“Is There Anything Good About Men?”
This is my comment to this blog post: http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/men-and-women-different-but-equal-whats-the-problem
Culture, of course, is a product of the interaction of humans of all genders and all levels of intellectual capacity. It is also the social expression, at the most fundamental level, of primate behaviors which underlay 90% or more (has it been measured?) of human behavior.
It occurs, if one gains some distance from the idea of the implicit supremacy of the human animal, that male or female, humans operate pretty much just like other organisms, that is, they tend toward self-preservation, reproduction, and pecking order, in roughly that sequence.
Interestingly, the ancient Hindu thinkers describe exactly this, as these represent the first three "chakras" which are, in essence, those domains into which we channel our energies.
Of course, the next (fourth) chakra represents the network, the idea that what's good for the whole is good for me. This idea of transcendence, which is embodied in empathy and compassion-- the altruistic impulse-- also has biological roots, but in fact, can not be enjoyed without a certain loosening of the demands of the first, most primitive, and most divisive, focii.
Men and women, different? Not very much, in my view. Overly aggressive men are in large part a biological response to selection by women over tens of thousands of years.
Fortunately, men are beginning, at least in the West, to respond in kind to lower demands for physical strength, and more verbal skills. (Unfortunately, our worst are still as bad as ever)...
Give us a few generations, we're slow learners
:-)
