Evolutionary Psychology Perspective by: Jem
Aura © 2006
I
had a very stimulating conversation the other day with a group of musicians. We
go to a local bar on Monday nights after our music class. I was pushing the
subject of Evolutionary Psychology and had the whole group enthralled and fully
engaged.
One
of the women called me afterward and wanted to ask a favor of me. She had been
having trouble with her daughter, and the subject matter at the bar had struck
her hard with how closely it matched what she had experienced as a girl, and
now what her daughter was experiencing. I knew this woman - we're
in a band together - and I knew her daughter also.
"Jim,
I know this may sound strange, but I was hoping maybe you could talk to Jenny
about the evolutionary psychology stuff. She is so smart,
I really think it will help her to deal with what she's been going
through."
"Well,
we covered a lot of ground the other night, which part did you want me to
cover?"
"I
was hoping all of it. I mean, I was kind of skeptical
during the first half of it, but by the end of the night, most of the loose
pieces were fitting together. I normally
wouldn't ask a friend to have a talk like this with my
daughter, but I think she might actually listen to you. You're very passionate
about the subject."
"Hmmm. I've never tried to frame it for a young audience. I guess I
can wing it. So how should we work it? I
mean, you want me to just come over there?"
"Oh,
I don't mean right away, unless you're free. How ever you want to handle it is
fine."
"So
tell me, what has she been doing to make you so concerned?"
"Well,
you know Stevie's nephew?"
"I
think so. Isn't he the one everyone thinks is his brother?"
"Yea,
that's him. Well, he's over here a lot with the kids.
He likes getting away from his home life I guess. Anyway, he told me a while
ago that Jenny was being forward with him. Like really
aggressive. I'm not sure why he told me,
because I think he's lying about the details. Jenny swears it didn't happen the way he said it. But
really, that's beside the point: We've talked and talked, and she is confused
about what's going on inside her. I think hearing that it's not her going
crazy, that there is a reasonable, even if it is really complicated,
explanation, will help her to cope with it better."
"I'll
do what I can."
"Could
you refresh my memory of how co-dependency fits in to it?"
"Co-dependency
is a behavior that belongs to the peer-to-peer mating strategy."
"There's
more than one mating strategy?"
"There's lots. But there are three
primary strategies. One is the one we all know and love,
the peer-to-peer strategy where the man is invested in supporting the family
and gets to pretend like he's the boss. Another is peer-to-peer 'affairs' where
mating occurs secretly and the man does not invest in the child but allows the
woman's mate to raise it as his own. And lastly, the one none of us like to admit even exists,
the adult-male-to-adolescent-female strategy. In this strategy, the man again
does not invest in the child. The mother of the girl will help her to raise the
child."
"Why
do we need three strategies?"
"Well,
we don’t any more. We did a long time
ago, and there are a lot more than just three strategies, but those are the
primary ones. Co-dependency is needed because women need to be boss when it comes to
certain things, and in certain situations. Men are a pain in the ass and
sometimes it was better for everyone if they just didn't hang around."
"Really."
"Yes. You see - this is where it gets very
complicated - women and men have evolved to have specialized
skills. Men are good at fighting, defending, building, making things, and
problem solving. They have the ability to focus an incredible amount of
resources and attention onto a specific goal and see it though to its
conclusion without easily being distracted or diverted.
They are good at teaching older children the cause-and-effect relationship of
life in general. They build long term character into
the child by making them understand consequences for their actions, and as such
they don't feel bad watching a child suffer a bit as a result of their poor
choices. A woman can hardly stand to watch a child suffer in any way, shape, or
form. She is specialized in raising the very young children, being
tuned-in to their short-term physical and emotional needs. While men are
very sensitive emotionally, they are not as emotive as women – meaning they don’t express emotions very well. While women are not as sensitive emotionally
– meaning they are emotionally tough, women are very emotive. These characteristic differences are an
indication of the means in which women exert their control. Women trasmit their needs through emotional influence, and men are designed to receive the signals and obey them. That is
co-dependency.
"We
are? Please, do continue."
