I disagree koz.

Joseph Campbell would say that men have to go through some trial to 'qualify' as men because they need to prove something. Women become women through menses - so they're fertile with nothing to prove.

Your reference to 'science' misses the point. The narratives have nothing to do with reality - but that's what makes them so important. Jack Bauer? I mean c'mon! Jack Bauer had to be created from whole cloth. The 'myth' is just that because it is a kind of wish fulfillment/fantasy: male triumph over a threat.

Dr. Ducat:

I wonder how you would diagnose the current, apparent failure of the macho rage response.

We've had our chance to "shock and awe" and frankly, it didn't work. What do we do when confronted with the failure of bad-ass-ity?

Re: The ancient wound she identifies is the failure of Colonial-era American men to protect “their” women from abduction by native males,

Three things:

1) The colonial generation is long dead
2) Very few colonial or pioneer women were ever abudcted or harmed by the natives-- Indeed, the natives were many times more likely to suffer abuse, murder and outright genocide at the hands of the whites. And colonial/pioneer women were far more likely to die young from disease, malnutrition or over-work. (ditto for the men)
3) As Ms Faludi mentions the few occasions when white women were carried off by natives were for a long time suppressed. Though in the present day this is no longer case. One such woman, the 18th century Mary Jemson in central New York who was taken by the Iroquois, is now memorialized in Letchworth State Park. And two years ago the miniseries "Into The West" included a character who was carried off by the Cheyenne and ultimately ended up preferring her life with them. But this is recent. For a long time these things were not talked about and that being the case, it's hard to se how it could inlfuence people once those alive at the time were dead and the empotional truama of the experience was dead with them.

I don't know. I find this whole line of approach overdone. If too many on the Left are overationalistic this strikes me as overly mystical, a trait usually found on the Right. Why can't we just say people were pissed off mightily by 9-11 and in the throes of that emotion allowed themselves to be conned and misled by clever demagogues on the Right?

Re: While homoerotic partnerships were unremarkable, any non-slave male believed to have been penetrated was called a binoumenos, which means, “fucked male,” and could lose his rights to citizenship.

You need to modify that slightly: any non-slave ADULT male. Youths were fair game.

I don't know. I find this whole line of approach overdone. If too many on the Left are overationalistic this strikes me as overly mystical, a trait usually found on the Right.

Agreed. Every group has its space cadets. Though overall the left imho is better off, as our kooks are usually too abstract to be meaningful. And our clueless pioneers tend to wander off cliffs and harm only themselves, while a culture of repressive reactionaries harm everyone.

As bad as the hippies were, most grew out of it or only managed to totally disempower themselves. I'll take the hippies over the Taliban-like fundies any day.

btw, you're also getting your cart before your horse, and completely mistaking cause and effect. You've got it all backwards and mixed up.

The environment creates violence, and different types of violence. For example Southern and Rural settlers were the least educated and went to the harshest lands, and in many cases took lands from neighbors to expand. Hence to this day they exibit a coarser, more physically rough culture.

Northerners were better educated and more likely to design and build the arms as well as finance wars. To this day it's a more intellectual culture, more physically "gentlemanly."

But both are violent in different ways. And women were of course prospering from the violence as well as men, as the spoils also accrued to their mutual households and offspring.

Oh, well now that you've said "Not Uh!" in that one sentence response, I'm convinced! ;)

Of course violence has many causes. But the point is that if you trace them back you'll find environmental and technological root causes.

For example:

Southerners tended to come from Scots Irish background. Who were poorer and more agrarian/rural. Who then had to be pioneers to expand the pie if they wanted a piece, because upper class, educated people of mostly English decent tended to control the North East. As poorer rural/agrarian people, they were more directly connecting to hunting and physical work, and a coarser culture.

slavery, as an example of violence, was a joint venture of the North and South. The North tended to provide the capital and logistical means, while the Southerners provided direct violence and labor involved in plantation operation. Obviously both profited enormously.

Later the North "outgrew" slavery first due to their continued move towards industrialization and capitalism. the South was still more dependent on slavery, though it was also moving away from it.

