Hotel Satire
Too Many Young Males
By Lydia Sargent
Welcome to Hotel
Satire where we have been sickened by the sex scandal in the White House. We agree with
the Christian Coalition that Clinton is Satan and are hoping that Kenneth Starr appoints
the very moral and upstanding Dan Quayle as president, the Constitution be damned.
In addition, many
of us also feel that the sex scandal was actually created by Bill, perhaps responding to
pressure from that witch Hilary, to divert our attention from a very important issue: the
defense budget, which was recently voted on and which is currently around $270 billion.
This is shockingly low for a country threatened by war. We know what many of your are
thinking, "What war?" Well, if you think that the threat of war is not imminent,
think again. There’s going to be a huge war soon. Where? In China? Why? Too many young men
between the ages of 15 to 29 competing for territory and goods in order to attract a gal
to marry and propagate the species.
If this sounds
like some strange view held by mere gals, you’re wrong. The gals here at Hotel Satire
would never come up with this view on our own. It is, after all, based on science, a
subject we know nothing about and aren’t suited for as gals, biologically, as science has
told us many times for centuries. No, this scientific information comes from an important
new study on the biological roots of war. We read about it in the Boston Globe (September
20, 1998) in an article titled "Prescription for war: too many young men." The
study was conducted by two Canadian psychologists: one, Christian Mesquida, a graduate
student, and Neil Wiener, a professor in the psychology department–both are –both are at
York University in Toronto. They presented their work at a Boston (the intellectual
capital of the world) conference in a session on "Biology and War." These
researchers say that what triggers most wars is not ideology or honor but a society
"bottom-heavy with young, unmarried and violence-prone males." When there are
too many of them, they form "coalitions bent on seizing territory, goods, or other
resources they need to marry and have offspring."
At Hotel Satire,
we gals were shocked and surprised to hear that we had been wrong about wars and why they
got started. That really, there was no political dimension at all but that wars were the
result more of animal behavior; that war is a form of "intrasexual male competition
among groups, occasionally to obtain mates but more often to acquire the resources
necessary to attract and maintain mates." Mesquida and Wiener say their analysis of
population patterns shows that this evolutionary perspective explains conflicts from
ancient times to today’s world.
And it does seem
to be true, doesn’t it? Thinking back as to why I was attracted to the man who became my
husband it was the size of his stock portfolio and his real estate holdings. I was not
bothered one wit by the number of people he had to destroy to get them. True, he never
fought in a war since he was able to buy his way out of it, but maneuvering on the stock
market is similar n many ways, isn’t it?
Getting back to
this article about wars being caused by an over population of young males, our researchers
claim that there has been no satisfactory historical explanation for war. Also, many wars
have been hard to predict: "the revolution in Iran, the civil war in El Salvador, and
Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait."
The above
statement surely gives added credence to this new theory of war, because, in thinking
back, we Hotel Satire gals realize we had no idea that there was going to be a civil war
in El Salvador or a revolution in Iran. The Iraq invasion of Kuwait was also a complete
surprise. One of the Satire gals husbands works for the government, another for the CIA,
another is a close personal friend of Oliver North, and they said their husbands had no
clue.
Continuing: our
brave researchers, Mesquida and Wiener have mapped out the population demographics of
major countries of the world’s wars and rebellions and found the most conflicts have
occurred in the "developing world, where male youths are numerous, making competition
for land, food, and mates more intense, i.e., the Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Algeria, and the
former Yugoslavia." Of course, Mesquida pointed out that although wars happen because
of the number of young males about in a country, these young males are not always
conscious of the fact that they are waging war to get resources in order to compete for
wives, but in evolutionary terms, "that is their fundamental motivation."
Some of the gals
thought it was strange that Mesquida and Wiener base a theory of war on the claim that
wars happen because males fight for resources and mates, even though they don’t know
that’s what they are fighting for. But others of us pointed out that gals don’t have the
capacity to understand science, particularly psychology and people’s behavior, that’s why
our role in society has been dealing with the education and nurturing of the young, for
which we need no psychological skills whatsoever.
