The Art of Manliness - #86： Demonic Males With Dr. Richard Wrangham

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:18.640 Now, a few months ago, I wrote an in-depth series on the anthropology, the history, the

00:00:24.080 philosophy, the biology of the culture of manhood that we find across the globe and across

00:00:30.960 time.

00:00:31.960 Yes, there are differences between culture to culture, small ones, but they all have these

00:00:36.440 high-level general principles in common on what it means to be a man and what manhood

00:00:41.180 means.

00:00:41.700 And one of those high-level principles is that a man is supposed to be a protector, and that

00:00:47.200 means using violence and aggression to protect his family, his tribe, and also to invade other 0.59

00:00:52.780 countries to get more resources.

00:00:54.720 It means being competitive.

00:00:56.460 It means having martial courage.

00:00:58.600 That's what it means to be a man.

00:01:00.320 And we make the case that's sort of the core of masculinity on what it means to be a man

00:01:04.220 across cultures.

00:01:05.520 But why is this?

00:01:06.300 Why is it that men are called upon to fulfill this role as protector and are expected to

00:01:12.240 be aggressive and competitive and sometimes willing to do violence if necessary?

00:01:18.160 Some would say that it's just completely a cultural construct, and that if you change

00:01:22.220 the culture, you can change the way men behave.

00:01:25.740 But our guest today has an argument that there is a biological component to why men tend to

00:01:31.660 be more violent, more aggressive, more competitive.

00:01:34.500 His name is Dr. Richard Wrangham.

00:01:36.400 He's a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University, and he's the co-author

00:01:40.680 of the book, Demonic Males, Apes and the Origins of Human Violence.

00:01:45.360 And in his book, he highlights research that's been done in recent years among primates, specifically

00:01:52.160 the great apes, and specifically the chimpanzees, on male violence.

00:01:58.000 And what he's found is that there's a lot of similarities, specifically between male chimps

00:02:02.680 and male humans, on how we approach violence and how they form male-bonded groups.

00:02:08.900 Male chimps also are very violent, and we'll talk about how they actually engage in warfare 1.00

00:02:14.480 in a way, just as male humans do.

00:02:17.360 Male chimps tend to form male-bonded groups, like little armies, basically, little gangs, 1.00

00:02:23.280 just like male humans tend to do.

00:02:25.500 So it's just a fascinating discussion.

00:02:27.220 And we only scratched the surface in this conversation, so I recommend you go pick up

00:02:31.600 the book after you listen to this podcast to delve deeper into this.

00:02:35.980 So without further ado, let's get on to the show with Dr. Richard Wrangham.

00:02:42.120 Dr. Wrangham, welcome to the show.

00:02:44.280 Thank you so much.

00:02:45.020 Nice to be here.

00:02:45.600 Well, before we get to talking about your book, Demonic Males, let's talk a bit about

00:02:50.100 your profession, because I think this is interesting.

00:02:51.220 I never heard of this before until I read your book.

00:02:53.340 You're a professor of biological anthropology.

00:02:56.460 Can you explain what biological anthropology is?

00:02:59.600 Let me first explain what anthropology is.

00:03:01.860 That is, of course, just the study of people from many different perspectives, but particularly

00:03:07.900 understanding different cultures.

00:03:09.680 And then biological anthropology is the biological component of that.

00:03:15.180 And to some extent, it looks at differences among cultures.

00:03:18.680 But actually, the great majority of its attention is given to thinking about us as a species in

00:03:29.480 comparison to other species.

00:03:31.520 They're asking questions about why is it that we have different kinds of bodies, different

00:03:36.580 kinds of physiology, different kinds of behavior, in my case, from other species.

00:03:40.880 Interesting.

00:03:41.880 And you specifically focus on chimps, right?

00:03:46.300 Or primates.

00:03:47.560 Well, I started studying chimpanzees in the 1970s.

00:03:51.500 And when I did that, I was not an anthropologist.

00:03:54.680 I was just an ordinary biologist thinking about the evolution of animal behavior.

00:04:00.680 But there's something so striking when you study chimpanzees.

00:04:04.080 And after about 20 minutes of seeing them close up in the wild and just seeing the way they

00:04:10.120 use their eyes and their facial expressions and their gestures, you realize that there's something

00:04:16.500 about chimpanzees that is sort of half human, half animal, to put it at its crudest.

00:04:24.040 You know, they have a lot of complexity in the way that their behavior and their mental

00:04:29.800 processes are organized.

