Jul 7, 2016 03:58 AM
The Weaponised Loser
https://aeon.co/essays/humiliation-and-r...-shootings
EXCERPT: [...] It has become commonplace to argue that terrorist attacks are not about religion but politics or economics. Such interpretations usually recreate the terrorist as a cost-benefit actor, redressing economic or political imbalance. But if we’re willing to accept that these acts might only seem to be religious but are really something else, then we need to consider carefully whether we are right about the something else. Freudian interpretations of the news might be out of style, but we would do well to revitalise them (with updated data from social sciences and biology).
The facts of toxic masculinity are rarely discussed after mass shootings, as we beat the usual drums of gun control and mental health. Or toxic masculinity is blithely attributed to some patriarchal conspiracy that is unconsciously educated into boys. But consider the bigger, evolutionary picture. Social life requires the domestication of men. This is not some contemporary political interpretation of maleness. It’s a biological generalisation that applies to most social mammals. Intermale aggression must be turned into guardian instincts, if primate societies (such as ours) are to attain stability. Males must transform from little tyrants, competing for females, to selfless bodyguards and potential providers.
In a way, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, since the life history of a contemporary man seems to replicate the hominin trajectory of increased cooperation – increased pair bonding, increased male involvement in parenting, and the attendant emotional pacifications that are required. Even the biochemistry of the domesticated man changes, as fatherhood significantly reduces troublesome testosterone levels. This is the timeworn process in which young men become stakeholders in society. For the most part, men undertake this transformation willingly, but usually with conditions.
The ancient social contract, underwritten by androgens and oestrogens, is that a man will get a woman. He expects to get a partner, children and status. The execution of this ancient contract is imperfect and bears directly on the long historical record of male crime. As everyone knows, most violent crime is male [...] Without a partner or sexual fulfilment, many men remain emotionally juvenile – aggressively impulsive, self-serving and potentially violent.
Young men who cannot find a place in the socialisation process will often take up a disdainful hostility towards domestication itself. The terminal rebel takes shape. [...]
Historically, religions such as Islam and Christianity have played an important role in domesticating their respective male populations, but at a cost. Religion tries to manage eros for the sake of social harmony, but it does so indirectly by demonising desire and the body. [...] The jihadi loser has the ultimate frustration [...] That interminable frustration can be channelled into a zealous mission to purify everything in the acid of an imaginary and bogus strain of religion. Male power is thought to be diminished – a kind of purity defilement – from uncontrolled women (the alluring single woman or the infidel) but when a woman is in some ‘appropriate’ state of affiliation (the obedient wife) there is no pollution and the male’s power is increased by his domination of her. This is not essentially different from the sanctioned sexuality one finds in other Axial age religions, East and West....
[...] There’s little to no theological underpinning for this stuff, but there is an irresistibly tempting psychodynamic for frustrated young men who are easily drafted into a pathological band of brothers. For the terminally frustrated male, the promise of women slaves is an enticing, albeit horrifying, recruitment tool.
The pre-modern West also demonised desire. But in the contemporary West, natural sexual frustration is intensified by a culture that throws sex in your face at every turn, reminding you that you’re not getting any. These are existential issues because they resonate – rightly or wrongly – at the core of how many men see themselves. The problem is that many of our social norms and cultural narratives increase rather than defuse resentment. And resentment is the psychological fuel that gets the fire of violence going, whatever the ideological justification....
https://aeon.co/essays/humiliation-and-r...-shootings
EXCERPT: [...] It has become commonplace to argue that terrorist attacks are not about religion but politics or economics. Such interpretations usually recreate the terrorist as a cost-benefit actor, redressing economic or political imbalance. But if we’re willing to accept that these acts might only seem to be religious but are really something else, then we need to consider carefully whether we are right about the something else. Freudian interpretations of the news might be out of style, but we would do well to revitalise them (with updated data from social sciences and biology).
The facts of toxic masculinity are rarely discussed after mass shootings, as we beat the usual drums of gun control and mental health. Or toxic masculinity is blithely attributed to some patriarchal conspiracy that is unconsciously educated into boys. But consider the bigger, evolutionary picture. Social life requires the domestication of men. This is not some contemporary political interpretation of maleness. It’s a biological generalisation that applies to most social mammals. Intermale aggression must be turned into guardian instincts, if primate societies (such as ours) are to attain stability. Males must transform from little tyrants, competing for females, to selfless bodyguards and potential providers.
In a way, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, since the life history of a contemporary man seems to replicate the hominin trajectory of increased cooperation – increased pair bonding, increased male involvement in parenting, and the attendant emotional pacifications that are required. Even the biochemistry of the domesticated man changes, as fatherhood significantly reduces troublesome testosterone levels. This is the timeworn process in which young men become stakeholders in society. For the most part, men undertake this transformation willingly, but usually with conditions.
The ancient social contract, underwritten by androgens and oestrogens, is that a man will get a woman. He expects to get a partner, children and status. The execution of this ancient contract is imperfect and bears directly on the long historical record of male crime. As everyone knows, most violent crime is male [...] Without a partner or sexual fulfilment, many men remain emotionally juvenile – aggressively impulsive, self-serving and potentially violent.
Young men who cannot find a place in the socialisation process will often take up a disdainful hostility towards domestication itself. The terminal rebel takes shape. [...]
Historically, religions such as Islam and Christianity have played an important role in domesticating their respective male populations, but at a cost. Religion tries to manage eros for the sake of social harmony, but it does so indirectly by demonising desire and the body. [...] The jihadi loser has the ultimate frustration [...] That interminable frustration can be channelled into a zealous mission to purify everything in the acid of an imaginary and bogus strain of religion. Male power is thought to be diminished – a kind of purity defilement – from uncontrolled women (the alluring single woman or the infidel) but when a woman is in some ‘appropriate’ state of affiliation (the obedient wife) there is no pollution and the male’s power is increased by his domination of her. This is not essentially different from the sanctioned sexuality one finds in other Axial age religions, East and West....
[...] There’s little to no theological underpinning for this stuff, but there is an irresistibly tempting psychodynamic for frustrated young men who are easily drafted into a pathological band of brothers. For the terminally frustrated male, the promise of women slaves is an enticing, albeit horrifying, recruitment tool.
The pre-modern West also demonised desire. But in the contemporary West, natural sexual frustration is intensified by a culture that throws sex in your face at every turn, reminding you that you’re not getting any. These are existential issues because they resonate – rightly or wrongly – at the core of how many men see themselves. The problem is that many of our social norms and cultural narratives increase rather than defuse resentment. And resentment is the psychological fuel that gets the fire of violence going, whatever the ideological justification....
