Socially Imposed, Gender Specific, Evolutionary, Psychologic

[Zerubbabel]

Evolutionary Psychology is the study of behavioral and cognitive adaptations of humans to a changing environment. These adaptations could come in response to changes in the physical environment such as the end of the ice age. Adaptations can also come in response to a changing social environment. History is full of examples and it seems that whenever there is an interaction or mingling of different cultures then how we as individuals think and what we do inevitably changes. The movement of the group sweeps the individual, and the individual’s psychology, along with it.

Early man lived in a violent and dangerous world. The ever-present dangers came from the environment (imagine living through an ice age) and from wild animals and from other groups of violent men. The group that had strong, competitive and aggressive men to protect it and to provide for it faired better than the group that had peaceful non-competitive and non-aggressive men. The same is true for most mammals and mating schemes always evolved to favor the strong and aggressive male, to reproduce more strong aggressive males.

Since those early years there has been a continual march of progress and the development of civilization. Now those attributes are undesirable and harmful to the social order. There has existed for a long time the, not elimination of, but the channeling of aggression into specific means, e.g. military service and sports. Today in the West even that is changing at some level and there is a very strong social force against all forms of masculine aggression. The word macho is now an expression of contempt. There are movements to eliminate competition among boys, to suppress any signs of aggression. The boys who fail gentle persuasion are put on behavioral modifying drugs. There are many reactions and pathos associated with this but the general movement away from aggression is clear and undeniable. Now this in itself is the source of conflict involving what some call the feminization of the West. It is not my intent to fan those flames but to establish an extant example of the titular adaptation to which I can juxtapose a proposed adaptation for the other gender.

Early Woman lived a harsh life with deprivations and dangers all around them. The group that had caring, comforting, as well as fertile and lactating women, faired better. Women could make life much more tolerable by always gathering what they could and by making the home more comfortable. They were always the one trying to improve the nest and to provide for the weaker among the group. Evolutionary psychology has ingrained that drive for comfort into the woman in the same way that evolutionary psychology drove aggression into the man.

Today we live in, not only a peaceful civilization, but a civilization of hyper-consumerism, and over-population. Women are at the forefront of this movement and marketing types tell us that women control the majority of all spending and so are the driving force and the dominant consumer. The women has a much higher standard of comfort than the man. Much of this is justified by present or potential children. This hyper consumption and obsession with comfort is presented as being “for the children.” What really got me thinking about this is a comment from a woman with many children and many pets who said “I need to feel needed.” This is obviously the manifestation of an evolutionarily ingrained psychological drive in the female gender.

For sustainability to ever be something more than mere lip-service, the individual female needs to have socially imposed upon her the necessity to suppress her drive towards material comfort, in the same way that the individual male has had socially imposed upon him the necessity to suppress his drive towards aggression. Of course this will be viscerally opposed by women themselves and economically/politically opposed by the wealthy who profit from consumerism and have always loved, and reached out to through marketing, the comfort-loving woman.

[LuckyR]

Evolutionary Psychology is the study of behavioral and cognitive adaptations of humans to a changing environment. These adaptations could come in response to changes in the physical environment such as the end of the ice age. Adaptations can also come in response to a changing social environment. History is full of examples and it seems that whenever there is an interaction or mingling of different cultures then how we as individuals think and what we do inevitably changes. The movement of the group sweeps the individual, and the individual’s psychology, along with it.

Early man lived in a violent and dangerous world. The ever-present dangers came from the environment (imagine living through an ice age) and from wild animals and from other groups of violent men. The group that had strong, competitive and aggressive men to protect it and to provide for it faired better than the group that had peaceful non-competitive and non-aggressive men. The same is true for most mammals and mating schemes always evolved to favor the strong and aggressive male, to reproduce more strong aggressive males.

Since those early years there has been a continual march of progress and the development of civilization. Now those attributes are undesirable and harmful to the social order. There has existed for a long time the, not elimination of, but the channeling of aggression into specific means, e.g. military service and sports. Today in the West even that is changing at some level and there is a very strong social force against all forms of masculine aggression. The word macho is now an expression of contempt. There are movements to eliminate competition among boys, to suppress any signs of aggression. The boys who fail gentle persuasion are put on behavioral modifying drugs. There are many reactions and pathos associated with this but the general movement away from aggression is clear and undeniable. Now this in itself is the source of conflict involving what some call the feminization of the West. It is not my intent to fan those flames but to establish an extant example of the titular adaptation to which I can juxtapose a proposed adaptation for the other gender.

