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August 08, 2007
More Piggies for China
Allan Carlson, President of the Howard Center, sponsor of the recent World Congress of Families, today calls China's recent ban on "crude slogans" in population-control programs a "cover-up":
“Instead of abandoning its draconian program of forced population control, China is trying to put a happy-face on its extreme anti-family policies,” charged Allan C. Carlson, International Secretary of the World Congress of Families.
According to an Associated Press story, Beijing has banned the use of what it calls “crude slogans,” such as “Raise fewer babies but more piggies,” which have angered rural residents.
Also discarded are slogans which reveal too much about the way the nation’s one-child-per-family policy is enforced, such as “Houses toppled, cows confiscated, if abortion demand rejected.”
There’s enormous pressure on local officials to hold down birthrates, especially in rural areas. In turn, this has led to forced abortions and fines as high as $1,300 levied on villagers who have a second child (ten times the annual income in these areas).
“It has also resulted in aborting female fetuses and even female infanticide, among couples who want at least one son,” Carlson noted. “This has led to a gender imbalance in China’s population – a male-female ratio of 119-100.”
Especially in farming communities, young men can’t find wives, which has resulted in stealing female babies and an upsurge of prostitution and sexual slavery.
“These horrors were inflicted not by a conquering power but by the Chinese Communist Party,” Carlson declared. “Sometime in this century, China will experience a labor shortage. Even now, there are too few workers to care for the elderly.”
So what do you do with 19 "surplus" men per every 100 women and 100 men? Why, export them, or put them in an army and find something for them to do.
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So what do you do with 19 "surplus" men per every 100 women and 100 men? Why, export them, or put them in an army and find something for them to do.
One of the many things I find troubling about the continuing worldwide drop in fertility is that, for now, developed countries, like ours, have been able to compensate somewhat for their own imploding fertility by replacing their own unborn children with immigrants. But as the rest of the world experiences its own implosion in fertility, that source will dry up. China won't be "exporting" its excess men in a few decades when every able-bodied worker will be needed to keep support those who cannot work -- same with Mexico and the rest of Latin America.
Those who are worrying about "excessive" immigration need to stop worrying. Demographics in the nations from which most of our immigrants come will solve that concern. What we need to be worrying about is what we are going to do for workers (especially those of us who will be old, can no longer work, and need of health care) when the immigration "problem" is so solved.
The world is digging a hole that it will find increasingly difficult to crawl out of.
Posted by: GL | Aug 8, 2007 11:06:36 AM
Actually, there are three parts of the world where the imbalance of the sexes is going to result in a major crisis: China, the Indian subcontinent, and the Arab world. In the case of the first two, this is caused by sex selection through abortion combined with family limitation policies intended to keep overall fertility at or below replacement. In the last, it is due to polygamy and endogamy (cousin marriage), but the effect in all cases is the same: large numbers of young men unable to find wives. Result: horniness that sublimates into aggression. Indeed, studies of the psychology of suicide bombers (predominantly male) show that sexual frustration is a leading motivator: if one cannot relieve one's self in this world, the promise of 72 houris in the next sounds pretty good.
With regard to China and India, but particularly China, all those extra men convert to an extra large army and not too many inhibitions about using it.
One ought to ponder long the strategic implications of sex imbalance.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 8, 2007 11:32:35 AM
One possibility is that as Russia kills itself off through abortion and vodka, China will take up the slack and take over resource rich Siberia, whose women can also provide wives for all those single Chinese men.
Posted by: Neil Cooper | Aug 8, 2007 12:01:03 PM
I've long had a picture in my mind of hordes of young Chinese men coming to America and seizing young women to take home as wives. Maybe they'll seek out all those Chinese girl babies adopted here that were given away so carelessly.
Posted by: Judy Warner | Aug 8, 2007 12:02:57 PM
GL,
This won't cause immigration to "dry up". If you're dirt poor because your society is corrupt and they're forcing you in to labor camps to support aging plutocrats you still run over the border.
Posted by: Nick | Aug 8, 2007 12:10:56 PM
Nick,
That could be true, in which case, those nations will begin to experience severe problems and rapid depopulation, made up primarily of left behind old people. The net result is that it will take a generation or two longer before our immigration stream dries up. In any event, if current trends continue, you need not worry about your grandchildren 50 years hence complaining about all those Hispanic immigrants; they'll be begging for immigrants from anywhere they can get them.
