Welcome back to Manthropology—in this week’s episode, we discuss Richard Wrangham’s new book “The Goodness Paradox”, and whether or not his theories of the “taming” of humanity are true. And just where does hybristophilia—the sexual attraction to murderers and other violent people—fit into all this? Find out!
The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution by Wrangham, which essentially says that humans became domesticatd due to the most violent males being killed off by the community
There might be some truth to this, but…then he says that women in the societies of our hunter gatherer ancestors chose the least violent men. Is this the case, or is it the typical anthropological idealism? Let’s take a look.
The book posits that humans are the most cooperative of all primates (at least within the community, with the majority of violence directly pointed outwards), and posits why this might be the case. I will agree with that fact, but as you can probably imagine I disagree with the explanation of why.
“Reduced reactive aggression must feature alongside intelligence, cooperation, and social learning as a key contributor to the emergence and success of our species.” According to Wrangham, and how does he posit that reactive aggression was reduced? By looking at the Russian experiments in domesticating foxes, they killed off the most violent fox specimens and bred foth a more docile batch of foxes. Also, domesticity came packaged with other features such as more gracile (soft) facial features and more frequent breeding.
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