lottery can radically
reshuffle a child’s education, career opportunities, and cultural predilections. Had my
grandparents and father missed the train out of Moscow that they instead barely made, maybe
I’d be a chain-smoking Russian academic rather than a Birkenstock-wearing American one,
moved to tears by the heroism during the Battle of Stalingrad rather than that at Pearl
Harbor. Scaled up from the level of individual family histories, our big-picture group
identities—the national identities and cultural principles that structure our lives—are just
as arbitrary and subject to the vagaries of history.
What does the author BEST mean when they refer to the Battle of Stalingrad and Pearl Harbour?
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Choice D is the correct answer.
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