Early Woman lived a harsh life with deprivations and dangers all around them. The group that had caring, comforting, as well as fertile and lactating women, faired better. Women could make life much more tolerable by always gathering what they could and by making the home more comfortable. They were always the one trying to improve the nest and to provide for the weaker among the group. Evolutionary psychology has ingrained that drive for comfort into the woman in the same way that evolutionary psychology drove aggression into the man.

Today we live in, not only a peaceful civilization, but a civilization of hyper-consumerism, and over-population. Women are at the forefront of this movement and marketing types tell us that women control the majority of all spending and so are the driving force and the dominant consumer. The women has a much higher standard of comfort than the man. Much of this is justified by present or potential children. This hyper consumption and obsession with comfort is presented as being “for the children.” What really got me thinking about this is a comment from a woman with many children and many pets who said “I need to feel needed.” This is obviously the manifestation of an evolutionarily ingrained psychological drive in the female gender.

For sustainability to ever be something more than mere lip-service, the individual female needs to have socially imposed upon her the necessity to suppress her drive towards material comfort, in the same way that the individual male has had socially imposed upon him the necessity to suppress his drive towards aggression. Of course this will be viscerally opposed by women themselves and economically/politically opposed by the wealthy who profit from consumerism and have always loved, and reached out to through marketing, the comfort-loving woman.

Wow. Talk about a disconnect from the theoretical to the practical. Let me guess, you aren't a woman, right?

[Sy Borg]

I think this is a generalisation that is not useful in a practical sense. The issue is cutting down on pointless waste, not targeting groups that, at best, would only cause people to be defensive and dig in.

Studies have found that drug addiction is strongly influenced by the level of social connection and stimulation, and I would class excessive consumption of goods generally to also be a wasteful self comforting behaviour for the isolated and bored.

On a personal level, I have fewer clothes than most men do, and half of those are threadbare or frayed - due to ideology, not poverty. I have simple needs and find it strange to watch so many men driving by in their road-hogging, gas-guzzling, view-obscuring SUVs while I putt around in my little old Corolla sedan (when I am not taking public transport or walking). As a drummer, I have two drum sets. Most drummers are men, and those who have played for as long as I have done have a fair few kits, and often updated. They all seem to have far more gear and high tech extras than me.

Then again, I am single, not trapped at home with brats while the man runs around doing stuff. We could try balancing mens' toys and booze with womens' indulgences but I don't see the point. There is only one thing that will change anyone's consumption - be it a man or woman - price controls and availability.

It should be said that there is currently a strong kickback against feminism, a macho fightback, and the rules of engagement have changed with women increasingly more likely to be verbally and physically brutalised by men than several decades ago. Just yesterday I stumbled at the local shops and almost fell into a young yuppie-looking man, walking with his girlfriend. He pushed me hard in the back and shouted "Watch where you're going!".

Not so long ago, if an older woman fell into a young man on the street he would help her rather than hit and shout at her. His behaviour was was shocking to me.

Not so long ago, a girlfriend would not tolerate her partner behaving like such an ignorant oaf to women in public, as opposed to just looking scared and weak as this woman did.

Not so long ago the personal attacks on women in power we see today would have been unacceptable, now they are just normal. It seems to me that (some) men are fighting back and the old rules about holding back the aggression and violence for women are going fast. I expect to see a strong increase in man-on-woman-violence in the Anglosphere as this trend continues.

[Zerubbabel]

I think the essential premise here is the gender specific adaptations and their validity. I went to lengths to display male aggression alongside female nurturing. I find them to be remarkably parallel and display how every virtue can also be a vise. Yet one is usually accepted as a just so fact while the other is a taboo heresy that receives "wow' responses. I expect that the opposing view would try to make clear the distinction. for example: Why would a critique against the feminine adaptation towards nurturing elicit the assumption that it must have come from a man ("Let me guess, you aren't a woman, right?"), while admonitions against male aggression have long come from men themselves (remember that men have dominated religion which has, not always successfully, preached against male aggression)?

Is this the argument?: Yes males have a psychological adaptation towards aggression, but females do not have a psychological adaptation towards nurturing. -or if they do it is never a bad thing.

