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Salvation in the Space age

"The flood of anxiety is not the end for man.
It is, rather, a 'school' that provides man with
the ultimate education, the final maturity.
It is a better teacher than reality . . .
because reality can be lied about, twisted, and tamed
by the tricks of cultural perception and repression.
But anxiety cannot be lied about.
Once you face up to it, it reveals the truth of your situation;
and only by seeing that truth
can you open a new possibility for yourself."
Becker, Ernest. (1973). The Denial of Death.
New York: The Free Press, pp. 87-88.
(1974 Pulitzer Prize for Non-fiction)

What is the dominant threat to human survival? If we look at the evolution of human mating strategies, we see that these strategies respond to two threats, resource shortage or parasitism. Depending which of these is dominant, either a short- or long-term mating strategy is selected. The Evolution of Human Mating: Trade-Offs and Strategic Pluralism.

What is the threat today, food shortages or AIDS? Since at least the industrial revolution, the availability of food and other resources essential for human survival have been adequate for the entire population of the Earth. AIDS and other parasitic diseases, however, continue to be a problem, which has resisted even the most well supported scientific efforts.

Even though there has been an unprecedented increase in wealth production worldwide, resulting from continuing technological progress and economic growth, poverty continues to dominate a substantial fraction of the world's population Kofi Annan's Amazing Facts: the true parameters of the planet's problems. While it may seem obvious that a change in political will and social organization could rapidly resolve resource distribution problems, the connection between social organization and infectious disease may be less clear.

Direct connections can be made between lack of clean drinking water, poor sanitation, and other deficiencies of the physical environment and the spread of disease. However, problems of the social environment can also be implicated in this spread. Most obviously, the failure to provide uniform vaccination and the lack of adequate medical care can contribute to epidemics. Less obviously, wars and other disruptions of society have been implicated in the spread of infectious agents, particularly sexually transmitted diseases. In the long run, however, it is the evolutionary interplay between host and parasite which determines the toll of disease.

The dominate social forms of today are based upon cultural arrangements that were appropriate thousands of years ago, when resource shortage was a crucial problem of survival. The continued application of these forms imposes restrictions on human behavior that are both unnecessary and counterproductive.

A culture for life extension

"Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition,
and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather,
altogether incalculable."
Søren Kierkegaard. Either/Or, vol. 1, "The Rotation Method" (1843)

There are, however, social forms which demonstrate that freedom in personal affairs and social responsibility can be united. This is done within a culture that has as a highest value household harmony. Walking Marriage A-xia marriage

The Moso demonstrated "low fertility and mortality rates that are usually considered to be the result of modernization." (Chuan-kang Shih. L'Homme-Revue française d'anthropologie.154-155, avril-septembre 2000. Tisese and Its Anthropological Significance. Issues around the Visiting Sexual System among the Moso.) Advantages of the culture include freedom in sexual-reproductive relations, the absence of "illegitimate" children, absence of conflict among in-laws, and a stable care environment for dependent persons. This last factor likely contributed to the very high ages reached by some Moso around 1900 AD.

The traditional argument for exclusive life-long marriage has been that early human fathers provided food for their mates in exchange for fidelity. However, this view has been increasing replaced by the notion that, "monogamy arose as 'negotiation between males' about access to females, to cut the high risks of direct fighting." In fact, some tribes believe that a child can have multiple fathers - partible paternity. Children with "multiple" fathers were found to survive with significantly greater frequency than those with only one father (Hagmann, M. [1999, Feb. 5], Science, 283, 777).

From other research, we know 'that the type of sanction against female sexuality is the critical factor for predicting the cultural importance of romantic love... (V. C. de Munck & A. Korotayev [1999]. Sexual Equality and Romantic Love: A Reanalysis of Rosenblatt's Study on the Function of Romantic Love)' The authors find that societies that allow premarital and extramarital sex for both males and females rate romantic love significantly higher than societies that have a double standard or have strong sanctions against female sexuality out of wedlock. Since the Moso do not sanction female sexuality, we can expect romantic love to be valued highly in the culture.

Mate choice: The evolutionary evidence

"If sexual selection drove human mental evolution, it must have been a form of sexual selection that could work given mutual mate choice."

"More recent studies of human tribal societies and of other primates suggests these views are wrong, and that both sexes exercise mate choice among chimpanzees, bonobos, and tribal humans, which are all characterized by multi-male, multi-female social groups. Other evidence (ranging from comparative morphology to evolutionary psychology) suggests that hominids were not lifelong monogamists, but followed a pattern of serial social monogamy (with relationships lasting a few days to a few years) augmented by extra- pair copulations and some polygyny."

"It [chapter 9] concludes by urging evolutionary psychology to broaden its concept of human morality from what Nietzsche called the Christian 'morality of the herd' (fairness, conscience, equality, fidelity, altruism), to what he called the pagan virtues (e.g., bravery, beauty, skill, leadership, stoicism, sacrifice, good manners)."

Miller, Geoffrey F. (2001) The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature, Psycoloquy: 12,#8 http://psycprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000137/