Polymath

Why Was Everyone in History Always Killing Each Other? The Moral Psychology of Our Ancestors

Crucifixions, feudalism, caste systems, torture, slavery: all centralised states, from the beginning of civilisation in the 4th millennium BCE until very, very recently, saw all of these as totally normal. There's a reason why 'Horrible Histories' wasn't called 'Really Quite Pleasant, Actually, Histories.' But why? How did these societies- our ancestors- view morality, what did they perceive as morally right or wrong, and when did that change?This is a long video, but it explores the root causes of this in a thorough, evidence-based way. And it's not just my opinion- on this channel, it never is. I've spent the last half a decade studying the academic literatures of political science, history, psychology, and more, and in this video I'm integrating multiple different consensuses from experts in multiple different fields to give you a genuinely evidence-based answer.This video is a combined synthesis of loadsss of different scientific theories, sociological surveys, analyses of primary sources, and expert conclusions. None of this is my own 'hot take' or bias: I'm only interested in soaking up knowledge from people who have more understanding in this than I do, and then transmitting that knowledge to you.Thanks very much for watching!

Why the U.S. North and South Are So Different

The USA has many differences: Republican and Democrat, rural and urban, religious and atheist, FOX News and CNN, tradition and modernity, poor and rich. And it seems as if a lot of these differences seem to correspond to the historic contrast between the U.S. North and South.And it's not a coincidence. These are two extremely different societies grafted together into one state. As we'll point out, the North resembles the Western world in its political values, socioeconomic characteristics, and history; whereas the South resembles Latin America much more closely in all these ways. That's how stark the difference is. But why? What's going on here?In this video, we get right to the root cause, and then build from there, giving you a complete and multi-layered analysis of the USA. We examine U.S. geography, U.S. history, U.S. economics, U.S. politics, and U.S. psychology. In future videos, we'll look at these in even MORE depth. I want to talk to you guys all about how the USA became the way it is today, the deeper analysis of why the Civil War happened, and about the USA's transition from golden age post-war boom to current crisis. I also want to talk more about the political psychology of what makes people left wing or right wing. But for now, enjoy! As always on this channel, I'm not just giving you my random opinions and 'hot takes'. I'm summarising the expert consensuses from various literatures (history, politics, psychology, etc), integrating them, and presenting you with the insights of real professionals in a scientific way. This channel will always be about scientific rigour and journalistic integrity, and I will always encourage you to be sceptical, question received wisdom, and do your own research with reliable sources. Bye for now!

A Deepdive Into The Porn World of 'Painal': and Why People Watch It

CW: Both this video and this video's description contain graphic descriptions of violence, abuse, and non-consensual sex. This content is disturbing. This is a video investigating and explaining a genre of pornography called 'painal'. It is partially an amateur investigative journalism piece of the painal subreddit, an online community dedicating to sharing and viewing videos of this kind of porn with ~65k weekly visitors and ~400k subscribers. It is also partially a psychological and sociological analysis of why individuals enjoy this content, and how they come to get there. This video is not a sensationalised, clickbait piece for views: it is an (amateur) case study of a phenomenon (far more popular than one might think). I have done this to shed light on what painal porn is and its popularity, but the wider systemic issues in both the porn industry and societal sex ed that facilitate real life abuse of women. Painal is a portmanteau of 'pain' + 'anal' but it is NOT just painful anal sex. The role of pain in sex is well-established in the BDSM community and painal is NOT just sadomasochism. Healthy sadomasochism is done for the pleasure of both sadist and masochist, and both parties are concerned for each other's wellbeing and respect boundaries and consent. Painal is a genre of porn explicitly dedicated to the recipient (almost always a woman being penetrated by a man) NOT feeling any pleasure at all; instead feeling real, unfaked physical and psychological distress. The distress of the woman is the source of the (typically a) man's pleasure- and the more maximised the woman's pain and degradation is, the more arousing the painal porn is. It is essential to note that painal is NOT a 'kink' as it is intended to cause genuine suffering to one party. Painal relates more to concepts like abuse and sexual sadism disorder. Ultimately, painal is all about the power differential between penetrator and recipient, representing an extreme form of domination: the underlying desire for unchecked power and dominance over another individual is generally seen by experts as motivating rape and sexual sadism disorder as well. The essential narrative is: the porn industry both normalises harmful treatment of women and desensitises consumers to it, doing so because it makes them money. Societies do not provide adequate sex ed to young children experiencing puberty, so they can view the harmful treatment of women in mainstream porn as normal. Porn changes an individual's brain so that they need to seek out acceleratingly extreme and violent porn. The porn industry actively facilitates this and provides this more extreme porn because it makes them money. This porn dehumanises the women involved, allowing consumers to seek out even more violent porn which genuinely (and often lastingly) harms female sex work employees. They are often financially desperate, lied to, or 18/19 years old and groomed. Mainstream porn sites and studios produce this as it increases profits, and huge numbers of female pornstars are abused or raped whilst filming. Although this video investigates the r/painal subreddit specifically (as of today, 69k weekly visitors), painal content is also found in other parts of Reddit. For example, the r/anal subreddit advertises its 'extreme painal' videos in its description. This is an example of how painal content in general online is now escaping the boundaries of a demarcated niche and is spreading to general, mainstream pornography. As porn algorithms begin promoting painal content more and more, it will not only be shown to young teenagers just accessing porn more and more, but will gradually become increasingly normalised. Based on the systemic injustices and abuse of the porn industry, I would advise the reader of this description either to actively seek out 'ethical porn' (which you can just google to get loads of results), or to avoid viewing it altogether. Please watch this video with caution and discretion.