00:04:31.140 And so that draws you, as a biologist studying chimpanzees, into the study of anthropology.

00:04:35.900 Okay.

00:04:36.500 So your book is called Demonic Males.

00:04:38.460 This was written back in 1996.

00:04:40.540 And it's about apes and the origins of human violence.

00:04:43.800 And until fairly recently, scientists thought that human beings were the only species of

00:04:49.860 animal that deliberately killed members of their own species in acts of warfare or murder.

00:04:55.780 And they often blamed our ability to reason or civilization for our violent tendencies.

00:05:03.920 But that changed because of an event that happened in the 1970s, where primatologists observed

00:05:11.400 an incident amongst a pack of chimps that forced them to re-evaluate humanity's monopoly on 1.00

00:05:18.020 premeditated killing and war.

00:05:20.880 Can you describe that event?

00:05:23.680 Oh, yes.

00:05:24.240 No, you're absolutely right about the setup.

00:05:27.020 I mean, even in the late 1960s, there was a very famous book called On Aggression by the

00:05:34.280 great biologist Conrad Lorenz.

00:05:36.860 And he said, humans are unique.

00:05:38.860 We don't kill it.

00:05:39.680 We kill each other.

00:05:40.720 Other animals don't.

00:05:42.560 The thing is that people hadn't watched animals much at that point.

00:05:45.200 And there we were in 1974 with chimpanzees in the wild, already realizing that there was

00:05:55.040 something pretty intense going on about their relationships.

00:05:57.580 Because we were working with two groups of chimps, which had been one about five years before, 0.77

00:06:04.540 but they'd become increasingly separate.

00:06:06.580 And in January 1974, a small group of chimpanzees from one of those communities moved towards

00:06:13.940 the territorial border and went into the area that's normally occupied by the neighboring

00:06:21.200 group.

00:06:22.200 And they found one individual in the neighboring group who they stalked as if they were prey,

00:06:29.440 as if it was lions stalking an antelope, and got sufficiently close that the victim was

00:06:35.620 unable to escape.

00:06:37.100 He was chased down, and they grabbed him and pummeled him really hard.

00:06:44.360 He didn't die on the spot.

00:06:45.940 He was able to drag himself away, but he died a couple of days later.

00:06:50.560 And that was the first case that any of the chimp people saw, in which you had really 0.99

00:06:57.880 deliberate hunting and killing of a member of their own species, another adult of their

00:07:03.660 own species.

00:07:04.520 Very dramatic.

00:07:05.900 Yeah, the way you described it, it just seemed really brutal, because chimps are, they're

00:07:11.060 very strong.

00:07:11.920 And they're like three or four times stronger than human beings or something like that?

00:07:17.280 Yes.

00:07:17.480 I mean, one of the amazing things, as we've now accumulated much more information since

00:07:21.780 in the last 20 years, is that you can take something like 100 kills that have been seen

00:07:28.580 with real confidence in the wild, and in not a single case has any of the attackers been

00:07:34.980 hurt.

00:07:35.700 Well, that's amazing, considering that you've got an animal three or four times as strong

00:07:39.620 as a human, fighting for its life, absolutely desperate, but it can't put any wounds on

00:07:46.000 the aggressor.

00:07:46.560 And why is that?

00:07:47.240 Because they always choose, when attacking, to attack in sufficient number that they're

00:07:54.040 safe.

00:07:54.360 So, basically, if four of them each take one limb and hold it down, then the fifth can do

00:08:01.840 whatever they like.

00:08:02.640 They can drum on the ribcage of the victim, and nothing's going to happen. 0.99

00:08:09.460 And, in fact, what they do is they tear out their thorax, and they tear off the testicles,

00:08:14.120 and they pull skin back by gripping it with their teeth just to pull it away from the body.

00:08:21.460 They have awful wounds all over the place.

00:08:24.020 I mean, they have terrible stuff.

00:08:25.880 And yet, they don't get hurt because they've immobilized the victim.

00:08:29.100 And that's because they're smart enough to organize a group of four or five or eight or

00:08:33.960 ten or twelve or whatever it is to isolate one victim and then do their worst.

00:08:41.340 Okay.

00:08:42.200 So, but why do chimps do this?

00:08:43.680 Because in most species, animals just defend territory, but what you're describing here

00:08:49.860 and what primatologists have observed countless more times since then is that these chimps

00:08:55.020 are actually organizing and going into other communities and basically raiding them.