"Yes
you are. Women, out of necessity, have
evolved the ability to control men through emotional influence. And men have evolved to be controlled emotionally. However, There are many practical lessons regarding the Matriarchal
role, and child rearing in general, that need to be taught before a young girl
will be ready to exercise her super-powers of emotional control. These are practical lessons, not instinctive,
because human society ebbs and flows much faster than evolution can keep up, and there are many
cultural situations that must be learned by a young girl through observing her
mother while raising her first baby. Keep in mind that whenever we are talking
in terms of Evolutionary Psychology, or evolved behaviors, we are always
talking about the ancestral environment, not modern times.”
“How
the Mother orchestrates the incredibly volatile situation that ends up with her
daughter pregnant, for her education, is something that has become encoded into
our mating behavior. Once the girl finishes raising the child to a certain age, she then seeks out
a peer aged mate and tries to establish herself as a matriarch. She will test
her ability to control the emotional state of the male by expressing
displeasure in him and then watching to see to what lengths he will go to make
her happy, even though he probably never did anything wrong in the first
place.”
“Wow,
I’ve done that. So that’s why I did it. Very cool.”
“Yea, and cruel.
Does that clear it up for you?”
“Clear
as mud.”
“Talk
to you soon.”
“Bye.”
So later that week Jenny and I went to a noisy coffee house where
we could talk without worrying about prying ears.
"So,
what have you been doing to get your mom all worried about you?"
"Nothing really."
"Did
she tell you what we were going to talk about?"
"Nope. Just that she's too
dumb to explain it all to me. I'm am curious, but I'm pretty sure that this isn't about
the birds and the bees… is it?"
"Well,
in a round-about way it actually is, just not the way you've ever heard it
before."
Jenny
gave him a frightened look and then glanced around to see who might be
listening.
"Don't
worry. This isn't about the mechanics of sex. This is
about relationships."
She
relaxed noticeably once that sunk in.
"You
are feeling attracted to your cousin, aren't you?"
Jenny
clicked her toungue "Gawd,
I'm too sure. What has she been telling you?"
"Please
don't worry. It's perfectly natural. Do you want to
tell me what happened?"
"No."
"Come
on, please? I'm
not judging you. I think you are beautiful and incredibly intelligent. I wish I
was your cousin. But it just
doesn't add up to me. I swear I will never tell anyone a single thing you say
here tonight. Please?"
The
beautiful and intelligent comment got a smile out of her, then she watched to
see if I was just flattering her. I wasn't.
Jenny
decided to confide in me: "Dan
likes me alot. I mean, we talk on the phone all the
time, and chat on the computer, email, and he's always
over here on weekends, and he's always right next to me when he's here. I like him too - but he's
almost as old as my dad. So it's like we are
boyfriend-girlfriend, except it's like we would tease each other alot and even flirt and stuff, but it was always just
goofing around. Then the other night we were wrestling and he was tickling me,
and it got a little mushy all of a sudden. He was like laying on me from trying
to hold me down, so I said "are you going to kiss
me?" and
he started to, but then he didn't."
"How'd
that make you feel?"
Jenny
shrugged. "I didn't really mind. I wanted him to, but he's
afraid. He could go to jail."
"Do
you think that's the only thing holding him back?"
"Yea, and my mom and dad. They'd freak."
"I
don't know. Your mom's pretty cool headed. If you
ended up pregnant, well then she would probably freak."
"Are
we talking about the same mom?"
"Yea. It has to
do with what I want to tell you about. Your mom and I have talked about this stuff a
lot and now she thinks the way I do."
"And
how is that?"
"In a minute. Why did Dan tell your mom that you were
all over him?"
Jenny's
eyes diverted from mine and settled on a spot at the center of the table. She
was ripping a napkin into small pieces.
"Jenny? Hello."
"Because of what I said."
"What
did you say?"
"It
was stupid. I don't know why i
said it. I wish I could take it back."
"Just
tell me."
She
sighed deeply, thinking, and then excused herself to go to the bathroom. I
grabbed her wrist before she slid out of the booth. "You can trust me,
Jenny. You know you can." And I let her go.
"I
threatened him." She said as she slid back in. "I told him that I wouldn't care if he
kissed me and stuff, just that we have to keep it really secret. He wanted to, I think, but he was afraid of getting caught. I could tell he was going to say no, so I
told him that I could make up any story I wanted to get him in trouble. He didn't like that
at all. He went straight to my mom, but he lied about what really happened. He didn't say that I threatened him. I thought he would."
