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Because of the large, long investment necessary to raise,
educate and socialize a child, humans have tended towards
monogamy and extended families to provide necessary parenting.
How strongly we are monogamous is illustrated by the
reactions to rejection that can be observed. Monogamy, being a
response also to an extended developmental period of the mind
suggests that it would coincide to language and tool use. Some
researchers have suggested that monogamy and year around female
receptivity had a lot to do with social evolution leading to
current human cooperative ability.
Monogamy
The legal term monogamy refers to husband and wife. In
biological terms for humans, it means the male extensively
assisting in raising the children. It is not so much
monogamy as it is a matter of the female having help raising
the children. The child must receive material resource,
technical skills, knowledge and culture from more than the
mother. That is the way it is for all social animals.
Monogamies generally occur when it requires more than one
parent to give (evolutionary) reasonable chance for the offspring
to survive to maturity. Monogamies arise in otherwise polygamous
species in relatively harsh conditions where it requires two
parents to raise the young. In humans it seems that monogamies
are not so much due to the harshness of the environment, but
instead that they are a result of the long large investment
necessary to raise, educate, and socialize a human child.
The basis of human reproductive habit has related to the
family and community since the hunter-gatherer and until present.
In typical mammals the family is mother and immature young.
Monogamy adds the father to the family. Occasionally, as in
jackals, there are even young staying on as helpers, delaying
their own reproduction to help their parents raise siblings.
Some species include uncles and aunts in the "family." Hunter-
gatherer humans reproductive habits included an extended family
of mother or mothers, father, grandparents, siblings, uncles,
aunts, cousins, grandchildren, etc. As humans evolved, the social
unit was the reproductive unit and was mostly extended family
where relatedness was well understood. Relatedness would have
been high enough for inclusive fitness to be important to social
interaction. They also knew their relatedness to the groups
around them because the families were part of larger tribes in a
territory.
Since the critical aspect of the reproductive arrangement
was the male providing both intellectual and physical resources
to the offspring, a form of polygamy could and does exist where
one male provides the resources for more than one female. Still,
all humans characteristically practice marriage such that the
male is highly involved in raising the children. In any case, the
point is that human males have an essential part in the family.
The extension of this is religion where broad family ties are
institutionalized.
When considering the factors that dictate human
characteristics, the overwhelming importance of education leads
one to consider any factor that effects the cost of child
raising. Education and its cost is such an important element of
human survival, that any changes in it, profoundly effect the
whole society. It must be considered that computers offer this
potential. If computers can be effectively used as teaching
machines, it will have profound results on the society.
Marriage
Humans are a specie that normally mate for life. This is
largely related to the requirements of child raising. Complex
customs and institutions have been developed to make this work.
These institutions and customs are collectively known as
marriage. Marriage is a very old institution at the very root of
humanity. It is central to any family or community. It is one of
the best things that humans have produced. From a biological
perspective, it must be viewed primarily as it relates to child
raising. Realistically it relates to love, economics,
reproduction, happiness, security, hope and much more. To some
greater or lesser degree, we are genetically adapted to marriage.
It is a mating contract in the context of the community. From the
view of societies, it is the basic glue that holds the society
together. Historically, marriage is how diverse societies have
ended or avoided wars.
Societies have always had laws governing marriage, both for
genetic and economic reasons. During much of recent human
development, the moral law regulating marriage and the family was
preserved by the religious functionaries. Their knowledge helped
preserve the society. It also has importance as a basic part of
ownership laws.
The context in which this is being examined includes
happiness as being more than just survival. A marriage is
considered as being for raising children and a happy home is the
best environment for raising children, but it is also supposed to
provide personal happiness to the partners in that bond. That is
not the belief of some cultures or individuals. The more hybrid
an individual is, the better they can be at communication,
including with the other sex. Circumstances being what they are,
it would suggest that the reasons for marriage and raising a
family should include personal satisfaction as much as some
biological imperative. A person that is too selfish to be able to
value the enjoyment of their children, has little reason for
family.
As important as marriage is, in the future it would seem
natural that the society would develop institutions to promote
it. It might well be that any society that does not promote
marriage and family, will cease. In the future this would
include dating services, child care, education, family
counceling, etc.
rewrite, expand, say women may get relegated
In civil societies, disease has historically caused a very
high child mortality rate. Typically this rate has been as high
as 60%. Families in agriculteral areas have been large for the
same reason and to provide labor on the farm. Another reason for
larger families has been to provide for the parents in old age.
