RE: Sex BC ~ The Origins of Marriage ? (Full Version)

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Marc2b -> RE: Sex BC ~ The Origins of Marriage ? (3/31/2008 9:03:37 AM)

quote:

Didn't any of the cave women just want to fuck?


Of course, cave women just wanted to fuck, just like women today. The question is, why do they just want to fuck and, more importantly, why do they fuck who they fuck. She may be thinking, oh God, he’s a gorgeous hunk, but why does she perceive him as a gorgeous hunk?




kittinSol -> RE: Sex BC ~ The Origins of Marriage ? (3/31/2008 9:03:42 AM)

Human beings are more than the combined sum of their animal instincts. What makes humanity is that we have departed from our state of nature.

As a matter of fact, I don't believe we have instincts anymore. We have needs and desires, but these aren't instincts. BOOH!

By the way... you shouldn't say that something is "foolish" simply because you disagree with it [;)] .




celticlord2112 -> RE: Sex BC ~ The Origins of Marriage ? (3/31/2008 9:19:28 AM)

quote:

All the "cavemen" theories are all very cute at trying to explain human beings, but the fact of the matter is that we operate on a different level than mere biology. We're beyond our "instincts" - unless we're on planet Gor.

Are you arguing that biology plays no role in human development, that it is all nurture not nature?




Marc2b -> RE: Sex BC ~ The Origins of Marriage ? (3/31/2008 9:25:28 AM)

quote:

I understand this is a generalistation, but when mankind moved away from the; 'Hunter/Gatherer/Wanderer',lifestyle to the more agrarian community living lifestyle, everyone was involved in creating the food.


Everyone was involved in the acquisition of food before the agricultural revolution but not after. Don’t forget that while he was hunting the big game, she was gathering (and possibly hunting small game as well). In fact, from what I’ve studied, while he brought home that all important protein, she probably brought in more calories. The agricultural revolution, however, freed up some of us (and eventually, most of us) from direct acquisition of food. This gave us the free time to create civilization as we know it.

quote:

Studies show women not only were breeders, but did the majority of the mundane work, something indicated by bone deformity. Men on the other hand did not show similar bone deformity.

By this time the property origin of the marriage idea was already set, according to academics, something which has continued until the changes largely in the twentieth century.


If I gave you the impression that I thought women were only breeders, well... that wasn’t my intent. My point was that both men and women have biological, instinctual, reasons for wanting to declare that "this one belongs to me, all other keep your hands off!" All the formalities, rituals, contracts, etc., are merely what we have added on since then.




kittinSol -> RE: Sex BC ~ The Origins of Marriage ? (3/31/2008 9:35:57 AM)

No.




Marc2b -> RE: Sex BC ~ The Origins of Marriage ? (3/31/2008 9:45:02 AM)

quote:

Human beings are more than the combined sum of their animal instincts.


You’ll get no argument from me there.

quote:

What makes humanity is that we have departed from our state of nature.


But not as far as you might think. The only meaningful difference between human beings from the cave days and human beings today is the tools we use.

quote:

As a matter of fact, I don't believe we have instincts anymore. We have needs and desires, but these aren't instincts. BOOH!

By the way... you shouldn't say that something is "foolish" simply because you disagree with it.


No I shouldn’t. But I will say something is foolish if I believe it to be foolish. Nothing personal. It is just that I cannot for the life of me believe that you (or anyone) would believe (as Celticlord so aptly put it) that we are all nurture and no nature.  No instincts???!!!!  C'mon, look around you!

P.S. to Celticlord: I love your sig line. It jives nicely with one of my own favorite quotes from J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame (via the character G’Kar):

"If we deny the other, we deny ourselves."




kittinSol -> RE: Sex BC ~ The Origins of Marriage ? (3/31/2008 9:55:56 AM)

I look around me, and I see such that not two human cultures are the same. I disagree with the modern fashion of explaining human beings uniquely by their biology (love is just a chemical reaction in the brain, women are lying sluts because they want to trap men, men are brutal bastards because of testosterone, sex is just an instinct, we're all troglodytes at heart), and I define myself as a person, not as a genetic mess of instincts.

If you want to do that for yourself, go for it; just don't dump me in the same pot as yours :-) .







luckydog1 -> RE: Sex BC ~ The Origins of Marriage ? (3/31/2008 10:25:59 AM)

no having to push something the size of a watermelon out a hole the size of a golf ball (would someone explain to me where the intelligent design is in that?).


If the hole was the size of a watermellon, it wouldn't be very much fun to have sex, and the entire instinctual evolutionary process would not have happened.  Before living things could rationalise how to have babies, there had to be a mechanism to get creatures to have sex.  Pleasure.  What could be a better design than that?




Marc2b -> RE: Sex BC ~ The Origins of Marriage ? (3/31/2008 11:18:21 AM)

quote:

I look around me, and I see such that not two human cultures are the same.


Look more closely and you’ll see that they are more alike than different. The differences are surface details and little more. We may sing different songs but we all sing. We may dance different dances but we all dance. We evolved as a tribal species and every human community of every kind, forms itself into a hierarchy – a pseudo-tribe because we are following our tribal instincts. Once we each belonged to only one tribe and that tribe protected us and in return we gave it our loyalty. Members of our tribe were good, outsiders were bad (or, at least, suspect). An injury from another tribe member upon your own tribe raised your ire and perhaps precipitated an attack in response. An injury suffered by another tribe didn’t bother you that much (after all, they are not one of us).