Going back to the Scots/Irish, why were they poorer to begin with? Because their clime is colder and harsher compared to England, which is also situated closer to the mainland. As such, it was more influenced by the technology of European empires and made more powerful in the region. That included more finance and science, while the North stayed relatively more nomadic and developed fine crafts but less written technology. and of course for a long time the English used this advantage to enslave Northerners. In fact, many Scots/Irish who came to the Americas, were indentured servants.

Going further back, why were empires like the Romans and Greeks more advanced? In large part because they had the best lands. Nice climate, defensible islands and semi-isolated lands, in close proximity to the crossroads of all the world's cultures, between Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Yes, but just to add, complexity doesn't equal mystery.

We can't wish gender away in our ignorance as some would, nor should people speculate in ignorance too much about the limiting nature of gender.

If ever there was an issue needing moderate sensibilities, it's gender politics. Too many zealots on both sides, nature and nurture.

While the scientific knowledge has grown since the 70's, it's hard to tell from listening to some rednecks and women's studies grads.

Well, not to complain but you have to convince me, you're the one who made the claim.

There is no evidence to support your claim whatsoever. I have never seen one study that would support it.

Starting with the last, first, Roman and Greek cultures were constantly, continuously at war - the Greeks with the other Greek states and with outside forces. A claim that their lands were "semi-isolated...and in close proximity to the crossroads of all the world's culture" is a contradiction. If it is in close proximation, then it cannot be semi-isolated, and the many invasions would prove that so. The land wasn't arable and they imported a large amount of foodstuffs and grain as did the Romans, speaking of which, the easier question to answer about the Romans would be when weren't they at war? Most of Roman culture was borrowed from other cultures and had nothing to do with their climate or environment.

Now you claim that the Scots/Irish were impoverished because of a poor climate, but that is not the case - they were mainly impoverished because of British political policies, such as the Irish Acts and the Land Enclosure Acts which set up the constant cycle of poverty - no grazing land, no wealth. The Scots would tell you that they were never enslaved by the English and I would agree with them. It was a series of politically advantaged marriages that joined England and Scotland and to this day Scotland maintains a Scottish parliament.

As to the claim that the Northeast was settled by an upper class British class, I don't believe that to be true. If there was any class that settled in the Northeast, it wasn't the upper class, but the tradesmen class and New York was primarily a Dutch settlement. The great families of New York such as the Roosevelts and the Stuyvesants were Dutch, not British, in fact the upper class of New York was Dutch. The Livingstons, the Jays and the Morrises were later arrivals. The south on the other hand, was settled by many British upper class families who sent second sons to manage land grants, families such as the Washingtons, the Randolphs and the Lees who were cultured, educated people. Maryland was settled in much the same way. Both the north and south had a mix of gentility and coarseness and to claim that one region is more violence prone because of their cultural heritage just does not fit the real picture.

In my opinion, anyone who came to this country as a settler had to have a certain amount of hardiness and crudeness and a tolerance for violence and coarseness or they would not have survived.

So no, I don't believe that the environment can predict the level of violence perpetrated or tolerated by a society nor does it have much effect on people who commit violent acts.

Ugh, it's Amanda Marcotte. Birds of a feather and all. There are too many problems in her brief comment to list them all, but to start:

He's equating senseless warfare with "hypermasculinty" which is obnoxious, and Marcotte is attempting a smoke screen for him by claiming that "masculinity" is different from the male gender, and that masculinity is wholly a "social construct." Which is a llot of hand waving and BS.

If someone was bashing femininity as weak and helpless or otherwise derogatory stereotyping, and claiming the problem with society was too much femininity, it would be 1) at best moronically simplistic 2) inflammatory 3) totally un-PC 4) not something Marcotte would likely defend, though with her record for SNAFU I wouldn't put it past her.

"Masculinty" and "femininity" are part social, but they're certainly rooted fundamentally in gender traits derived from hormonal differences first manifesting in utero and empirically observable in behavior upon birth. The notion that they're wholly a societal construct, is totally unscientific PC chatter.

If Ducat wants to talk about violence, he should specifically. If he wants to speak about masculinity or femininity as broad umbrellas of traits including all the nuances and variations, he should specifically discuss that topic. But that kind of vague gender polemic and such inflammatory shoddy theories, is totally obnoxious at or beyond the Larry Summers level of ridiculousness.