In the present technological society, these factors do not play a
major role. Instead, the decrease in child mortality and the
increased costs of raising and educationg children, has caused
a reduction in family size. Other factors, such as social
programs to support the elderly, have contributed to this as
well.
With it being seemingly unnecessary for women to devote
their full energies to child bearing and child raising, has come
a focus on other activities including carreer occupations. This
in turn has further devalued childraising as an occupation.
Various institutions to provide childcare have been created and
become more common. Often, it is economical for a women to have
an occupation and to pay for child care. Another factor is that
child raising can end up being very intellectualy unstimulating.
All of these factors end up devaluing child bearing and child
raising.
Many traditional values got devalued by the strident voices
of inexperienced youth. They got away with it because rapid
changes in society caused traditions to fade and become suspect.
What went along with this was the Cold War and the Vietnam War.
These showed such poor judgement by leadership, that traditional
leadership got discredited. This judgement was perhaps somewhat
unjust, but popular media fueled this with attacks on
conservative values.
This book progresses through time and the development of
societies. This part of this book is the first place that reaches
an examination of what is happening currently. So here, is where
one common present problem is mentioned that is an effect that
appears, with great consequence, to infleunce many factors in
human society and survival. It is described here for the present
topic, but it relates to many current topics and problems. It
will be more completely discussed in the section on beliefs.
The human mind is a pattern recognition device. It finds
patterns or it imposes them where they do not exist. It always
makes patterns that are balanced. We tend to think in terms of
dualities. If we believe in good, we will believe in evil. If we
believe in right, we will believe in wrong. We tend to believe
there is a perfect solution to a problem. Time and wisdom may
lead to a knowledge that this is not always the case, but it is
how the human mind is designed and without talent and discipline,
few people progress to an ability for more critical
understandings. Conservatism is using the solutions that have
worked best in the past.
The upshoot of all this is that humans look for perfect
solutions and often think that they exist. It is how the brain
works. Still, we are human and no matter what we would like to
imagine, we are not perfect. Human reporduction is a rather messy
affair. We have hormones that produce normal states that are far
from rational. Pregnancy is very stressful and fairly dangerous.
Childraising, while quite rewarding overall, can be tedious at
times and terrifying at other times. It could be accurately
enough stated that parenting can be stressful. It might be more
accurate to say that sometimes parenting is heartbreaking. The
trouble is that our tendency towards wishful thinking, when
applied to relationships and child raising, has typically led us
to great mistakes. When discussing the successes or failures of
marriages or parenting, this tendency towards irrational wishful
thinking is a major factor to be considered. Many times it has
made people disregard lessons that have already been expensively
learned in the past.
Presently, it is difficult to guess the the consequences of
child raising by institutions verses the family. There are
disfunctional families and disfunctional institutions. The
attention and love that a family provides may not make up for the
professional knowledge that an institution can bring.. or vica-
versa. Moralities dictate how parents raise their children and
few moralities push extensive education for children. Most
moralities developed when education had little value. The rapid
social and technological changes have made older values quite
suspect. There is also wishfull thinking and the Dr. Spock
syndrome - lazy parents. Dr. Spock said not to worry too much
about teaching and discipling children. They would turn out fine
and socialize naturally as they got older. parents accepted this
thinking for two reasons. It allowed them to be lazy and not
devote the effort necessary to teach and socialize their
children. The other reason is that so many things about parenting
are unpleasent. It takes an incredible amount of effort, time,
skill and luck to manage to teach, socialize and discipline
children. We tend to be lazy and think that the easy way works.
We think that strict discipline seems wrong, so we tend towards
lax discipline. Children resist the effort of learning and the
discomfort of discipline. Presently, the result of this is social
disaster. We are not naturally adapted to this ecology yet and
learning what we need is very difficult at present. Looking for
new, perhaps perfect systems, is a tendency of youth. Unfotunatly
it tends to make people forget the hard learned lessons of the
past.
As long as child mortality is low, humans will not need to
have big families. If mortality goes up, big families will again
be necessary and women will probably have to specialize in
childraising.
A fairly common habit in humans is for selection of the mate
being done by the parents. They try to insure that their child
marries the mate with the highest available status. This is most
common in situations where the parents already have wealth or
status and are trying to acquire more through and for their
chldren. Many times though, it is because humans mature
reproductively before they mature emotionally or rationally.
