Biology, Religion and Humanity
All living organisms obey the ultimate biological imperative of survival, self-preservation, the biologically-imprinted requirement to pass on one's genes from one generation to the next. The successful organism is the one which manages to generate as many offspring as possible. Oddly, though perhaps not, most religions too offer a fundamental dictum to adherents: to "be fruitful and multiply". Procreation in the human species is seen as serious business, and to the religious faithful the act of procreation is meant specifically for the purpose of begetting. Not pleasure. Yet nature has equipped humans, as she has done with other species to feel pleasure in the act of procreation, a not-too-subtle encouragement.Nature would have us happily humping and producing offspring here, there and everywhere. Good thing she has also equipped us with various types of ameliorating emotions as well as some intelligence and a modicum of free will so that we are also able to make choices, once we realize that lack of temperance leads to complications of varied and many types. While other animals have their definite seasons for indulging, geared to the compatability of weather and the raising of young, we have no such constraints; did Nature in her all-seeing wisdom foresee that humankind would be capable of altering its environment to the extent that we do, providing for ourselves personal havens from the elements?
Well, in stepped religion, and the dictates from that direction are somewhat measured; while recognizing that males and females are opposite sides of the same race, it also sees that the genders are quite at variance with one another, in capabilities, emotions and priorities, let alone the ease with which the female gender reaches intellectial and social maturity, as opposed to her slower race-partner. Still, both nature and religion urge rapid reproduction on humankind. Neither appears to worry that the breadth and fruits of the earth will not be sufficient to to provide for an ever-expanding humankind.
And why should they? Both appear to have relied historically on the inevitable appearance of the Three Horseman of the Apolcalpyse: war, famine and pestilence. And these three disasters have always been in evidence; the first the product of humankind's egregious shortcomings, part and parcel of its primal imperative, the need to secure territory which in turn provides shelter and the potential wherewith to feed oneself. Famine and pestilence is what nature throws in for good measure; can't have mankind too complacent, after all.
Talk about conflicted, that's humankind. We get all these messages, and they really do control our biologies. Women feel an utter compulsion to bear children, to nurture them and prepare them for their place within the world men and women and religion have made, to receive them. Men work out their aggressions one way or another; in advanced societies with unbridled enthusiasm for organized sports, in more elemental societies, by waging constant warfare upon other tribes. So, on the one hand, we have the "be fruitful and multiply" dictum (for the greater glory of nature/God). And on the other there is the impulse of belligerence, whereupon mankind visits either kindly humiliation or miserable death and destruction upon his fellows.
Still, most men in most cultures regardless of where they are geographically generally prefer to preserve their own lives for brief posterity, while with varying degrees of hesitance or determination proceeding to take the lives of their perceived adversaries. The single outstanding variation in this generalized pattern appears to be that of men representing fundamentalist Islam, where passionate adherents not only are eagerly fired to wage war on unbelievers, but in the process they are also persuaded to give up that most precious element which most hold dear: their very lives (for the greater glory of Allah/God).
Women are a constant and reliable baby-making enterprise ensuring the appearance of an ongoing stream of humankind, while men are expendable in the nature of things Islam, wedded to the imperative of upholding Allah's expectations of his human flock.
People who live in the West, or in Western-oriented and emulating countries which tend to be publicly secular, and privately religious or without religion as the case may be, tend to govern their natures and the demands of nature. Emotions are far less likely to be extrovertly displayed in pyrrhic flashes in recall of ancient animosities. Reason is a core value, overwhelming tendencies to fall back toward Neanderthal tendencies. Intelligent discourse is more likely to follow in the wake of disagreements, as people agree to disagree, and personal education levels along with upwardly-mobile social and business plans tend to produce fewer offspring. So, level-headed, intelligent and knowledgeable individuals are less likely to populate the world in comparison to their more religiously-inspired, less educated counterparts elsewhere.
Who wins in the end? Intelligent, socially mature individuals capable of accepting variables amongst cultures; conscience-stricken environmentalists who eschew war if at all possible? Or backward-looking, fiercely religious conformists who condemn lifestyles and allegiances unlike their own?
Suddenly the future doesn't look all that appealing.
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, March 29, 2006
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