On wars, centralization and sex ratio

[cocogi]

This is gonna be a long a quite complex post. I am putting a lot effort into it - although it does NOT mean in anyway that I have the truth about it, or that my conclusions are necessarily valid.
I'm sharing it to discuss together - learn, correct and revise "my" observations.
In some points I may appear as giving final truths, but in reality they are all just personal observations I would like to rediscuss with you.
A symposium.

So:

Preliminary concepts:
- Sex ratio and biology
- The rats experiment
- Centralization and the rise of unitary states
- World wars I and II ("Slaughterhouse no.5")


My own observations:
- Extreme centralization reduces the opportunity for men to raise to optimal positions of status - except for a restricted few.
This leaves a surplus of unsatisfied - "qualified" men but who simply don't find any adequate position to fill.
It increases the "extremistan" - the possibility for women to reproduce with fewer, 'rockstar' men who are in the highest positions.

Just imagine it visually:
A centralized state of 5 million people vs. 10 very autonomous countries of half a million each.
In the first case, you are going to have one president, one main anchorman, a few nationally famous artists, 11 top soccer players, and so on.
In the second case, each of those autonomous community will have the same positions. Each.
So, in the same number of people (5 million in total) - with autonomous communities, there are gonna be 10 times more spots for "top positions" - within their own community.

Even if a top artist in the unitarian state may be more powerful in absolute terms - it doesn't matter for our reasoning: what we consider is the "top" level, regardless of how much high is that top.

Now, the difference may not look so immediate, but is immense.
It means that, in a unitarian system, 90% of those men will have no chance of reaching the top positions - but they may be very well qualified for them.

The difference between the skills required in both scenarios may not be that different - it's just that the spots are fewer.

Some things, some professions and roles - as Nassim Taleb famously explained - tend to the extremes, the "extremistan".

Basically, in the big country, there will be much less space for minor artists, for more footballers, rockstars, top politicians and so on.
Because people from that same community are gonna follow the top ones. The distribution will not be omogenous.

People are gonna watch the national shows, follow the national teams, follow the national politics, and so on.
Even if a "local" scene exist - it is gonna be much less wide than in the "collection of autonomous, separate communities" scenario.


This brings us to another famous study that also GC quoted: the rats experiment.

Basically, what this and other sociologists observed is that - when a community runs out of available, good, positions for qualified men, these men react by increasing competition and lowering social stability, then with depression, inaction, less reproduction and - in general - nothing very good for the society.


So, I would then like to bring a parallel to what has actually, historically, happened with the rise of the unitarian states - in Europe, in particular, where I live.

Between the 1700 and the 1900, what happened was that the nation-state was born. Collections of communities formed what is now Germany, Italy (which were, and will see later the connection, the most fragmented territories - because of the celtic tribes in Germany and the city-states/duchies in Central-Northern Italy) - France went more centralized and burocratic with the revolution, and so on.

In such a unitarian system, the surplus of men who cannot reach positions of status and who are subjected to a numerically few, controlling ruling class - becomes more evident.

(Note: I am not saying that the following is a manifestation of *only* nation-states. There have probably communities in which these kind of things happened, on different levels).

The men at the top have a morally hazardous incentive to eliminate (let's see what I mean) the "surplus" men, for more than one reason:
a) reduce the competition for themselves,
b) bring the society to a point of equilibrium, reducing the social tension and imbalance posed by the situation

They do it in very different ways - from the more to the less cruent.
There has been the literal extermination of men in mass wars. World wars I and II have basically been a slaughter of men, especially - as famously referred also by Kurt Vonnegut in the emblematic "Slaughterhouse no.5".
Empires, in general, tend to be war-hungry, since the Roman Empire itself - and I guess that this reduction of available spots + restricted ruling class may explain an even subconscious dynamic.
There is the feminization and nullification of masculinity.
And there is - simply - the normalization of celibacy, the cultural acceptance that (a lot of) men should just be happy alone and not even think about women - to simply be "patient" and accept their situation.

Prostitution, when a mass phaenomenon, is basically the anesthetical equivalent - which achieves a similar aim: basically moving a lot of men out of the dating pool, by restricting their options to the "sexual masturbation" by few women. It's basically a sort of palliative way.
Italian fascism, indeed - a very centralistic ideology - normalized and legalized mass prostitution. Probably because it understood that an highly centralized system would have found a mass of unsatisfied men ready to disrupt it.

