Essays and Theories
Essays and Theories
RETHINKING POSSE COMITATUS
IN AN ERA OF MUSLIM SUICIDE BOMBERS
AND THE COMING HOARDS OF BACHELOR MALES FROM INDIA AND CHINA:
ARE MORE AND MORE SIGNS
POINTING TO THE LACK OF MARRIAGE OPPORTUNITIES
FOR THESE SURPLUS MALES AS FODDER
FOR FUTURE WARS AND A THREAT TO OUR NATIONAL SECURITY?
PART I
Click here for PART II
by
William A. Spriggs
August 23, 2007
There is a paper worthy of note on the internet found at the Journal
of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology www.jsecjournal.com,
titled: THE EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGICAL IMAGINATION: WHY YOU CAN'T GET A DATE
ON A SATURDAY NIGHT AND WHY MOST SUICIDE BOMBERS ARE MUSLIM, written by Satoshi
Kanazawa, Interdisciplinary Institute of Management, London School of Economics
and Political Science. The paper helped to spawn this essay which has been brewing
in the back of my head for months.
Basically, in a nut-shell, Mr. Kanazawa, posits that because Muslims practice polygamy (wealthy men having multiple wives and hoarding the available supply of eligible, reproductive women), and because of highly restrictive economies, the poor, unattached Muslin male is a poor prospect to attract any remaining reproductive females. Mr. Kanazawa believes that since the wealth gap is so large in Muslim cultures, it increases the aggressiveness of the poor Muslim male in attempts to avoid becoming reproductive losers. But, since the urge to mate and procreate is buried deep in our genes, the resource poor young Muslim male must resort to the Koran's unique promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam as a substitute for reproduction; Kanazawa affirms this Muslim quest can only be obtained in martyrdom. Kanazawa teaches us that this sex transference process has deeper origins in which sociologist C. Wright Mills argued in 1956 that individuals create intimate links with their "personal troubles" and society's "public issues." Mr. Kanazawa supports Wright's arguments, but expands those thoughts into an evolutionary perspective which offers a much better guide because it "… will allow us to see even more intimate links between our personal troubles and public issues."
"The evolutionary psychological imagination (perspective) first allows you to see the universality of human nature and realize that, to a large extent, people are the same everywhere. It diverts your attention from the particular, the exceptional, the individual, and the local, and focuses your attention to the universal and the common in human experiences.
"The other key ingredient is the Koran's promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. This creates a strong motive for many young Muslim men who are excluded from reproductive opportunities to commit suicide bombings. Now a vague promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven may not sound so appealing if they have even one real mate on earth, which monogamy in the context of a 50-50 sex ratio mathematically guarantees. However, for young low-status Muslim men who are excluded from any mating opportunities because of polygyny among older higher-status men even such a vague promise in the afterlife begins to be appealing in light of their bleak reproductive prospect on earth."
Mr. Kanazawa also enlightens us about the parallel sexual practices of "loser" males in the West who seek pornography in print, DVDs, and on the internet as a substitute for reproductive copulation in the real world. So, to be sure we understand how Muslin and Western male "imagination" works in regard to substitute sexual copulations, Kanazawa cites himself in presenting his Savanna Principle (Kanazawa, 2004) which states:
"…the human brain has difficulty comprehending and dealing with entities and situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment."
"And that the human brain which evolved like any other organ in the body is ideally suited for conditions in the early ancestral environment of some 10,000 to 1.6 million years ago and not for conditions that exist today. (Crawford, 1993; Symons, 1990; Tooby & Cosmides, 1990)
"When men get aroused with erections while watching pornography, they know in reality that they can not mate with the images on the computer screen because there were no televisions, videos, DVDs, or the internet in the ancestral environment.
"The Savanna Principle tells us, however, that the brain of these men doesn't really comprehend that they would never copulate with the sexually receptive women they see on the screen…Adapted to the conditions of the ancestral environment without TV and videos, the brain of young men today cannot really comprehend that they cannot have sex with the porn stars they see on TV.
