Solving the problem of intermale aggression

Great Debates
41

Bolding mine.

This is a truly fine post. IOW, I agree with it. :slight_smile:

This echoes very much the life of myself and my wife. And also her sister and sister’s ex-husband.

in this era of exploration of roles and goals, there are more opportunities for people to live the life that fits them, not the cookie-cutter pink or blue life society wants to hand them. At the same time, it affords more opportunity for two people meandering around the role-space to get confused about what they want and what’s on offer and become disenchanted mid-life with the pairing they picked.

As with racial (in-)equality, any system that artificially subordinates a big chunk of one big group equally raises up the status of the lower echelons of the other group. IOW, if we artificially subordinate 90% of women, then a bottom 10%ile man still “outranks” half the populace. Which is a mighty comfortable place to be. For the men.
Here’s an interesting analogy. In today’s modern world we have an infinite supply of low cost food. As a result, obesity rates are off the charts. Because humans have evolved biologically as hunter/gatherers living off marginal food supplies from marginal lands all over the planet. We’re built for food scarcity yet now find ourselves drowning in the stuff.

So which is “human nature”: To scrawnily survive famines, or to be obese?

Clearly the answer is “It’s both, depending on the environment”. But a superficial politics-laden analysis wouldn’t see it that way. It’d say something like “Scrawny is the old natural way, obesity is a modern aberration.”

Given that we’re going (we fervently hope) to keep our plentiful cheap food coming UFN, the goal today ought to be “How can we best use the environment we *do *live in, not the one we *used *to live in?”

Switching back to male/female issues. …

What works best in an environment of low birth rates, high education, civilized rule of law nearly everywhere, and non-dangerous non-strenuous occupations for nearly all workers is what we should be (are?) aiming for. It wasn’t what we were biologically evolved for, but it’s where we are. And with luck it’s where we will stay. So we better learn how to live here.

The good news is our memes and hence societies can evolve far faster than can our genes and hence our bodies.

42

Thanks. I’m glad someone found my point in all my meandering.

To a certain extent this all boils down to our inability to fully understand human behavior, and by extension, the human brain. We don’t know why things are the way they are, we can only glean hints as society changes over time.

Intermale agression is only a problem if expressed in a destructive way. In that regard I agree with astro. As I said been before, we have some clue what makes men more likely to behave violently, and if I might generalize, it all comes down to surviving vs. thriving.

Since you’ve used obesity as an example, there are many who contend that obesity can’t possibly be genetic since it’s a relatively new phenomenon. This ignores the constant interplay between genetics and environment, better known as epigenetics. I could see it totally possible that men have some genetic disposition toward violent behavior that is only expressed in the presence of certain environmental triggers. So the solution is to ameliorate the conditions that trigger that gene expression. Could it be that lower levels of testosterone in men may be the result of ameliorating such conditions?

43

Another thing to look at is MAO-A. There was a study by Moffitt & Caspri which basically found that those with a certain variant were far more likely to be violent if they were also raised in an abusive home environment. So that suggests that eliminating abusive home environments is a good idea (aside from the obvious moral reasons).

Longer term it might be something that could be addressed with genomic editing.

44

From what I understand, starting from the basis that females are distributed according to resources and males are distributed according to females, to help reduce intra-male aggression in primates, a female strategy would be to align their oestrus cycles, therefore one dominant male cannot “guard” all receptive females against other subordinate males. Over evolutionary time it would be beneficial for males to evolve towards monogamy and away from sexual dimorphism, towards living within kinship societies.

Evolving these mechanisms does not help in the short-term, but, from what I also understand, males subjected to a boost of pro-lactin after siring an infant gives them a “hit of caring” for their young. I am sure there could be a way to dose up males with pro-lactin and through Google Glasses have other people appear as infants.

46

That is “the fear”, somehow the ladies have to lull the gents into a false sense of security and then BAM! Amazons with male slaves!

