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At 11:20 PM 11/21/2007, spike wrote:<br>
snip<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Keith, I have a question
regarding a news story that has been making the<br>
rounds last couple days. It seems to be causing xenophobic war
memes having<br>
nothing to do with future prospects. In terms of conflicts
between<br>
societies and EP, how do we deal with the case of the Saudi woman who
was<br>
sentenced to 100 lashes for the crime of being raped? Then when
she<br>
appealed the absurd sentence, they doubled it to 200?<br><br>
<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/11/21/saudi.rape.lawyer/index.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/11/21/saudi.rape.lawyer/index.html</a>
</blockquote><br>
This type of institutional persecution of women is about what should be
expected in that culture. Here is a recent fairly good article out of an
Indian newspaper.<br><br>
Ten politically incorrect truths about human nature <br>
Deekonda Ramesh, 20 November 2007, Tuesday<br><br>
2. <b>Humans are naturally polygamous</b> <br>
The history of western civilization aside, humans are naturally
polygamous. Polyandry (a marriage of one woman to many men) is very rare,
but polygamy (the marriage of one man to many women) is widely practised
in human societies, even though Judeo-Christian traditions hold that
monogamy is the only natural form of marriage. We know that humans have
been polygamous throughout most of history because men are taller than
women.<br>
<br>
Among primate and non-primate species, the degree of polygamy highly
correlates with the degree to which males of a species are larger than
females. The more polygamous the species, the greater the size disparity
between the sexes. Typically, human males are 10 per cent taller and 20
per cent heavier than females. This suggests that, throughout history,
humans have been mildly polygamous. <br>
<br>
Relative to monogamy, polygamy creates greater fitness variance (the
distance between the "winners" and the "losers" in
the reproductive game) among males than among females because it allows a
few males to monopolise all the females in the group. The greater fitness
variance among males creates greater pressure for men to compete with
each other for mates. Only big and tall males can win mating
opportunities. Among pair-bonding species like humans, in which males and
females stay together to raise their children, females also prefer to
mate with big and tall males because they can provide better physical
protection against predators and other males. <br>
<br>
In societies where rich men are much richer than poor men, women (and
their children) are better off sharing the few wealthy men; one-half,
one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a wealthy man is still better than an
entire poor man. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, "The maternal
instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the
exclusive possession of a third-rate one." Despite the fact that
humans are naturally polygamous, most industrial societies are monogamous
because men tend to be more or less equal in their resources compared
with their ancestors in medieval times. (Inequality tends to increase as
society advances in complexity from hunter-gatherer to advanced agrarian
societies. Industrialization tends to decrease the level of
inequality.)<br>
<br>
3. <b>Most women benefit from polygamy, while most men
benefit from monogamy</b> <br>
When there is resource inequality among men, the case in every human
society, most women benefit from polygamy: women can share a wealthy man.
Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man. The only
exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can
monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygamy, they must share the men
with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly
opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife.
True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that’s
much better than not marrying anyone at all.<br>
<br>
Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under
polygamy. What they don't realize is that, for most men who are not
extremely desirable, polygamy means no wife at all, or, if they are
lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under
monogamy. <br>
<br>
4. <b>Most suicide bombers are Muslim</b> <br>
According to the Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of
<i>Making Sense of Suicide Missions</i>, a comprehensive history of this
troubling yet topical phenomenon, while suicide missions are not always
religiously motivated, when religion is involved, it is <i>always</i>
Muslim. Why is this? Why is Islam the only religion that motivates its
followers to commit suicide missions?<br>
<br>
The surprising answer from the evolutionary psychological perspective is
that Muslim suicide bombing may have nothing to do with Islam or the
Koran (except for two lines in it). It may have nothing to do with the
religion, politics, the culture, the race, the ethnicity, the language,
or the region. As with everything else from this perspective, it may have
a lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the <i>absence</i> of sex.<br>
<br>
What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates
polygamy. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether
excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygamy creates
shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each,
then the other 50 percent don't get any wives at all.<br>
<br>
So polygamy increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men
of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men
resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have
little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives.
Across all societies, polygamy makes men violent, increasing crimes such
as murder and rape, even after accounting for such obvious factors as
economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level
of democracy, and political factors in the region. <br>
<br>
However, polygamy itself is not a sufficient cause of suicide bombing.
Societies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are much more
polygamous than the Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa.
And they do have very high levels of violence. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers
from a long history of continuous civil wars, but not suicide bombings.
<br>
<br>
The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven
for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may
not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which
strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite
appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a
complete reproductive loser.<br>
<br>
It is the combination of polygamy and the promise of a large harem of
virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide
bombings. Consistent with this explanation, all studies of suicide
bombers indicate that they are significantly younger than not only the
Muslim population in general but other (non-suicidal) members of their
own extreme political organizations like the Hamas and the Hezbollah. And
nearly all suicide bombers are single. <br><br>
<a href="http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=127849" eudora="autourl">
http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=127849</a><br><br>
Keith</body>
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