"Just as the brain of young Western men today is tricked by porn movies…the brain of young Muslim men today is tricked by the Koran, which also did not exist in the ancestral environment. Just as the brain of Western men thinks that they can potentially copulate with the sexually receptive women they see in porn movies, the brain of Muslim men thinks that they could copulate with the 72 virgins in heaven, if they die as martyrs." (Emphasis Kanazawa's)
Now, both these examples raise fascinating thoughts that if Western men watch so much pornography as a substitute for actual copulations and Muslim men become martyrs in Islam in order to copulate with 72 virgins, can we then assume that our male ancestral brains that evolved had sex on a daily, or, on multiple levels in vast numbers?
Or then, perhaps not; after all, if our ancestral brains are equipped to believe that we are always on the brink of starvation and then when we visit an "all you can eat buffet," and some humans tend to "stuff their brains out." (See the excellent Time magazine cover story of June 11th, 2007, "The Science of Appetite: Why we are hardwired to crave the wrong things and what new research says we can do about it.") So too perhaps, when the rare opportunity arises, young males everywhere sexually overindulge themselves because their ancestral brains knew that it most likely would be a long time between sexual accesses. I tend to favor the latter theory because police vice records are full of citations listing males doing stupid things in order to obtain sex.
So does that mean that our modern day "loser" male knows that he has reduced opportunities to mate with women (that's because women ignore his other fine qualities) and that he might as well get what is available while the "getting is good?" Unfortunately, that may be the case. It could also be why men resort to rape or "date rape" drugs, or lying to the female that he will be committed to her and her progeny by trying to convince the female that he will "always be there." All these false masculine commitment mechanisms are done for the mere sake of steady access to females. But then, that is what the modern female wants - freedom to choose - and the freedom to learn from her mistakes if that is the case. Sisters "pass down" their knowledge to fellow sisters throughout the years and a "cultural norm" is formed amongst them within the meme; See my book review of: The Rules: Time Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right. Men do the same; here's a YouTube video of Radio announcer Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks radio show from Air America giving his advice about "Which Women Should You Go For?" to his partner, Ben Mankiewicz, and, we assume, his listening male audience.
Regardless of their ethnic or cultural norms, all men must "reach down" into the biological and "turn on" their visceral lust before deciding the direction of the sexual attachment - whether real or imagined. I don't quite agree with Kanazawa that modern man doesn't know what his ancestral biological brain is doing; I posit that in the comfort zone of their private abodes, modern man can easily substitute the real world and reach down into the fantasy world of lust for the sole quest of ejaculatory release. Hard erections with maximum blood engorgement frames for the male the emotional sense of his own individual sexual power and the resulting ejaculatory release feels damn good - period. The male sex drive is powerful because the modern female has sexually selected males to be this way and they are currently satisfied with these evolutionary results. When the majority of women are dissatisfied with the modern male's sex drive, they will change the evolutionary voyage that human males travel and lead them down a different path; men will follow because to "obey" means unlimited sexual access.
As for the Muslim motive for suicide, I posit that the role of becoming a martyr is not so much for religious fervor as it is for socially economic reasons, and thus, evolutionary in force (and I feel the same for young Western males with little economic opportunities). If the unemployment rate is 50 or 75%, as I am to led to believe exists in many Muslim countries, the situation presents itself in which there are few economic pathways in which they can help their younger brothers or sisters survive despite their desire for work; the possibility of their family receiving compensation and positive social feedback and encouragement for martyrdom in their local environmental neighborhoods could be the only biological gene transference available. After all, being a martyr does not pass their genes into the next generation, but any financial rewards that they think would be passed to their family members could be a biological motivation despite the end result of "redmistdomism." ("red-mist-dom-ism").
