Love and romance vs. nature
Leo Frankowski in his ‘man’s adventure’ “Cross Time Engineer” makes an interesting observation. That is, that nature appears to endow the newly pubescent with both interest in making babies, and an almost irresistable allure. No, I am not about to condone child rape.
But this observation is fundamental to understanding society. Adolescents (’past puberty’) are prevented from making babies non-stop and indescriminately by two things: Information about how to meet partners and how to find pleasure in these strange new practices, and experience. Most of the taboos today about what movies kids watch, identifying erotic materials as ‘adult’, and controls on movement of adolescents (confine in school or work, dating restrictions) is historical legacy, intended to keep adolescents from acquiring the information and experience for as long as possible.
What we overlook is that the human body is intended to make babies. We each have an interest in combining with another adult in sexual release. This has been true for literally ages. We each have a drive to find a partner. The drive to find a partner is a fundamental ‘itch’ that assures enough babies are made to keep the community functioning. Once we experience intimacy with a partner, that first drive *changes* into a nuturing mode — less exciting, perhaps, but the focus must now change from finding a partner — to raising those babies that are now being made. As we proceed to raise those babies, we often find the drive to nurture changing again, to ‘retired’, essentially removing mature adults from the ongoing gene pool. This removal reduces the number of genetic defects, and limits competition for *partners* to the younger adults. Women’s bodies have a supporting cycle within the ‘nurture’ cycle — from birth until they stop breast feeding they are much less likely to conceive a new child, otherwise they are fertile, until the cycle changes again at menopause.
Like many of nature’s paths, this path from childhood, to puberty, to finding a partner, to nurturing the children, to genetic withdrawal, is subject to change. That is, any adult can change from nurturing back to finding a partner. I understand it takes an average of 2.5 years for a man to recover from a divorce, a woman 3.5 years. This period is not ‘just emotional.’ The time to make the change is a fundamental reversal of the change from ‘nurture children’ to ‘find a partner’. This changes the personality and value systems of the individual. Today we find grandparents raising infants and children in ever increasing numbers. Support such individuals — they are having to return from ‘removed’ to ‘nurture the children.’ Again, a fundamental reversal of natural change.
We like to think of our lives progressing on the basis of faith in God, God’s design for us, and free will. Or temptations of the devil, etc. Most of us refuse to acknowledge how our bodies have cycles that produce profound changes in who we are. Some of those that refuse this truth are even female. Our bodies impose survival oriented goals on us that vary with our life stages, including goals that relate to making babies.
Where we thinking and conniving people go awry, is that the greater intensity of drive and excitement lies in the ‘find a partner’ part of the cycle. The ‘I want to have lots of sex!’ part. The part targeted by advertisers looking for the inexperience, uninformed post-puberty adolescents. And social pressures and advertising also send the adults in the ‘nurture’ and ‘removal’ stages messages that reinforce the ‘find a partner’ cycle. By reinforcing the message about ‘find a partner’, social institutions and advertising send a social message to the individual, “Forget your allotted cycle — your community/church/state/country requires you to ‘find a partner’ and make babies.” Adults are often kept in an extended state of ‘find a partner’, some apparently never leave that part of the cycle to fully enter the ‘nurture’ stage of life.
Reports that correlate larger numbers of sexual partners with increased incidence of cervical cancer make the news for a day or two, and are forgotten. The female body finds the fluids of the partner to be ‘foreign bodies’, but adapts to that particular blend of hormones and genetic material. Introducing additional partners triggers the adaptations — which some women come to find exciting and desirable. In reality, the hormonal and physical adaption to a partner is *supposed* to initiate the change from ‘find a partner’ to ‘nurture the babies’. Both male and female bodies make this adaptation to the partner, and likewise some of either gender seek to flip that ‘trigger’ on a regular and frequent basis. But the ‘adapt to new partner’ trigger is only supposed to be activated a few times. Setting hormonal surges raging through the body is strong enough to make a baby — not something trivial to be indulged in for fun.
On a physical level, then, we should be finding partners when young, and keeping them. We should be raising our children, and not competing for younger partners.
Brad K.