The Biology of Love – Not

All in all, it was probably a mistake to let scientists anywhere near the topics of love and lust. Just as analyzing a joke kills it, so analyzing why we fall in love with those we do was bound to end badly. Consider the idea that aging professors attract their nubile young female students because young women are genetically programmed to fall for high-status, well-off men. Further, aging men are supposedly wired to be attracted to fertile young things.

Result: when our fiftysomething married man beds his student, the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in his stars or his character or his moral compass but in his DNA.

It's no wonder reductionist explanations for behavior—especially "my genes made me do it"—are so popular: they let us off the hook. Bad choice in whom you went home with that night? Understandable; you were overwhelmed by his pheromones. Unfaithful? Not your fault; blame the genes that program men to spread their seed widely. Except that in many cases more mundane explanations that invoke plain old thinking and feeling, rather than an unconscious drive to get your genes into the next generation, are more plausible.

Take the lap-dance experiment. Last year, scientists asked 18 strippers to log how many hours they worked, what they earned in tips and whether they were ovulating, menstruating or neither. While ovulating, the phase in the monthly cycle when a woman is most likely to conceive, the strippers earned an average of $335 per five-hour shift, compared with $185 while menstruating. The reason, the (male) scientists concluded, is that a fertile woman emits a signal that she is physiologically ripe to conceive. Men are, supposedly, genetically programmed to detect the signal—since being drawn to a fertile woman is something evolution and natural selection would favor—and to behave in a way (generous tipping) that might win her.

Leaving aside the fantasy element of that last part, this explanation has some problems. First, there is no good evidence that men can detect pheromones, hormones or any other magic molecule that reveals when a woman is ovulating. Also, even if such magic molecules existed, there is a simpler explanation for why men give bigger tips to ovulating strippers, one with no need to invoke unconscious genetic impulses. Women feel sexiest when ovulating. Just a guess, but maybe a stripper who feels sexy gives a more tip-worthy lap dance than one who feels uncomfortable during her period. If so, says David Buller of Northern Illinois University, author of a 2005 book, "Adapting Minds," which questions evolutionary explanations for complex behavior, "the lap dance may be [more alluring to] the client, so he will tip more."

In a similar explanatory vein, women in several studies say their husbands or lovers are more attentive and amorous when they are ovulating. This, too, is supposed to reflect men's ability, honed by natural selection, to detect signals (pheromones, hormones, whatever) that indicate when sex is likely to yield children. Children are how evolution keeps score; genes for behaviors that produce offspring—in this case, for detecting a woman's fertile period—survive the brutal winnowing process of natural selection. But again there is a simpler explanation for why men turn on the charm when their partners are ovulating, and it harks back to the strippers. Ovulation increases libido. A libidinous wife is more likely to send signals—readers are invited to provide their own examples—that she would welcome affection. Again, no genes controlling us like puppets. A loving heart and working brain are enough.

Men's taste in women is also supposed to reflect evolutionary selection, and to show that genes have our behaviors and preferences on a short leash. Specifically, men prefer D cups and broad hips, says this school of thought, because those are signs of fertility. A man who picks fecund females is more likely to leave offspring—that measure of evolutionary success—than a man who is attracted to reproductive duds. Two problems here. There is no empirical evidence that women whose shape deviates from the Barbie "ideal" are less fertile. Also, different societies at different times have idolized very different female bodies. The Rubenesque woman is nothing like the 2008 ideal of, say, Angelina Jolie. Genes do not evolve fast enough to account for that change in male tastes. Some esthetic preferences, including in a mate, are driven by culture, not DNA.

When an Anna Nicole Smith (27) marries a J. Howard Marshall (89), much of the public nods knowingly and figures, DNA programs women to seek out older, wealthy men, and men to go for young, fertile babes. Please. Give the lady credit for rationally evaluating the benefits of marrying an incontinent octogenarian multimillionaire. Besides, when 50-year-old men are asked the age of their preferred mate, most settle on 40 or so, not 25, even though the younger woman is more fertile. And on average, 25-year-old women say their ideal guy is 28, even though a 50-year-old is more likely to have the status and 401(k) that evolutionary explanations say women are programmed to lust for. This Valentine's Day, let's celebrate all the ways our hearts and minds, not our mindless DNA, guide us in the ways of love.