00:09:00.400 What is the evolutionary purpose?

00:09:02.400 I mean, what do they stand to gain from that?

00:09:04.960 You see, it's pretty clear what's going on.

00:09:07.260 What they stand to gain is territory.

00:09:10.640 It's more land.

00:09:11.420 It's not that they take over the neighboring group.

00:09:14.960 It's just that if they attack members of neighboring groups and kill them, then it's more likely

00:09:22.600 that they will be able to use that area in the future, that it will be poorly defended by the neighboring group.

00:09:28.860 So, they just increase slightly the area that they use.

00:09:32.920 And why is that important?

00:09:34.460 It's because the bigger the area, then we know this very clearly, the more food they get

00:09:40.200 and the more food they get, then the faster they're able to reproduce and the better they're able to survive

00:09:44.660 because energy coming from food is always limiting.

00:09:48.280 And the more you can get, then the better you can survive and reproduce.

00:09:51.120 Fascinating.

00:09:52.500 So, are chimps the only primate that does this besides human beings? 0.94

00:09:57.200 I mean, do orangutans or gorillas do this sort of raiding?

00:10:00.700 None of the other close relatives of humans do, but it don't look as though there is some very similar behavior

00:10:07.340 in actually a monkey that lives in the Americas from Mexico to Peru, the spider monkey,

00:10:16.900 because they have a rather similar pattern to chimpanzees of instead of living in a stable troop,

00:10:24.740 they break up into small units like chimpanzees do.

00:10:28.900 And it's because of this breaking up, a constant fission and fusion of the parties

00:10:34.780 that leave sometimes a big group and sometimes an isolated individual,

00:10:39.740 that you can get these great asymmetries with one group being able to isolate a lone individual.

00:10:46.500 So, that seems to be the key.

00:10:48.140 It's not so much that chimps are closely related to us.

00:10:51.300 It's more that they have the same kind of grouping pattern.

00:10:54.920 Interesting. So, you talk about the chimps organize themselves in these little patrols,

00:11:02.160 five or eight chimpanzees.

00:11:04.500 Are these strictly male groups or are there females involved? 1.00

00:11:08.880 No, this is very, very much male.

00:11:11.580 There are occasions when females might join.

00:11:15.360 And the classic example is there was one particular female called Gigi, 0.60

00:11:20.160 who is now long dead, but when she was alive in Gombe in Tanzania,

00:11:24.260 she did sometimes join the males.

00:11:26.560 Now, the funny thing about Gigi is she never had a baby.

00:11:30.760 She was apparently sterilized early in life or maybe genetically sterile for some reason. 0.67

00:11:37.320 And at any rate, she was rather male-like.

00:11:39.840 She was rather broad-shouldered and big.

00:11:44.000 And she did sometimes go on the patrols.

00:11:46.540 But even then, she did not join in.

00:11:48.260 She would watch the males doing all the terrible beating and attacking,

00:11:54.620 and she would run around excitedly.

00:11:56.980 So, that showed that even when a female was there, it's a male activity. 0.71

00:12:01.320 And normally, it is only males.

00:12:03.180 And in fact, the parties, the subgroups that you find within the center of the community range of chimpanzees,

00:12:10.540 they are very much mixed, say, 50-50, male and female.

00:12:14.220 But as they move towards the edge, you find the females dropping off. 1.00

00:12:19.260 And then by the time they get to the right of the edge of the territory, it's pretty much 100% males.

00:12:24.900 Fascinating.

00:12:25.200 So, what similarities have you found between the way chimps engage in warfare,

00:12:31.640 from what we can call it that, and how they bond and group, and what we see in humans?

00:12:38.440 Well, the things that are found in chimps are very much similar to what you find in humans.

00:12:45.180 But humans make it more complicated, of course.

00:12:47.540 But the elements of a group of males taking the opportunity to attack helpless victims, 0.82

00:12:54.620 and not just attack them, but kill them, 0.70

00:12:57.440 that is something that you see in small-scale societies of humans. 0.98

00:13:03.200 And indeed, you can say that you see it in modern warfare.

00:13:06.700 You know, the aim of a modern warfare, the aim of a good commander,

00:13:10.480 is to send his men on an attack that will leave them all safe,

00:13:15.520 and will just kill members of the enemy.

00:13:17.080 In other words, you know, you're always trying to arrange for asymmetries of power

00:13:20.220 to your maximum advantage.