So it actually did both: mass wars + mass prostitution. An extermination and subtle castration of (a lot of) men.

-


Ok, so: many many concepts.
As I already said, this is mostly a collection of observations, paths and parallels that I thought about and arose to my attentions.
I am just curious to what other can add, subtract, notice or modify to all of these.
Something that I thought worth to put on the table and just think about it.

 

[Will_V]

Moved to offtopic.

Interesting thoughts there. I just happened to get in my youtube feed a clip from an interview between Lex Fridman and Richard Wrangham, where Wrangham basically said that it would be a good idea for some future utopian society to eliminate males from the general population, as they are responsible for the vast majority of aggression. And this from a highly esteemed Harvard anthropologist. So that got my mental gears turning about the sort of direction society is going right now (and also about the curious role of academia in steering the public perception of these sorts of issues).

Like you have alluded to, society has a difficult problem right now about what to do with men. Wrangham pointed out in a part of the rest of the interview that it was the ability of humans to reduce reactive violence (i.e. spontaneous fighting) while increasing 'coalitionary proactive violence' (i.e. societal punishment) that allowed us to evolve from neanderthals to what we are today. That seems to be at least partly true - we live now in a world where society seems to benefit from having very cooperative, low-aggression members in a rigidly controlled environment where the society itself metes out judgement and punishment. Just look at China and what they've become from having a population who follow all the rules that their society lays out for them.

The problem with this picture is that societies with submissive members become tyrannical rather quickly, just look at the direction that Communism takes every country where it is implemented. And the only ones who will consider standing up to it are highly disagreeable people with the tendency to become aggressive rather than capitulate when faced with a threat. The freest society (until recently at least) has been USA which is basically synonymous with individualistic, disagreeable individuals who are ready to stand up to the slightest violation of their sacred constitutional rights.

Ever since I was a kid reading science fiction (I used to read a lot of it, my parents had a whole bookshelf packed with them) I've been fascinated with the idea of the Fermi paradox and the implicit rationalization that sometime soon the human race will destroy itself. I don't know when I first felt it but I've long had the intuition that if it happened, it would not be a war, but a well-meaning, possibly accidental self-destruction through cutting off the ability to adapt and/or reproduce, and simply dying out. Probably the first time I thought of this was when I read the book The Humanoids by Jack Williamson, I was probably eight or nine at the time and I remember it shook me badly, the sort of book that you feel like you need to go and take a holiday in the real world to recover from. It takes you right to the edge of the first and last utopia that the human race would ever experience.

I have a sort of faith in what Nietzche calls the 'will to power', whatever that strange force is that takes something from lifeless to animated, not by some spontaneous magic but by simply actualizing the inherent drive, libido, aggressive desire to live that exists at least in people, if not in all things at some level. It is the only thing that remains to be expressed in a person who is faced with annihilation or a complete lack of hope. And all the moral and ethical questions that we consider individually or collectively as human beings is tiresome and requires endless patience and is often self-contradictory (if not outright disfunctional), but the will to live just is. It cannot be repressed or denied, or fabricated from entropy. Whatever it is, is the most pure basis of human existence that we can conceive of, and in my view, it is the only thing that can save humanity from whatever dismal future or cliffhanger that may appear.

But it is also the harbinger of change, of revolution, of incrementally destroying and rebuilding slightly better. And it is aggressive and competitive. All of which makes it the enemy of the centralized society that you spoke about. And it is embodied most potently in the individual or tribal inclinations of men.

What would it cost society to try to remove that or subvert it? We don't know, but I believe it would cost everything. Because I don't think it is understood quite how far it reaches into the depths of the natural mechanisms that create and propel living things forward through time and space.

And that is the danger of the times that we live in - firstly that we have a society now that is complex enough that no one really has a conceptual grip on the whole picture, and secondly that we are of a technological maturity that we can (and probably will soon attempt to) substantially alter the course of the human race at some biological and/or technological level, for some well-meaning but fundamentally ignorant goal. And that may well be our last gasp.

I think what Wrangham said about getting rid of men is fundamentally stupid because - as is often the case with these kind of theoretically self-absorbed utopian notions - it doesn't take into account the inevitability of something filling the vaccuum of power, or our inability to deal with future situations that don't exist right now, both of which are in fact prime considerations of the mechanisms of nature that he is apparently so well acquainted with. Instead, I think a reverence for knowledge and discipline - wisdom, in a word - is required to have the same effect without the disastrous consequences. That is something that society would do well to perpetuate, but it simply doesn't provide the easiest and most pliable people to control.

