MindfulAgony
New member
Interesting. Not all of it well supported by science.
Such statements are more useful if they are accompanied by specifics. Illustrative examples usually suffice for the lay audience.
Interesting. Not all of it well supported by science.
Such statements are more useful if they are accompanied by specifics. Illustrative examples usually suffice for the lay audience.
I'm not koifish, but I'll throw one out there. I have a BA degree in evolutionary biology, and found that although the authors have a lot of interesting ideas so far (I'm only just beginning the book) they make a couple common mistakes in their understanding of the mechanisms behind natural selection.
One that rubbed me the wrong way is on page 54, refuting the common argument for male preoccupation with paternity. In the bullet points, they say that the theory presumes that a man must know which children are biologically his--that he must understand sex leads to babies and that his partner was faithful. Nonsense. There needs not be a conscience understanding of the mechanisms at play. Men who just happened to be sexually monogamous and expect the same of their partners would "waste" less of their time and resources on children who were not biologically theirs than men who were promiscuous.
However, I would still agree that the theory presumes pair bonding and a culture organized around biologically related families (not necessarily nuclear in my opinion--grandparents have a stake in their grandchildren's evolutionary success). If ancient humans lived in tribes where all resources were shared evenly among the group, there is little evolutionary pressure for enforced monogamy and male's preoccupation with paternity. However, it is very, very rare for resources to be so evenly split unless the group is evenly related (bees, ants, and naked mole rats are a few examples of this type of relation pattern).
Also, on the page before they take offense at defining "productive" as producing offspring who survive to reproduce, that this is somehow a religious/political tinged word. In the evolutionary sense, that IS the only definition of success. It has nothing to do with politics at all. It's simply the mathematical foundation of all natural selection.
So...I'm sticking with the book. It's an interesting read so far and I hope that they come up with more facts to defend the theories. However, as of page 55 the authors are making a lot of common mistakes around their understanding of the mechanics of evolution and I'd feel a lot more hopeful about the book if one of the authors had a degree in biology.
I think your mixing things up a bit. While working towards a Ph.D. in psychology (unfinished) David Buss was a star in the department. I spent a lot of time with the evolutionary psych folks partly because I had some intellectual interest in the subject matter. But, admittedly, also because David had the hottest grad students in the department (even the males were hot). Anyway, back to our topic.
In the passage you take issue with, Ryan and Jetha are talking about the evolutionary psychology theory of parternity certainty. As they explain, it hypothesizes that selection would favor men who acted to invest in their own children versus others because that investment is costly. It does not actively presume that this is a conscious psychological process that the more casual description in the book may seem suggest. Instead, evolutionary psych proposes that men evolved solutions to the problem of paternity certainty when they're engaged in long term mating strategies. Specifically, men were "evolved" to desire chastity, sexual fidelity, and abhorence for promiscuity in a long term mate. These long term "mating strategies" are hypothesized to be an evolved mechanism in men who have the challenge of paternity certainty.
Consciuos behavior, pre-conscious or unconscious desires are all involved here. Assuming that something has to be conscious to be driving behavior is a mis-understanding of psychological science.
They were simply describing the hypothesis around paternity certainty which is certaintly a cornerstone of theory of Evolutionary Psychology. Which is an area of research populated by both psychologists and biologists. With that further explanation, are you still convinced that they are misunderstanding natural selection?
I'll admit that I don't fully understand evolutionary biology, but I'm not sure why producing offspring would be the only definition of success, or why you'd want to only care for your own offspring.
You can transmit other things than your genes, and from an evolutionary point of view it seems to me it certainly benefits the whole species when you take care of younglings that might grow to heal others, and so on. Obviously, for the species to survive, you need to carry on genes, but producing offsprings that survive to reproduce doesn't seem to me to be the only thing. Making sure people, whether your own offsprings or not, live to reproduce is also a good thing. Sometimes, having less offspring to give the ones who survive a better chance is good too.
I think there is a lot of benefit in social creatures to being there are a parent figure, with or without transmitting your genes. I'm speaking of both genders here, you have lots of stories about female animals who adopt and raise an orphan (sometimes of a different species, too), I think these provide advantages as well as they grow to help the rest of the tribe, as well as yourself when you're old. I think it carries the whole tribe and the whole species up.
There is much to survival of the species than sharing your genes is what I'm getting at. Sometimes, it might even be better to make sure you don't share them if you carry something that would endanger future generations or make them weaker. I don't think the species is as simple as each individual selfishly reproducing their own genes, I think there are also cooperative ways that we act naturally and that from an evolutionary point of view are useful to the species, yet have nothing to do with reproduction.
I just finished Sex at Dawn and was happy to see the authors address current trends in contemporary life to deal with humans' natural need for sexual variety, in the last chapter. Polyamory, swinging and open relationships were all mentioned. So was the sad fact that most couples therapists today are not on the bangwagon, and try to enforce monogamy at all costs.
Interesting how we profess this to be completely natural, but nature would imply that it would be a male-dominated lifestyle, and yet is not. I love the way our world works ^^
And then you have polyandry as a tradition in places where the population is already so high, which once again leads to conclusions that it could be a way to curb down natality.
When it was time for a man to marry, the wife chosen for or by him, after the wedding, would be put in a room, have her hair clipped short, be dressed in men's clothing and left alone in the dark. Her new husband, if he had the nerve, would come in and consummate. If he really didnt like women, this male drag requirement for sex could go on for months or years.
When it was time for a man to marry, the wife chosen for or by him, after the wedding, would be put in a room, have her hair clipped short, be dressed in men's clothing and left alone in the dark. Her new husband, if he had the nerve, would come in and consummate. If he really didnt like women, this male drag requirement for sex could go on for months or years.
I heard about a culture in which it was believed (apparently) that semen gave you more testosterone, so boys were supposed to drink it (from the source) throughout teenage. Once they were adult, it was their turn to share the testosterone.
I can't remember where and when that was, though.
The thing that is fairly new to Western society (and I would argue most non-Western societies) is the idea that sex is an activity that happens between equals.
A free, high status Roman man generally did not have sex with an equal - his wife, slaves, younger boys or men, and lower status free men certainly did not qualify. In fact, sex between male equals was looked at askance. "Roman Homosexuality" by Craig A. Williams is a brilliant book on this topic - he argues that degrees of free, unfree, dominant and submissive (and not the consenting, negotiated bdsm versions) are the critical categories, not hetero- and homosexuality.