Family/Community
economic unit, old age, emotional support
Biologically speaking, a family is basically a genetic
concept where experienced adults raise and educate their
children. For humans, especially since the time of the cities, it
has come to mean much more. It is an economic unit, it is to care
for individuals in old age, it is to provide emotional support
and security and it has other functions.
For humans it is also described as an economic unit. If desired, it could be
called an institution for raising children, but that could be an
orphanage, creche or even a school. Normally, for humans, the
family has been the multi-generation extended family that
includes grand parents and various other relatives beyond just
the parents and children. A nuclear family consists of just the
parents and children. A family is for providing the economic and
educational resources required by the child.
One somewhat ideal family form is when the grandparents can
aid in raising the children. Often, they have valuable experience
to contribute.
In the situation that is arising, stress is enough of a
problem that the family should be defined as a method of raising
children. This is independent of whether it is a large extended
family or a single parent or relative and a child. There is not
always a choice.
In that much of human destiny will be created by human
desire, an extremely important question arises about what the
family should be.
wealth and status
new stuff ********
Community
What we call a community started as a tribe. In reproductive
terms, it is a group of families that live together such that the
socialization of the children occurs in that context. A community
has common habits and beliefs. Marriage is almost always between
members of the same or related communities. Many different
factors make the community the equivelent of an extension of the
family. It is the largest of human reproductive entities. a
community may be the location of families or it may be based on a
common set of moral beliefs, such as a religious community. In a
tribe, the community is very closely releated. Mates are almost
exclusively selected from the same tribe. This is true of any
community and tends to be a defining characteristic.
Reproduction
We show little instinct towards pregnancy. We do show an
instinct to have sex. Pregnancy causes parental behaviors to
develop. This is a key consideration.
Factors such as birth control, eugenics, cloning, etc., all
could become significant, but they will act in relation to the
basic form of human reproductive behavior in relation to
vertebrate habit.
Moities and Incest
Humans, almost universally, have taboos against incest.
Marriage tends to between members of different families, or
moities, within the same community or tribe.
Education
When considering the factors that dictate human
characteristics, the overwhelming importance of education leads
one to consider any factor that effects the cost of child
raising. Education and its cost is such an important element of
human survival, that any changes in it, profoundly effect the
whole society. It must be considered that computers offer this
potential. If computers can be effectively used as teaching
machines, it will have profound results on the society.
Reproduction (a. Wealth -- material)
There are three kinds of wealth: material, genetic and
status.
Material wealth is the resources necessary for growth,
homeostasis and reproduction. Affluence would be having a
comfortable supply of these resources. Wealthy is a degree of
wealth which would refer to an abundance of these resources or
the ability to produce them.
Even before humans started hunting big game, wealth included
hunting territories, water sources, skins, ornaments, tools, live
stock and little else. The only form of economics would have been
barter.
Wealth in the sense of real estate, is far older than any
legalism because it is the basic resource that humans occupied
and from which all other resources originated. Territories are
aggressively defended.
Since then, the concept of wealth has changed and expanded.
Notable stages were the development of agriculture; cities and
economics of the Middle Ages; and the industrial revolution. In
the next ecology it will relate to a stable resource base that is
not environmentally destructive.
Excessive analysis of the relevance meaning of various forms
of wealth, including money, shows that its biological
significance is similar to that of a territory and its
corresponding resources. At times a fiat money, gold, or other
things have provided for survival where real estate wouldn not
have. The whole issue is complex, but resolvable when evaluated
by examples rather than some governing principle. Sometimes
anything could be worthless or it could provide the resources
needed for survival.
Though fundamentally not much different than some of the
resource characteristics of the hunter-gatherer, it is
incredibly novel compared to other species.
What is significantly different from the hunter-gatherer is
while the tribe found or made all it required, the tribes in
cities specialized on one resource and traded for other
necessities.
The significance of wealth extends past the resources of day
to day survival and includes giving a wider choice and selection
of mates. It also allows a greater parental investment in the
young, further enhancing their survival chances and increasing
the parents inclusive fitness.
c. Wealth -- hypertrophy of resource
Material Wealth
The changes in energy acquisition strategy has led to major
and novel changes in male and female reproductive strategy.