00:13:24.160 What humans do that is more complicated is several things,

00:13:28.840 and I'll draw attention to two of them.

00:13:30.500 One is that humans take more risks.

00:13:34.700 So, if you look at the literature on warrior behavior in small-scale societies,

00:13:41.280 such as hunters and gatherers,

00:13:42.920 what you find is that, unlike chimpanzees,

00:13:45.080 the aggressors do sometimes get hurt.

00:13:48.440 There's an ambush of the aggressors,

00:13:50.300 or there's a very quick defense mounted by the defenders.

00:13:54.860 They grab a weapon or whatever.

00:13:56.220 And this reflects the fact that some kind of benefit is needed to compensate the warriors for this,

00:14:05.600 and the benefits are clear.

00:14:06.900 They're cultural.

00:14:08.140 In the societies of humans,

00:14:11.200 you have various kinds of rewards that everyone knows about,

00:14:16.700 that you will get higher status,

00:14:18.340 that you will get more wives,

00:14:20.640 and you will get access to some of the resources that are at stake.

00:14:24.780 So, humans are able to inculcate a militarization of a basic biological tendency.

00:14:32.180 And then the second thing, of course,

00:14:33.340 is that chimps are doing this from just one particular community of up to 200 individuals

00:14:41.040 who all live and share the same area.

00:14:42.820 But, of course, what humans can do is organize the coalitions to be between neighboring villages or neighboring groups.

00:14:53.260 And then that tremendously enlarges the whole operation.

00:14:57.880 Interesting.

00:14:58.160 So, one of the things that this book did for me is it kind of shattered that myth that a lot of people have

00:15:06.000 about civilized cultures being the only type of culture that is engaged in warfare,

00:15:12.920 and that primitive hunter-gatherer societies live in peace and harmony.

00:15:17.120 But the research shows that warfare is actually very ubiquitous,

00:15:20.520 or was very ubiquitous amongst hunter-gatherer societies.

00:15:23.680 Can you describe some of the research that shows how likely someone was to get killed in a hunter-gatherer society,

00:15:31.300 or how likely they were to actually kill another person?

00:15:34.160 Because I think, I mean, yeah, there's this idea, I guess, that the noble savage is the myth that people have.

00:15:39.160 Where did that myth come from, and, yeah, like, why do we have that?

00:15:45.160 Historically, you can talk about it being the musings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau,

00:15:49.940 the 18th, 19th century French intellectual who was just very impressed by a few primitive 0.98

00:15:58.400 or a few sort of small-scale peoples that he came across.

00:16:01.280 But as with many of these people, they had already been affected by modern life.

00:16:07.380 And the basic answer to your question about why is it that we tend to think

00:16:12.600 that people living at hunters-and-gatherers are so peaceful is that they've very rarely been studied,

00:16:20.060 except where they're living next to militarily powerful farmers,

00:16:24.980 and they're smart enough to know they're not going to do well fighting against the farmers.

00:16:30.780 And if you look further, you find the evidence that the farmers had in the past defeated them, essentially.

00:16:36.580 The critical question is, what happens when you look at hunters-and-gatherers

00:16:41.860 that have been neighbored by other hunters-and-gatherers who speak a different language?

00:16:48.960 And there are something like six culture areas around the world where you can find such cases.

00:16:54.360 And there you find awful violence.

00:16:56.520 So as long as you look in the right areas where you don't have the hunters-and-gatherers

00:17:03.500 already having been dominated by a much more powerful group,

00:17:09.220 then you find this sort of somewhat chimpanzee-like behavior.

00:17:14.320 So, I mean, the question is, you know, you're a biological anthropologist.

00:17:18.620 And so there must be a reason why chimps and humans, human males specifically,

00:17:26.140 have this violent temperament.

00:17:27.920 I mean, why was it that males in both these species developed a violent temperament?

00:17:34.020 You know, what purpose did it serve?

00:17:36.880 Well, in a tragic way, it seems to benefit both the males and the females.

00:17:42.820 If you think about the community of chimpanzees, they are always going to be surrounded by other groups of chimpanzees.

00:17:52.940 And the only way they can get more access to the food that is so important for ultimately turning and producing more babies

00:18:01.180 and having evolutionary success is to expand at the expense of the neighbors.

00:18:06.100 And it so happens that in chimpanzees, the ecology that they have evolved with is one in which it pays to live in groups

00:18:17.340 that sometimes you travel alone and sometimes you travel in a bigger group, which gives rise to the asymmetry.