Today most of us belong to a number of interlocking pseudo-tribes: our family, our neighborhood, the company we work for, the sports team we cheer on, our culture, our sub-culture (i.e. the BDSM community), our town, our region, our nation... etc, etc, etc... and we still have the same basic reactions. Do not be deceived by the fact that we have formalized (ritualized, legalized) many of our reactions. Launching a lawsuit may not be the same as shooting a bow and arrow at someone but both are attacks. They serve the same purpose. To take what the other has and consume it. To benefit you tribe by taking from another. Do not be deceived by the fact that we spout different rhetoric and slogans. It serves the same purpose. The Muslim who screams about infidels is no different than the Nazi who screams about Jews or the Republican who screams about Democrats or the Democrat who screams about Republicans or... They are all doing the same thing – trying to increase loyalty to their tribe at the expense of the other.

quote:

I disagree with the modern fashion of explaining human beings uniquely by their biology (love is just a chemical reaction in the brain, women are lying sluts because they want to trap men, men are brutal bastards because of testosterone, sex is just an instinct, we're all troglodytes at heart), and I define myself as a person, not as a genetic mess of instincts.


Again, who said anything about "uniquely." I do not define humans as a "genetic mess of instincts." Quite the opposite. I firmly believe that each and everyone of us is more than the sum of our parts and I have already stated that what sets humans apart from the rest of the animal world is out ability to override our instincts. But you cannot discount our animal heritage. You cannot discount our evolution. They are a part of us wether you like it or not.

quote:

If you want to do that for yourself, go for it; just don't dump me in the same pot as yours :-) .

We’ve all been in the same pot since day one. The problem is that the pot is starting to boil over.




Vendaval -> RE: Sex BC ~ The Origins of Marriage ? (3/31/2008 12:21:22 PM)

Aneirin, I am curious as to whether the documentary will address various types of marriages; poly and group marriage, etc.  And the other important issue is when did virginity become more important than being able to have healthy off-spring?  There were times in the Middle Ages when a woman who already had a healthy child was a preferred mate to one who had no children.  She had already proven her ability to reproduce.




Aneirin -> RE: Sex BC ~ The Origins of Marriage ? (3/31/2008 2:06:06 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Vendaval

Aneirin, I am curious as to whether the documentary will address various types of marriages; poly and group marriage, etc.  And the other important issue is when did virginity become more important than being able to have healthy off-spring?  There were times in the Middle Ages when a woman who already had a healthy child was a preferred mate to one who had no children.  She had already proven her ability to reproduce.


I wait to see that myself, but the documentary as I understand it was the first of three, dealing with what we can understand of the ancients. There was however a burial in what is now the Czech Republic, the oldest burial found, three people, one female and two males buried in a ritualistic way that the anthropologists tried to suggest an execution  for a law broken by the three. A sexual law perhaps as one of the males had had a stake thrust through the genitals, and the female had a flint knife between her legs pointing to where her genitalia would be.




Marc2b -> RE: Sex BC ~ The Origins of Marriage ? (3/31/2008 3:54:52 PM)

quote:

If the hole was the size of a watermellon, it wouldn't be very much fun to have sex, and the entire instinctual evolutionary process would not have happened. Before living things could rationalise how to have babies, there had to be a mechanism to get creatures to have sex. Pleasure. What could be a better design than that?


You’re taking this far to seriously. But that aside, While I do believe there is a creator (a whole separate topic), I do not believe that evolution has a design to it or that anything rationalized how to have babies (well, at least until the Catholic Church came along). Evolution is about adaptation (via mutation and natural selection) to constantly changing forces (climate change, invasive species, etc.). I do not believe that humans are the "planned" end result of evolution (if we are, then what the hell is evolution thinking?). What appears to be design is, in fact, equilibrium. Systems seek equilibrium (which should never be confused with harmony).

Pleasure is certainly a useful way to encourage making babies but most species do not appear to use it. Even amongst our closest relatives, the chimpanzees and other apes, sex appears to produce only a few seconds of pleasure that doesn’t come close to the frequent and sustained orgasms humans are capable of. So if we didn’t need to evolve orgasms in order to complete the physical exchange of body fluids necessary to make babies, then the question becomes: why evolve to experience such pleasure? That, too, is another whole topic. This topic actually. I think we evolved such pleasures in order to strengthen the pair bond (formally called marriage) that will be better equipped to successfully raise the offspring to adulthood. Note that I say strengthen, not cement, the pair bond. As I have already noted, there are evolutionary forces that work against the pair bond.




Griswold -> RE: Sex BC ~ The Origins of Marriage ? (3/31/2008 4:55:12 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Aneirin

One of the 'discoveries', was thoughts on the origins of marriage, a time when to ensure sperm selectivity was becoming paramount, the female was ceasing to be an equal and was being seen more as an object and a breeding machine.


Ahhhh...the good old days....long gone, along with those days when you could arbitrarily dump toxic waste in any nearby garbage receptacle and have it gingerly taken away at $22.00 a ton.




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