It includes great overhead for status
************************************************************************
Reproduction (a. Wealth -- genetic)
wealth is all things that contribute to successful reproduction
Wealth is understood to be more than money or possessions.
It includes real estate, money, knowledge, skill, position,
health, beauty, etc. Biologically these divide up as genetic and
material wealth.
Genetic wealth includes "health, beauty, and brains" or
superior physiology, morphology and psychology. The value of
beauty or secondary sexual characteristics is easy to understand.
It enhances mate choice and mate bonding among other things. The
value of health is broad as well. Efficiency of physical activity
and simple survival would be a good start for a list of
advantages conferred by health. The value of psychological
balance, intelligence, aggressiveness, patience, timing, rythym,
love, loyalty, based on other psychological traits that are
influenced by heredity, is that these are our psychological
appendages we use to deal with the world and the demands of
survival.
Even in America "breeding" and class are understood to designate
qualities in a person. When it comes down to mate selection, factors of
genetic wealth will be weighed. Women and men are very capable of
judging many genetic characteristics -- Appendix.
Status
There are many kinds and meanings to wealth. Wealth can be
material, genetic, technical and other things. It can be beauty,
money, skill and position. One of the most important forms of
wealth is status. In terms of biology, it is described as the
reproductive group that you have access to. In terms of reality,
it dictates much of the form of human decisions. Status is a
fundamental and important aspect of how we socially interact
organize and regulate our society. In analyzing any
characteristic of human habit or belief, consideration of its
relation to status is usually pertinent.
Status and class have more mobile meanings than does caste.
Caste refers not only to occupation and status, but to tribe.
Class refers more to status and usually economic position. Class
may not refer to tribe. In recent history, status and class has
come to be very closely related to material wealth and to a large
extent, beauty ( as in the past as well ). The source of our
primary value system is the aggressive Indo-Europeans. We
compete for status, by the methods and value system of
pastoralists. There are some.. other value systems, aggressively
attacked by more fundamental elements of the society ( ignorant
people ) who instinctively attack any sign of change or challenge
to their value system. The values of the pastoralist are just
what can be seen presently.
Their is another form of status that this society recognizes
to some extent. That is intellectual ability. Both the actor and
the sport star are likely to acquire monetary wealth. This is
usually not the case for the intellectual artist, but there is a
status system involved. In a way it is like beauty, but it is so
antithical to the common aggressive system of the society, that
it becomes a separate status value and system. It is a very
visible contrast between genetic wealth and material wealth.
Beauty fits into the aggressive system better than creative
ability and is often equated directly with material wealth. In a
system dominated by aggressive exploitive values, the exploited
class becomes low in status. Creativity is antithical to the
values of the society. It is presently so important that you can
get away with it some, if you are apologetic. One thing rigidly
enforced by the society, it is unforgivable for an individual to
claim superior intelligence. It may be due to the present lack of
any real understanding of what intelligence means, but more
likely it is seen as an assault on the aggressive value system.
Inclusive Fitness
As most other behaviors in humans, aspects of reproductive
behaviors have hypertrophied to a point where recognition of
basic elements is difficult. Also, the potential presented by
language as a tool for family recording has made the consequences
of inclusive fitness, or nepotism, far more significant.
Inclusive fitness is when aid is extended to a related
individual such that it increases the chances of survival of your
own genetic sequences.
As suggested by the genetic consequences of inclusive
fitness, data indicates that in most species that exhibit
altruism, it is more often exhibited towards relatives.
Different species have different rates of relatedness in any
reproductive population, but altruism appears when relatedness is
relatively high. It can even be different for each sex of a
specie according to dispersal characteristics of each sex.
Intelligence, as a behavior facilitates technology, but it
developed largely as a social behavior for remembering and
understanding our interactions with other members of our society.
The problems that must ultimately be solved in a primitive or
modern society for an individual's survival and acceptance in the
society are more complex and intellectually demanding than most
mental tasks. Bits of information per task could be compared and
might produce interesting results. In humans, cunning, as a
strategy for success in the society has shown increasing
importance relative to more physically aggressive based
hierarchies.
Nepotism
With the mastery of record keeping, families and tribes
could establish complex understandings of relationships within
the society. Nepotism, favoritism towards family members, became
elaborately institutionalized and extended. This altruism towards
family members is considered a feature of inclusive fitness,
where helping those related to you helps your overall chance for
genetic survival. In the sense of the real world, it is easy to
observe incredible forms of family loyalty.