Posted by: GL | Aug 8, 2007 1:04:49 PM
One ought to ponder long the strategic implications of sex imbalance.
Of course, it's possible to address sex imbalances by marrying women off at significantly younger ages than men. Pairing 28-year-old men with 16-year-old girls doesn't do much for sex equity, but it's one remedium concupiscentiae.
Posted by: DGP | Aug 8, 2007 1:44:16 PM
BTW, that's not an endorsement of pedophilia -- just a reflection on past approaches in, say, rural China.
Posted by: DGP | Aug 8, 2007 1:47:24 PM
Word has it that China is already taking over eastern Siberia, using the same method that Mexico is here. Why Putin does nothing about this is a good question.
That is correct, millions of single males make adequate infantry. All Eurasia should tremble.
China just threatened an act of war against the US, by the way, by threatening to crash the dollar (our own falt, and I've spoken against our trade policies for just this reason, but such an act would be an act of war, and they are intent on doing just that, no doubt if we try to defend Formosa and the Pescatores, or even, as in this case, attempt to address some trade issues.)
DGP, actually, I think Dewey's Prussian division of Americans in to age-based connections rather than family-based groups, is very harmful.
Posted by: labrialumn | Aug 8, 2007 1:49:27 PM
Just last month, I read a book entitled "Bare Branches" that focused on the strategic implications of China's and India's birthrate ratio. It was the scariest book I've ever read, and unfortunately, the authors did not have many concrete solutions to make.
Posted by: Darren | Aug 8, 2007 2:27:53 PM
>>>China just threatened an act of war against the US, by the way, by threatening to crash the dollar <<<
The image that comes to mind is that of a man holding a pistol to his crotch while saying, "Fork over the money or I'll shoot". China can crash our economy, of course, but as China is utterly dependent upon our prosperity to keep its own export-driven economy chugging, that would be very much a matter of murder-suicide.
Regarding Taiwan and the South China Sea resource area, China at present has only the power to deny or destroy, not the power to control or occupy. If they want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg by reducing Taiwan to rubble, it will probably be the last thing the Chinese Communist Party ever does. If they try to occupy the Spratlys or any other deserted coral reef in the South China Sea, they would loose most of their navy trying to keep it supplied. China's military power, like its economic power, is largely illusory--at this point.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 8, 2007 2:29:28 PM
I'm afraid some Asian nation is going to come to the "obvious" solution (supposing financial incentives don't boost the birthrate) and start artificially conceiving children who will then be reared by state nannies. Not that I'd put it past (say) Britain (or some in the US) to do the same thing if they were in the same boat.
Posted by: Gene Godbold | Aug 8, 2007 2:29:37 PM
Stuart,
I have read that China is planning a rather extensive increase in the size of their Navy. The numbers I have read would not put it anywhere in league with us, but would make it competitive in the regions in which it concentrated its forces. One has to ask oneself what they intend to do with a significantly larger Naval presence in the western Pacific and, perhaps, the Indian Ocean. I doubt they are building it just because they have money to burn.
Posted by: GL | Aug 8, 2007 3:03:20 PM
>>>I have read that China is planning a rather extensive increase in the size of their Navy. The numbers I have read would not put it anywhere in league with us, but would make it competitive in the regions in which it concentrated its forces.<<<
There are two kinds of navies: sea control and sea denial. The former, of which the U.S. Navy is the only one in existence right now, has the ability to go where it wants pretty much whenever it wants, and to stay as long as it wants.
Sea denial navies are intended to prevent sea control navies from dominating the ocean in a particular place, for a limited time. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union built up a sea denial navy to counter our sea control navy. We had to have sea control because our lines of communication to Western Europe stretched across the Atlantic Ocean. The German Navy in World War II was intended to be a sea denial navy but never quite got to that point. The Japanese in World War II started with a sea control navy and lost it through their policy of decisive battle (begging the question of what you do after you have LOST the decisive battle).
China's sea denial navy appears intended to keep us from moving freely to interpose our fleet between China and Taiwan (as we did in the 1950s and 60s). it relies heavily on diesel-electric submarines (appropriate, given the constricted and shallow waters in which it operates), mines, and anti-ship cruise missiles. Its surface fleet to date has been built around frigates and destroyers with limited "over the horizon" capabilities, but they want to buy or build a couple of aircraft carriers which will give them the ability, for a limited time, to hold the U.S. Navy at bay while overpowering all the other regional navies, But learning to operate carriers at sea as part of a battle group is something that takes generations to learn and is so expensive that only one country in the world can do it on a regular basis (times twelve!), so it would not be long before the Chinese carriers joined all those Japanese carriers on the bottom of the ocean. It might hurt us for a bit, but that would just get us ticked off.
