A rchive Date
[ 27-08-2000 ]
Category
[ Psychology ]
sub-Categoy
[ Sex ]
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[The Mating Mind
If you thought politics was about intelligent debate, principles and justice, Dr Geoffrey Miller will happily put you straight. It is about sex. In fact, much of what we revere in cultured society, such as art, music, even comedy, is about sex. At the root of human culture, many would argue, lies the well-developed organ called the human brain. Which, Miller would counter, grew to its impressive size because it was a tool as much for wooing as for survival.
But back to politics. "When somebody is spouting a particular ideology, I tend to step back and ask why that person should have a view on it," says Miller, 35, an evolutionary psychologist at University College London. "Why are they talking about it publicly? What aspects are they trying to play up to make them look more attractive? Once you start doing that, you get quite sceptical about human discourse." He points out that the issues that, in his opinion, are most important to human welfare - the environment, the arms trade, contraception, disillusionment among inner-city youth - are not the kind of topics that dominate political agendas.
"Political issues tend to be superficial and very prone to fashion cycles. Take drug legalisation. Smoking marijuana is seen as a low-status activity of alienated youth. It's not seen as sexually attractive, so adults don't want to be seen supporting it." Miller is sceptical about the hardline argument against legalisation - that soft drugs lead to hard ones.
Politicians may find Miller's proposition absurd but they are "kidding themselves", he says. The people who know politicans best - senior civil servants - testify to an "astonishing" number of affairs, liaisons and mistresses in the corridors of power. Bill Clinton is, perhaps, a good example of how politics can be allied to sexual charisma.
This vignette illustrates the intense debate about the origins of human nature which Miller has waded into with his witty, well- argued first book, The Mating Mind. He is keen to put the reins on the idea, perpetuated by many psychologists, that every aspect of our behaviour and personality is directed towards survival. To survive was not enough, he insists. Our ancestors also had to reproduce. Miller argues that the "most distinctive aspects of our minds evolved largely through the sexual choices our ancestors made . . . our minds are entertaining, intelligent, creative and articulate far beyond the demands of surviving on the plains of Pleistocene Africa."
Miller cleverly taps into an enigma that rankles in science. Put simply, nobody has provided a satisfactory explanation for why all cultures, independently, seem to come up with creative practices such as art and music. Even though they seem superfluous to survival, creativity is seen as important, and the most advanced practitioners are seen as high-status individuals. The attractive muses who flock to Salman Rushdie and Mick Jagger, among others, suggest that this status equates to sexual desirability. Indeed, the 19th-century bohemian arts scene was routinely depleted by bouts of syphilis.
Some indignant psychologists might retort that art can be thought of in terms of survival. Good representational painting, for example, suggests a keen eye for one's surroundings and environment, which might have given our forebears the edge in surviving in unknown territory.
Miller thinks this too laboured an explanation.
"Why bother to display a representation of your surroundings?" he asks. "What information does it carry? The physical habitat doesn't care. So the benefits must be social or sexual. Great artists get high status, and primatologists will tell you that status is a measure of reproductive success."
In fact, art is a perfect example of a sexual fitness indicator, he concludes. It is hard to accomplish but easy to judge. "Even painting stripes of red ochre on the body is something that not everybody can do to the same ability - that's what makes it worth paying attention to."
This ancestral desire to flaunt abilities to a prospective mate does seem to illuminate certain human truths. If you ask people about their true ambitions, they tend to say things like "travel the world", "be a famous writer" or "be the next Noel Gallagher".
Some people may even pursue creative ideas in their spare time for little or no money, such as playing in a pub band or painting watercolours. They do it because it gives them something to talk about at a party. It is rare, Miller says, to find someone who longs to be a tax lawyer or an accountant, and who mugs up on fiscal law at the weekend.
He is quick to add, though, that the "unsexy" professions acquire some sort of status in the salaries they command. However, the extremely widespread innate desire to be accomplished in at least one creative realm suggests, Miller says, that these traits are "real adaptations". In other words, the longing to be creative is so universal that it must have evolved in our ancestors for a good reason, and the reason is sexual selection.
The idea that much of human endeavour is sexual display finds fascinating support in the truth that artists, musicians, novelists, even scientists tend to do their best work in their sexual prime, and mostly before they are married. The finding applies equally to men and women.
What about something as obtuse as humour, a uniquely human trait?
Why does a good sense of humour - the immortal GSOH in personal ads - top the list of desired attributes in men? It isn't because the ability to crack funny jokes once contributed to survival chances, Miller argues. It is because humour is a pretty efficient display of sexual credentials too: "You make a joke. So that's going to affect the weather, or stop a predator? It's a non-starter.
"The fact that good comedy is dependent on culture and language suggests that a sense of humour is about the ability to learn the nuances of that culture. It means having the social intelligence to be tuned in, to be plumbed into the gossip system. It's about the ability to set up an expectation in the audience and then violate it. You need to be able to jump out of a certain mindset and present a novel idea. That requires intelligence."
In The Prehistory of the Mind, archaeologist Steve Mithen argued that creativity and culture are the accidental results of cross-wiring in our ancestors' large brains. Miller is scathing: "People who write about culture as a by-product of big brains don't seem aware that other species, like dolphins and whales, have big brains but not the capacity for humour. The brain of a sperm whale weighs 18lb. Ours is the size of a grapefruit."
Ultimately, Miller is arguing for a commonsense view of the evolution of human nature. He feels any theory should be able to explain the mundane truths of everyday life, such as why public life is full of men (they are more eager to display their sexual wares); why people at dinner parties talk about dangerous places they have been on holiday (it impresses potential sexual suitors).
He even admits that he has indulged in a bit of sexual display himself but, now he is married to Rosalind, a television producer, and has a daughter, Atalanta, the longing to show off is fading. "I was one of many male students who escorted young women to abortion clinics past pro-life protesters," Miller recalls. "But lots of us only did it once, because we would then be able to talk about it. After that, you get the law of diminishing returns. There's no point doing it twice. But now I don't go to conferences as much as I did, I don't go to the gym as much, I don't cook interesting stuff any more, and I don't read books that are as serious."
Miller has comforting words for those unnerved by the idea that men and women are merely sexual predators: "Some critics may have a set of moral instincts about sexuality. They might condemn this theory as cold-hearted sexual strategising. But this is inappropriate because we all do this stuff without knowing about it. It's a human universal."
The Mating Mind, by Geoffrey Miller, is published by William Heinemann]
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