How Evolution Affects the Welfare State
Gender Roles From a Male Perspective That (If Correct,) Dictate and/or Predict the Failure of the Welfare State:
Male and Female. So much about us is the same and yet so much is, and will forever be, different. I was raised by the most feminist woman I know and I have a sister so of course I believe in equal rights for women across the board. That having been said we can still learn a lot by examining the differences between the sexes and I personally find gender roles to be fascinating.
Most of us, I think, can agree that as a whole in general and for the most part (and other bet-hedging cliches), it is the role of the female to bear and raise children and it is the role of the male to do work, to do whatever work necessary to provide for them what it is that they require in order to thrive. Almost all of us feel an inner satisfaction when we realize a fulfillment of these basic instincts. It should be said quickly that both genders clearly posses these instincts together, just in varying degrees in relation to one another.
When examined a bit more closely, these behaviors make sense. We humans are not terribly common in the animal kingdom in the way that we reproduce. We make one baby at a time and it takes a while to get here. Women are unable to perform highly physical acts while pregnant and especially in the later stages of the gestation. Our children are not only born completely helpless, but remain so for quite a long time. Many human females do not survive a birth unassisted by either science or other humans or both. 'In the wild', a human female's last act is, sadly, frequently that of childbirth. The role of the man as the provider becomes even more important in such a tragic event. Even after surviving a birth a woman tends to be temporarily weakened physically, to varying degrees. A new burden is immediately placed on the economic, caloric, and time budget of the entire household and/or small tribal commune. One must stay home and care for, and one must go out and bring back. For various and obvious reasons that I won't list here, (there is a reason we identify with penguins) these roles are almost always populated by the same genders over and over and over throughout time, regardless of global politics, technology, geography, religion, biology, or culture.
What happens to a male population of humans, might we posit, if the political state in which they reside takes up the collective and global role of 'provider' to females and children?
I argue that apathy happens. Apathy on an individual and/or communal and/or cultural and/or societal level.
The 'male chauvanist' (whatever it is called) in me would say that one operating underlying instinct of females is to find a provider for their child during their many months of physical 'inability' due to pregnancy followed immediately by a period of pure devotion to a helpless new life, and then again followed by many years of dependent yearning from that same said helpless and adorable little life. Who provides these resources for the child and the new mother? It must be the family and the household all as one but it also must be the father. The male of strong age. The male of favor. To be with the woman and to have been able to conceive this little addition to the gene pool in the first place is a blessing to him and he must work for that blessing. If he treats it all with any less than his full attention, he is forgetting his natural place and ignoring the consequences.
If the State takes over this role, this role of 'provider of things', you will breed a population of apathetic menfolk. You are going against nature and you have forgotten the cardinal rule: 'Nature Always Wins'.
The male no longer feels as though he can or, must, adequately provide for his own on his own and thus regresses to his basest instincts of behavior of copulating with whoever and whatever sexual partner will accept him, with the full knowledge that the State will provide for his females and his inevitable reckless offspring. The female no longer must be nearly as picky as to whom she copulates with as The State is already her assured future provider. So now she also regresses to her own basest behavior. The behavior of both is then reinforced as the norm in the new generation of humans that are bred and the cycle repeats itself, populates at an increased rate due to the assuredness of governmental provision, and finally becomes an ingrained cultural phenomenon reinforced by political and religious dogma. This population will always vote itself a raise. The ability to survive in any other way is no longer a known entity. It is essentially not an option. They have successfully bred themselves a generation of the inept and ignorant. And the cogent paid for it to happen. Can we elevate this situation? Can we do anything about this?
The welfare state is not tenable on a genetic level. We have all long known that socialism works on paper to any degree we want but only works in reality at a very small degree. This is because socialism, as a whole, discounts the true nature of mankind toward greed and self interest. Of course we are greedy and self interested! Every life form that has ever seen success on this planet is greedy and self interested! It is not an aspect of ourselves that can be voted or prayed away.
Socialism can not work when tested against human nature and the biology of all known life. It cannot on a global, national, or even 'City-State' level. It can only work for good in very small numbers of humans in very small tribes or clans. A large or extended family unit. The family unit is THE functioning unit of the mechanism that drives not only human culture, but biological human evolution.
Any level above 'very large family' size and socialism becomes a genetically detrimental philosophy. At the genetic level we must acknowledge that the satisfaction of our base instincts, namely survival and procreation, must be held as sacrosanct individually acquired and accounted for traits. We protect our line of DNA (the family) against other lines. We must. To do otherwise is to deny the very nature of our animalism and is to be, quite literally, backwards.
