Can homosexuality and Darwin be in one boat?

How does evolution make sense of seemingly anti-evolution behavior like homosexuality?

In his book, “The Descent of Man, and Selection in relation to Sex”, Darwin proposed a bombastic idea. Known as the theory of sexual selection, it could explain several traits and characteristics of a specie, in terms of their role in reproductive success. It famously includes the bright and decorative feathers of a peacock, which it uses to attract the female mate which is bland and dull. And it led to the now popular conclusion, that probably, art, poetry and music, were the tools of sexual selection to attract women, ending up in hot encounter in bed. Nevertheless, Darwin was right as far as the peacocks, and the pheasants and the guppies, and species who only have sex for reproduction were concerned.

But much has changed in our understanding of sexual behaviors in humans and other animals. Humans, as we know today, are hypersexual mammals who possess far more sexual capacity than is needed for reproduction. The human male has the biggest gonads in all primates, and the human female can have sex in non-ovulation periods and during pregnancy. Apart from this, humans engage in all sorts of non-reproductive sexual practices, including sodomy, oral sex, self-pleasure, genital rubbing and homosexuality.  This should raise an important “Why?”

But before that, let’s ask another question “What went wrong?” Well, the answer lies in the cultural context of the Victorian era, whose “straight, monogamous, puritanical sex” picture had impacted Darwin’s judgement about human sexuality. Also, we happened to meet the chimpanzees first, who are not only aggressive, but non-cooperative in their social arrangements and usually have sex for reproduction. It was later, that primatologists and ethologists came across other primates, whose social dynamics were starkly different than that of chimpanzees. And soon we begun to find other mammals, both primates and non-primates who engage in similar sexual behaviors.

So, how can evolution explain that?

The mammals wasting their time in sex with no reproductive outcome, and which should seemingly reduce their chances of survival because it does not leave them offspring. Right?

Well, wrong. This arises out of a heinous misconception about evolution that the individuals have to struggle for survival and carry their lineage. It’s the genes, not the individuals, which need to survive and get carried on. And the seeming “paradox of homosexuality” does not really exist, because the homosexuals are still reproductively fit and can produce offspring. But this takes us back to discussion above, why do humans, like bonobos and other primates, engage in non-reproductive sex?

According to E.O Wilson, human sexuality and that of other primates, can be well described as a bonding mechanism in interdependent bands. Humans, which are highly social beings, sexually promiscuous and who engage in sex for pleasure. The bonding maintains cooperation and mutuality between the groups, and increases the chances of gene propagation. The gene is still selfish, even though the individuals can form cooperative arrangements, and hold remarkable qualities of altruism.

Homosexuality did not serve any specific evolutionary function, as some in evolutionary psychology propose, in that men used to cuddle in winter and that is why you have gays, or that gays were better guardians of women and children when the men used to go out for hunt. These musings are based on questionable assumptions about human sexuality, mostly the Victorian ones, which simply compresses the staggering diversity of sexual practices in human cultures into one tiny gob, on which many of the hypothesis and theories in the social sciences and humanities today stand upon. Instead, homosexuality and other non-reproductive forms of sex can be seen as an evolutionary result of our high drive and social inclinations, as species, who enjoy sex for pleasure rather than reproduction. It reminds me of the female orgasm, which does not make any sense from a reproductive standpoint, even though many researchers had attempted to find an evolutionary reason, they failed miserably. Except that we know, that the orgasm is also an expression of pleasure which strengthens bond making and mutuality.

Before any plausible theory on this is to take birth, it is important to re-examine, and accordingly re-shape our picture of human sexuality. You cannot simply ignore, the “odd” sexual behaviors, and the supposedly rare practices of different cultures and arrangements. Once we have an accurate and representative picture of human sexuality and that of other primates, the puzzle joints should neatly fit in.

Portrait showing homosexual behavior in ancient Greece

Further Explore

Mota, Paulo  "Darwin's Sexual Selection Theory-A Forgotten idea"

http://www.uc.pt/en/cia/publica/AP_artigos/AP26.27.10_paulomota

Ryan, Christopher and Cacilda Jethá "Sex at Dawn". June 2010.

Wilson, Edward. "Sociobiology". 1975. 

The Bookgasms: A Reading List Suggestion

From the moors of science and nature, to the boggling insights into culture, morality and religion, these book suggestions ought to be on the list of every informed reader who seeks to understand and piece together the fringes of universe. Drawing from some of the classical texts and contemporary researches in areas which should concern a thinking human society. These are suggestions by me, and are nowhere near exhaustive or perfect.