We must also take into consideration outside pressures from dominate economic groups promising "rewards" in the local environments. The lyrics in the protest song go something like this: "Just another poor boy off to fight another rich man's war" rings louder then ever (See below for complete lyrics). For Osamba bin Laden, who recently reappeared on July 12th, 2007 and was seen on the internet calling on young men to become martyrs in "the great struggle against" -- (pick you evil de jour phrase of the moment) is merely a rich man exploiting one of societies' oldest sick opportunities: How to take advantage of surplus bachelor male populations for war or profit. I can't say for sure that Osamba bin Laden is aware of demographics and economics 101, but he probably sees around him a sea of young males eager to do more with their lives besides seeking food and shelter. However, I have a suspicion that the American Pentagon is highly aware of the demographics swirling around Generation Y and the available pool of young males of peak fighting age in 2007. America is awash in bachelor males left in the wake of job outsourcing of our manufacturing base over a period of thirty years and the destruction of the middle class' ability to be upwardly mobile.
After defending his arguments against certain studies that show that educated vs. poor uneducated Muslim males commit more suicide bombings, Kanazawa drops a bomb of his own:
"The evolutionary psychological imagination (perspective) suggests that there may be an intimate connection between your inability to find a date on a Saturday night, and…the current so-called "War on Terror." It suggests that Muslim suicide bombings may have nothing to do with Islam or the Koran (except for two lines in it, one condoning polygyny, and another promising 72 virgins to all martyrs; they may have nothing to do with religion, politics, culture, race, ethnicity, language or region. As is everything else from an evolutionary psychological perspective, they may have a lot to do with sex, or in this case, the absence of sex." (Emphasis, Kanazawa's).
I agree. It's the lack of readily available female sexual access that makes the human male grumpy and aggressive to seek out the same even if he is not consciously aware of the underling evolutionary pressure building up like static electricity within his testes.
It is the point that I have been trying to get across for years now - In our Western culture, women, by limiting the "supply" of sexual access to any old Tom, Dick, or Harry, "escalate the price" of the "commodity" of sexual availability, and hence, greater potential resource accumulations for their progeny. Of course, this is entirely her choice - and as an evolutionary feminist, I strongly argue it is her fundamental evolutionary right. In fact, we EFers also believe that because of sexual choice (by both males and females - but mostly by males seeking to be "selected" by empowered females), all the great accomplishments that have been discovered, written about, and created -- came from sexual choice. We're discussing art, morality, language, creativity, music, humor, fiction, religions and philosophies. (See Goffrey F. Miller's influential work: The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature). Compare those societies that today empower their women as opposed to those who treat their women as reproductive cattle; you will find huge disparities in creativity. The ancient Greek and Roman empires, while treating their women like property and reproductive cows, took thousand of years and massive amounts of slave labor to achieve their "glory."
OK, so in Kanazawa's evolutionary perspective, he correctly states that because of polygyny it "makes men very competitive and aggressive because they must compete fiercely with each other not be left out of the reproductive game altogether and to win mates." Or in the case of Western women whom have choice, they voluntarily "remove" themselves from the reproductive pool, or get really "picky" in order to "up the price" of sexual access, and "to make the male compete harder" for sexual access by requiring more resources from the male before granting him sexual access.
In our Western culture, because of the illegality of polygyny, a separate development has become apparent: Males, such as chief executive officers of large corporations, movie stars, politicians, and professional athletics have formed alliances with each other to up their income beyond the unimaginable of the common male, and we have, instead of men having many wives, men having "serial monogamies." The result is the same as polygyny as it reduces the pool of available women for lower, economically poor males. I have not come across any studies on the subject, but I have a hunch that once the first wife gives way to the second trophy wife, and the second wife gives way to the third, etc., all of "displaced" females once "taken care of" with separation perks and alimony -- I posit that the incentive to have another male around would be similar to a fish wanting to ride a bicycle, hence, her voluntary removal from the reproductive pool.
But, there is a fourth, and more chilling aspect to the aggressive male competitiveness trying not to be losers in the reproductive scheme of things: countries that practice female infanticide. In particular, I am talking about two major population centers that will produce massive numbers of "bare branches," "reproductive losers," or unattached bachelor males within the next twenty years: India and China. I am basing my arguments on the seminal work by Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer and their population projection found in their book, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population.
