When Young Men In The Horny Years Aren't Getting Any (Or Much)
Claire Lehman @ClairLemon tweeted this this morning:
Open Access link to the paper by Ben Raffield, Neil Price, and Mark Collard in Evolution & Human Behavior, the journal of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society.
The title:
Male-biased operational sex ratios and the Viking phenomenon: an evolutionary anthropological perspective on Late Iron Age Scandinavian raiding
And the abstract:
In this paper, we use a combination of evolutionary theory, ethnographic data, written sources, and archaeological evidence to develop a new explanation for the origins of Viking raiding. Our argument focuses on the operational sex ratio, which is the ratio of males to females in a society who are ready to mate at a given time. We propose that a combination of two practices - polygyny and concubinage - and the increase in social inequality that occurred in Scandinavia during the Late Iron Age resulted in a male-biased operational sex ratio. This would have created a pool of unmarried men motivated to engage in risky behaviours that had the potential to increase their wealth and status, and therefore their probability of entering the marriage market. With high-status men looking to instigate expeditions to acquire plunder and develop their reputations as war leaders, raiding represented a mutually beneficial means of achieving social advancement and success.
Matt Ridley, it turns out, has covered this (per a paper by cultural evolutionary psychology researchers Joseph Henrich, Rob Boyd, and Peter Richerson):
The correlation between violence and polygamy (strictly, polygyny -- being married to more than one wife at the same time -- as having more than one husband is much rarer) is not just about violence to women. It is also about violence among men. From Troy to Brigham Young, from Genghis Khan to Islamic State, there has been a tendency for nations that allow polygamous marriage to exhibit more crime and more warfare than those that do not. The cause is increased competition for mates. Polygamy results in more unmarried young men, and these commit most violence.Even moderate polygamy can produce large imbalances. Imagine that in a village of 50 men and 50 women, two men have four wives, four men have three wives and fourteen have two wives: that leaves 30 men chasing the remaining two women. A recipe for trouble.
A fascinating 2009 paper called The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage, by the anthropologist Joe Henrich and his colleagues, detailed the historical correlation between polygamy and crime, chillingly explaining it thus: "Faced with high levels of intra-sexual competition and little chance of obtaining even one long-term mate, unmarried, low-status men will heavily discount the future and more readily engage in risky status-elevating and sex-seeking behaviours. This will result in higher rates of murder, theft, rape, social disruption, kidnapping (especially of females), sexual slavery and prostitution."
The authors argue that the gradual and erratic imposition over many centuries of "normative monogamy" in Europe and then much of the rest of the world was motivated largely by rulers wanting to suppress crime and violence. Or perhaps societies that suppressed polygamy proved more successful, displacing those that didn't.
Professor Henrich even argues that the advance of monogamy played a part in the industrial revolution. Reducing the pool of unmarried men and levelling the reproductive playing field not only decreased crime, but spurred commerce and innovation. Once men stop striving to achieve marriage (or double marriage) they invest their energy in more productive ambitions.
Welcome to jihad against the rest of us to return the globe to Islamic oppression, or as it's called, "The New Caliphate."
Less drugs and less booze?
Obviously, this is a horrible situation and must be corrected.
#StonerLivesMatter
Patrick at August 16, 2017 6:05 AM
"...30 men chasing the remaining two women."
Hmmm, kinda describes the scene last Saturday night...
bkmale at August 16, 2017 6:48 AM
Even Mohammed recognized the value of not completely shutting young men out of the marriage pool, limiting polygamy in Islam to a set number of wives (4, I believe).
Conan the Grammarian at August 16, 2017 6:56 AM
Lehman nails the reason why polygamy is a terrible idea. Men who have no mating prospects tend to see life as not worth living, so why not engage in thrill-seeking behavior? Some of that may be beneficial, but a lot of it is harmful, both to the person doing it and to society in general. A time-honored method of getting rid of those surplus men is to send them off to war. Many of them will go willingly, as thrill-seeking, hoping to return with war treasure, or just as a means of getting their life over with.
The Mormon polygamists in Utah are notorious for exiling surplus males when they reach the age of 15 or so -- the "lost boys". They wind up in surrounding communities with no means of supporting themselves, and with severe psychological problems, and those communities have to bear the cost of treating them and supporting them.
