Sometimes its funny and relevant (see Emma Weylin on "SlutWalks"), serious, or just plain weird.
In any case looking over all of this brings on some different perspectives - ones you may not get from the "standard view point" prescribed by whatever stereotype you choose to inhabit.
So over the last couple of days I have become aware of some interesting studies: The first is "The Tricky Chemistry of Attraction" from the WSJ.
This article discusses how use of modern hormone based contraceptives changes how women as well as men think about choosing a mate. Basically the interesting part, at least to me, is that without these hormones (contraceptives) there is a documented tendency for couples to choose partners based on the greatest differences in their immune systems, i.e., greatest natural genetic differences and resulting the largest possible genetic diversity of the offspring.
The greatest genetic distance between a pair of parents in terms of immune system yields the most effective immune system for the child.
Not surprisingly, when natural hormones are replaced with human decision making there is a documented decline in successfully selecting an mate relative to this.
With these contraceptive hormones in play the decision process changes. Of course, most or all of this is not obvious to the participants and the studies involved use smell and pheromones.
The next is "Performance Benefits of Depression: Sequential Decision Making in Healthy Sample and a Clinically Depressed Sample" (also described here in Wired).
Here we see that the "clinically depressed" tend to spend a lot of time focused on their problems (surprise, surprise). However, in scenarios were making good decisions is important, the endless ruminating tends to produce documentably better results. As if its a mechanism for the mind to study what went wrong so as to do better the next time.
Emma Weylin's article on SlutWalks is also relevant and we'll see why in a minute...
So from the quarterback's arm chair what I see here is that western society has been heavily investing "solutions" in what seem superficially like important advances in medicine (and I choose medicine here as an example, there are other relevant fields here as well) such as birth control pills and anti-depressants.
However, the solutions are focused not on an actual "problem" per se, i.e., contraceptives are not focused on stopping all human reproduction and anti-depressants are not focused on stopping all heavy duty, thrashing-in-the-bed-at-3AM sulking. No, these "advances" are focused on removing the superficial aspects of the problems (an unwanted pregnancy and making "Joe" happy at work).
However, as time goes by we see that there are perhaps reasons for things to be the way that they were in the first place:
- Strong sexual attractions and random couplings producing more healthy (more able or more intelligent?) offspring.
- Depressed minds deeply focused solving otherwise unsolvable problems.
And, in the case of Emma Weylin's SlutWalks, the notion that behaving disrespectfully to yourself in exactly the way the very notion feminism decries, i.e., rather than being liberated from having to using your body to survive because of your gender you wallow in doing exactly that.
So what is my point?
In societies without instantaneous communication and advanced technology progress is slow and deliberate because there is no way to "jump ahead" to an apparently obvious solution like creating an "anti-depressant."
Humanity itself is not designed for these kinds of changes, particularly at such high speed, where the benefits of the status quo are not well understood by those creating the supposed "solution".
(Imagine the ad for Anti-Depressant drugs featuring Vincent van Gogh. The unfinished "Starry Night" on a dimly lit easel in the far background. Van Gogh, on anti-depressents, in the foreground, face lit by a video game with fingers on the game controller, smiling, leaving the unfinished painting to trash heap of history in his lust for killing one more Orc. The caption: "Why spend your day being depressed? Talk to your doctor about X and start enjoying life again...")
Perhaps there are so many depressed people in today's society because there is something wrong!
(Or, put another way, is shooting the town crier as he rides through the streets shouting "Fire!" because he is making too much noise for you to sleep really addressing the problem?)
Perhaps the divorce rates, the rates of unwanted births, and such are based on the fact that our decision making at the crucial moment of selecting a mate was dimmed by hormones.
(See "Sexual Devolution" here.)
Perhaps today's youth are less able because of their genetics!
(Show dogs, whose breeding has been controlled by humans for dozens and in some cases hundreds of years are notoriously unhealthy gene-wise with bad hips, genetic disease, etc... but they really do look cute.)
Perhaps in our rush to make our own world more comfortable and convenient for ourselves we are relegating our children to a future scrap heap of gene-based disease, stupidity and misery.
Consequences are tricky things and humans are notoriously bad at predicting the future.
Perhaps the rush to create the bestest, smallest, fastest widget is not the same is making wise societal decisions for the good of everyone...
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