1) The Blind Watchmaker 

It explains some of underlying processes going on in evolution, which as the title suggests is "a blind watchmaker", with no eyes to foresee the future. Contrary to popular ideas about evolution and natural selection, Dawkins describes how evolution creates and designs, which is not necessarily the "best" design.

2) The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe itself

You just cannot ignore physics, no matter how wild and fancy your imagination gets in the philosophical realms such as nature of reality, life and the universe. Sean Carroll explains what our current understandings about the natural world are and what plausible inferences we can draw from it. To the fine-tuners, the bio-centrists and the woo woo hoods, bad news for you all.

3) Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and other Animals

Why are we moral? Why do we have remarkable capacities of altruism, cooperation and mutuality? 

This interdisciplinary voyage seeks to answer questions which have long been at the discretion of philosophy and religion. 

4) Thinking Fast and Slow

It is the holy grail for any one trying to grasp the complexities of human behavior, cognition and psychology. Comprehensive and understandable for an ordinary creature. (No, you won't be able to control people after reading this, but you surely will be able to see, how vulnerable our thought and perception is)

5) The Age of Reason

This is one of the classic Enlightenment texts which throw light at the philosophical loopholes in theology and religious doctrines. If a God was all-powerful, it would not need the aid of revelation or prophets, or any agency and would be accessible to every man alike without any barrier of tradition, culture and language. 

6) Sex At Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality 

It traces the evolution of human sexuality, while challenging some of the assumptions about sexual nature of humans and the cultural pretexts in the social sciences and the evolutionary psychology. The "hyper-driven male and the reluctant female" picture, which have been at the heart of most sociological and anthropological literature is a vestige of Victorian era, which have crept into our present-day ideals of marriage, monogamy and sex. 

7) Why People Believe Weird Things?

From psychic mediums, to alternative medicines, ancient astronauts, and to the elusive conspiracy theories, weird things are everywhere, which continue to attract so many people and the drive million dollar industry of pseudo-science and quackery. Why do smart people believe weird things? 

8) Breaking The Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

How do religions do it? which keep billions of people on their feet, and some are even ready to go at far fetched lengths for it. It seeks to vacuum some of the fog which surrounds the origins of religion, its practice and its evolution. 

9) Sapiens: A brief history of Humankind

How did humans become the dominant species of the planet? From small herd of foragers to vast civilizations of glamour and technology. It is a story about us, and our success which will leave you thinking for long. 

10)  The Mind of the terrorist: The psychology of terrorism from IRA to Al-Qaeda

No, the terrorists are not the "psychopathic" mind wretched creatures you once have thought. They are perfectly normal people who know what they are doing, Before we step into the political dimension of countering terrorism, it is important to understand them first, from a closer and detached point of view.

11) The Second Sex 

Its one of the central pieces of feminist literature. Oh, the horror of the F word. From biology, to history and to culture, it sheds light on some of the ideological nicks, which an ordinary eye presumably fails to catch. 

12) The Origins of Species 

Even though we know about evolution a lot more than Darwin did, it is still a beautiful and mind sparking read. 

Opiniongasms

"No, I will not respect your opinion. I will only respect your right to hold that opinion" 

 We stand at the juncture of society which does not put much work into discerning an informed opinion from an ‘opinion’. The credit goes to the post-modernist commodification of knowledge, a world of ‘alternatives’ and ‘perspectives’ which hold the same amount of water. These attitudes have even crept up in the academic spheres, which have stalled our progress in some of the crucial areas. One such example, which has lingered quite long is that of consciousness and human brain, as many in philosophy and psychology fear the 'biologizing' of mind.

Opinions are not created equal. It is a futile business, or rather a ludicrous one. It’s true that knowledge is uncertain, but some ideas are obviously more well-grounded in research and based on educated lines of thinking. The whole scheme of “open-mindedness”, which put in other words, implies that the opinion of a streetwalker and that of an academician counts as equal, is probably the most preposterous and even harmful proposition someone has ever made.

Of course, you are entitled to your opinion. No one can stop you from thinking or expressing, but to expect that your opinion holds weight and is to be taken seriously in matters of sophisticated discussions is a different realm altogether. People often confuse entitlement to an opinion with the opinion itself, which stems from their inability to understand critical thinking and dialectical reasoning.

In learning and intelligence theories of psychology, we know this phenomenon as the ‘reflective’ scale, with people moving on from the I-just-know-what-I-know stage to the all-opinions-counts-equal ladder, and further higher up at the “I know it because of conclusive evidence and informed guesses” as they sharpen their tools of thinking.