Cousin Dave at August 16, 2017 6:57 AM
Williamson is all over this this morning at NR:
Crid at August 16, 2017 7:27 AM
> What does an angry white boy want? What does an
> angry white boy want? The fact that they get
> together to play dress-up — to engage in a large
> and sometimes murderous game of cowboys and
> Indians — may give us our answer. They want to be
> someone other than who they are.
Nah. They simply believe that a White majority nation is self-evidently good. The rest is just the projection of globalist National Review.
Snoopy at August 16, 2017 8:24 AM
The white nationalists in Charlottesville lost any pretext of a moral high ground when James Allen Fields drove his car into the crowd. He was not defending anyone. He was not protecting a group of beleaguered protesters from attacking hoodlums. He was seeking to murder as many random people as he could as quickly as he could.
And the KKK grand-whatever who defended him tossed onto the ash heap of history any chance of the white nationalists gaining even a smidgen of legitimacy for their viewpoint, not that they had much of one to begin with, "I'm sorta glad that them people got hit and I'm glad that girl died."
They need to stop pretending they have a legitimate viewpoint in this and slink back under the rocks from which they crawled.
Conan the Grammarian at August 16, 2017 9:12 AM
"The white nationalists in Charlottesville lost any pretext of a moral high ground when James Allen Fields drove his car into the crowd"
Do I lose the moral high ground protesting the very real problem of police brutality when someone associated with BLM murders five policemen?
Of course not, so why should I lose my moral and constutitional right to protest the bowdlerizations of history just because some nut case drives his car into an Antifa Socialist?
The anti constitutional concept of guilt by ancestry and guilt by association is rapidly becoming the new norm in this country.
You aren't going to like where this is going.
Isab at August 16, 2017 9:34 AM
When you promote and celebrate murder in the name of your cause, you do.
Your response then should be to condemn the murder and express sympathy for the victim.
And, yes, the BLM, Antifa, etc. crowd is not deserving of sympathy. They, too, are violent thugs. And had Fields been one of them, I'd have expressed the same sentiment, albeit with the parties reversed.
Thuggery, of any kind and by any party, holds no moral high ground. The TEA Party held peaceful rallies and cleaned up after itself. None of its members showed up with baseball bats and helmets ready to rumble.
Occupy showed up ready to fight, defecating on police cars and claimed moral superiority over the TEA Party by virtue of not being right-wing. Not so fast there, buddy.
In this case, too many Unite the Right marchers showed up with bats and helmets. So did the counter-protestors. This was a planned rumble from the beginning, not a simple exercise of free speech and assembly.
Conan the Grammarian at August 16, 2017 10:29 AM
Jason Riley, in today's Wall Street Journal, writes that Trump shares Obama's tendency to indulge in moral equivalence in order to appease the president's own party's fringe groups.
EXCERPTS (the article is behind a pay wall):
President Trump sees himself as the antithesis of President Obama, and that’s true in ways large and small. Both men, however, share a fondness for the identity politics that continue to poison U.S. race relations.
AND
When five policemen were gunned down in Dallas last year, Mr. Obama said there was no justification for violence against law enforcement—but then he added a comment about racial inequity in the criminal-justice system. After violent demonstrators pillaged Baltimore in 2015 following the death of a black man in police custody, Mr. Obama dutifully condemned the rioters—but not without also noting that “we have seen too many instances of what appears to be police officers interacting with individuals, primarily African-American, often poor, in ways that raise troubling questions.”
What we heard from Mr. Trump on Saturday, when he said “many sides” were to blame for what took place in Charlottesville, was more of the same equivocation. Both presidents were less interested in moral clarity than in placating fringe groups out of political expediency. [emphasis mine] The difference is that Mr. Obama’s caucus mostly indulged his racial innuendo, while Mr. Trump’s called him on it. That’s why the president reluctantly issued a more forceful second statement on Monday.
