MENS-WELLBEING.COM: Politics

Politics

10 August 2011

Feral Britain - Challenging the Normal Natural Order?

Last night I set out for Rusholme for a drink and a curry with a mate. When we met at the pub we were turned away. The venue was shutting down in anticipation that the riots were moving in our direction. I felt profoundly disturbed. We found another pub that was remaining open. There were very few customers, but I did talk to one man who had been caught in the city centre violence unable to escape for three hours. I had heard enough. I walked home to the scene of emergency vehicles roaming the streets, lights flashing, and busloads of police officers being driven around the city.

Of course my experience is not unusual. The riots that have swept the country have caught millions in their repercussions. There is a palpable sense of unease running throughout our urban centres. The fact that government and the police are themselves behind the curve simply feeds our insecurity. We looked to authority to give a lead, and our helplessness is compounded when we see them reduced, like ourselves, to bystanders.

How should we make sense of our feelings? One way of looking at this is to understand that we construct a social world in which there is a "normal natural order". Through our life's experience, we form a view of how the world works. This is not just a description of the social world, it is also a moral prescription. We expect the world to work in a certain way, and hold the world morally accountable if it does not conform to our expectations.

The normal natural order permeates everything that we do. For example we expect that people die at the end of their natural lives. When an individual dies tragically young, we feel aggrieved, and struggle to make sense of the death. The death of a young person challenges the normal natural order. It is a moral dislocation of our social compass.

When it comes to rioting, I would suggest, we also have a normal natural order. Civil disorder ensues when there is political anger, and that anger is projected onto our symbols of authority, not least the police. The race riots of the 1980s, the poll tax riots, and the G8 riots all fall into this category. So does the civil unrest that is sweeping the Moslem world. Such civil unrest may be distressing for those caught up in it, but it doesn’t threaten our understanding of the kind of world we live in.

What we have experienced in feral Britain over the last few days breaks with the normal natural order. We have seen a different kind of riot. It is rioting for the sake of criminality. The rioters are focused on looting and dodge, rather than confront the authorities. It is little wonder police tactics are behind the curve.

In challenging the normal natural order, feral Britain is also deeply and profoundly disturbing. Like a young death, we are left trying to make sense of what is going on. Why do so many of our fellow citizens feel that this is an acceptable way to behave? For how long can we expect this new form of civil unrest to go on? What does this mean for the future of our society?

Disjuncts to the normal natural order are deeply unsettling. Until a new consensus emerges that makes sense of the events we are living through, we can expect to remain unsettled. But that new consensus will emerge, and when it does, our faith in the predictability of the social order will be restored. With it, our sense of security will also return. But it will take time.

Dr Phil Tyson is a Men's Psychotherapist based in Manchester in the UK. He offers:

About This Blog

Posted by Dr Phil Tyson on 10 August 2011 at 02:29 PM in Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

01 June 2011

Book Review: The Women Racket – The new science explaining how the sexes relate at work, at play and in society by Steve Moxon.

Have you ever been stumped in an argument with a feminist? If so then this book is for you!

The overarching claim of feminism is that men systematically oppress women due to patriarchy. Patriarchy, of course, is differently evoked as both a description of the current state of affairs, and an explanation of it. Moxon attacks the very notion of patriarchy itself. Drawing on evolutionary psychology he argues that women, far from being oppressed by men, are in a socially privileged position. Rather it is the large number of low status males that dominate most societies that are oppressed, by both women and other men.

This, of course, is an incendiary idea and goes against the normative view of received political correctness. It seems to me that his view goes further, to imply that feminism itself is a way of oppressing men and preserves and enhances women’s privileged position.

Moxons argument is essentially a simple one. Women are the limiting factor of reproduction in the human species whereas men are, from an evolutionary perspective, dispensable. The genetic variation in men is therefore more widespread and is the source of genetic competition between men for access to women. Men, he claims, because they compete amongst themselves for access to women, organise themselves into the dominance hierarchies with which we are so familiar. Women, he claims, are attracted to high status males leaving the majority of low status males sexually and socially disadvantaged.

Moxon takes this position and applies it to a wide variety of feminist gripes. From female suffrage to pornography, and gender dynamics at work to accusations of rape, Moxon tries to demolish the feminist edifice and proposes an alternative narrative, that it is the vast majority of men, not women that are devalued in society.