Mesquida and
Wiener make clear that the theory only applies to offensive, not defensive, wars. Thus,
the young men "involved in the Normandy invasion in 1944 were not drive by the same
biological imperatives as the Nazi youth." So if you were wondering about the Vietnam
War, say, and why U.S. youths were involved in that when U.S. males were less than 30
percent of the population, wonder no longer.
Mesquida said, in
his remarks at the Boston conference, that the "young male explanation brings a new
way to look at conflict–from the bottom up instead of top-down." It also refutes the
theory that wars are started by older male leaders who send young men to die in battle. In
fact, the researchers say, "those leaders are probably as much a creation of the
coalition of young, aggressive men as they are the instigators of wars." They also
say that wars have been a means for older leaders to deal with the surplus of young men
vying with them for society’s resources."
While a little
confused by the above comments which seemed to say that even though older men don’t start
wars, they do start wars. Still it all seemed to make sense when applied to reality,
especially that bottom-up business. We’ve long felt that wars were not made by men in
power. No. Not at all. If you’ve ever watched a large group of young guys 15-29 you know
what we mean. We can easily see how young men, seeing that there are too many other young
men hanging around at the mall or on a street corner and only a handful of gals, would get
together with other young men and start a war. Our leaders, seeing this, would then decide
to let the young males carry on the slaughter in order to get rid of them. Or something.
The Globe
article goes on to say that "as horrifying and destructive as war is, some
evolutionary psychologists say it can be seen as an adaptation. "As a strategy for
acquiring the resources to mate and produce offspring, warring against a neighbor furthers
the evolutionary mission of preserving and promulgating your own genetic endowment and
that of your relatives." This fits, the authors say, with the fact that ‘all violent
group confrontations are perpetuated almost exclusively by young males’ of reproductive
age, most of them unmarried.
You see, why gals
can never be scientists? What gal could possibly have concluded that, since all wars have
been fought by young unmarried males, it follows that wars are fought because there are
too many of them and they need to kill each other in order to survive.
Napoleon Chagnon,
a prominent anthropologist at the University of California in Santa Barbara, said that
Mesquida and Wiener’s theory is a new twist on what he’s long believed. "They’ve
focused on a very important category of individuals–young unmarried males, who become a
problem in all societies" and can be the cause of instability and war. Chagnon said
that some societies, particularly the Yanomamo people of Brazil, whom he has long
studied–have tried to defuse the behavior by creating backbreaking chores for young men
or–in the case of medieval society–by sending them off on the Crusades.
We Satire gals
were very impressed by this last about the Crusades. What better way to divert young males
from fighting wars, than by sending them off to war. It also explains slavery, and all
other forms of oppressive work, doesn’t it? Hard labor in a factory or field is just a way
of preventing a surfeit of young males from starting a war.
A benefit of this
new theory is that scientists can predict violence-prone areas much as geologists can
predict where building tensions below ground threaten to trigger earthquakes. While they
can’t make firm predictions yet, Mesquida said one country "where conditions may be
brewing trouble is China, in part because a preference for male children is creating a
growing imbalance. Soon after the turn of the century there is expected to be a million
more young men than young women."
Uh oh. Clearly,
some back breaking work is needed in China pronto.
By the way, among
the most peaceful nations from 1989 to 1998 are Canada and the U.S. Our researchers
include a map showing the percentage of young adult male populations throughout the world.
They then put stars, circles, and squares in various countries to indicate major and minor
wars, civil wars, and terrorism. The United States and Canada have no stars, circles,
squares. Africa has the most.
This really
proves their theory, doesn’t it? Because when it comes to peaceful nations, the U.S. has
to be at the top. Until now, we never knew why. But it’s because we have a low percentage
of unmarried young men. This new theory also helps explain a country’s military budget. It
must follow that the lower the percentage of young males, the greater the need for weapons
to protect a nation from populations with high young male populations.
By the way, this
new research supports our Hotel Satire theory that gals in the army are a biological
mistake. Wars are fought to win gals, so any gals who fight in wars are lesbians.