The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: How Risk Taking Transforms Us, Body and Mind

by John Coates

Ruminating about the role of testosterone today, he worries that the real challenge facing us is not so much how to incorporate women more fully into society but how to stop men from seceding from it. A chilling thought. Keynes entertained somewhat the same concern, and concluded that capitalism, rather than any of the other economic systems on offer during the 1930s, was the preferred antidote to our violent urges, quipping that it is better to terrorize your checkbook than your neighbor. So maybe it is better to have testosterone vented in the markets than elsewhere. I do not think that follows. We tend to get extreme behavior of the sort that gives testosterone a bad name when we isolate young males. This phenomenon can be observed in the animal world, and most vividly among elephants. In the absence of elders, young male elephants go into musth prematurely, a condition in which their testosterone levels surge forty to fifty times above baseline, and then they run amok, killing other animals and trampling villages. In South Africa, park rangers have found a solution to the problem: they have brought in an elder male elephant, and his presence has calmed the rogues.