It is a story as old as dirt. Humankind evolves and migrates from the jungle by chasing after big game; female discovers the use of plants and domestic animals and tells the male that they are not moving from their spot of domesticated bliss; food surpluses develop through the sweat and hard labor of united clan efforts; males assert their "superiority" by also extolling their "strength" in being the protector of the clan; violence is involved which is potentially harmful to her future progeny, so the female "allows" this behavior as advantageous to her progeny. Clans grow into tribes, tribes grow into farming villages; some families, by luck and hard work, accumulate more resources then others; females find sons of those families more "attractive" for progeny advancement; "loser males" get left behind reproductively. And finally, "winner alpha males" find projects for "loser beta males" to continue their reign by taking advantage of their "strength and availability."
"In many societies, the type of food procurement system plays a role in determining the prevalence of female infanticide. Hunting, large animal husbandry, and agriculture involving heavy plowing render sons more valuable than daughters. (H. Yuan Tien, China's Strategic Demographic Initiative (New York: Praeger, 1991); and Barbara D. Miller, The Endangered Sex: Neglect of Female Children in Rural North India (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981). Male-centered food production systems go hand in hand with patrilocality, wherein a wife not only joins her husband's family upon marriage but also severs daily contact with her natal family. In such cultures, females are usually not allowed to inherit real property, because when they marry, it would fall into the hands of their husbands' families. Even before marriage, girls are viewed not as family members but as houseguests. Investment in their care by their natal families is therefore considered a complete loss: A common proverb in patrilocal cultures is, "Raising a daughter is like watering a plant in another man's garden. "Sons, who stay with their families to care and provide for them, are thus considered more valuable." (See Fei Hsiao-Tung, Peasant life in China: A Field Study of Country Life in the Yangtze Valley [(1939; reprint, London: Routledge and Kegan Pau, 1962)] p.10 of Bare Branches:
"The combination of male-centered food production systems and patrilocality virtually guarantess not only women's lowly place in society but also the hefty dowries necessary to marry them off. The dowry system furthers erodes any natural affection parents might have for their daughters, for their birth many consign their families to financial ruin. (See Ho Ping-ti, Studies on the Population of China, 1368 -1953 [(Cambridge, Mass,: Harvard University Press, 1956)]. According to an old Cantonese saying, "A daughter is a thief." The triple threat of patriolocality, male-oriented food provision systems, and the dowry thus predisposes cultures toward female infanticide as a rational choice." Ilib. p. 10 & 11.
The quotes above center on Chinese culture, but India evolved in similar fashion as an agrarian society. Both cultures consider the male son to be more of an advantage then the female for similar reasons, and as a result, when resources are limited - particularly, China where famine was a frequent occurrence - then the mouth to feed that was considered less of a burden usually was kept alive.
So before we get into population numbers of bachelor males from these two countries, let's quickly review the four reproductive paths that limit supply of reproductively available females and will create this "coming hoard of bachelor males from China and India" mentioned in the title of this essay.
One: Polygamy (wealthy men having multiple wives and hoarding the available supply of eligible, reproductive women).
Two: Female Choice: Women being "picky" and rejecting "loser" males with little or no resources. This cultural mechanism is usually found in Western societies where the "love" has taken the social norm of arranged marriages for coalitions between families for political or financial reasons.
Three: Serial monogamy. Basically the same as polygamy, only one wife at a time due to legalities and religious moralities.
Four: Female infanticide. (Considering "unworthy females" as a burden) and killing infant females.
So, what's the big deal? Why should we care about, or be cautious of, bachelor males that can't get laid on a Saturday night? Because only chimpanzees and humans form alliances to wage violence against their fellow species; and only the males of both species engage in violent organized violence. It is the male that goes off to war, and it is usually the bachelor male who volunteers; not once in recorded history have women formed coalitions to kill their fellow species. Yes, I know, American women are now in combat in 2007 - but their numbers are a very small percentage of the fighting force, and you know it.
Yes, America must remain strong against all enemies foreign and domestic, but I am beginning to sense that within the next 20 years or less, we are going to recognize that all surplus bachelor males - both here and abroad - but in particularly in China and India -- pose a substantial strategic threat because of sheer numbers, and creative methods will have to be formulated in which to defuse the problem. And if we can solve the problem here on American shores, perhaps we can export the idea and defuse the potential problem that could - I repeat - could be a threat to our national security.