This witty depiction, made by SMBC probably hits the nail. 

The consequences of "open-mindedness" under the disguise of tolerating people's opinions no matter how outdated, or ill-supported they are, manifests itself in terms of popular quackery, pseudo-science and religious debates which basically presents the scientific opinion as a mere "opinion", just one in the alternatives' sea. And, its one of the reasons, why liberals have failed to counter fanatics of their religion which continue to find asylum behind the "respect-my-opinion" wall and gain support. So, this obviously has serious and practical implications for how our conversations turn out and how we progress as a society. So, no, I will not respect your opinion. I will only respect your educated opinion. 

The "All Religions" sorry game

The phrase "But all religions" has become the ultimate armor to deflect genuine criticism 


If you have ever been in a serious political discussion with the puritans or the theists, chances are that the phrase "But All Religions" will come up almost every time you are in the middle of scrutinizing theological underpinnings. The argument started off in the atheistic literature but is now being used rigorously by the apologists and the regressive leftists, or probably those who have little time re-assessing what they are saying, without realizing its implications.

Whenever any solemn debate with the Islamic theologians and scholars, on matters of women, homosexuals, rights of non-Muslims, and the hated apostates, come along, it is inevitable that "All religions" is going to be smacked hard at your face. End of discussion. This becomes a gigantic barricade for any one wanting to have an informed discussion about the topic and trying to challenge the obviously problematic parts in Islamic law and theology, which are always avoided in the Islamic world.

So, let's try to deconstruct the very argument. Are all religions equal? If you think yes, you either are poorly educated on the matter, or you are just being intellectually dishonest, because its not true. There are some theological aspects unique to Islam, which are inherently problematic, like the widely accepted killing of the apostates (people who leave Islam). No serious attempt to challenge it, among the theologians and the scholars has taken place so far. Its true that in the pre-Enlightenment West, the Church's teachings and the dogmas of Christianity revolved around the same notions of blasphemy, but there has been a history of political and social struggle, and oodles of external criticism hammered by philosophers and free-thinkers which shaped much of the liberal West we witness today. The fundamentalists of organized religions might come under the same category. But, you don't have to run for your life, if you left Jainism or Sikhism.

The "All religions" argument is the height of dishonesty and cheap apologia. Many liberals in the West, and even some atheists continue to use the same argument, without discerning what this entails, and how it is corrosive to our progress.

Looking back at the Orgasm

A brief glimpse at the female pleasure's set

Image from Google pictures

From the Plato’s Timaeus, to the Chinese Jade Chambers and to the Freudian’s sexology, the O game has journeyed a long path of speculations, cultural fringes and fancy mythologizing. There have been fragments in the pasts, with democratized sexual pleasure for women, and also junctures of repressive mores, mutilation, and taboo. Humans’ attempts to understand female sexuality had been sleazy, and even if, occasionally, it happens to be studied, the drawings rarely reach public thought.

Today, after our neuron clusters are capable of contemplating the workings of universe and making sophisticated technology, we still understand little about our bodies. Many had sought to explain, female orgasm in terms of evolutionary functionality and later, adaptation, but this arose from inaccurate conceptions about the female orgasm, which we know today, is difficult to reach vaginally, and thus divorces itself from serving any particular evolutionary catch.

Then the sensationalized G-spot and nitty-gritty of ejaculation, arousal, and attitudes. The internet is squashing with information, often, wrong and unsupported. There are meter long “How To’s” self-help quack, all kinds of it, which thrive; “How to make her orgasm quickly”. “How to revive your sexual energy”, “10 Things you need to know about Os”. They do, because of the lack of decisiveness of science on these matters, which provide the food for a wide variety of woo to feed on.

It is true that any serious scholarship in this domain, faces barricades of culture and politics. 

But, we have a long way to go. Because, the oodles of media, literature and pornography still relies on outdated ideas about female sexuality and orgasms, which have long been discredited (in the scientific spheres). The fogginess which surrounds the topic manifests itself in a million households with unhappy paramours, poor sex education in schools and appalling practices of some cultures. Sometimes, science needs to step in, when issues with deeper political and social consequences are concerned. 

The Arrogant Atheists

They are cold. They are cynical. They are godlessly haughty. 

Somewhere between the towering heap of names and connotations, which are associated with us, vanity is the most popular and probably the oldest charge on the dubious. "Why atheists seem so arrogant?" is a query I get hounded with often whenever I try to put my fingers and dither the threads of religious thought and dogma.

