Lulz. Take a read through the list of historical patricides on Wikipedia (link below) and count the monarchs deposed by their offspring. Family ties aren’t strong enough to fetter ambition.
The way I see it, the tension you are trying to articulate is between individual autocratic rule or leadership, and more depersonalized institutional culture. Nepotism is abhorrent in the latter, embraced in the former. However in general it seems to me that the latter is also characterized by the philosophy that the nail which stands up gets hammered down. In other words it selects for conformity and discourages outliers, valuing consistency over deviance. The former allows for more deviance in both directions, good and bad. A good king can rule a very successful society, but a bad king can turn it into a morass. Nepotism is a problem to outsiders because you can’t tell which you’ll get. But forbidding it may mean cutting off the best qualified and most talented candidate(s).
A personal anecdote, somewhat related. My uncle was department head at a prestigious university hospital and medical school. He was named acting Chief of Medicine while they did a search to replace the retiring incumbent. But he could not be considered for the job because of a policy to not promote from within to that position. So he was forced to leave and run a competing institution in order to continue his career growth. They avoided political pitfalls with that policy, but also lost literally decades of institutional knowledge and personal working relationships throughout the institution and the local community. Was it worth it? His success in his next position suggests maybe not...
I see nepotism as the same sort of two-edged sword, and my personal philosophy values pragmatism over principle so I’m not a fan of a blanket prohibition. Let results speak for themselves.
EDIT: oops. Here’s that link...
Patricide - Wikipedia
Pardon the shortcut, but I've read enough history (not to mention mythology and bible stories) not to need a Wiki page on patricide (or, for that matter, child sacrifice.)
I am not, however, familiar with any reports of the younger Belichicks plotting Bill's demise, or conversely, of Bill's possible sacrifice of his children to Moloch.
Nepotism in the Pats context might (doubtfully) respond to some familiar emotional family resonances, in keeping with extreme cases involving folks like Oedipus. But I don't think so.
I suppose the parent-child pressure cooker is as well ensconced in what little we know of psychology as sibling rivalry; in terms of family fights, there are those who believe we're all driven by urges to murder one parent and shtup the other (and those who believe we're driven by the need to eliminate our siblings to reduce competition for mommy's lovin'.)
However, while I am not the greatest of buddies with my brother, we have not (as adults) actually taken active steps toward offing one another or for that matter, boffing or offing our parents. Nor has anybody I've ever known. Patricides and fratricides in the news seem quite unusual, infanticides perhaps less so, although they're often conflated with abortion, in which nobody you've ever met is harmed.
This is critical in our context, and not up for an idiotic veer into politics; The Belichick boys are, after all, born, and any urge by their father to kill them would be in the context of born (and for that matter, raised) offspring.
My world is rife, however, with nepotism. I need only look at the building manager (not mine at present, although I've seen this,) who suck at their jobs but happen -- just happen -- t0 be the owner's daughter or son. Or, not to drag politics into it, but the children of a president who just happen to be the best Americans out of 330 million at whatever the hell it is they're supposed to be doing in the white house. For that matter, you could make the same critique of Hilary Clinton vis a vis Bill, whatever policy chops of her own she had going into Bill's presidency.
Back to what we see every day, nepotism is so widespread because it is, contrary to the wikipedia page on patricide, a biological imperative to advance the lot of one's offspring.
One does not, typically, will one's fortune to a hit man to have one's childrens, siblings, or parents (if alive) murdered. One typically cuts them out of the will, if one is on the outs with them. One rather gives one's belongings to one's children, hoping to better their lot. Why? A sentimental answer, to give an emotional name to a phenomenon that answers to biological urges, is that one loves them. I suppose. But it is a great statement of disdain
not to will things to one's own children in our culture. The
default is to better their lot, even if there is no special love with them, and you see them perhaps twice a year.
I think rather that we do for our children for reasons going back to biology, although the reasons are enhanced by personal affection and by cultural preference.
What is important here, however, is that our preference is automatic. It happens as the default, if nothing interferes with this course. In unusual cases, the family dynamic might pervert the usual course of events into killing one's children, parents, or siblings. In ordinary circumstances, however, one favors those close to oneself.
Recognition of this fact caused a whole split in evolutionary biology with the publication of Dawkin's
The Selfish Gene in 1976. He began what became that book with an inquiry into altruism: Why might we lay down our lives for another? Well, in terms of what we do unconsciously, it's not just
any other. We tend to lay down our lives to save those closest to us. Specific cases differ, but the big mass of altruistic behavior expresses rules that boil down to "save the greatest concentration of genes like my own." This is often rendered as "You'll lay down your life for X siblings, or Y first cousins, or Z second cousins." (with the variables defined)
The point of Dawkin's book wasn't to posit this observation, it was to explain the observation which was already out there and well known. I'm sure there are ins and outs about why you'd save good breeding stock (a partner one posits producing offspring with, etc.)
I'm the first one to say "Well that's not how
my individual psychology works!" Okay, that's what I believe, and I could offer proof to that effect.
However, when one measures what happens broadly across society, one finds people trying to benefit those in their families. Headline cases include the Felicity Huffmans of the world who were fixing admissions into universities on behalf off their young; dynastic politics (in the main, accepting of course that the incentives of said politics as well as individual whim can result in other outcomes), and most importantly because it is most broad, the anti-meritocratic institution of inheritance. Also importantly,
I don't know how my preference for those genetically close to me would express itself; therefore, there are quite logical rules against it in many fields of endeavor (and the urge is so strong that these rules are often flagrantly violated, and the violations often not zealously pursued, because, perhaps, the nepotistic urge is so pervasive.)
Side note regarding exceptions that prove the rule: you're focusing, for example, on the murder of one uncle, when the succession has gone through several generations to date, involving not only the Dear Leader at the center of the arrangement, but
most other figures in the family. I'm guessing that the theoretical reason for his demise was that he was viewed as a threat or a bother, in a way that only matters
because of his membership in the tiny genetic group in whose hands power concentrates in Korea; no dynasty, and the uncle's life is very different, and
more likely comes to an uneventful close.
I am not judging meritocracy as inherently good for all of society in all instances, at least not here, in a non-political football board.
I am merely observing that nepotism is both a biologically favored and widespread pitfall, and that this pitfall is corrosive to any notion of meritocracy. Its coexistence with competitive drive for the prizes at the top of family dynasty politics is a special and rare case, as compared with the everyday politics of petty nepotism you can see all around you (in workplaces and the like.)
Belichick is likely to have been influenced by the tendency to favor those genetically close to oneself. He is unlikely to be retaining his offspring as a prelude to their murders.
Stay relevant baby.
But that's my brain talking, not my heart.