AND
The president’s inability to denounce white nationalists properly on his first try is troubling, but more so is these groups’ growing prominence. Race relations declined sharply under Mr. Obama, according to polling in the final months of 2016; by the time Mr. Trump entered office, they were already at their tensest since the 1992 riots in Los Angeles. The videos captured, and spread widely through social media, of police encounters with black suspects no doubt contributed to the problem. The data show a steep decline in police shootings in recent decades. But anecdotal evidence, no matter how unrepresentative of reality, packs a more powerful punch than the recitation of dry statistics.
Mr. Obama’s attempts to advance black interests through heightened group identity and us-against-them rhetoric didn’t help. He embraced openly antiwhite groups like Black Lives Matter and racially polarizing figures like Al Sharpton. The subsequent rise of the alt-right may be history repeating itself. The Black Power movement of the 1960s was followed by an increase in the number of skinheads and other white-identity groups in the 1970s and ’80s, including among more-educated whites who had previously kept their distance.
AND
Where does this leave people who reject the politicization of race? In a bad way that could get worse before it gets better. The white supremacists who organized last weekend’s events are reportedly planning several more. The media no doubt will cover these rallies like never before, giving demonstrators, with their Hitler salutes and Tiki torches, all the attention they crave. Heaven only knows how the White House will respond.
END
In either case, both presidents should have come right out and denounced racism and violence. We are being ill-served by presidents who cannot (or will not) face down extremist elements that claim an affiliation to their own parties.
Conan the Grammarian at August 16, 2017 10:47 AM
"They seek identity in the tribe because they are failed individuals. "
See: Crips, Bloods, Nortenos, Surenos, et al.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at August 16, 2017 11:16 AM
"Jason Riley, in today's Wall Street Journal, writes that Trump shares Obama's tendency to indulge in moral equivalence in order to appease the president's own party's fringe groups."
Of course, the issue is that when Obama did it, the media and the elites cheered. In their world, left-wing violence is always excusable and often appropriate.
Cousin Dave at August 16, 2017 11:26 AM
And a thought about tactical politics: Assuming that the Klansman regard Trump as a hero (which it is not clear that they do, at least not universally), then they fail to realize that when they engage in this behavior, they put their hero in a no-win situation. If Trump equivocates, the media tars him as a racist. If he doesn't, the media spins it as a repudiation of the conservative base.
Cousin Dave at August 16, 2017 11:29 AM
In any case, here's Jason Riley's full article:
http://archive.is/bCcdU
Sixclaws at August 16, 2017 12:00 PM
Confucian China -500 BC to 1949 AD tended to have both polygyny and low crime and very low violence. This was a combination of political/personal/social philosophy and the mutual accountability rules - evil doing was the responsibility of the family, or group of 10 families. BUT, do not overlook child rearing practices with no scolding or hitting children, because the dominant belief is that people are GOOD and only need to be shown how to behave, by example. Violence could erupt in times of famine or regime change, which tended to be in 400 year cycles. The good reputation of Confucian culture peoples arises from this careful, hard working, and non violent, polite behavior. Of course, Mao and Communism has pretty much destroyed that culture.
vicki chang at August 16, 2017 12:14 PM
When the vikings when out they did not just look for loot (and they were also big traders) but in fact colonized. They invaded England big time, and the English girls preferred them over the locals (braver, and they took baths!). They acquired a kingdom in Normandy.
Another way to get "lost boys" is when the economy does not provide good entry-level jobs, so young men can't get started financially. On top of this, young women seem less inclined to settle down until they are 30 (if then), leaving men in their 20s alone.
cc at August 16, 2017 12:30 PM
Of course, Mao and Communism has pretty much destroyed that culture.
And their one child policy has given them excess males. At some point, that's going to be a problem. How it gets expressed remains to be seen.
The other advantage of going on a foreign adventure, pillaging and burning is that one may bring home a bride. Or find a nice bit of country and settle in, and become part of that new country. Shout out to the Normans.
Maxim 1: pillage then burn.
http://schlockmercenary.wikia.com/wiki/The_Seventy_Maxims_of_Maximally_Effective_Mercenaries
I R A Darth Aggie at August 16, 2017 12:38 PM
I think you can see it today IRA. A significant part of China's foreign conquests was to obtain women. Now you have more of an excess of men in the conquered countries.
Ben at August 16, 2017 1:41 PM
> They simply believe that a White
> majority nation is self-evidently
> good.
