tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842646186840178331.post2696420042141958526..comments2022-06-03T18:54:17.855+01:00Comments on Rika's Column: Men, Women, Humand kind and the GodsRikahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14671449965019068746noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842646186840178331.post-30655552281204375952010-02-14T11:29:17.127+00:002010-02-14T11:29:17.127+00:00Hi Blaise, thanks for the great input. That might ...Hi Blaise, thanks for the great input. That might explain why guys take their midlife crisis with a young blonde, while ladies take up arts classes ;o) And an interesting thought about our emotions still being Neolithic - great inspiration to think about other areas where this shows... food, maybe?Rikahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14671449965019068746noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8842646186840178331.post-32321256897173089402010-02-14T11:28:46.591+00:002010-02-14T11:28:46.591+00:00Comment received via email from Blaise, 4th Februa...Comment received via email from Blaise, 4th February 20101:<br /><br />Hi Rika, I saw the interesting article on cheating and I thought I'd chip in with the evolutionary science point of view. <br /> <br />Human behaviour is a combination of our cultural experience and our genetic inheritance, and our genetic inheritance has a lot to say about our sex lives. From the point of view of genetics, a human body (or any animal or plant body) is just an eleborate way for our genes to get copies of themselves into the next generation. As Dawkins pointed out in The Selfish Gene, males and females have very different strategies that in fact conflixt with one another. Females have a limited number of children and raising each one is vast expenditure of time and energy. Males can in principle father enormous numbers of children and sperm production is virtually free of cost. So, theoretically females should be very choosy and get the very best sperm they can, while males should be as promiscuous as possible. Females should respond by refusing to have sex unless help is given with raising the children. Males then have two attractive options: help raise their children and thus improve their survival prospects or continue being promiscuous. The value of staying with the female to raise the children disappears if she cheats, as now he may be raising another man's children. This problem never occurs for a woman, as she always knows her children are hers. So males should, according to evolutionary theory see cheating as much more threatening than females do. Of course, we are not slaves to our genes, our behaviour is not 'programmed' like a computer, but our bodies and minds have evolved over 400 million years since we came out the sea and this is determines our desires. But evolution works many orders of magnitude more slowly than cultural change and although there is now no reason to think that children are the automatic outcome of an affair our genes have perfectly equipped us to deal with a Stone Age environment. Culturally we are in the 21st century, but our emotions are still Neolithic.<br /> <br />BlaiseRikahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14671449965019068746noreply@blogger.com