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Well, that is useful.
Posted a large journal. The site choked so I broke it up into chunks.
Now the front page only displays the last few in reverse.
Please open my full profile to read the lot.
Thanks. |
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What does this mean today?
For several centuries now we have had in the main increasingly safe and increasingly comfortable conditions.
Females have therefore been securing more freedom to innovate, more freedom to select mates that allow them to innovate, and more freedom to promote innovations that provide them with more opportunities to innovate and more opportunities to select mates that allow them to innovate. Females have also secured more capacity themselves to protect themselves and to conserve what they have without relying on males to do so.
This has progressed to the point that if they so desired a large proportion of females in the western world could secure all of the resources they need to adequately provide for the offspring they choose to have either by themselves or in couples of females or small groups.
Males on the other hand have had increasingly restricted opportunities to secure breeding rights through the application of strength or conservatism.
Males have had to increasingly innovate to secure breeding rights. This includes innovating their interactions with females to provide females with increased freedoms and an ever increasing capacity to be free to innovate safely.
This has progressed to the point that there are very few risks that a male can now take that females cannot now safely take for themselves.
Taking the risk of grabbing a potential mate and dragging her off to a cabin in the woods is no longer viable in this day and age when it was in times past for so long that some societies still have ritualised versions of it in their oldest custom.
Most of the innovation males engage in now is how to make themselves interesting to females who no longer need them.
This has mainly been caused by all the innovating promoted by mostly females and risked by mostly males.
So what is feminism?
It is the drive of females to innovate and to have the freedom to innovate and the freedom to encourage males to risk innovating.
It is also the freedom to innovate and the freedom to encourage males to innovate that has been provided by the greatest innovations that have in the main been made through the risks taken mainly by males plus the gains we have conserved as our civilisation has grown and developed.
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This can be reduced down to:
Females drive innovation when they can.
Females will be conservative when they need to be.
Males promote conserving what they have when they can.
Males will be innovative when they need to be.
This acts as a negative feedback mechanism that optimizes the balance of innovation and conservatism in response to environmental conditions.
For most of human history we have been swinging between famine and plenty, war and peace, good times and bad times. Those groups that managed to conserve what they had during the hard times survived where other groups did not. Those groups that innovated during the easy times out competed those that did not. This acted to evolutionarily encourage behavior that had its roots deep in our evolutionary past.
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Now we add environmental factors.
In a higher stress environment:
The range of safely selectable innovations is reduced.
An increased focus on conserving what is already held encourages survival.
Increased aggression may be needed to compete with increasingly scarce resources.
Submitting to increased restrictions in risky innovation contributes to survival.
In lower stress environments:
Less competition for resources so less aggression required.
The range of safely selectable options increases.
An increased focus on exploring new opportunities enhances long term improvement of survival opportunities.
Allowing more freedom to innovate contributes to survival.
When these are added together:
When times get tough males with increased tendencies toward aggression and conservatism are more likely to secure and preserve breeding opportunities.
When times get tough females are more likely to accept restrictions on their opportunities to innovate and to pass on such innovation in the pursuit of a male that can help them preserve and protect their children.
When times are easy females need males less beyond the immediate needs of mating and so have increased freedom the select males that give them the opportunities to innovate.
When times are easy males are more likely to take risk in searching for innovations that improve their opportunities to secure breeding opportunities.
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To this we can add innovation and conservatism to the innovation and conservatism landscape.
A female who creates an innovation that increases the range of low risk innovation will have greater opportunities to innovate with greater rewards.
A female that pursues innovations that improve the range of low rist innovations will likely have even greater reward to benefit the propagation of her offspring.
A female will accept restriction on innovation or increased conservatism to protect her children.
A male that innovates by accepting more innovation from a female or providing protection and support to a female may improve their access to breeding opportunities.
Males may protect or preserve their breeding opportunities by restricting the options of the females in their groups
Males may take the risk of restricting a females opportunities to innovate to reduce the chance of the female from engaging in an innovation that may result in the male loosing breeding opportunity.
