There is a metaphor in the sperm and the ovum. Sperm cells have locomotion, they can move and search for an egg to penetrate, the ovum sends off signals to attract them, but they have a shell that the successful sperm cell has to break through...sperm are Also like armies, in that they attack sperm from other males (the competition). A load of sperm is in essence an army that fights as a group against the armies of ejaculations of other males. May the winner take all...
A quote by Orson Scott Card that beautifully explains why the human world is the way it is... "Human Civilization"
"Take the differences between males and females. Males naturally tend towards a broadcast strategy of reproduction, since males make almost an infinite supply of sperm, which costs them nothing to deploy it.
Their most sensible reproductive strategy is to deploy it in every available female, and to make special efforts to deposit it in the most healthy females. The ones most likely to bring their offspring to adulthood.
A male does best reproductively if he wanders and copulates as widely as possible. I'm speaking of overall trends. There are always strange individuals who do not follow the norms.
The female strategy is just the opposite, Instead of millions and millions of sperm we have the one egg a month. Each child represents an enormous investment of effort. So females need stability. They need to be sure there will always be plenty of food. We also spend large amounts of time growing relatively helpless, unable to find food. Far from being wanderers, we females need to establish and stay. If we can't get that then our next best strategy is to mate with the strongest and healthiest possible males. But best of all is to get a strong healthy male who will stay and provide, Instead of wandering and copulating at will.
So there are two pressures on males, the one is to spread their seed, violently if necessary. The other is to be attractive to females by being stable providers. By suppressing and containing the need to wander and the tendency to use force. Likewise there are two pressures on females, the one is to get the seed of the strongest most virile male so their infants will have good genes, which would make the violent forceful males attractive to them. The other is to get the protection of the most stable males, non-violent males so their infants will be protected and provided for and as many as possible will reach adulthood.
Our whole history, all that i have ever found in all my wanderings, It can all be interpreted as people blindly acting out those genetic strategies. We get pulled in those two directions. Our great civilizations are nothing more than social machines to create the ideal female setting. Where a woman can count on stability. Legal and moral codes, that try to abolish violence and promote permanence of ownership and force contracts, those represent the primary female strategy, the taming of the male.
And the tribes of wandering barbarians outside the reach of civilization...Spread the seed, within the tribe the most dominant males take possession of the best females. Either through formal polygamy or through spur of the moment copulations that the other males are powerless to resist. But those low status males are kept in line because the leaders take them to war and let them rape and pillage their brains out when they win a victory. They act out sexual desirability by proving themselves in combat and then kill all the rival males and copulate with their widowed females when they win. Hideous, monstrous behavior. But also a viable acting out of the genetic strategy."
(P.s. "barbarians"
Barbarians were groups that were not a part of the Empire. In a sense barbarians are tribes that are not a part of a great nation of a stratified, agricultural, landowning slave state. In empires women are usually treated like chattel one notch above slaves and serfs.
Julius Caesar and Pliny the Elder and other historians of the day documented the societies of the "barbarians" prior to the expansion of civilization in antiquity they were much more egalitarian than the great civilization that conquered them.
The armies of barbarians weren't states but hundreds of tribes, disorganized without combat leadership experience. They were farmers protecting their land, thats why the Legions bowled over them.
Generally in tribal groups women had property rights could rule were part of tribal counsels and could separate from their men at their leisure. it was the encroachment of "Civilization that turned them into nomadic bands of raiders.
They had to abandon their their collectivist, egalitarian and semi-democratic lifestyle of farming and livestock production. Being stationary left them vulnerable to assault from the forces of the empire and emigrants.
In the same way the American Indians were predominantly agricultural societies until their land was seized by the Europeans.
People that explored the frontier ran into many societies that they thought were "Amazons" because their societies were matrilineal and women participated in counsels and were peers to men and held high social stations and positions of influence and authority.
In the same way the Indians were maligned in history as blood thirsty savages they were being robbed of their land an culture and the people they were attacking were farming their farms and driving them off their property. They weren't "Great Fierce Warriors" It took a couple of generations being taken to school in genocide for them to toughen up. King Phillip war wasn't a rebellion. it was the last resort for the Seminole and affiliated tribes when they were homeless, starving and impoverished. Converted to Christianity and cast off their lands, as the Providence ordained.
Barbarians in antiquity suffered the same fate due to the encroachment of western civilization land seizure and being thrust into homelessness and squalor. They were "warlike" because they were falling back from Rome into territories traditionally held by their cousins, and fighting for a place to pitch their tents.)
Take out the sensible model of natural selection, Slap a warning label on everything, rather than allow common sense to prevail, as we have, due to empathy and legality, and there is an overwhelming population of weak and sickly survivors ready to breed with, in addition. If we let nature take them, we would not have nearly as much disease, stupidity or illness. That is one of the ways emotion, linked with this example, is also to blame for the general shape of humanity. But he's right, it can all be brought back to that original female reproductive ideal of security. Those base male/female ideals are the foundation of all of it.
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