What I find interesting about China is not its conventional force buildup, but its interest in asymmetrical warfare, up to and including both cyber war and economic warfare. They also have an unhealthy interest in space weapons, because we rely on space assets much more than they do. A working Chinese ASAT system would be a greater threat than a Chinese carrier battle group.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 8, 2007 3:28:58 PM
>A working Chinese ASAT system would be a greater threat than a Chinese carrier battle group.
Absolutely right.
Posted by: David Gray | Aug 8, 2007 6:45:15 PM
Stuart,
The Red Chinese navy now has boomers and supersonic (in water) torpedos they bought from the Russians.
That is stil sea denail, of course, but involving some technology we don't even have yet.
The Chinese -have- a working ASAT system, if one can accept losing low Earth orbit for a few generations. I don't think that they'd mind.
Odds are the Chinese would simply nuke us, thanks to Clinton selling them MIRV technology in exchange for campaign contributions.
Posted by: labrialumn | Aug 8, 2007 11:54:03 PM
>>>The Red Chinese navy now has boomers and supersonic (in water) torpedos they bought from the Russians.<<<
The PLA(N) has had boomer boats for more than thirty years--not very good boomers, at that. Unless they plan to nuke the U.S., not of much use for invading Taiwan. The nuclear torpedo threat is real, but the downside of such torpedoes is their short range. A 659mm Type 65 wake homer, with its 50 nm range and big, big warhead is a lot more dangerous to a carrier than the supersonic torpedo simply because it would be hard to get positioned for a shot against a carrier battle group operating in a wartime mode (which would include an SSN out in front in close support, ongoing ASW patrols, and a large total exclusion zone). Of course, they could shoot first, before formally opening hostilities--but that raises the whole Pearl Harbor thing, which didn't work out well for our last major Asiatic opponents.
>>>That is stil sea denail, of course, but involving some technology we don't even have yet.<<<
The Russians have had supersonic, rocket-propelled torpedoes at least since the early 1980s, and have been selling them to fraternal, peace-loving countries since the middle 90s. Either the Navy is run by stupid people (not true, in my experience), or they have assessed the risk and found counters to it, just as they found counters to the supersonic, high-altitude diving cruise missile (SS-N-19 Shipwreck). These counters are not necessarily technical; they can also be tactical or operatiobal.
>>>The Chinese -have- a working ASAT system, if one can accept losing low Earth orbit for a few generations. I don't think that they'd mind.<<<
This is one reason why the next generation of U.S. reconnaissance satellites are being pushed into HEO or even GEO (which necessitates much larger erectable mirrors). The other reason is to gain more dwell time for persistent surveillance (necessary when dealing with terrorists and other highly volatile targets). The Chinese ASAT system is a rather clunky co-orbital type: bring another satellite close to the target and blow it up. These can be countered by maneuvering them out of the way.
>>>Odds are the Chinese would simply nuke us, thanks to Clinton selling them MIRV technology in exchange for campaign contributions.<<<
Fortunately, the Chinese aren't radical Muslims, so they have no incentive to find out about the seventy two houris.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 9, 2007 4:42:47 AM
DGP, above, made a comment that one way China might redress its sexual imbalance is to marry 16 year old women to 28 year old men. Then he(she?) said in a second comment "It's not that I am endorsing pedophilia..." First of all, I don't see how this redresses any imbalance, unless the 16 year old cohort has a significantly higher percentage of females. But second of all, I want to dispute calling the marriage of a 16 year old "pedophilia." A 16 year old is NOT a child. In many societies, and in ours until quite recently, 16 was a perfectly normal age for marriage for a woman. And she often married someone older; 28 would have been considered a quite respectable and normal age for the man to be. By then he would have established a career or inherited the farm, and been able to support her and their children. In the Jane Austen classic, "Emma" the heroine is 17 and finally marries, to the satisfaction of all concerned, the 33 year old Mr. Knightley. There are reasons why this might not work so well in this culture. We have different expectations for women. Women expect to get an education before marrying, and may hope to have a career before and after...and perhaps even during...their childbearing years. Couples have different expectations of the kind of relationship they will have. Etc, etc. But we shouldn't think our pattern is the only possible right or healthy one. And...pedophilia???? You were joking, right? Susan Peterson
Posted by: Susan Peterson | Aug 9, 2007 6:02:09 PM
DGP, above, made a comment that one way China might redress its sexual imbalance is to marry 16 year old women to 28 year old men. Then he(she?) said in a second comment "It's not that I am endorsing pedophilia..." First of all, I don't see how this redresses any imbalance, unless the 16 year old cohort has a significantly higher percentage of females.