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To recap:
Females are more likely to engage in broad, low risk, mostly low reward innovation.
This is to improve the health, safety and prospects of their children.
Males are more likely to engage in high risk innovation. This is to secure breeding opportunities.
Females are more likely to propagate innovation onto others. Passing on new skills to their children, other females they are close to or their friends results in benefits to all in the environment their children will inhabit.
Males are less likely to innovate when they have secured breeding opportunities. If what they have works they are less likely to take any risks of attempting.
A female is less likely to attempt innovations that threaten her children.
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There is a lot of variation within any group. Some males may be less aggressive. Some females might be more willing to pursue more high risk or high aggression pursuits.
There will always be competition for the opportunity to breed. Males can easily breed with multiple females in a breeding period (for humans this is a little over 9 months). It is very unlikely that a female can breed with multiple males in a single breeding period though it has happened on occasion. Whenever there is competition their is opportunity for conflict and hence for appropriately applied aggression to provide an advantage.
Females are protective of their children and will only choose to be around males that are less likely to be a threat.
In general aggression in females makes males less likely to approach them for breeding.
Aggression in females can support their protection of their children up to a point, beyond that it becomes contra to survival of their offspring. Where this point is depends on the environment.
All of these factors led to a very effective mechanism for managing the balance between the risks and rewards of innovation versus the safety and the stagnation of conservatism.
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As we evolved and our intelligence grew we developed a wider range of choices and skills. We spent more time raising young so males needed to develop closer relationships with their children. Opportunities arose for males and females to extend and expand what they could do. There still though was a split in what most males and most females would to.
Herding, tending and shearing stock versus carding,spinning and weaving wool. Making leather using skins and fats and chemical versus making soap using urine and fats and chemicals. Working in the forge versus working in the kitchen over a fire pit. Working in the stable with large animals versus working in the garden tending the fruit and vegetables and small food animals. Still in general the males would tend the more solitary and in general more dangerous activities. Still the opportunities for taking risks for greater rewards were more available to males. Females still had safer opportunities for a greater number of innovations though these innovations were not as likely to result in great rewards.
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In general males avoid the risk of innovation unless their breeding prospects can only be improved with the higher risks of innovation.
In general a male in the group will not innovate as they already have the breeding opportunity and so will not take risks with this opportunity.
In general males are larger and more aggressive.
In general a female is smaller and directly protective of the children and so will be more likely to run and hide.
A male in the group though will learn new skills and innovations that arise in the grup that are discovered and developed by the females of the group.
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Females that are closer to the group can innovate with reduced amounts of risks.
With the support the group can provide they can take a greater number of smaller risks in the pursuit of innovation.
More males spend more time away from such groups. They are more likely to hunt and more likely to fight. Males are the first line of defense if the group is threatened. Males are therefore larger, have more access to fresh kills and are more aggressive.
Females have direct access to the locally gathered and caught food. They work more closely with children and are more likely to run and hide than to fight.
While males will share the kills with the group and can access the food gathered by the group this mostly balances out the diet and feeds the children.
In general females innovate and promote innovation in their group and offspring but avoid taking risks that would harm their children.
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First a bit of anthropology 101.
Primate mothers look after their children. If they develop a new skill or behaviour this is likely to be passed onto their children. Fathers do not spend much time with their children and are less likely to propagate new skills and ideas they have had to their children.
Individuals that pass on useful survival skills to their offspring are more likely to have more grandchildren.
A male can still innovate and improve their prospects of personal survival and hence achieving the opportunity to breed.
Innovation though entails a degree of risk. If a male is out alone and hunting then the risks of innovation are relatively high.
If a male has no breeding opportunities then taking even significant risks to gain the reward of acceptance into a troop along with the associated breeding opportunity is worth it.
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I have been thinking about why bdsm works and what that means.
I have figured out some of the reasons for our many and varies interests. That we have such a wide variety of interests indicates that there are a few different reasons at least.
The first that I will describe is feminism, or what I understand feminism to be.
Looks like these journals can only be so big so this will be in chunks |
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