Opportunism and Promiscuity
In their sexual proclivities the males of animal species, including humankind, are hard-wired to be opportunistic and promiscuous. The hard-wired defense-mechanisms of fear and anger reinforce sexual proclivities. The reflex tendency of males to dominate and self-advantage are also hard-wired proclivities.
Together, these proclivities reinforce each other and are not easily suppressed. Male competition and dominion have contributed to the survival and ascendancy of the species in the context of the wilds, and the genetic patterns of hard-wired instinct have served humankind in competing successfully.
Inter-species competition prized sexual prowess. Today, however, the inter-species challenges to the place of humans have largely been suppressed. It isn’t the wild kingdom that threatens human existence so much as it is human dominion that threatens the wild kingdom.
Under this reversed circumstance, humankind needs a new rationale toward inter-relational survival. Fortuitously, the animal brain has evolved cortical hemispheres that overlay the hard-wired avian-reptilian brain (limbus-amygdala), which lets intelligence find “soft” responses, rational approaches to outside threats. Humans learn, remember, make associations and come up with benign solutions that do not threaten other species.
Femininity, the ground-state of social reflectivity, characterizes that aspect of “soft” socializing that deals with conflicts in subtle, non-violent ways. Familial and communal harmony is profoundly affected by the nurturing and socializing roles of females in child rearing and in providing for human needs by cultivating natural relationships. Personal qualities of nurturing are predisposed in the female personality and counterbalance the dominion habits of males. The rational processing of the cortical brain is an effective blanket against hurtful and violent predispositions, but not always effective in prevailing against male tendencies toward alienation and dominion.
The contrasting dynamics of females and males, sociality vs. dominion, are affective/ effective means of survival when they correspond and constructively affirm/ offset each other. When males and females together use their physical/ psychical powers and proclivities to achieve symbiotic accommodation, they mitigate violence and destruction. Male hard edges are softened by female sensitivity and female softness is secured in male firmness.
By the social inter-play of mutuality, complementarity and subsidiarity, the sexes together optimize their individual talents and achieve social objectives without resorting to violence and destructiveness. Intelligence recognizes the necessity of behaving benignly within the complex systems of symbionts. The natural order of communal socializing depends on female/ male co-dependency.
What about male-on-male and female-on-female liaisons? In observing other animal species there is a sense that male-on-male associations can be beneficial and harmful; they tend to reinforce hard-wired proclivities; or in the case of females, they tend toward collaboration. Female-on-female liaisons may serve to strengthen and enlighten socializing instincts and ways of nurturing, whereas, male-on-male liaisons would likely be more conflictive, based on instinctual predispositions.
The origin and success of all-male and all-female religious communities are from their intentions and work of personal and social wellbeing. Authentic community like authentic religion focuses on works of personal/ social need, certainly not on purposes of overreach and dominion.
Hegemony and function in human communities, families, churches and nations, need to engage the complementary dispositions of males and females, and base authority on competence, whether female or male. It is destructive and anti-social for one or the other sex to dominate and control the other. Females need to soften the destructive passions of males, and males need to support the socializing talents of females. By habit of social culture and natural design, it shouldn’t be surprising that society understands the social bonding of a man and a woman, for purposes of originating and sustaining families and building communities, to be unique and to have a special and precise meaning, which is understood by the word “marriage”.
The dynamic of the man/ woman relationship in marriage is not the same as male-on-male or female-on-female dynamics in same-sex partnerships. Because of the wide personality differences of males and females, it is hardly deniable that there can be same-sex partnerships in which two people of the same sex are compatible in their intentions and collaboration. However, same-sex partnerships that reinforce opportunistic and dominion proclivities are hardly beneficial whether to those in the partnership or to the community.
Openness and sensitivity to people of good faith, in all their relationships, is the Christian way and is to be encouraged, whether in Church or other communities. Hurtful relationships in any setting are anti-social and should be discouraged. The presumption of trust is the right attitude, until the presumption is disproved.
While I respect your
While I respect your erudition, I am always distrustful of analyses that base contemporary policies on historical, evolutionary or feral observations of
gender specific competencies (except for writing one's name in the snow.)
Bonobo societies use sexual pleasure in promiscuous applications to avert violence and build communitiy. Works for them.
Your observations about same-sex unions is certainly true of prison populations. but there the elements of free choice and partner availability are missing. In a purely anecdotal and personal observation, I would say that there appears to be less violence and domination in gay male couples than in straight couples.