I'm male. As far as redress is concerned, do the math: Over large populations, shifting typical marital ages can address sex imbalances.
But second of all, I want to dispute calling the marriage of a 16 year old "pedophilia."
Dispute it all you want. I was merely disclaiming such an interest -- no NAMBLA membership for me, thank you. That such a disclaimer seems necessary to me attests not to any general definition of pedophilia, but to some legal definitions which may indeed include 16-year-olds, and also to the tendency of disagreeable interlocutors to impute to each other more than they've said.
Posted by: DGP | Aug 10, 2007 12:12:33 PM
I'm with Susan on part I and both Susan and DGP on part II. I fail to see how, in the long run, a society can offset an imbalance in the sexes by disparate ages at marriage. It will work for awhile, but, unless the imbalance is rectified, eventually the necessary age gap will grow too wide to address the problem. I would be happy to reconsider this position were it explained to me why I am wrong.
As to part II, I agree that in an historic sense, 16 is a perfectly appropriate age at which a woman may marry. (I have several 18th and 19th century ancestors who married at or even before that age). But I also agree with DGP's reasons for giving his disclaimer.
Posted by: GL | Aug 10, 2007 12:28:16 PM
Dear Susan,
To the best of my recollection, Emma was at least 21 and Knightly 35. Maybe you're thinking of Sense and Sensibility in which Marianne was ~19 and Col. Brandon was over 35.
Posted by: Gene Godbold | Aug 10, 2007 12:31:02 PM
Shifting works if male populations grow because there are typically, in normal populations, more females. So you address a temporary shortage by artificially increasing supply.
As an interesting side note I've seen a definite up-tick in sci-fi short stories that are looking at this problem. Since most sf writers are left leaning this means there at least aware of the problem.
Posted by: Nick | Aug 10, 2007 12:45:33 PM
I predict that the large corps of unmarried Chinese men will be employed in ruthlessly euthanizing the future vast numbers of elderly Chinese. That would eliminate China's looming social services crisis --- no elderly, no spending. Except, of course, the Politburo.
Posted by: Steve | Aug 10, 2007 12:57:40 PM
Shifting works if male populations grow because there are typically, in normal populations, more females. So you address a temporary shortage by artificially increasing supply.
Yes, shifting works if the shortage is temporary, which is why wrote: "I fail to see how, in the long run, a society can offset an imbalance in the sexes by disparate ages at marriage. It will work for awhile, but, unless the imbalance is rectified, eventually the necessary age gap will grow too wide to address the problem."
The question is whether the shortage is temporary (of course, it is temporary viewed from the really long term, so) or rather, short-lived. Only time will tell, but for now, it appears that China is still aggressively pursuing the same policies that created the imbalance.
I predict that the large corps of unmarried Chinese men will be employed in ruthlessly euthanizing the future vast numbers of elderly Chinese. That would eliminate China's looming social services crisis --- no elderly, no spending. Except, of course, the Politburo.
Ah, yes, à la Logan's Run (in which elderly was defined, if I recall, as 30).
Posted by: GL | Aug 10, 2007 1:11:59 PM
My memory is poor. I looked it up on Wikipedia. The age of termination in Logan's Run was 21.
Posted by: GL | Aug 10, 2007 1:14:54 PM
"The age of termination in Logan's Run was 21."
Yikes! Let's hope that's in dog years...
Posted by: Bill R | Aug 10, 2007 1:57:04 PM
Susan, GL, & Nick,
Demographic calculations can be very complicated. Consider:
(1) No sex imbalance is ever truly permanent, simply in view of the fact that people age and die. [The Chinese government does not yet have an effective plan for eliminating death, but some commentators expect them to achieve this ability in 5 to 10 years. ;-) ] If the reasons for the sex imbalance are sustained for generations, yes, the problem can grow to catastrophic proportions, but common sense suggests that certain sociological feedback mechanisms would tend to brake the process. For example, polygynous societies experiencing a scarcity of women find that as the supply decreases, the prices or marrying and maintaining women go up, so that men who might otherwise have married twice can in fact afford only one wife.
