Vanessa Woods on Bonobos over Chimps

LIke many people, I've been thinking about why humans are so violent towards each other for a long time. After 30 or 40 years of considering the topic, I have concluded that the root cause is patrilineage. I am not blaming men here. This is about a cultural structure that is not sustainable in the natural order of things and therefore requires violence to maintain. Part of that violence is patriarchy which has as it's core purpose the support of patrilineage. If you doubt that patrilineage is an unnatural, unsustainable cultural construct, just think about it. What do you know for sure about a baby's parentage? It's mother - that is hard ot miss. But how do you know who the father is? Well, you could ask the mother. But what if it's critical to know who the father is, independent of the mother's testimony? Well, you have to controll the women all the time from puberty onwards. That is violence in itself. And then if men want to control who the father is, and it's a matter of their status and ego, then they are going to need to control women's activities, by force if necessary. And I'm not blaming men because women are the carriers of culture and these systems cannot continue without the active support and participation by women from generation to generation. I believe this system and the resulting rigid sex-role stereotypes hurt men and women alike. But it is the root cause of violence in my opinion.