Interdependence of Instincts
The following thoughts are limited to mammals:
In the first posting, I listed three main instincts, that make a man a hazard to me, if any one of these instincts is stronger than rationality. But those instincts are not independent.
Both, the saksual (misspelling for the purpose to avoid to be found in filthy men's searches) instinct and the dominance instinct are a consequence of the procreation instinct, enabling success.
I use the expression dominance instinct for the instinctive drive to fight for a high position in a hierarchy of power, because the power gives advantage in the competition for scarce resources.
The urge to procreate is not limited to the mere survival of a species, but to produce a surplus of members as a part of the carnivorous food chain. Mice breed, and a part of the population is eaten by foxes, foxes breed and a part is eaten by wolves. Even humans in prehistoric times had reasons to breed surplus, because they were part of the diet of bears, lions and tigers.
The result of progress in technology has led to the overpopulation of the earth. Not only because of ecological reasons, but also, because some areas are not suitable for human settlement. People are forced or compelled to live, where earthquakes, floods and tornadoes, extreme heat make live a hazard, so that the area is not really suitable for living in safety. People slave away years of their live to build houses and then in a short moment all is destructed. In California, an earthquake of a catastrophic magnitude is expected in the near future. Wise people would move to safe places. But considering the general overpopulation, there are not enough safe areas on this globe for all people.
Usually there are roughly as many males as females in any species. But there is a discrepancy between the reproduction time of males, that is much shorter than that of females due to the duration of pregnancy.
As a consequence, many animals like lions form groups, in which one male controls a harem of several females.
But this is also practiced in some human societies. I once read a book about traditional African villages and family life. A compound starts with a hut for the man, and a hut for wife number one. As soon as she has the first child, she is put on hold, the man marries a second wife, who gets her own hut, and she has his attentions, until she also has a child. Depending on the man's financial power, he might get more wives. When the child of a wife is old enough to be weened, she then again gets the macho's attentions, until she has another child.
The rule, that a man may have four wives, is even written into the coran.
Logically, when some males take control over the fertility of several females each, others are left without a mate. While there can be environments, where there is sufficient food for every body without fighting for it, there are never as many fertile females as males want to have by the instinct for procreation.
Thus a high instinct for procreation in a male leads only to breeding success, if there is also enough of a dominance instinct to acquire the fertile females.
But then there is the another question. When the procreation instinct is lower than rationality, can there still be a high dominance and saksual instinct, either both or one? I think this is possible, when there is no attitude of a balance of giving and receiving, but the selfish strive for advantages. Narcissists driven by the entitlement and grandiosity delusion could be examples. This is another example, where delusions could be connected to instincts.
Education, especially during the early years of course has some influence. Religions in some form promise reward for breeding and punishment for not breeding especially by active prevention. Lucky those, for whom education and the instinctive inclination were congruent, where those with a high procreation instinct were encouraged by their religion, and where those with a low procreation instinct were raised in a secular environment.
But unlucky those, who have a low procreation instinct but are brainwashed into having offspring that they do not really want, especially women, who are tied down by an unwanted burden for many years.
In modern western societies, when contraception and abortion are available, many women have only one or maybe two children, some stay childfree, and some regret to have as many children as they have. Before medicine had progressed so far, until a few hundred years ago, having children was all married women's fate, and while it was common to have more than a dozen children, it is very questionable, if the women wanted so many.
The only way to avoid pregnancy was to fend their husbands off as much as possible.
But if the man had to fight for gaining control over the woman and felt an urge to do so, then this means, that he was driven by a high procreation and high dominance instinct. Logically, that if he has successfully gained dominance over other men, that he generalises his instinctive tendency and dominates also the females. The male, who is driven by all three instincts and his target are females, could be called a macho by instinct.
The macho, who had to fight hard to gain a position of power first by competing with other men to acquire a woman and then with her to gain control over her fertility wants his reward by getting as many offspring as bearers of his genes, else he would not have struggled.
But if the woman wants to have as few children as possible, it makes me wonder, why men by evolution have become stronger than women. Maybe to be able to force dominance and procreation upon unwilling women? I wonder, if there were smaller populations, if men were not stronger than women, if men could not force procreation upon women.
Maybe as a reaction to how machos use power over women, some women compensate their helpless feelings by the power over the children, maybe some even have children to have someone to have power over.
Being a woman dominated by a man, who is stronger and driven by instincts has been a dire fate all through prehistory and history.
Being a woman with high rationality in a world, where most men are driven by macho instincts, she has a difficult situation to protect herself.
