The entire idea that our society and culture has gone askew has so many far reaching tendrils. A few posts ago I alluded to the fact that I was pondering big things, and mentioned Gaia Theory but never followed up on it. The reason being that the idea that our entire culture is... wrong, for lack of a better word, is so large and unwieldy that although I am intrigued, I am willing to accept that, I am interested in how to change that, it remains difficult to wrap my head around and put it down on paper. There is no spoon. Woah.
Ishmael posited the idea that we used to live, when we were nomadic hunter-gatherers, as if we "belonged to the world", we were the Children of Gaia (forgive my waxing hippieness), and lived in this symbiotic relationship with the world as a whole. Gaia Theory is the idea that everything is interconnected in a giant symbiotic relationship encompassing every element on Earth in order to sustain a state of homeorhesis, not to be confused with homeostasis. (Homeostasis: properties of a system to regulate its environment to maintain a stable, constant state. Homeorhesis: properties of a system to regulate its environment around a trajectory. Elements working in cohesion to maintain certain static points, but those points will change depending on various elements).
Confused yet? Stay with me. Daniel Quinn and Gaia Theory (the brain child of James Lovelock) have nothing to do with each other as far as I know, but I can't help but love the complementary nature of their ideas. That we used to "belong to the earth" and we lived in this giant symbiotic, fluctuating eco-balance. That when tracing our evolution, we ceased to belong to the earth and began to think the earth belonged to us. Now we have domesticated animals, and crops, and property, and therefore I must own what is mine in order to protect what is mine. And protect what is mine in order to own it.
I began this whole rant because of Sex at Dawn, and we may seemed to have strayed from our original path which was the current sexual narrative but trust me, it was only a minor detour.
Sex at Dawn also traces our cultural past to the Neolithic Revolution (remember, the agricultural revolution) and this huge societal shift from hunter-gatherer to domesticated settler. The traditional idea surrounding the interplay of the sexes was that men need to protect their paternal rights, so they want exclusive access to the female so they can assure their offspring is theirs. Women need to trade their reproductive capability for security and food that men offer. So it's this constant monogamous byplay of horny man versus reluctant woman. Men want sex, potentially lots of it with many women to ensure their genes get passed on. Women don't want to trade sex for someone who isn't going to stick around and take care of their pregnant selves and their offspring.
This was Darwin's idea (and others) when he was doing his whole evolution song and dance, and it largely hasn't changed in the intervening years. This book says wait a second. Is that actually how we evolved? Is that our true origins, or is that the culture in which we live projecting it's own taboos upon history?
When the British first started wandering around Australia, they reported that the Aborigines were miserable and starving, in a state of chronic famine. Why? Because they saw them eating bugs, rats, grubs, etc. To the Brits with their tea and crumpets, eating bugs was a last resort of a starving man. To the Aborigines, it was an excellent source of protein and part of their daily diet. They weren't starving or miserable. Has man always lived in a state of tense monogamy, of gender inequality and byplay, or do we assume that because that's how we've lived for the last two thousand years?
Remember, we weren't always sedentary. Our nomadic ancestors lived in a state of "belonging to the earth". Due to the nomadic lifestyle, our population was kept in check by the availability of food. You didn't store food or possess many things, because you took with you what you could carry. Instead of individual owning rights -- this is my property, my home, my crop -- man lived in bands of nomads who shared because that was the best way to ensure the survival of yourself and your band. You did not own anything that your tribemate did not also own or have access to. If they shared everything, why wouldn't they have shared sex? Without land to pass on to offspring, the knowledge of paternity loses importance. The raising of children was a communal affair. The best way to pass on your genes as a man would be to regularly screw all the women in your tribe. And the woman didn't have to worry about being left starving and pregnant, because the band would take care of her and her offspring. With the availability of food and the culture of sharing, women weren't dependent on men, they were equal members of the nomadic tribe.
Is this starting to make sense now?
To be continued...