Why People Worth more than Things?

Well, let’s go to right to the question, why people worth more than things? We must, firt of all, analyze what makes something be valuable in our reality. What give value to the things? As na classic example let’s go to the most famous and desired minerals, the diamond and the gold. What makes them so expensive? The answer rests in the most important capitalist law, the Supply and Demand. What makes them expensive? Their rarity. The less quantity is available and less the natural occurrence the most expensive it is.

Our answer start to be drawn. Let’s think a little more before take our conclusion. How many of “you” exists? How many fathers and mothers do you have? And even having a lot of brothers, each one of them have a particular meaning for you. You can’t get rid of one and put other in his place. Each one is unique for you, as you are unique to the World. Each live or gone human carry a individual particle of rarity. Each one of us are irremediably irreplaceable. That’s why death is so painful. Cause in each death there is an irreparable loss. No matter how much comfort we try to find in the immortality of the soul doctrine, our feeling is of a definitive separation. The cry is of a total lost and an irreparable loss. This shows how valuable are persons, and how even unconsciously they worth more than anything. The loss of something never hurts more than the loss of someone.

And that’s why even existing thousands and thousands of people dying and coming to life every single day, each one comes or goes holding their irreplaceable and inestimable value. All this helps me to expose an argument of the reincarnation doctrine (that I personally don’t believe). If we are immortals and we live incarnating and reincarnating, life is not that rare and unique like this. Been replaceable or even disposable. The idea of the immortality of the soul, that preaches the ascension to heaven or the fall down to hell (or even a strategic stop on purgatory) helps to make human life banal. And on the contrary of common thought, it’s not a biblical doctrine like they say. But that’s another gigantic discussion, that I won’t going to bring up now. Who knows later we talk about it…

What really matters now is to understand how much unique we are, and the others that live around us, and that they matter more than things that also are around us and we like it. I repeat my last concept here: The more human we are, more we like people.

“Bowling for Finland” and the Power of Ideas

The original Video was taken out.

It’s already famous in the Internet the video of Pekka-Eric, the new suicide-killer from first world schools. In his video, published in You Tube he says: “I am a cynic existentialist, anti-human-humanist, anti-social-Darwinist and a type of atheist god”; “hate, I am full of hate and I worship it”; “I am the law, the judge and the executor, there is no major authority than me”.

In times like this, passes through my head that atheist arguments against the Medieval Christianity and it’s anti-Christian madness. But I am not going to deal with this issue, cause I don’t think it’s fair to bring any concept upon atheism based on the particular acts of an atheist, like concept the Christianity based on the act of an particular Christianism.

But what I would like to analyze here is the content of the T-shirt of Pekka-Eric. “Humanity is Overrated”, is written in the T-shirt. Something that he is trying to fight when he take away 8 lives including he’s own. We all were affected by he’s acts. Not just the wounds, and killed, and friends of them. But the intire world looks astonished for something, that is becoming even more common. Cause, never is natural or healthy to receive this kind of information no matter where you live.

“Humanity is Overrated” is an example of what ideas are able to. One idea (in fact two, cause there is nothing new or original in shoot inside a school) killed 8 persons and call all that attention. The idea was clear and was taken to the last consequences.

A lot of people question the media influence above people, but is also very evident that the ideas carried through it can destroy or construct. Media is means, it just carries a message. Who should be the responsible for that message? Who watch or who transmit? Looks like to me that the basic logic of “the greater, take care of the less”, found in life and transit laws should be repeated here. The media is every more specialized while the audience do not evolve in the same educational speed. In another words, to put into the audience the responsibility of the message is the same as give to Pekka-Eric that T-Shirt.

People worth more than things.

I'm very diffident about my English in this one...

Do you know when you find a true statement that you immediately incorporate it to your cosmovision? Is that magical moment when you see a perfect delimitation of an idea that, although never had been in touch with you in that way, is so familiar? That happened to me last year, when my Applied Communication teacher, designed the phrase more simple of the world, but containing the most pragmatic truth that my social intelligence will never forget. “People worth more than things”.

If you allow me to advance in this thought, I would like to amplify that concept to: “Life is more important than things”. We define, therefore, “things” as everything that don’t live at all. I know, for half dozen persons reading this may look obvious what I am saying till here, but I say to this minority, believe me, there are a majority that don’t understand so easily this simple truth.