Then indeed, they are not very bright. (Or, per your example here, Bright.) They're as milquetoast and uncompetitive as Williamson insinuates... Congregating in screechy, sexless little huddles, toting deck-party decorations, lashing out at the Mommy-government culture which sustains them, but not masculine enough to care for themselves.
You don't know "self-evidently" means; it's difficult to regard your racism as the renegade force you imagine it to be.
Crid at August 16, 2017 2:23 PM
Consider this thread: LARPing with Tiki torches.
Crid at August 16, 2017 3:02 PM
Okay, imagine one of them has a Tiki torch.
Crid at August 16, 2017 3:50 PM
> Okay, imagine one of them has a Tiki torch.
Like a candlelight vigil, but bigger?
Snoopy at August 16, 2017 3:57 PM
> They're as milquetoast
They've gone from playing a large and sometimes murderous game of cowboys and Indians to milquetoast in just a few hours.
> Then indeed, they are not very bright.
The protestors? Probably true for most. It was obvious that they were being set up, and they took the bait.
> sexless little huddles
I don't know... women love the bad boys. And these guys are all about producing lots of white children. But then according to you, everyone who doesn't agree with you isn't getting laid.
> your racism
Yes, I'm racist, and you likely are too. But I was talking about their views, not mine. Similarly, when I talk about a civil war starting, it's what I see happening, not what I endorse. But nice smear - I can almost see you writing for the National Review.
Snoopy at August 16, 2017 4:10 PM
> You don't know "self-evidently" means
Is it really that controversial that White Nationalists believe that a White majority nation is self-evidently good? If that's not the case, what is it that they believe? That's it's good, but not self-evidently?
Snoopy at August 16, 2017 4:19 PM
> sometimes murderous game of
> cowboys and Indians to
> milquetoast
Both apply. Children in idiot homes sometimes kill little sisters with firearms... We don't thereafter ascribe powerful spirits or rational self-determination. These doods are little dorklettes... Look at them.
> It was obvious that they
> were being set up
As always, desperate to blame the outcomes of their lives in the conniving forces of a world they never created....
> I don't know... women love
> the bad boys.
Well-loved men don't show up with lawn-party decorations to needfully gender-bond for TV cameras.
> I'm racist, and you likely
> are too
Not at all, as lovers, friends, associates and business partners will affirm. You really ought to go fuck yourself.
> nice smear
A self-described racist imagines the world cares for his endorsements?
> Is it really that controversial
> that White Nationalists believe
> that a White majority nation
> is self-evidently good?
I affirmed nothing of the kind, and wouldn't bother with such a trivial point even if I did.
Crid at August 16, 2017 5:27 PM
The Tiki torchers are chumps: Pizza & produce, not law firms and medical partnership.
And we are left to wonder how the Snoopys of the world feel about Jews...
Crid at August 16, 2017 5:40 PM
All you Trump voters must be bustin' your buttons with pride this week.
Crid at August 16, 2017 5:55 PM
Okay, here's a prediction: This tree will be dying from a poison spike by noon on Sunday, quite uselessly; and any imaginable virtue from Confederate iconography will be irrevocably squandered.
Meanwhile, Trumpsters, remember to be upset about Hillary, because that's all that ever mattered.
Crid at August 16, 2017 6:04 PM
> And we are left to wonder how the Snoopys of the
> world feel about Jews...
Probably good stuff... as Snoopy is Jewish. Went to the same Jewish summer camp as Amy did. Sister is on the Synagogue's board of directors.
Reading comprehension is not your strong point.
Snoopy at August 16, 2017 6:10 PM
Even babies are racist:
https://phys.org/news/2017-04-infants-racial-bias-members.html
At least I admit I am; you lie to yourself (and pat yourself on the back) that you're not.
Snoopy at August 16, 2017 6:12 PM
And Jews are just as racist. If I had married a woman who wasn't Jewish, I would have been disowned by my family and cast out of the community. I've seen it happy to may people.
Snoopy at August 16, 2017 6:16 PM
> you lie to yourself
This presumptive and clumsy fascination with interiors is the fashion among seventh-grade girls. The best of them are over it by high school.
