The reason for aggression
An interesting study has proven something that most long suspected.
Men are violent because violence gets the girl.
The hunger for women, along with property, are blamed for the evolution of belligerence and bravery by a study of the mathematics of warfare.
This specific study looks at the way in which more aggressive groups (kin groups especially) are able to prey upon both the women and resources of less aggressive ones.
But in hunter gatherer societies in general we’ve known for a long time that violence literally gets the girl. Murder rates were (and are in still extant such societies) vastly higher, many times, than they are in modern socieities. And yes, killing a man to get his wife was and is a common cause of such violence.
That we’re descended from those men who were either violent enough to gain a mate this way or aggressive enough to defend themselves successfully from an attempt, explains a great deal of why violence is still inherent in the human male.
September 5th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
This is interesting, and it seems possible that there is that connection. Fathers for Life might disagree with you., though. Here, http://fathersforlife.org/articles/report/resptojw.htm, they respond to the Report Newsmagazine’s Jeff White’s comment that “…all men are beastly brutes,” with the article “Predominantly women, not men, kill children.”
On the same topic, is this NYT piece: http://www.gargaro.com/pinker.html. It, too, talks about women killing their babies, describing it as the “ultimate violation of the natural order.” Pretty violent, too.
Tim adds: That women kill children more often than men really doesn’t surprise me. Shouldn’t really surprise anyone I guess, given that women do (whether we think it right or not) carry the burden of childcare. Think of it this way: if there’s chance per hour of a carer killing a child (a very low one of course) then that sex which does more hours of childcare will have a higher incidence of child killing.