It's not something I'd expect most non-Indians to notice immediately, but the whole "politicians promise toilets" thing has been a common scam in India for decades. It's a very easy thing to promise, and frequently half-delivered if at all. Getting a toilet built and safely maintained is almost as rare as a cold-email from Nigeria following through with the million dollars they promised.
Why has this been flagged? The article by itself is an interesting nuanced take. Was it flagged due to the extremely poor quality of comments here or due to people down voting the article?
It's a controversial topic. Many of us "westerners" don't "get" some aspects of Muslim culture. It's hard to express the puzzlement in a way that doesn't offend. I do try to ask diplomatically, but my ability to articulate such sticky subject matter in a seamless way is apparently limited. Please have patience.
I don't understand your comment. Are we commenting on the same article? As far as I can tell this article is about Modi and how the Gates foundation is wrong in its decision to award Modi.
The article speaks about how the Clean India Mission is a farce in reality. It speaks about the NRC which ironically, despite its original intent, ended up rendering a majority of Hindus stateless. It speaks about the completely undemocratic lock down of Kashmir.
How is any of this related to Muslim culture? Or do you think any anti Modi article is by some odd definition, decidedly pro Muslim? That's like saying any anti Trump article is definitely anti American. Muslims are referred to almost as many times as Dalit, Christians and Jews. Show we question their culture as well?
Don't dress your bigotry in the garb of pseudo intellectualism.
Religious flamewar is not ok here. We've banned this account.
I had hoped that perhaps you were improving after the last few dozen of your accounts that we've banned. Would you please consider just following the site guidelines? I don't really see what you're getting out of vandalizing HN, or why you would want to create so much extra work for us. It just takes resources away from making HN more interesting, which I assume you must value or you'd be spending your spare hours elsewhere.
Every powerful tool gets co-opted by devils. The devil is not interested in co-opting weak tools. He want's the most powerful ones. The devil wants to corrupt the highest good, the highest truth. So you proclaiming that you have the highest good and highest truth only attracts the devil closer.
Is the problem here that a person with Islamic beliefs wrote this op-ed? Not sure how well you read the piece, because the actual problem in TFA is the author's assertion that Narendra Modi's Hindu beliefs are responsible for people dying.
The Bible, including New Testament, doesn't forbid slaves either. It was common and accepted practice in Roman times. If you lose a battle, you become a slave. That was considered a fact life then. (A great motivator to win, I must say.)
I suspect polygamy may be the culprit. It makes males have to be ultra-competitive in order to mate such that they are overly aggressive. If some have multiple wives, it means others have zero wives, since there wouldn't be enough females to go around. When competition becomes all or nothing, mayhem and war are the result.
Even if the all-or-nothing competition itself doesn't create more aggressiveness, for the sake of argument, the larger percentage of unmarried men means more men have higher levels of testosterone, being that individual testosterone levels go down once one marries and has kids. That's a medical fact, not speculation. And testosterone on average makes one more aggressive.
Thus, the first part of this theory is indeed speculative, but the second part is pretty much a mathematical truth.
I'm not trying to offend, just presenting an intriguing theory.
> being that individual testosterone levels go down once one marries and has kids. That's a medical fact, not speculation. And testosterone on average makes one more aggressive.
The first part is true, but the later one is false. Testosterone on does not makes one more aggressive, a medical fact researcher started to figure out in the last 30 years or so and have instead found a much better theory what testosterone do and why it so easily get associated with aggression. Testosterone increase the amount of energy a person will spend on defending challenges to social status.
Imagine a male baboon that just raised to alpha status of a flock after a difficult and dangerous fight with the previous alpha male. This is the point where testosterone production spikes. If the new alpha male get challenged and loose then any gained chance of mating would be lost. In addition all the energy and risk of injury that was just spent on rising to the top would be wasted effort.
A low ranking male baboon however might find a better strategy to lay low and wait for a opportunity, such as the moment after someone above them have just been in a fight. If they get challenged and loose then there isn't as much of a loss. A optimal strategy is thus to modulate how much energy is spent on defense based on how high the probability for mating is and how high the risk is that someone else might try to take it away.
The role of testosterone, a sex hormone, should maybe not come as an surprise as being the method in which the body inform itself of this. It also make sense that marriage and having kids reduces the need for high testosterone. You loose social status and the negative effect is not as bad. A better strategy might be to reserve energy and maybe focus on raising the offspring you already have.
That's an interesting point, but I'm not sure research on apes can be directly applied to humans. In general for human populations, if a group feels like they've gotten a raw deal on the basics like food, shelter, and sex; they riot or war. Anger over disappearing factories is partly why you-know-who got elected, who promised to shake things up and rattle the establishment. They felt slighted. Normally somebody that controversial and undiplomatic wouldn't get elected.