00:18:23.340 Okay, so now males and females are both interested in getting a larger group, a larger area, as I'm trying to say,

00:18:32.660 where they can get more resources.

00:18:34.460 And this will be true of any species.

00:18:37.820 But only in chimpanzees or very rarely elsewhere do you have the regular asymmetry that enable killing to be favored.

00:18:47.800 And why is it just the males?

00:18:49.580 Well, the mothers are burdened by their young. 0.99

00:18:52.240 And it's very dangerous for them to get involved in the attacks.

00:18:56.920 And over evolutionary time, natural selection has favored mothers who are relatively fearful of going to the edge 0.92

00:19:03.820 and getting involved in these fights, whereas it's favored males who relish the idea,

00:19:09.340 who get very excited by the prospect of going up and beating up their neighbors.

00:19:13.560 And the net result is that their group does well.

00:19:16.700 And as a consequence, they do well as well.

00:19:20.520 They are able to increase the number of babies they pass on to future generations.

00:19:26.460 Human beings are not only related to chimpanzees.

00:19:29.700 In recent, particularly in the media, they talked a lot about the bonobos, or bonobos,

00:19:35.460 I don't know how you pronounce it, as sort of this docile or peaceful, you know, close relative of ours.

00:19:41.840 So, yeah, the chimps and the bonobos have a different culture,

00:19:46.880 where the chimps are more aggressive and the bonobos more peaceful.

00:19:50.720 Can you describe a little bit more detail the difference between chimps and bonobos

00:19:53.760 and why these differences emerge between the two?

00:19:56.920 Yeah, it is a totally fascinating story, and we still don't understand all of it.

00:20:01.240 But you said there's a different culture between them, and in a sense that's right. 1.00

00:20:06.520 But if we're going to be strictly accurate, it's a different biology.

00:20:08.780 It's a different psychology.

00:20:09.660 You know, you put chimpanzees and bonobos into zoos in identical conditions,

00:20:15.820 and there's a complete difference in the way they behave.

00:20:19.360 Now, this is very, very striking, because bonobos are very like chimpanzees to look at.

00:20:25.460 In fact, they're so similar that Western scientists had seen bonobos for some time,

00:20:30.800 several years, before they realized that they are a different species.

00:20:33.980 And it's the behavior that shows it.

00:20:35.520 And what is it about the behavior?

00:20:36.620 It's a number of things, but more striking than anything, the bonobos are, as you said,

00:20:42.340 relatively peaceful.

00:20:43.480 It doesn't matter whether you're talking about captive or wild, males or females,

00:20:48.620 whether they've been fed by humans or they're in nature, whether you're talking about within-group

00:20:55.160 aggression or between-group aggression.

00:20:56.560 In all these ways, chimpanzees are far more aggressive than the bonobos.

00:21:03.000 So that's the fact.

00:21:04.600 There are other things linked to this.

00:21:06.240 There's more non-conceptive sexuality among the bonobos. 0.94

00:21:11.160 They're famously homosexual. 0.83

00:21:12.840 They're famously diverse in their sexual practices. 0.96

00:21:15.220 But the important thing, from a biological perspective, the most important thing seems to be the reduced

00:21:21.860 aggression.

00:21:23.080 And now, where does this come from?

00:21:24.280 Well, the one thing I think we can say about this with some confidence is that bonobos have

00:21:29.040 evolved from a chimpanzee-like ancestor rather than the other way around.

00:21:33.340 And the reason you can say that is because of a fascinating similarity between bonobos and

00:21:41.480 dogs.

00:21:43.260 So this is a little bit surprising that I suddenly introduced a totally different species.

00:21:47.180 But here's the formula.

00:21:48.720 Wolf is to dog as chimpanzee is to bonobo.

00:21:52.600 In other words, dogs have evolved from wolves by reducing aggression.

00:21:57.920 They've become domesticated.

00:21:59.020 And bonobos have evolved from something like chimpanzees by reducing aggression.

00:22:05.080 And the reason we can say this is because, just as you find in all domesticated animals,

00:22:10.900 there are certain features that change in the skull.

00:22:14.840 The skull becomes relatively small in dogs compared to wolves.

00:22:18.800 The teeth become smaller.

00:22:20.520 The face becomes shorter.

00:22:21.980 And the brain becomes smaller.