And btw, calling the Washington Monument "phallic" really shows a tendency to say things for effect, which has caused Marcotte problems already.

Does Marcotte elevate some ideals on pedestals and point to them incessantly? Obviously she does with her brand of "feminism" so it must be "phallic" according to her definition.

After the Edwards affair some introspection was long overdue. Grow up Marcotte. Just because you have a small fan base doesn't mean much. So do Limbaugh, Malkin, and plenty of other morons.

Re: Greek and Roman lands were some of the earliest and most extensively cultivated lands.

Italy was fairly fertile, though the city of Rome rapidly outgrew its capacities and Roime had to look elsewhere for grain. Greece on the other hand was an environmental disaster by the Bronze Age and the Greek exported their population and imported food.

In regards to the South, the upland Southerners were Scots-Irish. The lowland South was different: mainly English (but Cavalier not Puritan) with an admixture of French, both Huguenot and Cajun.

We don't dismiss Freud out of hand. We don't dismiss Lewis and Clark out of hand.

I'm not saying it. Campbell said it. He's an authority. You're not. Try citing sources instead of skepticism. I can be skeptical about whether the world is really flat, the moon landings etc.

I have to admit, if the tables were turned - if we were saying emasculation was ruining us - yeah the 'left' would be up in arms (so to speak).

I think in the abstract you are right, but it's the world as it is that argues against you.

We really are surrounded by an increasingly fascist culture. We have Air Force fighter fly overs at every NASCAR race. We sing the national anthem at every sports event. Oh, and we spend half a trillion a year on our bad-ass army.

Bad-ass-ism is failing us. In fact, when you think about it, the turrurists are the epitome of machismo: they're signing on for death for eternal glory - not to mention that mastery over women is perhaps their main priority.

Advertising, Koz. Advertising. How the war was sold.

The power of advertising varies from person to person, because minds run on different tracks. But still, advertising is powerful.

I thought we'd come far enough to know that nature vs. nurture is a foolish argument. The main chink in your armor, you seem to underestimate the power of language and other symbols.

In the beginning there was the word; predecessor to the written word.

Kevin Russell Cook

The centrality of emotion, metaphor, fantasy and the phantasmagoric eruptions of the unconscious are either ignored or treated with sneering derision. Regrettably, this is not a mistake made by the right. - Ducat

snicker...

Kozmik: You are gettig mislead by terminology differences and forgetting your Lewis Carrol. 'Masculinity' is a word and means precisely what the user intends it to mean no more no less. You will get more out of Ducat's post if you re-read it replacing 'masculinity' (since his usuage doesn't jib with yours) with something like 'tough guy role playing.'

In the social sciences there are a great many arguments over terminology where people are using the same terminology to mean different things and end up talking past each other.

And yes men are more violent than women: see the statistics. And yes women also are aggressive but more likely to use different means. And yes some of the differences are hormonally based: see steroid rage.

The Right is willing to spout utter nonsense as long as they and/or their target group will buy it.

It is disgusting but it is a fact that emotional pull of a meme can for many people override rational thought. The Rethugs exploit this and the Left tends to regard it as beneath consideration. So we unilaterally disarm as to the use of non-rational appeals. Not only that but the Left in attempting to call the Rethugs on it asks how stupid do the Rethugs think we are to ask us to believe that? This implicitly calls those who do fall for it stupid and is not a persuasive maneuver.

The reThugs employ sophisticated advertising firms to discover what there memes may be.

Dr. Ducat: You mentioned a correlation between conservatism and femaphobia. I would like to hear more. Earlier research as reported in the popular press suggested that the terms people use as swear words reflect underlying concerns. Which would indeed suggest that Arnold Schwarnegger is phobic.

Your definition is misinformed and unscientific. It's not a surprise to me we have a psychologist and an ideological feminist known for unconsidered language, throwing these terms around so sloppily. I'm only half joking when I say this conversation could quickly switch to dream analysis and grooming habits.

As I already said, the definition of "masculinity" means human male gender traits. Just as "femininity" means human female gender traits.

Obviously there is no complete of definitive catalog of them, and obviously we can argue about which traits are more cultural and which are more biological, and in what proportion.