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[QUOTE=SpiceWeasel]
Intermale agression is only a problem if expressed in a destructive way […] I could see it totally possible that men have some genetic disposition toward violent behavior that is only expressed in the presence of certain environmental triggers. So the solution is to ameliorate the conditions that trigger that gene expression.

[/QUOTE]

That could absolutely work – by modifying the social environment we might be able to subdue our genetic tendencies toward aggression. And you’re right that we should not shift the responsibility entirely onto the violent male, as some advocates of nonviolent resistance do – actually, violence is clearly necessary in some scenarios, as to defend one’s children from physical assault.

Conversely, however, I question whether violence is the only problem. What about sadness, pain, or discomfort resulting from intermale aggression? A lot of people talk about world peace. I never hear anyone champion world happiness. Of course we can obtain world peace if we slap our enemies in straight jackets and laugh at them in mental hospitals – but it would obviously thwart world happiness that they lived in discomfort.

[QUOTE=SpiceWeasel]
Could it be that lower levels of testosterone in men may be the result of ameliorating such conditions?
[/QUOTE]

As a sex-loving male (despite my culturally-enforced lifelong virginity), I can see the benefits but also the drawbacks of decreasing testosterone. Studies suggest that testosterone not only boosts sex drive but also assists in such tasks as spatial and mathematical cognition. Could it be possible to increase testosterone and yet decrease violent encounters?

[QUOTE=Chen019]
Another thing to look at is MAO-A. There was a study by Moffitt & Caspri which basically found that those with a certain variant were far more likely to be violent if they were also raised in an abusive home environment. So that suggests that eliminating abusive home environments is a good idea (aside from the obvious moral reasons).

Longer term it might be something that could be addressed with genomic editing.
[/QUOTE]

Your idea of longer-term genomic editing seems to concord with Einstein’s to direct the course of evolution. Though I would not be surprised if people focused more on the other contributing factor (abusive homes) against any kind of self-directed evolution at all: in any discussion of eugenics, people are always quick to play the Hitler card (as if that were the only scenario they could imagine!).

[QUOTE=RupieDupie]
From what I understand, starting from the basis that females are distributed according to resources and males are distributed according to females, to help reduce intra-male aggression in primates, a female strategy would be to align their oestrus cycles, therefore one dominant male cannot “guard” all receptive females against other subordinate males. Over evolutionary time it would be beneficial for males to evolve towards monogamy and away from sexual dimorphism, towards living within kinship societies.
[/QUOTE]

I’m not sure what you mean in your first statements – how are males and females distributed according to either resources or each other?

Evolving toward monogamy might be feasible – I recall Marilyn vos Savant proclaiming she was “for” it on the cover of one book – but I think there could be drawbacks to maintaining rigid monogamy at the present time. In response to Wesley Clark’s comments that intermale aggression was about mating opportunities and those without such opportunities were prone to violence, I asked if sex were somehow a “need.” Our culture insinuates that sex is a need – in snarky comments toward those who aren’t “getting any” and in love songs. That leaves open whether sex is truly biologically a “need” without which we might suffer some kind of ill physical or mental effects, and if so, monogamy runs the risk of leaving some people destitute of this “need.”

Before concerns about STDs became prevalent, we used to have brothels that regularly provided sexual services to clients. Certainly, we haven’t found a cure for every STD and even administering protection or cure for those for which we have might be resource-intensive. Yet with other advancements in technology I wonder if STD contraction can somehow be institutionally guarded against. I’m not, of course, demanding that women toil as men’s sex slaves – that would run against the aim of universal happiness within a culture – but legalized consensual sexual services could in theory play a role in the reduction of the violence and crime we tie to intermale aggression.

