YOUNG BUCKS

Normally I make one post a day, but since I’m only quoting here, I thought I'd just run it in as an extra.  The content is important and male-on-male, though not MSM.  Brits are keen students of social order, having struggled mightily with it for a millennium or so.  In America we try to deny and suppress it and therefore it sneaks back on us in Evil ways, clever as the Devil.

This is from a correspondent on H-ANIMAL@H-NET.MSU.EDU , John A.W. Lock.

For semi-domestic animals I would point you at the various studies on deer - deer parks are the only opportunity most people get to see such multi-age cohort groups of male animals. . . . 

And no, not every male gets to be a "stud". You do get harem sharing in fallow deer but neither male is happy about it. 

... It's all part of learning how to become a senior buck within the socio-economic culture of that particular park. . . .

The first lesson a young fallow buck has to learn is how to break off a fight.  [My emphasis. pm]  It's a pre-req for engaging in a fight because the other animal will assume you know your limits and will do as much as he needs to make you run away. Male "prey animals" never intend to kill their rivals, it just happens, and it's just plain bad luck, a slip, a dodgy antler spike etc. I've only seen it happen a couple of times - it's very rare - and the victor has been nonplussed by his combatant's decision to go to sleep in the middle of a bout. 

Concerning the human animal, I got this from www.goodmenproject.com. http://ow.ly/jNfz3    It’s also from an English writer, Nick Clements.  

A few years later I worked in a Children’s Home, and the boys were amongst the most outrageously loud characters I’d ever met. In the confines of the Home they strutted like peacocks, they were Alpha males, but, during the course of any bus journey from the Home into town, they slowly transformed from cocky arrogant hooligans into timid quiet sheep. For some time this transformation puzzled me, and then I realised why it occurred. As kids from a Home they wore second hand clothes, they had hand-me-downs, not the latest fashions. The Home kids were intimidated by the clothes the ‘normal’ kids on the bus wore, and it radically affected their behaviour and sense of status.

I am employed to train social and care workers to work with teenagers; as a starting point I introduce them to the concept of ‘pecking order’.  Teenagers seek out and want to know where they stand in the pecking order. There are any number of pecking orders to be joined, they cover a wide spectrum of activities—appearance, behaviour, football, sports, fashion, gaming, school, etc. They can be very specialised, or they can be generic, they are the equivalent of league tables: we can be high in some and low in others. They have always been there, and each generation of teens creates their own new structures and frameworks, as well as rules and regulations. . . .

In my experience, the creation of pecking orders is a very healthy and normal part of life. It has always accompanied adolescence and the onset of puberty. It can on occasions become a very painful, spiteful and antagonistic forum. Rejection from your order is devastating, just as acceptance can be liberating. In each of the pecking orders there will be jostling and fighting for places amongst the Alphas, Betas and Gammas.

The Alphas try to stay ahead of the Betas by re-organising the specifications, exerting their power; the Betas fight amongst themselves for ascendancy and validation; and the Gammas, being subservient to their Alpha masters, do all the dirty jobs.

Many of the professionals I teach don’t like the concept of pecking order, especially the division into classes or factions, they feel such a state of affairs is inappropriate and divisive. I have worked with teenagers since 1975, and in that time I have been through my own transformative journey, as well as witnessing behavioural patterns which re-occur generation after generation. It is true what these other professionals say about pecking orders, but I have also observed it to be normal and expected. We shouldn’t suppress it; by doing so, we will only make it more extreme. We need to work alongside it.

Adolescents need to have peer appraisal and assessment, otherwise they won’t know who they truly are. If they don’t try to step up to their pecking orders, they will remain judging themselves by their parents’ criteria, not their peers. Peer appraisal can be harsh by other people’s (outsiders’) standards.

Within the framework of any newly forming pecking order there is continual posturing and competition. This needs to be channelled in such a way that it doesn’t lead to violence, intolerance and hatred, and this is mostly the case. As with competition in nature, 99% of the time it remains posturing—bravado—challenge and risk without going too far. I encourage the professionals to let these jostlings occur naturally and not to interfere. Pecking orders often give adolescents a sense of belonging, which they haven’t had before.

People can gain strength from their Gamma status in the pecking order, however lowly and demeaning this may appear to others. A few years ago I worked in the wilderness with a diverse group of teenagers, some from social services and others from well-off backgrounds. They divided and kept separate for the majority of the time, occasionally pushing the boundaries of their groupings, but mostly remaining in their social class. Early one morning I sat with the kids from social services. We poked sticks into the fire, we brewed tea, we chatted and laughed ,and there was a strong feeling of bond, mutual support, and camaraderie. After a while one of the boys from the other group woke up and came to join us at the fire. Through no fault or action of his, the atmosphere changed instantly: it became awkward and silent. The boys I was with withdrew; they chose to maintain the status quo.

To some extent the magic was lost, but it was also safer and more secure for those boys to inhabit familiar territory. The social standing to which these boys were conforming can be likened to the ‘Geeks and Jocks’ of America. As teenagers, the majority of us know which side of the divide we stand. Accepting our place can enable us paradoxically to gain status. Those geeks who know they are geeks, can attempt to become Alpha geeks.  In recent years the portrayal of the geek as hero has become a strong motif in Hollywood, and it has shifted the balance of power.

So, despite apparent lowly status, boys can find self belief and confidence within their social group. ‘Belonging’ is a very powerful thing, and it reflects knowing your limitations and strengths. When I talked later about the incident with the boys this came over very strongly in their discussion. They said they were happy for the Alpha boys to be in charge of the fire most of the time, to make things happen, and they observed such actions with detachment and humour. That morning, through circumstance, they’d taken control of the fire for a period of time; they’d taken control on their terms and in their own particular way. Not stacking loads of wood and creating a huge conflagration, but sticking in the ends of sticks and making them glow. This had made them happy. As one of the lads said, ‘I don’t want to be so aggressive and competitive. That kind of behaviour looks very exhausting to me.’