Crid at August 16, 2017 6:58 PM
And again you've got no argument - just insults. You'd fit right in with the seventh-grade girls.
Snoopy at August 16, 2017 7:11 PM
My argument would be that you and a number of similarly incompetent individuals have lashed out at a discerning society by electing as our chief executive a torpid trust fund baby who has never done a thing for another human being in his entire life. He is a perfect reflection of your personal, trivial needs... Not the greater needs of those around you, about whom you care not at all. You're a small man, and you have elected a small man to speak for you.
Merely insulting you is so easy as to lack sport.
crid at August 16, 2017 8:27 PM
Williamson is all over this
Really, it seems like hes just over the white side of this and ignoring the fact this has been going on in other not so white communities for just as long
lujlp at August 16, 2017 10:47 PM
"Another way to get 'lost boys' is when the economy does not provide good entry-level jobs, so young men can't get started financially. On top of this, young women seem less inclined to settle down until they are 30 (if then), leaving men in their 20s alone."
This is where our current society has created a huge problem. Women in their early 20s (at least the pretty ones) are at the peak of their social worth and desirability, due to their physical attractiveness and the likelihood that they have good social skills. Men of the same age are at the nadir of their social value; they have neither income nor reputational status, and likely many of them are not well socialized. So at this age, the average woman has much higher social worth than all but a tiny fraction of their male cohort.
Cousin Dave at August 17, 2017 7:22 AM
CD isn't wrong, but I think humbling young men in those years, generally if not cruelly, is probably good for the species.
Young men are, as a rule, fucked in the head. Young women can be fucked in the head too, but it takes a broader set of social forces to make that happen.
(Those are precisely the forces at work in America today, but that's not important now.)
Reminding young men to settle down and get something done has brought a lot of wealth to a lot of lives.
crid at August 17, 2017 8:18 AM
> Reading comprehension is not
> your strong point.
It's more that I'm inattentive to the dull & wrongheaded.
Crid at August 17, 2017 8:26 AM
Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal, "The Politics of Pointlessness" - excerpts:
Charlottesville was a warning. The warning is that America’s politics is steadily disconnecting from reality. Our politics is starting to seem psychotic.
Generally people get into politics to accomplish something concrete or achievable—the passage of a piece of legislation or of identifiable public policies whose purpose is to make things better. In a word, progress.
The right and the left have disagreed for centuries on what works, but they at least shared a belief that the point of their political activity was to accomplish something real.
Charlottesville was a political riot. Is Charlottesville the future?
Some may say the Charlottesville riot was the lunatic fringe of the right and left, with no particular relevance to what falls in between. But I think Charlottesville may be a prototype of a politics that is drifting away from traditional norms of behavior and purpose.
Street protest has become the politics du jour. Groups form constantly in the streets to chant slogans. America’s campuses live amid perpetual protest...
I watched a group of protesters sit down and block traffic at a main intersection in Santa Barbara, Calif. It seemed like a play date. The cops watched like bemused adults.
Charlottesville wasn’t a play date. It was a pitched battle between two organized mobs—the white nationalist groups on the right and the badly underreported Antifa, or “antifascist,” groups on the hard-as-stone left. Stories about Antifa’s organized violence are trickling out now, but there is no conceivable journalistic defense for having waited so long to inform the public about this dangerous movement.
The phenomenon that enables politics without purpose is the internet. It is the group-organizing tool for psychologically disassociated young people on the left and on the right, like James Alex Fields Jr. , who allegedly drove his car into a crowd, killing Heather Heyer. She won’t be the last casualty.
Mr. Fields makes me think of the lone-wolf jihadists here and in Europe who explode out of the general population in a homicidal rage. These are people who sit endlessly in front of a computer screen, brainwashing themselves with online propaganda until they snap to make a “political statement.” The internet—websites, social media, message boards—is elevating political paranoia and delegitimizing normal politics...
The phenomenon that enables politics without purpose is the internet. It is the group-organizing tool for psychologically disassociated young people on the left and on the right, like James Alex Fields Jr. , who allegedly drove his car into a crowd, killing Heather Heyer. She won’t be the last casualty.
Conan the Grammarian at August 17, 2017 12:18 PM
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