A frequent complaint I get is that I belong to a bunch of cave dwellers, to the alleged “Bronze age goat herders” of my faith. So it is with some amusement that I found myself reading an evo/psych thread written by some real cave dwellers who seem to believe that evolution explains everything. They were like a herd of apes all beating their manly chests, bragging about how many bananas they have, and blaming women for all the evils of the world. Self identifying as great silver backs, I suspect.
So the theory goes that women, in a vile quest to manipulate the gene pool, have been selecting only thugs, while selecting out and rejecting all the good and gentle men. Because of women’s incredible lack of morals and odd sexual tastes, we now have a world populated by complete barbarians, which allegedly proves evolution. Naturally the most aggressive men can hunt the most bananas, which is why aggressive men are more attractive to women. Apparently we have a great fondness for bananas.
Anyway, due to this female character defect, all the good men are being edited out of the equation, being rudely deprived of their civil right to play in the gene pool.
Poor grammar and chest thumping aside, there is some simple logic behind this. From an evo/psych perspective, you could make an argument for the fact that women are more attracted to utter barbarians because we have evolved to desire protection and provision. Or because we’re just evil and wish to create a master race of Morlocks. Either way it seems to fit somewhat.
Naturally that is not the conclusion they made, the Lost Boys of the Cave decided that if there is any evil to be found in men, it is clearly the fault of women who must have bred it into them genetically by sexually selecting only the most obnoxious men, the thugs, and not unlike you would breed characteristics into a poodle, we have somehow managed to take a beautiful creature like a man-wolf and transform him into a chihuahua.
Yes, by pre-selecting only thugs, we have somehow managed to create a world full of rabid chihuahuas. Apparently something has gone terrible wrong with our natural selection. Last time I checked wolves are far more manly than chihuahuas, so in theory if women are only selecting thugs, than we should be creating a world filled with nothing but total were-wolves, the offspring of barbarians.
Left completely unsaid however, was the fact that if women really lived in a world full of complete barbarians, just how much choice and sexual selection are women actually capable of? Never mind.
I came to 3 conclusions after reading this diatribe. First, God was right in Genesis when He said, “it is not good for the man to be alone.” That apparently included alone with his thoughts. Second, whatever women’s flaws are, if there is any sexual selection going on, it can’t be any more foolish than what I was reading from these men. But lastly and most importantly, evolution in this sense can not exist because women do select men for protection and provision and in cave dwelling days that is going to translate into quite aggressive and barbaric. If women were truly selecting only thugs due to our alleged sexual evolution, we should have created a master race of Morlocks by now. Now true, some days it does appear as if we have done exactly that, but in truth human nature has not changed much over the centuries.
I often think the world is going to hell in a hand basket myself, but that can be a difficult thing to measure. Something we have to adjust for is the population explosion, recently declining, but it took us forever as humans to arrive at one billion people on the planet. We went from 1 billion to more than 7 billion in just the last century. More people simply means more chaos, not that we are evolving into some less pleasant life form. Than we have the technology age, mediated reality, that works very hard to bring us every human tragedy and failing known to man. We are inundated with information, most of it negative. So more people and more information about people than we ever wanted to have, can certainly skew our perspectives.
We have not created a master race of Morlocks. Sad to say, but I have to conclude that what we are seeing in the world today is actually just human nature, largely amplified due to population increases and technology.
As to those Lost Boys of the Cave however, whoever has been sexually selecting for the stupid gene, Girl, we really need to talk…….
See, there's this thing called biology... 
This is very good! So relatable. I hope you don’t mind that I shared. 🙂
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Thank you for your kind words and I appreciate the share. 🙂
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Haha. It’s kind of funny when you see such an example of people in love with their own perceptions and feelings while so devoid of basic reality. All around me in the world I see most people procreate at some point. Out of all the different types of guys out there even those few who are genuinely nice, even those few who are genuinely of far above average intelligence, even those few who are genuinely lacking in IQ, even the thugs…many representatives of every category eventually procreate. Of course I do know of a few individual men who haven’t yet and may not ever produce any offspring. I just don’t know of any “type” that are excluded from the gene pool of the future.
