I would like to know why urban blacks prey on their own so much. The murder rates among blacks in Chicago, New York, Baltimore & New Orleans are horrific. I don’t understand what is driving this - drugs? poverty? Human nature? genes? -and why is this not be addressed by these city governments?
I think Peterson and others have hit on a decent model to explain this violence using competence hierarchies. Young men, especially, need to show themselves as being near the top of some hierarchy in order to attract women and have the esteem of their peers.
In cities where their poverty relative to very wealthy people who live in the same city is obvious, that is a strike against them. Maybe some are great athletes or musicians- they can do fine. What about the rest?
Then add on missing fathers. Who teaches young men how to channel and control aggression? Who is to show them that hard work, courtesy, honesty and loyalty to one woman brings meaning and esteem?
These things won’t explain everything, but they explain a lot, I think.
Re: living near great wealth - I have lived in NY for 35 years. Coming from a middle class MA background I am continually amazed by the wealth, even though I’m doing quite well myself now. That said, NY has always had that income divide but never the murder, battering, theft etc. like now
Billions have poured into the black community of NYC - billions over the years, to no avail. Just about every person has a SNAP card, lives in subsidized housing, can access myriad food banks, free schooling, free school lunches, myriad after school programs (music, dance, sports, etc).The kids from these areas who jump on the subway have the latest phones and are dressed to the nines. So clearly money isn’t the problem. So maybe it really is a lack of personal agency, lack of fathers which leads to moral depravity. But then, how does one fix a soul?
Great read. Utterly fascinating stuff. But as I digest, I wonder: is the theory a bit too general? A bit too tidy? Did human groups organize and select differently across time and space? There were, after all, four hundred thousand years and how many thousands of clans, bands, and cultures over that time? Is it possible that some cultures actually selected for big bad bullies? The theory fits nicely into the box of elegant and easy to grasp and explain. But while I want to swallow it all whole and smile, the idea that the human organism is far too messy an animal for such simplicity remains stuck in my head. I’ll likely be left thinking about this one for a while. Guess I’ll have to read the book.
I dunno about that. Bullies persist. Many bullies rise to the top. If a group lives in an extremely competitive and combative environment then extreme aggression is a favorable survival trait. Remove the external threat and that aggression turns inward. Bada-bing: naturally selected bully. I try to remove the concept of ‘sense’ from humanity and its evolution. Rationality and logic may be a human trait, perhaps it is the trait that defines the best of us, but those certainly don’t define our evolution. The human animal has been (and still is) molded by a chaotic and changing world. Simplicity may be satisfying, but I also fear it as deceiving.
Always? If we assume the presented theory is true - human groups selectively kill the overtly aggressive and we’ve therefore domesticated ourselves - does this not simply select for bullies who seem overtly cooperative? The socially competent psychopaths? The Tony Soprano’s of the article’s example? Perhaps we just selected for more efficient bullies? Perhaps we selected for better camouflage? Again, bullies persist. By all means, let’s discuss our self-domestication and rah-rah all the way home. But let us also consider the ways in which we’ve made ourselves more efficient assholes. That includes to our in-group.
I think everyone remembers the fear of bullies when were children, and then watching certain people follow those same bullying patterns into adulthood (dampened though they may be by wisdom and socialization). The existence of bullies certainly doesn't seem to be in much jeopardy. I wonder if there will always be a level of bullying, and/or hierarchies in social groups no matter how many anti-social male genes are removed from the pool. The overall level of aggression lowers, but the social hierarchies and emergent bullying still form, however subdued?
Philosophy has tackled this age old question, "Why cant we be Good?" I highly recommend all of Jacob Needleman's books and the one titled "Why Can't we be Good?" I copied and pasted some exerts from Will Durant's "The Pleasures of Philosophy (1953):
“Nearly all the races of men once lived by pursuing beasts, killing them, cutting them up-usually on the spot-and eating them, often in the raw, and always to the cubic capacity of the hunter’s stomach.”
“Primitive man ate like the modern dog, because he did not know when his next meal would come; insecurity is the mother of greed, as cruelty is the child of fear…How much of our contemporary cruelty and greed, our surviving violence, occasional relish for war, goes back to the hunting stage?”
“Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, as hatred becomes respectable in war. Brutality and greed were once necessary in the struggle for existence, and are now ridicules atavism; man’s sins are not the result of his fall; they are relics of his rise.”
