on testosterone bullshit and bonobos
testosterone guru – aka the ugliest human on the planet?
I’ve written about testosterone before, here, here, here, here and here (!), but as I’m currently getting just too many ‘testosterone crisis’ pieces on my YouTube feed, I feel the need to return to the fray, with bonobos in mind, of course.
So, there’s nothing particularly wrong about men wanting to boost their testosterone levels, I suppose, but I just think that the focus is wrong. The focus should be on health. If you eat well, exercise daily, sleep effectively (and sleep routines can vary with individuals), and avoid too much stress, your hormone levels will tend to take care of themselves. It’s likely true that testosterone levels have reduced in the WEIRD world in the past few decades, but this doesn’t amount to a crisis. In the same WEIRD world, at least since the sixties, male machismo has become more a focus of derision as female empowerment has become a focus for – well, women. In that period, and especially since the 80s and 90s, physical work has become mechanised, or transferred to non-WEIRD countries – I worked in about five different factories from the 70s to the 90s, all of which have since shut down, as Australia has virtually ceased to be a manufacturing nation.
So men are mostly not doing physical work like they used to. Even so, we’re all living longer. And it’s worth looking at a couple of ‘longevity hotspots’ such as Tuscany, Okinawa, Switzerland, Singapore, and last but not least, here in Australia. Forget looking at the testosterone levels in these regions, look at how they live and the challenges they face. But let me first use a bonobo quote which I may have used before, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Mate competition by males over females is common in many animal species. During mating season male testosterone levels rise, resulting in an increase in aggressive behavior and masculine features. Male bonobos, however, invest much more into friendly relationships with females. Elevated testosterone and aggression levels would collide with this increased tendency towards forming pair-relationships.
It would be interesting to research the apparent fall in testosterone levels in WEIRD nations, to see if there are any links to increased sucking up to women. Or just an increased role in family life, as opposed to the old mostly-absent, hard-working father scenario. Certainly, with the better angels of our nature prevailing, males aren’t dying so much in wars, or limping along in the aftermath, and factories are generally safer or being removed to less affluent parts of the world. I recall reading that, in northern Italy and in Sardinia, the high life expectancy for men is pretty well equal to that for women. Key to this appears to be an active life both physically and socially. Take this blurb from the Visit Italy website, which closely resembles what I’ve learned from an essay on Okinawan society:
Scholars believe that this phenomenon [longevity] is due to a constellation of factors, not only genetic. This is where lifestyle comes into play: a set of practices aimed at a happy, active and inclusive existence. Social relations also seem to be surprisingly decisive when it comes to longevity.
Here people, even when very old, continue to be an integral part of the community and participate in social life. Family ties, in particular, are absolutely solid; there is no room for loneliness or even absolute rest.
Gardening, looking after grandchildren, and cooking are all activities taken very seriously by Sardinian nonni [grandparents], who continue to have as much weight in the family dynamics as their children and grandchildren. Being together and being useful at all ages: could this be one of the secrets to a long life?
Caring and sharing – isn’t this the bonobo way?
And testosterone bullshit goes both ways – it makes you more ‘manly’, whatever that may mean, or it makes you stupid, responding with ‘brute’ violence to situations that require greater (feminine?) nuance. But what makes a person more or less ‘masculine’ according to social norms of masculinity (which are changing, especially in the WEIRD world) involves a huge array of determining factors, including hormone levels of course, but far from confined to them. Focussing more or less solely on testosterone is just dumb male shite.
Humans are evolving, I hope, to become more like bonobos. I’m not against competition and aggression, in its place. I like watching competitive sports, especially soccer, and I’ve enjoyed watching the women’s game progress rapidly in recent years. Unsurprisingly, I’ve noticed that women’s soccer is just as aggressive but with much less of the biffo and play-acting and referee-confronting that you find in the men. There’s also less crowd violence. It just seems ‘unseemly’ to even imagine crowd violence, which generally involves males, at a women’s soccer tournament. Some interesting psychology to unpick there. Bonobos and chimps don’t play sport of course, but they do come close to it, especially as youngsters, chasing each other to get the ‘ball’, whatever it might be, in quite a rough and tumble way. This kind of competitive rough-and-tumble is a feature of cubs and pups and calves etc in thousands of mammalian species, and is set to continue, encouraged and regulated by watchful adults. It’s neither a male nor a female thing. The manufactured testosterone crisis, on the other hand, seems all about ‘maleness’, a tedious fiction that even some women are buying into. What’s most funny about all those ‘boost your testosterone levels’ videos by men is the way these ‘influencer’ guys are built. Truly, I’d rather be dead than look like that!
In my view they just need to be educated about bonobos. Vive les bonobos! Would that we could all be as happy and sexy and caring and sharing as them!
References
https://www.visititaly.eu/history-and-traditions/why-people-in-italy-live-longer-reasons
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