"I
had a feeling it was something like that.
Okay, thank you. Are you ready to hear what you're supposed to
hear?"
Jenny
nodded.
"Have
you ever thought about what life used to be like?"
"What
do you mean?"
"Well,
things just aren't the way they used to be."
"How
did they used to be?"
"I
mean a really long time ago."
"Yea? How long?"
"Say
50,000 years. “
“Wow.”
“Yeah,
wow. Do you know what the world was like back then?"
"Not
really."
"Not
many people do. It’s
important for you to understand what I mean when I say 50,000 years ago. There weren’t any dinosaurs, and humans were exactly the same as
we are today – only very, very, slightly less evolved. You could take a child from back then, raise
him in today’s society, and you wouldn’t be able to
tell the difference. The main difference
is in the way people
lived. No real laws for society – except survival of the
fittest and whatever behaviors come instinctively. And
what they would teach their children, passed on from generation to generation
about how to survive. Things we don’t even think about
any more. We think to go shopping at the corner grocery store. They had to know
about all of the local plants and animals, their growth, where they could be
found, their habits, when things were edible, all of the other things that
plants, animals, and minerals could be used for. No stores.
You find it for yourself or you die. And as the eons
of time marched by, and life for people wasn’t really changing, many behaviors
that helped people to survive became written into our DNA. ”
“The
most important difference between then and now is that without medicine and
modern ways of storing food and water,
people just didn't live that long.
40 years was considered old. So a whole bunch of behaviors that seem
weird to us today, because we live so long and don’t really need them any more,
were very necessary back then.”
“What
it meant was that,
just like all of the other animals on the planet, as soon as
possible, each individual would mate and have offspring. Back then, a girl
needed to get pregnant at your age, or even younger if possible, just so her mom would be around to help raise
the child and teach her everything she knows about raising children, dealing
with men, and survival as a woman, before she died. The behaviors that get
written into our genes are very complicated. They are driven
by age and circumstances. And once they are written
in, they are very difficult to erase. Only more eons of time, behaving
differently, will eventually wipe them away.”
“Consider
that if a girl had a baby at 13, and her mother was 13 when she had her, then
by the time the baby reaches 10 years old, the baby’s grandmother would be at
least 36 already. She would
be even older for any of her younger children, and each of them,
if they were girls, would need to be taught also. Evolution makes us want to
have as many children as possible, as soon as possible. It was a race against the clock - evolution
has built into us the need to have sex at a young age."
"Boys too?"
"No,
not really, boys are different. You see,
giving birth and raising a child takes a lot of effort. A woman invests a lot
of her life and energy into growing fetuses and raising children. Men don’t
have to invest in the growing of a fetus, except right at the start, and for
whatever reason, evolution has made it so that boys go about their adolescent
years learning how to fight and learning from other men how to survive as men
do. They don't settle into raising children the way
girls do. They might have sex, but they won't stay
around to try and help raise the child. Not until they are older. When he is older, he will fall under the
control of a strong woman his own age, and she will tame him and make him do
things to help her raise her family. She will probably already have at least
one child from when she was a young girl, but now she will have his children,
and probably a few from other men that she sneaks off to see. Evolution makes us want to have children from
different fathers and mothers to increase the chances of having a really strong child, and decrease the chances of having all
duds. Back then, children died a lot,
for a lot of reasons. People had to just keep churning
out children as fast as they could in hopes of ending up with just a few that
survived to have families of their own."
"But
if boys don't want to have kids and girls do, how does
it happen?"
"I
think you know already. Don't you?"
"Older men."
"That's
right."
"So,
you think I want to get pregnant?"
"No,
I know you don't. But there is a part of you that
does. A part that you aren't aware of."
"What
part is that?"
"The part that controls how you feel about things, the part
that controls your emotions."
"I
don't control them?"
"No,
you don't. If something happens in your life that deserves an emotional
response, it will come upon you whether you want it to or not. All you can do
is choose what to do about it, and even then, if you
don't do what the emotions intended for you to do, they will continue to bother
you. But the feelings will come, and holding them back usually only makes them
worse."
