Re: Yet more anthropological explanations for "male violence"

From: Michael Price (nini_pad_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 07/31/04 

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 00:04:08 -0700

"offshore eddie" <eddie@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:P93Nc.14849$mL5.1374@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> In this article an anthropologist insists that "male violence" is
hard-wired
> by centuries of evolution. He has a lot of good reasons for taking this
> view and not the feminist men-are-just-the-product-of-their-culture view.
> He cites male-on-male violence, violent behavior among other primates, for
> example, to conclude:
>
> "On a purely biological level, the youths involved in
> Toews' killing may unknowingly have been acting
> out a primal instinct by weakening or killing potential
> rivals and thereby enhancing their own chances of
> survival. This, and not the specter of "evil," as some
> would have it, Wrangham says, lies at the root of
> almost all violence, including warfare."
>
> But he is still too scared by his politically correct academic culture to
> mention that females must have selected the most violent and aggressive
> males as mating partners, without regard to their criminality, in order
for
> such traits to have won out in a Darwinian environment. Thus, we see many
> women today seeking out the most "violent" and aggressive males, and there
> is no condemnation of women for doing so. There is condemnation of sports
> teams for condoning "violent" males, especially males who are "violent"
> toward women, but no condemnation of the women who consort with such
males.
> Although not handsome, Donald Trump is a man of status, power and wealth,
> but his aggressive business tactics are certainly not something women hold
> against him. He could impoverish a hundred men and suffer no
condemnation,
> but if he slapped a woman he would be a pariah.
>
>
> - (Offshore Eddie, 2004)
>
> *********************************************************
>
> March 22, 2002
> Are our genes 'wired' for violence? Expert thinks it's a primal instinct
> By Alex Tizon
> Seattle Times staff reporter
> http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/134424186_wrangham22m.html
>
> No single theory can explain why a roving gang of boys descended on Tacoma
> resident Erik Toews as he walked home from work one night in August 2000.
> The boys, ages 11 to 19, beat Toews into a fatal coma. Police called it a
> random attack. The oldest of the eight assailants was sentenced last month
> to 26 years in prison. When given the opportunity to make a statement, he,
> like the others, offered no explanation for the killing.
>
> Invariably, after such crimes, social commentators lament the rise of
youth
> alienation or the glamorization of violence in the media. Community
> activists blame the prevalence of deadly weapons. To the usual post-mortem
> theorizing, add this controversial perspective: It's genetic.

  Then why is it on the rise? The genetics haven't changed that fast.
>
> Harvard author and anthropologist Richard Wrangham, in Seattle this week,
> says that human beings, particularly young men, have a biological
> predisposition for violence and that such behavior stems in part from a
> primal survival instinct. This predisposition, he says, "is written in the
> molecular chemistry of DNA," which is a technical way of saying it's
> hard-wired into us.

  No it isn't. It's a technical way of saying that under certain
circumstances
these behaviours could arise.
>
> On a purely biological level, the youths involved in Toews' killing may
> unknowingly have been acting out a primal instinct by weakening or killing
> potential rivals and thereby enhancing their own chances of survival.

  I doubt it, there was no indication that the victim was or might have
been seen to be a potential rival.

> This, and not the specter of "evil," as some would have it, Wrangham says,
lies at
> the root of almost all violence, including warfare. Wrangham says the
Sept.
> 11 attacks and the subsequent war on terrorism can be explained through
the
> prism of this theory, which arises from the nascent field of evolutionary
> biology. Violence, such as the kind visited upon Toews and the warfare
> witnessed today in the Middle East, has been a constant throughout
history,
> occurring across race, culture and nationalit and even across species.

  Actually rates of violence vary widely. Unless he has evidence that the
genetics
varies widely too (and sometimes withing decades without any other
demographic
change) it's clear that the genetics aint that big a factor.

> In fact, Wrangham's theories come from studying great apes, whose genetic
> makeup nearly mirrors our own.
>
> Tracing behavior
> Wrangham is also a primatologist. He's in town this week to lend
Ivy-League
> weight to a chimpanzee-protection conference sponsored by the Glaser
Family
> Foundation (of RealNetworks' Rob Glaser) and attended by scientific
> luminaries such as Jane Goodall and Stephen Wise. Wrangham's ideas,
> presented in his book, "Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human
> Violence," are based on studies of chimpanzee communities in the wild.
> Although released several years ago, the book continues to make its way
> through scientific and academic circles, and not without loud dissent. One
> critic called the book's thesis "titillating and simplistic." Others
deemed
> it dangerous, opening the way for a legal defense of ruthless killers.
After
> all, how can society blame any individual if violence is a genetic
> imperative of our species?
>
  But not all of our species practice violence and not all that do use the
same
amount or use it in response to the same provocation.

