[smallpoxgirl]

This started off as a comment in the school shooting thread, but I decided it actually pertains to several topics in discussion right now, so I gave it its own thread.

Traditional societies are organized with a central village that is fairly soft and violence free. That center is where the women, the children, the old, and the infirmed spend their time. It is also the place where the wealth of the group is maintained: tools, shelters, extra clothing, food stores, etc. Outside that center is a zone for protection and predation (hunting). In this zone, healthy adult males are required to do violence. They do violence on other groups of humans to defend the village, and they do violence on prey animals to provide food.

The "civilization" process has progressed to the point of exterminating that exterior zone. With Wounded Knee in 1890, the American frontier closed, officially ending the exterior zone. The entire world, at this point, is soft interior space. This creates a very real problem of how to cope with adult males who are biologically programmed to do violence. Some of that agression gets vented through wars and sports, but there is a great societal emphasis on wussifying males so that they don't do violence in the soft interior zone. We, as a society are becoming less and less tolerant of violence in the interior zone, and as we view violence more and more negatively, we are coming to value masculity less and less.

There have been two paths of reaction to this phenomenon by males. One path has been to acquiess. Thus we have the "sensitive" male who wears sweaters and eats granola, talks excessively about his feelings, drives a mini-van, becomes a stay-at-home dad, etc. Typically this comes from people who have spent a bit too much time in school. Especially at liberal arts colleges. The other path has been rebellion. This typically comes from the lower classes. One of the initial examples of this was cultural reminiscences about the "good old days" before the frontier closed when a man could still do violence and be valued for it: Cowboy movies and such. As the exterior zone has become more and more of a distant memory, men have sought to glorify violence in increasingly abstract ways:from action movies which usually provide some weak pretext of justification for the violence done, to professional wrestling and Tough Man competitions which are clearly violence for it's own sake. Simultaneously as masculine roles in society are further and further vanquished, male icons have needed to go to greater and greater lengths to declare their masculinity. Compare John Wayne with The Rock. John Wayne was a fairly normal looking guy. The Rock is a caricature of muscular hypertrophy. John Wayne was pretty withdrawn and soft spoken. The Rock and other pro-wrestlers spew an almost constant stream of agression. In doing so they provide an outlet for their viewers who are themselves trying hard to fit into societal roles which conflict with their biological impulses. Violence by proxy, through movies, watching sports, televised wars, etc are not an adequate outlet however, and these urges continue to sublimate.

As we have recently witnessed with Mark Foley, normal biological urges, when supressed, often boil over in aberant ways. Homosexuals, unable to accept their own homosexuality, can end up sexually exploiting their 16 y/o pages. Males, denied adequate outlets to do violence and be valued for it, can end up exploding in fits of abherent violence against children and others. I believe the recent school shootings are a good example of this.

Through a somewhat different, but simultaneous path, women's traditional roles have been severely eroded as well. Women were traditionally responsible for most food preparation, preservation, and storage as well as making garments for the group. These tasks have become thouraghly comodified and so women's roles have been severely undermined. With our rampant overpopulation, childbearing is also seen more in terms of being an unwanted burden than in the uniformly benificial sense that it once was.

With their traditional roles at home obviated, women have moved more into the world of commodified work outside the home. While it is often claimed that this is a "traditional male role", the reality is that it is not a traditional role at all and has very androgynizing effects on both genders. Thus we find people, lacking a role to reinforce their gender, turning to greater and greater degrees of caricatured secondary sex charecteristics: profoundly hypertrophied muscles in the male, and the proposterous silicone breasts in the female.

[PolestaR]

Some good points SPG. I think it's a bit simplistic though. Maybe I have the right genes to carry us into the future.. or something.. but I can put my violence on hold for any period of time. I am smart... and like violence. This has what some might see as a negative effect where I am not as emotional as some others.

These people you mention who do "illogical" things are not needed in a world with finite resources. I certainly think society as it is today in most western nations is unhealthy... everyone feels insignificant... you cant do anything to change anything.. etc. Not only that but what we see as "work" requires us to live most of our lives in an "office" environment.

You take any animal from it's natural environment and put it somewhere foreign and see how well it does... most times they fail. Humans are a bit different because we can mentally and physically adapt to many environments... but it is obvious to me at least this direction we are heading is rather unhealthy. We have little connection to our own survival. One way governments keep us like cows at a feeding tray.

[Atlantean_Relic]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PolestaR', '
')
These people you mention who do "illogical" things are not needed in a world with finite resources. I certainly think society as it is today in most western nations is unhealthy... everyone feels insignificant... you cant do anything to change anything.. etc. Not only that but what we see as "work" requires us to live most of our lives in an "office" environment.