Before I take this essay to the next stage, perhaps we should focus all the negatives about bachelor males that are universal, and why it is such a big deal about our "loser" bachelor males who can't get laid on a Saturday night. Once again, let's turn to the seminal work by Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer in their book, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population.
"First, they belong predominantly to the lowest socioeconomic class. Unlike men of higher standing, surplus males have little or no bargaining power in the marriage market and thus frequently end up alone…Beginning with nonhuman primate studies and moving up the evolutionary chain to humans, when females are scarce, the only reproductive failure are low-status males…Indeed the phrase "bachelor herd," originating in the study of mammals, refers to low-status males who lack access to females and who congregate at the outer edges of society waiting for their chance to overthrow the group's alpha male." [(See Mildred Dickemann, "The Ecology of Mating Systems in Hypergynous Dowry Societies," Social Science Information, Vol. 18, No. 2 (May 1979), pp. 163-195; Mildred Dickemann, "Female Infaticide, Reproductive Strategies, and Social Stratification: A Preliminary Model," in Napoleon A. Chagnon and William Irons, eds., Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective (North Scituate, Mass.: Duxbury, 1979), pp. 321-367)] Bare Branches, p. 188.
"Second, in economies with market features, bare branches are more likely to be underemployed or unemployed. They are also more likely to chosen for low-status jobs that are dangerous, menial, labor intensive, or seasonal. ((See David T. Courtwright, Violent Land: Single Men and Social Disorder from the Frontier to the Inner City (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996). In non-market economies, bare branches generally do not have land or other resources that would increase their chances of marrying. For this reason, second, third, and higher birth-order sons in non-primogeniture societies, such as China's, eldest sons are more likely to have access to the resources needed to attract wives. Like those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, higher birth-order sons of the upper classes frequently engage in risky ventures to acquire the resources and status they lack. The most common route is through military service, a path also taken by low-status bare branches…Their poor socioeconomics position and reproductive prospects make them perennial aspirants in large-scale expansionist and insurgent military campaigns through which they might hope to achieve higher positions." (Underline emphasis mine). [(See James L. Boone, "Parental Investment and Elite Family Structure in Preindustrial States: A Case Study of Late Medieval-Early Modern Portugues Genalogies," American Anthropologist, Vol. 88, No. 4 (December 1986), pp, 859-878)]. pp. 189 - 190.
"Third, bare branches are typically transients with few ties to the communities in which they look for work. Because they move repeatedly to find jobs, they possess a high degree of anonymity. This anonymity and lack of community attachment combine to loosen the psychological constraints of bare branches against engaging in criminal behavior." (Howard M. Bahr, ed., Disaffiliated Man: Essays and Bibliography on Skid Row, Vagrancy, and Outsiders, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970, and Gregory R. Woirol, In the Floating Army (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992 - (The mobility of low-status male laborers was also a common theme in medieval Europe). p. 190 of Bare Branches.
"Fourth, bare branches live and socialize with other bare branches, creating distinctive bachelor subcultures." (See Lionel Tiger, Men in Groups, London: Marion Boyars, 1984, and John C. Burnham, Bad Habits: Drinking, Smoking, Taking Drugs, Gambling, Sexual Misbehavior, and Swearing in American History, New York University Press, 1993. pp. 190-191.
Those are just the general characteristics of bachelor males in societies where the male population exceeds the female population in excessive amounts. Now, let's take a look at particular behavioral tendencies that are considered to be the result of such characteristics - all of these behaviors are considered detrimental to the norm of behaviors within societies. Once again, I quote from the brilliant, Bare Branches, but limit their citations due to space limitations.
>"First, males are more violent than females.
>"Second, males engage more often than females in other types of anti-social behavior. i.e., men are nearly thirteen and a half times as likely to commit fraud, thirteen times as likely to be arrest for carrying or possessing a weapon, more than then times as likely to burgle, nine time as likely to steal a car, eight and half times as likely to find themselves arrested for drunkenness, eight times as likely to be arrested for vagrancy.
>"Third, unmarried males commit more violence than married males.