However, to state as Marcotte does, that all of "masculinity" i.e. male traits, or all of "femininity" i.e. female traits, are cultural, is flat out unscientific and factually false. It's popular with a branch of ideological feminists and psychologists who want to believe it. Unscientific psychologists like it because it unconstrains psychology from biology allowing them free speculation. Some feminists like it for similar reasons pertaining to political speculation.

However, as un-PC as some may find it, the fact is there are many male and female psychological differences which are determined in utero by hormones which effect brain architecture. The male and female brain, at birth, is physically different architecturally and have different areas developed, scaled for specialization. That specialization is empirically observable in child development and behavioral studies, from birth.

Now, that's not to say that gender roles are cut in stone or that there isn't a great deal of plasticity and diversity in individuals. It's my personal opinion we'd generally do well to move away from traditional gender roles, and even away from our inherent nature to some extent to better adapt to the times.

But, the fact remains that part of masculinity or femininity is biological and that is factually indisputable. And when one is discussing "masculinity" or "femininity" it's like discussing other generalities, such as "race" or creed, and such. It's obnoxious to bring thier simplistic caricatures of gender, and then claim society as a whole is blighted by this or that caricature of some fraction of humanity.

It's just obnoxious and is exactly what I can't stand about some quacks and polemicists.

No, the early settlers did not come here to be accountants and secretaries

Nor did I say that. Could you be any more obtuse? Emigration didn't stop in the 1600's, nor was our cultural landscape set at that point. What I said is that not all immigrants came to the US as you claimed had to be rough and tumble.

The vast majority of the Southern population, and especially the South West, and West, came in the 1700's or later, and they were primarily Scots-Irish and other border and poor British. Many were indentured servants. It was the least desirable place to go because many died of tropical diseases, the work was back breaking, and there was little to no infrastructure.

By comparison, the immigration which continued to the North most certainly were relatively more skilled workers able to work in the growing factories, mills, and offices of the Northern cites. Even very early on in the 1700's you have people like stone masons, academics, and artists coming to build out the first northern cities, while the South is still all plantations for the most part. Later you have financiers, secretaries, engineers and such arriving with the industrial revolution, while the south is for the most part still plantations, and still plagued by tropical diseases like malaria.

Of course anyone coming to this country as a settler had to hardy - far more of them died of disease and malnutrition

Nonsense. Most people of earlier civilizations had to be relatively more "hardy" in the era before TV and air conditioning. Duh! But the point is we're talking about the relative differences between northerners and southerners. And northerners were only dying of malnutrition and disease in large numbers very early in the history of the colonies. By comparison, malaria was rampant in much of the south through most of its history.

Mostly all of the people who emigrated south to hard agrarian regions, suffering from malaria and tropical diseases, and with less access to trade and Europe, were the poorest and most disadvantaged people, including many indentured whites sent to work plantations before African slaves. For a long time the South was stricken with tropical diseases, had little infrastructure, and had an economy primarily of plantations.

And to this day, we see that cultural and economic divide in the popular culture of the south.

My point in mentioning Dutch and British families migrating to the North and the South was to refute your claim that the British settled north and the Scots/Irish south

Which is a silly straw man. I never said it was that exclusive or black and white. I said it was a general trend which I was highlighting to point to relative wealth, status, and education disparity.

What I said is that the settlers who went South were generally poorer and going to a more challenging climate to do more physical work. they were more often indentured, exiled, or otherwise poor and disenfranchised. That includes the majority of Scots-Irish and other generally poor or exiled people, including some poor English and others.

While the settlers of the North generally went to a better climate for people of Northern European descent accustomed to cold winters with technology to overcome it. The North also has better Atlantic ports for receiving goods from Europe, which was essential to early American development. They were more prosperous and often better educated, including many of the better off English, Dutch, and so on. The North increasingly specialized, rapidly, to more traders and financiers, skilled labor and professional classes.

The results of that are still visible to this day in the South regarding hunting and agrarian culture, coarser culture, distrust of government and institutions, cultural conservatism, more Libertarianism, fewer and less prestigious universities and other infrastructure, etc.

By comparison the North (and more recently the coastal West) is still the financial hub, still more technologically developed, more prestigious universities and other infrastructure, generally less militaristic and more in favor of government and institutions, more liberal and culturally diverse, and so on.