Animals studies is where the findings are easiest to see but of course there is human studies that investigate the same aspects, and yes those align with the finding of the animal studies.
The most common method is with some form of economical game where in an experimental setting you either reward either aggression or cooperation, and then inject half the participants with testosterone and the other with a placebo. The finding of that is just as I mentioned above, ie that regardless if cooperation or aggression is rewarded, what correlate with testosterone is how much effort is spent on defending a position. If it is cooperation, then cooperation goes up after injecting testosterone. The real life example that a professor in neuroendocrinologist gave is that if you inject a buddhist monk with testosterone the expected results, considering their culture, would be increased zen-like behavior.
The reason testosterone get associated with aggression is that zen-like behavior is not the common cultural appropriate response to being challenged. Lets imagine the case of a man disrespecting an other man (a different word for challenging someone socially) by cutting a waiting line in front of an other man. Testosterone would in that case amplify what ever the cultural appropriate behavior is for defending their social status, which in many places of the world would be a violent response. From the outside that would look very much like aggression.
The common difference between animal studies and human is not that animals and humans has fundamental different biology or behavior in regard to impulses, but rather that humans tend to use it more novel and complex way. Loosing your job can easily be converted to a feeling of loosing social status, especially if someone or a group can be made to be the perceived as taking that social status.
In a rather fascinating study researcher looked at sport fans and found that their biology mimicked the social status effect of their teams. Fans testosterone went up if their team won, or down when it lost. A similar effect has been found in primary elections, where men on the winning side gain testosterone after the election results was announced.
Missing out on marriage is a big loss of status. By your reasoning, one then seeks to find a way, any way, to regain status. You can't find it in marriage (in the short term), so you try to find it some other way. You take bigger risks, which may include battle and violence. In general, people in the bottom rung of status "classes" take bigger risks because they have less to lose. It makes sense that evolution would result in such beings taking bigger gambles, which can result in societal chaos in modern societies. If you have a reasonable chance of reproducing as things are, you tend to play it safe. If don't, then then playing it safe is not a good numerical strategy.
If somebody's chance of reproducing is say 2%, they may start to think, "Hey, if me and a bunch of other losers invade the next town, my chance of "getting some" goes up to 5%." The math of evolution would favor such behavior.
You see it in sports also: if your team is are clearly losing, you gamble more with "tricky" plays and perhaps cheating, which may result in interceptions (losing possession of the ball) and/or penalties.
I should point out this is probably a factor with any inequality, not just marriage. Pitchforks come out when enough feel left behind.
> Missing out on marriage is a big loss of status.
No, it doesn’t work like that. Not getting something which you never had is not a loss in status. And only loss in status is affected by testosterone, not any possible gains in status.
I.e. only people who feel they are losing something which they feel they currently have are affected by testosterone.
This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Just because polygamy is permissible doesn't mean it's practiced in a widespread manner, not to mention you don't even know what percentage of marriages are polygamous.
If some have multiple wives, it means others have zero wives, since there wouldn't be enough females to go around.
Historically, following a war, there are too few husbands to go around. In strictly monogamous cultures, the result is that some women cannot find a husband and additionally typically have to also put up with harassment over their lack of a husband and children.
You appear to be doing a great deal of speculating without gathering much in the way of data to support your conclusions. This isn't exactly a best practice.
I understand that the wording is not very intelligent and even malevolent, and, what is interesting, if you abstract that's how I would imagine an accurate description would sound out of an internet troll's mouth.
Narrative and contexts are extremely important, in this case, Islam has been historically (and still is) of the strictest religions (if not The). With precisely described and followed rules for entering (conversion), and exiting (death is the only exit on papers, but majority are quite moderate and the worst you'll get is a disappointed kick in the butt by your family), and about "universal" way everyone should live their live.
And specifically due to this "strictness" (easy to convert and "impossible" to break out) we see the "popularity" of this religion on the World's Map, and also due to this "strictness" modern views and prejudices have been formed as it is very easy for a small group of extremists to take it over the top.
This is a softer form of religious flamewar in its own right. Please don't post arguments about to HN which religion is the worst. It can lead nowhere good.
Also history is fascinating! Just a couple centuries ago the roles were reversed! Middle east is the cradle of the math as we know it! While West and Europe were busy with crusades and inquisitions, they were doing math and science in Alexandria. Wonder how things will play out in a couple hundred years from now.
There are lots of articles about how Americans have become increasingly cynical and dismissive of science. Who knows, maybe another reversal will occur in a hundred or so years, with Americans abandoning science and the Middle East abandoning religion.