Rev Dr McCoy and Frannie, I
Rev Dr McCoy and Frannie, I am grateful for your challenge to the thesis I present here. The airing of this matter is profoundly important if we as a people are to move beyond the hard fixations of culture and the deficits of natural proclivities.
Speaking to Rev McCoy's comment: "scientific theory-building (NO hypothesis of this sort has ever yielded a usable null hypothesis or genuine disproof) but it is misleading because it claims a scope and depth of analysis currently unknown. Moreover, for human beings, whose phenomenology imposes meta-scientific obstacles to even quasi-experimental observation, statements such as, "sexual proclivities ... are hard-wired", are simply bald assertions with NO basis either in science or in speculative philosophy"
I am of the opinion that the evidence of cultural history, of genetic coding, and of biological structure and process support the theory I prefer here. (On these last two points, I expect to say more another time, based on neural research and brain science.)
Just as there are in radical nature “natural causes� giving evidence of original sin (which is now more common than “original�) so there are in radical nature “natural means� by which redemption and salvation from sin are found. Just as “grace supposes nature�, so it is true that “disgrace supposes nature�. Good as we are in our personal living, each of us has to admit that in the face of evil doing “but for the grace of God, there go I�. And likewise, bad as we are, we can also be assured in the face of others doing good that “by the grace of God there I can also go�.
Radical evolution is a very recent cultural awareness that is unsettling to thought and habit. We are deeply cultured against the thought of “feral� instincts connected to our atavistic history, but that does not mean that our denial is right in its conclusion. We are culturally inclined toward imperial (patriarchal) dominion, but that does not mean that imperial culture is without anti-social tendencies and seriously “radical� deficits. Roman Catholicism and Anglican Catholicism preserve natural affinities for each other in their cultural tendencies toward imperialism. That doesn’t mean they are right.
I know that the universal implications of what I present here are breathtaking and provocative, but that doesn’t mean that they are wrong. As I was writing, they were unsettling also to me, and I questioned if I wanted to identify myself with them. But, I put my ideas to the personal test and to the cultural test, and I convinced myself that they are more right than wrong.
I asked myself: Do I personally have proclivities to be “opportunistic�? Yes. Do I have a proclivity toward being “promiscuous�? Yes. Do I instinctively fight back when I am challenged? Yes. Am I inclined to speak and behave embarrassingly in all-male situations? Yes. And I could go on and on as to atavistic instincts of “feral� origin which I possess. But, does that mean that I am fated to succumb to these proclivities? No.
Male cultural history (feral and human) documents proclivities toward pretenses (pomposity and grandeur) and predation. The coloration and antics of males of many species are a wonder to behold, and though obvious, are sometimes also devious. Females both love and suffer the pretentions of males.
Proclivities in themselves are ambivalent, that is, they can serve both good and hurtful purposes. Cultural rituals of royalty and religion serve purposes of need but also intentions of greed.
I do not see how we can logically deny that the radical exploitation and degradation of nature and social relationships are disconnected from the “feral� irrationality of “hard-wired� instincts that lie deeply buried in the avian-reptilian brain that lays under the cortical brain of each of us.
Are the conclusions I have come to absolute and categorical? No. But they have merit in the face of cultural denial and its consequences. I think they are persuasive. I think we deny them at our own peril.
I would like to enlarge the
I would like to enlarge the scope of idea-exploration under the hypothesis presented here. If the brain of feral ancestry is brought forward and is yet functional in the human brain, might we not expect to discover cultural evidence of its influence on interpersonal relationships and history? My answer is "yes", and further, I am of the belief that there are profound and unconsidered psychological (male proclivities) motivations at work in "religious" dispositions and political despotism.
As has already been proposed, male proclivities of dominion and exploitation are very much even now the cultural vogue and are still wreaking perhaps irreparable damage. Beyond that, let me propose yet another provocative and breathtaking suggestion: that imperial (patriarchal) culture and dominion politics frustrate and infantilize faith (religion) and reason (culture); which is to say that global religion and politics are yet immature.
[This is the follow-up I
[This is the follow-up I promised above] The universe is quantum-electric. Electricity powers evolution. Electrical power is everywhere, distributed and stored in positive-negative potential.
Electrical power is fearsome as lightning and subtle as a neuron-spark. It is harsh and all-controlling, it is pliant and subtle. It is straight-line and hot, it is diffuse and cool. It is the ripple of a thought; it is the shattered trunk of a lightning-struck tree. It is the contentious energy of warfare and the gentleness of a mother’s cradle song. It is the hard-wired power of instinct and the soft energy of sensation, of purpose, of love.