Many in the past, had been stamped by similar accusations. The literature is enormous by the free-thinkers and the philosophers who had sought to defend their 'non-arrogance', throughout history. And many, continue to face the same rubric today.

So why are atheists so arrogant?

Well, because..they are not. They 'look' arrogant because our cultural conditioning has taught us that 'disobedience' to God is vanity. Disregard for the sacred is surrounded by taboo and voodoo. Its the same discourse of 'atheists being little nefarious satans', which some of us are already tired of. The whole 'godlessly haughty' wrangle stems from the same mores which maintain that goodness or good morality can only come from religion, of which obedience or submission to the divine is a major chunk. We 'look' arrogant or cold, because of the presupposition deeply rooted in our culture, that 'denying God' implies man taking control of his life, an ideal that is at the heart of religious doctrines. When Iblees was made Satan, when he refused to bow before God, was charged with conceit in the Islamic theology. But, he was 'conceited' not because he denied the existence of God, but because he considered himself God.

This reflects a preposterous misunderstanding which the religious have about atheists. They don't consider themselves God or think that they control everything. They simply think that its highly unlikely that such a being exists.

The problem is not with the atheists. It is with the tenets of our cultural upbringing which 'otherize' them, making them look like horned brutes breathing fire.

Why is sex such a taboo?

The shhh moments probe our lives every day, when we are bombarded with cues of inappropriateness and discrepancy. Some will just shrug their shoulders, melding into the “ought to be this way” narrative which is constantly hammered by cultural mores and social institutions into us since we were dumb blobs of flesh in our cradles. But some restless creatures of our kind, would like to scratch their heads and ask “Why did that happen?”

How come, sex, which our species is undeniably obsessed with, became such a “behind the covers” and often times, a “dirty” business. In other words, why is sex such a taboo? Let’s take a foot back, and ask “what do we exactly mean by that?”. Does this means sex outside marriage or practices like incest, on which large volumes of thought and literature has been expend. No, that is not what I mean. By, sex, I mean the very act of sex, which is supposed to be done behind closed doors, or possibly bushes in ancient times, without announcing it out loud or talking about it. 

But before answering that, it is important to muse another question. “Has sex always been a taboo?” If yes, then why. Did it serve any particular purpose? Humans have the tendency to look at their surroundings and think that things have always been the way they are now.

This is one of the spheres, where you find the most diverse and even contradictory schemes of theorizing. Because it’s like asking, why the word ‘fuck’ became so popular in language? Is there any particular reason for it besides that so many people started using it at once?

Culture and obviously, religion has a big hand in fencing taboo around the act, just like it does arbitrarily in matters of food and clothing. But, let’s dissect the ‘standard narrative’ which is often given in answer to this question, which goes something like this

“Sexual taboos are natural, it is a mechanism by which nature controlled whose offspring is who, so that men and women could work in functional units”

It does look quite good, and seems to make sense, but it is not quite true. Because, we know, that humans at least around pre-historic times were highly promiscuous and lived in shared societal structures, sharing food, resources and well..women. This kind of dynamics and practice, did not only exist in pre-historic times, but practiced in primitive forms of societies even later.  Surprisingly, some of these practices were sanctioned by religion, which vary a great deal on their position about sex and sexuality. This does not necessarily mean that taboo on sex was nearly absent, but that it did not exist in forms like it does today, with masturbation, nudity, sex talk, female sexuality being surrounded by contempt.

However with the advent of agriculture and changing cultural constrains, the standard narrative does hold some water, but taboo on sex was not ‘nature’s planning’ but rather a social adaption in response to religion and possibly, changing societal dynamics. When it comes to planning, nature is the worst entity. It is blind. Many people think it’s something useful that comes out of their sweet Motherly nature, which almost always has to serve some purpose.

We, coming from Abrahamic paradigms which spread and soon merged in and affected other cultures, have the tendency to fill our voids of knowledge, with pre-existing assumptions of today. It’s not that our ancestors sat around and carefully discussed what benefits would doing it behind the bushes would serve. It’s just that the ideal of ‘being civilized’ and therefore ‘unlike animals’, which has been at the very heart of our cultural conditioning. You can say, that humans did not want to look back at their animalistic past, and that sex out in open, reminds them of their primitive instincts, which culture has dictated to be embarrassing and something to get disgusted about.