That's all a product of the type of people who went where and how those cultures would logically evolve.

And who went where was determined in large part by simple geography, climate, shipping access, diseases, and geographic similarity to Northern Europe.

Obviously language has importance. And?

How is "nature vs nurture a foolish argument" in your opinion? In some ways it is, in some ways it's not. It all depends on who is making it and the quality of it.

In the beginning there was the word; predecessor to the written word."

Lol. Ok dood. Pass me the joint and tell me what that's supposed to mean.

The centrality of emotion, metaphor, fantasy and the phantasmagoric eruptions of the unconscious are either ignored or treated with sneering derision. Regrettably, this is not a mistake made by the right. - Ducat

Thanks! What a choice bit of nonsense to really illustrate Ducat's raging goofballlism, and defensiveness too. I can't imagine why he might encounter "sneering derision" with such water tight theories.

I suppose the free love movement and drug culture were the epitome of hyper-rationalism on the left? And Wall Street is just filled with "phantasmagoric eruptions of the unconscious" in the form of wagers on statistical probability and hedged risk.

But hey, if it sells books, why not characterize the entire left and right as John Kerry vs Jerry Falwell. It's so much easier to understand that way, right?

Now you're really nitpicking and grasping. Lol is precisely the most appropriate response to your comments.

Now you made the claim "environment causes violence" and you offered no evidence and no arguments that would support that claim - no cause and effect, nothing.

Nonsense. What I said is that environment and geographic location shapes cultures, which then in turn produces some predictable outcomes in turn of relative advantage, technological advancement, disease and fortune, etc. Which then determines outcomes like inter-tribal violence and exploitation. In that order.

I.e. in summary, ultimately environment causes violence. And I gave many examples and have continued to give them.

Your main argument is counter-intuitive - you claim that southerners are more violence prone than northerners and then you offer the reason that Roman and Greek societies were more cultured than the north and therefore less prone to environmental causes of violence, while the northerners were more prone to violence and far less cultured. So which is it?

No. You're missing the point and conflating a bunch of concepts.

The Romans and Greeks were technologically advanced for the ancient world due to their natural advantages which are primarily geographic: climate, trade, etc. They were still war like though, as all cultures are warlike until they move past the notion of scarcity of physical resources, and start to think more in terms of global economy, and more importantly an economy of ideas which is moving beyond scarcity, which is a product of the modern world.

Northern Europe was a bad place for primitive man due to harsh winters. But, with the addition of technologies imported from the south by Romans, such as stone masonry, mathematics, writing, etc, the Northern European were able to prosper, overcome the winter and wet, and take advantage of the fertile lands.

Ireland and Scotland were behind the curve technologically, after the arrival of Romans, because they were so remote. Which allowed England to largely subjugate them with Roman technology.

The immigrants to the early Americas basically imported much of the structure of Britain and Continental Europe. Which had the result of the people arriving to relatively advantaged or disadvantaged lands in the New World, depending on what they had in the Old World. Such as the poorer Scots-Irish generally, went to the South for hard agrarian work, and had to deal with malaria and such. While the most advantaged people of the Old World, such as more English, Dutch, and so on, went more to the prime Northern American lands that are much like the lands of Europe they're already adapted to, and free of malaria and such tropical diseases.

And in the harsher South the white people were more dependent on slavery to give them a chance to get ahead, just as English had gotten ahead by exploiting those weaker and on disadvantaged lands, just as the Romans had, and so on.

And now we're to a point where we're post scarcity, at least in some regards, in some communities, which tend to be located on the most advantaged geography. In the most technologically advanced communities, ideas are the commodity, which results in less actual killing and allows for secular humanism.

***

and btw, ironically Ireland is now booming largely due to all this ancient history continuing to play out.

The English dominance of Ireland allowed them to exploit Ireland generally, and specifically the potato crop, which meant that Irish potato famines were much harder than they would have been otherwise without England mandating they continue exporting potatoes while starving. As a result of such things, many Irish emigrated.

Recently, the Irish government was able to offer low tax rates to entrepreneurs, and attract many to re-patriate. Why? Becasue the economy was in the dumps and infrastructure in terrible shape, so there was only one way to go: up.