Electrical power is the energy of communication, consciousness and conscience. It is the energy of convergence, divergence and emergence. By communication, ideas come together; in bringing ideas together, understandings converge and diverge; and by the intelligence of converging and diverging ideas, newness emerges. All of the above come together in intentional consciousness, in purposeful living, in organic symbiosis and evolution.
Organic life is quantum-electric. As in the universe so in the neural system, some electricity is linear and hot (hard-wired) and some is diffuse, parallel and “soft�. Hard-wiring is direct and high voltage, soft power is diffuse and low-voltage. Soft power circuits are easily zapped by high-voltage power — power surges mess up computers.
Thinking like all processes of consciousness involves diffuse, low-voltage electricity. Some conscious responses are reflex, directly responsive and unthinking (instincts), and some are reflective, thoughtful and intentional. Hierarchical dominion is high-voltage, hard-wired. Shared authority is parallel-wired, diffuse and equilibrating — what makes for harmony. Reflective consciousness accommodates soft messaging in the iterations of social harmony, as in intentional responsiveness to naturally occurring contingencies. Institutional hard-wiring is less sensitive to the soft impulses of diffuse circuitry.
Intelligence is what intelligence does. Intelligence is the evolving design of diffuse energy at work in reflective consciousness.
In early evolution, the parceling of power was more direct and less subtle. Early “wiring� was linear and direct, reflex and involuntary — what served survival needs in situations of high risk (“startle responses�) that required flight or fight. In the category of survival responses are sex-linked reflexes. Aggressive and over-powering males passed on the survival genes of aggression and dominion.
In the course of evolution, as subtle accommodations came about so did the substances (neural networks) and processes of consciousness. Effectively, nerve networks throughout organic bodies link up with brain centers and diversify the capabilities of energy potentials. Complexity-consciousness continually opens to greater complexity.
Humankind is not fated to be driven by the unmitigated control of instinctive hard-wiring rather the equipment of human intelligence is open to the necessity of engaging complexity-consciousness beyond the limitations of hard-wired instinct. Males do not solely possess the potentials of consciousness. Mono-polarity is ineffective except for bi-polar electrical potential as represented in females and males together.
Communication, consciousness and conscience are about the work of mutuality, complementarity and subsidiarity, and these are about the work of convergence, divergence and emergence — what is the intelligent design of evolution — trimorphic resonance.
REFERENCES;
David Boudanis, “Electric Universe�
Antonio Damasio, “Descartes’ Error�
Daniel Goleman, “Emotional Intelligence�
Richard Restak, “The Modular Brain�
Carl Sagan, “Broca’s Brain�
Lewis Thomas, “The Lives of a Cell�
Lewis Thomas, “The Medusa and the Snail�
Sylvester I would add the
Sylvester I would add the following title to your list:
Joseph Chilton Pearce: The Biology of Transcendence, and also the works of Dr. Bruce Lipton.
Lipton's work was especially helpful to me in understanding why it is so difficult to change the early life programming our brains lay down in the years 0-6. This early learning becomes the basis of most of our unconcious drives and attitudes and is extremely powerful relative to our concious mind. Put 'garbage' in in these early years, and as adults one gets 'garbage' out. It's why abuse victims have a very difficult time healing. It's very difficult for adult conciousness to reprogram this early hard wiring. It's hard to find a program (therapy) which can hack into and change early programming.
Institutions will mirror the same early programming phenomenon. How much of our early history does Catholicism still mindlessly hang onto, and no amount of rational conscious thinking seems to effect it.
There was a point I thought the abuse crisis might be the program capable of hacking into the old hardwiring but it sure doesn't seem like it's had much of an effect. According to Bishop Paprocki it's the good old devil. Talk about intransigent early programming.
Radicalism re: the
Radicalism re: the 'hard-wiring' of ANYTHING in human experience:
Whether as a form of scientific naturalism or theology, this notion of 'radical nature' is foreign to me and so I perhaps miss your point. At the risk of mis-translating your intention, my response to your interest in *proclivities* is squarely in the non-radical camp of a contemporary scientific theology. My own understanding of such theological realism concerns, perforce, the connection between scientific and theological METHOD. [As such, I follow the approach of Alistair McGrath who extends Thomas Torrance's turn-of-the-twentieth century theological REALISM,] viz., there are three foundational components to what I would consider a viable scientific theology following McGrath:
1/ an ONTOLOGICAL approach is necessary to establish that their are, indeed, realities (Reality) that exist both independent of and external to human inquiry that such inquiry seeks to discover (put bluntly, my mind doesn't invent reality - either by "opinion" or madness);
2/ a shared EPISTEMOLOGY posits that we can know realities (Reality) and generate statements concerning them(It) beyond but not relying on subjective limitation of mood or cultural conditioning (ideology can be escaped with rational/spiritual discipline); and
3/ a SEMANTIC integrity is possible in the provisional descriptions both of the object and process of our shared human inquiry (I can mean what I say & say what I mean in a non-trivial manner).