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This also made me think of how common the theme is that nice guys never get any. It’s bizarre how many guys walk around basically saying to all their friends (or perhaps mostly just to their friends who are girls?) that they are nice and someone should get them laid. It’s weird how many men are clueless about their own nature…as bad guys who really only want empty, disconnected sex and are also totally devoid of any motivation to either improve themselves or invest anything in lifting up and loving another person. It’s painful sometimes contemplating just how much is wrong in that oh so common scenario.
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Yep, you said a mouthful there. It is painful to watch sometimes. I’m always puzzled by all these so called “nice guys.” I much prefer those who are rotten and know it. I can relate to them. 🙂
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Complex topic IB. In my experience women build relationships to strengthen their positions. if a male is acting in an aggressive way that destroys a woman’s relationships, she is less likely to mate. if a male acts in an aggressive way that increases relationships (i.e. buying a company to increase his power base)it increases his attractiveness for he achieves more power and authority in society and can provide safety and protection to the woman,. It is really all about safety for the woman and her offspring – real or potential. If aggressive male puts up a wall of safety then that is positive and if he decreases safety, that is negative. How the woman perceives this safety s variable in my experience. It is all dependent on how stooopid they are. Women who are short sighted may be attracted to a possessive male but women of greater foresight will reject the same male because they know he reduces relationships in the long run.
Complex topic IB, but definitely worthy of a conversation. Thanks
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It is a complex issue, isn’t it? Women do get all broken and cross those signals, so yes possessive, obnoxious, can be mistaken for protection, safety, usually with dire consequences. Then there are the women who marry men for long term relationships, but eventually discover there’s just no attraction there anymore. I think if women had permission in our culture to be more honest about ourselves and what we want from men, many of these problems could be avoided. Ha, of course, many of us just let biology rule and don’t ever bother to ask these questions.
Power is an issue I think our whole culture is really wrestling with, we just don’t know how to define it anymore. So power and authority within the culture these days can mean you’re a corrupt creep that isn’t fit to have a relationship with anyone. In times past integrity, honor, reliability built success, but today even our politicians are often under indictment or investigation.
So wealth, status, power, popularity, are no longer good measures of someones worth and value.
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“I think if women had permission in our culture to be more honest about ourselves and what we want from men, many of these problems could be avoided. Ha, of course, many of us just let biology rule and don’t ever bother to ask these questions.”
And some of us have ourselves talked into the views that we can handle to try to repair after damage and build anew. People need time to repair. But one of the dysfunctions of our current dating and divorce culture stuff is that people play at it, come to need it and to need more to repair and then jump into getting it fulfilled very quickly but in dysfunctional ways after a break-up.
I’ve been going through all sorts of iterations of good long cries and journaling and pouring out emotions and thoughts and ideas. I wouldn’t have done any of that if I’d given in to the urge to just go get me some replacement/fake intimacy. Theoretically I might be healthy and functional enough someday to see things consistently clearly. I think I already have loads of good clear moments. They just can’t wipe out the need to keep processing through all the bad. I even have some tiny. Moments of hope and some fairly wild ideas about differences there ought to be between the way people in our culture do dating and committing versus ways I think we maybe ought to do it in future.
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Perhaps I should clarify the word, wild. *laughs*
I think I have some valid ideas. But I also know that such changes sound radical or even crazy to most people. There is the cultural norm first and foremost. Then there are new ideas all the time both good and bad. Sometimes a new idea fits nicely enough into the cultural paradigm that it is adopted but most new ideas clash with the paradigm just a little too much for comfort. And how many people like to look at those things that cause that kind of dissonance rather than dismiss them quickly?
I’m just so used to living outside of the box now that I’m fairly comfortable there. And I’m used to the idea that my out-of-the-boxness seems crazy to a lot of people.
So I’m mulling over ideas of pre-marital counseling, prenuptial agreements and betrothal concepts and open communication about intimate matters beforehand…even a concept I once heard quite a bit about that dame out of an eastern European country where an older couple who witnessed a wedding became by cultural decree responsible for the young couple and would later move in with them if they got in trouble and stay until the young couple worked it out even if only to work as a united front to get rid of the older couple….and apparently the older couple would easily enough just move right in again if they thought they needed to.
