    20

    20

    b ehavioral science's classic formulations--that frustration and

    aggression go hand in hand.

    But frustration is an experience we cannot dodge.  Fashionable as

    it is to think that none of us can be happy until we fulfill our potential,

    fulfilling our potential to its limit is an absolute impossibility.  If a

    bacterium were allowed to fulfill its potential, within only four days, it

    could produce more progeny than there are protons in the universe.29

    Fortunately, reality's constraints have kept bacteria from acting out

    their full reproductive possibilities.

    Human males, like microbes, have reproductive capacities that

    could swamp the solar system.  During his lifetime, each man produces

    enough sperm to inseminate every woman on the planet many times

    over.  (A single ejaculation contains between 100 and 300 million

    sperm--a supply sufficient to impregnate almost every woman in

    North America.)30  But the individual's sexual potential is something he

    can never fulfill.  Men everywhere from Sri Lanka to Savannah,

    Georgia, watch women go by and fantasize possessing them sexually.

    In his imagination, each male couples with  thousands of females by

    the time he dies.  Yet in real life, the average Joe has mated with only a

    few.

    Even chimpanzees endure this ignominious fate.  The dominant

    chimp in a group hordes all the ladies for himself.  Subordinate males

    are starved for sex.  When the head chimp is not looking, the lesser

    beasts  sneak up to friendly looking females and make supplicating,

    seductive gestures.  If the lady seems willing, the furtive Romeo tries to

    lead her off to some secluded spot where the couple can catch a

    moment of forbidden love.  But all too frequently, as the pair skulks

    into the shadows, the lordly top-ranking animal catches a glimpse of

    their departure and punishes the impertinent commoner brutally for

    poaching on his harem.31  The result for humans and chimps alike is

    frustration-- an inevitable, inescapable frustration.  If the psychologists

    are correct, the upshot should be an ever-growing buildup of

    aggression.

    <<  <  GO  >  >>