Because we live in both TIME and FLESH (the incarnation) ALL "DISCOVERY" - BOTH SCIENTIFIC AND THEOLOGICAL (including both creedal and formal 'belief') IS PROVISIONAL. It is this characteristic of provisionality that is, to me, the locus of the 'sacred' in my experience.
Having given you the context above, I can only say that the notion of 'radicalism' in both 'nature' and 'existence' without an operational definition is meaningless to me. It implies an *a priori* refusal where an *a posteriori* skepticism is wanted in the intersection of science and theology.
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
Jesus said, "You are the light of the world. ... let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven." (Matthew 5:15-16)
Sylvester, I think you are
Sylvester, I think you are going to have to flesh out your observations. I can get on board with what you are saying precisely because I have lately undertaken an extensive study concerning the relationships and development of brain structure. I have a basis from which to understand your concepts.
I undertook my research in order to understand the concepts inherent in Energy Psychology and whether the attendant therapeutic techniques held promise, especially for abuse victims and those suffering from PTSD. Initial indications are hopeful. What I did not expect was the impact this research has had on my theology, or how much of this branch of psychology was centered in quantum physics. We don't only live in TIME and FLESH, we apparently have an energy body surrounding our physical body which is heavily involved in interacting on a cellular level, especially a neural cellular level.
All of these new avenues of research posit real questions for a theological understanding of humanity. It's unfortunate to me that the only spiritual folks really looking at this data are New Agers. Maybe that's not an accident.
"there are three
"there are three foundational components to what I would consider a viable scientific theology following McGrath"
I'm not sure if you are suggesting that the evolutionary linkages of feral/ human history, as suggested here are inconsistent with the "foundational components" of McGrath and Torrance.
I use "radical" in the "root" meaning of the Latin word "radix". "Radical evolution" means that there is essential continuity and organic connectedness of all life on Earth, ultimately back to big bang beginnings. Thus, "natural causes" and "effects" root back organically to prior and (perhaps) less differentiated forms of life. The continuity of the across-time linkages of life are organically imprinted in DNA coding, and handed down from generation to generation.
Correct me if I'm wrong: ONTOLOGY as proposed here finds origin in the essential continuity of evolved organisms; shared EPISTEMOLOGY finds consistency in the continuity of evolved/ evolving consciousness [in quantum science, contemporary psychology, neurology, etc]; and the SEMANTIC used here is consistent with shared epistemology and in the languages of knowledge and experience.
Maybe I miss the point completely as to the philosophical/ theological assumptions of your authorities. I apologize if I do. I confess that I am uninformed in their rationality, and my ignorance undoubtedly shows. But, I don't know that I have any disagreement with them. I don't think I do.
Thanks Sylvester. Yes,
Thanks Sylvester. Yes, while I have no brief against historical continuity, I believe that we do disagree - or at least use very different hermeneutical & scientific 'lens' - in our conceptual bases re: what it is to be human:
1/ I do not find the *post-human* conceptualization of the "radical evolution" thesis persuasive and
2/ I do not consider myself to be *trans-humanist*.
Perhaps when/if the community of discourse surrounding e.g., Garreau and Pinker's notions of cyber/mind speculations, progress to the stage of hypothesis generation, I will be able to bend this traditional mind of mine around the "new discoveries". For the time-being I'm afraid that this purported 'newness' strikes me as a very tried 'oldness'. I.e., I see the radical evolution thesis as a kind of twentieth-century scientific Gnosticism that blends sci-fi fantasy and anti-apocalyptic mysticism.
Give me John Searle (THE REDISCOVERY of THE MIND) and his 'solution' to that vexing mind-body dualism any day ...
Having said this, I very much appreciate your well-considered posts and exploratory spirit! Blessings be upon you.
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
"For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating..." (Is 65 17-18)
To be fully human is “to
To be fully human is “to effect in one's lifetime the convergence of faith and reason and to emerge renewed from their convergence�.
I have a sense, Dr McCoy, that while we come from different directions we converge at the intersection of faith and reason. On evidence of the postings, I believe that we both support the mutually reinforcing intuitions and intentions of faith and reason.
