Benvolio. I pray thee, good Mercutio, let's retire: The day is hot, the Capulets abroad, And, if we meet, we shall not 'scape a brawl; For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.
~ Romeo and Juliet
Mad Blood Stirring didn't turn out to be the book I was expecting – in a surprisingly satisfying way. Subtitled “The Inner Lives of Violent Men”, and written by a journalist with a Master's Degree in neuroscience, I thought this would be a mix of hard science and philosophy (in the vein of Steven Pinker or James Gleick). But right from the book's Introduction, author Daemon Fairless proves himself a captivating storyteller, and by focussing on the stories of real people – those he interviews and himself – he is able to illustrate male violence without getting bogged down in studies and stats (although plenty of science is cited here as well). Fairless may have gone looking for explanations for his own violent impulses, and he may have written a memoir here more than anything else, but I found it all fascinating and relatable and a worthwhile read.
Yes, I have White Hat Syndrome. Yes, I want to make the world a better place by confronting – no, let's be honest – by vanquishing the people I find threatening, domineering, manipulative and sadistic. But that white hat sits atop an angry head. And beneath that anger is a twitchy and hyper-vigilant person who is overattuned to threatening sounds in the underbrush.Right from the Introduction, Fairless explains that he's the kind of man who is always spoiling for a fight – intervening with belligerent customers in stores, chasing down purse-snatchers, responding to cries in the night. He's a big man, and over the years, he has trained with weights and martial arts – when Fairless walks into a room sizing up the other men, imagining who he could take down in a fight, this seems to go beyond the average fantasy; he's hoping someone gets in his face. Fairless also explains that his parents were hippies – he was raised with limited television and no toy guns; he was awash in feminist and pacifist theory; he marched and rallied and considers himself a “post-patriarchal man”. And yet, the fighting; the genuine bloodlust. In seeking explanations for his own darkest urges, Fairless shares stories that illustrate the whole range of violent behaviour.
People who live in violent places, particularly kids raised in violent subcultures, have higher levels of chronic anger. They tend to view relationships in a hostile, mistrustful way. They perceive the world and the people in it as dangerous and threatening. And if they also happen to be carrying one of the environmentally sensitive genes, fear and anger are amplified – all the more so if they're carrying more than one of these alleles.In each section in Mad Blood Stirring, Fairless tells a big story about a sanctioned form of male violence and contrasts it with both the criminal extremes and his own personal urges. In the first, Fairless tells the story of a MMA fighter – his training, his history, his experiences – and adds smaller stories here and there from the male culture of honour – from schoolyard bullies to frontier justice – and begins to share his own history; from his childhood as both the bullied and the bully, to his own fight training. As the book progresses, the sections deal with increasingly violent activities: contrasting an inner city high school football team with the kind of petty criminal their coach hopes to prevent his players from becoming; a willing participant in BDSM activity is contrasted against a serial rapist; the story of a cruelly manipulative parent is set off against a psychopathic serial killer; the tribalism of sports fans is compared to warmongers and the higher purpose of a professional soldier. Throughout, Fairless adds stories from his own life and cites fascinating stats (75% of men have had specific homicidal fantasies? Up to 50% of men would commit rape if they knew they'd get away with it? Chimps routinely organise war raids against neighbouring troops?), and it all works together to shine a light on what seems natural and ubiquitous; the constant suppression of male violence that allows for human civilisation.
Now, having said that, I have no idea if most men actually walk around with Fairless' constant fantasies of violence and sex – the women he sees are all evaluated for their own uses – but his openness and relatable voice made this a fascinating examination of his own experience. More a memoir than I had been expecting, it was the personal focus of Mad Blood Stirring that I most engaged with.