But we are not 'legion', we are each just one man or woman, and so I think our role is to effect in ourselves - and perhaps, if we can accomplish it, in our children - the kind of existence that we believe to be the best and most worthy, even if it is a small and brief effort in the face of everything that surrounds us. Because what does it matter if the ideal existed for one moment or a billion years? What matters is that it existed at all.

 

[orkie123]

I somehow feel the reason space exploration is starting to rise in popularity is that if we don't have new places to "conquer" soon, we will either end up in some unbearable society or the end of humanity in one way or another.

It' interesting that almost anyone I ask if they would take a one way ticket to a new planet to set up the first community of say 10,000, they wouldn't do it. I would take that opportunity in a heartbeat. Would be so exciting to start from scratch.

Also, I find it so ironic when people complain about how much money X country spends on nuclear/weapon programs. Most these people wouldn't last 5 minutes in the wars that would break out if USA wasn't spending so much $ on weapons. I wouldn't last either but at least I know it and I'm thankful for these deterrents. Before nukes, any empire that became too comfortable and focused on pleasure was destroyed by a more vicious enemy.

 

[Beck Bass]

Before nukes, any empire that became too comfortable and focused on pleasure was destroyed by a more vicious enemy.

Yeah, it's just the natural cycle, the people that don't have as much have the drive to strive for more, but once they have, they lose that drive

it doesn't take into account the inevitability of something filling the vaccuum of power, or our inability to deal with future situations that don't exist right now, both of which are in fact prime considerations of the mechanisms of nature that he is apparently so well acquainted with.

Yeah, apparently he's very unfamiliar with how aggressive and toxic some lesbians can be lol, like women are all that different from men, after all (other than being a bit phisically weaker for quite literally having the aparatus in them to make whole new living things - not without men's sperm though, which is another factor that people like dismissing like it's nothing)

 

[Conquistador]

Yeah, apparently he's very unfamiliar with how aggressive and toxic some lesbians can be lol, like women are all that different from men

Like lesbians are all that different from other women?

Women rarely engage in aggression through physical violence. But that hardly means they don’t engage in any kind of destructive or wasteful behavior…

Also, there is some anthropological evidence that male humans tend to be more effective at peacefully engaging and communicating with out-group members. As well as historical surveys documenting that female leaders consistently are slightly more likely to resort to warfare.

As far as I’m concerned, if this overeducated blowhard in his Harvard ivory tower was right, humans and their shared culture would have evolved differently. Instead, most hunter-gatherer and other "primitive" societies primarily practice gender equality with a division of labor, and lifelong monogamy, with optional polygamy if the man can guarantee enough resources.

If there’s a problem, it’s not due to males, but the 21st century system. Which means that cultures need to, and will, adapt to changing circumstances. It’s just that it’s currently difficult for cultures to keep up with the rate of technological change.

 

[Will_V]

Yeah, apparently he's very unfamiliar with how aggressive and toxic some lesbians can be lol, like women are all that different from men, after all (other than being a bit phisically weaker for quite literally having the aparatus in them to make whole new living things - not without men's sperm though, which is another factor that people like dismissing like it's nothing)

I agree women can be pretty vindictive and nasty but I don't think they have nearly as much capability for direct aggression as men, even when you take out the physical aspect. But I don't think that's necessarily a 'better' thing for society - you can see in the psychology of women a much higher level of neuroticism that fills the same space that aggression fills in men. And the destructive aspect of collective neuroticism (which is what you would have in a society filled with only women, and is what society is leaning toward now) is a society that overreacts to perceived or relatively small threats, and underreacts to larger direct or strategic threats. This is what victims do - they lash out at anything that remotely triggers them, but panic and run from ones that are difficult to face. Whereas strong, capable, and dominant masculine figures do the exact opposite.

I once saw a podcast of Jocko Willink titled 'Aggression overcomes fear' or something like that, and I always remember that phrase because it made me realize that fear is not so much an emotional element of its own but a void, the absence of something positive and intentional. To conquer fear and anxiety it isn't enough to simply 'be calm' or 'relax' or whatever - this simply makes you lethargic - you have to propel yourself against that fear with an actual, intentional aggression. If you're a soldier in a trench and the enemy is coming for you, what's going to make you get out of the trench and expose yourself? The only thing is absolute aggression. In most of society, conflict and competition isn't nearly as brutal as that but the same rule applies. I know very well from all the relationships I've been in that my capability to be aggressive toward an obstacle or goal is one of the most valuable things that a girl gets from being with me, because it provides a buffer against the fear and anxiety that she feels instead.

