I thought RichardKennaway’s previous comment was interesting, and would appreciate hearing your comments on it. Commenting on the hypothesis that life under the rule of others may have selected for submissiveness, he wrote:
On the other hand, submissiveness is surely selected against in rulers, who as noted in the posting leave more descendants than proles. So perhaps in a society in which the strong rule and the weak submit there is some evolutionarily stable distribution along a submissive/aggressive spectrum, rather than favouring one or the other?
My feeling is that the dichotomy between societies where males are threatening and violent and societies where males are submissive and not threats to each other is the most interesting social dichotomy we have. In some societies where males are threats there is a clear alternative niche like the Berdache on the Great Plains. In urban ghettos with drug dealers and street corner males there is a significant set of males who hold down jobs and, often, bring the proceeds to support their matrifocal families. How much such males reproduce is not clear. A wonderful description of this, with a zany analysis, is (Sharff, J. W. (1981). Free enterprise and the ghetto family. Psychology Today, 15, 41-8.)
There may well be stable distributions lurking in the social system but they are likely different everywhere: that for Bushmen would be quite different from that for Mundurucu.
Rulers do not always leave more descendants than proles. I highly recommend Gregory Clark’s “Farewell to Alms”, in which he shows that the medieval ruling class in Britain essentially all killed each other and have no descendants today. On the other end peasants and laborers did not reproduce themselves, so almost everyone in the UK today is descended from the medieval gentry, prosperous merchants, and so on.
the medieval ruling class in Britain essentially all killed each other and have no descendants today
I’m one of their descendants.
I rather assumed that every Anglo-Saxon was (excluding the royal family through Charles, whose ancestry is German, but including Diana Spencer and her children), and that I only knew how because I had wealthy ancestors who kept track. But even if that’s not so, they don’t have no descendants.
ETA: On second thought, perhaps the scope of ‘essentially’ was meant to extend to the end of the sentence.
I don’t think it’s correct to assume a pure strategy (ie each male is either dominant OR submissive). It might make more sense for males to be able to switch when the opportunity arises from submissive to dominant (a mixed strategy in game theory terms). I think outsider orang-utans can become alphas (adding the distinctive cheek-flaps etc) when they find a group that will let them join, for example.
We do see humans making the same transition (and in the other direction too) when they move between groups, and when opportunities arise.
I thought RichardKennaway’s previous comment was interesting, and would appreciate hearing your comments on it. Commenting on the hypothesis that life under the rule of others may have selected for submissiveness, he wrote:
My feeling is that the dichotomy between societies where males are threatening and violent and societies where males are submissive and not threats to each other is the most interesting social dichotomy we have. In some societies where males are threats there is a clear alternative niche like the Berdache on the Great Plains. In urban ghettos with drug dealers and street corner males there is a significant set of males who hold down jobs and, often, bring the proceeds to support their matrifocal families. How much such males reproduce is not clear. A wonderful description of this, with a zany analysis, is (Sharff, J. W. (1981). Free enterprise and the ghetto family. Psychology Today, 15, 41-8.)
There may well be stable distributions lurking in the social system but they are likely different everywhere: that for Bushmen would be quite different from that for Mundurucu.
Rulers do not always leave more descendants than proles. I highly recommend Gregory Clark’s “Farewell to Alms”, in which he shows that the medieval ruling class in Britain essentially all killed each other and have no descendants today. On the other end peasants and laborers did not reproduce themselves, so almost everyone in the UK today is descended from the medieval gentry, prosperous merchants, and so on.
I’m one of their descendants.
I rather assumed that every Anglo-Saxon was (excluding the royal family through Charles, whose ancestry is German, but including Diana Spencer and her children), and that I only knew how because I had wealthy ancestors who kept track. But even if that’s not so, they don’t have no descendants.
ETA: On second thought, perhaps the scope of ‘essentially’ was meant to extend to the end of the sentence.
I don’t think it’s correct to assume a pure strategy (ie each male is either dominant OR submissive). It might make more sense for males to be able to switch when the opportunity arises from submissive to dominant (a mixed strategy in game theory terms). I think outsider orang-utans can become alphas (adding the distinctive cheek-flaps etc) when they find a group that will let them join, for example.
We do see humans making the same transition (and in the other direction too) when they move between groups, and when opportunities arise.