Tag: civilization

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I was watching the trial by combat joust in the new Game of Thrones iteration “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” and it dawned on me on how attracted human beings are to violence. People are willing to joust and people are willing to watch jousting even though there was a good chance that somebody would, at the very least, get maimed or, worse still, be killed; furthermore blood sports have a long history in humanity.

The modern world makes a show of caring more about the athletes in their games but the danger still exists (think boxing, rugby, football, hockey, Formula One). These men risk their bodies and possibly their lives to entertain us.

Some observations here:

1.The participants are largely men. There is something innate in men to show their bravery by risking their health and lives. Some men like to rumble. I knew a guy who liked to get in bar fights. He would arrange situations where he might have to defend his “honor.” His honor was broadly defined as anything that irritated him, things like tailgating on a highway or running into him in a crowded bar. I generally thought his honor wasn’t at stake and a simple apology would suffice but he felt differently. The show of physical courage is important to men.

2. A lot of people like to watch these displays of physical courage. Millions of people watch football games and boxing matches — knowing full well that these men are risking their bodies for their entertainment. Even though they would like to detach the idea of this as courage, most people in the audience for these events would largely agree with this idea of physical courage. It is important to them to know there are men capable of this type of courage.

3. These ideas are pretty much locked into our definition of courage. As this appears to have been going on for as long as humans have been in civilizations, speaks volumes of the importance of violence in civilization. I can give all kinds of rational reasons why this shouldn’t be so, that it is insanity for a man to risk his future brain for a Super Bowl ring now but I am fairly certain it will fall on deaf ears. In order to prove his courage, a man must risk his body to prove it and this is the way things have been for a very long time.

What I am trying to figure out is why society’s approach to violence is to treat it as some aberration instead of fundamental to the nature of the male of our species. So much of what humans profess to think about something has nothing to do with how we feel about it. Men want to box. People want to watch boxing. Saying that they shouldn’t box or enjoy boxing fails to deal with the reality of the situation. When someone screams fight in high school parking lot, the people rushing to the fight are not running to break up the fight but rather trying to catch the action before it ends.

I wish I had answers but I don’t. But completely quashing this very strong emotion in humans and making them wrong, doesn’t stop people from having them. It is irrational and inexplicable but despite our best efforts to reform and our continued disapproval of physical violence, it persists. Let’s face it, humans like to rumble.

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There is a growing number of people, generally Conservative, who are worried about a population bust. Here is the latest example from Noah Smith. Why won’t people have more babies? The earth, at some point in the distant future, won’t have enough people to keep the human species alive. They have tried giving money to potential parents to encourage them to populate. It doesn’t seem to have an effect. Greater support for the parents. Socialized countries with a wide array of parental support have some of the lowest birth rates in the world. It seems that women, when given the choice, will opt for fewer to none children. Why?Why? Why? How can this be happening?

  1. It is really difficult to get people to believe there is a crisis when I drive in bumper to bumper traffic, shop in crowded grocery stores, and can never find a parking spaces. My life experience would be a whole lot better with fewer people — everywhere I go and you are telling me we need more people. I find it difficult to believe there is a problem despite the scientific evidence that suggests otherwise (see global warming and extremely cold winters).
  2. Children are an 18 year and longer project. Child rearing is time consuming, expensive and, for some stretches of the little human’s life, thankless. Once you are committed to the project, you just can’t back out. I think it is to our credit that people are now looking at child rearing with the idea is this right for me. Or not.
  3. That many people are opting out suggests there is a problem with the role. If you can’t see yourself changing diapers, going to grade school Christmas shows, teaching your kid how to tie his shoes are how to drive, witnessing tantrums and adolescence, and, oh yes, paying $100,000 plus for a college education then you absolutely should opt out. Isn’t that what people have been saying for years – don’t have kids if you don’t want to take care of them. You can’t very well complain when people are looking at the role and saying, you know I just don’t think that is for me. Parenting isn’t for everyone.
  4. The old historical model of women having lots and lots of babies is based in a different time. There wasn’t reliable birth control. Women were restricted in their options. Realistically most men had equally restricted options. Farm labor was the “choice” far large swaths of the human race for most of our species existence. This doesn’t mean people liked these options, they just didn’t have another choice. In the modern world, people have many more choices. Isn’t that the way we want things to be?
  5. Right now there are 8 billion people on earth. I think more people might step up to reproduce if they actually believed the future of the human race depended upon it. Right now, for most of us, it doesn’t appear to be that way. I find it difficult to believe that a much smaller group of humans, thousands of years back, were able to grow a species to this number but if we drop below a billion people, the human race is doomed to extinction. Computer models are all well in good but the truth is they are often wrong.

I don’t know what the solution to this “problem” is but I fear that it might involve forcing women to have babies they don’t want to have and don’t want to raise. All for the sake of keeping the human race going. I know this is disappointing, but maybe the human race has run its course. If people don’t want to reproduce anymore then maybe the jig is up. It says a lot about a species when people no longer want to participate in one of the basic biological function that keeps the species running. All good things must come to an end.