(2) The habit of marrying women off at younger ages can effectively distribute the scarcity of women over the entire population of men, so that men's marriages are simply delayed. When you're talking about a population as large as China's, a few million surplus men need not mean a delay of over a few months. [This depends, of course, on many factors, such as the onset of marital age changes relative to the onset of female scarcity.]
(3) Even apart from deliberate sex selection, the proportion of males to females conceived and born does not remain constant, but varies slightly with the age and health of at least the mothers. One researcher I knew in the 1980s in Africa believed she could establish a negative correlation between the average age of motherhood and the proportion of females conceived. This was only measurable in tenths of percentage points, but once again, in a population the size of China's, even a small tweak behind the decimal point involves millions of people.
(4) Boys will be boys. Among other things, that means that even supposing the worst -- an accumulation of angry, young Chinese males without families -- not all that aggression need be pent up to be inflicted on the putative enemies of China. They may afflict each other, as do inner city youth in the western world. Which brings us back to point (1)....
Posted by: DGP | Aug 10, 2007 3:10:08 PM
the prices or marrying and maintaining women go up
Sorry, that should be "the prices of marrying and maintaining women go up."
Posted by: DGP | Aug 10, 2007 3:13:03 PM
>>>No sex imbalance is ever truly permanent, simply in view of the fact that people age and die.<<<
True in the past, when such imbalances were the result of natural phenomena such as war. Since slightly more females than males are actually born alive (probably to account for greater mortality among women in childbirth under "natural" conditions, the situation would self-correct in a generation or two.
Bit it is not true today, because it is possible to "preselect" the sex of a child in utero through a combination of sonogram and abortion. As long as there are cultural and legal considtions that favor male offspring, the situation will continue. And gradually, the imbalance gets worse--unless people change their minds about the desirability of sons vs. daughters.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 10, 2007 3:48:37 PM
True in the past, when such imbalances were the result of natural phenomena such as war.... Bit it is not true today, because it is possible to "preselect" the sex of a child in utero through a combination of sonogram and abortion.
This is a false distinction. Moreover, the line of thought is rather inelegant. War is not usually considered a natural phenomenon. Nevertheless, I take your point.
But back to the false distinction. "Natural" forces that sustain unintended sex imbalances are no less sustainable. Intentional sex selection is no less vulnerable to countervailing forces than the "natural" causes.
Posted by: DGP | Aug 10, 2007 6:19:46 PM
>>>Intentional sex selection is no less vulnerable to countervailing forces than the "natural" causes.<<<
True, but those countervailing forces would have to be volitional, a conscious change of attitudes. Prior to the ability to screen the unborn for sex, nothing could prevent the live birth of children in the prevailing natural ratio (though, interestingly, some demographers claim that more male than female children tend to be born in the immediate aftermath of war). The only way to deal with the issue is infanticide, which, despite what some might think, is difficult to do even in societies where it is permitted. Even the ancients generally did not kill their unborn children outright, but merely exposed them. And, unless the child was visibly deformed and likely to die in any case, most of those seem to have survived because they were picked up off the dung heaps by people who had no children of their own, or (more frequently) by slave brokers looking to pick up some free stock. Girl children in particular were prized for that reason, as they could be trained and raised as prostitutes.
War, by the way, appears to be the most natural of all human activities, dating back to the emergence of behaviorally modern humans some 50-75,000 years ago. Man in a state of nature is constantly engaged in war, most often to control food and to collect women. And contrary to modern war, primitive war almost always was fought to the point of annihilation (of the male population, in any case). The post-WWII bias against war among anthropologists and archaeologists led to a distortion of the record, and an artificial debellicization of our ancestors.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 10, 2007 6:35:32 PM
War, by the way, appears to be the most natural of all human activities....
"Natural" in the sense of "typical," yes. But not in the theological sense, and in any case intentional human activities are often understood as the opposite of natural causes in biological analyses.
Posted by: DGP | Aug 10, 2007 7:39:36 PM
True, but those countervailing forces would have to be volitional, a conscious change of attitudes.