“We do not know when man passed from hunting to tillage, but we may be sure that the great transition created a demand for new virtues; and that many old virtues became vices in the settled and quiet routine of the farm. Industrious was now more vital than bravery, thrift more desirable than violence, peace more profitable than war. Then suddenly factories appeared; men and woman and children began to leave home and family, authority, and unity, to work as individuals, individually paid...instead of sowing seeds and reaping harvests in the fields, men fought a life-and-death struggle, in dark filthy shops…”
Our life and death struggle, virtues, and vices have changed in the information age. 20th Century vices like marijuana, gambling and homosexuality are now virtues. No one has time or interest in Religion and Philosophy to develop their own soul so it seems.
The few times I have read your longer form stuff, like the Sadly Porn review and this, it is some of your best stuff and what convinced me to start paying.
Did self domestication build a better psychopath? Were those who had elevated levels on the trait scale of psychopathic deviancy better able to navigate the mob? How does this match up with the gossip trap? Were we in a gossip/psychopath trap? And at the same time did this help us to outcompete the other hominids that are no longer around?
Excellent review. That guy acting like a 'world state' would be a good thing is a little bit concerning. I'd say that would massively increase the threat posed by tyranny.
The part about reducing capacity for organized violence resonates with John Robb’s commentary on networked conflict. He thinks we are very few steps from nuclear conflict due to Putin’s war and escalating tensions at Taiwan.
Hi Rob, it has been said that in terms of international relations, nations act a lot like boys in early adolescence. If so, maybe the same principles can be useful in understanding and guiding national leaders.
For instance, Trump was a clear advocate of national selfishness. But he used that to guide some middle eastern nations into signing the Abraham Accords. Pretty much he told those countries to state what they needed to each other and several of them found common ground.
With Iran it was the opposite. Recognizing that Iran was operating on a path that was completely harmful to neighboring states, US policy was to encourage others to band against Iran in mutual self defense.
Biden, however, treats Iran as if that regime will act in a non-narcissistic way. Obama did the same. Iran doesn’t seem to want to give up its ways. Glad to negotiate in bad faith, accept pallets of cash and keep doing what they were doing.
Maybe Trump, being a narcissist, recognized the same traits in Iran’s leadership, only worse. That might have given him more insight than his predecessors. Or successor.
Very inciteful. Much of it resonates with common sense from the experienced and observed world. It seems we are seeing more coalitionary proactive aggression within our politics against internal tribes that would otherwise be considered internal members of the same tribe.
I would like to know why urban blacks prey on their own so much. The murder rates among blacks in Chicago, New York, Baltimore & New Orleans are horrific. I don’t understand what is driving this - drugs? poverty? Human nature? genes? -and why is this not be addressed by these city governments?
I think Peterson and others have hit on a decent model to explain this violence using competence hierarchies. Young men, especially, need to show themselves as being near the top of some hierarchy in order to attract women and have the esteem of their peers.
In cities where their poverty relative to very wealthy people who live in the same city is obvious, that is a strike against them. Maybe some are great athletes or musicians- they can do fine. What about the rest?
Then add on missing fathers. Who teaches young men how to channel and control aggression? Who is to show them that hard work, courtesy, honesty and loyalty to one woman brings meaning and esteem?
These things won’t explain everything, but they explain a lot, I think.
Re: living near great wealth - I have lived in NY for 35 years. Coming from a middle class MA background I am continually amazed by the wealth, even though I’m doing quite well myself now. That said, NY has always had that income divide but never the murder, battering, theft etc. like now
Billions have poured into the black community of NYC - billions over the years, to no avail. Just about every person has a SNAP card, lives in subsidized housing, can access myriad food banks, free schooling, free school lunches, myriad after school programs (music, dance, sports, etc).The kids from these areas who jump on the subway have the latest phones and are dressed to the nines. So clearly money isn’t the problem. So maybe it really is a lack of personal agency, lack of fathers which leads to moral depravity. But then, how does one fix a soul?
I suspect that the District Attorney’s decision not to prosecute most crimes is a big factor in recent increases.
Great read. Utterly fascinating stuff. But as I digest, I wonder: is the theory a bit too general? A bit too tidy? Did human groups organize and select differently across time and space? There were, after all, four hundred thousand years and how many thousands of clans, bands, and cultures over that time? Is it possible that some cultures actually selected for big bad bullies? The theory fits nicely into the box of elegant and easy to grasp and explain. But while I want to swallow it all whole and smile, the idea that the human organism is far too messy an animal for such simplicity remains stuck in my head. I’ll likely be left thinking about this one for a while. Guess I’ll have to read the book.