Womanless men…compete with special ferocity. An unmarried man between twenty-four and thirty-five years of age is about three times as likely to murder another male as is a married man the same age…a good part of the difference may lay in "the pacifying effect" of marriage. Murder isn't the only thing an "unpacified" man is more likely to do. He is also more likely to incur various risks - committing robbery, for example - to gain the resources that may attract women…"Mazur and Michalek suggest some of the dynamics that underlie this tendency: 'Single men spend more time in male company than do married men, and they are more likely than married men to encounter confrontations and challenges. Lacking the social support of a wife, they are more likely to face situations where they must protect their social prestige in competitive encounters with other males. These are precisely the kinds of situations in which T elevates. The marriage ceremony is the culmination of a more gradual period of courtship and engagement, in which a man accepts the support and courtship of his partner, removing himself from competition with other men for sexual partners. As a result, according to the reciprocal model, his T declines. (Allen Mazur, and Joel Michalek, "Marriage, Divorce, and Male Testosterone," Social Forces, Vol. 77, No. 1 (September 1998), pp. 315 - 330. pp. 195-196 of Bare Branches.
"Fourth, low-status males commit more violence than high-status males." (Wilson and Daly, "Competitiveness, Risk Taking, and violence"' Laura Betzig, Despotism and Differential Reproduction: A Darwinian View of History (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1986, and William H. Durham, "Resource Competition and Human Aggression," Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 51, No. 3 (September 1976), pp. 385-415.[p.197 of Bare Branches]
"Fifth, males commit more violence under the influence of alcohol and certain drugs." p. 197. It would seem a "DUH" response would be appropriate and I think we can all agree on its validity without elaboration.
"Sixth, transient males commit proportionately more violence than nontransient males: they also tend to be victims of violent crime more often than nontransients. 'There may be a general hypersensitivity to insult in any subculture that is (or once was) organized around young men who are unconstrained by traditional community agents of social control, as often occurs in frontier communities, gangs, among vagabonds or bohemians, and after breakdowns in the social fabric following wars or natural disasters. When young men place special emphasis on protecting their reputations, and they are not restrained from doing so, dominance contests become ubiquitous -- the hallmark of male-to-male interaction…Hormone levels [T levels] should be elevated in young men who are constantly vigilant against assaults on their reputations." [[Mazur and Booth, "Testosterone and Dominance." P, 360. [pp. 196-197 of Bare Branches].
"Seventh, males who are predisposed to risk-taking (i.e., men who are young, unmarried, low status or substance abusing) exhibit even more exaggerated risky and violent behavior when in groups…Males encourage risky behavior in group situations to enhance their social prestige. As Courtwright puts it, 'Men who congregate with men tend to be more sensitive about status and reputation. Even if they are not intoxicated with drink or enraged by insult, they instinctively test one another, probing for signs of weakness…Disreputable, lower-class males…exercised much greater influence in bachelor communities like bunkhouses and mining camps. They both tempted and punished, for to fail to emulate their vices was to fail, in their own terms, to be a man.'" (Courtwright, Violent Land: Single Men and Social Disorder from the Frontier to the Inner City, --. 42-43.) pp. 199 - 200 of Bare Branches.
Ok, you can see that males individually by themselves are more violent then females, and the effect is multiplied when males congregate in groups -- or if we want to use our modern vernacular --"gangs." When in groups, these males probe each other for weakness, and this leads back to the front door of the biological origins of male behavior that in order to pass their genes, they have to be more aggressive. Which is precisely what Kanazawa was teaching us in his opening essay about the increased violent behavior of males in the high sex ratio Islamic societies trying not to be reproductive losers. I want you to pay particular attention to the next two paragraphs and burn them into your brains, because they will lead into the next frame that I want to present which introduces us to the strategic implications of surplus bachelorhood. Once again, we turn to the book, Bare Branches, who directly quote Wrangham and Peterson, and Mesquida and Wiener.