"I
guess that's true."
"You
know, when I was figuring all of this out for myself,
this is where I really got stuck. Because I thought, Shit, if I'm not in control of my emotions, then who the fuck is? And
who’s side is he on?"
"Hey,
watch your language you dirty old man." Jenny smiled at the fact I used
the language she was so used to hearing, and saying, when she was with her
friends.
"Your a big girl now, I don't think it's going to damage you…
any worse than you already are."
"Hey!"
"Well,
I'm pretty passionate about this stuff and sometimes I just get carried
away."
"Okay, Okay, so who the fuck is in control then?"
A woman sitting at a booth
across the aisle glared at us.
"Shh ! Damn, that lady heard you. It's the part of us that acts on instinct. I call him the
puppeteer. It's
like he watches us walk around living our lives as if it’s a soap opera on TV,
and in front of him he has a bunch of buttons, One for each of our emotions.
There are dozens of buttons for all kinds of situations. And he loves pushing
them."
"And
he wants to get me pregnant?"
"You
bet he does. It's
all he thinks about. But he works
together with other peoples’ puppeteers to make it happen exactly the way it is
supposed to - I mean exactly the way he wants it to."
"How
does he do it? I mean why does he want to get me pregnant when he is me, and I
don't want to?"
"All
right, one question at a time. How does he do it? I already told you. He pushes buttons - but
only when it suits him. Why does he
want to get you pregnant? He doesn't think like we do. He has his own reasons for pushing
the buttons, and his reason for pushing it is almost never the same reason we
believe we felt it. He has three simple
reasons for everything: Survival, mating, and raising children. All of our emotions are for those three
reasons. For example. If you see your mother get hurt,
and you think she might die, your puppeteer would push a whole bunch of buttons
to make you cry, feel sad, angry, anguish, anxiety, remorse, guilt, etc. You would think that it's
because you love your mother, and that's all. But the
puppeteer sees your mother’s suffering as a sign that she might not be there to
raise you, and therefore you might not survive to mate and have children. Your
crying and distress will bring others to help your mother, or if she is dead,
to instill sympathy in others so that they might take you in as an orphan. To him it's about
survival. If those other people
watching you crying have nothing to gain from taking you in as their own, their
puppeteers would not push that sympathy button, and they would simply leave you
there without the least bit of guilt, because he is in charge of guilt also.
But that would not normally happen, because we have also evolved compassion so
that if everyone feels compassion toward an orphan, then everyone will be
assured that, in the event they should die, their own child will be adopted and
will survive. So we all have that built in reaction – and we all would like to
claim it as something belonging to us, a good thing – but it is still just
another string that the puppeteer pulls, for survival."
"So
how does he go about getting me pregnant when I don't want to?"
"Actually,
he doesn't do it alone. It takes at least three puppeteers, all cooperating, in
order to get a young girl pregnant. But, you should understand that the puppeteer can't force
anyone to actually do anything. All he can do is force feelings upon you, and
he can also send ideas into your consciousness to
suggest what action to take. I'm sure that you've experienced a flash of anger toward
someone, and then had the image or idea of hurting the person come into your
mind... - That's the puppeteer. Also, when we start feeling sexual, we get all kinds of
fantasies running through our head - The one's we would never talk about -
that's him too. So,
even though we feel angry, and think about hurting someone, we usually don't. At least not any more. A long time ago, people probably did
act out what the puppeteer suggested simply because there were no consequences
back then. In fact, you were rewarded. If a
man killed a rival man, he got to take all his
possessions, all his wives, and he was held in high regard as a strong
man. Now? you go to prison for
the rest of your life."
"Anyway,
the puppeteer is sneaky when it comes to young girls. You see, a young girl
would be frightened to all of a sudden be faced with a
man ready to have sex right there. And he cannot
afford to have her upset and calling attention to him. All of the puppeteers in
the whole society want this union to remain secret – I’ll
explain more of that in a minute. So the man’s puppeteer has him being gentle and nice, and her’s pushes a bunch of buttons that make her feel playful,
flirtatious, and wanting physical contact – allowing her to think it’s all just
a game and nothing to worry about - and
allowing those feelings to shape the relationship with the man over time until
she feels very comfortable and trusting of him. Then, at exactly the right time, they (the
puppeteers) start pushing some secret buttons, ones she's never felt before. Powerful ones. And just like the
fun and affectionate physical games they played before, they play the sex game.