And their old geographic disadvantage turned to an advantage. In the new tech era, Ireland is ideally placed in the time zone between the two largest developed consumer economies: the EU and America, in that order. And they speak English, which of course they got from their oppressors, who also helped make it the international language of business.

Only problem now is all the success. Ireland now has to build infrastructure and raise quality of life, which means taxes, which erases that advantage. Also, there isn't an infinite supply of skilled ex-pats, and the less skilled are following. And as a result of prosperity, if they're not careful they may also inflame class strife, meaning the Irish will have their own Irish oppressors, and additionally they'll segregate in Ireland to better and worse lands depending on that. Which I hear is already happening as some "native" Irish resent the invading nouveau riche "foreign" Irish, who they previously adored, so long as they were geographically elsewhere and sending funds back.

However that plays out, they'll still have the geographic and language advantage that used to be a disadvantage, at least until something else changes.

sphealey,

Who here is saying that? I think maybe you are dragging some personal issues around with you.

Anyways,

Your rating stalking is amusing. It's been weeks now. Are your feelings really so bruised?

Don't you have anything better to do, or a little more self respect, than to skulk around rating stalking me? I'd suggest regular hot relaxing baths, or a change in diet, more exercise, or such would help you more.

It reflects on you. But carry on.

No, you said, "the environment causes violence and different kinds of violence."

And now of course you're practising diversion argumentation. Southern Europe was just as prone to warfare and violence as Northern Europe, a fact from which you cannot escape or divert attention by bringing up a "new Ireland" which of course has nothing to do with your claim, other than to refute it.

If Ireland and Scotland had been "subjugated by England" using Roman technology, then explain why Hadrian built his wall - couldn't he have used Roman technology to subjucate them? The English didn't invade Ireland until 1170 and the Irish weren't conquered, they welcomed the English king because they were fighting off Norman invasions - it wasn't until the Tudor reign that there was a significant domination of Ireland by England.

The first great wave of Irish immigration occurred in 1718 and as Thomas Lechmere, the surveyor general of customs in Boston noted, "they are generally men of estates" and "there are none to be sold, all have their passages paid in sterling in Ireland." So all the Irish didn't come to America because they were the poorest of the poor, nor did they come because of climate in Ireland, they came because of the availability of adding to their estates.

Were the Irish more violent or prone to violence? When's the last time you read about Ireland invading England or any other country for that matter?

We don't know what the conditions are that breed violence and we don't know what the cause is. A Danish study (adoption by "honest families" and "criminal families" and the rate at which those children entered the justice system)suggests that there is some merit in a genetic disposition to crime but there is no proof that genetics are the cause of violence. There are studies which suggest a causation between a culture who plays violent sports and violence but that could be the result of group identity politics rather than the sports.

There are evolutionary reasons why humans are disposed to violence, but there is far more evidence that would tend to discount that cause, because there is far more evidence to support that humans were evolutionarily programmed to living in peace and harmony and offer protection to the weak and sick and all peoples have a sense of justice, morality and kindness while they have different levels of violent behavior and tolerance of violence.

There are roughly three factors in which violence variations among groups can be explained: innate factors, socialization factors and situational factors and there is no evidence whatsoever to support one factor as an explanation of adaptive violence and adaptive violence is probably caused by a combination of factors which are constantly changing.

So no, violence is not caused by environment, although it may well fall into one of the three groups of factors, and no, the Scots/Irish are no more "prone" to violence than any other people - it's the equivelant of claiming that having brown eyes is the cause of crime or brown eyed people are more prone to violence than people with different coloured eyes. Eye colour is a variable, just as environment is a variable, and variables do not prove cause.

Kozmik is a prime example of what Dr. Ducat refers to in his book. Koz, your approach to communication is so very aggressive and emotionally overwrought that it immediately suggests that this discussion has hit a raw nerve with you and so you and your mouth are of and running to shore up defenses. If you are so certain of the rightness of your view, then why the name calling,the silly attacks etc etc? And what a damn shame that you hijacked this thread and diverted the conversation so that it could be the All About Kozmik Show. Read Ducat's book. It may very well be over your head because your mind is as rusted shut as an old possum trap in the woods. In all your ranting about how 'stoopid' everyone else is, you have unknowingly revealed yourself. I see London...I see Kozmik's underpants...