Catching up, and a little evolution
Yesterday I was substituting for the librarian in a K-2 school. In three of the classes I read a book, then allowed the younguns to browse through the shelves to look at books. About four boys in each class refused to have anything to do with the books, and sat at the table instead of even looking at pictures.
I will say that one boy finally did give up and start looking at books, if only from boredom. But what’s with that, anyway? Boys no longer want anything to do with books?
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A caller I’ve spoken with several times was telling me a while back about some female superiority writing he had been looking at. It described the female as more evolved than the male of the human species, saying that females have continued to adapt, while males are still essentially cavemen, unready for civilization.
That sounds all well and good, but not having seen the article myself, I was unable to imagine a mechanism that would allow females to continue to evolve while males stopped doing so.
Having considered this for a while, I now am convinced that males have indeed continued to evolve, but in the wrong direction.
Enter male agressive risk-taking behavior. As I often tell my callers, the male mountain goats are seen in those nature documentaries butting their heads against each other, either falling off the mountainside or causing themselves brain damage. While the (invariably male) narrator drones on about the males competing to gain the favor of females, you might not notice that there are never any females in sight. They are off raising the next generation, pretty much ignoring the battles on the mountainside.
Now in the case of human females and males, the males are pulling foolish stunts like street racing and bungee-jumping. When asked, they will say they are doing these activities to impress women. Of course, the women are not impressed in the slightest by what they consider to be immature behavior by the men.
A slightly larger number of babies born each year are males than females, yet adult females generally outnumber males overall. It was theorized in the past that this could be attributed to young male babies being more succeptible to congenital and/or infectious diseases, or men dying in war more often then women. A study finally analyzed these statistics and found that the difference in adult numbers could be attributed entirely to male risk-taking behaviors. In other words, these males are voluntarily thinning the herd, but the individuals being selected are braver and bolder, but more foolhardy and less intellectual. In other words, they have weaker self- and group- (family) preservation instincts, and are slower on the uptake. Hmm, sounds like modern males, especially the younguns.
I found a cool newspaper article, but after all this writing, I don’t have time to work on it. I’ll try to summarize and analyze it tomorrow, and if not, then the weekend.
Ta-ta, guys.