It is certainly true that Moxon has focussed in on an extremely powerful alternative narrative to feminism. Evolutionary psychology, an approach I have a lot of sympathy with, offers a radical reconceptualisation of gender relations. Moxon, however, is not a scientist, and at times I was not convinced that his reliance on evolutionary psychology justified all the claims he was making for it. No science, however, is politically neutral, and perhaps it needs a journalist of Moxon’s calibre to point out the political implications for us.

Dr Phil Tyson is a Men's Psychotherapist based in Manchester in the UK. He offers:

About This Blog

Posted by Dr Phil Tyson on 01 June 2011 at 03:49 PM in Book Reviews, Evolutionary Psychology, Feminism, Politics, Women | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

19 March 2011

From Benghazi to Baghdad: Men, Women and War.

Like many people I have been transfixed by the popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. In the person of Gaddafi, we have an example of the worst possible kind of man. He has held power for 42 years by a despicable combination of terrorising his people and brutalising any dissent. His recent reckless attempt to retain power by the genocide of his own people sickens me to my core. The need to maintain power and control through fear is a shameful part of male psychology. And now, as I write, my country prepares to go to war to stop him.

As a species our history is littered with warfare, which, it seems, is as much a part of the human condition as sex, money and infidelity. But why do we go to war? Why do men behave the way they do? And what, if anything, are the advantages of warfare for women?

Studies of tribal societies show that throughout human history, warfare between rival tribes has been a normal fact of life. It may be true that different tribes may, more or less, be more likely at to go to war at different times in their history, but all tribal peoples have gone to war at some point.

We are also not the only animal that fights wars. Chimpanzees, an animal that shares 98.5% of its DNA with humans, also fight wars between rival troops. In principle one group covets the assets of the other group, say the source of some tasty fruit trees, and launch raids on their rival’s territory. Chimpanzees can kill the males and often co-opt the females of the losing troop into the dominant troop. If the incursion is successful it brings economic benefits to the troop as a whole, and has the added benefit of a network of less effective males (from an evolutionary point of view) being weakened. The benefits to the victorious males are also access to more females with whom to bear more offspring, and so spread their genes further.

But is there a benefit to women for war? What the evolutionary psychology approach suggests is that the female chimps of the defeated troop switch allegiance to the new troop. From the female chimp’s point of view, bearing the children of the victor is more likely to bring about a greater evolutionary fitness for her own offspring. War, from a female's genes point of view, is a win-win. Whoever wins the war, they still get to mate with the most evolutionary appealing chimps. There is even evidence to suggest that women have evolved psychological abilities to make the transition from one troop to the next.

Generalising from chimpanzees to human beings is deeply problematic, but it does give us clues as to how human warfare is structured: Men kill each other; Women are protected as non-combatants; Sex, or more specifically, rape is endemic.

The evolutionary psychology explanation, of course, does nothing to condone the huge loss of life in Libya and other war torn areas such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Understanding why we go to war, however, may help us to understand how to avoid conflict. If, at base, war is about securing material and reproductive rights from the losers, we can build our society so that such behaviour is unnecessary. Countries could be more integrated. The more people that become economically, politically, and socially interconnected, the need for war will be gone. Everybody, in principle, would have access to anyone or any material benefit anywhere in the world. Greater efforts should be placed to ensure the even distribution of the wealth throughout the world. Without large-scale poverty, people would not feel the need to covet his neighbours so intensely. Democracy, which facilitates the distribution of wealth more fairly, should be more broadly adopted throughout the world. Our politicians could, and should, be more vociferous about this. Furthermore, democracies are less likely to go to war, or become embedded in unpopular wars.

We shouldn't, of course, forget the pain of the combatants in a war zone. The men who have to fight wars show great courage and often suffer great damage as a result of their experiences. I remember as a little boy my grandfather sitting me down and explaining to me the horrors of the trenches he experienced in World War I. What stuck most vividly in my boyhood imagination was the night he was so tired he slept, by mistake, on the body of a young dead soldier. As a boy I learnt deeply of the pain my grandfather had endured, and I vowed not to be a man of war, but a man of peace.

