Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id SAA10024 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 20 Jan 2002 18:48:15 GMT Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 10:43:31 -0800 From: Virginia Bowen <ForVirg@pacbell.net> Subject: RE: Rogue Males by Lionel Tiger In-reply-to: <200201200721.g0K7LvB19601@mail18.bigmailbox.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Message-id: <JBEGINOFPDEMDHAFHMCIAEKACOAA.ForVirg@pacbell.net> X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 8BIT Importance: Normal X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-priority: Normal Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Very interesting Joe. I can't recall exactly where I first read about the
fact of monogamous marriage actually being a boon to males (The Red Queen
maybe) because in polygamous societies a few males get all the "resources"
(and the opportunity to spread THEIR genes - and memes). The 72 virgins
awaiting them in heaven surely only adds enormous fuel to the fire - a
rather concrete otherwordly reward for their accepting the lack they have in
this one!
Just curious - does anyone know how Bin-Laden justifies that he need not
become a suicide attacker himself? Is it some kind of "prophet of Allah"
thing?
Virginia
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> Of Joe Dees
> Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2002 11:22 PM
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Rogue Males by Lionel Tiger
>
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,561712,00.html
>
> An outstanding characteristic of the miserable band of
> worshippers responsible for the savage events of September 11 is
> that they are all male. Virtually all the fist-shakers we see in
> news clips of anti-American demonstrations in Pakistan and
> elsewhere are men, too, usually relatively young ones. What does
> this have to do with September 11, Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban,
> and the future?
> One of the most difficult tasks for any social system is figuring
> out what to do with its young males. These are invariably the
> most impressionable, energetic, socially exigent, and politically
> inept members of any group. They cause trouble for their elders
> and ruthlessly hassle each other. They pose chronic danger to
> public order when they drive, drink and take drugs.
>
> Various communities cause their young men to endure a startling
> and often gory array of harassing rituals and trials in order to
> become acceptable adults. In his autobiography, Nelson Mandela
> says that only after his circumcision at the age of 15 did he
> feel ready to assume the chieftaincy he inherited. I have been a
> so-called expert witness in lawsuits on behalf of young men
> physically abused by fraternity brothers during initiations: one
> was turned into a quadriplegic. Often, only when they have made
> their bones in some grim initiatory expedition are young men able
> to contemplate the next steps of courtship and marriage.
>
> The terrorism of Bin Laden harnesses the chaos of young men,
> uniting the energies of political ardour and sex in a turbulent
> fuel. The structure of al-Qaida - an all-male enterprise, of
> course - appears to involve small groups of relatively young men
> who maintain strong bonds with each other, bonds whose intensity
> is dramatised and heightened by the secrecy demanded by their
> missions and the danger of their projects. Like the highly
> trained, elite forces of the army and navy, they are screened
> before they are allowed to earn their stripes in a programme of
> militaristic training in isolated and demanding environments.
>
> Selection is prestigious. It confers unquestionable, if radical,
> Islamic credentials and associates them with the tides of history
> sketched for them in their training. For many, nothing in the
> rest of their often sorry existences can compare with the
> authoritative drama of what they hope to do and with the sense of
> purpose flowing from their commitment to the leaders they accept.
>
> Their comfort in an all-male world begins with the high sex
> segregation of many of the Muslim communities from which the
> terrorists draw. While there are great variations among Islamic
> communities, the sharp tendency is toward sexually segregated
> societies. Contact between the sexes is tightly restricted by
> draconian moral codes. Not only are women's faces veiled, so is
> their behaviour. This means that men and women have relatively
> little to do with people of the opposite sex. Therefore, they
> develop a great deal of reliance on those of their own.
>
> Most men in most societies marry, or try to. This is more
> difficult than usual in polygamous societies in which powerful
> men may have as many as four wives, leaving three potential
> husbands without a date for Saturday night - or any night. For
> example, Osama Bin Laden is thought to have several cave-mates,
> as many as four. There are also substantially more men than women
> in Afghanistan, which augments the deprivations of polygamy. So
> some of his troops have no choice but to accustom themselves to
> relatively monastic lives.
>
> The sexuality and reproductive potential of such young men is not
> an unimportant matter politically. The United Arab Emirates, not
> normally considered forerunners of the progressive movement, have
> taken an inventive action that reflects how difficult it is for
> men and women to mate in a traditional manner. To marry a local
> woman, men of that nation must provide gifts, feasts, and ritual
> performances that may cost as much as $40,000 (£27,000) - an
> impossible accumulation for all but a few. Many would choose a
> foreign wife instead, which is unattractive to the government. So
> now when a man marries a local woman, the government supplies a
> grant sufficient for his ceremonial obligations. Bin Laden and
> his ilk provide no such marriage benefit. (In a grim reversal,
> they offer bonuses to the kin of those who commit suicide.) So,
> his young men have to rely for emotional and social succour on
> their fellow-marchers to the triumph of grandly effective death.
>
> It is in the crucible of all-male intensity that the bonds of
> terrorist commitment and self-denial are formed. As they move
> from Hamburg to Cleveland to Lima to Havana to Jersey City, they
> are enveloped in tacit camaraderie with their associates who have
> endured the same training, the same deprivation, the same
> expectation of enjoying death and heaven in the same shiver. They
> share the sweet-sour prospect of striking a fiery suicidal blow
> for the self-evident purity of a religion of love.
>
> They are not lonely psychopaths but demented special forces
> wearing anonymity like a uniform. They share and catalyse
> swirling energies and religious absolutism, forces immensely
> useful to those operators such as Bin Laden who are able to turn
> young men's need for a cool place in the hot sun outwards to
> other societies, to attack infidels at large.
>
> It's all something grand to do. So much better than the few jobs
> available, the threadbare economies, the ramshackle societies run
> either by altogether corrupt cynics, autocratic monarchies
> feeding princes foie gras, or theocracies that mistake reading
> ancient books for action.
>
> Will the situation change? There are countless young men in poor
> "states of concern" whose only plausible luxury may lie in the
> symbolic realm of moral and theological triumph. They are likely,
> at best, to have to scrape out a minimally tolerable existence
> that pales beside the images of sensual and material peril -
> America! America! - their leaders seek to hide from them but
> cannot. "The Great Satan" strictly translated is "the great
> tempter". A select few, perhaps the most angry or lonely, perhaps
> the most pious or theoretical, will decide not to try to become
> part of America or its way of life but to destroy it.
>
> To do this they can enrol in stirring academies such as Bin
> Laden's. The danger of belonging to them enhances their
> excitement and feeds their sense of worthwhile enterprise. Their
> comrades provide them an emotional haven and a clear focus for
> the turbulent energies at the intersection of youth and despair.
> Their basic weapons are intensity and extreme commitment, not the
> usual visible armament of warriors.
>
> American and other forces will have to find, confront, and
> destroy something new. They may well succeed in rooting out at
> least the more overt groups. But the much larger and longer-term
> problem for us and the world at large - that there are millions
> upon millions of these young men, not just Bin Laden's thousands
> - will finally have to be faced by the currently feckless leaders
> of the grim societies that have produced and nurtured such wild
> theological pathologies.
>
> • Lionel Tiger is Darwin professor of anthropology at Rutgers
> University, New Jersey. Among his books are Men in Groups and The
> Decline of Males. A version of this article first appeared on the
> website Slate.com.
>
>
>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
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