Elisabella
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quote:
To get back to your 1:99 ratio, there is a lower limit on how far genetic diversity can be minimized and still maintain a healthy population, a biologist could tell what it is, but in any case, among humans, males who are willing to help defray female reproductive costs constribute more than semen, they contribute resources, and social enrichment (MPI) thus further enhancing and accelerating the neotenic developmental dynamic.
In the really, really, short version of this - things are the way they are, whatever they are, for a reason, it's very useful to study it, but trying to second guess it amounts to jumping to conclusions that may prove unsupportable after all the other complexities are factored in.
Oh no doubt, and I admit my example was an extreme one (any "pick one or the other" example tends to be extreme) and while I'd agree it's far from ideal, I do think that the benefits of switching to quick-easy-disposable reproduction for a couple of generations in a postapocalyptic situation would be beneficial in the long run. In an inherently unstable environment that threatens the end of the species, the goal is not "make sure my child survives" but rather "make sure enough children make it to adulthood to breed" and once the immediate threat was over, obviously we would go back to a K-strategy type society, but by that time I presume we'd have enough males to balance out.
Interestingly I once read that 70% of our ancestors are female. That would suggest that a 70:30 ratio would be ideal for reproduction, but I'd disagree with that. I'd argue that the reason a 50:50 gender split is ideal is because men are more easily disposable. 30% men would mean they all had to reproduce. 50% men means 30% can reproduce and 20% can die in war.
To get back to the OP, nature seems to be quite misandrist ;) I could go into a long theory about how I believe nature's misandry created social misogyny but, well, I don't know if anyone wants to hear it.
quote:
The sort of abstract social schemes to watch out for are essentially those that attempt to compete by reducing overall diversity, representing competition to specific instantiations of the broader pattern, Christianity vs. Islam for example, the "clash of civilizations" - they are both really simply slightly different instantiations of the same meta pattern that stress slightly different externalities - the fundamentalists of both resemble each other more closely than they resemble the semi-urban industrial parent cultures in which they are embedded in 20th century terms. Christianity reflects an agrarian social/economic value system, Islam a pastoral one, is the major distinction.
That's a really good point, I've never really considered it that way. I've always just rolled my eyes at fundamentalist Christians because I don't see them as violent, the way I see fundamentalist Muslims.
The strange thing to me is that when fundamentalist Christians get violent, it's usually against their own society - bombing abortion clinics is really the first and only thing that comes to mind. Fundamentalist Muslims on the other hand tend to get violent against other societies, 9/11 being the "big" example of it, as well as embassy bombings. Any ideas on why that would be?
< Message edited by Elisabella -- 1/6/2010 4:52:44 PM >
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RE: Misogyny and BDSM - 
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