Boudica

Professional podcaster Jamie Jeffers, in a review of the History Channel's Vikings (which I've never seen), comments approvingly on the show's depiction of Lagertha*:

I really like the fact that they have a tough-as-nails warrior woman and they don't treat it like it's strange... they did an excellent job demonstrating that there were warrior women and warrior women were very effective. It does a good job dispelling a lot of the innate sexism that you run into.

Unsurprisingly, I don't like it.

Jeffers regularly juxtaposes the rigid gender distinctions certain ancient civilizations, like the Romans, made with the relatively more overlapping gender roles that existed among others such as the Norse or Celts, even employing the term "progressive" to describe the latter. In so doing, Jeffers projects a contemporary (and liberal, and western!) worldview to a past that was in many ways quite alien to anything existing within the prevailing mores and ethos of said contemporary worldview.

"Regressive" may be a synonym of "progressive"; "repressive", however, not necessarily so. I'd argue, in fact, that--and I'm generalizing as someone with a spotty amateur's knowledge of history--from the onset of the agricultural age through the Enlightenment, or maybe even the Industrial Revolution, the contextually more progressive (in the Hegelian sense of the word) societies tended to be the ones in which gender distinctions were relatively more, not less, pronounced. It was a natural outgrowth of specialization. Rather than being Jacks and Jills of all trades by necessity, people in more 'progressive' societies were able to become especially good at certain things and leverage these more specialized skills to obtain the products and services produced by others similarly become extraordinarily skilled in other things. It's not all John Locke and Adam Smith, though--similar forces were at work at other layers of society, not just the occupational ones.

Specifically, the relatively more sexually egalitarian tribes in Gaul and Brittania for which the employment of female warriors was not exceptionally remarkable were not 'ahead' of the Romans but instead were 'behind' them (history backs me up here). They used their women to join battle with their opponents and block the retreats of their own men because they had to. For a society to use women in hand-in-hand combat isn't very efficient--women are weaker, smaller, slower, and less physically aggressive than men are. Sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures, but just like arming the old, sickly, infirm, and untrained, what you gain in numbers you tend to lose in per capita fighting ability. Perhaps he used "disproportionate force", but Severus' actions become a little easier to comprehend, don't they?

Additionally, women are a more precious reproductive resource than men are. If, today, tribe Azure is comprised of 100 males and 50 females of reproductive age while tribe Fuchsia is comprised of 50 males and 100 females of the same condition, assuming no annihilation from hostile neighbors, which tribe is going to have more people--both male and female--of reproductive age a generation down the road? The male reproductive role takes fifteen minutes, the female role nine months (and a couple of decades of residual effort on top of that). At the high end, rates of reproduction are far more restricted by the number of fertile women in a society than they are by the number of fertile men.

Today, the rules of the game have changed, and it is indeed the case that in more progressive societies gender distinctions are less pronounced than they are in more regressive ones. Having shaken free of the Malthusian Trap centuries ago, the question of women assuming military roles in the contemporary West is no longer one of necessity but rather one of luxury--progressive societies are able to more easily afford putting women in harm's way. In the US, for example, the fighting capabilities of soldiers operating small arms and artillery just isn't a crucial or even important determinant of the nation's well being. We're not threatened militarily in any serious way and most of the casualties we do suffer are primarily the consequence of the ideologically-driven strategic decisions we make and tactics we forsake (ie sending marines into firefights in the mountains of Tora Bora and the streets of Baghdad rather than raining hell on these places from 30,000 feet above).

Indulging in the same sort of contemporary bias critically examined above, one might say that, in a historical context, Jeffers' take is an example of the bottom (those forced to equip everyone to fight) and the top (by those able to afford inefficiencies) uniting against the middle (those who are neither compelled by penury nor able to insouciantly engage in profligacy)!

* Anachronistic, yes, but it's historical fiction, not a documentary.

Gays to lose the Darwinian struggle?

Does the understanding that homosexuality is innate--which is generally the consensus among those for whom so much else is inconsistently believed to be shaped by the socio-cultural environment--threaten the sustainability of gayness in the same way the intellectual primacy of evolution is threatened by Darwinists losing the Darwinian struggle? I am not aware of data to address the possibility empirically, but reading about Oscar Wilde's two children made me wonder.

If the germ theory of homosexuality is accurate, then the question is irrelevant. But if sexual preference is genetic in origin (which is admittedly not an idea easily comprehended), does the increasing tolerance of homosexuality as a valid lifestyle, morally on par with heterosexuality (or even superior to it) mean fewer homosexuals will stay in the closet and "live a lie" in pursuing the American dream, including a wife and, more importantly, children?

Why does it seem natural to feel cold toward those who've acquired wealth?

In an Econ Talk podcast a few years back, host Russ Roberts summarizes one of Walter Williams' putatively great economic insights (begins 41:15):

Through most of human history, you got rich stealing from your neighbor; through plunder, taking something that belonged to somebody else by knocking him over the head and grabbing his stuff. But it's only recently that you can get rich by serving your fellow man.

I would be interested in hearing arguments concerning how far this goes in explaining the human evolutionary predisposition toward despising those who have more than one has himself. In pre-agricultural societies, which were far more egalitarian than anything in the contemporary developed world, could this go hand-in-hand with desire to censure cheaters and hoarders? Is there even a difference before agrarian existence begins?

Or might the evolutionary basis for disdain of those who have more have arisen with the onset of settled societies capable of producing and storing excess wealth, and thus allowing for social stratification to occur? Once settled, agricultural societies began coming into existence in the Fertile Crescent 10,000 years ago, those who didn't directly produce began living off the fruits of those who did, often (though not always) against the latters' will, as in the cases of military conquest or taxation. Following the onset of the Industrial Revolution, it is easy to see how Henry Ford's acquisition of wealth improved the lives of the vast majority of the people touched by the cars his company manufactured in the process. It is more difficult to see how ancient and medieval rulers (or any other persons of high social status and great affluence at during this time range) could be perceived in the same glowing light by the commoners of their societies.

For some (especially among those on the political left), acquirers of wealth are presumed to have gained such vast affluence through immoral (or at least ammoral) exploitation or downright theft. I hear Dave Matthews singing:

Caught for stealing somebody's riches? Oh no, no, no, no. But wouldn't you like to retire, with a million bucks? Um, yeah.

Stories that fit this narrative (ie Ken Lay, Bernie Madoff) garner enormous public attention, and the tabloid market thrives off the public's desire to see those at the top fall from grace.

Are these inclinations instinctive due to general mammalian competitiveness, or can they be defined more narrowly as an evolutionary vestiges (at least in the developed world) of a functional disdain for those of great wealth at a time when such was wealth was almost exclusively acquired through value transfer rather than value creation?

If memory serves (although I'm having trouble finding where, specifically), Razib has asserted that humanity is in some ways swinging back toward the dispositions of hunter and gatherer societies. Those of sedentary societies gained after the onset of agriculture but have since peaked and are now in decline, to be replaced by those existing previously. Is this a potential illustration of that phenomenon, or merely an example of someone with no scientific training spinning evolutionary theories to explain why humans act the way they do?