entremet
Member
http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2015/05/27/wj-professor-enters-mma-world-to-study-why-men-fight/
This guy definitely has some cojones on him.
Seems like an interesting book.
Gotta give the guy credit for doing a cage fight with a 24 year old.
He was 40 at the time.
The results are detailed in the book apparently. Doesn't sound like it was pretty.
This guy definitely has some cojones on him.
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Whether it’s boxing, wrestling or brawls in the street, it seems most men like to fight, or at least watch other men fight.
But, why is that?
A local college professor decided to find out by putting down his books and putting up his dukes.
Jonathan Gottschall is a professor of English literature at Washington & Jefferson College.
Gottschall had always been more at home in the library than the gym until one opened up across from his office.
“I just thought this was hilarious – this contrast between this incredibly refined, cultured world of the English department and then this savage world of the mixed martial arts gym,” he said.
Shedding the shackles of academia, Gottschall joined the gym in search of answers.
To up the ante, Gottschall set for himself the ultimate challenge of training for a match with a professional cage fighter.
“It’s a very [primal and] terrifying thing to be locked up in a cage with a trained killer and the only way out is to fight your way through him,” Gottschall said.
Those 13 months divided between gym and research in his office has yielded a book titled,
“The Professor in the Cage.”
It’s a study of violence in men, which has some surprising revelations.
“I think most men enjoy play fighting, they enjoy competition, they enjoy testing themselves and challenging themselves. Most men do not like to fight,” Gottschall said.
Men, it seems, crave respect, higher status and more wealth than other men. However, they don’t necessarily want to fight each other to get them.
Instead of bar fights, duels and wars, we’ve established games of ritual combat like football and cage fighting.
“I came to the point of view that these kinds of ritualized contests constrain aggression and that without them, the world would be a much darker and violent place,” Gottschall said.
Seems like an interesting book.
Gotta give the guy credit for doing a cage fight with a 24 year old.
He was 40 at the time.
The results are detailed in the book apparently. Doesn't sound like it was pretty.