Confessions of a Woke, Antiwar, Hockey-Playing Demonic Male

Me (left) with one of my demonic buddies, Tim.

February 20, 2023. I’ve been playing pond hockey again lately, and I have a confession to make.

First, some background. In my youth I played hockey on rinks with referees and goalies. Since the mid-1990s I’ve played on frozen ponds in the Hudson Highlands, an hour’s drive north of New York City. I brag about playing hockey in my books and on Twitter and Facebook. I named my old Scientific American blog and this new journal “Cross-Check,” after a mean hockey move.

I describe pond hockey as a spiritual experience. When we play, usually on ponds deep in the woods, I feel mystically connected to the ice, snow, trees, sky and other players. I’ve played with some men for decades, and now I’m playing with their sons and daughters. No one keeps score. We play for the sheer joy of skimming across the ice while batting around a puck. The puck is just a McGuffin, winning and losing don’t matter.

Or so I tell myself. The truth is—and here comes my confession—I have a hard time playing hockey mindfully, the way Buddha would. Winning and losing matter to me. They matter more if my non-hockey life isn’t going well--if my marriage is falling apart, say, or my writing career is faltering. 

When I return home after a game, I should bask in the game’s afterglow, savoring the ache of my muscles, the windburn on my face. Instead, I brood, not always, but often. I recall moments when I should have scored but didn’t, and when my opponents scored against me. My broodiness has increased lately, perhaps because I’m getting old, and I’m playing with much younger, stronger, faster men. 

I like to think of myself as an easy-going guy, a psychedelic woke feminist Buddhist peacenik. But reflecting on my post-hockey broodiness, I must acknowledge that down in the clammy cellar of my psyche lurks a macho jerk, who wants not only to win but to dominate. In his cartoonish fantasies, this jerk races up the ice feinting past opposing players, and then with a final pirouette he smacks the puck against the goal-board. Clonk!

He does this over and over, exultantly. The other players think he’s an asshole, a bad sport, but he doesn’t care, because he’s a winner. In this jerk’s fantasy--okay, my fantasy--I drive home and tell my woman about my triumphs, and she oohs and aahs and insists on massaging my sore muscles. I don’t even have to take a shower first. She adores me that much.

My writing provokes analogous fantasies. I aspire to write without desire, as Buddha would. That goal became easier after Stevens Institute of Technology hired me in 2005. Stevens pays me well, so I no longer depend on writing for income. I write for fun, the sheer joy of self-expression. That’s what I tell myself and others. But part of me still craves fame and glory. In my fantasies, every column goes viral, every book becomes a #1-bestseller. Joe Rogan pesters me to come on his show.

That brings me to the demonic-male theory of war. Anthropologist Richard Wrangham coined the term demonic male to describe hyper-competitive primates, who fight over territory, food, females. Natural selection favored the emergence of demonic males among chimpanzees, our closest genetic relatives, and our own hominid ancestors, according to Wrangham.

Males perpetrate most human violence, from lethal bar fights to world wars, but Wrangham says females are at least partially responsible for demonic masculinity. For millions of years, he asserts, our female ancestors have mated with demonic males, ensuring the perpetuation of demonic genes and hence of war and other forms of violence.

Here is how Wrangham puts it in his 1996 book Demonic Males: “Many women would prefer it otherwise, but in the real world, the tough guy finds himself besieged with female admirers, while the self-effacing friend sadly clutches his glass of Chablis at the fern bar alone.” Yes, chicks don’t dig dudes who drink white wine, apparently.

I attack the demonic-males theory of war in my book The End of War and elsewhere. What Wrangham calls “coalitionary killing” emerged not millions of years ago but less than 15,000 years ago, when our ancestors abandoned their nomadic ways and began settling down. The chimps called bonobos are as closely related to us as common chimps, and yet bonobos have never been observed killing each other. These “hippy chimps” resolve conflicts by having lots of sex; they make love, not war.

Although I reject Wrangham’s dark, Darwinian theory of war, my own demonic fantasies give me pause. Where do they come from, nature or nurture? The fantasies could spring from demonic genes that I inherited from my father and grandfather, who both fought in World War II. They could also stem from the glorifications of demonic masculinity in which we are steeped from infancy. And in which we are still steeped, even in the #MeToo era.

I recently watched The Northman, in which a Viking prince seeks to avenge his dad’s murder and disembowels everyone who get in his way. It’s a ridiculous, over-the-top film, but the mystical-mythical portrayal of demonic masculinity got to me. My muscles twitched in vicarious sympathy as the hero hacked his enemies. Ahh, to be a warrior returning from battle, drenched in the gore of your rivals, to the arms of your adoring mate!

Just to be clear: My demonic fantasies are just fantasies. I don’t really want to disembowel my enemies. I don’t even have enemies, other than maybe a few cranks on Twitter. I’m happy being a science-writing professor with no power over anyone, except perhaps my poor students, and I want to give them all As. I wouldn’t want to be a dean, let alone a Viking warlord. Too stressful!

I view my demonic fantasies with amused, ironic detachment. My demonic self is a pathetic creature, because underneath his desire to win is his fear of losing—and of being perceived as a loser. He’s so insecure, poor thing! My true self is my mindful self, which coolly watches the game of life, paying attention to each moment without desire, fear, regret. That’s my aspiration, anyway.

Of course, my desire to be mindful could be just another manifestation of my demonic self. Ah, to be a charismatic guru, as enlightened as Buddha, worshipped by millions of men and women, who recognize my spiritual perfection and shower cash, luxury cars and sexual favors upon me!

Our demonic urges have real-world consequences. Some ruthless jerks fulfill their fantasies by achieving success in the realms of business, religion, culture, politics. Many of us who are less successful identify with these bullies. We cheer them on, buy their books and stocks, flock to their rallies, vote for them, making the bullies even more powerful. Not good.

I do what I can to counter this trend. I denounce war, predatory capitalism, racism, sexism and other manifestations of demonic masculinity. When my own demonic self rears his head, I jeer at him and whack him. I tell myself that I’m a lucky bastard, who should be grateful for what he has instead of craving more. I’m lucky I can play hockey at my age!

When I feel myself getting too competitive in a hockey game, I pause to take in my surroundings: the carved-up ice, the cloud-streaked sky, the winter sun hovering above the trees, my ragtag hockey buddies. Pay attention, I tell myself. Be grateful. As soon as I resume playing, my demonic self takes over, and I try as hard as I can to score and to prevent the other team from scoring.

Further Reading:

I present a detailed critique of the demonic-male theory of war in The End of War.

I mention pond hockey in my books Mind-Body Problems, Pay Attention and My Quantum Experiment.

In 2018 The Highlands Current, a paper based in Cold Spring, New York, wrote about my pond-hockey gang.