I dunno about that. Bullies persist. Many bullies rise to the top. If a group lives in an extremely competitive and combative environment then extreme aggression is a favorable survival trait. Remove the external threat and that aggression turns inward. Bada-bing: naturally selected bully. I try to remove the concept of ‘sense’ from humanity and its evolution. Rationality and logic may be a human trait, perhaps it is the trait that defines the best of us, but those certainly don’t define our evolution. The human animal has been (and still is) molded by a chaotic and changing world. Simplicity may be satisfying, but I also fear it as deceiving.
Bullies survive when they help an in-group versus an out
Always? If we assume the presented theory is true - human groups selectively kill the overtly aggressive and we’ve therefore domesticated ourselves - does this not simply select for bullies who seem overtly cooperative? The socially competent psychopaths? The Tony Soprano’s of the article’s example? Perhaps we just selected for more efficient bullies? Perhaps we selected for better camouflage? Again, bullies persist. By all means, let’s discuss our self-domestication and rah-rah all the way home. But let us also consider the ways in which we’ve made ourselves more efficient assholes. That includes to our in-group.
Definitely true
I think everyone remembers the fear of bullies when were children, and then watching certain people follow those same bullying patterns into adulthood (dampened though they may be by wisdom and socialization). The existence of bullies certainly doesn't seem to be in much jeopardy. I wonder if there will always be a level of bullying, and/or hierarchies in social groups no matter how many anti-social male genes are removed from the pool. The overall level of aggression lowers, but the social hierarchies and emergent bullying still form, however subdued?
Philosophy has tackled this age old question, "Why cant we be Good?" I highly recommend all of Jacob Needleman's books and the one titled "Why Can't we be Good?" I copied and pasted some exerts from Will Durant's "The Pleasures of Philosophy (1953):
“Nearly all the races of men once lived by pursuing beasts, killing them, cutting them up-usually on the spot-and eating them, often in the raw, and always to the cubic capacity of the hunter’s stomach.”
“Primitive man ate like the modern dog, because he did not know when his next meal would come; insecurity is the mother of greed, as cruelty is the child of fear…How much of our contemporary cruelty and greed, our surviving violence, occasional relish for war, goes back to the hunting stage?”
“Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, as hatred becomes respectable in war. Brutality and greed were once necessary in the struggle for existence, and are now ridicules atavism; man’s sins are not the result of his fall; they are relics of his rise.”
“We do not know when man passed from hunting to tillage, but we may be sure that the great transition created a demand for new virtues; and that many old virtues became vices in the settled and quiet routine of the farm. Industrious was now more vital than bravery, thrift more desirable than violence, peace more profitable than war. Then suddenly factories appeared; men and woman and children began to leave home and family, authority, and unity, to work as individuals, individually paid...instead of sowing seeds and reaping harvests in the fields, men fought a life-and-death struggle, in dark filthy shops…”
Our life and death struggle, virtues, and vices have changed in the information age. 20th Century vices like marijuana, gambling and homosexuality are now virtues. No one has time or interest in Religion and Philosophy to develop their own soul so it seems.
The few times I have read your longer form stuff, like the Sadly Porn review and this, it is some of your best stuff and what convinced me to start paying.
Did self domestication build a better psychopath? Were those who had elevated levels on the trait scale of psychopathic deviancy better able to navigate the mob? How does this match up with the gossip trap? Were we in a gossip/psychopath trap? And at the same time did this help us to outcompete the other hominids that are no longer around?
Excellent review. That guy acting like a 'world state' would be a good thing is a little bit concerning. I'd say that would massively increase the threat posed by tyranny.
The part about reducing capacity for organized violence resonates with John Robb’s commentary on networked conflict. He thinks we are very few steps from nuclear conflict due to Putin’s war and escalating tensions at Taiwan.
Hi Rob, it has been said that in terms of international relations, nations act a lot like boys in early adolescence. If so, maybe the same principles can be useful in understanding and guiding national leaders.
For instance, Trump was a clear advocate of national selfishness. But he used that to guide some middle eastern nations into signing the Abraham Accords. Pretty much he told those countries to state what they needed to each other and several of them found common ground.
With Iran it was the opposite. Recognizing that Iran was operating on a path that was completely harmful to neighboring states, US policy was to encourage others to band against Iran in mutual self defense.
Biden, however, treats Iran as if that regime will act in a non-narcissistic way. Obama did the same. Iran doesn’t seem to want to give up its ways. Glad to negotiate in bad faith, accept pallets of cash and keep doing what they were doing.
Maybe Trump, being a narcissist, recognized the same traits in Iran’s leadership, only worse. That might have given him more insight than his predecessors. Or successor.
Very inciteful. Much of it resonates with common sense from the experienced and observed world. It seems we are seeing more coalitionary proactive aggression within our politics against internal tribes that would otherwise be considered internal members of the same tribe.