 
Further Explore

Ryan, Christopher and Cacilda Jethá “Sex at Dawn: The Pre-historic Origins of Modern Sexuality”

Dening, Sarah. The Mythology of Sex. Macmillian 1996, ISBN 978-0-02-861207-2

Patton, Michael S. (June 1985). "Masturbation from Judaism to Victorianism"

Art is not subjective

Throughout history, art has enjoyed a special place in almost all human cultures and often seen as an ‘out of the world’, imaginative and an increasingly subjective endeavor. Whether its lore, mythology, visual art, music or literature, it has been seen as employing some deeper or ‘higher’ forms of conscious reach. But as we put the scientific goggles to stare at the world and the humans living in that world, we might want to shrug our shoulders and say Hmm! What if something else going on?

So, what does the seemingly conclusive heading above actually mean? When I say, art is not subjective, do I mean that everyone has to like the same art and art forms. It would be cool if each person on the planet would listen to the same songs, or read the same books, but that is not what I mean. Then, does it mean that art in human societies serves specific evolutionary functions which in popular thought, is deemed as a way “to attract mates and pass on genes”. That is not quite true, nevertheless, that is not what I mean either.

When I talk about art, I am basically talking about aesthetics and beauty, principles of which are not so subjective or beyond this world, as previously thought to be. There are predictable patterns which manifests themselves across human cultures and even across species, and they can be studied in a scientific way. There are some cognitive and emotional modules, shaped by evolution which explains why some arts find their way in museums, buildings and even worshiped as gods in temples while others don’t quite make it. In a particular cultural tradition, some aesthetic forms continue to get replicated over and over across generations and across geography which can be traced historically such as deliberately enhanced features of iconography in Hindu art.

The all-time creative world of art is subject to cognitive and cerebral laws formulated by billions of years of evolution. What those laws are which invoke awe and ahas in us have remained the domain of artists and craftsmen, who had learned to capitalize on them through trial and experimentation. In other words, they take advantage of our perception and emotional processing systems to charm ‘magic’ on us.

So, how do we know this?  Well, the findings arose from completely unrelated areas of science. Mainly perception and neuroscience. We don’t see how we think we see. There are some ‘perception shortcuts’ which evolution had wired in us during millennia of our struggle with environment. The evidence comes from visual and cognitive illusions which easily trick our brains, even if we know that we are being deceived. But, more important insights come from ethology, the study of animals. Jewel beetles, which are found in Australia were noted to go extinct because they were seen having sex with beer bottles. Well, Jewel beetles are brown and glossy and so are the beer bottles, which humans have the habit of throwing around in the environment. The beetles saw “anything that is brown and glossy, that is our hotie”.

Nikolaas Tinbergen, a Nobel prize winner ethologist, did an experiment with seagulls, whose beaks have a red dot, which they use to feed their infants. Tinbergen took an isolated beak, with no seagull attached and swayed it in front of the infants who showed the exact same response when they were about to get food even though there was no seagull. Then, Tinbergen, took a wooden stick and painted it with red dot, much brighter and bigger than that of a seagull’s beak. And, the infants pecked even vigorously and grew crazy for food. Vilayanur Ramachandran had remarked on this “If those seagulls were to build a museum and pay millions of dollars for an artifact, then that would most probably be the painted wooden stick”.

This new way of looking at art through the lens of neuroscience was coined by Semir Zeki  according to whom art is governed by the laws of the brain which just means that you cannot ignore biology while doing culture. For many years, humanities and the social sciences have shown contempt on 'biologizing' of social and cultural phenomenon which according to them are complex, and cannot be underpinned. 'Reductionist' is the favorite and probably the most common word in the humanities and social sciences which is equivalent to being a baby-eater. 

Nevertheless, findings from different areas continue to shake us and make us re-evaluate our standings. Margaret Livingstone, had pointed to several perceptual tricks which artists and impressionists use to make us clap by manipulating our visual systems. Art reveals how we see, at the back end in processing of our brains. That makes scientists the theorists, and artists the experimentalists. In her documentary video, The Neuroscience of Art, she explains the use of contrast and detail in several paintings. She also shows drawings made by people with brain damages and perception impairments who have difficulty locating distance and spatial network as shown below. 

All of this tells us an important story about our own selves and how we see. Cultures, throughout history, have tried to figure out ways in which we perceive and absorb reality, whether it is auditory systems in sounds and music or visual organization in pictorial or illustrative art forms which enchant us and make us coming for more.  

Further Explore

Huang, Mengfei. "The Neuroscience of Art"
http://web.stanford.edu/group/co-sign/Huang.pdf

Vilayanur, Ramachandran. "Aesthetic Universals and Neurology of Hindu Art". 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZTvHqM-_jE

The Scientist. "Neuroaesthetics"

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/39802/title/Neuroaesthetics/