What Wrangham doesn't take into account is that a society filled with relatively weak, docile, neurotic individuals is one that is ripe for exploitation. And at that level, it wouldn't need to be a man who does that - when you have a lot of institutional power and you are backed up by the resources of a society's legal and protective systems - what Wrangham calls 'coalitionary proactive violence' - you don't need big balls to start taking advantage of things. In fact, this kind of position is very alluring for the kind of people who feel otherwise incapable of dominating their environment and acquiring the things they want. And we are already seeing the effects of this.

Another thing that he does not talk about is the value of competition, which is what drives everything in nature and without which we wouldn't have even gotten to the level of an amoeba. And aggression, as well as a host of masculine traits, is what fuels that, while the female role is typically to stand by and reproduce the winner. Who is out there slaving away to develop the future of society and take the human race into outer space and to other planets? 99% are highly aggressive and competitive male figures. The idea that it would happen at all without them is pure fantasy. It was aggressive, competitive men who boarded ships without life jackets, maps, GPS, EPIRBs or any of that stuff and went and spread civilization throughout the known world. Is it time to simply end the arc of human development?

Part of the problem is that modern society perpetuates fantasies that have no basis in reality, such as the idea that you can have all the good parts of something without the 'bad' parts and it remains fully functional. In movies for example you always see the fantasy of the weak, conformist beta male or woman who is somehow simultaneously courageous against powerful enemies and just does some ninja kung fu and flips them on their back and wins the day. Look at Avatar for example, a movie that I loathe. Where you have all these blue people who have no technology, are ultra pacifist and conformist and collectivist and matriarchal, and somehow defeat the latest interplanetary military hardware by jumping on it to make it swerve and bump into a cliff. This is the kind of fantasy that operates at some level these days even in relatively intelligent people - they believe that you just need to get rid of the things you don't like and everything you do like will remain and even somehow become more powerful. That's not the way it works - the same people who can and will stand up to overwhelming opposition are generally aggressive, dominant and overbearing individuals who are used to going and taking what they want, and the people who are nice and comformist generally cannot deal with even small threats.

Lastly Wrangham said that he thinks that there's no reason why women could not have produced all the works of engineering and art that men have done if given an opportunity. I think this is nonsense - the things that women create reflect their femininity, and the things that men create reflect their masculinity. To believe that one can just step in to fill the role of the other just because they are 'allowed' to is complete bs. Even if they have the faculties to do so, they would not have done so because they are driven by different motivations.

It's not surprising at all to me that people live in these fantasies, what's surprising is that a Harvard anthropologist does. Besides the ethical questionability of his remarks, I don't know how he manages to retain his position after displaying that kind of low level thinking - I thought Harvard had a reputation to uphold.

 

[Beck Bass]

Lastly Wrangham said that he thinks that there's no reason why women could not have produced all the works of engineering and art that men have done if given an opportunity. I think this is nonsense - the things that women create reflect their femininity, and the things that men create reflect their masculinity. To believe that one can just step in to fill the role of the other just because they are 'allowed' to is complete bs. Even if they have the faculties to do so, they would not have done so because they are driven by different motivations.

It's not surprising at all to me that people live in these fantasies, what's surprising is that a Harvard anthropologist does. Besides the ethical questionability of his remarks, I don't know how he manages to retain his position after displaying that kind of low level thinking - I thought Harvard had a reputation to uphold.

Could they have done it? Probably.
Would they have done it? I don't think so.

As you said, competition is what drives society, and if everyone is so conformist, avoiding conflict, changes don't happen.

But the part about such an academic defending those positions doesn't surprise me at all. It's just the status quo, at this point, and he's gonna say whatever to keep his job. It's more about what he gains individually than about actually being right, which is sad, but those guys choose "studying" as a carreer, so they are gonna "study" in whatever ways benefits them. The school system/academia is more interested in self-preservation than anything at this point, since in a world with such ease of access to most knowledge, it's difficult to even justify their existence, at least to the extent that they currently have dominated our society. Like I can't think of many people doing more pointless work than most professors I had in university, yet their salaries and carreer stability is among the top (at least here in Braziland)