Not in a passionate way like adults make love, but more like a fun and
titillating sexy game - that goes all the way."
"Okay,
back to the three puppeteers. The main one, the one that operates in complete
secrecy, is the mother's puppeteer. First, he begins to see when the girl is
maturing. He then, using a host of irrational ideas and lies,
inflicts terrible urges on her mother to either get rid of her natural father
in favor of a new mate, or if possible, she might just have an affair with a
man that is accepted by her father - a subordinate man, because whatever man it
ends up being, he needs to be able to have access to her, and the only way to
do that is through her mother, and he can't be her natural father. But if this is not
possible, she will try to find a man outside of the relationship, and then
leave the girl's father. If for some
reason her mother's puppeteer in unable to succeed in this goal, then her
puppeteer will try to seek out a way to get her pregnant without the mother's
help, but this is more dangerous, without her mother to screen the individual,
it opens up all sorts of risks. Of course this is the mother's puppeteer thinking all of this,
not her mother, and he is operating without her knowing it. To her, the need to find another man is
overpowering, he makes her believe that it is her mate’s fault. If your natural
father is in the way, in her eyes, he becomes the worst human on the planet. To her, this has nothing to do with you. The
puppeteer wants it that way. Once the stage is set and there is a suitable man
in the inner circle of the family, he keeps her content by pushing all the
right buttons, and in deep denial with programmed ideas, thoughts that her new
man, virile as he is, and her daughter, fertile as she is, have completely no
interest in each other sexually.
Hah! What a crock of shit that
is!"
My
passion for the subject matter had my voice a little louder than it needed to
be, and the lady across the isle got up and left.
“Come
on, this is a little hard to believe. My mom actually tries to get me
pregnant?”
“I
know. It is hard to believe. Try to keep an open mind while I explain some more
to you. Secrecy is the holy grail of
this strategy. Everything is secret and
unspoken. Even between the girl and the man.
After all, they are just playing. Your mother will allow you to get
pregnant secretly. And remember, we are still talking
50,000 years ago. People back then just
went with their feelings. The puppeteers had an easy time of it. So, to your
mother, it is so secret that she won't even admit to herself that she allowed
it to happen. Her puppeteer simply refuses to push any buttons except a few to
make her feel that her daughter is safe and secure,
and a sense of general well being even though she knows there's a rooster is in
the hen house. Once the mother's puppeteer has set the stage,
then, the man's and the girl's puppeteers push all the right buttons to allow
them to feel good around each other, to enjoy physical contact, and especially
to enjoy it to be done secretly, and as time goes by, they become more and more
promiscuous and then, all of a sudden, she is aching for fulfillment. But it isn't passionate love making. It's
done more like a game. Just having fun. They don't want to become too attached to each other because the
puppeteers both know that it is a temporary situation. Afterward, the man's
puppeteer makes him feel indifferent toward the girl and the child she is
carrying, and he quickly
abandons them, if he is wise, and goes on raising his other
children with his mate. The girl, too,
feels indifferent, though they both may meet several more times until the girl
begins to show. Then he will make himself scarce. If the man your mother is mated to is not your father, then she would simply allow him to get
you pregnant. Again, not consciously condoning it, just passively letting
nature take it's course. Any questions?"
"Yeah.
Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why all the sneaking around. Why doesn't
the puppeteer just push buttons so that everyone is happy with the girl getting
pregnant? Because I think
everyone gets mad and angry when they hear about a man having sex with a young
girl. So that must mean the puppeteers don't want that
either, otherwise they wouldn't push the angry button. Would they?"
"Wow,
you are a quick study my girl. I am very impressed. Okay - excellent question. You’re right and your
wrong. The puppeteer does make everyone
happy that the girl is pregnant – The puppeteers make everyone believe it was a
nice young boy that did it, and there’s no need to go bothering the girl about
it – isn’t she cute – such a nice glow... They only push the angry button at an
adult man that gets caught. It’s
punishment for not being secret enough.