We both live in the same reality, at this same time. We do not know with certainty all the dynamics that have brought us to this convergence. While knowing past dynamics may be enlightening to the way forward, more to the point is knowing the conscionable necessities of authentic living. Faith and reason mutually inform us in these matters.
Humankind, personally and socially, is conditioned by nature (genetics) and by culture (nurture). Going forward, we know that we condition the future (genetics and memetics) by the way we correlate with each other and nature. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is for Christians the Way, the Truth and the Life (Light). Faith and reason both compel us to conscionable behavior, to love’s symbiotic fidelity.
The “Naturalis Sacramentum Ordinis� is “sign� and “grace�, nature and nurture, intention and intuition. Reason tells us, “grace supposes nature�, i.e., culture supposes nature. Faith tells us “nature supposes grace�, i.e., nature supposes culture.
The fullness of Sacramental living requires the reciprocation of sign/ grace, nature/ nurture, reason/ faith, and intention/ intuition. Faith needs reason, reason needs faith; intuition needs intention, intention needs intuition; religion needs science, science needs religion. Faith’s motive of love supposes reason’s motive of symbiosis; reason’s motive of symbiosis supposes faith’s motive of love.
Intentional consciousness (conscience) is a two-cylinder engine. When only one cylinder fires, life arrives at fulfillment with greater difficulty. To be fully human means to enable faith (belief) with reason (knowledge), and to enable reason with faith.
Human living lacks full integration if/ when faith demeans reason, when reason demeans faith. Rationalism (First Enlightenment) eschews fideism (imperially imposed belief) and fideism (imperial belief) eschews rationalism. Second Enlightenment (conscionable rationality, rational conscience) eschews both rationalism and fideism in favor of the mutuality of evolving faith/ reason.
I love the two-cylinder
I love the two-cylinder approach to faith & reason! No arguments here...
Only just one thing: faith & reason must serve the greater desire to obtain full human-ness in loving, the most precious attribute of which is forgiveness & reconciliation. I think the twin engines of faith & reason drive us to that place if we use compassion and solicitude as our navigational points: they point to Covenant.
For me, it's all about Covenant: the being-in-Covenant; the yearning-for-covenantal relationships; the 'uprightness' of the conduct-of-covenant; the aim of covenant: all this that serves the restoration of God's presence here and now in God's continuing Revelation wrought in the actions of God's faithful through grace.
Yes, Sylvester, I think we are in much the same place regarding faith & reason. Are we headed in the same direction?
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
"For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating..." (Is 65:17-18)
I have no reason to think
I have no reason to think that we are not. Do you have reason to think that we are (heading in different directions)?
- Just saw your post. -
- Just saw your post.
- Can't remember why I queried this???
Yes, I think our shared direction is why we talk to each other however anonymously. Sometimes I wonder about my own trajectory ... but only in momemts of self-doubt and lesser faith ...
It's all just part of the dynamic of moving & being in the world I guess.
God's peace, Sylvester,
e+
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
"For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating..." (Is 65:17-18)
Thank you E+ ! The thought
Thank you E+ !
The thought popped in my head: how people in close proximity are too often ships passing in the night unaware; eventhough we are distant ships we are very much aware.. Is that living "mindfully"? I believe it is. My soul is refreshed!
Like all ontologies that
Like all ontologies that seek to explain a "human dynamic" the psycho-sexual one used here is, I believe, fundamentally flawed on at least two counts:
1/ the binary opposition, in the present case extracted from "animal species" observations (citations???), is patently false. Such 'evidence' is not only inconclusive in terms of of scientific theory-building (NO hypothesis of this sort has ever yielded a usable null hypothesis or genuine disproof) but it is misleading because it claims a scope and depth of analysis currently unknown. Moreover, for human beings, whose phenomenology imposes meta-scientific obstacles to even quasi-experimental observation, statements such as, "sexual proclivities ... are hard-wired", are simply bald assertions with NO basis either in science or in speculative philosophy;
and
2/ more importantly, as children of God whose Covenant-in-Christ is a guarantee of salvation, our own participation in the great adventure of Redemption is, I believe, also an exploration of ALL the incarnational realities that unfold in the abundance of a life lived in genuine communion/community. The little binary box for humanity proffered here serves our Redemption-adventure no better than those other little boxes built for God serve God's own Grace of Revelation.
[By the way, the phrases "male-on-male" and "female-on-female" are auto-erotic terms and/or slurs. If one wishes to describe same-sex with somewhat familiar, albeit adolescent, slang, why not say, male-with-male and female-with-female?]
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
Jesus said, "You are the light of the world. ... let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven." (Matthew 5:15-16)