Because of inclusive fitness, the pre-record keeping humans
would extend altruism to family members to the extent that they
were known and to their social group or tribe that they display
reciprocal altruism towards.
In a multi-tribal society, the most effective use of altruism,
would be to direct it towards family members.
With the growth of record keeping, altruism as an aspect of
inclusive fitness became institutionalized and knowledge of
relatedness, by the individual, took in many more people.
By the time the first cities were built, a tribes knowledge
included extensive knowledge of the "recent" genealogy of every
member of the society and also knowledge of the tribe's
relatedness to other tribes of their nation. Nepotism was the
rule and from observation appears to have been quite a successful
strategy.
Jealosy
Jealosy seems to function as a behavioral mechanism to
make an individual protective and possessive of their mate.
Leisure ?? may not belong here
One aspect of what is referred to as the "New Ecology" is
that in the context of staging a qualitative step in evolution
it will only happen under certain conditions. An environment of
excessive conflict will only push evolution in the direction it
has already gone. One of the necessary conditions (under most
circumstances) would be general affluence reflecting a certain
ratio between population number and available resources. Our
evolution must lead to a situation of reduced stress, that is a
stable ecology that we can be come well adapted to. Often
education, let alone leisure and entertainment, has been
considered an aspect of affluence. Hopefully, comfort can be
considered the normal state.
Humans enjoy both leisure and entertainment, and their
evolutionary history has promoted both for different reasons.
Philosophically stated, "It will be a person at leisure that
will figure out many of the paths that humans will travel".
Often leisure and entertainment may serve multiple functions
such as education or reproductive behavior.
Resting at leisure conserves energy and promotes both
physical and mental recuperation. Leisure is required for the
consideration of one's world and the self-introspection that
develops an individual's potential for self-awareness. Leisure is
a time of regrowth, growth, and creativity. Leisure time is when
reproductive behavior occurs. Contra wise, the extent individuals
spend time structuring as a way of dealing with excessive time on
their hands shows the limits of real leisure requirements.
Anthropologists have conjectured that hunter-gatherer
humans, depending on locale and season, might spend over half
their time at leisure.
Any ecology can be evaluated for its promiscuousness. A
description of its resource availability versus potential
selective effects will describe how "promiscuous" a particular
ecological system or environment is. This should give a
description of leisure versus occupation at the business of
resource acquisition or basic survival.
Part of leisure time includes privacy. It is when an
individual is free from the demands of their society. Privacy
serves many functions, but one relates to a time of relaxation
and rest.
Humans, like rats, are generalists and as such evolution has
programed them to be constantly active and curious so as to
ensure exploitation of any available resources and to maximize
the adaptability in any group or circumstance. Humans are
designed to be "stimulant addicts" as often as inclined to
leisure.
How much resource is devoted to social interactions, sports,
movies, TV, radios, music, vacations, art, education,
restraunting, vices, and other "cheap thrills" that provide
physical and mental stimulation as well as potential for growth.
Much social interaction is simply for mental stimulation and so
is functionally similar to reading a book or watching sports.
This is also one of the personal reasons for having a family. The
challenge, stimulation, excitement,.. generated by a growing
family, is hard to imagine. Such is what life is and will be for
as long as we are human.
***** ************************************************************
move where belongs
In present society, it might be noted that when females are
competing for mates consists of looking attractive or sexual.
Even monetary wealth is more likely to be used as a lure than
intelligence or wisdom. And when was the last time you saw an
article on how to be a pleasent person? ****/
Various reproductive strategies that have worked quite well
in the past, may present problems in the ecologies that are
presently developing.
One of the unfortunate consequences of the lag in human
adaptation to present changing circumstances, is female mate
selection criteria. A female is trying to select the fittest
mate. Evolutionarily, that has meant the most aggressive male. In
the ecology that we are entering, aggressiveness is of secondary
importance. When they are young, it is extremely common for a
female to be attracted to a male for his aggressiveness. As she
gets older, aggressiveness is less desirable. By age 25, the
descisions made at 20, may be regretable.
Males have a corrosponding situation. They may be attracted
to physical attributes that do not reflect emotional attributes
that are desirable in the long run. Also, since disease has
always been one of the major problems for humans, natural
tendencies towards promiscuity, can lead to severe problems.
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