So I'm beginning to get a vague picture of evolutionary psychology and the first thing that struck me as totally new was the idea that all of evolution happens on this planet at once. Sex is not just what humans do, it's what large sections of the animal kingdom do. Sex evolved in all manner of creatures and so what sex is is not for humans to suggest only involves Homo Sapiens Sapiens. We big headed primates may like to live in the Matrix and believe what we want to believe about sex, but we're ultimately wrong. Sex is what it evolved to become, across all creatures that do it. It is not for us to redefine. We're not responsible.
So as I came in sideways to a discussion about abortion and .. well this:
A reminder: The conservative anti-choice crowd's rhetoric makes a lot more sense if you see it less as "saving a child's life" and more as "pregnancy is the punishment for having sex".
To which I said: Pregnancy is the inevitable consequence of having sex. It is what sex is, the result of the way of the universe, ie evolution. If conservatism were genetic, would you give eugenics a second thought?
Of course there's the obvious homosexual angle. But is homosexuality eugenic by design? I doubt it. I think most people simply get their rocks off in different directions, some of which will be rewarded by evolution and some which will not. My concern here in using the term inevitable is me weighing in against the amount of chemistry devoted to stopping pregnancy in order to enable a sporting amount of sexual profligacy some of which is just as greedily obtuse as obesity. I could belabor the point, but suffice it to say that if the Rubenesque were all that in yesteryear, and skinny bitches with green hair are all that today, then our taste in sex is unmoored from any particular path. Which is to say what's sexy in the Matrix is random. There is no reason nor rhyme behind it. It's just what you wanna do. Therefore you should have no moral pretense about it. I shit on your sex life. So what? Again, the universe doesn't care about motives. It simply rewards what it does and you have no say.
But what if we are actually capable of being smartly in tune with our nature? In other words what if we build houses with door frames that are the right size for the overwhelming majority of humans. Then we're doing something right. That's all I'm going to say that we do right, for now.
How about a man with no legs? Say he has lost them in combat. Has he lost some element of his humanity if he will never walk again? Is he as human as the man who has run all his life? Is walking and running a fundamental part of being human? I say it is. I say we recognize that loss no matter how much wheelchair basketball he plays. No matter how he fulfills himself playing piano, he is still handicapped. That doesn't change his rights under government. That doesn't change his status in society. But he is handicapped. If he wasn't, then nobody would have ever invented the wheelchair. Everyone would be just as happy crawling as walking. Walking is fundamentally human, those who cannot or do not are handicapped and have lost some element of their humanity.
So too is childbirth fundamentally human.
Oh. You're scared now, aren't you? You see where I'm going with this don't you? How could I not go there? I'm just building the door the right size for the overwhelming majority of humans. That's doing something right. You see I don't want to live in the Matrix. I want to live in harmony with nature, with an eye for understanding what humans have evolved from to be what we are. Isn't it strange that when we talk about sex with kids for the first time, we mention the 'birds and the bees'? How we do it is much more like the dogs and the horses, or quite frankly the monkeys and the chimps. Sex evolved without our thinking about it.
Pregnancy is not a punishment for having sex. Children are a reward for having sex. Psychologically I understand this as a parent who has raised three of those dirty blighters. And I love them. Illogically. I don't understand exactly why. It goes against my logic to put up with them as long as I have, and yet I do. And I'm also happy, illogically, to please my old ass parents. I know this is an experience central to humanity, and I don't really understand why. But some of that understanding is unnecessary. When I'm happy, I'm just happy. I don't need to explain how or why. I just enjoy that thing. When I'm suffering, I don't need people to explain it. I don't want to hear explanations of why and how. I just want it to stop.
This is me talking psychology. Get used to it. It's my new category.
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