Ed,
At 14:17 09/08/2011, you wrote:
A couple of comments, Keith. One is that I've known strong-willed
and powerful women whose husbands are low status whimps. They
didn't marry them to attain status, but probably because it is nice
to have a husband when attending events.
Too true -- and don't I know it! Yes, there are exceptions. One such
hyperdominant virago I knew played havoc and misery with several
other lives and that is why I left home at 16 years of age just as
soon as I had a job. However, to return to the normal family mode,
another interesting feature of the marrying-up tendency is that,
quite often, women of great abilities find it difficult to find a
satisfying husband. Whereas the minority of males who don't marry and
are subsequently childless tend to be inept or faulty in one way or
another, females who don't marry tend to be altogether superior
specimens. (In the Victorian age we had quite a number of well-heeled
female adventurers who took off and explored the world alone,
impressing Arab Sheikhs, African Chiefs and Indian Maharajahs alike
as they hove to with their steel-like gaze atop camels and donkeys.)
The other concerns gold, as you may have guessed. It may feel
reassuring to think there is something out there that can
ultimately provide the world with the stability it lacks, but I
can't really see anything doing that, not even gold. We live in a
world of quick fixes, and something that prevents governments from
trying to fix quickly doesn't fit anymore.
Well, we'll see -- if you and I live long enough. Just as the world
market previously winnowed out gold as being the best currency so I
think that the central banks of the emergent countries will also
re-legitimize gold when America and Europe finally expire -- buried
up to their necks in useless banknotes.
Keith
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[email protected]>Keith Hudson
To: <mailto:[email protected]>RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME
DISTRIBUTION, ,EDUCATION
Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2011 4:51 AM
Subject: [Futurework] Consequences of our second-strongest instinct
As the stock markets of the world seem on the point of collapse and
likely long-term economic depression looms, let me dwell on a couple
of fundamentals.
The strongest instinct of all is individual survival. In extremis we
have even been known to eat one another. Thus food and water are the
ultimate backing for any currency. A billionaire marooned in a tent
in the middle of the Sahara would spend his last penny if he were to
be offered food and water and taken to safety. He might even spend
his last penny on one cupful of water without any further guarantees.
We don't need any of the biological sciences to tell us the above.
However, for the vast majority of mankind, as yet uneducated in any
of the biological sciences (even in the Western world), we need such
stuff as anthropology or evolutionary biology to tell us what is the
second-most important instinct which we share with 3,000 other
mammalian species.
This is procreation, disguised in practical form as status. The male
of the species needs to have as high a status as possible in order
to have as much sex as possible, in particular with young, healthy,
desirable females. This, of course, can't happen for more than a
small minority of human males, as with other mammals, because of the
50:50 male:female sex ratio. Mao Zedong, the all-powerful dictator
of China for many years was a recent example of an exception (now
that his true life story is being told!). By the age of about 30
years, when our frontal lobes have largely ceased developing, and
potential skills are largely revealed, most males have settled into
an acceptable status role for themselves. It is not that any male
(to my knowledge anyway) will turn down an opportunity to increase
his status, but he won't necessarily strive hard for it. Only
relatively few will continue to be energetic in mid- and older-life
in pursuing higher status intensively in the arts, or sciences, or
politics, or business, or sport (of the gentler sort!) or even in
some obscure hobby or activity.
The general instinctive strategy of the young pubescent female is to
choose as her life partner a male of as high a status as possible
within her social domain as her intelligence, health and beauty
allows. This is our human version of the quality control instinct of
all mammalian species in making sure that the more inept males are
left childless so that their less fortunate genes are not passed
on. In oppressive cultures, parents will do this for her, often
having to entice such a male with a dowry offering.
And, talking of dowries, this immediately brings us back to money
because currency and status are highly correlated in most spheres of
human activity. Even individuals with the finest intellectual minds
who don't usually bother overmuch with conventional status objects
strive for gongs such as Nobel Prizes -- and usually also find
themselves (accidentally?) in higher-paid jobs than the humdrum mental plodder.
Food and water are not convenient items to carry around in exchange
for items which have to do with our second-strongest instinct, so
man has made do with small items which are valuable because of their
rarity. Gold and precious stones are good examples. In fact, as an
economic survival-of-the-fittest phenomenon, gold coins became by
far the best currency to carry around. By the 17th century it was
the universal currency except in a few small isolated islands.
Gold had to be assisted, however, with a cloud of many other
vicarious currencies during the course of the industrial revolution,
because of the sheer volume of money that was being transacted.
Principally (as regards most people most of the time) these
surrogates were banknotes, though they could be exchanged, if
absolutely necessary, with gold. This regime was thrown over
completely, however, in 1914, when major countries started printing
hitherto unimaginable quantities of banknotes to pay for wartime
armaments. After WWII was over, they decided that it was in their
interests to outlaw gold as the currency with which their
electorates had to pay their taxes -- that is, the legal currency.
By printing banknotes, at first modestly and then exuberantly, they
could devalue the cost of their debts.
But, as we are seeing in the past few weeks and months, this trick
never quite came off. The principal paper currencies -- the dollar,
the euro and the renminbi -- have all been devaluing and are now
close to panic mode. Gold, which had never quite lost its currency
status, either in the minds of many ordinary people nor in the
vaults of the central banks, is now re-establishing its basic value
in mirror-like fashion. Central banks of the world, particularly
those of the fast emerging countries, have been buying gold steadily
since the last pseudo currency, the Euro, was instituted in 1999.
If we do, in fact, descend into world-wide economic depression in
the next few days then one thing is for certain. Treasury
economists, central bankers and top politicians will be re-reading
their history books to determine more precisely just what went wrong
in the last century. Then we might have some hope that a dependable
stable world trading currency will follow.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/08/
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/08/
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