[ritter]

Interesting essay, smallpoxgirl. But I’ve got to ask, where does a well educated, domestic (yes I cook and clean after I get home from my desk job as my wife is usually too busy grading papers) male that drives a minivan to his martial arts class fit into all of this? I’ve got an old VW that I’m teaching myself to wrench on and I must say, things get violent when I’ve smashed my hand into the exhaust for the third time trying to get that &*#@ing nut on the bolt. Then I come in and play dolls with my 3-year old daughter.

You may be on to something with your outer zone of protection/violence. I have found it acceptable to be aggressive in my dojo with other males (and several females that train there also). It’s more of an inner circle rather than outer, but it certainly helps me deal with stress--a physical release of an otherwise physiological buildup. And the only sport I can stomach to watch on TV is soccer.

Ritter

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ritter', 'I')nteresting essay, smallpoxgirl. But I’ve got to ask, where does a ... fit into all of this?

[lorenzo]

Nice sketch, smallpoxgirl, but it's only one example out of a whole range of cultures, some of which differ totally. There are many matriarchal cultures where women are dominant, and men are total sissified losers. There's even one where polyandry is the rule, and where the women go out, do the hunting while the males clean the pots and do the cooking (in the Himalayas somewhere). The Amazonas really existed: female warriors, and wussy-men with their beauty-cases.

In most cultures there's a much more subtle gender configuration at work. Men don't hunt all day, you know. They hunted once every few days, sometimes only once every few weeks or so. For the rest, they were just lazy, probably very friendly, with spare time on their hands. This spare time resulted in continuous partying, drumming, painting, searching flowers for the ladies, making bracelets for the girls, etc... Primitive man was probably much more metrosexual than you think.

In these cultures, if there is any at all, male violence is ritualised and takes a central place *within* the domestic sphere - basically in the form of artistic (music) and religious expressions (God is someone one can curse at, and for whom one can butcher and sacrifice animals), and in the form of sex. In countless cultures, the metaphors used to describe sex all circle around 'hunting', 'capturing', 'slaughtering' and 'consuming' women.

The sublimation of violence is probably as old as mankind though. And this works both ways. In hunting, the metaphors used to represent capturing and slaughtering are all anthropomorphic: the animal is your kin, and you have to treat it with the utmost respect, both when hunting it down, when killing it, when dividing it and when consuming it.

It's not like primitive man went out to scream and have a fight with enormous ferocious monsters. He probably was very subtle at it, worked with some kind of high-tech tool that requires sissy-skills and glasses (like throwing a stone against the head of an animal, or pointing an arrow at it, or clubbing a jumping squirrel to death, which is a fun game, not 'violence'). Hunting was an art, an intellectual affair, with signals, sounds, winks, fine tools, etc...

Forget the raw, violent wrestling matches with mammoths. Virtually no culture hunts large wild animals, not today, not then. *You will find many more squirrel, bird and mice bones in a primitive camp site, than mammoth or tiger teeth.*


So I'm not so sure whether (1) the violence was so violent in the first place, (2) the difference between the interior/exterior sphere is so straightforward, (3) and that gender roles were so well defined. Moreover, man has been sublimating 'violence' for probably a very long time.

Still, if you're talking about the way Western societies evolved, your description might be accurate. I firmly believe that the harsh cold climate of Northern Europe resulted in ferocious mammoth-hunting brutes, who differed radically from their elegant African or Asian high-tech forest hunters, who used finely carved spears and arrows which they threw and shot at tiny animals, while copying their sounds and their colors on their faces.

In short, in most cultures, hunting was probably a very intellectualist, liberal arts, cerebral activity. For nerds only.



>the romantic idea that primitive man was a brute, came much later, when the concept of monotheism and empire was invented. The "other" became a brute. I think real violence was invented very late in history, maybe somewhere around 5000BC or so.

>recent monotheistic religions, who loved to use the scapegoat and alterity principle, used the notion of violence to portray "the other", the enemy who doesn't obey the One God's word (in Christianity this is the Eternal Jew who butchers and eats babies, or the Muslim who beheads all his enemies) etc... And this play of alterity caused a system of reciprocal violence, which was probably totally absent in the early, kind, *bon sauvage*.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Well, there's always war. Why haven't efforts to bring peace succeeded? Your're on to something here, SPG. War is built in, a human trait that can't be suppressed. Very similar to the sex drive. The constant historical examples of war show that humans have always made war. The whole thermonuclear hydrogen bomb thing made it all rather iffy. I think that people will gradually go crazier and crazier until the shrooms start sprouting. But the naked ape has to fight.