The laws of supply and demand have a wonderful way of changing attitudes. :-)
Posted by: DGP | Aug 10, 2007 7:46:48 PM
>>>"Natural" in the sense of "typical," yes. But not in the theological sense, and in any case intentional human activities are often understood as the opposite of natural causes in biological analyses.<<<
If, by theological sense, you mean that man's nature is not inclined to warfare, that is correct as far as it goes. However, man having fallen in Adam, the image and likeness of God within has been marred and besmirched. Having fallen prey to death and corruption, man is subject to disordered passions, which impel him to sin with every thought, word and deed. And that moral calamity has been manifest since the beginning of human history through war.
Insofar as it is common to think of human activity as somehow standing outside of and in opposition to "nature", people often think of human activities as being "artificial". However, man is just as much a part of the ecosystem as the chimp or the beaver--both of which alter their environment in very "artificial" ways. It's always been an error of people on both sides of environmental issues to think that man is somehow outside of his environment.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 10, 2007 8:01:37 PM
>>>The laws of supply and demand have a wonderful way of changing attitudes. :-)<<<
This assumes that societal mores are always evolutionarily beneficial. In fact, as the history of many societies demonstrates, they often are not.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 10, 2007 8:02:45 PM
This assumes that societal mores are always evolutionarily beneficial.
No, it does not so assume; it merely requires that this sometimes occurs. And certainly, just this phenomenon has occurred in other societies experiencing a scarcity of females.
Insofar as it is common to think of human activity as somehow standing outside of and in opposition to "nature", people often think of human activities as being "artificial". However, man is just as much a part of the ecosystem as the chimp or the beaver....
I wholeheartedly agree, but still insist that to use words in direct defiance of their conventional use, without disclaimer, is at least inelegant.
Posted by: DGP | Aug 10, 2007 10:22:02 PM
>>>I wholeheartedly agree, but still insist that to use words in direct defiance of their conventional use, without disclaimer, is at least inelegant.<<<
It does have all the elegance of honesty, though.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 11, 2007 4:52:38 AM
When a species of, say, apes, habitually engages in fighting each other we call this their natural behavior. We say the bonobos are naturally peaceful. Why shouldn't we say that man is naturally warlike? Our difference from the animals is that we have developed ways of avoiding war.
Posted by: Judy Warner | Aug 11, 2007 5:21:18 AM
>>>When a species of, say, apes, habitually engages in fighting each other we call this their natural behavior. We say the bonobos are naturally peaceful. Why shouldn't we say that man is naturally warlike? Our difference from the animals is that we have developed ways of avoiding war.<<<
What's interesting about humans is their combination of both chimpanzee (warlike) and bonobo (sexually promiscuous) behavior. But not only have we developed ways of avoiding war (although I fear we are backsliding in that direction through the adoption of terrorism and other forms of "Fourth Generation Warfare"), we have also mutated away from the bonobo's unrestrained sexual license.
Bonobo females, like human females, have no visual signs of their fertility (unlike, say, baboons and chimps), and are always sexually receptive. They have sex freely with all male members of their tribe, and when two tribes meet they grease the skids by mutual exchanges of sexual favors.
This appears to work well for bonobo society: since no male knows which female is carrying his offspring, he has an incentive to look out for all the females and all the juveniles in the group, in the hope that his genes will move to the next generation.
Humans do this one better by forming exclusive pair bondings, which are held together through sex. Easch partner in the pair gives up something: the male gives up the right to mate with as many women as he wants, the woman gives up her right to mate with the most reproductively attractive male in the group. In return, the male gets unrestricted sexual access to ONE female, and no longer has to compete with more dominant males for the right to mate. The female gets the implicit promise of protection and support from ONE male, provided she remain (visibly) true to him.
This has the effect of mititgating the effect of man's territoriality and proclivity to violence, while also ensuring that human offspring have a pair of dedicated parents willing and able to look out for them during their extended developmental time.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Aug 11, 2007 6:08:53 AM
"When a species of, say, apes, habitually engages in fighting each other we call this their natural behavior. We say the bonobos are naturally peaceful. Why shouldn't we say that man is naturally warlike? Our difference from the animals is that we have developed ways of avoiding war."
Careful there; to the extent that war is man's natural behavior (in the theological sense), it cannot be judged as immoral.
Posted by: craig | Aug 14, 2007 9:24:45 AM
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