Miesten ja naisten eroista
17/02/09 13:36
Tuolla oli erään aikaisemman artikkelin kommenteissa johtaja T:n laittama linkki miesten ja naisten eroista, populaatioista, kulttuurista ja sensellaisesta.
Tämä kannattaa lukea jos asia kiinnostaa.
Pidin tuosta artikkelista, koska se oli sisällöltään jokseenkin sellainen, kuin millaiseksi olen itse hahmottanut nämä asiat niitä laiskasti 20 vuotta pyöriteltyäni. Jos muut ovat pyörittelyssään päätyneet samantapaisiin tuloksiin, en olisi suoraan sanoen kovin yllättynyt. Tuo tarjoaa kuitenkin yhden näkökulman siihen, miksi maailma on sellainen kuin se on, ja myös ainakin minulle kelpaavan perustelun sille, miksi nykyinen “patriarkaatti on sortanut naisia tuhansia vuosia” -propaganda ei itse asiassa perustu mihinkään muuhun kuin toiveiden tynnyriin.
Tiivistelmä tässä:
To summarize my main points: A few lucky men are at the top of society and enjoy the culture’s best rewards. Others, less fortunate, have their lives chewed up by it. Culture uses both men and women, but most cultures use them in somewhat different ways. Most cultures see individual men as more expendable than individual women, and this difference is probably based on nature, in whose reproductive competition some men are the big losers and other men are the biggest winners. Hence it uses men for the many risky jobs it has.
Men go to extremes more than women, and this fits in well with culture using them to try out lots of different things, rewarding the winners and crushing the losers.
Culture is not about men against women. By and large, cultural progress emerged from groups of men working with and against other men. While women concentrated on the close relationships that enabled the species to survive, men created the bigger networks of shallow relationships, less necessary for survival but eventually enabling culture to flourish. The gradual creation of wealth, knowledge, and power in the men’s sphere was the source of gender inequality. Men created the big social structures that comprise society, and men still are mainly responsible for this, even though we now see that women can perform perfectly well in these large systems.
What seems to have worked best for cultures is to play off the men against each other, competing for respect and other rewards that end up distributed very unequally. Men have to prove themselves by producing things the society values. They have to prevail over rivals and enemies in cultural competitions, which is probably why they aren’t as lovable as women.
The essence of how culture uses men depends on a basic social insecurity. This insecurity is in fact social, existential, and biological. Built into the male role is the danger of not being good enough to be accepted and respected and even the danger of not being able to do well enough to create offspring.
The basic social insecurity of manhood is stressful for the men, and it is hardly surprising that so many men crack up or do evil or heroic things or die younger than women. But that insecurity is useful and productive for the culture, the system.
Again, I’m not saying it’s right, or fair, or proper. But it has worked. The cultures that have succeeded have used this formula, and that is one reason that they have succeeded instead of their rivals.
Tämä kannattaa lukea jos asia kiinnostaa.
Pidin tuosta artikkelista, koska se oli sisällöltään jokseenkin sellainen, kuin millaiseksi olen itse hahmottanut nämä asiat niitä laiskasti 20 vuotta pyöriteltyäni. Jos muut ovat pyörittelyssään päätyneet samantapaisiin tuloksiin, en olisi suoraan sanoen kovin yllättynyt. Tuo tarjoaa kuitenkin yhden näkökulman siihen, miksi maailma on sellainen kuin se on, ja myös ainakin minulle kelpaavan perustelun sille, miksi nykyinen “patriarkaatti on sortanut naisia tuhansia vuosia” -propaganda ei itse asiassa perustu mihinkään muuhun kuin toiveiden tynnyriin.
Tiivistelmä tässä:
To summarize my main points: A few lucky men are at the top of society and enjoy the culture’s best rewards. Others, less fortunate, have their lives chewed up by it. Culture uses both men and women, but most cultures use them in somewhat different ways. Most cultures see individual men as more expendable than individual women, and this difference is probably based on nature, in whose reproductive competition some men are the big losers and other men are the biggest winners. Hence it uses men for the many risky jobs it has.
Culture is not about men against women. By and large, cultural progress emerged from groups of men working with and against other men. While women concentrated on the close relationships that enabled the species to survive, men created the bigger networks of shallow relationships, less necessary for survival but eventually enabling culture to flourish. The gradual creation of wealth, knowledge, and power in the men’s sphere was the source of gender inequality. Men created the big social structures that comprise society, and men still are mainly responsible for this, even though we now see that women can perform perfectly well in these large systems.
What seems to have worked best for cultures is to play off the men against each other, competing for respect and other rewards that end up distributed very unequally. Men have to prove themselves by producing things the society values. They have to prevail over rivals and enemies in cultural competitions, which is probably why they aren’t as lovable as women.
The essence of how culture uses men depends on a basic social insecurity. This insecurity is in fact social, existential, and biological. Built into the male role is the danger of not being good enough to be accepted and respected and even the danger of not being able to do well enough to create offspring.
The basic social insecurity of manhood is stressful for the men, and it is hardly surprising that so many men crack up or do evil or heroic things or die younger than women. But that insecurity is useful and productive for the culture, the system.
Again, I’m not saying it’s right, or fair, or proper. But it has worked. The cultures that have succeeded have used this formula, and that is one reason that they have succeeded instead of their rivals.
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