The Brutish and The Clever

“If the strong person exercises all his rights to oppress and pillage the weak, he is only doing the most natural thing in the world.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

When we observe the imperatives of nature, it might appear that might makes right. With relatively few exceptions – hyenas, some species of fish, ants, spiders, and bees among them – sexual dimorphism results in males being bigger and stronger than females. Using their size and strength differential, males dominate females, and attempt to dominate each other using brute force or the threat of it.

This is also true of human beings, and for example, in places like Afghanistan where Taliban patriarchy is the law of the land, women are explicitly prohibited from obtaining a higher education. The writer Robert Graves believed men have been waging war on women for 10,000 years, and cites Greek mythology and the Bible to make his case. The Greek myth of Pandora tells the tale of the world’s first woman, constructed from clay and subsequently held responsible for releasing evil into the world. Eve, created from the rib of Adam, defies God and gets humanity banished from the Garden of Eden. Today’s post-liberal Vice-Presidential candidate J.D. Vance argues that women should stay with abusive men, and their primary role in life is to bear children.

This matter of childbearing is central. Male lions and bears, for example, will slaughter the cubs sired by another male; the drive to propagate their own DNA appears to be a biological imperative. This inclination may be true for men, too; that, plus a deep-seated jealousy of women’s unique ability to bear children may play a subconscious role in why men want to dominate women and subdue other men. Interpersonal conflict gets played out in even more complicated ways, however: a war of words.

Cleverness can defeat brute force; that’s what lawyering and the rule of law are based upon. This, too, is an ancient tale. The Odyssey by Homer features the quick-witted Ulysses whose cleverness with language allows him to escape the brutal, man-eating cyclops, Polyphemus. When asked his name by Polyphemus, Ulysses answers “Nobody,” confusing the cyclops to the point of mental paralysis. Such verbal gymnastics are at the core of American democracy, a nation based on Enlightenment principles of the force of reason instead of the force of might.

As played out on the national stage, the nature of the present political conflict between brutal Masculine Red and clever Feminine Blue is as plain as day. The sight of heavily muscled wrestler Hulk Hogan unceremoniously tearing off his shirt while addressing the GOP convention and threatening America with revenge of the “Trumpamaniacs” said it all.

Masculine strength manifesting as authoritarian power portrays cleverness as weak, feminine deviousness. This is the recurrent theme of a 10,000 year-old Neolithic maxim writ large, that imposing power over the weak is perfectly natural and proper. Such thinking underlies Fascism, a relapse into barbarism that treats human beings as things. According to Fascists, the weak deserve punishment since they use cunning to evade their place in the natural order.

As a species, we need not surrender to barbarism. We can transcend our predatory animal nature, although clearly, not everyone is as capable of doing so as others. The full promise of democracy, if we can overcome the brute in us, is great goodness and decency; it’s the essential work of every generation.