Understanding the often unconscious nature of genetic control is the first step toward understanding that -- in many realms, not just sex -- we are all puppets, and our best hope for even partial liberation is to try to decipher the logic of the puppeteer... I don't think I'm spoiling the end of the movie by noting here that the puppeteer seems to have exactly zero regard for the happiness of the puppets. (查看原文)
The second point to grasp before pondering how natural selection has "decided" to shape the sexual preferences of women (and of men) is that it isn't foresightful. Evolution is guided by the environment in which it takes place, and environments change. Natural selection had no way of anticipating, for example, that someday people would use contraception, and that their passions would thus lead them into time-consuming and energy-sapping sex that was sure to be fruitless...
This isn't to say that there's anything wrong with "unproductive" sexual recreation. Just because natural selection created us doesn't mean we have to slavishly follow its peculiar agenda. (If anything, we might be tempted to spite it for all the ridiculous baggage it's saddled us with.) ... (查看原文)
What the theory of natural selection says, rather, is that people's minds were designed to maximize fitness in the environment which those minds evolved. (查看原文)