[QUOTE=RupieDupie]
Evolving these mechanisms does not help in the short-term, but, from what I also understand, males subjected to a boost of pro-lactin after siring an infant gives them a “hit of caring” for their young. I am sure there could be a way to dose up males with pro-lactin and through Google Glasses have other people appear as infants.
[/QUOTE]

I’ve heard similar things about the hormone oxytocin, and that might be a solution for males unfit to reproduce in order to calm their aggressive instincts and help them lead more contented lives. If we administer it to just everyone, however, we run the risk of creating an evolutionary dependency on the drug, which could have the opposite effect and make matters worse. But you’re definitely onto something with the idea of using “cuddle hormones” as drugs (just keep them away from the greedy pharmaceutical companies!).

[QUOTE=Emily Blunt]
Think influence and riches in the hands of ladies and we will have no compelling reason to search for second-hand specialist through mating with “alpha” guys.
[/QUOTE]

I like your attitude – both yours and ZPG Zealot’s. What observed differences are there between patriarchal and matriarchal societies? I have read about one or two such societies, but have never looked into the details of the comparison.

astro, you began your reply with:

[QUOTE=astro]
With all due respect your baseline assumptions are sophomoric as are your attempts to parse this out into some meta theory paradigm of human behavior. There is not a single “culture” of any size on this planet where the majority of human females of that culture are not differentially more attracted to aggressively confident men.
[/QUOTE]

When SpiceWeasel directly challenged you on this point, you then guarded your assertion with the word “believe”:

[QUOTE=astro]
I believe these preferences are cross cultural and to the extent any tendencies can said to be “wired in” they are. You are welcome to disagree.
[/QUOTE]

This isn’t just a question of whether you believe or know that women universally have a preference for the “aggressive, confident man” (as you substitute in lieu of “bad boy,” where I had concentrated specifically on the word “bad”). It is a question of whether you are even willing to discuss the issue in objective, scientific terms.

Looking carefully through your posts, I see that you occasionally reuse certain expressions referring to men of this “confident” nature. These include the notions of “stepping up,” “not taking shit,” and “handling the situation.” The problem is that despite a few examples you give (an illness in the family, an unexpected bill, or the “asshole neighbor”), you haven’t reduced these concepts to behaviors that can be physically observed. When I refer to physically observable behaviors, think punching, head-cocking, or chest-butting – or something that can be seen under a microscope. Until the terms we use are reduced to such concepts, they don’t mean anything scientifically.

[QUOTE=astro]
The notion that you are going to fix these innate male and female predispositions short of some eugenics scenario […]
[/QUOTE]

Stop there, mid-sentence. This is exactly Einstein’s suggestion and the one with which I replied to your original post in this thread – and to which you did not respond. I will repost again his remark to Freud (this time with proper spelling):

“Man has within himself a lust for hatred and destruction … It is a comparatively easy task to call [this passion] interplay and raise it to the power of collective psychosis. Here lies, perhaps, the crux of all the complex of factors we are considering, an enigma that only an expert in the lore of human instincts can resolve … Is it possible to control man’s mental evolution so as to make him proof against the psychoses of hate and destructiveness?” (Einstein: A Life, Denis Brian, 232)

The question is, is there anything wrong with a Eugenics scenario? More generally, are you motivated at all to remedy the suffering of others, suffering that is partially a result of our aggressive male instincts? Like Wesley Clark, you allude that you are and you mention the possibility of redirecting these instincts for the betterment of society:

[QUOTE=astro]
The best any culture can do is have strong ethical and moral guidelines for how these drives can be expressed and have options to channel those impulses in a socially positive direction.
[/QUOTE]

However, by “socially positive” you could mean anything from the universal happiness I brought up earlier to a dystopia in which the less fortunate are festively mocked. When people use such terms it is often hard to tell.

48

In the mammal world females are usually distributed by resources, food, water etc, while the male distribution is highly influenced by the female distribution. But I think humanity becomes a lost opportunity if it is only dictated by biology (on a gross level it is).