"Because of the large potential reproductive rewards at stake for males, sexual selection has apparently favored male temperaments that revel in high risk/high-gain ventures. At the individual level, this temperamental quality can show relatively trivial effects. Men may sometimes drive their cars faster or gamble more intensely or perhaps play sports more recklessly than women. But the sort of relatively discountable wildness that, for example, hikes automobile insurance rates for adolescent boys and young men also produces a greater willingness to risk their own and others' lives; and that sort of risk attraction becomes very significant once men acquire weapons. And where men combine into groups - gangs or villages or tribes or nations - this driving, adventurous ethic turns quickly aggressive and lethally serious." (Wrangham and Peterson, Demonic Males, p. 53) [p.200 of Bare Brances].
"Young males participate in collective aggression to acquire the resources needed to attract a mate, and we should expect a great majority of the militants to come from that section of the population with fewest resources…It is likely then that controlling elites astutely underwrite such risky undertakings as territorial expansion or colonization, especially when the alternative is having the aggressive tendencies of the male citizens directed at themselves…Tentatively, we would like to propose that it is intergenerational competition for reproductive resources, when exacerbated by the presence of emergence of male collective aggression, which occasionally expresses itself as expansionist warfare." (Mesquida and Wiener, "Human Collective Aggression," pp. 256-260). p. 201 of Bare Branches.
I want every anti-gang police officer, military planner, and politician to understand that paragraph above. Males as individuals or gangs comprising groups of males do the activities that they do to acquire resources, status, and attention in order to pass their genes - in other words --- reproduce -- (or as Kanazawa suggests - getting laid successfully on a Saturday night). I am not suggesting for one second, that what these roaming groups of gangs or "wilding males" do is permissible, nor do I, for one second, condone the destruction or theft of personal property -- but that I want you to understand is that there are strong biological forces at work below the surface in human behavior that when these males are "forced" into a pot of vast numbers as shown below by exclusionary social pressures, the results could be volatile beyond our collective imaginations.
On page 126 of Bare Branches, we find Table 3.13A. Population Projection, Ages 15-35, India, 2020: Sex Ratio of 109.65 Males per 100 Females. Here we arrive at the male population at 235,709,000 and the female population at 207,383,000 resulting in the total of 28,326,000 "missing females," or 28 million "surplus males."
Now, that was India. Let's now move on to China. According to the population chart on page 183 of Bare Branches, we find Table 4.10: Projections for China's Male and Female Population Ages 15-34, Year 2020, Adjusted Lifetime Survival Ratio LTSR). We arrive at the figure of 212,585,768 males in 2020. The female numbers are projected to be: 179.526,075 thereby leaving 33,059,694 "missing females" or in other words, 33 million surplus males.
So, if we total the projections for surplus males in India and China, we arrive at a sum of 61,385,694 million. Now, the standing army of the US military in 2007 is - oh -- let's stretch it --- say 3 million? Now, obviously, not all 61 million surplus males from India and China would be available to be turned into an expansionist military machine, but how about 20% of them? I also want to admit that I have not done my homework with the numbers for American bachelor males available because this is a mental exercise in probabilities; but understand this: that if the worst case scenario did occur, America would be outnumbered by four to one at the minimum, upwards to six to one at the maximum.
The future can't be predicted, so the percentage calculated from the total of those 61 million Indian and Chinese surplus men does not necessarily mean that they would form coalitions and decide to go to war against the United States; in truth, the more likely scenario would be that they would end up hating each other more (most likely in a fight for limited supplies of oil and other resources) and go to war against each other. The problem there, of course, is that both countries have nuclear weapons, and ---- which direction does the wind blow around the planet?
I'm not trying to put a scare into you, but I am bringing up these numbers because there really is a concern that, because of the collective nature of these surplus males, my fear is that there is a "Chinese Dick Cheney" out there somewhere in China who wants to recapture Chinese "greatness" that it was denied for so long in his countries' history. And if this de-evolved, knuckle-crawling Chinese conservative male understands demographics, does he also understand the collective potential of these surplus male numbers that his country will soon have?