00:22:23.440 Well, all of these things happen in bonobos compared to chimps.

00:22:25.880 It's a fascinating story of a parallel in the wild to what we see in domesticated animals.

00:22:34.180 And the parallels mean that there was natural selection against aggressiveness in bonobos.

00:22:41.600 And they ended up being this nicer, kinder species.

00:22:45.900 They're still somewhat aggressive, but just enormously less so than chimps.

00:22:50.540 This probably started happening just a little less than a million years ago,

00:22:54.400 long after the chimpanzee-bonobo line had split off from humans about six million years ago.

00:23:01.340 And why it happened, it's a fascinating question.

00:23:06.200 And I think the answer is something to do with the fact that bonobos live in stable groups,

00:23:12.720 unlike these constantly varying groups of chimps that give rise to the power asymmetries 0.91

00:23:19.820 where aggression can be easily carried out very safely.

00:23:23.860 The reason that bonobos live in more stable groups is because they have access to different kinds of foods from the chimps.

00:23:31.420 And the specific foods that appear to be really important are those that are also eaten by gorillas.

00:23:37.500 Well, now, guess what?

00:23:39.700 There are no gorillas in the areas of Africa where bonobos live.

00:23:43.800 They live in the areas where chimpanzees live.

00:23:46.820 So chimps and gorillas compete over these certain foods.

00:23:51.260 And because there are gorillas that are eating them, then the chimps can't. 1.00

00:23:55.360 So the gorillas are able to eat them.

00:23:58.180 And by the way, that leads them to live in stable groups.

00:24:01.740 The foods we're talking about are meadows of edible herbs on the forest floor.

00:24:10.120 So in the bonobo areas, no gorillas to eat them.

00:24:13.360 The bonobos do, in fact, eat them.

00:24:15.260 And when they're eating them, they can stay together in stable groups just like the gorillas can. 1.00

00:24:19.380 So we think that there is a deep ecological difference between these two species

00:24:24.760 that's led to a difference in grouping patterns,

00:24:26.860 that's led to a difference in the economics of aggression such that aggression doesn't pay in the bonobo world.

00:24:34.080 And they've ended up self-domesticating, a bit like ending up like a dog compared to a wolf.

00:24:41.360 So is it, I guess, resource abundance that leads to stability?

00:24:44.320 I mean, is this herb pretty abundant where you don't have to really fight for it or take a risk for it?

00:24:48.840 That's right.

00:24:49.780 Yeah, it's a kind of a local resource abundance.

00:24:51.900 It's the way the food is distributed that enables bonobos to take this different evolutionary path.

00:24:57.100 And it just shows how arbitrary it is, whether or not a species ends up being more or less aggressive.

00:25:03.160 Okay.

00:25:04.060 So let's move on to this because I thought this was really interesting.

00:25:07.240 It's about patriarchy, right?

00:25:09.240 It's a hot topic amongst social scientists and feminists. 1.00

00:25:14.940 And it's popularly thought that patriarchy is this complete social or cultural construct.

00:25:20.440 And it's often unique to Western cultures.

00:25:23.100 However, you highlight research in your book that not only from primatologists, but also from anthropologists,

00:25:28.620 that patriarchy is much more ubiquitous than we formerly thought and that there's likely a biological reason for it.

00:25:35.800 Can you describe the theory of how patriarchy has a biological underpinning?

00:25:45.060 Yeah, I mean, this is one of these classic confusions when people are looking at somewhat related questions

00:25:51.160 and appearing to disagree when actually they don't really.

00:25:54.440 In other words, sure, patriarchy is strongly cultural in the sense that there are lots of differences among different human societies.

00:26:02.420 Some are much more patriarchal, some are much less so.

00:26:06.260 And those differences are going to be due to culture, not to differences in genes or anything like that.

00:26:13.400 But at the same time, if you look at humans compared to other species,

00:26:20.360 then you find that we are sort of a particular characteristic form.

00:26:26.060 And that is, we are a species in which overall there is a very consistent tendency for patriarchy in every society.

00:26:37.160 So were there any true matriarchal societies among hunters and gatherers or anybody else?

00:26:42.900 No.

00:26:44.140 You don't find it at all.

00:26:45.740 You find people sometimes drifting in that direction.

00:26:50.100 You find sometimes women's houses or women's being able to take important roles in communal decisions. 1.00

00:26:58.660 But if there is ever a clash between what the men want to do and what the women want to do,

00:27:02.720 then the authority always resides with the men.