It has to do with co-dependency.
You see, women have a secret super-power. They have the ability to set
up co-dependency in relationships. Men are subject to it. They have to be,
because a good woman is going to test for it before she mates with him - oops,
I mean.... okay
- there are three main strategies for mating in humans: One main one is getting
married. Another is having secret affairs. The last is the one with a man and a
young girl. The co-dependency is strong
in a married relationship, can be strong in a secret affair, but there is no
co-dependency in the man-girl relationship. Everyone, both males and females, are designed and intended to have all three types of relationships
occur in their lifetime. There is
a critical time for a young girl to mature into a woman. It has been the way of
our species to teach young girls how to integrate the co-dependency instinct
into their particular culture, while at the same time being taught everything
she needs to know about raising children so that she can lead a family of her
own successfully. In order to teach her
daughter correctly, it is very important that the girl is
not under the influence of a co-dependency relationship. So all of the
puppeteers together - community wide - force the men to not be involved with
the young girls after they become pregnant by pushing the hatred button toward any
man caught in a relationship with a young girl. They are
rewarded if they do it successfully in secret by the guarantee that his
child, even though he will have nothing to do in raising it, has an excellent
chance of survival. The hatred button
toward these men is the foundation of the denial everyone feels. When a girl comes up pregnant, people will
avoid asking who the father might be, Their denial is
thick and as long as it could be an immaculate conception, that's what it will
be. Perfectly normal
for a young girl to be pregnant - but how monstrous for a man to have sex with
a young girl. This is how people used to feel, and still do to a certain
extent."
"So,
to sum-up, the whole thing is orchestrated so that you can go to school with
your mom without any men bothering you before you are ready. If you weren't
intended to have a child that young, evolution would not have allowed you to be
fertile at that age. Ask any biologist
if there is any other species on earth that doesn't mate as soon as they are
fertile."
"Wow.
That's deep."
"Any questions?"
"Yea, does this mean I'm
having your baby?"
"Very funny."
"How
do you know all this? You don't have any proof."
"The
fact that no one has a better explanation serves as proof enough for me. And also there's the
proof of our feelings. If you search your feelings, and examine when they come
upon you and why, and the strange ideas that accompany them, eventually, maybe
by the time you are as old as me, you will start seeing that sneaky old
puppeteer back there pushing buttons, or pulling strings, or whatever. It’s really
important to know how diabolical he is. He is a liar, and a sneak. It is
incredibly difficult for us to see him that way because a long time ago, if you
followed his lead carefully, it all seemed to work, so we have a built in
belief that if we feel a certain way, there must me a ‘good’ reason for it. Don’t believe it. Think about your life
and what you do with a clear head. Don’t act
spontaneously – wait for the emotional influence to fade before making
important decisions. I bet you wouldn't be real eager to tell your dad about your most
private fantasies. Those are your puppeteer directing a film in your head of
what he wants you to actually do."
Jenny
sat silent for a few moments thinking about this, pulling up her fantasies and
examining them under this new light.
"So
Jenny, answer me truthfully, would your fantasies have gotten you pregnant?"
"Uhm,
kinda sorta maybe"
"Kinda sorta maybe?
Is that like being just a little pregnant? As opposed
to a lot?"
"I
guess so."
"The
next question is, did you ever fantasize that way
about a boy your own age?"
"No."
"Good,
that fits my theory. So now comes a question for you. One that
you will have to find your own answers for."
"Okay,
Ask away."
"Assuming
you believe all this stuff, knowing how 'old school' the puppeteer is and how
most of what he tries to do doesn't even make sense in today's society, what
will you do when feelings and urges come upon you out of the blue, at the worst
possible times, when you are the weakest and most vulnerable. What will you do?"
Jenny
opened her mouth to speak but I put my hand over it. "Words are meaningless. Just show me."
“What
about God? Do you believe in God?”
“Very, Very much.”
“But
this doesn’t sound like God is doing anything. Are we just supposed to figure
this out for ourselves, or is God pointing the way for us somehow?”
“To
quote from Forrest Gump: “I think maybe it’s both, at the same time.”
If you would like to show your
support, all I ask is that you
write to me and tell me about your reading experience.
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