Ok, so we have these creepy population predictions about India and China, and then my thoughts drift to the possibility of a coming war between our country and either one or both of these countries. Now, this is all science-fiction/worst case scenario prediction stuff that falls under one of those obscure pentagon planning departments. But what if there was really was a war and we had no draft in this country? Could America survive? Can we rely on every one of the "red-blooded-neo-con-chicken hawk," "kick ass," "step on their necks and grind their face into the dirt" minds to all step up to the plate and join the military in vast numbers to protect this country?
Or, will the more likely outcome be, like our current Vice-President's Viet Name War draft deferment reasons, as "having better things to do?" Or would the conservative "tough guy" myth be more like the 2008 presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, whose five sons, all of whom are of military age, did not join up to fight in the Iraq "war" stated that "his sons make their own decisions and are serving the country by campaigning for him across Iowa in an RV?"
The answer, of course, is that this country has been saturated with corporate top-down "I'm on top because I deserve it" mentality and these "pseudo masculine substitutes" will always pass the buck to "someone below themselves" to fight the good fight. Patriotism does not exist anymore in the United States in 2007 because greed has taken hold as the holy grail of achievement and morality. Why? Because the ability to "make it" and be "upwardly mobile" has disappeared in the United States because of globalization taking away those opportunities from the middle class.
Let's face reality here people - the poor, "sad sack" foot soldier is always the one who is dragged off to war to fight "the good fight" for someone else's political ideology, religion, or insanity (or are the three all the same? - once again, see the music lyrics below). And it would be no different in those countries with surplus males. Just look at our species' recorded history; once again, let's study Mesquida and Wiener.
"It is likely then that controlling elites astutely underwrite such risky undertakings as territorial expansion or colonization, especially when the alternative is having the aggressive tendencies of the male citizens directed at themselves…Tentatively, we would like to propose that is intergenerational competition for reproductive resources, when exacerbated by the presence of emergence of male collective aggression, which occasionally expresses itself as expansionist warfare." (Mesquida and Wiener, "Human Collecitve Aggression," p. 201 of Bare Branches.
The problems that I have framed above fall within two main memes:
FIRST, THAT SURPLUS BACHELOR MALE POPULATIONS IN GENERAL ARE A BAD THING.
SECOND, THAT THE UNITED STATES WILL BE VASTLY OUT-NUMBERED BY CHINA AND INDIA WITH SURPLUS BACHELOR MALES WHICH COULD USE THESE EXCESS MALES IN EXPANSIONIST WARFARE.
In Part II of this essay, I want to focus on the problem that exists in this country as the middle class, and the neighborhoods that they live in, sink further in an abyss of mental and economic depression. There is a slow motion train wreck in progress and I sense that new creative methods will be needed. In part II I will address what I think those problems are and the one possible solution from an evolutionary perspective evolving upward into a social perspective which involves a rethinking about Posse Comitatus.
End of Part I.
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Rich Man's War
Copyright, (2004) Steve Earl, from the Album "The Revolution Starts...Now!"
TO PURCHASE ALBUM, CLICK HERE
Jimmy joined the army 'cause he had no place to go
There ain't nobody hirin'
'round here since all the jobs went
down to Mexico
Reckoned that he'd learn himself a trade maybe see the world
Move to the city someday and marry a black haired girl
Somebody somewhere had another plan
Now he's go a rifle in his hand
Rollin' into Baghdad wonderin' how he got this far
Just another poor boy off to fight a rich man's war
Bobby had an eagle and a flag tattooed on his arm
Red white and blue to the bone when he landed in Kandahar
Left behind a pretty young wife and a baby girl
A stack of overdue bills and went off to save the world
Been a year now and he's still there
Chasin' ghosts in the thin dry air
Meanwhile back at home the finance company took his car
Just another poor boy off to fight a rich man's war
When will we ever learn
When will we ever see
We stand up and take our turn
And keep tellin' ourselves we're free
Ali was the second son of a second son
Grew up in Gaza throwing bottles and rocks when the tanks would come
Ain't nothin' else to do around here just a game children play
Somethin' 'bout livin' in fear all your life makes you hard that way
He answered when he got the call
Wrapped himself in death and praised Allah
A fat man in a new Mercedes drove him to the door
Just another poor boy off to fight a rich man's war
Copyright, Evolution's Voyage, 1995 - 2011