The Power of Attraction

Recently, there was a study released that confirmed that men choose their mate based on looks, which, I can only assume, means that women choose their mate based on something more. I don't know, I wasn't interested in reading the story.

But lets go with that assumption and extrapolate. It is pretty obvious that our goal in life is to promote the continued existance of the species, in some way or another. The simplest way to do that is to make more people. The way to make more people is to have sex. But what reproduction means is different for men than it is for women. Men do not need to alter their lives for a few years (9 months + nursing, which was the only way to feed babies for most of the existance of our species, except, of course, for the very very rich who had nursemaids) in order to procreate, so their main goal is finding the best possible mate in terms of overall health (including looks). Women look for a guy that is not only healthy, but likely to help out so that she isn't left with the kid, all by herself. And what does a pregnant or nursing woman need? She needs what we all need, food, shelter, and clothing, but she also needs time and relaxation. A pregnant woman needs MORE nourishment but is LESS likely to be able to get it all by herself. Women need someone to meet their basic needs on a daily basis during this time. Men only need the woman to be pregnant, healthy, and alive.

Of course, men know that the best mate is more than *just* good looking, but in the end, women are more concerned with their looks than men are. And men, partially freed from worrying about how they look, partially to attract women, do other things - all kinds of other things. Everyone needs a mate to continue the species, but were not interested in just any mate. So we have competition for mates. Women strive to be the best looking, the healthiest. Whereas men strive to prove that they can provide.

So that is the mating dance of the homo sapiens sapien.

Long ago, long before written history, long before agriculture, every adult member of our species needed to devote the entire day to obtaining enough calories to stay alive. Lets not forget that men usally needed to provide for more than just themselves while the women were hampered from later stages of pregancy. Nobody had the time to develop fancy bowls, religions, or governments. Those that did starved to death. But along the way, there came agriculture, loosely defined as the cultivation or maintenance of a food resource leading to the eventual harvesting. Cultivation took a varied amount of work, from the domestication of animals to waiting around for the salmon spawn. But what this meant was that one person could suddenly feed two, three, ten, one hundred. The people that didn't have to spend their entire day looking for food also had nothing to do. The results are all around us.

I feel we are at a very important milestone in the history of our species, much like those living during the advent of agriculture. Remember how women devote years of their lives to the care of new generations? Until only recenly, only the very very rich woman could afford to both carry on her own genes AND not devote her life to pregancy. One baby might take two years, significantly more if babies died in infancy or early childhood. Women have devoted their entire lives to one thing - procreation. But after thousands of years, we've filled up the planet. Oh, technically, we could handle more growth. Technically, we could make the entire planet like California.

Technically, which really implies ignoring the unmeasurable. Simply put, there are too many people NOW. I've been caught in traffic on a SATURDAY around here more than I care to remember. So not everyone needs to have a kid to perpetuate the species. In fact, a lot of people can do a lot more good with other activites. We also have a system that allows women to just assume that any pregnancy will not only go to term, but the baby that results will live into adulthood and even old age. [Of course, this is not necessiarly the case in a large segment of the world]

The result? Women do not need to devote their lives to pregnancy. And because we're homo sapiens sapiens, we want to do other things now. Men used to spend their time looking for calories for themselves and the women. Agriculture solved this problem thousands of years ago. Women spent their time being pregnant or nursing until about a hundred years ago. The difference? Look around.