-- Updated November 27th, 2016, 3:28 pm to add the following --

I think this is a generalisation that is not useful in a practical sense. The issue is cutting down on pointless waste, not targeting groups that, at best, would only cause people to be defensive and dig in.

Studies have found that drug addiction is strongly influenced by the level of social connection and stimulation, and I would class excessive consumption of goods generally to also be a wasteful self comforting behaviour for the isolated and bored.

On a personal level, I have fewer clothes than most men do, and half of those are threadbare or frayed - due to ideology, not poverty. I have simple needs and find it strange to watch so many men driving by in their road-hogging, gas-guzzling, view-obscuring SUVs while I putt around in my little old Corolla sedan (when I am not taking public transport or walking). As a drummer, I have two drum sets. Most drummers are men, and those who have played for as long as I have done have a fair few kits, and often updated. They all seem to have far more gear and high tech extras than me.

Then again, I am single, not trapped at home with brats while the man runs around doing stuff. We could try balancing mens' toys and booze with womens' indulgences but I don't see the point. There is only one thing that will change anyone's consumption - be it a man or woman - price controls and availability.

It should be said that there is currently a strong kickback against feminism, a macho fightback, and the rules of engagement have changed with women increasingly more likely to be verbally and physically brutalised by men than several decades ago. Just yesterday I stumbled at the local shops and almost fell into a young yuppie-looking man, walking with his girlfriend. He pushed me hard in the back and shouted "Watch where you're going!".

Not so long ago, if an older woman fell into a young man on the street he would help her rather than hit and shout at her. His behavior was was shocking to me.

Not so long ago, a girlfriend would not tolerate her partner behaving like such an ignorant oaf to women in public, as opposed to just looking scared and weak as this woman did.

Not so long ago the personal attacks on women in power we see today would have been unacceptable, now they are just normal. It seems to me that (some) men are fighting back and the old rules about holding back the aggression and violence for women are going fast. I expect to see a strong increase in man-on-woman-violence in the Anglosphere as this trend continues.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply Greta. So now I know that you are an older woman, a musician with frayed jeans, simple needs, a Corrolla, you are an ideological ascetic and feel free to use the word "yuppie." That makes you a hippie (?). That's a good thing and I think concerning your view on the isolation of the individual that we would agree on many points of critique against modernity - But that might be a different topic.

I appreciate your lament of our loss of chivalry. It points to a Western tradition of socially imposed psychological adaptations controlling male aggression.

It is Sunday in autumn and I must go indulge in our new socially imposed channeling of male aggression: Football. Ever notice how the NFL has become saturated with patriotism and honoring our military. The last remnant of virtuous male violence: sports and military/police service. Had not the hippie become yuppie - the bohemian become bourgeois, it might have been different.

[Burning ghost]

You went to length?

So intelligence loses to aggressive physical behaviour? I see from the scientific studies you've presented the exact "lengths" you've taken.

Aggressiom amd competition are societially imposed. There is certainly something to be said for the effect of puberty andnthe dynamic sex plays in society.

I personally would argue that societies suffering from aggressive behvaioir often have sexual desires repressed through attitudes of taboo towards sex.

Giving children drugs to subdue "anomalies" is an american trend I believe sensible doctors are phasing out. This is an attitude that stems from how humans have come to alter the natural environment to fit their needs.

Basic psychological studies suggest that physical violence begets physical violence. If you watch acts of aggression you are more likely to perform acts of aggression.

Shopping in general is a form of therapy and makes people feel better be they male or female.

Also men and women cope with stress in different ways. It appears that men tend to become more emotionally charged and women tend to do the opposite. This is not obviously so black and white and the reseaech on this is not completely conclusive. The size of the insula is associated with empathy though, and this factors in for people suffering from stress.

[Zerubbabel]

Burning Ghost, Your reply is a shotgun approach focusing on aggression, ignoring entirely the feminine adaptation towards nurturing (the titular concept). Nonetheless I'll try to gather-up the BB's.

I'd be interested in how you concluded from my writing this: "So intelligence loses to aggressive physical behaviour?" I must have written with some ambiguity to feed your misunderstanding.

Sexual promiscuity suppresses aggression? Like the Roman Empire (think Caligula)?

