Friedrich Merz recently received a shit storm when he spoke of “little pashas” in connection with the New Year’s Eve riots in major German cities. He probably meant young men, often from the Muslim milieu, who are spoiled by their mothers and therefore know no boundaries. The derogatory use of the term is problematic because the historical bearers of the honorary title Pascha – including some Germans – were mostly hard-working, capable men. Maybe Merz should have said “little orcas”.
Because the orca men remain dependent on their mother for their entire lives, who spoils them until their own death. So the males, even when they are bigger and stronger than their mother, still ask for a few extra fish. And when the mother dies, the life chances of the mama’s sons are drastically reduced. The daughters, on the other hand, become independent with sexual maturity, do not receive any special attention and do not demand it.
Why Do Orca Whale Mothers Spoil Their Sons? And why do female orcas, who can live up to 90 years, go through menopause in their 30s and 40s? Both seem to contradict the “selfish gene” theory, according to which we are merely carriers of our genes whose main interest is self-reproduction: the more children, the better.
In humans, it is believed that the “grandmother principle” can be used to explain the menopause: from a certain age, it makes more sense to take care of your own daughter’s children in terms of the reproduction of your own genes than to worry about further pregnancies and births to weaken.
And in the case of the orcas, too, pampering the males makes sense from the standpoint of selfish genes. Killer whales live in family groups led by the group’s ancestor. If the daughters get pregnant, the group gets bigger and more mouths have to be fed. The sons, on the other hand, look for their sex partners outside the group, and their children stay there too. Pleasure without responsibility for the males, and for their mother reproduction of their genes also without responsibility.
You would have to be a killer whale male. No feminists and gender theorists anywhere. On the other hand, this behavior, much as it may have been evolutionarily beneficial, seems to have reached the end of its usefulness. In any case, orca populations are declining, presumably because the lifelong indulgence of males exhausts the mothers. To say it with Thilo Sarrazin: The orcas are getting rid of themselves.
Even with people, such behavior is not a recipe for success, regardless of what macho apologists like Jordan Peterson or Andrew Tate say. Where patriarchy is strongest, people are poorest. Orca mothers can’t help but spoil their sons; they are slaves to their genes. Human mothers have a choice, and things aren’t looking good for the little orcas. Maybe that’s why they’re rioting.