Sadly there just aren’t many reliable older couples around in western culture, which means conversely there are too many divorced older couples and unreliable older couples who may be divorced in future, so that one isn’t much help. But I think there is a lot of room for improvement in our own cultural practices and I see specific value in addressing the need for improvement head on, not to mention in understanding and exploring ideas out of other cultures and other times in history with an open mind. I’m praying all the time that God will protect my kids from bad marriages!
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From scratchmom has a good point – the dynamics of choice are totally different for the same players, dependent on whether they are about to enter a relationship or they are in a relationship and trying to decide whether to continue.
To address your comment, IB, of power often involving corruption and illegal activity – I read a study done by Harvard Business School that compared human personality types in the general population to those in the Executive of companies. They found a higher incidence of psychopaths and sociopaths in business than in society. Which makes sense as the mind set required to produce sub-standard products or to lay off hundreds of employees or operate in unsafe manner because they can, requires a lack of emotional connection while maintaining corporate image through optics- basically the definition of a psychopath. Financial gain and power are the rewards for those who acting in a psychopathic manner. And power and solid finances spell safety for women- you can see where this is going and why so many relationships fail.
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I tend to believe that the thug-chasing is really a recent phenomenon. As you said, if it came naturally to women, humanity would have died out. In fact, modern cultures where it’s prevalent (i.e, the English-speaking world) actually ARE dying out. And conversely, you can’t get much more thuggish than ISIS, and they aren’t exactly known for having female fan-clubs in the Middle East.
My feeling is that thug-chasing in our culture comes from a combination of feminist education (teaching girls that all men are pigs); mass-media (glamorizing bad-boys); and family/religious breakdown (lack of mentoring for girls). Sadly, a lot of males—like the Gamecocks—go along with it all because they can use female dysfunction as an excuse for not being men.
Even cavemen look better from today’s perspective
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“Sadly, a lot of males—like the Gamecocks—go along with it all because they can use female dysfunction as an excuse for not being men.”
I think this really is true. I see it expressed over and over again. What makes me kind of sad about that is that men are men, they are called to lead, they are called to know who they are and who they serve and it isn’t women at all. Men have to go forth and conquer, they create their place in the world and figure out who they are. If that is completely dependent on the culture or on women, those men will become trapped and powerless over their own lives.
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This sort of tickled me IB. Even though I live out in the sticks now, I grew up a pretty hard core city kid. so by nature I am I guess…semi thuggish. It’s just how we grew up. I have since purchased some pronouns and suits and can be taken into polite company. But the basic wildness has never really disappeared. My wife(future wife) was rather shocked when it rose to the surface a time or two as we were courting so to speak, and rather disturbed her country genteelness.
So, while she was certainly not thug hunting, she managed to find one in some ways. While she would have never in a million years been attracted to that if that is all a person was, she finds some value in the fact that it is still in there, waiting to pop out. Basically, there is some security in the fact that, if needed, her fellow can still out thug any real thugs we might happen to encounter. I just have to take my coat and tie off is all. So, the idea of looking for protection and security is not an invalid idea at all.
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LOL! How charming and romantic, Wally. I really think there is a faith based precedent for that kind of love. We are all thugs so to speak, but thugs with great worth and value who have been redeemed. That is who Christ chose as His disciples, not the righteous, not the “nice,” but those who where a bit rough around the edges. Than He sends them out and says, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” Oh, and all these bad things will probably befall you, but don’t worry about it.
So men really do have a special role in the world and how perfect, when men actually understand who and what they are, when they know their worth and value, women find them attractive. I admit, women too, tend to ask a great deal. You just need to be a sheep, able to fight wolves, wise as a serpent, but also as harmless as a dove. 🙂
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Amen IB!
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I hope a lot of people understand the relevance of what you’ve said here. “Sad to say, but I have to conclude that what we are seeing in the world today is actually just human nature, largely amplified due to population increases and technology.” Sadly I doubt they will.
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