We are in the age of video and, more than any generation of human beings before us, we watch acts, all sorts of acts. Along with sex, violence is one of our favorites. And yet Pinker and Keeley count everything up and conclude for us that we are living in the least violent age - ever.

If the therapeutic and soothing effects of shopping explains our hyper-consumerism - and we are moving towards a state of drug-less-ness - that doesn't bode well for the environment. Better to get our therapeutic soothing from drugs and save the planet.

>>>"Aggressiom amd competition are societially imposed."<<< We are a social animal. Because of our deficiencies in tooth and claw and fleetness of foot we are highly dependent on social survival strategies. We have no study group of the aggressive behaviors of non-social human beings .... except maybe for the feral child. So, I'd have to agree with you - and go even further and say that anything human, any behavioral attribute is socially imposed. Yet if I look at it biologically we are omnivores and that demands aggression in the kill, or aggression to defend to the death the piece of ground where we put our seed. We fool ourselves to think that we passively/non-aggressively eat/consume through the marketplace of systematized aggression.

But throw out all the above because we at least have a shared foundation in our acknowledgment of gender psychological distinctions.


.

[Burning ghost]

I asked the question because you said the stronger and more aggressive males survived and therefore their groups survived. I think it is more likely a combination of brains and physical strength.

I find gender distinction facinating subject especially as we live in a patriarchal society.

-- Updated November 28th, 2016, 12:51 pm to add the following --

I would add that regardless of gender some people perform better in competition than others.

Something I don't know so much about is the of humans. I do wonder how comparable we are today to our ancestors in this respect and physiological effect of our diet change.

I probably focused on aggression because it was something you mentioned early and happended to come up as a subject that day for me elsewhere.

[Wilson]

Early man lived in a violent and dangerous world. The ever-present dangers came from the environment (imagine living through an ice age) and from wild animals and from other groups of violent men. The group that had strong, competitive and aggressive men to protect it and to provide for it faired better than the group that had peaceful non-competitive and non-aggressive men. The same is true for most mammals and mating schemes always evolved to favor the strong and aggressive male, to reproduce more strong aggressive males.

For survival, it was advantageous for early males to be aggressive and physically brave toward outside dangers - but not WITHIN each group of hunter-gatherer individuals. There - within the group - it was critical for those men to be cooperative with others, both male and female. If everybody is fighting within a community, that community isn't going to be very good at withstanding outside predators nor at providing food and shelter for the group. So evolution favored individuals who drew a distinction between "us" and "them" and acted differently according to whether people (and animals) were inside or outside the group. Within a community, competitiveness and strength - within limits - might mean that one might have more sexual partners and sire more children, but excessive aggression inside a group would make it less likely to survive.

Early Woman lived a harsh life with deprivations and dangers all around them. The group that had caring, comforting, as well as fertile and lactating women, faired better. Women could make life much more tolerable by always gathering what they could and by making the home more comfortable. They were always the one trying to improve the nest and to provide for the weaker among the group. Evolutionary psychology has ingrained that drive for comfort into the woman in the same way that evolutionary psychology drove aggression into the man.

For sustainability to ever be something more than mere lip-service, the individual female needs to have socially imposed upon her the necessity to suppress her drive towards material comfort, in the same way that the individual male has had socially imposed upon him the necessity to suppress his drive towards aggression. Of course this will be viscerally opposed by women themselves and economically/politically opposed by the wealthy who profit from consumerism and have always loved, and reached out to through marketing, the comfort-loving woman.

You want to suppress women's drives toward material comfort? How to do that? Is there a pill? You think public service announcements will do the trick?

Males and females do have some genetic and evolutionary psychological differences, all right, but they are different only in degree. We all want material comfort. Most of us like our toys, of one type of another. We like things that feel good, taste good, smell good, sound good, make us happy, make us feel good about ourselves, and so on. Many of us are concerned about sustainability, many of us are not. If you want to promote sustainability, or population control, or animal rights, or responsible climate policies, I suggest that you do so without much regard to gender.

[Sy Borg]

I appreciate your lament of our loss of chivalry. It points to a Western tradition of socially imposed psychological adaptations controlling male aggression.

It is Sunday in autumn and I must go indulge in our new socially imposed channeling of male aggression: Football. Ever notice how the NFL has become saturated with patriotism and honoring our military. The last remnant of virtuous male violence: sports and military/police service. Had not the hippie become yuppie - the bohemian become bourgeois, it might have been different.

