I have been thinking a lot about the popular images of aggressive male competitors. Silverback gorillas. Wrestlemania or UFC fighters. These popular ideas feature ‘Alpha males’ bullying and pushing around ‘weaker’ males in order to get mates, habitat, or food. These toxic stereotypes probably spill over into popular culture and contribute to the issues we have among genders today.
My question is, how common are these ‘alpha males’? How ‘fit’ were these gender differences across all the sexually reproducing species that ever lived? Because if natural selection had chosen this to be ‘fit’, wouldn’t we have evolved more slowly? And why the huge leap from aggressive male dominant primates to whatever we are as humans?
In other words, are male humans supposed to club females over the head and drag them back to our caves?
And I wonder what changed from primates to humans? Our brain size, for sure. The complexity of our nervous systems. The evolution of the MIND as an emergent thing, rather than just a brain and nerves. We became conscious.
So I just can’t help but believe, whether or not male aggression was selected for at some point, that it no longer is. I think humans are more vulnerable. I think, rather than exploit each others’ vulnerability and take advantage of it, we empathize with it.
This is the gist of my competition episodes. I just don’t think competition leads to as much diversity as cooperation. I don’t think the solutions to our problems will arise from competition, either. I believe that cooperation is the ‘human’ thing to do. Whether or not it was good for primates.
If we embrace each others’ vulnerabilities and try to understand them we can do far more. The solutions to the Acid Test problems (war, depression, anxiety, fear, climate change, inequality, etc.) can only be solved through cooperative efforts that demand we be vulnerable with each other. We need to let down our guard – we have too much guard.
I hope you enjoy, comment, and subscribe.
Podcast streaming audio here.
YouTube video here.