Everybody Make Love—And War

The root cause of war is finite resources or the perception of limited resources. Sex is not a resource. No one goes to war to have sex, sex itself simply isn't that important to society as a whole. It is only important to individuals to find a mate and reproduce but the concept of hostile courtship is actually counter to what any society allows. Back on war, almost anyone will go to war if they have too, in order to feed their children/grandchildren. Human beings are hard wired to think this way. If the basic needs of:food, water clothing and shelter (climate dependent) are denied human being's will fight to survive and that fight may be considered self defense depending on the circumstances.
The reduction of population growth is an important modifier relative to the perception of finite resources and the prevention of war. Population growth reduction is something all societies are struggling with given recent runaway population growth and unfortunately runs contrary to almost all the societal rules written before the medicine changed society and multiplied population growth. But this article doesn't focus on the correct aspects before it comes to a conclusion...

I think we are about done with evolving for the most part. It took better than 100,000 years to evolve just a little bit in the scheme of things. Our propensity for producing better methods of killing each other will win this race.

The challenge of our times is how to converge the immature commentary with truly profound discourse necessary to advance the ideals of our society. Immature commentary is borne of the assembly-line mentality which is plaguing every aspect of the press. The dirive for attention at all costs often leads provocateuers to frothfully spew hypothesis which have not been sifted through any sieve of reason or rationality. The only goal being to objectify attention-grabbing as the goal of information dispersal rather than informing and educating the audience and society at large. Somehow we as a society have to return "shaming" as a means of deterence so that those who would pretend to positions for which they have not fully vetted and cconstructed themselves will be branded (for what they are) as charlatans who would peddled unproven remedies on a vulnurable populace to its infinite hurt.

What's happened to Newsweek? First the article about the Bible supporting gay marriage now this. It's an insult to even call this journalism. What ever happened to reporting facts and news. This drivel is just someone's theories and musings passed off as an expose. Let's not forget this is basically free advertising for a book written by a former Newsweek "journalist." ...interesting.

Mr. Philips has done a fantastic job rolling up all of recorded history into four paragraphs. Perhaps for a follow he can condense the bible into a neat one word version. Never mind the annoying details, any evidence that does not support the hypothesis must be suprressed or ignored! Glad that my subscription to Newsweek ended long long ago. Sophomoric garbage like this should never be printed, there is no real content, no real discussion, and a laughable conclusion. What grammar school produced this author?

Silvyu, spoken like a true socialist/communist. They've been saying that stuff for 100 yrs. Look at the former Soviet Union... It doesn't work. Humans by nature have those that are willling to work just a little harder and those that don't. Soo in the end the harder worker who also is smart about how to direct those efforts reaps the rewards and those that are willing to settle for 40 hrs. a week and make no effort to improve stay where they are or at times fall further down in the social economic scale. That is why America is the richest country in the world oh and by the way we give away more of our GDP then any other country in the world. Oh yeah one last thing society is not a zero sum game. For someone to win doesn't require someone to loose. Look at how many millionaires Bill Gates has created.... Get with it learn your history, set expectations high and people will reach for them if given the freedom to do so. That cannot be acccomplished in a Socialist or Communist state.

xcz

The statement that humans and chimps are the only animal that kills it's own kind is not true. I've watched adult Grizzly kill male cubs because they are male. I've collected the carcasses of dead male wolves apparently killed because they were weaker. Don't get too deep into this - it's the course of nature. Men go to war over women. It's a simple as that. The boggest story regarding fighting over a woman is the story of Helen of Troy. It happens all the time.

No woman is worth fighting over. No war is worth fighting. It's just more stereotyping of men. You wouldn't have to look far to find physically/sexually aggressive women.

True musejoy. Although the bonobo society is dominated by females,. & way more sexually active, it's population size is about the same as the average chimps. This kind of suggest it isn't nessecairly competition for resources or lack thereof but, rather that females rule more peacefully, through sex... (if you look at society's where males are more dominate, and then compare them to where we are treated somewhat decent, you'll see as women come to power we get more civilized & less sexually repressed. The better treated women are in a society the less likely the are to want to stone or born gays, be racist, kill ppl of different faiths,{see Afganistan, & the Salem Witch Trials...} ect. Most hate groups are comprised of mostly males,{incredibly sexist 1s at that} and so are most jails) While compitition may indeed play a role, I think the different ways males & females dominate plays a more significant one...

I don't see much (or any) connection between contraceptive choice for women and link between sexual activity & violence. A simpler explanation is much more probable - to the victor go the spoils. Males who physically dominate rival males wins females. Partly it's because vanquished males are dead or demoralized. Partly it's because females prefer males capable of dominating others. Dominant males are regarded as better providers and of higher social status. Ugly and immoral . . . but probably true.

I agree, women also need the power to control there own bodies...birth control

I think all the author is doing is pitching an idea for readers to explore as a possibility. It doesn't sound like Mr. Phillips is trying to browbeat anyone into this way of thinking. All I can see that he has really done is propose a connection between sex and violence, related humans to chimpanzees and suggested that women can stop war. I had no idea these things could be so inflammatory.

How does one explain bonobo chimp society, then? They are very sexually active, and their society is also much more peaceful than ordinary chimp society... their genetic equals. They are also 98% similar to humans. The two impulses, sex and war, have an opposite effect (than the authors propose) on bonobo society. They use sex to diffuse tensions, resulting in little conflict.

How does one explain bonobo chimp society then? They are very sexual active and VERY peaceful and cooperative.

Poor Newsweek. I realize the standard of life in the USA has deteriorated to next to nothing; scandals, corruptions, same sex "marriages", crime, disease, homelessness, foreclosures, unemployment, wars, ad infinitum, but for your media to stoop to this level of journalism is incomprehensible. How sad for this nation when Newsweek has NOTHING better to report on other than TRASH. DO I SMELL A JUNKYARD?

The article is fundamentally flawed. The assiciations and the conslusion fail a basic understanding of social history. Violence has no meaningful direct coorelation to reproduction, other then survival in extreme circumstances. Reproduction is something that until recently focused nearly all of a women's resources to do just to break even generationally. in 700 ad women regualry produced 9+ children and only two survived to reproduce, themselves. In the modern world this natural balance is broken due to advances in medicine and those advances in turn then enabled women to focus her resources elsewhere. Women always had control over reproduction before marriage but the job opportunities were scarce (a convent or something similar). All ancient cultures define marriage to have the purpose to produce children and this was something older female tribal leaders took very seriously and young women and men were both "indoctrinated" to this roleplay, it is only in recent times that marriage can have a purposeother then child bearing...

That could be the absolute dumbest, most idiotic, conclusion I have ever read!!