Evolutionary Psychology

Sat, 07 Jun 2003 13:32:00 -0400
/society

One man’s explorations in Evolutionary Psychology contains such gems as :

Why Pigeons Don’t Know They’re Alive

If you were designing a creature, would you give it the ability to over-ride good sensible instincts, when that creature is not intelligent enough to guess the likely outcomes of these over-rides? I think not.

Why Samurai Killed Themselves

Families, not wishing to be harmed by the actions of one rogue family member, would for the sake of their genes demand that the one erring member should kill himself rather than damage the whole family gene pool.

… the attitude to suicide amongst the general peasantry was very different. It was considered a crime. A peasant man was valued for his ability to feed his family. Whereas a noble could be confident that someone would look after his children, and that there was no danger of their starving, a peasant was not in this position. A peasant who killed himself would be significantly harming the chances of his children to grow up properly fed. The nobles relied for their income on the labours of the poor in their area, so they didn’t want their peasants killing themselves off.

Why asking her out is terrifying

Today, … a man can afford to be rejected almost all the time, so long as some women consent. This was not the world our foraging ancestors lived in. Back then, the world was sparsely populated. A man might live in a band of about twenty-five people, of whom perhaps six at most would be women of reproductive age, and most of these would be spoken for. It would be common that the man would only have frequent encounters with one or two potential mates. A wise designer of human instinct would therefore give men a fear of ‘blowing it’ with such rare and precious women. The maxim ‘There are plenty more fish in the sea’ would be even less of a comfort to a man who knows that he might not set eyes on another single woman for months.