The crucial connection comes through an evolutionary phenomenon that began as our ancestors encountered inequality in wealth, power, and reproductive opportunities, and which disposes some men to behave in reckless, risky, and violent ways. You might call it "the problem with men," and though it's not something that manifests in all males, it is endemically masculine, and at its most extreme it can poison societies. But, much as we have dealt with obesity epidemics not by blaming obesity sufferers but by understanding the ways that evolved human physiology and psychology can create innate vulnerabilities, so too can a better understanding this evolutionary phenomenon help us to deter its damage.
(...)
Despite a few significant holdouts, polygamy continues to dwindle. There are still Jacob Zumas in the world who use "tradition" to shield their polygamist privilege, much as the mega-rich can usually be counted on to venerate wealth and promote inequality. But millennia of evolution ensure that polygyny and inequality will always stir violent competition and risky behavior among men and the oppression of women. Fortunately, our sense of fairness also has evolutionary roots, as does our ability to cooperate for the greater good. And those better angels of our nature will consign polygyny and entrenched inequality -- and men like Jacob Zuma -- to the wrong side of history.
Zuma's Wives: How Humans Evolved a Link Between Inequality and Misogyny
Hat tip to Gus Silber @gussilber
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Sigh. In other words, women as property is being explained away again.
Love,
Terri in Joburg
Well ... this is the best explanation i've read, simple yet astonishingly accurate in the outcomes.
I find it curious that organised agriculture is what led to money, and almost immediately afterwards, the stupid patriarchal system we inherited. That it stems from extreme insecurity on the part of the "big man" is poetic.
I think it also shows very neatly, how backward the president and his ilk are ... truly several thousand years behind the rest of the planet, both in thoughts and actions.
And it's about equality, the more one of us has, the less another has. Nothing wrong with that generally, i can have 5 chairs and you 2 ... both suit our needs, no inequality. But of course when 1 guy has "billions" in a bank account, some other guy, or rather wa whole bunch of guys have nothing. Their ladies have even less.
peace and love T
Yes, I agree with you on the whole.
But I sometimes get almighty tired of this whacky field of "EvoPsych" thinking it can explain everything.
The elephant in the drawing room is why the fuck men started treating women - heck, the whole natural world - as objects to be owned, in the first place.
Love,
T in J
Oh yes ma'am ... why we started treating the entire natural world as owned, by us.
I can live my whole live on a piece of land and not "own" it. Belong to it sure, need it, etc. But ownership ... ship, that damned TRADE word again.
I do find it hopeful that the general heading of "society" is away from this, at least in principle.
peace ;-)
Post a Comment