And evolutionary driven adaptations unfortunately would take years to solve the problem, but gene technology could help. We have the unprecedented ability to mess around with our genes, we could make a hermaphroditic society.

49

Actually, I just now realize I’ve been making a silly mistake with the Einstein quote. I completely missed the word “mental.” So Einstein must have been referring to some kind of upbringing by which the instincts of violence can be remedied. (It figures, I guess, since he was writing to Freud and not Darwin!)

But whether or not Einstein agrees, I think controlling man’s actual evolution is a possibility that should not be discounted.

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50

Data is always worthwhile to bring to a discussion.

Short version: it may not be solved but despite the false impression many have we have come a long long way to solving it.

Consistently throughout history homicide is a crime committed by young men and mostly upon other young men. It is the single best marker as the ultimate of intermale aggression. That has not changed much. But over the scope of modern civilization the rates of homicide have dropped dramatically. Detailed graphs and charts at the link.

Not sure what has worked so well but it has worked.

Meanwhile to the question “of men and mayhem” the argument is made that status and identity, work and wedlock, reduce male violence:

As far as what proscriptively can be done to further advance these already dramatic historic decreases … it is implied above that a perceived relative lack of status by young males drives violent intermale aggression and such a position is empirically backed up.

(Bolding mine.)

A society that values decreasing severe wealth and power inequalities and that discourages ugly displays of wealth, that gives all of its members, including young adult males, a sense that they have some meaningful status and identity, will have less violence. And the happiest countries in the world (by various indices), Norway, Denmark, and Iceland, are renown for having policies that attempt to address wealth and opportunity inequalities.

51

Way to class up the thread, man.

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Assuming addressed to me, thank you Spice Weasel. I hope you still agree after this addition.

It is possible that the interplay between cultural and biological evolution has in fact been responsible for the long term decrease in intermale aggressiveness.

Higher testosterone levels correlate with aggressive behaviors and there has been a documented gradual decrease in adult male testosterone levels matched for age.

There is a great deal of research that substantiates that females (statistically and in general) prefer more masculine and aggressive males, specifically when they are most fertile and specifically for short term relationships, and prefer the less aggressive less highly masculinized males as choices for long term relationships.

IF higher and lower young adult male testosterone levels (and thus greater or decreased aggressiveness) is an inheritable trait, then long term societal structures that have encouraged more stable and faithful long term marriage partnerships may have decreased what was a longer term trend that provided more aggressive, higher T, males with greater reproductive fitness.

And the extremely wide availability of the birth control pill over the past 60 years may have had significant impacts in many ways. Yes, even that short a period of time can have impacts with something that widely used.

  1. As per above women would more likely consciously choose the less aggressive male as the long term mate but the more aggressive one for the fling; control over fertility decreased the odds that those flings would result in children thus less passing on of those genes over the genes for the less aggressive males they are choosing as long term partners.

  2. Increased control over their reproductive choices has gone hand in hand with greater economic freedom for women - as per above more power and wealth in their own hands thus less drive for the alpha male.

  3. The OCP suppresses ovulation. And as a result “[w]omen who are on the birth-control pill may be more likely to pick provider types over aggressive, masculine specimens”

This is not “fault” BTW.

53

Interesting. I’ve read that women have different sexual tastes when they are on the Pill vs. off of it.

Although this link is a great example of why I hate evolutionary psychology.

  1. Do a study.
  2. Observe the results.
  3. Make up the reason for the results.
  4. Pretend that the reason itself is the actual finding of the study.

Plus there always has to be some dick quote like this:

It’s such a crass way of looking at human relationships.

And yes, you class up any thread, DSeid, even when I don’t agree with you. Which is rare.

54

Thank you Spice Weasel and yeah, the “just so story”, post hoc explanations, criticisms of evolutionary psychology is often (not always) warranted. And unless one is discussing weakly interacting massive particles as a dark matter candidate the word “wimp” (and to some degree “good” to describe genes) is out of place in a serious scientific context.