00:27:06.580 So in that sense, every single human society is patriarchal.

00:27:12.260 And by the way, this is not just some man saying this.

00:27:16.540 I mean, if you take, there was a book edited by two strong feminists called Women, Culture, and Society in the 1980s,

00:27:24.520 and there was endless chapters by women anthropologists, and everyone agreed.

00:27:28.940 There are no matriarchal societies. 1.00

00:27:31.700 So this is not some fantasy of men.

00:27:35.880 This is a very firm conclusion from an analysis of the political lives of people living in every different kind of society.

00:27:46.540 And so what is—so we all see patriarchy not only in humans but in chimps in a way. 0.73

00:27:54.120 I mean, so why—is it because males, both in chimps and in humans, are physically stronger

00:27:59.860 and that they have to do these raids to go and, you know, get more territory?

00:28:04.120 I mean, is that the biological underpinning of patriarchy in both species?

00:28:08.780 I mean, it may well have played a role, but it clearly isn't enough.

00:28:11.340 And here's why we can say that.

00:28:13.040 The bonobos provide a fascinating counterpoint, because in bonobos, the males are bigger than the females.

00:28:19.740 And if it was just a matter of strength, then the bonobos would undoubtedly be able to dominate the females.

00:28:25.320 But if there are conflicts between males and females in bonobos, the females routinely win.

00:28:30.080 And you can talk about them being sort of co-dominant between the males and the females,

00:28:36.060 or sometimes you can say that the females seem to be dominating the males,

00:28:39.560 but you never say that males are dominating the females.

00:28:41.680 So there is a case where the differences in strength are not enough to account for the differences in social behavior.

00:28:50.960 And the missing piece is the motivation of individuals to get together with other members of their own gender,

00:28:59.940 or sex in the case of bonobos and chimpanzees, and form alliances.

00:29:05.280 And in chimpanzees and humans, you have this very strong motivation of men to form really effective alliances that fight alongside each other.

00:29:15.440 And it's quite clear that that would have paid off in evolutionary time in the context of fighting against neighboring groups.

00:29:23.900 And I think that a very reasonable interpretation of the evolutionary history of patriarchy is that it stems from that tendency.

00:29:31.640 It stems from, essentially, war.

00:29:35.880 So men now are able to use the alliances that they have come to so readily form in the context of war to dominate life within each society,

00:29:49.320 whether it's modern-day America or hunter-gatherers living on the African plains.

00:29:56.320 And, by the way, you know, one should recognize that patriarchy in this sense of male dominance is cultural in this sense,

00:30:06.320 that it depends on the relationships among men or among women at the level of communal discussion.

00:30:17.820 But if you're talking about just a man and a woman alone in their house,

00:30:23.480 then it's quite wrong to think about males always being dominant.

00:30:27.600 I mean, in some marriages, a man might be dominant to a woman.

00:30:32.760 In others, a woman might be dominant to a man. 1.00

00:30:35.300 There is no consistency there.

00:30:37.340 It's once you get to the social, cultural area that you get the consistency.

00:30:42.180 But what is so striking, as you said, is that it occurs both in humans and in chimpanzees.

00:30:48.940 Fascinating.

00:30:50.340 So here's a question.

00:30:51.760 So I guess you're at Harvard University, correct?

00:30:55.240 Yes.

00:30:55.620 So I think one of your colleagues, Stephen Pinker, wrote The Better Nature, Angels of Ourselves,

00:30:59.880 and he makes the argument that violence is decreasing in the world.

00:31:03.360 So, I mean, if violence and aggression is an evolved trait in male humans,

00:31:10.840 why is it that violence is going down?

00:31:12.800 Can culture tame the beast, or is there something else that's going on that

00:31:16.460 because we live in an environment that has resource abundance,

00:31:19.520 we no longer have to be violent to gain an advantage in the world?

00:31:26.800 So the answer to that, I mean, there's this big question.

00:31:29.660 You say, well, if it's an evolved tendency, then how come it's,

00:31:33.360 it's going down?

00:31:35.780 The implication of the question is that if something has a biological component,

00:31:41.280 then it's going to be fixed.

00:31:42.600 But that's an inappropriate implication, and I'm glad you brought it up

00:31:47.780 because it's really important for people to recognize that just because there's an evolved tendency,

00:31:52.880 that doesn't mean it's fixed.

