In a conversation with another member of FW I once made a forecast that
when Tony Blair had resigned as Prime Minister he would then be so ashamed
of his support for Bush's invasion of Iraq that we would hear no more of
him and that he would slide into oblivion.
I had the precedent of Sir Anthony Eden in mind. After attempting to
assassinate President Nasser of Egpyt (for nationalizing the Suez Canal) in
1956, and then attempting to invade the country in a secret collusion with
France and Israel, he then had to withdraw after pressure from America. A
medical condition was invented for him and he left the country for a while.
He'd wanted to remain as Prime Minister apparently but he was then
manoeuvered out of office and he retired to a house in the Wiltshire
countryside. Although he wrote a highly acclaimed memoir and was made Earl
of Avon he hardly showed his face again in public.
I was partly wrong in Tony Blair's case. After his resignation he went on
to make a fortune around the world from lectures, mainly in America and,
under the Old Pal's Act, was made some sort of wunderkind for the problems
of the Middle East. However, even though he has a couple of expensive
houses, and made a brief semi-public excursion at a friend's medical clinic
during the recent General Election, he has hardly shown his face at all in
his own country in the last two years. He is obviously too ashamed of the
way he persuaded the House of Commons and the public on the basis of a
flimsy pretext that Saddam Hussein could rain missiles on this country at
45 minutes' notice. Essentially it was a lie and he's been found out
(increasingly so as the evidence mounts in the in the present Chilcot Enquiry).
Much the same applies -- this time in aces -- to Gordon Brown. Both as
Chancellor for ten years in the Labour Government and Prime Minister for
two he had been increasingly rumoured to be an office bully of the very
worst sort -- and fully revealed more recently in two books by those who
knew him well when in office. He bullied all around him and even Tony Blair
himself. After losing the recent General Election, Brown left London and
retired to his constituency home in Kirkaldly, Scotland, from which he
hasn't stirred since. Unlike Tony Blair, no top jobs have been found for
him, he's been on no lecture tours and his previous closest sycophants have
turned on him. Apparently, he says he will resume his seat in the House of
Commons when the Labour Party selects its new leader but it's doubtful
whether he'll ever do so, or even show his face in London again. His shame
and loss of status is such that I wouldn't be surprised if he commits suicide.
This is not meant to be a piece of Schadenfreude at Gordon Brown's expense.
Rather, it is to reinforce a constant theme in my thinking and writing --
the importance of status, particularly in the male. Second to eating food,
it is the strongest genetic predisposition the male has. Without status a
male can never acquire a partner or have sex -- unless he pays spot-price
for it or rapes someone.
All normally raised boys compete with one another for status long before
puberty while the rear cortex is developing and his sensory and physical
skills are being fully potentiated. During frontal cortex development after
puberty when much more subtle social and intellectual skills are being
refined in preparation for adulthood, competition for rank order continues
in all sorts of other ways, too. Usually it is largely over by the age of
about 30. Most young men "know their place" or, perhaps are content with
only modest advancement within their social or work circle as they grow
older. However, given that modern society consists of many circles -- and
highly stratified ones, too -- then there is no limit to the energy of the
highly ambitious as they seek higher and higher levels of wealth and/or power.
Sooner or later, even the most able and the most ambitious reach the limits
of their social standing. They will either be checked by fate -- or
"exogenous" circumstances as economists like to say -- or by someone else
(often a younger aspirant with more energy coming upstream ). They will
become depressed to a greater or lesser extent by how deep their loss of
status turns out to be, or how long it endures.
The male walrus dominates -- or even kills -- all other male walruses in
his vicinity as he acquires his harem of dewey-eyed females. Most mammalian
males have other methods of showing off their rank order to females than by
brute strength -- by their energy, their voice, their wiliness, their body
coloration, by their imaginative displays, or whatever. Humans do so even
more subtley -- by their clothing and speaking voice (to show their social
class), by their income, by their profession, by their possessions, by
their characteristics of dependabilty, etc. All these principally show his
economic value to a female who wants to be married and be looked after
comfortably and securely while they have children.
Once again -- second to food only -- status is the strongest driving force
of all, whether it's modest or excessive, whether in society or in
economics. Without the mechanism of male status, sex wouldn't occur at all,
nor the next generation ever appear. The sooner that economists are taught
the modern findings of evolutionary biology the better. The sooner that
economists realize that their subject is actually perfused by one powerful
theme and one theme only -- the relative adjustments of status throughout
the life of an individual, or class, or firm, or culture or country.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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