"Chivalry" at its core is simply a strong entity choosing to cooperate with a physically weaker being rather than exploiting their advantage. Men have increasingly embraced this notion with women, resulting in an effective doubling of available brains and tremendous progress. It's no accident that nations that oppress women are weak economically; it's a deliberate hobbling of the culture to favour the strong.

Re: football and the military, these are clear examples of human eusocial structures. In a sense today's ultra alpha male football stars are performing their feats on behalf of all men who would be them, and all women who would be with them in much the same way as soldiers fight on behalf of all, scientists research on behalf of all, doctor heal, and so on.

Today's footballers are gladiators, vicariously satisfying our evolved atavistic impulses just as the original gladiators did in their time, albeit in a more civilised manner. So, instead of sending our strongest athletes to their doom we have armies of medicos and equipment to mitigate harm. It's a channeled outlet to make up for the fact that we still-lively and excitable apes are increasingly forced to spend largely sedentary lives. Men who may have lead problematic lives are given the chance by pro football to live more constructive lives. Ditto the military, except they really are sent on death missions.

I would agree that obsessively acquisitive nesting by women is a luxury society will soon find it cannot afford - along with the numerous trivial gadgets, tools and vehicles that equivalent "typical" types of men acquire. Another huge issue that needs dealing with a meat consumption. In the US and Australia we consume about three times the world average in meat, about 50% more than other OECD nations, and of course we also have the highest rates of bowel cancer.

If we look at the per capita consumption of all major categories, we find that women, on average, eat about 20% less than what men eat (in retail weight). This is crudely consistent with the difference in healthy body weights of men and women and also with the dietary guidelines released by the USDA and the HSS which suggest that caloric needs of women are about 20% less than those of men. But women eat 42% less beef/pork, 23% less poultry and 21% less fish than what men eat (all a larger reduction than the average of 20%).

countinganimals.com/meat-consumption-pa ... nd-gender/

... the negative effect on the climate of Methane is 23 times higher than the effect of CO². Therefore the release of about 100 kg Methane per year for each cow is equivalent to about 2,300 kg CO² per year. ... World-wide, there are about 1.5 billion cows and bulls.

I'm not actually a hippie, but I can see how the assembled evidence would seem to line up :lol:

[Zerubbabel]

I wrote a thoughtful reply to Wilson and Greta but took too long and had to re-log-in. In doing so I lost all of my text. What a nice feature.

-- Updated November 30th, 2016, 12:51 pm to add the following --

Here's the condensed version:

Wilson-

The concept of "Us" and "Them" is a human universal. It is not gender specific.

How? How do we suppress male aggression? How is any moral, ethic or even ethos propagated? This is the Ethics and Morality forum. "How" is an essential question to every topic in this forum. It is not a refutation.

There is an important distinction to be made between appetitive desires and ideological or teleological desires or what might be considered a purpose in life.

As an example one might consider stoicism vs hedonism and compare the stoicism of the farm-raised woman of a century ago against the spoiled whiny hedonist urban male of today. I agree that the difference is in degree. But I tell you that the spoiled whiny hedonist urban male of today was raised on the pablum of the feminine drive towards comfort while the voice of the stoic male has been gagged in our de-macho-ized society. It is laughable today that a man might choose a simple life of physical labor and contemplative repose. (E.g. Eric Hoffer).


Greta-

There is a uni-lateral chain of dependency that goes from child to mother to man. Chivalry is one link. That is our biological foundation demanded by the extraordinarily long development period of human young. Throughout the animal kingdom the young are ready to go it alone after only a single season (the horse can out-run a man at the age of 2 hours.) But the human child remains helpless and parasitic for over a decade. That biological fact demands a social structure of dependency.

I agree with what you wrote with the exception of your views on tools and meat/methane. Without going into the details of these material issues I'll just say that your views emanate from with-in the existing system, from with-in modernity (so-called post-modernism is still way in the future). Modernity, by it's very essence, is unsustainable. That is what I meant in the OP by "lip service." I think you might see this in your remarkable statement:

"still-lively and excitable apes are increasingly forced to spend largely sedentary lives."

That statement is pregnant with ideas and can be chewed on like a cow chews its cud. "forced" ? If we are forced, it is the system of modernity that forces us ("how you gonna keep em down on the farm when there are so many shiny trinkets and baubles in the city?"). Will our psychological adaptations lead us into entirely sedentary lives with the entirety of our life and excitement provided to us through technology (modernity)? That is the idea in dystopian literature like Brave New World or The Matrix. Can mankind lift itself out of sedentariness, to throw off the shackles of modernity? Like this:



Or will it be this?:

[Wilson]

The concept of "Us" and "Them" is a human universal. It is not gender specific.

True, but logic says that in terms of evolution it was more important in males, who were physically stronger and had more testosterone and therefore were better able to fight off predators. So I assume men are more prone to that tendency, abd women have a somewhat wider circle of sympathy, though I have no proof of that, and of course there are many exceptions.

How? How do we suppress male aggression? How is any moral, ethic or even ethos propagated? This is the Ethics and Morality forum. "How" is an essential question to every topic in this forum. It is not a refutation.

I guess that was in response to my suggestion that suppressing women's need for material comfort would be impractical. We are what we are. The behavior of women and men can be constrained, but their basic needs and desires are in their DNA.

There is an important distinction to be made between appetitive desires and ideological or teleological desires or what might be considered a purpose in life.

As an example one might consider stoicism vs hedonism and compare the stoicism of the farm-raised woman of a century ago against the spoiled whiny hedonist urban male of today. I agree that the difference is in degree. But I tell you that the spoiled whiny hedonist urban male of today was raised on the pablum of the feminine drive towards comfort while the voice of the stoic male has been gagged in our de-macho-ized society. It is laughable today that a man might choose a simple life of physical labor and contemplative repose. (E.g. Eric Hoffer).

It seems that you are making value judgments of the current status of masculinity and femininity. That's fine, as long as you recognize that such beliefs are your own and not necessarily universal - and certainly not absolute.

By the way, my wife and I recently toured the Sistine Chapel in Rome and bought a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle of God's creation of man, an image of which you included in your post - a magnificent work of art, which we two atheists are now struggling to put together.

[Zerubbabel]

Thanks for the reply Wilson. The tasks of protecting the tribe and of trade required the man to be "Them"-centric. The heavy-lifting of reproduction required the woman to be "Us"-centric. Neither task implies any blurring of an Us-Them distinction. Inserting "sympathy" into the concept assumes that the psychological adaptation of feminine nurturing is freely given to whomever wants it regardless of their "Us" or "Them" status. It is not. In fact we might practically define "Us" as those who receive feminine nurturing, and "Them" as those who are denied feminine nurturing.

>>> "their (women and men) basic ... desires are in their DNA." <<<

No! Just as there is no gay gene there is no nurturing gene or aggression gene. That is what makes this topic so fascinating. It is not either hard-wired in the DNA or inculcated into the individual (nature vs nurture). There is another thing here, something like instinct which is somehow passed on to future generations without a physical biological component, at least not what we have found so far. Further we know that this passed-on trait can be manipulated, that a zeitgeist can be manufactured by the social engineers of past generations. It is fascinating. Here is two little things I find extra-fascinating: The feral child deprived of inculcation, or even a mimetic model, fails to walk erectly. And second, dogs have an instinct to look where a human points. Even tiny puppies will look where you point. There is no pointing gene yet they have passed onto future generation a psychological adaptation learned over tens of thousands of years. Chimpanzees are our closest genetic relative yet we have never lived with chimps as we have lived with dogs from the time we first made the deal with them (bones for sentry duty). Attempts to teach chimps (individual inculcation) to look where we point have failed.


Once again: There is an important distinction to be made between appetitive desires and ideological or teleological desires or what might be considered a purpose in life. ALL ideological or teleological desires are value judgments - yet in the case of psychological adaptations it is value judgments made, not by an individual but by the accumulation of the individual's predecessors. Greta embraces the value judgment of chivalry which was actively inculcated into generations upon generations of children in her past.

The distinction between appetitive desires and ideological or teleological desires is not merely my own value judgment. It is universal and it is absolute. We all want to eat.


.

[Felix]

The negative effect on the climate of Methane is 23 times higher than the effect of CO2. Therefore the release of about 100 kg Methane per year for each cow is equivalent to about 2,300 kg CO2 per year. ... World-wide, there are about 1.5 billion cows and bulls.

There is now a technical solution for this: an inflatable contraption strapped on the cow that collects the methane they excrete - call it a cow fart balloon backpack. Then the methane is used to run the farm.

Here's a picture of one: https://goo.gl/BrtDy4

Old MacDonald had a farm, e-i-e-i-o, and on this farm he collected cow farts, e-i-e-i-o.

Leave it to me to bring some cultural sophistication to this forum....

[Wilson]

Thanks for the reply Wilson. The tasks of protecting the tribe and of trade required the man to be "Them"-centric. The heavy-lifting of reproduction required the woman to be "Us"-centric. Neither task implies any blurring of an Us-Them distinction. Inserting "sympathy" into the concept assumes that the psychological adaptation of feminine nurturing is freely given to whomever wants it regardless of their "Us" or "Them" status. It is not. In fact we might practically define "Us" as those who receive feminine nurturing, and "Them" as those who are denied feminine nurturing.

The blurring has to do with the dividing line between "us" and "them", which is malleable and variable. Each of us decides for him or herself who is included in "us", and probably the greater capacity one has for sympathy, the wider will be the reach of that sympathy. We nowadays include a much wider sweep than our distant ancestors. We see video of people in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and we sympathize with every image we see of starving or brutalized people. So the psychological tendency we have of dividing the world into "us" and "them" is ingrained, but where we draw the line is individual, and probably more inclusive, on average, in females.

>>> "their (women and men) basic ... desires are in their DNA." <<<

No! Just as there is no gay gene there is no nurturing gene or aggression gene. That is what makes this topic so fascinating. It is not either hard-wired in the DNA or inculcated into the individual (nature vs nurture). There is another thing here, something like instinct which is somehow passed on to future generations without a physical biological component, at least not what we have found so far. Further we know that this passed-on trait can be manipulated, that a zeitgeist can be manufactured by the social engineers of past generations. It is fascinating. Here is two little things I find extra-fascinating: The feral child deprived of inculcation, or even a mimetic model, fails to walk erectly. And second, dogs have an instinct to look where a human points. Even tiny puppies will look where you point. There is no pointing gene yet they have passed onto future generation a psychological adaptation learned over tens of thousands of years. Chimpanzees are our closest genetic relative yet we have never lived with chimps as we have lived with dogs from the time we first made the deal with them (bones for sentry duty). Attempts to teach chimps (individual inculcation) to look where we point have failed.

Oh, I believe that a lot of our basic personality drives are encoded in our DNA. Not in single genes, but in combinations of a lot of genes. How evolution did that through wiring and connections is way beyond our understanding, but without question, in my mind, it did so. Everything from our preferences for certain foods, our disgust at certain odors, our desire for sex with particular human types, our division of the world into "us" and "them", our capacity for empathy, sympathy, hatred, and violence, and so on - that's up there in our brains, and evolution favored those personality nudges that made us more likely to survive and procreate.

Once again: There is an important distinction to be made between appetitive desires and ideological or teleological desires or what might be considered a purpose in life. ALL ideological or teleological desires are value judgments - yet in the case of psychological adaptations it is value judgments made, not by an individual but by the accumulation of the individual's predecessors. Greta embraces the value judgment of chivalry which was actively inculcated into generations upon generations of children in her past.

If I understand you correctly, I think we agree on that. And obviously society's norms and peer pressure and reasoned arguments and contemplation can change our opinions on various ethical and behavioral issues - but I'll always enjoy a good steak, no matter what. My sexual preference for women is instinctive and in my case apparently absolute. And women will, on average, have more of a nurturing tendency that I do. Psychologically, I'd be a lot more accepting of going to war for a just cause than my wife would. There are some underlying psychological differences, on average, between the sexes - though the expression of those differences is much less in today's world than they used to be.

[Sy Borg]

No! Just as there is no gay gene there is no nurturing gene or aggression gene. That is what makes this topic so fascinating. It is not either hard-wired in the DNA or inculcated into the individual (nature vs nurture).

You are swinging the pendulum too far the other way. The existence of epigenetics does not eliminate the importance of genetics. The nature v nurture "debate" was always a furphy, obviously so to any thinking observer of life. There are only matters of degree in this area so "No!" is the wrong answer. Genetics remain an important marker and strong predictor of sexuality and aggression, amongst many other traits.