It’s easy, in the world today, that people follow in love for things. And for that they cross values out, passing through what really mattes in life. People. In fact, there is a super-valorization of the person when this happens, but the wrong person. This person put it’s own desires above external values. When someone steals, kills, commit adultery (in all senses, sexual, social and economic), cheat, betray, pass through other interests, hurt, brake laws, ill-treat animals and etc… What is really happening is the super-valorization of it self. What, for consequence put things, the desired objects of an individual, above people. Above true values of life. We become what we most want, therefore even more humans will look like things, and not living beings. Things don’t relate, they make use, take advantage or serve each other. They are impersonal and inflexible in the fulfillment of their functions.

Impact of this modern thought, people die for profit

Someone can be asking, “but why relate is more important?” Last week I watched a philosopher in TV say one of the most few phrases in television that marked my life: “The family is the only institution capable to generate life”. It’s clear now? Just relationships generate life. What’s the meaning and relevancy of Pluto to the rest of Universe? None. But if there was life there? Then, it would be one of the most important planets in Via Lactea as the Earth. The life, for more miscomprehended that have been is what we know of most valuable. Even those who already gaved up of life and don’t give to it the proper value anymore, do this for the love of it.

Backing to the subject, we understand that, the world is more materialist today for lack of altruism. In another words, the excess of selfishness consumes us, cause human’s relationships are substituted by relations between people and things. Objects and living beings. Desires and realizations of a single individual. The man relates more with him self and less with the rest of the world. The Ipods are one pragmatic prove of that. The more time is passed with a thing the less time is passed with a living being and more time is passed alone.

That’s not so far guarantying the survival of mankind, but of the individual species. The human’s relations shall always exist, but they have even less meaning, they are helping the individual in his personal agenda to achieve his desires. The more this phenomenon happens and expands, more things get highly valuable over life. Less peace we’ll have, more divisions, more economic dysfunctions, less happiness, more stress, more rush, more capitalism, less solidarity e etc…

I was talking to a friend about CO2 guns, he told me that he loved to kill birds from far. So I said that I don’t shoot birds, but I like to shoot in glass and objects that react beautifully to my shots. He immediately understood my veiled critic and said: “So, you don’t shoot birds, but you shoot in someone’s else goods?” I understood that he had interpreted the word “glass” as a reference to my neighbor’s “window” (this is very common into Brazilian Portuguese semantic) or car’s windows targeted. Automatically, I fixed his mistake and explained that I was referring to glasses that I owned and stored for this activity…Wait a second!!! Let’s rewind a little...

Have you noticed that my friend putted someone’s goods above the life of a bird? Maybe if you had not realized it, don’t you think is time to reconsider? So glasses from windows and goods have more value than an animal that “is”, live and feel individually? This animal have social responsibilities with the lives it generated and relates with others members of it’s own species. That’s the reason why it worth less then a piece of glass that costs 2USD? Makes no sense.

Lotuho's village, also known as Latuka people.

“For traditional Africans, keep the balance and harmony in relationships inside his own family and tribe is extremely important. The possession of material goods is much less important than keep the appropriate interaction with other people. To the occidental man, in another hand, the value of people tend to be measured by the quantity of it’s possessions – land, money and goods. One result is the seek for success that means long hours in work, and disposal to annihilate other workers, friends and even family to be able to achieve great profit.

The Lotuho people, from south Suddan, for some time rejected the use of cattle to pull the plow, even knowing that the use of this animals would raise their production of food. With the cattle, the great feasts that happened during the field preparation for the sowing, would not be necessary, and that feasts were crucial to keep the relations in society. Better have less food, they say, than risc the harmony inside the village” (Applied Comunication class notes 2006, teacher Valdecir Lima).

If it’s not clear yet:
In life what really matters are not things, but relationships.

Without this comprehension and the legitimacy of our relations, we’ll be mere individuals alone in a multitude of abandoned. In the day that career, job, opportunities for your personal life, profit, desired objects and things in general become more important in your life than people, then it’s time to revaluate your values. For whom had we lived for? To fulfill the sheet in the duty of living? To realize ourselves at the cost of everything and all? This behavior in practice is what defines who you are. Are you a person or a thing? People relate.