00:31:54.040 And, yeah, Pinker did a wonderful job in showing that everywhere you look,

00:32:01.340 there is a tremendous evidence of a reduction in the actual frequency of death by violence,

00:32:07.760 or torture, or slavery, or all sorts of things that were far worse in the past in terms of violence.

00:32:16.220 So what is happening?

00:32:18.760 Well, one of your ideas was, have we become so well supplied with the resources that we don't need to fight?

00:32:27.460 I don't think that's a very powerful explanation because if you look in history and if you look in animals

00:32:36.820 and if you think about it theoretically, you actually expect that animals, individuals, groups of humans

00:32:43.640 that have the great ability to use resources to attack their neighbors will do so.

00:32:52.100 There are many examples where as you get more resources and have more power, then you use it.

00:33:00.940 So merely more power for some groups is not so important.

00:33:05.560 But, however, if you say everybody is doing better and so we're all able to put up more effective defenses,

00:33:13.940 well, then that would be much more reasonable.

00:33:17.100 I think they, I mean, Pinker drew attention to, I think he had six different forces that he reckoned were very important,

00:33:23.500 and some of those were moral, you know, the spread of a different kind of morality towards people of neighboring groups.

00:33:31.920 I, can culture tame the beast? Absolutely.

00:33:36.580 It clearly is doing so.

00:33:38.840 To me, the really exciting area is the development of institutions that have been going on for several hundred years

00:33:48.700 that intervene when there is war.

00:33:52.880 I mean, you know, we're seeing it now.

00:33:54.220 A tremendous number of ideas and organizations are being brought into play

00:34:02.240 to try and control the violence that's going on in the Middle East.

00:34:07.240 Well, a thousand years ago, it would have just played itself out

00:34:11.200 and people would have massacred each other without anyone intervening.

00:34:14.880 So there's now a much greater effort at all levels to reduce violence wherever it appears.

00:34:25.500 Okay.

00:34:26.480 So your book, the title of the book is Demonic Males,

00:34:29.540 and I think some people who would read it or would get the idea that, you know,

00:34:34.600 men are inherently flawed because they have this violent tendency

00:34:37.720 and human culture is somewhat helplessly at the mercy of the male propensity towards violence.

00:34:42.320 But are there reasons, you know, for optimism in your research?

00:34:45.980 And what do you hope people take away from these insights in your book?

00:34:50.720 I think, you know, I'm generally a positivist who thinks that the more we understand them,

00:34:56.100 the better we can take advantage of our understanding.

00:34:59.320 And I do feel that there's reasons for optimism.

00:35:03.340 I think that one of the things that Demonic Males reminds us 0.97

00:35:09.220 is that there are important psychological differences between men and women,

00:35:13.360 and I think it's a real stimulus to help promote the notion of increasing political power for women. 0.76

00:35:24.700 I think it's just great that countries like Rwanda and some of the Scandinavian countries

00:35:31.380 have now got around 50% of the legislatures at the national level being composed of women. 0.63

00:35:39.220 I think one can confidently expect that that will tend to lead to less aggressive policies.

00:35:47.340 Among men purely, I think that if we can understand that aggression is motivated by power difference,

00:35:56.500 which is what much different kinds of research suggests,

00:36:00.520 then we are reminded that it's really valuable to try and erode power differences

00:36:07.880 to make sure that we have bounces of power at all sorts of different levels.

00:36:12.280 Because the way natural selection and evolution work is that individuals don't want to take risks.

00:36:19.260 And if we can reduce the cultural enjoinments for militarization,

00:36:26.800 then if we can arrange society in such a way that there aren't huge imbalances of power,

00:36:32.920 we can expect that we will live in a much nicer world.

00:36:38.240 Very interesting.

00:36:39.040 Well, Dr. Ringham, this has been a fascinating discussion.

00:36:41.320 Thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:36:43.380 Well, thank you so much for the interview. It's wonderful to talk to you.

00:36:45.920 And our guest today was Dr. Richard Ringham.

00:36:48.620 He is a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University

00:36:52.300 and the co-author of the book, Demonic Males, Apes and the Origins of Human Violence.

00:36:57.100 And you can find that book on Amazon.com.

00:37:01.220 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:37:05.120 For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com.

00:37:09.640 And if you enjoy this show and you're getting something out of it,

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00:37:29.800 So until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

00:37:33.200 We'll be right back.

The Art of Manliness - October 25, 2014

#86： Demonic Males With Dr. Richard Wrangham

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