> The Harvard professor is part of an increasingly influential web of
> scientists who trace all aspects of human behavior to evolutionary
> selection. Their basic premise: People behave the way they do because
their
> ancestors made behavioral adaptations to survive that then were passed on.
> Wrangham writes that modern humans are "the dazed survivors of a
continuous,
> 5 million-year habit of lethal aggression."

  Then why is it that lethal aggression was almost unknown in the
near-anarchistic
"Wild West" while back East racially and therefore probably genetically
identical
populations were murdering each other at a rate of knots?

>
> "Demonic Males," co-authored by evolutionary biologist Dale Peterson,
argues
> that on the most basic level, primate (and therefore human) violence is
> driven by the need to survive and procreate. The best fighters, the ones
who
> wield violence most successfully, are the most likely to reproduce.

  Actually no, the sneakiest tend to reproduce, the most violent fathered
the most
children when in Zoos. In the wild it's the cunning that reproduce.
>
> Because humans and chimpanzees share nearly the same genetic package -
their
> DNA are 99 percent identical - Wrangham and a growing number of scientists
> see chimpanzees as windows to the origins of human behavior. How chimps
> behave, the theory goes, is probably how early humans behaved. But this is
> exactly where many scientists disagree.
>
> Jonathan Marks, an anthropologist at the University of North Carolina,
says
> Wrangham and Peterson make an incredible - and ultimately unscientific -
> leap by linking the behaviors of chimps and humans. Marks says the
> "connection," upon which the whole book is based, should be seen as merely
> an "imaginative projection" by Wrangham and Peterson of human
> characteristics onto chimpanzees. The authors, Marks says, never prove the
> connection.
>
> Waging war
> Nevertheless, chimps, like the other great apes, have been widely shown to
> have the capacity to feel and communicate complex thoughts and emotions,
to
> exhibit loyalty and affection as well as cruelty. Only in the past three
> decades have researchers documented the kind of violence among chimps
> traditionally ascribed only to humans - namely, waging war. Wrangham and
> Peterson contend that homicide committed by roving bands of young males
can
> be seen as a primitive form of war, one that humans have practiced for
eons.
> The scientists refer to it as "raiding." It's committed by one group as a
> way of weakening a rival community. In scenes eerily similar to the attack
> on Toews in Tacoma, "Demonic Males" describes in vivid detail raids by
> groups of young chimpanzee males who randomly select and beat to death
> isolated members of other bands.

  Actually the attacks are far from random. The chimps pick on a rival
group
and try to kill as many members as possible. The victim is determined by
availibility not whim.
>
> The Sept. 11 attacks, Wrangham says, conforms to the definition of a raid.
> They occurred by surprise, made no immediate material gains and killed
> members of the enemy. The goal was to weaken the United States. Wrangham
> disparages as "naïve" attempts by U.S. leaders to characterize the enemy,
in
> this case Osama bin Laden and al- Qaida, as "evil."
>
> "It is to a large extent just name-calling," he says. "Each side calls the
> other evil. Both sides invoke their own gods. This explains nothing about
> the roots of the conflict."

  Nor does this theory. Why would the 9/11 hijackers go all the way to
the other side of the world to kill a 'rival' group? Do they have nobody
to kill at home?
>
> From an evolutionary biologist's point of view, the conflict is a
> consequence of resource competition and power balances (and imbalances):
> Each side wants to secure more resources and more power.
>
  Why yes it does, and how do they do it? Through the monopoly State in
both cases.

> Make love, not war
> Wrangham does offer a way out of our genetic bind by citing the example of
> another primate, the bonobo, also known as the pygmy chimpanzee. The
bonobo
> is the make-love-not-war sibling of the primate family. This primate
rarely
> fights with its own kind or with other animals but instead makes love
> constantly and freely with friends, family and strangers. Food was more
> abundant in the areas where bonobos lived, allowing the species to evolve
> into a life of less struggle and isolation. In addition, females are equal
> in stature and status to males, creating a more egalitarian society, and
> tempering testosterone-driven (read: male) impulses toward aggression.
>
  Actually aggression might be more related to female hormones.

> The hope lies in that primate societies, including our own, have the
ability
> to structure communities in a way that effectively checks violent
behavior.
> Some examples of human success: early 17th-century New England, early
> 20th-century Iceland and mid-20th century Malaysia among Semai tribal
> members. All of these societies experienced strikingly low levels of
> violence. Besides having great uniformity in genes and ideology, the other
> main key was "controlling the young males" and not allowing them to become
> emotionally and socially detached from the rest of the community. These
> examples, Wrangham says, have been rare exceptions.

  The Nazi party controlled the young males very effectively and made them
extremely attached to the rest of society (via the State of course). Was it
pacifist?
>
> Alex Tizon can be reached at 206-464-2216 or atizon@seattletimes.com
>
> Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company
>
>

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