Why R@pe is More Common Than You Think

This video is a narration of an article I wrote about the statistical frequency of rape, as reported by scientific studies. You can find it on my Medium here https://medium.com/@danielaaronlevy05 This description box isn't large enough for me to paste all the references in, so please check out the source page or my YouTube channel @Daniel Aaron Levy. Content Warning: This video discusses rape, sexual coercion, and may potentially negatively affect your view of the society you live in. This is not meant to be a pleasant video. I wrote it because I wanted to draw attention to the fact that r@pe rates are much, much higher than you might expect. R@pe is not a rare event happening when some crazed stranger jumps on a woman in the street in the dark. Most women are r@ped by someone they know, and the proportion of men who admit to having r@ped someone in surveys is also much, much higher than you'd expect.This isn't at all to try and paint some misandrist, generalising narrative about all men being evil. It's not to accuse male listeners in any way. It's just to point out that this IS an issue which is affecting your female relatives and friends, and to encourage you to talk to them about these kinds of experiences. Most of all, it's to gain an understanding that both men and women experience in the world in very different ways. Fear plays a very different role. But online, I don't think the algorithm shows men any kind of information on what things are REALLY like, and I don't think that's fair for men or for women. By being aware of the magnitude of this problem, we can all start making it better. Yet very few people ARE aware of these rates. This is wildly under-discussed by mainstream newspapers and other outlets. The only newspaper I could find which even discussed one of these sources was The Guardian. I want to use this article to warn against another danger: politicising r@pe rates. This cannot be something which is discussed by only newspapers of a certain leaning: everybody, regardless of their political orientation, has a right to know. This is not 'gender ideology' or 'wokeness' or anything like that, it's about whether your family and friends are safe. Discussions of sexual violence are not a left vs right issue, they're an everybody vs violence issue.

The Myth of Materialism

This is a narration of an article I wrote about the ideology of materialism for The Skeptic- but you can find it online at https://medium.com/@danielaaronlevy05/the-myth-of-materialism-745c2f95f37e ! I reference some sources throughout the article, which I've copy-pasted for the original article over here: References 1. Oh GE. Social class, social self-esteem, and conspicuous consumption. Heliyon. February 2021;7. 2. de Botton A. Status Anxiety. London: Penguin Books; 2004. 3. Dittmar H, Bond R, Hurst M, Kasser T. The relationship between materialism and personal well-being: A meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. November 2014;107(5). 4. Dittmar H, Isham A. Materialistic value orientation and wellbeing. Current Opinion in Psychology. March 2022;46. 5. Bandura A, Walters RH. Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice hall; 1977. 6. DiMaggio P. Culture and Cognition. Annual Review of Sociology. 1997;23:263–287. 7. Lewis HM, Vinicius L, Strods J, Mace R. High mobility explains demand sharing and enforced cooperation in egalitarian hunter-gatherers. Nature Communications. December 2014;5(1). 8. Woodburn J. Egalitarian Societies. Man. September 1982;17(3):431–451. 9. Egilmez E, Naylor-Tincknell J. Altruism and Popularity. International Journal of Educational Methodology. 2017;3(2):65–74. 10. Kafashan S, Sparks A, Griskevicius V, Barclay P. Prosocial Behavior and Social Status. The Psychology of Social Status: Springer; 2014. 11. Wentzel KR. Prosocial Behavior and Peer Relations in Adolescence. Prosocial Development: A Multidimensional Approach: Oxford Academic; 2014. 12. Haidt J. The happiness hypothesis. London: Arrow Books; 2006. 13. Wong PT. Self-Transcendence: A paradoxical way to become your best. International Journal of Existential Psychology & Psychotherapy. 2016;6(1). 14. Wong PT. Meaning-seeking, self-transcendence, and well-being. Logotherapy and Existential Analysis: Proceedings of the Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna. 2016;1:311–321. 15. Becker JC, Hartwich L, Haslam SA. Neoliberalism can reduce well-being by promoting a sense of social disconnection, competition, and loneliness. British Journal of Social Psychology. 2021;60(3):947–965. 16. Avena NM, Rada P, Hoebel BG. Evidence for sugar addiction: Behavioral and neurochemical effects of intermittent, excessive sugar intake. Neuroscience & Biochemical Reviews. 2008;32(1):20–39. 17. Love T, Laier C, Brand M, Hatch L, Hajela R. Neuroscience of Internet Pornography Addiction: A Review and Update. Behavioral Sciences. September 2015;5(3):388–433. 18. Hui BPH, Ng JCK, Berzaghi E, Cunningham-Amos LA, Kogan A. Rewards of kindness? A meta-analysis of the link between prosociality and well-being. Psychological Bulletin. December 2020;146(12):1084–1116.