The Judo Principle
The principle of judo is to use your opponent’s strength against him, by guiding it rather than resisting it. A recent Australian campaign against reckless driving, aimed specifically at young men, has adopted the same approach with respect to cognitive biases. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1985802.ece
The traditional campaign, emphasizing the risks involved with speeding by showing graphic road crashes, was ineffective. This is as would be predicted by evolutionary psychology. Young males of many species engage in risky behaviour in order to signal their extraordinary prowess to women. A man who succeeds, mates, and one who fails might as well be dead anyway, in evolutionary terms. The traditional campaign assumes that young male speeders don’t realize their behaviour is risky, when in fact they speed because it’s risky. I wouldn’t be surprised if the campaign actually increased the incidence of dangerous speeding by young men.
The new campaign encourages women to signal a small penis by wiggling their pinky at speeders, a sign which apparently signals a small penis. This hits the mark, in evolutionary terms. But will it work? If women in fact find men who are successful risk takers to be more attractive, I doubt that an advertising campaign will make men believe otherwise. If the campaign succeeds it will be a fascinating example of the triumph of culture over nature. It’s worth a try.
Anyone have any other applications of the judo principle?
The irony is that he is probably speeding/acting out because of the exact same “signaling” that is now quite ironically intended to shame him into lawful behavior. The government’s support of the notion that there could theoretically be nothing more shaming (worse than public stockade of public shackles in the town square) than the fact of this linkage of less than adequate masculinity with the size of the organ, lends further fuel to the fire of such young boys. “You know how important it is” is the message which creates the same problem of shame and inadequacy on the part of those who may not have felt the need to engage in the behavior if the worth and virtue of their masculinity was not unnaturally linked to the male sexual organ’s arbitrary size. I’ve got buds w/ big ones (in part from testosterone…obviously) who are far more aggressive than shy-guy men with smaller penises. This is an example of how deteriorated, berzerk, and out of control we’ve become. Growing up in a small town in a very rough-neck part of the Western united states I used to cringe at the “No Fat Chicks” bumper stickers. And when my mother’s “boyfriend” would haggle her about going on a diet… (we’ll we won’t say what happened to his car) it really bugged me as an adolescent boy being raised by a single mother. My sister couldn’t have benefited from that stuff either. I was the only “man” of our house. My dad has a very, very large penis. What was the “size” of his pathetic failed masculinity? And my mom was hot (by Cosmo magazine standards) when he left w/ other "stud" buddies to hunt or whatever. For every non-speeder man with a smaller “urination organ”, for each guy sitting on the sidelines who by chance is small… you just criminalized/punished him by demeaning (and linking to some degree his social worth and presumed “virtue”) to something he was born with. Many guys won't even care. But thats not totally on whose behalf I'm writing this. It's bad enough (and i don't know aussie tv... but 'yall watch are hollywood orgy of sex/violence) when it is a private tv show filled with sexual imagery and objectification but now the government apparently has lended it's "big hand(s)" to the cultural stew. The pre-pubescent children whose sexual boundaries are crossed by this subconscious metaphor and submliminal “messaging”: you have not only demeaned the boys, but you have … like a child-molester in a certain way… sexually violated the innocence of children by bringing this into their young minds and hearts. Even when patriarchy was the norm, things never went so far as to infect the public mind and involve kids. You see that's where I draw the line. Adult men and women will always be in a crazy tango... But if you stand around, and i know i only sometimes have the guts to say this when not on a discussion board, if you stand around and do nothing, soon enough... well. You're a pervert child molester yourself. Period. My opinion of Australians (and most parts of America are the same so ‘aint feigning no self-flattery …this is your language right?...) is much less than it was 15 minutes ago.
It does seem plausible that risk taking might have evolved in part to impress other men, so long as the risks in question were less than the risks of involved in personal combat. And that does seem likely, or else men would just fight it out over women rather than engaging in signaling. Of course, many species do just fight it out -- so I wonder why some species apparently evolved signaling strategies as well?