We shouldn’t, of course, forget the pain of women and children in war zones. They lose their fathers, husbands and sons. They suffer dislocation and poverty, and endure the insecurity of sexual attack. Women are the victims of men’s military adventures.

So just because war can be explained to some extent by evolutionary psychology, this does not make it right. At times like this we need to be even more aware of the great and inspirational peace loving men throughout history, such as Christ, Gandhi, and Mandela. What is so encouraging about the uprisings against the repressive regimes in the Middle East and North Africa is they seem to have learned this lesson from history. To win a war you don't need to kill anyone, all you need to do is not comply with the oppressive minority. Egypt and Tunisia showed that if enough people engage in social disobedience often enough, the regime can no longer govern, and the power can be returned to the people. I wish the Moslem’s well in their struggle for basic human freedom and dignity, and implore our political leaders to be on the right side of history by supporting them in doing so.

Dr Phil Tyson is a Men's Psychotherapist based in Manchester in the UK. He offers:

About This Blog

Posted by Dr Phil Tyson on 19 March 2011 at 06:20 PM in Evolutionary Psychology, Politics, Women | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

19 December 2010

The Politics of Julian Assange.

As we come to the end of another year, I was reflecting on which man has had the most significant impact on society. I think history will show it will be Julian Assange, the slightly eccentric Australian journalist and founder of the web site Wikileaks. He has, of course, hit the world’s headlines recently for publishing secret communications from the US State department and alleging a politically motivated extradition to Sweden on sex offence charges.

Assange’s impact will not be remembered by the legal battle he is currently fighting but by his philosophy of political activism that he espouses. Of course the sensational journalism that reports his legal problems usually fails to draw our attention to this so here it is, albeit in a highly truncated form:

1. The political / economic system undermines the well-being of the majority of people by protecting the interests of a small minority of the elite. Nothing unusual of course in this idea.

2. The elite maintain their power by hiding their motives from the majority of people so they cannot be held up to rational scrutiny. Again, nothing unusual in this idea too.

3. Assange then uses the term ‘conspiracy’ to describe the pattern of secret communications that pass between members of the elite. These aren’t the grand conspiracy theories of 911 or covering up alien abductions, but the small ‘conspiracies’ of keeping the majority naïve to the motives and dealings of the elite.

4. Assange then uses a computational / network inspired view of the combined activity of the ruling elite as behaving like an organism. ‘Conspiracies’ are maintained by the elite through the patterns of communication of the individual members, rather than being ‘led’ by say a particular person. An assassination may knock out a key member of the conspiracy, but the conspiracy, because it is distributed through a network, will remain intact.

5. In order to function effectively, the members of the elite need to communicate freely and in secret. If this ability is compromised, say by leaks of confidential ambassadorial correspondence, the ‘conspiring’ elite will be forced to retrench. Individuals will not be able to communicate as effectively, and mistrust between members of the elite, say between ambassadors and leaders of countries, will grow.

6. A retrenched ‘conspiring’ elite will be unable to gain timely and effective intelligence of the environment in which it is working. Its ability to operate as a conspiracy will consequently be degraded.

7. Repressive, authoritarian regimes need to be the most conspiratorial in order to function effectively, and are therefore the most vulnerable to attack by systematic leaks of confidential material. Benign regimes, however, have the least to fear from transparency.

In a nutshell, Assange aims to bring about benign governance by making it increasingly difficult for repressive regimes to function. The ‘leaks’ that have created headlines around the world, are not meant to cause damage in themselves (although they no doubt will) but to achieve the broader aim of causing the conspiratorial elite to retrench and degrade their effectiveness.

For the state and big business, this is its ‘Napster moment’. Once internet users found a way to share perfect copies of music, the old business model of the record companies was over and there was nothing they could do about it. After Assange, the same is true of the workings of the state. Like the record companies before it, the ruling elite must adapt or die.

Assange offers us an ingenious theory of political progress in the internet age, and right or wrong, I can perfectly understand why he has upset so many powerful people. After Assange, however, the way people conceive of political activism has been changed forever.

Read a more detailed account of Julian Assange’s political philosophy here.

Or check out this more light-hearted rap on YouTube.

Dr Phil Tyson is a Men's Psychotherapist based in Manchester in the UK. He offers: