Quote:
|
Originally Posted by organic born
Read the book "Sex at Dawn" by Christopher Ryan in order to update your impressions along these lines. Nothing is as settled as you're mentioning above. :)
Males and females are fairly close to the same size, which indicates that competition among and between the sexes was not a big issue. If the males were forever in competition with each other this would have favored the larger and more dominant genes, but this didn't happen. There are a whole host of issues that generally favor a more balanced and egalitarian stance when it comes to our breeding habits among smaller groups, which was the norm until historically recently. In fact most everything that Christoper covers, in terms of relationships between and among the sexes, are essentially paralleled in the general habits of the South American tribe that I mentioned.
There's been a rush to judgment among earlier researchers in order to validate the general mindset of our more recent cultural order. While the current and progressing science on such things suggest a much looser and far more flexible, and less neurotic, expression of or species earlier mating behaviour.
Seriously.. you're in need of updating on this issue. :)
|
Look, Organic, the fact is no one revisionist or alternative perspective has the sole license on the truth. Everyone has to make a name for themselves in their academic area (LOL) but only some of it will stand the test of time. There is always some truth in nearly any alternative perspective because humanity consists of the main and of the outliers, or whatever terms you prefer.
You've found a perspective and an author you prefer and one that suits how you need to or prefer to see things. On the other hand, I'm referencing the bulk of scholarship to date on this issue, across nearly every aspect of life which is experienced directly and observed directly (society, culture, history, economics, biology and social biology), including both at the individual, social and collective (species) level.
It is what it is, with local variation over time and place. I think loads of folks since time immemorial, including loads of historians, generals, spiritual leaders (mostly men), and progressive men (mostly) in the sciences and humanities have done a wonderful and critical job of educating and sharing their experiences and perspectives to date...and they have revealed both the vastness of our accomplishments as well as the vastness of the stratification and primal fears our human history has been built upon to date. Great truths have already been revealed, revised, reinterpreted and well-established -- the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly. It's for all of us to continue the work forward.
Researchers -- mainly men, in fact -- have quantified the social imbalance in our lives and its sources in primal fears of control and access to the goods (sexual and material) as the root, with gender being the most fundamental or primary (first occurring) in the axis of stratification, rooted in fear/control/discrimination/oppression of women by men for control of the sexual goods. Other axes also exist...based in material accumulation and control (root of class imbalance), ethnocentrism (root of race/ethnic imbalance). Etc. In different ways from the perspective of very different areas of life and science.
We owe all these men (and women) a huge debt...they have done their bit to raise up humanity every bit as much as the great spiritual leaders, and they too shown us more honestly who we really are, and just exactly where we lack authentic love, compassion, and justice. And just exactly where we need to apply it, to these exact places -- these axes of discrimination and power upon which we've existed up until now. We owe them our thanks, and our deepest respect and honour.
The depth and breadth of this nearly universal reality is present in nearly every area of life, of society, of culture, of our simple daily existence...as well as of most scholarship and research. The fact is our current reality, in nearly every culture worldwide, proves this. And a lone theory or culture here or there is more typically the exception that proves the rule.
I really don't see why you are so invested in railing against most of humanity's known, observed and recorded history, social structures, cultures, and experiences to date, though I'm certain you have your reasons. It's far better IMO if you stop trying to convince others of something that doesn't speak to them and simply accept that it's ok to agree to disagree. I have no issue with you believing whatever you like. But it simply doesn't jive well with the vast majority of humanity's lived and recorded experiences to date, so once again, I'll leave you to it
Peace & blessings,
7L