BOYS AND OLD MEN

Even the president is now interested in the black box of our brain where things happen whether we want them to or not.  Or whether we even know they just happened/are happening, which could be an advantage.  I wanted to speculate a bit about “ethology”, the study of animal behavior, and I wanted to focus on young males in the transition between childhood and sexual maturity -- not complete maturity because I’m not sure that’s a state that’s ever reached in humans.  

The latest twist on that category is that these days we are said to have two middle-ages:  early and late.  (They always choose inspiring names, eh?  At least they’re easy to remember, unlike the 19^th century practice of using Latin.)  I guess it’s a recognition of something like mid-life crisis, in which some men have either earned the basics or have passed their physical prime -- or given that they are human, the culture around them has changed enough that they may have to change jobs or the way they do them.

Let’s go back.  When male children of any species begin to be sexual, their behavior is not yet useful to the group because they can create progeny that they can’t defend, so they’re in a sort of limbo, a drain on the rest.  In most species, including humans, they will clump up into a group of young bachelors, who have adventures while they learn skills and try to dominate each other until a pecking order emerges.  For males, pecking orders are emotionally crucial.  For evolution, pecking orders are key.

Let’s go back again.  Plants are the ultimate prey, the base of the food chain -- algae and grass.  But next up the food chain is the animal prey: the grazers who always form groups and herds and prairie dog villages, which have populations that turn over all the time as some are devoured and others mature.  They don’t usually die of old age. The weak or ill or malformed or simply different (white crows) sometimes get thrown out or at least crowded to the edge where they are easy to stalk.  The ones that are speedy, stick together, eat-fast/digest-later, and sleep in the middle of the day in some secret place, survive longer.  But their real secret of success is to breed and breed and breed until they have eaten Australia.  Also, they have bulgy eyes and look out the sides of their heads like birds.

Now the predators who eat other animals.  They tend to be loners (big cats) unless they are hunting herds on grasslands where it helps to have a pack (canines and lions) that can cut individuals out of the mass.  Cats have binocular vision because their eyes are in the front of their heads like apes, which helps to climb trees and judge distance, so they can drop on their prey.  Lions are whole families and cheetahs are fast.  You could build a workshop for humans around that.  ("What’s your cat type?")  Because humans, like grizzlies and pigs, will eat anything and so it helps to have a variety of types within the species.  The more animals can exploit a variety of prey-niches, the more the species is likely to succeed.  In fact, under some conditions, predator animals will eat each other.  Hoofed animals do that only when they have given birth and are ingesting a placenta.

But prey animals, like horses or buffalo, will kill their rivals without eating them.  The rivals who suffer are those that are lesser endowed. (However that’s defined -- always remember that gorillas have small “packages” and their work is protecting the group, which they do mostly by making an intimidating hullabaloo.) Youngest males and oldest males are easily discarded by the group.  Old males often become solitary and hide out for their own protection.  Cassowaries in the New Guinea jungle and bison on the federal Moiese, Montana, bison range both do this.  On the buffalo roundup, riders are told to use caution around the brushy coulee bottoms and, if they see an old bull there, just note him and leave him alone. They’re bad tempered -- what do they have to lose?

Old male humans also find places to lay-up and can be cranky if disturbed.  My great-grandfather, widowed, tried to live with my grandfather’s family but made so much trouble he had to be asked to leave.  He died in an SRO hotel in Minneapolis as though he were alcoholic or an ex-felon when his only crime was a bad temper.  He was a skilled and educated man.  His wife, when she was diagnosed with cancer, had gone to her sisters in Oklahoma who took care of her and tolerated him.   I don’t know why it is almost comforting to think about family matters in this abstract, analytical way.  Nor do I understand why there is a strong taboo in most families about ever admitting anything of the kind when the patterns are clearly so natural in the most literal sense.  

Much of modern urban human vulnerability seems to come from the loss of the extended family that was natural in previous economic arrangements.  It’s a loss of social habitat.  Often extended rural families had room for immature boys and troublesome old men.  There was space on land for them to keep busy away from each other.  I’m impressed when I stop at a Hutterite colony to buy vegetables.  The communities have a strong sense of order and roles.  When you park, an old man or two will come out to meet you, to see what you want.  Always there are satellite boys who might boldly accompany the old man, or might be hanging around the edges of buildings so they can step back to be hidden.  Evidently it depends on the personality of the old man and how much your appearance makes the boys curious.

Once one of these boys took refuge with two alcoholic old men in my neighborhood but the boy’s father came to try to make him go home.  The ruckus of shouting and slamming attracted me and I went to see what was happening the way a cat will attend any commotion in case of mice running out.  The mice were emotions between the boy and his father -- there was no violence -- waves of desperate defiance and accusation on the part of the boy and helpless yearning on the part of the father.  The deputy sheriff came and took over so I don’t know what finally happened.  I suppose I can make it into a short story, because writers are always predators.  (Sometimes prey.)

If I were writing it as a short story and wanted to make it realistic, I would tell how the boy left walking on the highway, ended up in the underworld of Denver, got hooked on drugs, was killed in a holdup at a convenience store where the clerk was not much older than he was, but the clerk was from a foreign country where waves of war had taught children about lethal defense. So he was alert and armed.  Neither boy would ever have a middle age, let alone two middle ages.  Who’s fault is it?  Why is that relevant anyway?