[lorenzo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'W')ell, there's always war.

[oowolf]

Do you concur with the argument put forward by Lewis Mumford, Stanley Diamond, and possibly Paul Shepard, that "civilization" (as practiced over the last 15,000 or so years) retards human development--keeping excessively socialized humans in a pathological state of physical, emotional and intellectual dependence: i.e. a noetenous ape? Or, is "civilization" a symptom of our biological neotenousness--an evolutionary experiment spiralling out of control into insanity (loss of contact contact with our evolutionary niche-reality), fated to end in dieoff?

If "civilization" is insanity (as Derrick Jensen claims), the question seems to be: Is our self-domestication an attempt to adapt to our inability to "grow up"?

"Civilization" is obviously such a wretched failure. I would call it an evolutionary wrong turn; ruining us as a species and trashing the environment as bad as many previous extinction-level events.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('oowolf', 'D')o you concur with the argument put forward by Lewis Mumford, Stanley Diamond, and possibly Paul Shepard, that "civilization" (as practiced over the last 15,000 or so years) retards human development--keeping excessively socialized humans in a pathological state of physical, emotional and intellectual dependence: i.e. a noetenous ape? Or, is "civilization" a symptom of our biological neotenousness--an evolutionary experiment spiralling out of control into insanity (loss of contact contact with our evolutionary niche-reality), fated to end in dieoff?

If "civilization" is insanity (as Derrick Jensen claims), the question seems to be: Is our self-domestication an attempt to adapt to our inability to "grow up"?

"Civilization" is obviously such a wretched failure. I would call it an evolutionary wrong turn; ruining us as a species and trashing the environment as bad as many previous extinction-level events.

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'W')ell, there's always war.

[PenultimateManStanding]

I'm sorry SPG, but I read that carefully several times. Sure, modern warfare is abstract as opposed to how the Indians fought. But what were you saying? It seems to me that we will all go back to sticks and stones, just like Einstein predicted. So what's your point?

[PrairieMule]

Excellent topic SPG,

As far as the sissification of man, ultimatley no man can blame anyone else but himself for his condition. What you call being programmed for violence, I call testosterone. The same testosterone that drives a man to smash and kill can also be applied to build and explore. I get my thrills fixing fence, cutting up fallen trees with a chainsaw, driving a tractor, digging posts oh and sometimes I go to the gun range . That kind of work does not require me verbalizing my feelings, its more of a base level of man versus nature. Toiling the land balanced with the wisdom of good conservationalism is enough fufill a mans ego. I assure you there are plenty of castles for the male psyce to to storm, we just have to look farther.

"And that's all I got to say about that"-Forrest Gump

[dissimulo]

Being human means denying your animal nature... until, eventually, you die... just like every other animal.

[jupiters_release]

Most people can't find a fullfilling connection with their environment as communities are entirely unautonomous by global monoculture. Funny you use the word violence with its negative moral connotation, of course I don't delight in the school shootings or modern technological video game-ish warfare but it only shows how artless, unreligious, and self-destructive life has become for the majority. As someone else already mentioned fighting isn't good or bad but only life-affirming when practiced well even including death of oneself or the other. Asserting "violence" with the fear and instability it applies is an innate part of healthy living is misleading, the language you use seems to contradict the points you're making.

[threadbear]

Men will become increasingly "sissified" in the future and I'm all for it. Girly men are better lovers.

[JustinFrankl]

The traditional roles you speak of, SPG, are reflections of the traditional small, cohesive, tribal environments we used to live in, which don't exist anymore.

Gender roles do exist, but they are reflections on the biological differences of the surrounding cultural, physical environment. Men become wussies as frequent aggression has no place, and frequent aggression loses its place as men become wussies. This cycle will perpetuate as long as the frontier is crowded out, and will pacify all but the most alpha of alpha males, those with likely the highest testosterone levels.

But the frontier isn't gone, it's been covered up with too many "humans-lite" (Dmitry Orlov). The system isn't sustainable, and neither are humans-lite. As traditional cultural, environmental, and social conditions return, so will traditional gender roles.

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JustinFrankl', '
')But the frontier isn't gone, it's been covered up with too many "humans-lite" (Dmitry Orlov).

[JustinFrankl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JustinFrankl', '
')But the frontier isn't gone, it's been covered up with too many "humans-lite" (Dmitry Orlov).

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jupiters_release', ' ')Funny you use the word violence with its negative moral connotation