Reflections on Richard Wrangham's book, The Goodness Paradox - Part I

Rise of the Patriarchy

Jul 30, 2024

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Reynolds' Third Law: Whatever politicians control, they will use against you to get what they want.

[NB: I spent a lot of time with this book, a tangent to my ongoing queries into "psychological safety." Even though I prefer the long form article, my notes pushed the boundary into book form. So I've split this up across several posts. The series isn't a review of Wrangham's book. It's a reflection on the insights I've gained from “The Goodness Paradox” and how they have deepened my understanding of the world and my place within it.]

Wrangham's book is well-researched. Nonetheless, I found it necessary to chase down some of the references to make sure I fully understood his conclusions. It was well worth the effort and I was not disappointed with what I found. The evolutionary data presented by Wrangham illuminate an accurate picture, notwithstanding the ultra-processed and highly concentrated micro-dosing served up by legacy and social media platforms when they seek to shore up their strawman narratives.

Wrangham quickly gets to the central thesis of his book. He cites a summary from 1929 by the anthropologist Maurice Davie which represents a consensus of understanding that remains true today: "people were as good to members of their own society as they were harsh to others." Wrangham concludes:

"High rates of killing or other forms of violence are not inevitable, and there is much variation among societies and over time. But overall tendencies are clear: compared with other primates, we practice exceptionally low levels of violence in our day-to-day lives, yet we achieve exceptionally high rates of death from violence in our wars. That discrepancy is the goodness paradox."

This thesis is presented several times in the form of we are exceptionally tolerant (exhibit low levels of reactive aggression) to those within our tribe or community but can be exceptionally cruel to outsiders (coalitionary proactive aggression.)

Rise of the Patriarchy

I would say if you wanted to understand how systems like the "good 'ol boys" patriarchy and oppressive gender-neutral bureaucracies (academic, governmental, and corporate) came into being, The Goodness Paradox will do much to enlighten your queries.

The short version:

In the beginning, somewhere before 300,000 years ago, there was the alpha male. There was also a lot of grunting and snorting, accentuated no doubt by exaggerated gesticulations and foot stomping. Our ancient ancestors weren't actually talking to each other just then. Language hadn't yet evolved and everybody in the tribe was at the mercy of the physically more powerful alpha male.

Somewhere along this timeline of mankind's self-domestication, language began to emerge. The underlings began to communicate among themselves. They began to share information, gossip, and eventually the male underlings discovered they could formed coalitions and plot against the aggressive alpha male. They also discovered that while they were no match for the alpha male in a one-to-one contest, when banding together a many-to-one ratio meant a coalition could not only depose an aggressive alpha male, such an action could be undertaken with very little risk of injury to any of the members of the coalition of underlings.

Most often, "deposition" meant kill. This is known as the "execution hypothesis."

"The execution hypothesis claims that, during the Pleistocene, a new kind of ability crystallized. For the first time, coalitions of males became effective at deliberately killing any member of their social group who was prepared to use violence on his own behalf and simply did not care what others thought about him. In the end, execution was the only way to stop such a male from being a tyrant."

Nasty, brutish, and short indeed. Nonetheless, the execution hypothesis marks the very beginning of the emergence of social control. And the good ol' boys club.

"In developing the ability to kill the physically imposing alpha, the subordinate males had discovered an irresistible coalitionary power. They could now coordinate to kill anyone. So all kinds of troublemakers became at risk. Any kind of noncompliance with the interests of the killing coalition could in theory provoke an intimidating threat. Women and young men were as vulnerable as domineering bullies to the power of the male elders."

That the coalition of male underlings could bring down even the most aggressive and strongest of alphas was just the beginning. As Lord Acton observed, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The coalition of male underlings soon found other ways to wield their power to further their self-interests and preserve status.

"[T]he dominance of males over females took a new form. It became a patriarchy in the special sense of male dominance based on a system. The system was a network of mature males protecting their mutual interests."

Today, the label "good ol' boys club" serves as both a cliché and a phantom strawman. For certain they still exist. Whether in distant corners of western society or hidden beneath a veneer of woke jargon, they're not likely to disappear entirely. But decades of denigrating males in toto and outlawing male spaces has pushed the traditional good ol' boys club system up against the ropes. The very bad downside of this assault is that the excesses have swept a lot of good and well-intentioned men into the scrap heap. I fear a time is approaching when they will be missed.

In their stead, a new form of underling coalitions have emerged. Fueled by the power of the Internet and amplified by social media, the new coalitions working to shape society are using the patriarchal system as a template and operate independent of gender, although often marching under some form of gender-identity heraldic device. Far from being patriarchal, they are much more aligned with a theocratic (with "wokism" feeding the fundamental scriptures for a secular religion) oligarchy or plutocracy. The new forms of coalition seek specialized social control and - yielding to the corrupting influences of power - focus on the destruction of individuals the coalition perceives as a threat to its identity and status. As it was during the Pleistocene, the objective in the 21st century isn't to contain or subdue or convert, it's to destroy.

There are many examples of this happening. In the corporate world, battles among coalitions of underlings play out in "turf wars." Cancel culture has claimed a startling number of victims who are then paraded around as warnings and threats to the timid and unsuspecting. The plethora of grievance studies degrees manufactured by academia have resulted in an army of individuals bent on forming destructive coalitions in the interest of "justice" and yet lacking any cogent formulation for what success looks like. They are done when all is destroyed. And in the end, they will have become what they sought to destroy - self-absorbed tyrants. The only people they loath more then those they seek to destroy are themselves.

"The Patriarchy" may very well be dead. But like the traces of Neanderthal genes we all carry around with us, it's very much a part of the DNA in today's breed of underling coalitions.

Postscript

On the subject of patriarchy, there was one thing in The Goodness Paradox that caused me to laugh out loud, in the way one does when the punch line of a good joke sneaks up on you.

All my life "the patriarchy" has been denigrated for its displays of machismo and "toxic masculinity." Such displays, the narrative bellows, are to be excised and erased from society. And yet, the same people bloviating this bilge pine for the serenity and tranquility promised by a return to nature and its soothing serenade...

"Imagine taking a walk in a tropical forest. In Uganda’s Kibale National Park, there are few greater pleasures than to stop for a minute, close your eyes, and simply listen. At almost any time of day, you may hear the trills of warblers and insects, persistent cuckoos and tinker-birds, and, every so often, the cawing of hornbills, the grumbling of colobus monkeys, even occasionally the hoots of chimpanzees. After dark, the calls of frogs, bats, and nightjars provide a backdrop for cicadas, bush babies, and owls. Peace seems to reign. “Soft stillness and the night / Become the touches of sweet harmony.”
Alas for innocence. The babble of the woods brings solace only if our ears are not properly attuned. The sounds that soothe are mostly male. Overwhelmingly, they tell of typical male actions: showing off, defending territories, threatening neighbors, calling allies, attracting females. They speak of color, weapons, and readiness for aggression. The human listener may be relaxed, but the callers are not. Jacked on testosterone, the males are loud, rough, and pushy. The sweet harmony is a testament to the pervasiveness of reactive aggression."

The patriarchy is dead! Long live the patriarchy!

Like trying to change an airplane’s engine while in the air, we cannot swap systems just because we want to. Systems derived from hundreds of thousands of years of evolution cannot be swapped out, they can only be modified. I believe we are currently living within a complicated and accelerated experiment to modify our behavioral system while at the same time poorly positioned to do so competently. The only thing I’m sure of is that the outcome will surprise everyone. And probably not in a good way.